Chapter Text
No one really expected that the kid in the sprawling white mansion up on Palos Verdes Drive would befriend the girl who lived above an Italian restaurant.
The Joestars were the textbook definition of old money. They lived like people who measure time in spa appointments and champagne cork pops. Their house overlooked the rest of town, and the ocean breeze itself bowed in respect when it passed by. The family had two sons—born five years apart—and their royal days were filled with horseback riding lessons, private tutors, and physical therapy appointments scheduled with specialists who flew in from Italy.
The Cujohs, on the other hand, lived loudly. They were a doting couple with only one daughter, so the family squeezed into the two-bedroom apartment above a restaurant named Pasta La Vista, Baby!. Their laughter, their fights, even their karaoke nights boomed right through the thin apartment walls.
Mornings usually started with the father, a Japanese professor with a doctorate in Marine Biology, yelling at the TV news. Meanwhile, the mother would be burning toast, and the daughter ate her breakfast without complaint. After all, they didn’t have the luxury of space and privacy that often comes with a higher income—yet there was a kind of comfort, the sort you only get being middle class, in knowing your neighbors could smell what you had for dinner and probably comment on it the next day.
Interestingly, though the two families’ worlds rarely intersected, both called their children by the same nickname: “JoJo.”
The JoJo of the Joestars, Jonathan, was the younger of the two mansion boys. He was the poster child of growing up eating with silver spoons, that much was true. His horse-riding coaches called him “Joe Kidd,” while the housekeep endearingly referred to him as “Johnny”—which he eventually stuck with later in life, because it rolled off the tongue better.
Little Johnny kept himself to the farthest of the fenced-in equestrian paddock where he could shrink into the hay bales if no one called on him. On the other hand, his brother, Nicholas Joestar, always seemed to be in motion: taller, louder, built to take up space. While Nicholas had a loud, charming laugh that drew the attention of every stable hand and visitor, Johnny had pale blue eyes that looked like they belonged to someone who spent more time watching than speaking. Teachers at his private kindergarten called him “reserved,” which was a polite way of saying he never raised his hand.
But then came the fall.
He was five when it happened. He had been thrown hard from his horse during a training session that his father had insisted he attended. The details were blurry in memory; there was the sun in his eyes, the ground coming up too fast, his body twisting wrong.
When he woke up, he learned a new word to describe himself. “Pa-ra-ple-gic.” The weight of that word didn’t hit Little Johnny until he tried to move. It was a funny clinical term until he noticed the absence of his senses below the waist after, the way his legs refused him.
There had been doctors, child specialists flown from all over the United States, and physical therapy that stretched from weeks into months. After a year, the therapy ended, and a wheelchair was the final, unwelcome prescription.
For a while, his parents kept insisting he’d get better if he just worked harder, if the right hands touched him, or if the right money was spent. He stopped believing long before they did.
The truth was, Johnny eventually grew to like the quiet. He began to like sketching horses he could no longer ride in the margins of his notebooks, tracing the curve of their muscles like he could draw himself into their speed. He liked the stillness of the ocean breeze drifting over the hills, even if it reminded him that he was stuck up high on his family home above Palos Verdes, looking down at everyone else.
The JoJo of the Cujohs, meanwhile, was pure noise in sneakers.
Jolyne Cujoh was the opposite of quiet. If she ever tried to sit quietly, her body betrayed her with tapping fingers, bouncing knees, or a sudden laugh that erupted out of nowhere. She was the girl climbing fire escapes just to yell down at strangers on the sidewalk. She was the kid dragging a backpack covered in marker scribbles and stickers, zippers hanging loose because she stuffed it with things she might need but probably didn’t. At home, she fought with her parents over bedtime, over homework, over whose turn it was to do the chores, but she never stayed angry for long.
Noise came easily to her. It was how she lived.
So, naturally, they should’ve had no reason to meet. Johnny’s world was afternoon tea served on the clock and nighttime drives up the horse racing arena in a spotless car, and Jolyne’s was pasta smells stuck in her hair and neighbors who borrowed sugar they never returned.
