Golden Boy
I deserve to be here. Jayce chants this mantra in his head to himself over and over, trying to work up some sort of courage. The expansive green lawn lies before him, he just needs to find it within himself to step through the tall gold gates to enter. He worked hard in highschool, straight A’s, top of his class, valedictorian and the men's football team captain, but all these people brushing past him with such ease even with backpacks full of notes and books makes him feel like a fraud. He could have sworn the building didn’t look this looming and scary when he was touring it last year.
The structure itself was a polished white, very clean looking. Jayce wonders how they keep it so clean? It has three tiers that get smaller towards the top, like a wedding cake but with more windows and textured walling. Just for dramatic flare, a massive piece of glass swirls around it like some sparkling ribbon. The building is massive though, you could fit the entirety of Piltover in there. But not everyone in Piltover can be here. After all, Hex Academy only accepted the brightest of minds.
He finally puts one foot in front of the other, making his way down the white brick path that leads to the school. The gates form a huge circle around the school and when he looks side to side he can see others walking down the different symmetrical paths, almost like the thing was cut like a pizza with a tower in the middle of it. The sun is out today, not a cloud in the sky. Jayce closes my eyes and basks in the light.
The big metalic doors that he arrives at are already swung open. The main foyer of the school is as you can imagine it. Brighter hardwood floors, big glass light fixtures that the natural light seems to dance off, and two elevators running up either side. The furniture is quite funky though, all awkward shapes and bright colors, but several students lie there, already hard at work and sleep deprived even though it’s the first day. A large boxy starbucks protrudes from one of the walls, a long line already formed. Beside it a vending machine full of Celcius, Monster, Redbull and other hazardous chemicals to keep you awake. The machine has a line of its own.
Jayce was so busy taking in his surroundings, he ran right into a warm body. His chest comes right into contact with their shoulder.
“Oh, my bad.” He exclaims. The girl's eyes meet his, then give me a once over and harden.
“Yeah, it is your bad.” She sneers. She’s quite mean looking. She has a muscular build, almost bigger than him though not quite. Her hair is pink and one side is completely buzzed off. She has a notch in her upper lip, a nose ring and a small tattoo that spells out VI right under her eye. Jayce actually finds myself cowering a little bit.
“You think just because your family has some pull you can walk all over anyone you like” she spits out “well frankly, I don’t give a shit about the name Talis. See you around Golden Boy.” That last sentence she says over her shoulder, already walking away.
The few people close enough to hear the exchange throw him a weird look. She must’ve been from the Undercity. He had heard the rumors that they were letting Zaunites into the upper class schools, giving the gifted but poor a chance. The people of Piltover and those from Zaun never had the best history, but he couldn’t imagine they hated him enough to cause a scene in front of everyone on the first day of classes. Surely they won't be all this hostile towards him?
The two cities' whole fighting history started years back, when Piltover was just setting down its foundation for becoming The City Of Progress. The city was overrun with brilliant ideas that gave it its nickname, but after invention comes manufacturing. If you didn’t have the next world changing invention, then you better believe you were in the factories working long hours just to make ends meet. Worse than just that, the constant smog in the air and pollution in the water from all these factories creating toxic gasses made the space practically unlivable.
Piltover, wanting to save face as the shining city of the future, cast all these factories and all this pollution into one concentrated area of the city. In the beginning, Zaun was just a nickname for the bad side of town. After a while though, it almost completely disconnected itself from the government of Piltover, becoming like its own city. Police stopped going over there, Pilties never went down there anyways, but Zaunites stopped going over to the topside, even for trade. Over time, Zaun became its own thing, something that Piltover didn’t even want to try and control. The whole situation never really sat right with Jayce, though.
None of his family are inventors . They just invest in inventions. It’s a touch embarrassing really. They sit back as someone else does all the work, spends all their sleepless nights making something of their own fabrication, and my family buys it and slaps the Talis name on it. Worse than that, they don’t even care who they give the products to. They don’t care about giving the military its guns, they don’t care if they give gasoline to the fire. Whoever’s willing to pay top dollar, that’s who gets it. Maybe all that girl's anger towards Jayce is somewhat warranted, but he’s not his family.
He knows what they must think though, Jayce always gets what he wants because his dad owns half the buildings in town. They must think he’s just some stuck up guy with daddy’s money. It’s part of the reason he put so much effort into his engineering. He hopes that one day he can invent something that will change their minds, something that will show them he has something to offer this world. He just needs to prove himself, and here is the perfect place to do it.
Jayce’s mind is slowly turning into a scrambled mess. This new room full of smart minds and new ideas is so beautiful and is giving him inspiration just by being in this space. The other half of him can barely contain his nerves. He feels like he’s going to cry or explode. He feels so unworthy of being here. All these people are so smart and have so much to offer this world. How is he supposed to live up to it? He wonders how many other people are here for their mathematical sciences degree and are going to come up with something better than him?
He realizes he’s been standing here with his mouth agape, lost in thought, far longer than acceptable. He gives his head a soft shake, I deserve to be here, he reminds himself, trying to calm down. He pulls the straps of his backpack tighter around his arms and makes his way to the glass elevator to his right. He gets in right after a few are already in the elevator, but then more pile on top, squishing in like sardines, all frantic to not be late to their first class. Jayce towers above all of them, so it's really just a sea of scalps for him. The doors close and then they woosh up. He’s been in an elevator before, but this one rises at an alarmingly fast rate.
He can see the people on ground level getting smaller before they pop up into the second tier of the cake-like building. All class rooms on this level start with two. His first class being integral calculus in room 217, he squeezes out of the elevator along with a few others. Where other schools would have a large hallway, Hex Academy is just one very plain circular room. Everything is painted white because of course it is, but there are no windows, meaning the glass light fixture in the middle of the room is extra bright. Underneath the light and Directly in the middle of the room is a silver, metallic table with some flowers and a few books strewn upon it. What an odd design choice.
The first door directly to the left of him is room number 201. Jayce begins there. He walks to the next one, it’s 202. Ah yes, he thinks, I see the game we’re playing. He continues his lap around the room, finally reaching the last door. It’s 217. Wow. He must’ve looked like such an idiot walking around the room like it’s his first day on earth. His cheeks turn a little hot from embarrassment, but as he looks around it seems no one’s really paying attention to his stupidity anyways. He grip the cold metal door handle and push the door open. Very slowly it reveals the inside of the room, not making a sound. When he gets the full view of the class he lets out a little huff of air. It’s beautiful.
The wall opposite of him is just glass, a big beautiful window, letting all natural light come in. No need for lighting here. To his right is a MASSIVE whiteboard, little scribbles of math equations and formulas already covering some of it. The top of the board is unreachable to anyone, so a ladder is hitched onto it. The ladder seems to be on a track at the top with wheels on the bottom to make it easy to move around. It’s wooden, but it looks older, unlike anything else in this place. The wood that it’s made of seems slightly stained and chips have been nicked out of it from years of use. A good reminder that even though the school’s brand new, it still holds the same values of knowledge.
Across from the board is the stadium seating. The actual table part is the same light wood from the downstairs flooring, but the seats themselves have white, plush leathering covering them. A few students are already sprinkled around the room, tapping away on their computers or writing something down. Jayce must admit, the whole building really is quite beautiful. He knows Cait would love it though. She’s majoring in architecture at the christian university across town. Not her first choice of university, but her extremely religious parents insisted on it.
He just wishes Cait were here with him. Her and his own mom are really the only people who can calm his worries. When he was hyperventilating this morning about his first day of school, they’re the ones he called. They believe in Jayce, and sometimes they can convince Jayce to believe in himself. Cait didn’t want to go here, though. If it was up to her, she would be at Piltover Arts, a uni that specializes in creativity. She’s always had an eye for the artistic, but her parents insisted that you couldn’t make a career out of painting. Her parents may have money but she herself did not. That means she had to go to the university of her parents' choice, something they’d pay for.
So now she's stuck in her christian university where boys and girls are barely allowed to touch and need to take separate classes, though that's never really been an issue for her. Since her parents didn’t agree on her creative art degree so she chose the next best thing: architecture. She couldn’t draw whatever she wanted, but at least she could draw something.
Jayce travels up the rows, finding a spot not directly beside someone, but near enough people. He considers himself an extroverted person, he just loves meeting new people and finding out their interests and ideas, so having no one to sit beside and laugh with under whispered breaths seems almost unbearable. He always felt bad for the ‘loners’ in school. He just doesn't understand how you don’t want to be surrounded by other people's contagious laughter and plaguing smiles. He feels like when people get older they stop making friends and start making acquaintances. He really hopes that these first days of uni he finds himself a friend, someone to go to parties and swap notes with.
Eventually more and more people enter the lecture hall. A kind looking girl plops herself down next to him. He throws her a ‘hey’ and she gives him a small smile before turning down to her phone to scroll on socials. Guess that's it for human interaction in this lesson. An older man with a small amount of stubble entered the room. He goes over some pleasantries before going over the syllabus. Then everyone hauls out their notebooks, fiercely scribbling while the professor speaks. Just like that, the year has begun.