winter - a ninjago

ii | chapter one

JAY

It's so uneasy around here. 

I usually can't stand walking in the dark, but after my mom and dad have been staying here for a few days due to work, I decided that instead of sitting down in my hotel room with nothing else to do other than scroll aimlessly through TikTok and eat some muffins, I should go for a walk. 

Why a walk at 8'o clock in the evening cold exactly? 

If I'm honest, I don't know myself. 

At first I was going to walk around the park for a bit of fresh air and to cure my boredom, and maybe even stop by the studio my dad's acting in. But now I'm finding that to be less of a possibility.

I guess I'm just randomly out on a walk, then. Which isn't a bad thing, but due to the cold, I wish I chose to do this midday instead. Maybe then I wouldn't be in almost five layers of clothing, heh. 

Either way, it's quite quiet here, despite the town that my parents and I are staying in right now. The place is usually a little busy, and the park always at least has like..more than hundred or so people people in, due to the size. But now, I generally think I'm the only one in this big ass park. If I'm honest, I find that scary. 

Right now I'm just roaming around a few bushes, looking down to see any hedgehogs or anything. My phone isn't dead or anything, I just don't have any data, so I can't really do much other than call my mom if I need anything. (That's the easy part though.) 

I look up for a second and I take in the fresh winter air, closing my eyes and sighing in some for of relaxation that I haven't felt in a while now. School hasn't stopped giving me assignments every god damn hour, I'm having to do online school and revision while my parents temporarily move from hotel room to hotel room just so my dad can complete his new movie coming out soon. Not to mention that I've barely had enough sleep due to the noise outside, meaning that I haven't been able to complete all of my assignments or even start a few of them due to my fatigue. 

Hell, I'm lucky enough to have this much energy in the evening to even go for a walk. 

As my head begins to clean away all of the unfinished math questions and the english essays, I smile in some form of relief that I also haven't felt in a good amount of time. It just feels as if I've got no more worries in the world now. The breeze in my ear is like a piano piece, it just feels so nice to acknowledge. 

I might call it an early night tonight. Screw those assignments, I'm not going to need a x 9c - 4b for my engineering degree anyway. (And I'm certainly not going to need to know how to use 'dicombobulated' in a sentence for a job as well.) The only thing that I may need to worry about tomorrow morning when I wake up is if there's any missed calls of my mom or dad. 

As I yawn, I get off the small log I found myself sitting on after a few moments of pure peace and relief. I stretch, as I feel like I've been sitting there dazed forever, when I realise from my watch that its only 8:08pm. I guess I could just have stiff joints. 

Anyway, I should probably start making my way back to the hotel room.

That's if I could remember which way I was supposed to go..shit. 

Was it left or right? I have that crap of a memory I don't know. I could just take a game of chance and hope that the route I choose takes me home and doesn't get me into a life or death situation. 

I'll just go left, half the time right isn't even the right direction. 

As I walk down, I can feel the silence looming all around me, it almost feels like a haunted maze. The suspense is killing me, and I don't even know why I feel like that. Why do I feel like there's something about to happen? The most harmful thing around me is a small, deep lake. And even then, I learnt how to swim at a young age. So if any murderer was to try and drag me in, I'd just swim.