Chapter Text
2014 - 5th September
West District, Andreasen Avenue
Garmadon/Jiang/Walker/Brookstone/Julien Residence
The apartment’s a total mess. As always.
Lloyd had escaped the pre-party chaos, camping in his bedroom. He’s fixing (or rather, tastefully messing up) his dirty blond waves in the full-length mirror propped up on the wall just beside his door.
It’s littered with photos, lots of little memories in paper form he’d collected throughout the years. Him, Kai, and Nya mid-jump into a lake. Him with his parents for his middle school graduation. His class on the school trip to the Wailing Alps.
He’s bent a little to see his face in the glass, pushing around the mess of locks. His hands are wet with the hair product thing his mom usually sent. The smell of it floats around, citrus-y but also kind of minty if that makes sense. Mostly, he just tries to make it presentable, and the product’s doing most of the heavy lifting for that.
Clothes are an afterthought, really. Earlier, he’d thrown on a grey USNC hoodie, a pair of jeans, and army green Chucks, and called it a day. The thick sleeves of the hoodie are pushed up a bit, gathered at his forearms, which are slightly tanned, like the rest of his skin. Summer still stuck to him.
It was the Friday of move-in weekend for the rest of the school, so their little portion of city was slowly filling with more and more people.
Their place was in a really, really good spot. It’s wedged just in the outskirts of the campus, the only thing in between their block and the school grounds being an avenue he’d forgotten the name of. There’s loads of cool hangout spots and convenience stores nearby, and the six of them visited them religiously. Lloyd’s favorite spot was the Doomsday Comix store just across the street.
The only downside to living off campus was having to leave a little earlier for classes (or parties,) but Lloyd didn’t really mind. He liked the trip. It gave him time to think, to wake himself up in the morning.
“Yo, Lloyd!”
Lloyd turns around and sees Kai, who’s clad in a loose t-shirt and a backwards cap, leaning on the open door. “You ready?” he says, and he squints a little, head turning around in all different directions, as if looking for something, or sniffing something out. Lloyd knows what’s coming, though.
Oh greattt, here we go.
“Is that hair gel I’m smelling, Garmaboy?”
“Nope,” Lloyd says, shaking his head. “Must be smelling your own.”
Kai furrows his brows, huffing a laugh. “Yeah, right. Who’re we impressing, kiddo?” he teases, pulling Lloyd into a hold and ruffling all his hard work.
“Hey,” he protests but to no avail. Kai releases him, chuckling. “Come on, let’s go,” he says.
Lloyd scoffs and follows, gently closing the door behind him. “‘Can taste the punch alreadayyy!” Kai whoops, throwing his hands up in the air.
Now they’re in the electron cloud of clutter, the floor littered with soda cans and notebook paper. On the coffee table in front of the couch, atop stacks of textbooks and old comics is a dingy pizza box, one lone slice remaining. Zane would probably want to clean up later, which makes Lloyd feel very sad for him.
“We’re not even out the door yet, Kai,” Lloyd hears Nya mutter, stepping out the bathroom in ripped jeans and a leather jacket, but over her, Jay shouts from the kitchen, “What flavor is it!?!”
“Sweat and desperation, baby.” Kai calls back.
“Does not sound appetizing.” Cole says, emerging from his room.
“I agree,” Zane chimes in. “That sounds like terrible punch.”
“Whatever, can we go now? ‘Cause I’m all buzzed. Are you guys buzzed? I’m pretty buzzed.”
“You’re eager to go, Kai. What, excited to see someone? I’m guessing her name rhymes with Schm-ylor Schm-en?” Cole teases, and the others laugh at that, while the man in question rolls his eyes.
“Fuck off, Skylor’s not even coming. Something with her dad.”
Lloyd smirks. “So, you two’ve been talking?”
“Can we just go now?”
—
2014 - 5th September
West District, Borg Avenue
The night air is cold. Windy, too, blowing his hair in his face, further rendering his previous efforts of keeping it socially acceptable, futile. Thanks, wind!
Part of what Lloyd likes most about Ninjago City is how it looks at night. It’s already really colorful, and in the dark it looks even better. He’d lived there most of his life, albeit on the opposite side of town.
His friends are talking about something, but he’s zoning out, walking just a bit slower than them. They’d just passed the twenty-four hour convenience store on the corner of the block, at the cusp of the avenue which he now remembers is named after Cyrus Borg. They’re at the stop light now.
“She’s just playing hard to get. You’re in as can be, dude, trust me on this.” Lloyd hears Cole say, and looking up, he sees him with an arm slung over Kai’s shoulder.
“You’ve never even dated anybody, Cole,” Jay cuts in.
“The coach doesn’t play, Jay.”
Lloyd hadn’t ever dated anyone either. Nor wanted to. He’d always just been uninterested. Maybe it wasn’t a lack of interest really, just that he was focused on more important things. Not that he minded, though, he kind of liked being in the bleachers more than being on the court.
The painted yellow stop light turns red. Below it the little white walking man formed by a collection of dots blinks, and the six of them cross casually, like clockwork. A step in the circadian rhythms of their lives now.
“So, what’re our bets for tonight?" Nya asks as they walk.
