Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“You have no idea who I am, do you?”

Jinora’s arms were crossed as her critical gaze pierced through the air of awkward silence. She wasn’t really sure what she was hoping for: a look of vague recognition, maybe — or, at the very least, a sheepish apology.

If not for neglecting to even notice the girl who sat behind him in class, then at least for having greeted her at the door in his underwear.

The look on his face reminded Jinora of those zombie movies Ikki loved to watch at abominable hours: tangled clumps of slightly matted hair stuck out from the top of his half-shaved head, looking less like a mild case of bed-head and more like something she might’ve seen the groomer comb out of Oogie’s fur. A too-large shirt (his nightshirt, presumably) with splotches of orange and yellow staining the distressed fabric hung off of his shoulders comically, and, if she squinted, she could see dried patches of drool lingering in the corner of his chapped lips.

Jinora was met with a wholly blank expression as he blinked a few too many times.

“Uh…” The boy, Kai, rubbed a pair of knuckles harshly over his bleary eyes, “M’ I supposed to?”

Sensing the end of her quickly dwindling patience, Jinora took a moment to center herself by stealing a steady and disciplined breath.

It was seven in the morning when her father had asked her to do a favor for a close friend, one that had involved picking a classmate up on her way to school that morning. It wasn’t an egregious request—after all, Jinora always made sure to wake up an hour and a half before she had to leave so she could use the bathroom before Ikki monopolized it. Ergo, she’d already been ready and tucked into her usual nook in the living room, reading one of the old Victorian romances she’d managed to snag from a used store.

“Sure, who is it?”

“I’m not entirely certain,” Tenzin looked pensive as he scratched his fingers through his neatly-trimmed beard, “Mako said he goes to the same school as you, and that he’s running late to work so he needs someone to make sure he arrives safely to his classes.”

Jinora’s eyebrows rose to the top of her forehead. Mako didn’t live with anyone, as far as she knew, least of all someone her age. In fact, the thought of the detective keeping company with a teenager was nearly comical, given that he spent most nights chasing them away from abandoned churches and gas stations.

“Well, whoever it is, he can’t be as bad of a backseat driver as Meelo. Let him know I’ll be there once I track down the rest of the circus so we can get going.”

An ear-piercing honk broke tension, and Jinora peered over her shoulder to see Ikki through the window of her BMW iX, banging on the horn with her face pressed obnoxiously against the glass. Jinora could feel the muscles behind her eyes beginning to strain as she rolled them for what already felt like the millionth time since they’d left.

Turning back to Kai, she pretended not to notice Meelo’s muffled yelling as he vigorously shook the handle of the locked passenger-side door.

“Kai, quit standing around and get your ass in gear! Being late to school is one thing, but don’t even think about making Jinora late, too.”

The muddled look of confusion on his face was broken, giving way to exasperation as he leaned back on his heels and let go of the door. She watched him wander back into the living room with a wave of his hand and a non-committal grunt.

Jinora stifled the urge to scoff as she crossed through the threshold and shut the screen door.

Mako’s apartment, for what little she remembered of it, looked surprisingly disheveled. Unwashed dishes sat stacked on the small island that separated the kitchen from the rest of the space, along with a small pile of dirty clothes that was carelessly tossed over the back of a dining chair. There was a myriad of different-colored blankets draped and tangled together on the couch, along with a handful of throw pillows having found their way onto the floor. Mud tracks lingered near the door, leading retroactively back to a nearly tattered pair of converse that looked more brown than whatever color the faded fabric might’ve been at one point.

Jinora wrinkled her nose. Had it rained last night?

Evenings leading up to the deadline for Junior year admissions were starting to blend too far together, at this point. She hadn’t even heard Oogie make a fuss outside her door, the way he usually did when there was even the slightest dip in the atmospheric pressure.

“Thanks again, Jinora.” The relief in Mako’s voice, coupled with the tired bags beneath his eyes were enough to tell her that last night must have been more than just a little rain for the detective. Jinora glanced furtively in Kai’s direction, watching him critically as he rifled through the pile of clothes near the apartment’s small breakfast nook. He wore an equally exhausted and irritated expression.

Just what had happened last night?

And what was Kai Fong, one of their school’s most dubious topics of gossip, doing spending the night at a detective’s apartment?

“It’s no problem,” She lied, tearing her attention away from the boy currently stumbling his way towards one of the doors she remembered leading to the bathroom, “Is….something going on? Something I should know about?”

Mako looked tired. No, scratch that: he looked like he’d just crawled his way out of a train wreck. If she hadn’t known better, she’d say the spider web of creases between his brow looked more pronounced than they usually were, painting the grimace hanging over his features with something that resembled desperation.

The smell of roasted coffee grounds hit her senses just as something in the kitchen behind the counter dinged.

The detective all but scurried up from the stoop just as he managed to finish fumbling with his shoes. “His parents are out of town.” The sound of leather squeaking against tile made Jinora impulsively grind her teeth as Mako hurried towards the source of the beeping. Seeming to be in too much of a hurry to mind the hot steam rolling from the pot, he snatched one of the clean cups still laying upside down on a towel near the sink. Bits of hot coffee splattered as he hastily poured himself a generous amount, and Mako hissed through clenched teeth, urgently scrubbing the offending droplets off the top of his hands. “He’s just crashing here for the night until they come to pick him up and I guess I forgot to let Chief Beifong know about it, so I’m running late.”

He made it sound so casual, the way he said it; as if the two had known each other for an amount of time that surpassed the need for ceremony. In fact, as she stepped off to the side to allow the detective what little room he had in his small, modest apartment to finish getting ready, Jinora felt a mountain of questions piling higher by the minute.

She was about to open her mouth to ask one, when she heard the detective cuss.

“Shit, I mean—sorry, don’t tell your dad. Uh….here,” He shoved a hand into one of his pockets, fetching his wallet and fishing through the contents. Hurrying back towards the door, he handed her a twenty dollar bill. “For gas. And emotional damages.”

“Emotional damages?” Jinora echoed. As if on queue, the sound of a door swinging open made her flinch, turning her head to see Kai in an ensemble that looked much more familiar: his boxers (which she certainly hadn’t noticed were red) had been replaced —or rather covered— by a pair of gray, slim-fitting jeans. He wore his usual array of layered shirts: a gray t-shirt with a Nike swoosh planted on the front and a red checkered flannel that hung unbuttoned over top. A green bomber jacket was draped over both, giving him his typical look of pride and swagger.

She remembered the back of that jacket from the hours she’d spent sitting right behind it in Mr. Zaheer’s class. Their seats were alphabetized. If he couldn’t remember her face, he could at least have the decency to remember the name that came right after his own during roll call. Jinora yet again did her best to stifle her feelings of bitterness.

She never did get any of the pencils back that he was always borrowing from her.

“You talking about me behind my back?” The brilliant grin on his face made her stomach do a sudden flip, making the chole puri and butter tea that she had for breakfast begin to chase each other around. If these were any other circumstances, Jinora probably would’ve let herself think about how attractive it made him look — about how cool and easy he made the space around him feel.

Right now, she wanted nothing more than to get them both to school and forget about him entirely.

Kai made a tsk sound with his tongue as he walked over to the disheveled couch and began combing through the blankets, clearly searching for something. “That’s not very cool of you, big bro.”

Mako visibly flinched and sent a scathing look in her classmate’s direction. “I told you to quit calling me that.”

Kai lifted his hands and shrugged his shoulders, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling. Mako pinched the bridge of his nose. “Next time, maybe you should quit hitting the snooze button on my alarm clock! It’s a lot easier being a part of conversations when you’re not playing scavenger hunt around my apartment twenty minutes before you’re supposed to have your ass in school!”

Fishing something out from between the timeworn and embroidered cushions, Kai placed whatever it was around his neck and brushed past the detective to grab the mud-encrusted pair of converse. A long, harrowing sigh was forced through Mako’s nose, as he once again held the twenty out for Jinora to take. “Really, you have no idea how much I appreciate this.”

Shaking her head, she pushed both the detective’s hand and the offering in it back to him, “It’s okay, really. I can’t accept money. It’s part of our beliefs.”

Jinora could feel Kai’s stare at the back of her head, and she could almost hear him thinking about his utter disbelief. It wouldn’t be the first time she and her family had turned heads with their outspoken views on personal wealth and excess. In that, both were equally frowned upon in a family of practicing monks.

The word monk always seemed to startle the people who heard it when she talked about her family. In her experience, people often associated it with some far off land tucked away in long-forgotten corners of Asia, or a practice still carried on specifically for tourists. Jinora had never been able to understand why people had to ask her so many questions about her culture, when the internet currently existed in its most competent form. Still, her parents had always taught her to be patient, so despite the many mixed bags of questions from her classmates, she’d always done her best to answer calmly and respectfully.

Even if the questions almost never seemed to sound curious, so much as they were judgmental.

A warm flush spread over the detective’s face, clearing his throat somewhat awkwardly as he nodded and shoved the money back into the front pocket of his dress pants.

“Behave, alright? And don’t even think about going anywhere after school, got it? Jinora’s dropping you off, too. Bolin and Wu will be around by the time you guys get out.”

Something much darker than Kai’s typical happy-go-lucky grin settled on his slightly scrunched up features, turning his head away with what Jinora could only describe as an entirely uncharacteristic glower. It only lasted for a split second, because after a beat, he threw his head back with a ridiculous groan. “Fine,” He stood up, knocking the toe of his left shoe against the other to get rid of the dried clumps of mud dangling from the soles, “but I’m having some friends over after school.”

Mako scoffed — at the idea of Kai trying to host a small party in his impossibly cramped apartment or the fact that he just scattered a bunch of muck right in front of his door, Jinora wasn’t sure.

“Absolutely not— ”

“Bye! Have a good day at work, big bro.”

“I told you not to call me that!”

He was bounding out the door by the time the detective could further scold him. With a heaving exhale, Mako shook his head and threw open the screen door. “I mean it, Kai!”

An undaunted middle finger stuck out as her classmate continued to shuffle towards her car, not even turning around. Curses flew out of the detective’s mouth, some of which Jinora wasn’t even sure she recognized, but she pretended not to hear them. Mako turned back toward her with a frustrated and guilty look. “I’m, uh….sorry about him. Let me know if he’s too much of a handful today, okay? I’ll come down from the station and get him. And thanks, again.”

Jinora raised an eyebrow, but she nodded nonetheless as she clutched the lanyard attached to her keys and stared after the boy next to her car. There was a sinking feeling in her gut telling her that this was going to be a much longer day than she bargained for.

Stealing herself, Jinora followed Kai out of the apartment.

“And tell him if he even thinks about inviting those delinquents over, I'm going to make him sleep in Pabu’s old dog bed tonight!”

By the time she shut the screen door carefully behind her, Kai had made his way to the passenger side of the bright, steel-colored BMW parked a short distance away from the complex. His hand grazed over the moulding, muttering something she can’t quite make out as he eyed it with the spirit of a child in a candy shop. The image would’ve been rather amusing, if she weren’t about to miss the first fifteen minutes of class because of him.

Kai whistled as he patted the front of the hood gently. “Damn, for someone who can’t accept twenty dollars, you sure do ride in style.”

Ignoring the muffled yelling and screeching coming from within the car, Jinora rounded the back of the vehicle and trudged through the thick, packed in snow to get to the driver’s side, “That’s because it’s electric. We’re…. Environmentalists.”

A moment of consideration crossed his face, before he shrugged in what she can only guess was either idle acceptance or general disinterest. Bracing herself, Jinora unlocked the car with a press of a button on her key fob.

Chaos abruptly ensued when she opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat. Kai followed suit.

“Who is he!?”

“Do you guys know each other or something?”

“Dad’s totally gonna kill Mako when he finds out who you’re taking to school!”

“This guy had better have a spotless record, otherwise the Commander is gonna have to take someone out back.”

Jinora glanced warily at the glaring numbers on her dashboard. It was 7:45 AM, and she was already getting a pounding headache. Kai looked similarly less than impressed. Though, to Jinora’s quiet satisfaction, there was a perturbed look in his eyes as he turned his head back to gaze doubtfully at the flailing monkeys in her back seat. “Uh….you saying you’re gonna shoot me?”

Meelo narrowed his eyes, grabbing the back of the driver’s seat as he leaned closer to the older boy’s face. “Maybe, maybe not. I haven’t decided yet.”

A single thick eyebrow raised as he glanced back at Jinora. A silent plea for some kind of explanation. Jinora found a sick satisfaction in depriving him of it as she stared straight ahead and shifted the BMW iX into drive.

Ikki shoved a hand in Meelo’s face, pushing him back down into his seat as she propeled herself forward to scrutinize with similar disregard for personal space. “Is it true you went to Juvie last year? The girls in my class said you got locked up cause you beat up a bunch of guys at your last school. Is it true you broke out? Are you on the run from the cops? Cause you can totally tell me, I’m not a snitch like Jinora.”

“Ikki, Meelo, sit down and put your seatbelts on!” Jinora snapped, turning her head to glower at the two bouncing heads blocking her rear view. Still, she couldn’t help but glance in Kai’s direction briefly, her own (admittedly ashamed) curiosity growing like a tingle in the back of her throat.

Both of his bold, dark eyebrows were drawn low, casting something of a shadow over frustratingly unreadable green eyes. He was glaring — or staring in disbelief. She wasn’t sure. His lips were pressed into a thin line. Jinora remembered the way his eyes narrowed when Mako admonished him. Both looks were strikingly unlike the boy she remembered from class: the boy who was all offhanded smiles and brash, nonchalant fun.

He must’ve noticed her staring. He must’ve noticed all of them staring, because he eventually turned forward in his seat and lounged back casually, opting for a cursory shrug as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Maybe, maybe not. Why don’t you ask your commander back there for my file?”

