The Importance of Splashing Puddles
It ends like this.
Splash! goes the puddle, water flying everywhere and soaking through Shen's leather boots. But that's okay, because all of his clothes are wet too, clinging onto him like some really sticky glue. It's raining, it's pouring, poro and yordles are snoring. Fee – fi – fo – fum. One, two, skip a few...
Splash!
Shen watches the way that water ripples flow out in funny circles from his feet. He tries to make pretty patterns with it, but the first ripple always disappear too fast for really cool circle overlays. So the boy gives up, and continues skipping through water puddles down the road.
Ninjas are supposed to be really quiet, his father said. You're supposed to walk quietly, talk quietly, eat quietly, fight quietly, sleep quietly, pee quietly, and probably splash rain puddles quietly too.
Shen can't do that yet, so he's practicing and practicing. Splash, splash, splash. Splashing puddles "without a sound" is an important art for all ninjas to learn, just like shuriken-throwing and sneaking cookies from the baskets.
At least that's what he's going to tell his caretakers, once they realize he's gone and come after him.
His socks are soggy, and his hair is a flooded bird nest. But the boy doesn't care! His father is busy with adult stuff and "important matters you'll understand later"s, and the rest of the kids have started training, and Shen can't join them because he's too young, and no matter what he says ("But I'm already five!"), his father's upside-down smile usually just gets bigger and bigger, like the two corners of his mouth are racing to see who can touch the ground faster, and he doesn't think either of the corners has won yet, but it's a close fight for sure. And it's still raining, and it's still pouring, and and and –
"Oof!" Shen trips on a rock. A great idea pops up while he's falling, so he tries to make it work. Except ideas don't really work so well outside of his head, and he ends up bumping his knee to his chin while trying to copy a really cool looking recovery roll he saw one of the disciples do.
A quiet chuckle draws his attention away from the pain, and startled, Shen looks around. There's another boy, huddled under a shed by the road. The roof is half-collapsed and dirty. The boy also looks half-collapsed and dirty. His clothes are torn like the rugs that servants back at the Kinkou temple use to clean the floors, and one side of his face is black and blue and a little green on the side too.
For a long time, they just stare at each other, then Shen shuffles forward. He's a little nervous, and not sure what to do. But curiosity gets the better of him.
"What's that on your face?" Shen asks.
The stranger tilts his head, and stays very still. For the longest time, nothing is said, so Shen moves closer until he's huddling under the roof too.
"A love tap."
The words are dead, sounding more like a scratchy noise that came from a broken-down hextech machine from Piltover than from the throat of a boy that looks only a little older than Shen.
"Doesn't look lovely."
"It's not."
"Oh."
Shen fiddles with a leaf on the floor, folds it in half, and unfolds it again. The rain is loud, filling in the silence with its pitter and patter. Normally around other kids, Shen would be the quiet one, so he finds this role reversal very strange but interesting. Even though the other boy is a little weird, and doesn't seem to like to move very much, he thinks it's nice like this all the same.
"My name is Shen. I'm five years old, and my favourite colour of the day is blue," he says, carefully reciting the important rituals of a self-introduction. "What's your name?"
Maybe it's hard for the other boy to talk with the scar splitting across his lips, because he doesn't say anything for a very long time. Maybe it's also hard for him to smile with the scar splitting across his lips, because he doesn't seem to smile much either.
"Zed," the older boy finally replies.
"Puh-leased to meet you," Shen says, because he suddenly remembers that manners are important. "What are you doing here?"
Blood-red eyes meet his for a second, before flittering away. "Other kids don't like me very much."
"Why not?"
Zed laughs. His whole body shakes with it, but he doesn't sound very happy. Maybe a little cold and tired. Maybe a little crazy too. "They say I'm a wretched child. I bring bad luck everywhere I go. I make things go wrong. People are happy when I'm gone."
"Not very nice of them."
Without a warning, Zed moves. When he sits up, he's an intimidating full head taller than Shen, and for the first time, he's smiling. It's lopsided and twisted, packing a frigidly cold edge instead of anything warm and fuzzy. It's a hateful smile. "I'm not a very nice person either."
"Okay."
This seems to irritate the older boy, because he huffs and slumps back down. "Don' cha have anything better to do than bugging me? What are you doing here?"
"Other kids don't like me very much either," Shen replies cheerfully, idly poking at pebbles on the floor.
