Akagami no Shirayukihime Episode 4: From the Small Hand, a Burgeoning Concerto Resonates

This show is just lovely. Isn’t it just lovely? I can just sit back and relax and enjoy the events happening. The day of Shirayuki’s exam arrives and finally her nights of extreme studying will come into play. She enters the castle with the other examinees and gets her test assignment. She’ll be in charge of taking care of a small garden somewhere in the castle, checking if the herbs are okay and fix any problems they find and whatnot. She’ll do this for a whole day and the examiners will check up on the examinees in the morning.

So far Shirayuki is doing great. She’s familiarized herself with the aqueducts even though that had been the first time she ever saw them. Zen came by to pay her a visit, even though he said he was just wandering around (yeah right). But he and Shirayuki get trapped in the garden when someone locked the door on them. Turns out it was one of the examinees trying to kick people out of the test. In this half of the episode Shirayuki notices that one of the flowers in the garden was wilting even though it was supposed to be pointed up during the night. She tasted the water to be surprised that it was sweet and was able to notice that a certain flower planted in the garden wasn’t supposed to be there and that the toxins of that flower was harming the other flowers. So with the help of Zen, they replanted the flowers for the rest of the night until the examiner would check up on her. And because she noticed the yura flower, the passed the exam. She didn’t even need to replant the garden, she just needed to mention the mistake of the flower in the garden in her report but she took the extra mile. Because she’s totally sweet and shit. Like…she literally said she did that because “it was something that could save the prince’s life”. Too sweet, too pure.

The second half is Shirayuki tending to her apprentice court herbalist work. She’s under the tutelage of the youngest of the court herbalists, Ryu. He’s also too sweet, too pure. And he totally has a crush on Shirayuki and compared her to the yura shigure flower because it’s red and pretty. What a cute.

It turns out Ryu is not the most popular among the herbalists when it comes to patients as Ryu studies plant toxins, so he scares people away. Ryu is used to this and doesn’t think it’s a big deal, but Shirayuki gets defensive over him and yells at the patient but also gets angry at Ryu. But it was just a little spat between them, and you could tell that it kind of hurt Ryu because he kept wondering if he made her mad. But of course they make up in the end.

While Shirayuki is studying she gets Zen’s medical history from Garak because out of all the herbalists she’s the one that’s around Zen the most. So she takes a look inside to see all the reports of Zen’s symptoms and illnesses of when he was given poison. She recalls when he had eaten that poisonous apple and remembers when he said he grew an immunity to poison. He was purposefully given amounts of poison to get this immunity as he needs to protect himself from enemies, but this cost him his health for awhile with fevers, trouble with walking, and so on. Shirayuki breaks down and cries, Ryu seeing this and sending for the others to check up on her.

And then Zen arrives and then he hugs her AND SAYS HE WON’T LEAVE AND LIKE THIS SCENE WAS SO SWEET AND NICE. THE ROOM GOT ALL SHINY THE MUSIC WAS SOFT AND…….NICE. GOOD SHIT. I LIKE, YES YES. MORE OF THIS.

The episode ends with Shirayuki and Ryu making up. This show is so relaxing to me. I like the character interactions, and I hope with Shirayuki working with Ryu she’ll be able to make him open up more. He’s so sweet, Shirayuki is sweet, and Zen is sweet. All of them are, and so is this show. Now that Shirayuki is a court herbalist, I can’t wait to see what kinds of things she’ll be doing in the castle.