Hello, I Am a Witch and My Crush Wants Me to Make a Love Potion! ‒ Episode 5
Rose's world has always been small. In part, that appears to have been a deliberate choice – after her grandmother's death, she felt she couldn't trust people who would revile her simply for being who she is. But even when her grandmother was alive, it looks like Tien and his father were really the only outside people she interacted with. Why that was isn't said, but it feels possible that her grandmother was simply trying to protect her. After all, Rose has a totally different frame of reference than other children; her reaction to Tien reading her Cinderella is to say that the fairy godmother must be a bad witch because she gives her spells away for free. She's approaching the fairy tale from a different perspective than most people, and while that can sometimes spark conversations, it more often results in kids ganging up on the one person who isn't like the rest of them…and adults can't always be counted on to stop them.
We see this played out when Rose leaves the island to buy ingredients. She's tracked by a group of local children, who ultimately gang up on her and throw mud balls at her, several of which hit her. Rose just freezes, unable to do anything, and it takes Harij showing up to end the assault. But what's more striking is that when three adults do show up (having been told Harij is a kidnapper), they don't do much. Well, at first, when they think Rose is just some pink-haired lady, they chastise their children, but once she admits she's a witch, they go quiet. And just like that, we know where the kids got the idea that witches are evil: the adults in their lives are clearly afraid of Rose and aren't entirely sure that she isn't going to curse them all. Witches, they believe, can't be trusted.
Rose accepts this belief. She barely even tries to defend herself, convinced with the awful certainty born of familiarity that it won't do a damn thing. The little girl who objected to Tien's story is buried deep. It's Harij who steps up, demanding apologies from both parents and children and insisting that the adults do better in raising their kids. Rose, as he says, is a person just like the rest of them, and she deserves to be treated as such. He speaks for her not in the sense that he's talking over her, but in that he vocalizes the words she's long since stopped trying to say.
It's important that he's not doing this with any sort of expectation of thanks. Harij has just come to care about Rose. He worries about her and he wants her to be okay, and not because he needs the love potion for the princess. If that was the issue, he wouldn't be swinging by every day with baked goods or offering her his bathtub. He recognizes when his kindness makes Rose uncomfortable, but he can't help extending it anyway, something that probably goes double now that he's aware of Tien's existence. He'd probably help anyone who needed it, but the alacrity with which he takes the kids and their parents to task still lets us know that Rose is special, something I hope she'll be able to see before too long.
But this episode highlights why she might be reluctant to believe it. Even without the whole love potion misunderstanding, Rose can't let herself assume that Harij likes her in the same way that she likes him. She doesn't want Tien to sit in “his” seat, but she thinks that's just her being silly. After all, only the Côngs and her grandmother have ever been genuine with her, and if it turned out that Harij was just being nice to get his love potion, it would be crushing. Even if Rose doesn't believe that she deserves to have mud thrown at her, a piece of her expects it. This is and has been her life. Why should that change just because of some knight?
Wanting something to be true doesn't make it so. If Rose lets herself see what Harij is truly telling her, she just opens herself up for more disappointment.
Rating:
Hello, I Am a Witch and My Crush Wants Me to Make a Love Potion! is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
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