Zed raises an eyebrow, but doesn't comment.
It ends like this. The rain falls and falls, and Shen's finally starting to shiver from his sopping wet clothes. But this isn't a bad way to spend his time, he thinks, sitting under this half-collapsed shed with this Not Very Nice person, watching the rain pour down like a waterfall.
When the angry weather finally dies down a little and the sky's getting dark, Shen turns towards the other boy and holds out his hand. "Do you want to come with me? You can be my friend."
Zed stares at his hand like it's a foreign object, and says: "I don't know how to be one."
Shen nods thoughtfully, because that's a very good point and he's never thought about it that way before. "I don't know either," he admits.
It's disappointing, because Shen thinks it'll be a lot more fun to jump in puddles with a friend at his side. Plus, Zed looks like he needs be a little more lively in order to look a little less dead. An idea pops in his head.
"An 'em-knee' then."
"'Em-knee''..?"
"Yep." Shen ignores the other's bewildered look, and continues. "Father explained it to me before. An 'em-knee'' is someone who fights with you, and steals the last cookie from you, and say mean things to you, and in-sults you, and beats you in battles, and..."
Halfway through his explanation, the boy trails off, tilting his head in slight confusion. He's pretty sure his father mentioned that everybody has 'em-knees', but for some reason, 'em-knees' does not sound like a very good thing to have.
Zed stares at the younger boy, one of his eyebrows raised reaaally high. Shen tries to do the same, except he can only get both of his eyebrows to go high and not one at a time.
"An enemy, you mean," the older boy says this very slowly, and looks at him like he has grown a second head. Which is a rather silly thing to do, really, because Shen doesn't think he can grow a second head even if he tries to. "Why the fuck would you want somebody like that?"
Shen blinks. "You're not supposed to say that word."
"Do I look like I give a damn?"
"That's not very nice."
"An enemy isn't exactly a nice person either, you brat," Zed snaps, crossing his arms angrily. "What exactly are you trying to pull here?"
"I'm not pulling anything." And just in case, Shen discreetly looks behind in to make sure nothing is accidentally 'being pulled' by him. He turns back around. "So an e-ne-my is not very nice, and you're a Not Very Nice Person. It works."
The other boy stares at Shen. He seems to do that a lot, so Shen tries to match his stare. But after a while, it makes Shen's eyes watery, so he gives up. He adds that to the mental list of things to improve on, including raising only one eyebrow and jumping in water puddles silently. A ninja must be skillful, after all.
Finally, Zed snorts and stands up. There's a tiny twitch in the corner of his mouth, the closest thing to a not-quite-a-smile that Shen has seen since meeting the other.
"You're crazy."
Shen doesn't offer a reply, because talking is tiring and silence sometimes makes a lot more sense than words.
He wants to answer, but he doesn't know the right phrases to explain how having a Not Very Nice enemy is better than having no friends and no enemies and no one at all. How he'd rather sit in the rain with an unfriendly stranger, than go back and face the older kids that avoid him and the elders that want to change him and the father that he isn't allowed to call father.
"Well," Zed finally says. "I think I know what y' meant."
The older boy stands up.
"...Alright. I've got nothing to lose anyways. Lead the way."
It ends like this.
Two disheveled boys jumping in puddles on their way back to the Kinkou village, debating seriously the pros and cons of stolen cookies like true rivals do, practicing insulting each other like true rivals do, talking about favourite colours and hey, wouldn't it only be logical if they dressed in opposite colours like true rivals do?
Some time in the future, one of them will look back and wonder when the fake insults became real ones meant to hurt, when the unspoken camaraderie warped into jealousy and spite, and when the the blue and red clothes changed from a stupid inside joke into a declaration of unbridgeable difference.
Some time in the future, Shen will have forgotten how to smile, how to sneakily steal cookies from the baskets, and the importance of splashing puddles without a sound. The rest are lost, but Zed will remember the first for him. Except memory isn't so reliable over time, and they twist and distort just like smiles and promises and people do - into something cruel and unrecognizable.
Zed will be smiling hatefully as he lays their master's severed head at Shen's feet, and he will be smiling still when they face off in the Summoner's Rift, killing and be killed by each other ad infinitum and more.
Because it ends like this. On their first meeting, under the rain, and a half-broken shed.
It ends like this. An offer, a handshake, and an exchange of naive, damning promises.
A/N: Penny for your thoughts? c: