NEW CHARACTER INTRODUCTION: Hye-Jin

Aaaalright! Another character!

This is Hye-Jin. She is from the South-West. But most importantly, she is half-elf. Why is this super important? Well to put it simply, elves are very powerful beings who have mastery over magic and mana. Nobody knows where they came from, but there is a theory that they used to be humans that were exposed to a whole lot of magic and through this they gained not only their mastery over magic, but also their longetivity. Elves live for 500+ years (yes I'm sure you can see the problem now. With Yso and Erina) but the caveat: reproduction is extremely hard.

An elf getting pregnant and carrying a child is very hard. Very rare. As a result, their population is always a little precarious, and each elven life is extremely precious. There ARE some very rare fertile elves that make their living.... giving birth to children for the high classes, but Tldr, having an elven descendant is a huge occasion. So, when Hye-Jin's father (a noble elf from another king elven nation that isn't Windsummer) went to a human country in the South-West and had a little bit of a romance with a human woman, he was not at all expecting to hear that she was able to conceive his one and only child. So Hye-Jin was eventually taken to live with her father and learn how to succeed him.

However, she has not at all adjusted well to this new life. Where she is from, the county where her mother and her lived is so vastly different culturally. She learned how to speak the language that elves use because her mom knew it, but she didn't really speak it much so she knows what people are saying but has difficulty clearly saying what it is she wants. The new expectations that people have of her, this new way of life, the strange looks she gets because she isn't a full-blooded elf. They are a lot for her, so she did the only thing she knew to do.

She rebelled.

She cut her hair as a way of rejecting her elven lineage (because the maids who would style her hair would comment on how distinctly un-elven her hair was aka it wasn't a lighter color as most elves' hair is). She refused to learn from teachers about etiquette and what not (because the teachers would always make harsh and uncalled for remarks towards her capabilities and all that). She refused to participate in social gatherings (because whenever she was there the talk was solely focused on how a certain half-elf was spoiling the party) and she just... retreated into nature. This was the only place she felt happy and without issues.

So yes. That's Hye-Jin's history. And it was when Zahara went to this elven kingdom to study plants that the two of them met u-u