Lloyd thinks. “Hmm. How many minutes before Jay spills something on himself or someone else?”
“Ten.”
“I’d say five.”
“Two minutes?”
“Statistically, it would be eight.”
“Woooooow. Ha ha, hilarious, guys. I’m laughing soooo hard.”
They’re now on the pavement, walking onto the concrete passage from Borg Avenue to the USNC school grounds.
The campus opens up to a bright oasis of green grass, tinted glass, and the cantilevered stone beams and upper floors of library buildings and study halls. It’s like a little city in the city. There are parks and lots of places to eat, and it feels even bigger with how much glass there is.
It’s modern, but not in a barren way, more like it’s breathing.
The planters and trees probably did that, but the warm timber wood slats on the walls help.
There’s not much concrete, really. If you were to make a palette of the campus, the main colors on there would probably be the warm browns of the wood and the reflections of the lighting from inside, lots of green, a black tint, the vibrant navy blue of the scattered signage that told you which part of campus you were in, and the white of pillars and the accents/text on signs.
They’re on the way to the campus center now, walking under a bridge with glass-paned windows connecting the student center and the learning resource center (or just a fancy way to say library) overhead. Over top of the tinted glass doors reads, University of the Sciences Ninjago City, painted in white. The school crest is beside it too.
His friends are still talking bets, now about how long before Kai drunk-dials Skylor again.
“Okay, you know what? I’ll do you one better. Who’s getting kissed first tonight? Aside from you two,” Kai said, gesturing towards Jay and Nya. Jay smirks. “Looks like someone’s changing the subject,” he says and Kai scoffs and rolls his eyes.
“If Pix is there, Zane probably.” Cole answers.
“I am not sure she would enjoy such a public display of affection. I, for one, prefer to maintain our privacy.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Jay leans forward. “Wouldn’t you want people to see you guys are, you know, together? It’s about the relationship status, Zane! The public acknowledgement of the bond!”
Nya chuckles. “I don’t think Zane and Pix have to make out in Griffin Turner’s dorm room for people to know that, Jay.”
“Ugh, I do not want the visual of Pixal and Zane making out in my head right now,” he replies, face exaggeratedly grossed out.
They laugh, the only sound in the empty campus besides passing cars and rustling leaves.
“My sister’s right, though,” Kai says. “They already walk together all the time anyway.”
“Precisely- intimacy is not limited to physical interactions. Rather, it is a shared cognitive and emotional state.”
“Yeah, yeah, keep your secrets, bud,” Cole says, walking through the doors, which open with a soft hiss as they approach. Lloyd feels a bit of the cold breeze through.
The guy at the reception desk, Dareth, is half-asleep, but he blinks awake at the sight of them.
He’s in his late thirties, and lets slide a lot of things he really shouldn’t. He’d tried to invite them to his karate dojo in the city around twelve times in their years here. They never went, but Lloyd liked that Dareth looked out for them, in his way at least. Dareth kind of acts as a weird uncle to them. Which makes two, counting Uncle Wu.
“Hey, kiddos,” he says drowsy. “Which dorm this time?”
They all let out a chorus of, ‘Hi, Dareth’s as they closed in.
“East building, Dareth,” Lloyd replies. “We’ll be good, I promise.”
“That’s Lloyd talking, Dareth,” Kai throws up his hands. “No guarantees.”
Cole smiles. “Yeah, you’ll be lucky to see Kai in one piece tomorrow morning.”
“You just have fun, guys. Wish I could join you, but, uh, duty calls,” Dareth chuckles. “Front desk doesn’t guard itself.”
“We’ll see you around, Dareth. Thanks,” Lloyd smiles.
“You guys have a good night,” he replies.
They greet him goodbye, feet pattering on the marble floors.
The adjacent atrium is massive. It’s open up the middle so you could see all four floors going up. The walls are mainly glass and the stairs, which went up the center were a warm toned wood, the entrance a dark gray steel. The square beams on the ceiling are a lighter wood.
On the first floor’s the dining hall, and upstairs are various meeting rooms, offices, and study areas. There were couches, and tables for groups and pairs. Up there is also the passageway to the dorm building, but of course, it required an ID card. Thankfully Lloyd brought his.
The second floor’s pretty empty. There’s not much reason for anyone to be out studying just yet, but there are a few up late, probably getting some early reading done.
“Soooo, back to the bet.” Jay teased, the ‘t’ sound clicking between his teeth.
“Hmm,” Nya hums. “Are Tox and Camille still a thing?”
Jay pauses. “Wait, they were a thing?”
“That’s news to me.”
“Intel suggests they parted ways after a heated disagreement involving the performance of a keg stand.”
“Yo, a keg stand? Why wasn’t I there?”
“We shouldn’t be talking about this, guys,” Lloyd cuts in, reaching for the lanyard tucked in his hoodie pocket. He taps the plastic case over the sensor by the heavy glass doors leading to the bridge, inside which shine a row of little ceiling lights.
The lock blinks green with a beep, the doors sliding open to the passageway. Lloyd steps to the side, letting the others go in first.
“Oh, come on, Lloyd,” Jay chirps, passing him as the doors swing open. “You’re just trying to deflect because you know you’re the wildcard.”