Ikki squealed at an octave Jinora thought previously impossible for a human being, bouncing on her heels as she grabbed the back of her older sister’s seat and shook it. “He has a file!” She hissed next to her ear, making Jinora flinch as she whipped her head around for the second time to deliver the sharpest death glare she could muster.

Her sister’s playfully wicked grin fell slack, replaced with contemptuous disinterest as she flopped back with a heavy huff . Jinora tried not to let the small surge of triumph go to her head as she diligently watched Ikki all but yank the seatbelt into place with a satisfying click. She bit the inside of her cheek, resisting the unbecoming urge to smirk while her little sister slouched as far down as the seat belt would allow, throwing her arms across her chest with exaggerated spite.

Good. Jinora turned back in her seat to eye the clock on the dashboard once more.

7:48 AM. Okay. She could manage this for twelve more minutes, especially if she had already won her first argument with Ikki.

Reaching down, she shifted the car into drive.

It took a profound amount of patience and a fair measure of bickering, but once again, Jinora managed to drop both Ikki and Meelo off at the middle school without either sustaining a battle wound or a promise to tattle to mom and dad. Jinora unconsciously exhaled, loosening her iron-grip on the steering wheel and sinking back against her leather seat.

The boy beside her was surprisingly (and irritatingly) unphased, in contrast: ankle propped against the opposite knee as he wiggled his foot impatiently and gazed intently out of the passenger window: looking far less inconvenienced than Jinora felt he should be.

After all, she was used to being stuck inside of a car with Ikki and Meelo for what always seemed to feel like eternity.

It would seem his knack for zoning out wasn’t entirely exclusive to the classroom.

“So,” Jinora began tentatively, doing her best to settle the metaphorical dust, “What’s your first period class today?”

Kai paused, as if he was trying to figure out the answer for himself.

Unbelievable. Jinora stifled a scoff — focused gaze the only thing keeping her from rolling her eyes for the umteenth time as she slowly and carefully guided the car back onto the road. Then again, she thought to herself, stealing a glance at the unkempt boy in her passenger seat.

He hardly ever shows up for school…. I’d be surprised if he even knows what day it is.

“Study hall, pretty sure.”

“Okay….” Jinora started, pursing her lips as she squinted at the traffic gliding past them, “That doesn’t really help me. I’m going to need to know a little more than that if I’m going to drop you off at the right entrance.”

A shrug seemed a fitting response; one matched by a blatant lack of elaboration as he squirmed and shifted in his seat. Jinora watched him strain against the seat belt to peer at the now empty backseat of her car.

“Is….everything okay?”

“Huh? Yeah. Just trying to figure out how Skoochy’s gonna fit his wheelchair in this thing.”

An indignant flush spread over her face, forcing herself to stare at the road ahead instead of whipping her head back in disbelief.

Was he joking?

“Mako said you can’t have friends over.” Jinora clarified slowly— feeling as though she were explaining to her little brother Rohan why he couldn’t have another piece of candy before bed time The second, and much more infuriating shrug made the molars of her teeth grind.

Her gradually thinning patience had miraculously survived her siblings, but now, it seemed to be struggling in its final knock-out round.

“So? Mako says a lot of stuff. Doesn’t mean I listen.”

“Well, you should.” She felt defensive: defensive of the clear boundaries Mako had so adamantly set. Jinora could almost picture the horror in her parents’ eyes if she had ever been invited to another person’s home as a guest, only to treat someone else’s intimate space like a clubhouse, “Clearly he’s doing you a favor, and you should be respecting his wishes in turn.”

Kai’s expression did an abrupt one-eighty as his tilted head and wandering gaze snapped back towards her. Jinora had to bite her lip at the small burst of satisfaction— feeling for the first time since she’d opened Mako’s apartment door that she finally had his attention.

It would’ve been a nice victory (however small). Were it not, of course, for the shockingly alarmed and rigid look in his eyes.

Jinora nearly lost control of the wheel for the briefest moment: glancing back at him for an amount of time, far too hazardous for the driver of a heavy moving vehicle.

In a sudden and disorienting flash, Kai’s disarmed expression was immediately replaced by a scowl. Jinora’s heart beat out of time as she watched him out of the corner of her eye, crossing his arms and leaning his weight against the window like a berated child.

“Whatever. What do you know?”

A car horn blared behind them, but Jinora ignored it as she took a moment to try and justify the sudden shift in his tone.

Okay… maybe coming out of the gate and nagging him like that was a bit too harsh. He wasn’t a kid Mako sent her to babysit, after all.

The tension in her shoulder loosened slightly, remembering the basic elements of mindfulness as she cleared her throat and evened out her tone. “I know what Mako told me, and I’m his friend. I’m doing this as a favor to him.”

Kai scoffed, and Jinora had to stop herself from taking another too-long glance. “You’re his friend?”

“Mhm.”

“He’s like, fifty. And you’re what, sixteen? That’s weird.”

“Seventeen.” Jinora reflexively corrected, unable to help herself, “And he’s a…. Family friend. My dad’s friend, more than anything.”

She could hear him hum shortly next to her, feeling the skepticism in his muddled energy. “Still weird.”

Jinora recited the pillars of mindfulness once more in the back of her head.

Deep breath. Present moment focus. Non-judgment. Non-reactivity. Compassion.

“Well, think about it: what if one of your friends asked you to do a favor?”

Kai was silent for a brief moment, so she elaborated.

“Since they seem so important to you?”

“Don’t talk about them.”

Blinking, Jinora felt her heart quickly skyrocket into her throat—stiffening against the leather seats. A part of her wanted to bite back, and say, ‘then don’t volunteer me as their chauffeur’, but another, much wiser part chased the words off the tip of her tongue. Undeniably, the car was beginning to feel much colder, despite state-of-the-art heated seats and a warm black interior to keep them shielded from the chill of morning frost. Distinctly, she could hear the faint sound of ringing in her ears, and a nervous tingling spreading across her skin as a chill settled down her spine.

This time, as she slowly pulled up to a stop sign, Jinora took something longer than a glance at Kai.

She expected him to look irate: glaring with an intensity that matched the sharp venom in his response. But he wasn’t glaring. No, if anything, he looked almost vacant, as he stared fixated at the cars in front of them.

If anything, he looked….

Lost.

Jinora drew a sharp and sudden breath as another car horn pierced through the thick veil of silence. Quickly, she whipped her head back to the road and all but slammed her foot against the gas.

That was weird.

A whirlwind of questions wreaked havoc in the tense and lingering silence. Never, in all the years both of them had spent at West Republic High School, had Jinora ever imagined that pushing Kai’s buttons would be so… incidental. After all, despite never really exchanging much but a passing glance, Jinora knew from her father that it was hard to get Kai Fong to care about anything.

She was having an eerie amount of trouble justifying the laid-back, carefree, and lighthearted boy from class, with the one all but brooding in her passenger seat.