But fate, as it often does, found an unassuming doorway.
It came and went on a sunburned afternoon in late spring when their lives were still being drawn in crayons. Johnny had slipped out of the mansion after another pointless therapy session and a round of his mother’s distant shouting.
“JoJo! JoJo!” she called him as he wheeled himself through the gates. “Come back here right now, Jonathan Joestar!”
He rolled himself faster and farther than he ever had before. Past the manicured hedges, past the driveway leading to their home… and down the long slope into town. He wasn’t supposed to. That was the point.
He followed the steep descent of Palos Verdes Drive where the streets flattened into unfinished road constructions and the air carried more black exhaust than sea breeze. For him, it was a kind of rebellion—just to walk that far without permission, just to see what lived below the hill.
For the other JoJo who lived there, it was simply life.
Jolyne never noticed how cracked the sidewalks outside their apartment were, or how heavy the smoke got near the restaurant vents. At some point it was just the soundtrack of her childhood innocence.
She was crouched outside Pasta La Vista, chalk staining her knees and fingers, drawing a sea serpent across the pavement. Her mother had twisted her black hair into two buns, a style Jolyne had demanded, because she wanted to match her favorite cartoon character. She had dust smeared on her knees and streaks of pink and green on her hands, and she muttered to herself about how the tail wasn’t curling right.
When she noticed a young, blond boy roll his wheelchair to a stop at the edge of her masterpiece, all soapy and clean against the grit of the street, she tilted her head like he’d come from another planet.
He wasn’t like the other kids she’d seen. His clothes were too neat, his skin too pale, sitting on a chair gleaming like it rather belonged in a Christmas mall exhibit. He didn’t belong here, and she quickly realized that. But the boy didn’t say anything—just stared at the serpent-thing like it was the first time he’d ever seen something like it.
“You lost or what?” Jolyne asked, clutching the green chalk on her hand tightly.
He shook his head, fumbling for words. “No. I just—was looking.”
“Well, it’s rude to stare,” she shot back, narrowing her eyes. Then, without another word, she pressed a nub of blue chalk into his palm. “If you’re gonna look, you gotta help.”
Johnny blinked at her, stunned. He’d expected the question, the one everyone else asked first: “What happened?” Or worse— “Can you still do…?” But this girl didn’t glance at his chair, didn’t tilt her head in pity, didn’t soften her voice. She just shoved chalk at him like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“I—uh—I don’t really…” He looked down at the chalk between his fingers, then at the serpent’s feet-like structure curling toward and under his wheels.
“What, you never drew on the ground before?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“Well, now you have,” she declared. She kicked at the sidewalk to clear a spot beside the monster’s snout. “Go on. Make it meaner. Right now it looks like it’s smiling and wants a big hug.”
Johnny hesitated, then leaned forward enough that it doesn’t strain him on his wheelchair. The way he scribbled lines was cautious, neat—far too careful for drawing a rabid monster. Jolyne craned her neck, watching.
“You draw like a grown-up,” she teased. “But that’s okay. Monsters don’t care. Here—give it teeth, BIG ones. Yeah, like that. See? Now it looks like it wants to bite somebody’s head off.”
She crouched closer beside his wheel, adding jagged fins, all the while spinning a story. The serpent, she said, lived in the restaurant’s basement, sneaking upstairs every night to steal garlic bread and pineapple juice. If you wanted it gone, you had to sing karaoke so bad it scared it off.
For the first time in a year, Johnny laughed—a short, startled sound that didn’t feel like his. He almost didn’t recognize it as his own.
Jolyne froze, then grinned wider. “Hey, you do laugh! I thought you were like… made of ice or something.”
He ducked his head, embarrassed.
“What’s your name?” she asked then.
“…Johnny.”
“Johnnyyy… what?”
“Joestar.”