“...Wildcard?” Lloyd furrows his brows.
“Oh, you know — the secret weapon, the ace in the hole, the guy who, in the third act, when all hope is lost, swoops in and shows the bad guys who's boss. He’s gone through the training montage, screwed up a few times, lost a friend along the way, and now he’s ready to kick some serious butt."
“I’m not a… wildcard,” Lloyd mutters, falling into step behind them. Suddenly he felt five eyes peering into his soul.
Cole admits, “I hate to say it, Lloyd, but Jay’s.. kinda right, which is rare,” which earns a ‘Hey!’ from Jay.
“Yeah you haven’t even so much as, like, flirted with anyone ever. And you’re a handsome little fella,” Kai says, patting his back. Lloyd rolls his eyes.
“Don’t rush him, guys,” Nya sighs. “I’m sure Lloyd will do all that when he’s ready. At his own pace.” She smiles at him.
“Thank you, Nya.” Lloyd nods with that. “I just, I’ve wanted to be here for a while, and now that I’m in, I’m not about to get distracted by…you know, romance.”
“See!” Kai points a finger at him as he walks backward to match Lloyd’s pace. “That’s exactly what a wildcard would say.”
“That is not a thing,” Lloyd says, tapping his ID on the door’s lock. The doors hiss open, and they start going down the hallway. “I just like… watching from the nosebleeds. What’s Griffin’s dorm number again?”
“102,” Cole says. “Just go left.”
“Well then,” Jay starts, smug. His freckle-spotted cheeks perk up as he smirks.
“Don’t,” Lloyd says, giving him a look as they turn the corner.
“Twenty bucks says Lloyd’s going from nosebleeds to center stage.”
“I’ll take you on that,” Nya leans into him. “It hasn’t happened before. Why now?”
“You never know, sis,” Kai teases, smirking at Lloyd, who just looks at him exasperated.
“Going once, going twice, sold to Miss Nya Jiang.”
“Whatever,” Lloyd says, stopping at 102. The door’s kept open by a basic Maths textbook. The music seeps through the crack.
Lloyd places his hand on the doorknob, the bass vibrating through the metal. “I’m with Nya. I’m leaving this party exactly as single as I came in,” he says as he looks over his shoulder.
“Whatever you say, Garmaboy.”
Lloyd turns the knob, and soon they’re in the common room. Most of the lights are off but it still feels bright somehow.
“Alright, lady and gents,” Kai says. “Operation ‘find-the-punch’ is a go.”
The party’s a blur of color.
He could make out a few familiar faces though, like Brad Tudabone, his friend from middle school. He should probably go say hi later. They probably wouldn’t be able to have a proper conversation over the volume of the music, though.
Take me to your best friend's house
Goin' 'round this roundabout, oh yeah
Take me to your best friend's house
I loved you then and I love you now, oh yeah
“Yo, guys, you made it!” someone shouts. It’s Griffin rushing over, his hair combed back and red-tinted sunglasses on. “What took you so long?”
“What, are we late?”
“Nah, just in time. Come on, grab a cup before it’s out.”
The others follow behind Griffin, and Lloyd treads behind, looking around and almost tripping on an untied shoelace in the process. They’d entered through the hallway connecting 101 and 103 into 102, the common room, which was pretty big, actually, fitting a kitchenette, dining table, a couple couches and beanbags, and a TV.
There are two living room type areas, which was surprising. Usually, these places were a lot smaller. Thank God it wasn’t, he thinks to himself. If this place were any smaller, he’d be suffocating.
There’s people everywhere. Sitting on the kitchen counter, slumped on the floor, making out in the corner. Eugh. He looks away. Intel was wrong about Tox and Camille parting ways, he guesses. He tries not to get swept in by the waves, following behind his friends like they’re a safety tether.
Most people are dancing or talking by the living room area, cups and phones in hand. He could see a lot of iPhone flashlights in the air.
On the counter’s the punch bowl, cans of beer, plastic one-liter bottles of soda, and a pack of red cups. Beside them is a black Sharpie marker, forgotten and missing the cap. Lloyd takes a cup and writes his name on it. He adds a little smiley face at the end.
Kai whoops, throwing his head back after gulping down a concoction of punch, beer and Pepsi.
“Lloyd, dude, you’ve gotta get some, it’s great.”
Lloyd watches as Kai mixes him a cup. ‘This shit looks radioactive,’ he thinks but doesn’t say out loud.
Kai hands it to him, and Lloyd swirls it around in his cup a bit before hesitantly gulping down a sip. He immediately regrets that decision.
Lloyd scrunches his face up, stretching his mouth open in reaction. “Oh my God, that tastes like battery acid,” he sputters.
“In a good way,” Kai suggests.
“Definitely not.”
—
A little later, Lloyd’s beat. He stands behind a couch, red cup in hand, which now only holds crushed ice and drops of juice. His friends had gone over to the balcony, but Lloyd stayed back.
Lying on the couch is the now passed-out body of Brad Tudabone, his black hair a mess on the sofa back. He and awake-Brad had been talking about the finale of How I Met Your Mother, which released earlier in the year. But their conversation clearly wasn’t interesting enough to keep the boy from drifting away.
