Chapter 2

Weeks passed by, and Petra started growing accustomed to school life. She started befriending people in her lecture classes—going out for lunches, sometimes dinners with them—and she got used to the presence, or lack thereof, of her roommate. The only thing she couldn't get used to, was Levi Ackerman. He was everywhere she went. He was studying in the library while she was picking up research books. He was in line at the coffee shop while she waited for her mocha to be made. She'd be doing laundry and she'd see him making out with some girl in the corner of the room.

It was like she couldn't fucking escape him.

The only times she was sure to not have to see him, were during class. When she would be sitting in grand lecture halls, in a room full of eighty other students, all frantically taking down whatever words her professor had just uttered. Those were her only moments of peace.

Today was no different.

Petra left the lecture hall, carrying her physics textbook in her arms. Her hand was sore from writing Professor Cameron's entire spiel, and her mind felt numb from an hour of listening to her drone.

Petra walked into one of the campus library's, hoping to get some work done before drowning herself in Netflix reruns of her favorite shows. At least then she'd have done something useful with herself.

She scanned the room for empty tables, and there were none. So resigned to sit with someone else, she picked a mostly empty table at random. And then she realized who was sitting at the head of the table. She dropped her bag, and when he didn't take notice, she finally spoke up.

"I'm starting to think you're following me." she stated firmly.

Levi looked up from his book, and arched a single eyebrow. "We live in the same dorm, and on the same floor, genius."

She sat down at the spot where she'd left her bag, and slumped half onto the table. "That doesn't mean we should be sitting at the same table—AKA, spend more time than necessary together."

She looked over at him and saw that his gaze had been redirected onto his book—In The Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson. "Not my problem." he fingered the corner of a page and turned it over. Petra watched him placidly, then turned back to the notebook she'd set in front of herself.

"Annoying fucker," she muttered under her breath. She looked back at him again, and hoped he didn't notice how her gaze strayed a beat too long on him.

Petra, promptly deciding to ignore Levi, pulled out her earbuds and flooded her senses with the steady rhythm of her music and tried to focus on her physics paper…

She walked back to her dorm on her own, a little over an hour later. Midway through her study session, a gorgeous brunette had walked up to their table and given Levi the, straight up, sexiest kiss she had ever witnessed. She tore her gaze away instantly and tried to focus on the material she'd just learned in class. Just focus on light refraction, Petra. A minute after she arrived, Levi collected his things and they left together to God-knows-where.

When she got back, Hanji was lying on her stomach in her bed, scribbling onto a notepad as she looked onto a textbook. She was so engrossed in her work, she didn't realize Petra had come in until the door slam shut behind them. Immediately, Hanji crawled up from her stomach, and turned around to see Petra, a grin spreading across her face. She pulled her earbuds off and grinned even wider—if that was possible—when Petra gave her a shy wave.

"My FAVORITE sophomore!" she cooed, repositioning herself to sit on her bed.

Petra dumped her bag onto her bed, cringing when she remembered that she'd left her laptop in, and praying that it wouldn't get hurt. But she looked over her shoulder and grinned back at Hanji. "How are you?"

Hanji nodded furiously, setting her pen and pad to the side, turning to give her full attention to Petra. "Swell. Delightful, really. I'm looking over some biology chapters, trying to come up with experiments." She lifted a her notepad and showed her the yellow page covered in a deep blue scrawl. "Nerve regeneration."

"Sounds fun."

"Oh yes, it really is."

Petra sat on the edge of her bed, and ran her fingers through her hair. Distracted, bored,

antsy. She felt alone. A little isolated. She glanced around her room, from the fairy lights she hung up the other day, and the old photos of her friends. And then the stack of books that was starting to grow on her desk. Then she looked back at Hanji. By now she'd already supported her textbook in her lap, and was staring at some chart, trying to make sense of it.

Petra cleared her throat, unknowingly, drawing back Hanji's attention. "You, uh… you wouldn't want to get dinner," she cleared her throat again, "would you?"

Immediately, Hanji's expression softened slightly, then quickly shifted back to unrestrained glee. "Would I have dinner with the best person in the world? OF COURSE."


The two ended up in a small restaurant just off campus that served greasy american food. Hanji had offered other places—thai, korean, italian—but Petra had turned them all down. Fatty comfort food was all she really needed at this point.

