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Since the dramatic change of scenery and all things considerably different by an extreme degree — that is, after the merge — Lloyd had finally found her.
Set in the mess of the Crossroads, the night of a carnival where cultures clash and unlikely people merge together in bustles — there she was. Distantly, with an innocent pursuit in her eyes and something mesmerized in the lostness: she’s occupied with a finger to her chin, looking up at one of the lighted booths selling foreign goods.
Choked up and frozen, a strife of questions clog the gears of his brain — should he go to her? Would it be appropriate to try and start up a recollecting conversation from where they last left awfully vague and open-ended? Could they heal and reconcile and ever be something more? Does Lloyd want more? Or, resetting his thoughts to a safe and sober state, maybe… not: turning his back and walking away, a little spiked that she might notice him before he’s finally gone.
The next time Lloyd finds her, she’s bored on a bench, drawing scribbles on the dirt with a stick, and… Lloyd walks the other way. Then there were the times at the library; the bank; the store; the bakery; the early morning strolls; the late night festivals; at the corner of his eyes, always — she’s there, and always — Lloyd turns the other direction.
He’s being immature, ignoring her for a really silly reason of nail-biting dread. He can’t face her, couldn’t — not yet. He doesn’t have a built-up tolerance to bear her presence at a close proximity or else he’ll crumble into tiny vulnerable pieces, all out and exposed. And it’s hard to tell how long this evading shtick would hold, but he soon finds out the harsh, eventual, and quite sudden way: the moment Lloyd desperately tried to avoid — with all his mixed-up, steely emotions — had arrived without any warning.
Halfway across the road, soil crunches under foot and leftover puddles of rain are blotched apart. There’s nothing for miles except for the endless path ahead and paddy fields of rice to the sides and, finally facing fate: there’s Harumi.
It wasn’t like Lloyd could change his current course and outrun her without notice, especially when Harumi was already in the process of noticing him; staring wide-eyed in a pure and harmless effect that keeps Lloyd hitched on his nerves. It makes a second feel like eternity, then it’s over once she walks straight past him – aloof and unresponsive, without any feelings attached.
He’s more scrapped in a pile of confusion than a supposed alleviation. Was Harumi avoiding Lloyd more than Lloyd was avoiding Harumi? Why would Harumi avoid him, anyways? What did Lloyd do in their past that was worse in comparison to what Harumi did to make avoidance a necessary pledge on her part? Maybe Lloyd didn’t see it correctly; maybe Harumi didn’t actually notice him, but something else entirely behind him and that’s why she acted as stranger by habit.
Lloyd sees Harumi everywhere that he’s grown involuntarily familiar with scraps of her routine, and Lloyd knows if he times it properly — on a risky experiment — to reach the fence gate of the garden she frequently visits before she reaches it and, opening the gate for her, Harumi will have to notice him. And it happens and she does notice and she even gives him a smile, but it was all friendly courtesy and depthless good manners from one stranger to another.
What? Bewildered and in a bit of a fret, Lloyd follows her at a safe distance. Peeking from behind a tree, Harumi sits on a clean patch of grass and opens a sketchbook to draw; she’s seemingly happy, humming an easy tune to coincide with the peaceful mood. The flowers bloom brighter in this rainy season, with dots of dew and plump stems in prime health. There’s nothing wrong or unusual about anything she does — so why has Harumi been ignoring Lloyd?
“I know you’re there,” Harumi says, blowing Lloyd’s weak cover, and breaking the crisp ice between them, “I always see you everywhere. Is there a reason for it?”
He might as well accept unavoidable reality: coming out and into the daylight. Confused and cautious, still maintaining that distance, “What do you mean?” said Lloyd.
“I mean, don’t you notice it too?” said Harumi. “I always seem to find you in a crowd and wherever I go, you happen to be there as well. You stand out to me for some reason… Why?” She looks up at him, taking in his features like it’s her first time, like she hasn’t ever before. “It’s like we were meant to meet.”
He doesn’t understand what she’s talking about. They both know each other well enough to know why they can stand out to each other, both striked with sensitive knowledge of each other. He’s Lloyd and she’s Harumi: they’re tied together with history and a touchy past and issues yet to be resolved. No large amount of a crowd could ever conceal one from the other. They both should know that, yet — why does it seem like only Lloyd knows that?
Even if it sounds stupid and ridiculous, Lloyd has to ask anyway to quench a thirsty doubt leaving him dry and seared, “Do you know who I am?”
“No,” said Harumi. She blinks, unaware of the impact of her answer. “I don’t know you… Am I supposed to?”
“You—” he starts but stops. Harumi is really good at pretending. Harumi can act in a certain lovely way that effectively throws Lloyd off, and his heart consequently dives down a deep throbbing pattern and sometimes in an unhealthy bad way. Lloyd knows she does it so well, he needs to put up a wall with his arms crossed in a firm resolution, but it unfolds back to his side when he really reads her, digging into her words and expression: Harumi sounds, looks, means… genuine. “You really don’t know me?”
She shakes her head, meaning it in every way. It means: Harumi couldn’t possibly avoid Lloyd because Harumi doesn’t know enough about Lloyd to avoid him. Harumi doesn’t know Lloyd; Harumi doesn’t remember Lloyd. Harumi — mashed in the merge — had lost her memories and forgot all about Lloyd.
“Who are you?” Harumi says with a sort of fascination; a wondering desire that overflows into a physical effort. She gets up to draw closer, curious, but Lloyd backs away instinctively.
Without realizing it, Lloyd’s quickly walking the other way. He leaves her and her question behind, and once far and alone: shakily sighs into his sweaty palms pressed against his cheeks. The damp, hot and cold sensation stirs him somewhat stable straight against his wobbly discomposure. Harumi was almost too close to him.
—
Since the merge and the bleak matter of the ninja’s absence — their location terribly unknown — Lloyd tends to the Monastery with busying chores and cares. He daily cleans each room as it was left, waters the house plants, takes out the trash, and fights dust with a wet towel. When all else is done, Lloyd trains and overworks himself to a beading sweat; hot skin and sticky clothes – anything to distract and pass the time.
It wasn’t too bad, sometimes — being alone. When Lloyd sits before the cascading stairs with a blanket over and a cup in hand, watching the strange complexity of realms combing in reddish purples and the newborn crossroads just beneath — it wasn’t always bad. Was Lloyd alone? Yes. Would Lloyd like someone’s company? He wouldn’t mind, so — yes.
A knock on the gates is really rare. If there ever were, which is not really, it would either be the dedicated mailman or the take-out delivery man if Lloyd was too lazy to cook. Today, there’s a knock on the gates, and — unsure of who to expect — Lloyd opens it to find, caught off guard: Harumi.
“Lloyd,” said Harumi, and Lloyd’s shoulders tense up, prickling with uncontrollable nerves. “That’s what I heard from others when I asked. That you’re a ninja and your name is Lloyd.”
“How did you know I live here?” he breathes out in a thin shudder, keeping himself safely near the door and fingers tightly curling around the frame to feel a sense of groundness. Harumi supposedly doesn’t know much of Lloyd as she should, unless she’s tricking him; playing a game to mess with his head and she does know everything that she supposedly shouldn’t. With pursed lips, Lloyd gives all his skepticisms in a stare.
“I asked,” said Harumi. She takes a step back, the whole Monastery in her view, “And it’s pretty obvious.” It is obvious and it’s not that big of a deal. Harumi knows where Lloyd lives because she asked, that’s a given rationale. Lloyd’s making it a big deal because Harumi’s a big deal, but as the evidence relays currently: Harumi doesn’t remember that they were ever a big deal, the same way Harumi doesn’t remember Lloyd.
“Lloyd,” Harumi says again to taste, finding it fitting and interesting. "It’s a really nice name… Lloyd.” Hearing that and hearing her, Lloyd’s heart burns; her infatuated voice striking an emotional chord he doesn’t want hit.
It forcefully shoves Lloyd through time. All those flashing memories he painfully bears: Harumi overly imposing in his space, overwhelming his face — taunting, toying — saying his name repeatedly hot and heavy and badly obsessed with how he looks when she does it, like Harumi loves Lloyd so much in between her hate for him; like he’s nothing and everything to her all at once. It makes him sick, squeamish in the pit of his stomach; reactively repulsed with a full pool of saliva in his mouth.
He swallows, though, and grips the doors harder – enough to wake his palm and the tip of his fingers all white. “I’d rather you not call me that… my name…” said Lloyd, weak and pale.
Harumi says, “Your name, Lloy—?”
“Yup,” says Lloyd, answering before he can hear it in full — for his heart’s sake.
“What do I call you, then?” said Harumi. “If not that,” sensing his apparent discomfort.
Not Lloyd — too tortuously personal; not green ninja — too formal; not even Mr. Garmadon — too weird, and quite frankly even worse. “You don’t have to call me anything. Just talk to me, no name needed,” said Lloyd. “Do I make sense?”
“Are you okay?” Harumi asks, concerned. Her eyes fall from his face to the occupying tremble in his hand.
He quickly covers it, taming the slipping panic with his other hand, and clears his throat – turning her attention back to his face. “Just fine,” said Lloyd, tired. “Any other reason you’re here?”
“Oh, I do have one thing to ask of you. A small request…” It must be embarrassing for her, or really meaningful that she wears a nervous, slanted smile, nudging Lloyd to drop his guard and raise his eyebrow. Harumi explains, fingers spread over her lips as she speaks, “I like to draw.”
The simple things in life have swiftly been smothered to dramatic transitions of a breaking new world, and everything’s different. One of this difference is a house, and it’s no longer the same standard structure as before with traditional requirements that make a house a house, but different in an abstract and unusually unique way of keeping the rain out. There’s the foreign design of tall, white towers on one side, then the disheveled apartments sprinkled on top of each other with slanted roofs and missing walls on the other. There were other houses too and more appearing in random bursts, blending together as one big mixing pot, that is — the merge.
Harumi’s house is no different from what’s considered different lately. It’s cramped and shabby with just one main room trapped under four walls, adapted for multiple uses — the small stove at the corner, the couch in the middle, and a bed at the far side — everything evenly spaced out. In her house, Lloyd and Harumi sit on pillows, diagonally apart with a coffee table in the middle.
Harumi’s drawing on sketch paper, pencil motions leisure and sweet; Harumi’s drawing Lloyd situated bored while weakly concealing his suspicions. He’s here in fulfillment of her request because there’s arguably nothing better for him to do and, while wired and wary of her — there’s a part of Lloyd that wants the company, anything to fend off weeks of lonely isolation.
It’s mostly quiet with mere lead scraping and dull breathing. Harumi repeats looking up at Lloyd then back down at paper, and Lloyd would wait, arms crossed over bent knees, his stare keenly fixed on her every move in case Harumi might do something, but she only draws and Lloyd’s reaching for something that’s not there.
He cracks, taking this opportunity to play twenty questions — he asks, “What was your life like before the merge?”
“My life? I… don’t know actually,” said Harumi, and there’s a soft pain to it, a slight ache from the uncertainty. “It’s like I blinked my eyes for one second and then suddenly I’m here.”
What he plans to say next is cruel, maybe a little too terribly brutal, but Harumi isn’t completely perfect and clean. There are very few things that can tick her off to a mass hysteria, and she can’t ever mask that indication. “Do you have parents?” Lloyd asks, bracing just in case. “Someone — anyone you know?”
There’s a pause, like she’s thinking about it hard to try to find the answer as much as Lloyd. “No,” Harumi concludes, unaffected. She’s so unaffected that she’s almost woefully bored: holding her face in her palm while she continues to draw – unaffected.
“What do you know?” said Lloyd.
“Nothing… I suppose,” and honestly, “I really don’t know anything — about anything.” Her drawing breaks off, pencil wavering over the paper with fumbling fingers dipped in a dilemma. “Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” Harumi asks, but when met with his face she then feels securely indifferent about it. Near Lloyd, there’s an odd familiarity she can’t shake, and it feels as though it simply doesn’t matter what she knows or doesn’t; Harumi simply couldn’t care to know the truthful end to that question when Lloyd’s right there — making it seem fine and fair without it — and continues back to drawing.
There are plenty of things to count when mixing ‘wrong’ with ‘Harumi’, and Lloyd doesn’t want to answer that question as much as Harumi doesn’t care to hear the answer – a small understanding they both discreetly share.
It’s weird: Harumi doesn’t realize that she’s like a plant — uprooted and replanted. With roots cut off, she’s now living in a different direction, separate from the previous life she doesn't even know.
“Oh,” Harumi says, noticing something Lloyd doesn’t. “You have — here, let me.” She reaches out to fix an out of place strand of hair over his forehead, but Lloyd immediately flinches back – eyes wide and suddenly aware of cold sweat under his arms.
Hand left awkwardly out in the open, “Sorry,” said Harumi.
Her apology is sincere; Lloyd knows her intentions were innocent, but it still rings him disturbed. He runs fingers through his hair, scratching roots and his scalp as a way to snap out of it. Keeping his eyes down, his breath is quietly messy, “Just draw,” said Lloyd.
The air is stuffy, straining them to an uncomfortable limit, but when Harumi finishes her drawing and slides it over for Lloyd to see: the tension eases off them. It’s him exactly, sketched very detailed to all his features.
“Wow,” says Lloyd. “This is good. This is — it looks just like me. It is me.” At the thick and grainy sheet, he rubs the corners where lead fades. “Wow,” he says again.
Harumi’s gently glad; watching Lloyd’s good opinion approval. He’s really impressed, and for a moment — soothed. It’s weird as Harumi is weird as they are weird together, but Lloyd does slightly appreciate her presence despite pinning nails creeping his skin occasionally. They’re spending quality time together after… well, everything. It’s weird and it’s different, but Lloyd strangely likes it because of that difference. It’s a type of fresh air where Lloyd is able to breathe around this Harumi, unlike then and before with that Harumi.
Harumi takes the sketch back, neatly putting it away in a folder, and puffs a ‘what now?’ exaggeration: arms crossed over the table waiting patiently for something, but Lloyd’s waiting too — yet to know what they’ll talk about next; what they’ll do now; where they’ll go from here. It’s very… weird.
—
She’s Harumi, but she isn’t. She’s not that Harumi, not the bad and mean and evil Harumi he’s horribly known. Right here and now, she’s a totally different Harumi. This Harumi is milder, softer, nicer, a more tolerable version of that Harumi which Lloyd can manage somewhat tactfully.
When Lloyd’s out and about on an errand, occupied with a task until he makes out Harumi in the distance, and… Lloyd stays still, unmoving anywhere either to her or from her. Time picks up eventually though, and Harumi notices him soon after a beat to come up to him — she asks if he wants to hang out with her. The times where Lloyd replies yes — they go somewhere nice and private; the garden or an empty field or by the edge of a cliff overlooking their newly merged world. They talk about simple things, natural conversational things, and Lloyd makes sure there’s an explicit gap between them, an ample amount of space that’s breathable for him. And Lloyd doesn’t mind Harumi; she’s good and well-behaved so they’ll talk for hours, and then the sun goes down and the nightly rain comes out.
The other times Lloyd decides no, he does not want to hang with her — he goes home and it becomes apparent how depressing loneliness can be. Even if he cleans or trains or does anything to fill his empty mind, there’s a sort of fussing grip within that bothers him. Sitting alone on the porch, rain drips off the roof to provide a fresh clarity, and Lloyd’s left to wonder what Harumi is doing or what they would be doing if he had said yes.
Sometimes, when Lloyd does agree yes and he’s with Harumi, laying down on the grass — the usual safely established distance between them — watching clouds shift and shape across the sky: Lloyd would have faint memories cross his mind like blotchy film rolls. Memories of her and him and everything bad about them. Silently troubled, it puts him off in a stumped mood.
“It’s been raining a lot,” Harumi says; her way of taking over his random waves of low spirits, diverting. “Is that normal? Or did it rain all the time before the merge?”
“No,” Lloyd answers plainly, flat in tone, “It must be a merge thing.” Harumi doesn’t know a lot of things, entrusting all her questions to Lloyd. She only asks what she considers relevant in the moment, especially the kind of questions that centers Lloyd; otherwise, Harumi doesn’t care much for anything else.
They’re an odd pairing — the two of them, fated in every way impossible to avoid. He’s Lloyd and she’s Harumi: there’s no other way around it, they’re too tied incredibly together since they first laid eyes, and even when this Harumi — with her apparently stricken amnesia — laid eyes on Lloyd like it was her first time, even though Lloyd knows it isn’t but to this Harumi it felt like so, meeting his eyes — so particularly interested in him.
Having her fill in the foggy sky sight, and in a disinterest to look at the next best thing: Harumi turns her head to Lloyd, and Lloyd follows through her reaching eyes to turn to her as well. Staring at each other: memories come crashing in again full circle, dizzying him confused, but Lloyd can’t imagine himself with any other company but Harumi.
—
“I discovered this a few days after waking up from the merge. I was so lost at the time,” Harumi explains to Lloyd, leading him to a shelter built on rusty iron sheets and dirty blankets stuffed in the holes. Once past what Lloyd assumes is a door, really just a thin metal slab she slides over: there are a few kids inside, two boys playing and one girl tired beyond her bedtime, trying to sleep.
“They’re all alone,” she tells him as he takes in this grim situation of lost kids and poor lodging. Harumi sits down on the low mattress with the girl, and there’s a comfortable indifference where the kids pay no mind to Harumi, like this is routine for her to visit, while staring down Lloyd – the unknown stranger. It must be true because the girl is so accustomed to Harumi’s presence that she snuggles wantingly closer to her lap. “I assume the merge took their parents, right?” said Harumi.
“There are people missing — yeah,” Lloyd confirms her theory, yet distracted by the two boys playing with a long stretch of rope. He feels abnormally unsettled for some reason and… confused — are they playing tug of war? Jump rope? Or both: jumping and tugging? Unsure, he brings himself back to see Harumi caressing the girl’s forehead, brushing hair aside; soft fingers and tingling nails to lull to sleep.
“They’re a lot like me, don’t you think?” said Harumi. “They don’t know much of anything… and simply living just because.”
He hesitates on a nod, and then, “That’s one way to put it, sure,” said Lloyd.
Harumi starts a weak hum, finding a tune – still soothing the child. It really is a small and dirty place for kids to live in, Lloyd catches everything unhealthy about the way built-up dew seeps in a string line through the cracks, thriving more rust and insisting a metallic odor, and the filthy beds with dark spot stains. It is really bad and unclean… Lloyd’s thinking of ways to remedy this issue, maybe have them live in the Monastery or set up a cleaner, warmer environment for them; he’s thinking really hard about it, concentrating, and then he hears — “Spider’s in the house, sleep deep,” and his blood runs chillingly cold and dangerously thin, “Spider bit the mouse, sleep deep.”
Harumi’s singing something… disturbingly recognizable; far distressingly unmistakable. Head throbbing out of order, heart pounding out of chest: “Don’t wake up or else—” Lloyd puts his hand on her shoulder, and it’s a strong and tight grip that Harumi senses something seriously unnatural because Lloyd never touches her, or likes to be touched for that matter, so she breaks her lullaby to check on him — his face stern and strikingly unfriendly.
“How do you know that song?” tone low in an interrogation, cold and crucial, but his anxiousness slips through when there’s a sudden sharpness near his heart, quickening his breath, “Answer me.”
She’s startled, yet mesmerized to see him like this. “I just do,” said Harumi, pleading her innocence, “It’s just a song I know.”
“No,” Lloyd jumps to conclusions, spiked, “You don’t just do — you can’t just know. There has to be a reason, unless… you know. Do you know?”
“Know what?” said Harumi, a little irritated and really wanting to know. Lloyd could, if he really wanted to — hurt her enough to squeeze out the truth, like her shoulder blade could emit a cracking warning if he pressed any further, but he doesn’t and lets go — too busy burning with layers upon layers of wiring uncertainty.
Lloyd teeters backwards, but Harumi gets up to balance him with her words, consoling him, “What’s wrong? Tell me. Help me understand because I really don’t.”
It must be a trick, it has to be a trick — Harumi’s probably pretending to not know what she obviously must know: about her and him and everything they’ve been through. Maybe it’s a sport for her and she likes to play Lloyd the fool. He can’t think clearly — bloods rushing out his head, Harumi’s inching closer, the kids playing increases loudly, and then it all merges into one big colliding wreck — lightheaded, Lloyd only perceives in flashes of the kids moving their fun onto him, tying Lloyd around with the rope — legs, waist, and arms — laughing innocently in between.
“Hey,” Lloyd scolds the kids, “Hey — wait,” but it’s too late when he’s fastened tightly and already tripping against his weight to fall hard on the floor.
Lloyd starts to — panic. Tied under rope and Harumi standing over him: it’s happening all over again, stuck in limbo reliving this inevitable nightmare of him vulnerably displayed and her watching it play out. He squirms to break free yet it only binds him all the more, stranding himself hopeless and pathetic and miserable. Quickly, and with a caring urgency, Harumi gets on her knees to help Lloyd, trying to peel off the rope, but it sets him off when he feels her prying hands — crying out, wriggling more frantically; grunts escaping and sharp, rapid breaths scratching his throat.
Harumi has to hold him down and work fast. Like ripping a band aid, it’s soon over once she finally stretches the loose end and he does the rest himself. “They’re just kids, sorry,” Harumi says insistently, sincere sympathy bearing in that apology.
Harumi feels sorry, really. She doesn’t know the next proper move or how to react, watching his eyes widen, lost in an absent-minded lapse, and his slouching body propped by his hands on the ground, acting out of control: hyperventilating.
He couldn’t care for the kids who stare at him dumbfounded and the girl he stirs awake from the noise — Lloyd’s too buried in his own reactive rush of a spasm, overwhelmed with tears that swell and blurr him into an isolated imagination. It feels… good, strangely therapeutic; chest heaving up and down, weezing for gasps of air, letting loose and unraveling himself like the big mess he really is.
She wants to help, to comfort, to do anything possibly alleviating to this haywire trip that overtakes him completely. Harumi has her fumbling fingers almost reaching out toward him, hesitant, but she tries anyway — tries touching his shoulder to which Lloyd feebly pushes away, wanting space, but something rash and desperate clicks inside him and he pulls her whole arm close to his chest: hiding in it, sweating and panting it out.
It goes on for a while until Lloyd sighs the final end of it, suddenly hit with tired exhaustion to groan a beaten cry in her arm. It’s humiliating when he comes to his senses, blurry vision and awkwardness around the room that he just has to leave, has to get out of here, has to go somewhere — anywhere. With weak knees, Lloyd hurries out to the open air of the night, leaving Harumi behind.
—
Later that same night: Lloyd feels numb. Sitting by the edge of a cliff, his thoughts are as blank as his face; eyes half-lidded and lips in a flat line, staring mindlessly ahead at nothing important. Cold wind comes splitting skin, freezing blood; and the crash of waves underneath dull out his other senses.
That’s why his heart skips a beat when Harumi breathes out, skittish, “Found you.”
“Hey,” Lloyd exhales, a slight shiver slipping through. The reminder hits when she politely sits far from him, considerately giving him space — she’s not that Harumi. That Harumi would love to test his limits, to be very close and push him to the edge until he breaks; this Harumi, however, is different, keeping her hands to herself and dangling her legs. “Are they, uh,” he clears his throat, “okay?”
“The kids? Yeah, they’re asleep,” said Harumi. “Don’t worry, they forget easily.”
“Good,” said Lloyd. “That’s good.”
There’s something she wants to say, biting her lip – unsure of how to bring it up. It’s on the tip of her tongue, a question she’s meant to ask for a while now, feeling awful since she marked something off. Remnants of shaky breaths and dying-out jitters are noticeable in Lloyd’s tense shoulders, and compelled with enough of it: “Are you scared of me?” Harumi asks, her own chest mimicking his up and down conflictions.
Lloyd wouldn’t use the word scared, more like… cautious? On guard? Or on edge? He’s not scared, really — he’s just… weird about it. Already strained as is, Lloyd diverts from a direct answer: hiding his face in his clammy hands, he admits with self-loathing, “Something’s wrong with me. I — I don’t know…”
“That’s okay,” Harumi assures him softly, “It’s fine, really.”
“No, it’s not fine!” he angrily groans, tugging at his skin, and “Gosh,” he sighs against the urge to pull out his hair. Frustrated, Lloyd turns to Harumi with a hasty burst of criticisms, “Why are you even here? Seriously… You don’t know me or anything about me, yet you’re so adamant on being near me.”
“I am!” she agrees urgently, and with a sedated turn of careful delicacy, “It’s hard to explain...” She bites her lip again, eyes set on Lloyd, searching for the right words until she lays hold of it, and Harumi says eventually, “I have this sort of feeling and I’m drawn to you. Like — like there’s something about you that I know but I don’t really know and I feel good near you. Does that make sense? Do I make sense? Do you… want me to go?”
“No,” Lloyd answers quickly without realizing it — to all three questions: no, that didn’t make sense to him; no, her explanation didn’t help either; and no, he does not want her to go. “No — stay. I want you to. I was just confused, that’s all.”
Somewhere in the haze, the gloomy night shifts an increase in humidity, moist air coming out brisk. It’s suffocating in a way, with cold hands and sore ears drowning under the weather. Lloyd makes it clear, “I’m not scared,” and discloses the weight he’s been carrying this whole time, “You just remind me of someone.”
“Who?” Harumi asks, and her voice is so tender and gentle that he shuts his eyes and shakes his head, cold air visible under his sighing to release a pressure within.
He couldn’t say exactly and he doesn’t know if he should say exactly; maybe it’s best if she doesn’t know and maybe soon he’ll forget too. Maybe that’s good.
They both feel a wet jolt on their skin, spreading goosebumps and a tingling sensation down their spine. A sound starts small and faint, a few drops then a few more then it’s crinkling all over — the sound of the rush of rain falling hard, soaking their hair and clothes.
Harumi never would have made it home without getting sickly drenched; Lloyd insists she come with him, the Monastery much closer at length. They make it before socks are soggy and the dampness tolerable enough to dry out: sitting on the porch as the slanted roof covers them.
Harumi has her eye on something Lloyd doesn’t know what. With the harsh rain, droplets bounce off the ground in heavy leaps, forming murky puddles and tuning out the sound of all else. Harumi is so fixated on staring at something that she tilts her head to the side, quiet for a long while until she’s had enough and points with her finger: “Is that the girl?” she asks, and Lloyd follows her finger to the wall of painted murals. She specifically points to what she assumes peculiarly looks a lot like her. “The one that reminds you of me?”
Lloyd doesn’t want to answer; he purses his lips, hoping her curiosity will die out if he ignores her. When Lloyd says nothing, Harumi takes it upon herself to look closer, as far as out in the rain, but a rash expression of Lloyd stops her: he grabs her hand, making sure she doesn’t break from the bounds the roof keeps them warm and dry.
Harumi looks at Lloyd, looks at her hand in his, looks at Lloyd again: casted in shades of pleas, his eyebrows are knitted and eyes watery-desperate. He grips her hand harder, eager, dire. “What are you scared of, Lloyd?”
He winces, his grip on her slipping because of sweat. Harumi doesn’t need to know and she should be fine not knowing because — what if she does remember? What happens then? He’s not scared, but gosh — just stay here with me, he wants to say against the lodge in his throat.
With the rain about, intensely pouring a pitter-patter, Harumi has to speak loud enough for Lloyd to hear, clear enough for him to understand. On her knees, scraping him with her locked eyes, “Whoever she is — I’m not her,” said Harumi.
“Right,” said Lloyd.
“And I’ll never be like her,” said Harumi.
“Okay,” said Lloyd.
“I’m not gonna hurt you,” said Harumi.
He hears her loud and clear, but has to put his hands on her shoulders, squeezing it to make sure this is real, this is happening. “Say it again,” Lloyd says, breathless, “with my name.”
“Lloyd…” she says to test how he’ll react: he’s jumpy, nervous, skin crawling with shivers, but he’s fine — at least she assumes so when she feels him squeeze her shoulders again to keep going. With sincerity, meaning it in every way, “I’m not going to hurt you, Lloyd.”
It’s so hard to breathe around her, like Lloyd has to remind himself to open his mouth to inhale-exhale. And he does the act: breathing, and he likes breathing and he likes Harumi — he likes this Harumi. “Will you stay with me?” Lloyd asks, breathing deeply, slowly, thoroughly, “Until the rain ends?”
Lloyd doesn’t keep track of time, but they soon fall tired from the hour lateness, falling asleep on the warm wooden porch — that kept distance between them closing in slowly — and when Lloyd wakes up: Harumi’s still there and it never stopped raining.