The party’s slowed down by now, with people mostly talking in their own circles, not jumping or crazedly chanting like earlier. There’s still music playing, but it seemed to match the pace — slow.
Lloyd’s surrounded by people, but it feels like he’s floating, there and not at the same time. He hears everything, but it all muddles into an unintelligible overlap of voice and song.
What time you coming out?
We started losing light
I'll never make it right
If you don't wander off
I'm so excited for the night
All we need's my bike and your enormous house
The heat of the room feels like it’s seeping into his skin, trying to find a way in.
He needs air. Or the others, or both.
Lloyd starts to move through the crowd, sifting through what feels like a sea of bodies, between first years talking about school or third years talking about girls. He sort of feels like a particle in diffusion, just moving from higher to lower concentration.
He wades through the metaphorical water, looking out for Nya's leather jacket, or Kai’s backwards cap. The colors of the room blend together like watercolor.
The music pulses through the room as he moves, as his gaze moves with him. He slips through a gap and his eyes are caught on something. Someone.
Then he sees her.
Suddenly everything else tunes out, the soda-punch-beer, the elbows, the talking, and all that’s left is her.
She’s standing by the open window, looking totally bored actually, with the wind quietly running through her hair.
Her hair is long and milky white — platinum blonde, and flows in lots of straight layers, framing her face. Her bangs are straight too, barely over her eyebrows. Lloyd thanks some higher power for the gift of his eyesight.
Gosh, she was like. Really, really pretty. She made it so, so hard to think, harder to think real, actual sentences.
She had these beautiful eyes, lined with this dark pencil stuff, so were her eyelashes. She had really nice skin too. There were a few of those little dark dots across her face, scattered around the center of her face.
She had a couple piercings too, and, holy crap, Lloyd felt like he was high. Well, he’d never been high before, but this is probably pretty close to the real deal, he thinks.
The little amount of light there even was in the room dances on her face, the silver glimmering like the glow was coming from underneath her skin. There was one through her septum — an open ring with little spheres at the tips, and a pair of spikes under her lips.
He tries to take her all in, but she’s a lot. She’s in a white tank top, not too loose but not tight either, stretching just over where her shorts ended. It hangs a little low, her black bra peeking out over her skin. Lloyd looks away almost immediately after he sees it.
A silver cross necklace dangled at the middle of her chest, and on her neck was this really tight black necklace that looked elastic, almost. It sort of looked like those loop patterns they’d make you do for cursive classes as a kid. Her denim shorts were cut just over her thighs, and she wore black leather boots that looked a little loose on her slender legs.
It felt like his heart had free fallen down his ribs, his guts sucking in to make space for it as it did.
He didn’t get any of it. This was so, so new to him; this weird feeling, like he needed to stare and never look away, like knowing somehow the moment was ending, and he’d lose her in his memories.
Like he needed to memorize her face, everything about her, afraid that all he’d remember tomorrow was the rush looking at her gave him, and the sadness of never knowing her fully.
She, like, glowed in the dark, and she made the flashes of the compact cameras and iPhones feel dull. No, she made the world feel dull, not just with her beauty but with the sort of indifference she had for it.
How could she be here and not be the center of attention? How was it possible that people weren’t frozen the way he was right now? It just didn’t make sense. She didn’t make sense.
Lloyd had studied making things make sense, studied how the human body worked, but nothing, nothing could explain anything in that moment.
Nothing, but the frantic and all-too-fast beating of his heart.
Then she turned her head.
Her eyes met Lloyd’s, and somehow, things got even worse than they were. He felt like his heart was pumping so much blood he’d combust.
Oh my gosh what do I do what do I do what do I do. Do I like, wave? No, that’s weird. She’s looked at you for a solid 5 nanoseconds. Well, she’s caught me staring anyway. Maybe there’s someone behind me. Just like. Calm down. This is just a girl. He’d never even liked girls all that much.
Then she smiled.
Smiled.
Lloyd felt like melting, or crumbling, or anything that involved folding into yourself.
God, it felt like his ribs were on the path to imploding.
And her smile, it wasn’t one of kindness, or sweetness, or anything like that.
It was like she was amused with him.
It was like… a challenge.
A really, really pretty one at that.
Lloyd liked challenges.
“Lloyd!”
He felt a hand clap on his shoulder, and suddenly he was on the ground again. He turned his head. It was Kai, with Jay in tow. “Where’ve you been, dude? We were waiting for you out on the balcony.”
Lloyd’s eyes darted from his friends to the girl, who was now talking with another girl, who he recognized as one of his cousin’s friends. Violet?
The other two leaned in to look.
“Whoa,” Jay said, sounding respectfully impressed. “Who’s that?”
Kai simply said “scoreeee.”
“She’s…” Lloyd trailed off, half embarrassed, half speechless still. His hand creeped up to scratch the back of his head.
“Yeah. She is.” Kai chuckled.
Jay snickered. “Looks like I’m getting my twenty bucks. If Lloyd even talks to her, that is,” he smiled, turning to Lloyd. He waggled his eyebrows. “Which you should,” he clarified. “It’s better than this eyefucking you’ve got going on.”