They sat at this table in the middle of the room, a dingy lamp suspended over them, illuminating the dust floating overhead and making their face have this unnaturally white-green tinge to them. The restaurant was surprisingly crowded with college students, all chatting away aimlessly, drinking bottles of beer and cans of coke, wasting the time. Petra kind of liked the way it was a little too noisy, and the fan overhead a little too loud. It had this great artificial life to it that little by little replenished life back into her.

The server, another college student, had come up and dropped a couple of glasses of water at their table a couple of moments ago, along with two menus in plastic pockets, the clear surface already clouded from age. The two read through the menu in near silence, Hanji contemplating every item—sometimes aloud—and Petra, silently glancing from page to page. Soups… sandwiches and burgers… meatloaf… Violently american if you didn't include the donuts and the deep fried ice cream on the back section of the menu. But it was exactly what she needed.

Petra found herself wandering the room with her gaze, watching tables full of loud alternative girls in dark lipstick laughing and playing poker, and then a few couples sitting at their tables, full of chatting, or lack thereof. She thought back to her last college, and how she might've been like them—oblivious, self-absorbed. She wondered what was stopping her from acting that way again. It was so much fun.

She turned back to Hanji, who was now sitting relatively tall, her foot tucked under her opposite thigh so her knee was sticking out to the side, bent. But her gaze was elsewhere, like her thoughts. She wondered what Hanji thought regularly.

The silence was finally broken when the waitress came and took their order (meatloaf and mashed potatoes plus iced tea for Petra, and a cheeseburger for Hanji, hold the onions). Hanji was surprisingly quiet.

"I, uh," Hanji smiled sheepishly, glancing around the room. "I used to come here a lot when I was a freshman."

"Oh yeah?"

Hanji laughed, like she was jaded ."Aha. Yup. I would come here with Erwin and Levi—you met him—and we would grab a couple of sodas, a few burgers. From there we might go see a movie, sneak into a couple of other ones. And then we'd walk. Around the city at dark."

Petra listened intently, never expecting Hanji to start talking about her freshman year—her first year in this city, on this campus, of all things. She had this far off look. Like she was reliving the moment.

"It was great."

The waitress came and dropped off Petra's iced tea. And almost autonomously, Hanji asked for a can of coke.

She ripped off the paper from the straw and began stirring the dark brown tea, absentmindedly. "There was this place I used to visit a lot too, when I was a freshman."

Hanji perked up.

Petra smiled, and chuckled, almost unsure of herself. "Yeah. It was this pancake house and we would always go there whenever we were out after midnight whether or not we were hungry. And they used to have this deal where anytime after 2am, a stack of pancakes would become a quarter—" she looked down into the whirlpool she was making with her straw and smiled. "—which, if I might add, is practically unheard of. Especially in New York city. But they did. And whenever we went there I would always get a stack of blueberry pancakes, and I would drown them in syrup." She thought back to the last time she was there. Right before she'd moved. She'd gone and got a stack of pancakes with her friends, but it was 2pm instead of 2am. The syrup just as sticky as she remembered—some got on her hand and stained the inside of her jacket pocket—but she hardly touched the stack. There was some sort of solemn air about the table, and the most she could do was sip at her cup of coffee. "I mean. It was probably just store bought batter."

Hanji nodded, and her coke came. She opened the can, a satisfying pop, and she poured it into the glass full of ice the waitress had given her. "So you like pancakes?"

Petra nodded, taking a sip from her glass. "Oh yes. Without a doubt, yes. Breakfast foods are far superior to regular foods." Hanji let out an unrestrained laugh, and nearly knocked her can over onto the pale, faded linoleum floors.

Petra couldn't help but smile.

As the night progressed, they started talking more and more, chatting about stupid things. Mundane things. They bounced back from concerts they'd gone to, to stupid things their teachers do during lectures, to Hanji's latest experiments, and then to some book that either one of them read and just couldn't get enough of. They were laughing, and soon enough, their voices became lost in the din that filled the rest of the room. They only started toning it back down again when a new waitress, their own must've been taking a break, came a gave them each of their respective dishes.

Petra didn't realize how hungry she'd become, and started attacking her food. Hanji did the same.
Midway through her dish, her mouth stuffed with food, Hanji heard Petra call her name.

"Yes?" her head perked up, as if she was a dog.

Petra swallowed, clearing her throat. "I was just wondering, you're close with Levi aren't you?"

"I've only known him for… " she started counting off on her fingers. "Seven years." she grinned madly, then took a swig of her dwindling coke. "I'd say I know the shorty pretty well. Whether he likes it or not, that is." she let out a cackle.

"So I was wondering, what the hell is his deal?"

"His deal?" Hanji snorted. "He has many of those. I'm afraid you'll need to specify."

"Don't I know it," Petra grumbled.

"Hey, just shoot. I'm all game for spilling the rather shallow details of his life. He's kind of a bore sometimes."

"So first off, I guess, why the hell is he an RA? It seems like he hates it."

Hanji swallowed her sip of coke, and nodded. "Oh yes. He really does. The simple answer is that someone thought it would be a rather formative experience for him. Maybe even build character."

"Someone?"

"His mom. Plus the dean was getting so pissed off. He thought restricting him to a dorm mainly full of underclassmen would make him stop." Hanji smiled, almost tiredly. "It didn't."

"And, like, what's up with him and all these girls? Like I swear he was just making out with some random girl a few weeks ago, and suddenly there's that brown-eyed beauty regularly picking him up from random spots on campus."

That was what made Hanji really lose it. She started laughing, and couldn't stop, to the point where she was hunched over and everyone in the room was staring at her.

But eventually she calmed back down, glancing around the room, stifling whatever giggles she had left. "I was wondering if you'd ask that question." she hiccuped out, emptying her glass of whatever coke was remaining. With a slight of the hand and a quick word, she got it refilled, then took a large swig, drinking half of her glass.

"Levi Ackerman. Where do I begin?" Hanji had this frighteningly devious grin, and for a second, Petra regretted even asking her. "There is no single way to describe Levi Ackerman."

Hanji twisted her torso around so her elbow rested on the back of her chair. She glanced around the room, pausing briefly every so often, and almost seeming to keep a mental check of those spots. Craning her neck back to look at Petra, her grin widened. "You see, Petra, darling. Out of the crowd of people who are currently inside this room, I know for a fact that at least a third of the people in here—plus, perhaps—have slept with Levi Ackerman."

Her eyes widened.

"Levi Ackerman, besides having a near perfect GPA, is somewhat of a legend around here, if you haven't noticed. In fact I'm surprised you didn't at least hear about him back at your old university." Hanji furrowed her brow, pensively. "Odd."

She quickly dismissed the thought with another sip of her drink. Petra, unconsciously, did the same with hers.

"Anyways. Levi Ackerman, despite being a short, angry, apathetic and careless imp, is a legend on and off campus. Essentially in most of the colleges in our nearby vicinity. He hates frat boys with a burning passion, but that doesn't stop him from going to their parties and drinking their beer. He goes fucking hard." Hanji let out a brief giggle. "As do I.

"But. The main difference between the two of us, is the fact that he sleeps around, all the time. With anyone, virtually. He's slept with most of the girls in our grade alone—maybe even some guys—and the crazy, pretty awful thing? These girls really want him. There's some sort of appeal to them in his cold and bored expression. Somehow it increases his sex appeal. I tried finding some biological explanation, but nothing adds up. What's worse is that so many of these girls wish, hope that they're the ones that'll change him. They'll be the ones who make him stay. And they're the ones he hurts the most, whether he realizes it or not." Hanji had her gaze focused elsewhere and Petra could see a hint of regret. Hanji sighed, then turned her body back to face Petra. "But I think the longest he's ever stayed is a couple weeks. He's just… he's just going through the motions at this point."

Petra listened intently, learning about this bored, lusting, genius of some sorts. Levi Ackerman.

"What an enigma." she mumbled to herself.

Hanji, whose chin had been resting on her laced knuckles, lifted her eyes to look at Petra. "Oh yes. I agree."


AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Hey everyone! I've really been wanting to update this story for weekends, but I didn't know where to go from my first chapter—in an interesting way, at least. So I spent forever trying to figure out how to make this chapter not terrible!

The funny part is I have some chapters lined up that I really want to publish, but I feel like I need to create more of a build? Hm. Either way, I hope you all have a lovely weekend, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter!