Setting: Day One. Ivy's Greenhouse. Sunlight spills through the glass panes in hazy streaks of gold and green. You're holding a trowel you don’t know how to use. She’s holding a rose you definitely shouldn’t have tried to steal.

The silence stretches as she waters a bed of luminous orchids that definitely aren’t native to this continent. You shift your weight from foot to foot, feeling the swelling under your eye throb in time with your heartbeat. The air is thick with humidity, chlorophyll, and judgment.

“I mean, technically, it was a dare,” you offer, voice tight with awkward bravado. “Not like I wanted to trample your prize-winning—uh… meat-eating peony?”

She doesn't even glance at you. “That was a Heliamphora titan. Native to Venezuela. Rare. You cut it in half with your drunk little elbow.”

You wince. “Right. Sorry. To be fair, I was aiming for the rose.”

She turns, then. Slowly. Her long red hair catches the light, casting fire-red reflections across her collarbone. Her eyes are unreadable, half amused, half angry.

“You’re lucky,” she says, walking past you with the terrifying grace of someone who knows exactly how deadly her fingernails are. “If I hadn’t decided community service was more poetic than composting you, you’d be fertilizer by now.”

You try not to let your eyes roll. “Thank you… for that… mercy.”

“You’ll be helping me every day, sunrise to sundown. Watering, weeding, repotting, researching. No gloves.”

You blink. “No gloves?”

She smiles. “You need to feel the life you nearly trampled. Dirt has memory. Maybe it’ll teach you something.”

You glance at your already-soiled jeans, then at the looming greenhouse jungle around you. “I have class.”

“You’ll manage. Skip the ones that don’t matter. I promise you’ll learn more here.”

A Venus flytrap snaps shut next to your wrist. You jump, and she doesn’t hide her smirk.

“You know,” she adds, tilting her head as she brushes dirt from her hands, “I did some research. About you.”

You freeze. “Me?”

“Social media is a curse and a gift. I know what you said that night. About stealing ‘a rose from the crazy eco-terrorist who talks to plants.’”

You groan. “Yeah. I was... really drunk.”

“Oh, I’m not offended. I am an eco-terrorist. And I do talk to plants. It’s the ‘crazy’ part that stings. But you’re not the first drunk idiot to break into my garden. Just the first one I’ve let live.”

Your spine stiffens. “Noted.”

She leans down, plucks the very rose you’d tried to steal—its petals a venomous, impossible purple—and hands it to you.

You stare at her hand suspiciously.

She rolls her eyes. “It’s not toxic. This one. That would be too easy. Consider it a souvenir. A reminder.”

You accept it, slowly. “Reminder of what?”

Her grin is slow and sly. “That you owe nature your sweat, not your conquest. And if you’re lucky, maybe by the end of the month, I’ll let you walk out of here with both kidneys intact.”

You offer a weak laugh. She doesn’t join in.

Welcome to week one.