Ever the peacekeeper of her circle, Jinora opened her mouth to say something— but it died quickly in her throat. Instead, after a moment of hesitation, she leaned forward and turned on her bluetooth radio.

She didn’t say much for the rest of their ride to school, and for a mercy, neither did Kai. Thankfully, this morning it hadn’t taken nearly as long as she thought it would to find a parking spot so soon before the first bell. She turned toward Kai, who had already managed to free himself from his seat belt and open the passenger side door.

“Is this door close enough to your first period so you won’t be late?” It was an overall pointless question, because he seemed uncharacteristically quick to move this morning. Jinora ignored the confusing sting of guilt and insult as he nodded, slamming the door shut before she could even turn her car off.

Sighing, Jinora retrieved her backpack from the floorboard of her backseat— quickly abandoning the vehicle with an almost equal amount of enthusiasm.

“Thanks for the ride, ‘Nora.” he offered, politely enough but without his usual lilt of casual charm.

“Jinora.” she corrected, pursing her lips. Kai blinked, briefly seeming to stir from his odd stupor. “My name is Jinora.”

Kai rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly as a somewhat guilty smile stopped short of his eyes. “Oh, uh….sorry, my bad.”

She blinked, wrestling with yet another score of psychological whiplash.

“It’s fine.” Jinora lied, swallowing down the bitter taste in her mouth and shutting her car door a little harder than she meant to. “You should probably text Mako and let him know you got here safe.”

It was only for a split second, but the brief halt in his hurried steps was long enough for Jinora to notice. She watched from behind as his shoulders visibly tensed– staring straight ahead at the double doors of the school’s eastward entrance.

“Sure.” He replied nonchalantly, his tone level and easy despite everything about his unusually rigid posture saying otherwise. “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

Jinora narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

The first bell echoed through the schoolyard, prompting a flurry of straggling students to abandon their small huddles across the parking lot. Kai followed suit, giving her a noncommittal wave as he broke into a quick jog past the throng of their ushering classmates.

Jinora joined in tow, trying not to take it personally when he ran right past the entrance.

School, for the most part, went smoothly— despite her small detour to Mako’s apartment nearly making her late for first period. Not, of course, that she wouldn’t have been excused: her father was the principal after all, and as loathe as she was to admit it came with certain perks, the thought did help to ease the stress of her eventful morning.

It was finally the end of winter break, which meant that her parents had far less opportunity to appropriate her schedule. That’s right: no more last-minute demands to pick her sister up from every mall hang out or sleepover, or hours spent babysitting Rohan and Meelo while they both relentlessly begged her for McDonald’s, or sodas from the gas station. No more seasonal cleaning projects or late-night reading sessions being interrupted by Ikki’s pop music blaring through their house’s paper-thin walls.

But, more importantly, it was back to a strict, set schedule– and there was nothing Jinora liked more than consistency. It was why she’d survived to her senior year with a rounded and unscathed 4.6 GPA, despite having more credits than her counselor was sure what to do with. It was why, despite being on the cusp of adulthood, she still fell asleep every night at 8 pm, and woke up just in time to hear the neighbor’s rooster start crowing at 4:30 in the morning. It was why she usually brought the same thing to eat every lunch period, and it was why she sat at the same table with the same group of elementary school friends, despite being somewhat begrudgingly familiar with most of the student body by then.

Jinora picked at her string beans with her fork, idly swirling it around the spice-peppered broth as she unconsciously glanced across the cafeteria. Her eyes almost immediately found Kai and his group of friends, crowded around the same table they always were: tucked away from the lunch monitor’s typical line of sight.

There were five of them, including Kai. There weren’t always five, of course: there were rarely ever five. Usually, at least one of them would fail to show up for roll call— leaving an unremarkably empty seat or three between them. Usually, Kai himself didn’t show up to class to begin with, and if he did, it was often fifteen or twenty minutes into their lecture. It amazed Jinora how easily he’d slip through the door, tip-toeing with footsteps quiet enough to tell Jinora that Kai’s sneaking skills were well broken-in. In fact, usually she and the students who sat closest to the back were the only ones to even notice his fashionably late entrances— until, of course, the professor’s attention inevitably returned to the sea of faces in her class and counted one more than she had started with.

Today, it looked like, not only would Kai be present for 6th period roll call– so, too, would the rest of his sporadically present friends.

Jinora’s eyes slowly followed their line of faces— from the long-legged girl staring disinterestedly at her phone to the boy spread out next to her in a wheelchair, laughing at something someone had said. Across from them, two boys were pressed up against each other— one looking vaguely amused and the other glancing nervously over at the closest lunch monitor who was straining to give them the stink eye. Like Kai, she knew of them more so than she knew any of them personally.

But, much unlike Kai, she paid attention enough to recognize their faces.

Jinora frowned, and as if he could suddenly read her thoughts from across the cafeteria, Kai spared a glance in her direction, smile faltering as he caught her analyzing gaze. His scored eyebrows furrowed, green eyes squinting.

He had the audacity to look both bewildered and vaguely amused.

For a moment, Jinora froze— flinching when she felt her teeth accidentally scrape against the metal tongs of her fork.

“Hey! JIN-OR-A!” A familiar voice snapped her blurring attention back into focus, and Jinora felt her half-ponytail smack her in the side of the face as she quickly turned to look back at her own lunch table. Mei Ling snapped her fingers, looking particularly irritated by the time Jinora managed to blink the piercing shade of green away from her eyes. “AP Bio! When are we going to the library to work on our skeletal structure diagrams?”

Jinora shook her head, glancing back down at the unfinished notes still spread out across her open text book. By now, she’d have been done with 3rd period homework, and would’ve already been reading her literature class’s assigned book of the week. “Uh…I don’t know. I’m pretty swamped this week between all of Ikki’s softball practice sessions and Meelo’s school play on Saturday.”

Mei Ling’s nose wrinkled up, mouth twisting as if she’d tasted something disgusting. She tore a big chunk out of her multigrain bagel with manicured fingernails, tossing it back and rolling her eyes. “Ugh. Why are you always stuck on field trip duty with those two? Don’t your parents ever take them anywhere?”

It was a good question, but a novel idea. So much so that Jinora nearly snorted through her nose as she started flipping back through her textbook.

“Nope.” Jinora lamented, lips popping on the end of the p, resuming her search for the function of skull sutures. “I’m the oldest so you’re looking at a heavily-discounted and endless child care resource.” Beside her, Yura smiled empathetically, the knowing look in her eyes one of the many reasons they’d both gotten along so well since Yura’s parents had emigrated to Republic City and into the house right across Jinora’s street.

‘Immigrant parents.’ Yura always said with a humorously fond sigh, ‘Can’t ever rebel or you won’t hear the end of it until they’re cold off their death bead.’

The thought made the edges of her lips twitch into a small smile. She was a third-generation immigrant, so she didn’t really have it quite as bad as Yura did when it came to the consequences of her actions. Still, expectations were higher than they were for the rest of West Republic High School— hoops increasingly more numerous, and narrow to jump through.

Mei Ling continued to look less than amused.

“Okay, I guess. What about after school today? We can study for like, an hour, then you can go pick your sister up.”

Jinora pursed her lips, filling the final blank in her notes with a neat scrawl of her color-coded pens.

“I can’t.” She answered reluctantly, forcing herself not to glance up as she snapped her text book shut. “I have to give Kai a ride home after school today.”

To say that she was bombarded by a wave of questions would have been the understatement of the year.

“Kai?” The girl across from her, Momo, repeated with incredulity, “Like…Kai Fong? Juvie Kai?”

All eyes were on her and burning with curiosity, in a way that made Jinora feel both uncomfortable and excited. She managed to bury the former down beneath an adequate layer of shame.

“You’ve been spending way too much time with my sister.” Jinora noted, a wry smile lingering in the corner of her lips as she shook her head and neatly piled her books back into her bag.

“Holy shit, when did that happen?” Yura demanded lightly, poking at Jinora’s side with a tongue-in-cheek grin, “Is that why you’ve been staring at him all day like a creepy stalker?”

All sarcasm and wit fizzled out quickly at the bottom of Jinora’s chest— replaced by that hot-and-cold feeling of mortification.

“I haven’t been staring at him.”

“Fine, I can play pretend too: did you know Jung-kook and I are getting married and having kids? It’s twins.”

Jinora laughed without humor. “Hilarious.”

“Seriously though,” Yura tilted her head slightly, leaning her cheek against the palm of her hands as she popped a Hot Cheeto into her mouth and licked her fingers clean, “What’s up? Is everything okay?”

It was a weird question, but one Jinora didn’t suppose went unwarranted. She and Kai didn’t exactly run in any of the same circles. In fact, if anything, she’d be inclined to say they ran in entirely opposite circles: like two gears in a mechanism that never touched.

Not even passing him in the hallway was cause for much more than a cursory glance from Jinora, if even.

If any of them had suddenly taken to hanging out with someone so absurdly notorious and simultaneously little-known, she supposed she’d have just as many seemingly insensitive questions.

“Yeah, it’s fine. My dad’s friend just asked this morning if I could give him a ride since his parents are out of town, so I did. End of story.” Jinora answered matter-of-factly, glancing up at the large clock above the auditorium curtains and urging the longer hand to move faster.

“Boo!” Momo jeered, sporting an overly-dramatic pout as she took a sip from her juice box. Mei Ling’s elegant eyebrows rose towards the roots of her long, neatly slicked back hair. Jinora could almost see her perfectly sculpted bun move from its pristine place on top of her head as she let out a dry, mirthy laugh, stealing one of Yura’s cheetos and shaking her head.

“Wow, that must’ve been soooo awkward. I wonder what it feels like to sit next to someone whose IQ is like, the square root of yours."

Jinora frowned, disapproving as her friends each exchanged small giggles and amused looks. Jinora didn’t exactly think Kai was stupid— constantly distracted and incurably bored during class, maybe, but that didn’t necessarily mean his IQ was low enough to be the potential punchline of a joke.

And, well, even if it was, it was neither funny nor did it make her current top ten list of grievances.

“Actually, he didn’t even recognize me.” Jinora admitted, fighting the urge to glance back at the subject of her friends' relentless gossiping. Trying so hard only made it easier for her to pick up on his laugh echoing from across the room, which didn’t make the bitter feeling in her mouth taste any sweeter.

Nor did it make her feel any less silly when her friends stared at her— varying degrees of doubt and disbelief facing her all at once.

If Jinora was shy, she would’ve sunk back in her seat. Instead, she made it a point to sit up straighter as she neatly stacked her empty tupperware.

“You’re kidding,” Yura snorted, squinting as she sat up and turned her head this way and that, unabashedly searching for his face somewhere in the crowded cafeteria. “Doesn’t he go to your dad’s office like, once a week?”

“No, dumbass, that’d actually require him to show up at least once a week.” Mei Ling laughed pointedly. Yura wrinkled her nose and shrugged, turning her attention back to the bag of hot cheetos in her hand.

“He couldn’t even like, pretend though?” Momo giggled, “Doesn’t he like, literally just lie for a living?”

It was Jinora’s turn to wrinkle her nose, doing her best not to tell her friends to keep their voices down, despite knowing there was no way Kai and his friends would be able to hear them from so far away.

Not that it would be the first time anyone had said it.

Rumors about other kids weren’t exactly few and far between in their neighborhood, nor were they unexpected in any group of more than one. None of it was ever particularly unusual. West Republic High School, however, was always coming down with pretty egregious cases of overly-dramatic gossip for more than a few reasons.

Their school encompassed a variety of areas in the city: some that contrasted more than others. Where Jinora lived, houses each looked relatively the same, with identical layouts and long, winding driveways. The street was wide due to flooding hazards in the area and was the first in their subdivision to be plowed in the morning, so that at 6:45 Jinora could start her car and be on her way to school a few minutes before anyone else would be there. Her neighbors said hi to her every time she came home in the afternoons, and always offered cold watermelon and lemonade during the summer when she was walking back with Rohan from the playground.

Not much happened across from her street that Jinora could ever think to mention to anyone, save for the occasional dog running loose after a mishap with a leash. She couldn’t, however, say the same for the parts of the city that existed outside the large, security-manned gate which operated outside of locally enforced curfews.

Jinora didn’t wander around very much downtown, mostly due to her father’s insistence. That was why she had a car to begin with, even if she did stick out like a sore thumb whenever she visited the local library. Still, she and anyone else from her area had both seen and known enough not to linger past the hours of the school day unless you absolutely had to.

By contrast, the houses and businesses were all cramped and huddled together— fitting almost as many doors as there were windows onto a single sidewalk. Streets were narrow and overly crowded by traffic that wound almost recklessly around corners and through poorly spaced intersections. People kept their heads down, for the most part, and it was rare for someone to wave you over to have a chat, or introduce themselves if you weren’t already familiar. Eyes darted, and hands stayed tucked into pockets.

She’d always thought the whole thing was a bit over dramatic: to not trust others around you to the point of downright paranoia.

Then again, she knew next to nothing about any of the kids from downtown, and they knew next to nothing about her.

How could they? With a few miles and a wrought-iron gate to separate them.

Putting them all into one cramped, enclosed, and hormonally addled space seemed even in theory like a recipe for gossip and hearsay.

Jinora didn’t put much stock into any of it, both because of her father’s teachings and her own lack of interest in anyone else’s life, when she was usually preoccupied by the enormity of her own.

“Those are just rumors.” Jinora dismissed, hoping it would steer her friends away from an increasingly shallow line of questioning.

She would have no such luck.

“Nuh-uh! My dad is a cop, remember? He told me to stay away from him at school during break cause he’s always down there at the station causing trouble for no good reason.” Mei Ling rolled her eyes, reaching across the table to steal another Cheeto. Yura made a face at her and held the bag just out of reach.

“Yeah, he is pretty bad news, Jinora.” Momo said, nodding in agreement as she picked at the split ends of her hair, “Like, no offense cause I know it’s a cultural thing for you to stay positive about people or whatever but don’t you remember when he got into that fight with Xiuying over the summer and he came back with a busted nose? They had to reschedule him for picture day. It was bad.”

Jinora blinked, remembering the name from her junior year horticulture class. She briefly thought she’d had a crush on him that year, after the teacher had paired them up for a project and he told her she had a nice voice after reading through some of the material for their lab. Kai had punched him? That felt hard for her to believe, given that Xiuling was always so well-mannered and that Kai only ever seemed either incurably bored or overly blase.

Of course, the look on Kai’s face that morning when she’d mentioned his friends seemed to prove otherwise.

Jinora shook her head.

Rumors. They’re just rumors.

“Somehow, I don’t think he’s going to beat up his one and only ride back from school.” Jinora dismissed dryly, refusing Yura’s sympathetic offer of a Cheeto despite a ‘they’re totally vegan, i swear’.

Mei Ling simply shrugged, looking defensive as she put her hands up. Yura flashed a big, playful grin in turn, giving Jinora’s leg a supportive nudge with her knee. “Well, you got our numbers just in case he starts acting shady af.”

“Ugh, did you just say A-F outloud?”

“Sorry: as Fuck. Is that more grammatically correct for you, your highness?”

“You are so full of shit.”

Jinora felt the edges of her lips quirk, her friends’ squabbles playing out even past the inevitable, shrieking sound of the 6th period bell blaring through the rabble of the cafeteria. She leaned down to collect her backpack from the floor beneath her feet, pausing only to glance briefly once again at the table where Kai and his friends would predictably loiter until the last possible second.

Only, this time, when she looked up, she found two familiar green eyes looking straight at her.

It lasted a second, until a fellow classmate’s body jostled into her own in the incurring rush as juniors and seniors alike stacked their trays onto the garbage cans. With a blink and a few hastily exchanged apologies, they were gone— replaced by the back of his faded hair.

Rumors.

Jinora shut her locker a bit more harshly than she intended.

“I told you, I’m not giving your friends a ride.”

An eruption of groans, protests, and mumbling exploded from behind the boy in front of her.

“Told ya.” One of them, the boy in the wheelchair, rolled his eyes. Jinora felt the hot flush of embarrassment and irritation spread across her face, and Kai must have noticed, because he moved surprisingly quick to stop the bleeding, whipping around to gesture angrily at them.

“Shut up you guys, I said I got this!” He all but hissed, prompting Jinora to scoff. She crossed her arms and leveled him with an expectant look as he turned back to her with an absurdly large and sheepish grin.

So completely different from the boy who’d sulked out of her car only just that morning.

With a gesture of his head, green eyes flicked over to the other end of the hallway, chin jutting towards a wall of unoccupied lockers. Jinora glanced between him and his friends, most of whom simply shrugged. The girl behind him muttered something unintelligible and rolled her eyes, while the jeering boy from before pressed his palms into the bags under his eyes and groaned.

This close, Jinora could say she recognized a few of their faces, at least. Skoochy was a boy who she’d shared classes with since middle school— shaggy dark hair and sloppy collar an enduring staple of the boy who always managed to earn their teacher’s ire no matter the semester. It was odd: they’d both attended the same private middle school for a few years, before he withdrew from his classes and disappeared from the bright white house his parents lived in just a few blocks away from her own.

He showed up again a year later at West Republic High, usually threatening to mow down anyone’s ankles if they crowded the hallways in front of his wheelchair.

Jinora had yet to ask exactly how it’d happened: how a boy, despite being the picture of trouble on two legs, went so quickly from darting past her in the halls to being wheeled along by one of his friends on any given morning— face ashen and bags under his eyes striking beneath the school’s bright fluorescent lights.

Even if she did ask, he probably wouldn’t have given her a straight answer. And even then, she supposed, he didn’t particularly owe her one.

The girl behind him rolled her eyes and mouthed something that Jinora couldn’t quite parse, but given the way her sharp eyes briefly flickered up from her nails to glare in Jinora’s direction, she couldn’t imagine it was anything particularly nice.

Jinora only vaguely recognized her— mostly because she always seemed to be glued to Skoochy in one way or another. Whether she was pushing him along down the halls or getting into trouble with the lunch monitors for lounging across his lap, the two seemed thick as thieves.

It might’ve been sweet, if it weren’t for the gross amounts of making out or the intimidating shrill of her voice when she snapped at anyone who stared at the two for too long.

The two boys next to them, in contrast, looked entirely uncomfortable. The skinny one awkwardly slid the straps of his backpack over his shoulders and stared down at the toe of his beat-up sketchers. The other looked at Jinora with what could almost be considered an apologetic look, round cheeks flushed with embarrassment as he glanced back and forth at the clock behind them.

Jinora crossed her arms and frowned. Her attention flung itself back to a pair of deceptively good-natured, green eyes.

“Well? I’m waiting.” Jinora stared him down. Calculating, and pointedly ignoring the obnoxious booing from the boy and girl behind him. “This is the part where you convince me it’s a good idea to go against my friend’s wishes so you can turn his house into a frat party while he’s gone.”

Kai snorted, and Jinora’s skeptical look turned into a withering glare.

“Sorry, it’s just. Frat party? How old are you?” Kai all but giggled.

“Old enough to be responsible in someone else’s house.” Jinora said, tilting her chin up slightly. Kai’s grin seemed to falter, something unreadable flickering behind his eyes.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot. You’re all grown up already, aren’chya?”

Jinora quickly turned around and started walking.

“Okay, okay! Sheesh, I’m sorry, Jinora. For real!”

The sound of her full, proper name made her freeze mid step, the heat of anger and irritation freezing at the bottom of her chest. She whipped her head around, fighting to keep her own surprise from showing. Kai had his hands stuffed into his pockets, his smile comically large and apologetic.

“That’s what you’re mad about, right?” He asked, turning his head to gesture toward his friends. They seemed to get the hint, despite being audibly reluctant as they wandered off toward the school’s large double doors. Silence rang painfully in the few seconds it took before the doors slowly clicked shut, and with each one that passed, Jinora could feel her face heating up to an unbearable burn.

Kai took a few steps closer, leaning casually against one of the lockers next to her. “Cause I didn’t remember your name?”

It seemed unfair, how quickly he went through motions: how fast he could exchange a guilty grin for a playful smile— how easy he made it look not to care.

Jinora felt a vicious pang of jealousy.

Kai whistled. Low and impressed. “Wow. You’ve got it bad.”

“Excuse me?”

He shrugged, seemingly unphased. “S’okay. I know a lot of girls like you.”

Jinora felt her face grow even warmer, somehow, as the realization dawned not for the first time on just how silly all of this was. She wasn't usually so easily offended, nor was she ever one to pick a fight. Maybe it’d be easier not to feel so wronged by the accusation if it weren’t for how insultingly mild his tone sounded, or the borderline indifference in his loose shoulders.

Jinora narrowed her eyes, turning around to face him entirely this time. “Explain to me exactly what that’s supposed to mean, or the next time Mako needs someone to chauffeur you around, you can walk.”

Kai, for his credit, held his hands up in quick defense, dark, thick brows shooting up to his hairline. “Relax! It’s not like a bad thing or whatever. It’s just — you gotta put yourself out there more if you want to be noticed.” He clarified, shoving his hands back into his pocket, “I mean…how am I supposed to remember a girl’s name if she doesn’t even talk in class?”

“It’s class. You’re not supposed to talk.”

“And? You’re supposed to be a kid, not a robot.”

Jinora felt the draw of her brow stiffen, her frown faltering slightly as she stared at him.

He stared back, sheepish twinkle slowly replaced by the glint of a challenge behind mischievous green eyes.

Jinora straightened her back and evening out her expression with a small, polite smile.

Challenge accepted.

“Interesting,” Jinora mused, crossing her arms and raising a thin brow. She tapped a slim finger against her forearm. “Is this still you trying to convince me to do you a favor?”

“Actually, I haven’t gotten to that part yet.”

“I’d get to it a little quicker if I were you. Time’s running out, and I have plans with someone after school.” She fired back, cool and calculating. After all, Kai didn’t need to know that those plans had more to do with babysitting her sister at middle school softball practice than they did with anything remotely pertaining to a social life.

Kai raised a scored, thick eyebrow— a small smirk tugging at a corner of his lips. He held up his hands once again, this time in surrender. “Message received, oh popular one.” He teased, a lighthearted laugh springing from his chest as he leaned himself up off the wall of lockers. Jinora continued to watch him skeptically.

Standing at his full height in front of her (rather than slumped over and half-asleep) and close enough to compare, she was surprised to note that they were nearly the same height— Kai’s voluptuous and enduring bedhead the only thing giving him an edge. If pressed, she’d never admit to having at one point admired the back of it on an occasion or two during their shared World History class.

Pursing her lips, Jinora quickly redirected her attention to something far more becoming of her own burning curiosity. At this distance, Jinora could tell that the necklace Kai had been scrambling to fish out from between the couch cushions that morning were dog tags. They were long and silvery— glinting off the harsh fluorescents scattered across the school’s cracked and stained ceiling tiles.

Jinora’s brow furrowed.

Were those….Military dog tags?

It was a question she didn’t have enough time to answer, because as soon as she squinted to parse what the tiny, scribbled letters on the front plate read, Kai’s animated arms were in the way and he titled his head back, dragging both his hands down his face. “Okay, look. Here’s the thing— I asked you to give my friends a ride because they don’t have one, alright?”

Jinora’s smile faltered, blinking as she stared at him. Kai rolled his eyes and turned his head off to the side, scratching the back of his neck and making it remarkably difficult for Jinora to discern whether or not this was yet another one of his infamously grandiose acts.

“All of them?” She clarified skeptically. Kai simply shrugged and made a limp gesture with his arms. “All four of them don’t have rides after school.”

It was clear that the disbelief in her voice made something in Kai prickle up, because his brow furrowed and he shot her a wary look.

“It’s not that rare for us, you know.”

Jinora blinked again, this time feeling less dubious and more surprised. She wasn’t sure what exactly he meant by us, because the way he said it sounded dirty: unclean, and borderline belligerent. It was a sentiment that she was almost positive Kai, who seemed to rarely stray far from his friends’ sides, could never have held towards them.

Jinora felt the heat of shame creep up her neck and spread to her cheeks.

Us. The kids who aren’t from neighborhoods called Sunny Acres.

“They don’t take the bus home from school?” She asked, frowning as her arms fell back to her sides and her brow creased with confusion. Kai simply shrugged, an integral part of his body language as she was coming to understand.

“Sometimes.” He answered, seemingly disinclined to elaborate. Jinora’s gaze strayed past him, staring at the school doors where his friends had disappeared only moments ago. Suddenly, Kai’s behavior in the car that morning was beginning to make some semblance of sense. Did he think that she was going to judge them for their circumstances? Is that why he’d been so quick to snap at her for mentioning them? Did they get bullied at school just for their financial situations?

Jinora resisted the urge to snort, recalling all the unsavory warnings about Kai from her friends.

Maybe not to their faces.

Defeat settled in Jinora’s stomach, shoulders dropping lamely as she let out a short sigh. “I’d be breaking, like, a dozen different laws trying to cram 6 mostly grown teenagers into a standard four-seat car.”

Kai, in contrast, looked suddenly and absolutely giddy with triumph— all objections and unpleasantness seemingly tossed into the wind as his head whirled toward her. He flashed Jinora an achingly bright and large grin. Jinora thought that the sudden hope and excitement in his eyes might’ve been endearing, were it not for the perpetual whiplash she felt she was beginning to suffer in his presence.

“C’mon! It’s like, what, ten minutes away?” Kai contended, throwing one of his arms up in a vague, outward gesture as he all but bounced on the balls of his feet. Jinora wasn’t sure how many more versions of the boy from her World History class she was prepared to meet today, but she didn’t have much time to deliberate, because his Kai’s springy steps were already leading him backwards toward the double doors.

Splaying his fingers out over his chest as he trailed backward, Kai shot her a wicked grin. “If you get caught between here and my hardass babysitter’s apartment, I swear on my 1998 Air Jordans I’ll carry you to school tomorrow.”

This time, Jinora did audibly snort.

“Where are you going?”

“To your car!” He shouted back, winking. He backed up into one of the doors, pushing it open with both elbows and an audible swoosh. “Gotta make sure Skoochy’s wheelchair fits in the trunk!”

Jinora rolled her eyes, heaving a large sigh before quickly running after him. As the door started to slide shut, she could hear his laughter from outside.

“Hold on, you need my keys to open the trunk! Kai!”

The drive to Mako’s apartment was only fifteen minutes, but Jinora wasn’t sure whether it felt more like five or fifty by the time she pulled into the parking lot.

Watching the four of them try to stack themselves into the backseat of her car had been almost amusing. A cacophony of voices overlapped, elbows jutting into sides and knees crashing together in a war for precious real estate. It was a spectacle, to say the least— one that drew the attention of whatever loiterers still remained in the school’s parking lot. It didn’t make her nearly as uncomfortable as it probably should have (thanks to Ikki and Meelo), but the security officer who began to eye them when the tall girl started to cuss loudly in Japanese had admittedly begun to make her nervous. Kai, on the other hand, was all but howling in her passenger seat by the time his friends managed to get both doors to shut completely.