Jolyne’s eyebrows shot up. “Joestar?” she repeated, like the name itself was too heavy for the sidewalk. “Whoa. That’s like… the fanciest name I ever heard. You a prince or something?”
“No,” he said quickly. “Just Johnny.”
“Okay. I’m Jolyne Cujoh.” She wiped her chalky hands on her shorts and stuck one out. He shook it, firm but welcoming.
“It’s nice to meet you, Jolyne.”
“You’re not, like… thirty years old or something, right?”
He blinked. “No?”
“I’m just making sure. I’ve only seen grownups wear that kind of clothes,” she said as she pointed at his baby-blue hoodie. “How old are you, then?”
“I’m six.”
Her face lit up. “Hey, me too! See? We already have something in common.”
By the time the butlers finally found the Joestar boy, dusk was settling in. They were driving hurriedly down the street, calling his name in anxious voices with the window rolled down, sometimes adding a scolding for traveling so far on his own.
“Master Jonathan! Master Jonathan!”
Two men in dark suits exited a limousine and hurried down the cracked pavement. Their polished hair and pressed collars looked absurd against the cracked sidewalks and chalk drawings. One immediately bent to polish the spotless wheels of Johnny’s chair, dusting at the spotless wheels like they’d been ruined by touching city air.
“Sir, you can’t come down here without telling us,” the other scolded. “Your mother is terribly frantic.”
Johnny flinched uncomfortably at their panic. His ears burned. He hated being fussed over, especially with his new friend watching.
“He wasn’t lost!” Jolyne declared loudly, planting her hands on her hips. “He was drawing with me. We’re making monsters.”
The butlers froze, noticing the little girl properly for the first time. They gave her a look that was half confusion, half disapproval. One of them wrinkled his nose at the chalk dust smeared across her legs. The other gave a polite, dismissive nod, already turning Johnny’s chair toward the hill, despite the boy’s protests of not having said goodbye yet.
Another, who delayed behind, cleared his throat. “That’s… very nice, miss. But Mr. Joestar needs to return home at once,” he said. “Thank you for keeping him company. We’ll bring him back to the manor now.”
She perked up. “‘Mis-ter Joestar’…?” she repeated with her childish curiosity. “What’s a ‘manor’? Is that where Johnny lives?”
The man hesitated, then answered smoothly, “He lives in the Joestar Estate, young miss. The one above Palos Verdes Drive.”
Jolyne tilted her head at that. Palos Verdes Drive. That was the big hill, the shiny houses she’d only seen from the street, the kind you pointed at and joked about living in “someday.” Even at six, she knew that meant mansions, money, and the kind of people who didn’t eat burnt toast for breakfast.
She opened her mouth to say something smart when the upstairs window of the apartment banged open.
“JoJo!” her mother called, leaning out with a dish towel in one hand. “Wash up! Dinner’s ready!”
The sound made both children glance up at once. Johnny, in particular, scrunched his eyebrows in surprise.
“…JoJo?” he echoed.
Jolyne shrugged like it was nothing. “Yeah. That’s what my mom calls me. Don’t laugh.”
“I… wasn’t going to. It’s nice,” he said quickly, though a smile tugged at his mouth.
The butlers soon wheeled him in the opposite direction of their artwork. The distance between them was already growing when he turned in his seat, lifting his hand awkwardly.
“Um… goodbye, Jolyne!” he called.
Jolyne didn’t look up. She dragged another chalk line across the pavement. “Nope! No goodbyes. I’ll see you tomorrow, Johnny.”
The young boy stared, caught between confusion and hope, as the hill pulled him farther and farther away. He looked down once more at the chalk serpent stretching across the pavement, at Jolyne already sketching in another fin as if she had all the time in the world before dinner. As he was brought back into the car, he replayed in his head how she didn’t wave, didn’t call after him—she just kept drawing, like she knew he’d come back.
And he did. Again and again.
From then on, the mansion boy and the restaurant girl were inseparable.
★ ★