Lloyd chokes on air. “Sorry??” He turns to face him, and in doing so feels the impact of someone’s body colliding with his shoulder, and the cold splash of liquid drenching the front of his hoodie.
Shoot. He looked down, and surely enough, there was a cherry red patch on his chest.
“Oh, shit, my bad!”
He met the eye of a very drunk, black-haired boy he didn’t recognize, though he did remember seeing him during one of Nya’s swim meets. His brows raised, looking at the stain, but his eyes were still sluggish with that sort of tiredness being drunk got you. “So sorry, man, I didn’t see you at all,” he slurred.
“No, that’s okay,” Lloyd assured him, but he looked up at the girl by the window. She wasn’t watching, thank goodness, but it looked like she was getting ready to leave, shrugging her purse onto her shoulder and gathering her things: a leather jacket and her phone.
The boy staggered away, wobbling as he did so. Lloyd saw him try to down his empty cup.
“Lloyd! I think she’s leaving,” Jay said, nodding to her as she slipped away.
“Yeah,” he replied, taking off the hoodie, left in just a graphic T-shirt with the periodic table on it. “I got that much.”
“You’re gonna let her get away, Romeo?” Kai teased.
Lloyd didn’t reply, just watched as she went, his eyes following her as she glided through the crowd with ease- as she and her perfect hair faded away, as she slowly went from the common room to the hallway, and soon, she was out the door, her friends behind her.
Huh.
This girl really was something. She’d just rewired his complete existence and walked out the door. To add to that, it was like she didn’t even really notice him at all.
No. No, she did!
Did she?
“There you guys are,” he heard Nya say, which snapped him back to reality. He could see Cole and Zane behind her. “We should probably go. It’s getting pretty late.” She added, looking down at her phone, the light from the screen even brighter in the dimly-lit room.
“What time is it?” Kai asked.
“Two twenty-seven A.M.,” Zane said, moving forward. “It will take us approximately twenty-five minutes to get back to the apartment.”
“What happened to your hoodie?” Nya asked, but Jay cut in with his usual, very manic way of talking. “A drunk second-year bumped into him. I think it was your teammate Ben. Big deal, but most importantly, our boy Lloyd here has spent the last ten minutes having a spiritual awakening because of, like, this ghost princess girl, and he would’ve gotten me my twenty bucks if she just stayed a little longer.”
“Is that so?” Nya smirked, turning to face Lloyd. Everyone was looking at him again. He felt a little awkward, ripping a piece of tissue from the kitchen towel holder on the counter and rubbing his stained hoodie to distract himself.
“Ghost princess, huh?” Cole asked, looking up from a half-eaten slice of pizza he’d scavenged from a nearby box.
“A transfer,” Kai replied. “We found Lloyd all heart-eyed like this,” he added, eyes wide and head tilted. Lloyd rolled his eyes, still wiping at the stained hoodie.
“It… wasn't like that,” Lloyd muttered, the warmth creeping up his face again. “She just, she was really…different from everyone else. I guess I was just caught by surprise.”
Everyone gave him this annoyingly knowing look, like they were egging him on, or something.
“She was really pretty, though.” He added.
—
Saturday - 6th September
West District, Andreasen Avenue
Garmadon/Jiang/Walker/Brookstone/Julien Residence
Two things:
1) Fortunately, Lloyd hadn’t forgotten about her, contrary to his earlier worries.
2) Unfortunately, Lloyd hadn’t forgotten about her.
Lloyd spends most of Saturday morning with Zane, cleaning up the apartment. Usually, they’d be talking about his lessons, or in peaceful silence as they played music in the background.
This morning though, much to his horror, Lloyd can’t help but talk on and on about the girl he’d seen at the party. He tries not to, but Zane’s there, and he’s much less annoying about it than any of the other guys.
Funny thing is, his talking probably irritated Lloyd more than it did Zane.
“Her hair, it was just,” he continues, gathering textbooks and other clutter off of the table, “it wasn’t just blonde, okay, not like my hair or anything. It was like, white. And her piercings, Zane, they were so…natural.”
“That is quite an…interesting descriptor for facial piercings. All things considered, they are nothing of the sort. By definition, they are artificial additions.”
“Yeah, exactly. It’s- no, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be talking about this,” he says, placing books from his stack onto the bookshelf.
Zane offers a small, reassuring smile. “You are experiencing a significant emotional response to a novel stimulus. It is perfectly normal to seek verbal processing, Lloyd. Though, I must admit, I have never heard you speak quite so extensively about a stranger's physical presentation.”
“I know,” Lloyd mumbles. “Me neither.”
—
In the afternoon, Lloyd and Jay go to Doomsday, just to check out what they’ve got. Looking through the bins had usually kept him from thinking too much. Lloyd had thought it would distract him from the whole mystery girl situation.
It did not. In fact, it sort of made it worse.
Doomsday wasn’t a particularly spacious store by any means, really it was only a little larger than their living room. They were by the front, where most of the new arrivals were displayed on a shelf near the door.
He picks up issue #5 of the new Amazing Spider-Man run with Jay beside him, looking at a New 52 Flash issue.
His fingers trace over the issue, still encased in the plastic. The Black Cat – Felicia Hardy’s white hair was bright against the dark blues of the city skyline. It only reminded him of her.
Jay peered over at him. He snickered.
“You know, you do have a type.”
“Shut up.”
—
The rest of Saturday is spent by Lloyd trying to read ahead for his classes, but they’re futile attempts. He’s worked up and it shows, he guesses, because Nya hasn’t stopped looking back and forth between him and the TV.
“Hey,” she says, leaning in. “You alright? You seem frustrated.”
“Yeah,” Lloyd says, but it comes out all shrill. He shakes his head. “No. No, no, I just —”
“It’s about the girl, isn’t it?”
He heaves out a breath. “Yes, yes it is. Look it’s- it’s new. I’ve never felt this way before and I don’t know why it’s such a big deal. I shouldn’t be this riled up over someone I don’t know, it’s stupid.”
“No, Lloyd, don’t say that. It’s never stupid to care, no matter who it is. I get it.” She sighs, smiles dryly. “You remember in high-school when the whole thing with Jay and Cole happened, yeah?”
He laughs at that. In ninth grade, well, at least when Lloyd and Nya were ninth grade, Jay and Nya were sort of already together. But then something happened with Cole and things got messy.
It felt so long ago. He remembered worrying things would never be the same again with all of them, but they patched things up eventually. “Yeah.”
“That was so shitty of me,” she chuckles, but Lloyd protests. “Hey, no, it wasn’t. We were all kids—”
She puts a hand up. “No, let me finish. That’s.. That’s not the point. The point is, if that had never happened, I never would’ve thought seriously about my relationship with Jay. Not enough to figure things out at least. Jay and I clearly had a lot to talk about, and if we hadn’t then, who knows? We might not have even been together by now. So, sure, feelings aren’t perfect, they’re messy, and chaotic, and most of the time totally out of nowhere,” she gestures wildly to the air. “But… we have them for a reason. Even if it doesn’t seem like it.”
“Yeah, it really didn’t seem like it back then.”
“Ouch.”
“Sorry.”
She chuckles. “But yeah, exactly. Maybe you’re meant to feel this way...And you never know, maybe she feels the same.”
“Maybe who feels the same?”
Lloyd turns around. It’s Kai. “Oh, party girl? Definitely. Come on, look at this guy.” He pats Lloyd’s shoulders from behind the couch.
Well. Siblings only share about 50% of their DNA after all. They can’t both be winners.
—
Sunday- 7th September
West District, Andreasen Avenue
Garmadon/Jiang/Walker/Brookstone/Julien Residence
By Sunday evening, Lloyd can’t think of anything but her. Which is very, very, concerning, considering classes start tomorrow and he is not up for a sophomore slump this year. He really can’t help it though and that scares him, albeit less than it would have had he not talked with Nya.
And to clarify, his feelings aren’t that bad, just new. He isn’t that mopey.
They’re all in the living room (except for Zane, who’s out with Pixal), some on the couch and some on the carpet, eating pizza. Skylor’s over, and in anticipation of her arrival, Kai had spent thirty minutes in the bathroom grooming himself. She and him were on the long part of the couch — it looked like they were in the ‘on again’ part of their off and on again relationship.
What’s worse than thinking of her is talking about her. And Lloyd is doing both, much to his embarrassment. But he can’t help it.
“Why didn’t you talk to her, man?” Cole asks him, pizza in his mouth.
Lloyd holds his face in his hands, head thrown back against the couch. “I don’t know, it wasn’t like that.”
“Oh, that’s bullshit and you know it, Lloyd,” Jay replies, chewing on a potato chip. “Jay!” Nya chastises him. The guys chuckle. Lloyd chokes on his stuffed crust.
Skylor laughs, too, lodged in the crook of Kai’s arm. “What did you say she looked like again?” She asks him, smiling wryly in that way she always does.
Oh. It’s the first time someone has asked rather than received the answer before they even could that weekend. “Oh, uhm- yeah, she had this really white hair, not in the old way, and—”
She cuts him off. “Piercings?”
“Uh, yeah. How’d– how’d you know?” Lloyd feels his heart skip a couple beats, and then some.
Kai tilts his head. “You know her, Sky?”
“First of all, never call me ‘Sky’ ever again. Second of all, yes,” she starts to type on her phone. “I think I do.”
She holds the screen up to Lloyd, and it feels like everyone leans in to look. It’s a photo pulled up on Google and holy shit, yes, it’s her. She has way less of the dark makeup on, her hair pulled into a bun. Noticeably, her piercings are missing. She looks toned down — stripped bare but God, still, like, beautiful.
His jaw is embarrassingly ajar, and it’s clear he’s mesmerized and can’t look away, but like other things, he can’t help it. “Yes, yes, that’s her.”
Skylor smirks, proud of herself. “She’s Harumi Jade.”
Harumi Jade. Her name is…Harumi.
It’s…pretty.
The others perk up. They repeat her last name more like a question than a reply.
“Wait, Jade?” Jay chirps. “As in, the major business people who do the phones and the fridges and the TVs, those Jades??”
“They’re the ones. My dad’s… crossed paths with them. She’s the heiress. They even call her the Jade Princess in the articles,” she says, scrolling presumably through said articles. “Well, they’re right. She’s practically royalty back in Shintaro.”
Lloyd pauses. “Why’s she here in Ninjago City?” (Not that he didn’t want her there, definitely not that. It was just weird. You get it.)
“At USNC, no less,” Nya adds.
“That’s what everyone’s asking. I don’t believe all of them, but there are rumors of a fallout with her parents. It’s clear they’re dodging things, though.”
“A princess. Lloyd, you do not like it easy, huh?” Cole snickers.
“There’s no, ‘it’,” Lloyd replies, but he had to admit, he was kind of right. He definitely didn’t feel at ease at all.
“Yeah, sure there isn’t, loverboy.”
Lloyd checks the clock. It’s 11:11. He wishes to fuse into the floorboards. (He also wishes to see Harumi Jade one and a hundred more times, but he’s not sure that’s how ‘11:11’s work.)
—
Monday - 8th September
West District, Andreasen Avenue
Garmadon/Jiang/Walker/Brookstone/Julien Residence
The morning of the first day is always hard. It’s harder when you’re almost sure, but not really that she’ll be there. Lloyd’s bed is soft and supple and he wishes he could sink in it and stay where he lay. It’s too bad he has school.
He gets up, puts on some pants and gets out the door to brush his teeth. It’s 9:14 at this point, and he has his first class at 10 am. He’s the only one up — the others either are already on campus or asleep.
Lloyd likes cooking a normal amount, but it doesn’t seem to like him back. He makes cheesy eggs and pours himself cereal. It’s pretty good for a change. The milk in it reminds him of her hair.
At that, he decides to watch Youtube as he eats. It distracts him from having to form serious thoughts.
Soon he’s in his room again, dressing up. He picks out a greyish-green flannel shirt and jeans. There’s lots of hoodies he’d accumulated over the years, so he brings one too. It’s grey, and has the NASA logo on the top right, so it passes the cool check. He fixes his hair, just with a comb and his hands now, definitely not using the hair gel stuff for the foreseeable future. He thought he looked alright, for what it’s worth.
He packs his backpack with his laptop, a notebook, and a water bottle. It’s dark green, and there’s little keychains hanging from the zipper and pins over the bottom pocket.
He closes the bag. He thinks about Harumi. He thinks about her so hard his stomach gets all funny inside.
He’s out the door now, earphones in. He’s listening to Oasis. He really likes Oasis.
The walk is cold and windy. It just rained last night, and the sky is painted a light grey. Lloyd’s shadow stretches long across the road. The city is about as busy as Monday mornings usually were, which is to say, pretty busy.
Champagne Supernova finishes when Lloyd is crossing the street. Next is Here Comes Your Man. He bobs his head to the jaunty guitar.
—
Lloyd finds his first class of the year: calculus. Not the best way to open the day, but oh well.
He scans the tiers for that bright platinum blonde hair. He doesn’t find it. That’s cool. Maybe she just doesn’t take calc.
—
His next class is Organic Chemistry, something he’s actually interested in. It doesn’t start until 12:00, so he elects to go to the campus park for a while.
UNSC is full of stuff to look at. It’s a really great campus. It’s modern and massive and just sprawling with life, but the architecture isn’t doing much for him. Not now, at least, because Lloyd’s passing through every person on campus looking for her. Worst part is, he doesn’t even want to, he’s just.. inclined to.
He turns on his phone, thinking to text in the group chat so he could meet with the others.
—
Cole and Zane and turn out to be on campus. As they’re talking in the park, Lloyd sees her. Or at least thinks he does.
There’s a blonde girl taking pictures by the fountain. The sun catches her hair, and for a split second, it looks like Harumi’s.
He pauses.
Yeah, no. Definitely not her.
—
Lloyd spends his Organic Chemistry class scrawling minimal notes about important dates in his notebook, and looking up from said notes to the door whenever he hears it open.
Nope, no Jade Princesses in sight.
Coooool.
—
He leaves class all dejected. You know what, it’s a big campus. Like, the size of a small town, big. He’s probably not seeing her today.
Stepping out into the hallway, he catches a glimpse of white hair and shoots up. Nope, just an old professor.
Okay, yeah. He really wasn’t seeing her today. Whatever. He didn’t like her like that. How could he? He didn’t even know her!
—
In thirty minutes, he has Behavioral Neuroscience. It’s a new addition to his list of courses, and he’s actually kind of intrigued to see how it goes. Intrigued enough that it takes his mind off of Harumi even if only for a moment. He feels weird calling her ‘Harumi.’ Well, technically he isn’t calling her anything, since they haven’t even spoken. But you get it.
Lloyd sits at one of the tables on the second floor of the West Central Building and waits, not looking around anymore. He’s given up. Not that there was anything to give up. Whatever. He plays Fruit Ninja.
By 1:22 he’s already on the way to the lecture building his class is in. The paths have started to fill up, with more people coming out for classes or to grab food from one of the many cafes and small restaurants on campus. Don’t Look Back in Anger by Oasis plays in his earphones. Soon, he’s at the doors of the building, tapping his ID on the scanner.
He checks his phone for the schedule. Behavioral Neuroscience is in Lecture Hall 402.
He arrives at 1:28, and the hall’s pretty populated once he gets there. Almost every wooden row has at least seven people, and even if it isn’t as packed as his calculus class was, it’s got lots of people considering it’s a more specialized course. The room is pretty massive too, mostly made up of wood, and at the front of it is a semicircle-ish platform with a desk, glass whiteboard, and a big projector screen overhead.
Slinging his backpack on the chair, he settles in one of the further tiers. The room’s cool and air conditioned, the air smelling really crisp and just, cold if that makes sense.
The professor’s already sitting by the desk, an older man named Dr. Nived. He’s got black, combed up hair with bits of grey in it, and a scruffy, shorter beard. Right now it looks like he’s going over something, probably lesson pointers or something, on his laptop. To Lloyd he kind of looks like the guy from The Bourne Legacy — that one agent in the cabin.
“Alright, it’s 1:30. Let’s get this started,” he calls out, straightening up. He’s charming, Lloyd admits, and his voice is loud enough to reach everyone without needing to use a microphone.
“Welcome to Behavioral Neuroscience. Most of you are here because you need the prerequisite. Some of you are here because you think understanding the brain will help you understand yourselves." He offered a dry, knowing smile. "Let me tell you, it won't. In fact, it’ll more likely terrify you.”
Too bad, Dr. Nived, Lloyd thinks. I’m already terrified.
“In this room, we do not treat the brain like a computer,” he continues, pacing slowly in front of the glass whiteboard, “-because it isn’t one. We treat it like the chemical warzone it is. Every choice you make, fear you harbor, every sudden, inexplicable attraction you feel toward people you know—”
Lloyd swallowed hard, his fingers tracing the edge of his dark green water bottle.
“—is all just a cocktail of dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. We are going to strip away the poetry of human behavior and look at the muscles underneath. We are going to study what exactly makes people act the way they do. What makes them fight, makes them love, makes them hate.”
“And because of the intensive nature of this course, you will not be working alone. You will be assigned a partner. This partnership is not negotiable, and it will last the entirety of the academic year. You will conduct case studies, you will co-author a fifty-page research paper, and you will learn to tolerate each other’s neuroses. You will have individual exams, don’t get me wrong. But for class activities, assignments, whatever — you’ll be joined at the hip.
He walked back to his laptop, tapping the trackpad to wake up the screen. A massive spreadsheet illuminated the projector screen above him.
"I’ve already paired you up based on a cross-reference of your previous academic tracks and majors. When I call your names, please locate your partner. Sit together, get familiar, then we’ll go over course rules, requirements, and how you’ll be graded.”
Lloyd scans the sheet, and he recognizes a few names from his other classes. Pairworks aren’t that bad, really, as long as your partner’s alright at least. As he looks through the list, Dr. Nived is calling out couples of names at a time. He occasionally looks up at the crowd, probably checking to see whether they’ve found each other.
Lloyd keeps reading off the list.
He finds himself.
But…no. No. No, there’s no way.
Like he’s reading his mind, Dr. Nived speaks.
“...and.…Garmadon, Lloyd, and Jade, Harumi.”
He does a double and a triple and a quadruple take. The words don’t float away, he isn’t imagining things, no. Still typed out in Arial on the projector: Garmadon, Lloyd. Across his name, Jade, Harumi.
No shot.
This is not how the universe works!
He gets up, collecting his stuff into his backpack.
It isn’t like that it isn’t like that it isn’t like that.
He looks over the sea of heads and sure enough, there she is by the back. Her platinum blonde hair sticks out like a sore throat– thumb. A sore thumb.
She isn’t even looking at him, because of course she isn’t — she’s sitting totally unfazed, like she didn’t even hear her name being called. Lloyd treads over there though, backpack over his shoulder and hoodie folded over his other hand. It feels like graduation, the way he’s walking up the aisle to meet her.
‘Joined at the hip,’ Dr. Nived had said earlier. A whole year. A research paper. Lloyd was like, terrible at writing. Ohhhhh God.
He reaches the final step, and now he’s on her level. Physically speaking, that is. Well, not by physical features, just like, their standing, you know.
He walks over to her.
He’s going through cardiac arrest and he really hopes she doesn’t hear.
Harumi… She looks really smart, sitting there. Her hair is gathered into a low bun but not polished like in the pictures. It’s messy but in a good way. She still has her piercings in, and her lips are pursed, eyebrows furrowed slightly.
Her eyes are bright and the skin around them is bare of the pencil stuff, though bits of black still lingered, remnants of last night. She’s wearing a slim grey hoodie that goes all the way to her neck, but it’s only zipped up to below her collarbone. There's a sliver of a white top under.
She rests on her elbows, her face cupped in her hand.
He swallows down the knots in his throat.
“Jade,” he says finally. She turns around.
Her face is completely blank, but those eyes are blown wide as she looks up at him through her lashes.
“Harumi Jade,” he corrects himself. There’s a lilt to it at the end, because he wants her to at least have the possibility of thinking he doesn’t know who she is yet.
“I’m Lloyd.”