Skoochy was pressed so far up against the door that his cheek was squished against the window and his breath made the glass foggy as he swore loudly. The tall girl was folded across his lap with her long legs slung across the other boys’ knees. Said boys, who Jinora felt particularly sorry for, were sandwiched together awkwardly: the smaller one having managed to twist his torso enough to create more shoulder room for the rest of them. The one with the round face had his legs clamped so tightly together she thought he might pop like a balloon right there in her car. Jinora winced every time she hit a bump in the road, causing the girl on top of them to cram the soles of her purple converse against the side of his head so she wouldn’t tumble down onto the floorboard.

She’d been silent, for the most part— trying to focus on keeping her speed steady. Not that it mattered, of course, because Kai’s friends hollered and shouted over one another loud enough to make up for any lack of small talk on her part. It was loud and abundantly chaotic, with laughter bouncing off the sides of her four-door sedan as they jostled and kicked and shoved one another around.

“God, your ass is so fucking fat, Skoochy, move over!” The girl jeered, wiggling on top of him as she tried to create more space between the crushing heel of her foot and her friend’s unnaturally bent head. Skoochy let out a sharp, barking laugh— elbowing her harshly in the back of her hip (which nearly knocked her right back onto the floorboard).

“Bitch, shut up if I shove myself any closer away I’m gonna turn into a fucking crime scene all over this girl’s fucking car!” He jeered back, causing the girl on top of him to grin and push him back even further with her butt. He made a choking noise and shoved her head away with a crackling laugh and a wry grin— ruining the almost perfect messy bun she’d likely spent hours crafting (or at least, it would take Jinora hours, if that was anything to go by). She snatched the paper-boy style hat off his head in retaliation and leaned away from him, dawning the hat with an impossibly royal-esque flourish.

“Guys, seriously— stop it.” The smallest of them cut in, still struggling to figure out how to twist himself away from Skoochy’s knee digging into his back. “We all know it’s my ass that’s way too big for this car.”

A chorus of sharp laughter promptly filled every seat in the car. Jinora, for her part, even exhaled through her nose in a quiet snort as the hint of amusement tugged at the corners of her lips. Kai, in contrast, looked like the picture of insurmountable glee: as if he were rendered out of something entirely different from the boy who had sat in her car wordlessly while idly dragging his nail against the interior detailing of her car.

Jinora felt herself smile ever so slightly as she glanced at the top of his head through the rear view mirror, twisted around in his seat as he snatched the hat from the girl’s head and shoved it onto his own with a broad grin and a jeering taunt. Jinora watched as he ducked back into his seat and shoved himself against her passenger door, laughing as manicured hands reached past the divide to snatch it back— falling just short as Kai laughed and leaned forward, licking the top of her hand. The girl snatched it back and made an impressive blustering of gagging noises.

Jinora, for her part, kept her focus on the road. Though, part of her idly wondered if she’d ever get away doing something like that to Momo or Mei Ling.

Pulling into the apartment complex’s entrance, Jinora let herself breathe a sigh of relief— mostly because she wasn’t sure how much more the interior of her car could handle under their clawing hands and kicking heels. One by one they all but tumbled out of her backseat— shoving and pushing and stretching their legs under the cold sun. The girl— Emi, Jinora heard them call her— shouted and pointed fingers as she eased herself out of Skoochy’s lap. In the chaos, Jinora could’ve sworn she heard her sternly tell the boy to stay put, which prompted her scruffy friend to roll his eyes and wave her off.

“Thanks for the ride, Jinora!” Kai grinned, breaking Jinora out of her own thoughts as she tore her attention away from the rear-view mirror. His eyes somehow looked greener with the pale white light shining through her windows.

Jinora blinked and shook her head. She shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly, a small smirk playing at the edges of her lips as she popped her trunk open. “Yeah, well, I’m still texting Mako to let him know you’re throwing a party at his apartment while he’s gone.”

Kai was already halfway out of her passenger seat when he glanced up at her through the curtain of his unkempt, half-curls and grinned.

“Damn, you really are a snitch.”

“Some might call it insurance.” Jinora replied. The small amusement that danced on the corners of her lips widened into an almost taunting smile. Kai’s smirk turned into a wide grin— one that, this time, looked like it actually reached his eyes.

He formed a closed first with his hand and extended it. Jinora stared at it almost expectantly, before glancing back up at Kai with a raised eyebrow. Still hanging halfway out the car, he rolled his eyes. “What? It’s a fist bump! It’s like, for ancient people. Figured you’d speak the language.”

“Ha ha.” Jinora retorted, tone stale and dripping with sarcasm. A beat of silence passed between them, before reluctantly, Jinora quietly sighed through her nostrils and raised a fist to meet his own.

The smile behind his eyes made her stomach feel a little funny when he broke the awkward tension and leaned forward— tapping their knuckles together.

“Solid.” He grinned, winking as he hoisted himself out of her passenger seat entirely.

Jinora watched them for a moment— even after the door to her BMW was thrown shut. Emi had managed to wriggle Skoochy’s wheelchair out from beneath a mountain of boxes and blankets which had once been stacked neatly in her trunk. She wheeled him around the back of the car to join the frey— every one of them with a smile that could light up the entire block and laughter that could wake anyone within a mile radius.

Finally, Jinora released a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding since they’d left the school parking lot.

Shaking her head, she reached down and threw the car back into gear.

Hopefully, it would be the last time she’d have to see Kai Fong ever again.

“But that wasn’t the last time, was it, Ms. Gyatso?”

The courtroom is so quiet that Jinora can swear even the birds beyond the windows of the justice building are slumbering that morning. Only a cough and the sound of someone dropping something— a pen, a notepad, a broach— she can’t tell, mostly because she’s staring down at her lap as the man beneath the stand glares daggers at the top of her forehead.

She clears her throat and shakes her head.

“No, sir. I ended up giving Kai rides to school and other places for a while when he was staying with Detective Chow.”

“With respect, that’s not what I’m asking, Ms. Gyatso.”

Silence follows again— and this time, no one is merciful enough to sneeze or let a writing utensil slip onto the floor. She tightens her jaw and grits her teeth, balling shaky fingers into the fabric of the skirt her mother had no doubt ironed painstakingly for this day.

This isn’t fair. She lets it ring out over and over again in her head like a war cry. Because it isn’t. She shouldn’t be here. None of them should.

She grits her teeth and tightens her jaw, remembering Dr. Shen’s advice.

Close your eyes, recognize what they’re asking you, and focus only on the details of your story.

Jinora takes a deep breath and holds it for five seconds, before letting it go through her nostrils.

Bravely, she lifts her chin.

Looking straight past the prosecutor, Jinora finds exactly whose face she needs to see right at this moment. He’s hunched over the table next to Asami— elbows pressed against the wood and eyes buried into the palms of his hands. His fingers grip clumps of dark brown hair that haven’t been shaven down to their typically stylish shape in months. Jinora wonders, even, how long it’s been since she’s seen him with a fresh haircut.

Jinora swallows behind the enormous lump in the back of her throat and shakes her head.

“No, it wasn’t.”

It was far, far from it.