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“That’s nothing to be sorry about,” your mouth flattens into a concerned line. “Why don’t you just stay here and do your best to relax? I have some things I have to get done today.” The younger girl nods. “Is there anything you want me to bring back? Part of my errands is picking up groceries.”
“Maybe some eastern peninsula bean curd?” Your guest asks with a bashful smile. “Extra spicy, if you can find it.”
“Sure,” she won’t owe you for that one, you don’t want to add anything else to the girl’s plate, it seems full enough as-is.
Almost an hour, you’re exiting the nearest branch of the University District Bank, grumbling to yourself. Opening an account was much tougher than you expected, given the teller’s skepticism at you having the amount of money that you did at your age, and with your only form of ID being your visa (which you learned was stamped incorrectly, given Kyoshi Island’s attitude regarding Ba Sing Se). But eventually, through talking to the manager and providing proof that you were who you said you were, as embarrassing as that was, you managed it. Now, standing on the front step of the bank with a pocket full of colorful United Federation bills, you resolve to stuff your fans at the bottom of the chest in your bedroom.
Passing through University Square, with its central fountain, you wonder why you didn’t just go to the bank’s main branch, given that you had to go past it to get your groceries. Probably because you didn’t want to admit you’d forgotten an entire wired check there yesterday.
Behind the fountain, in front of the main gate of Union City University, the youngest but largest educational institution in the city, there’s a stage set up with a considerable crowd in front of it. The crowd is mostly young people, from around your age to their mid-twenties, with people from seemingly all ethnic backgrounds in attendance. Their attention is pretty rapt on the speaker, a slightly older man with mutton chops in brown and gray, wearing a cream headband with a character on a red circle in the middle of it. You figure that the character, which you can’t make out at this distance, is the same as the one on the same-colored banners that are hung from poles on either side of the stage. Squinting, you can make out that the character stands for ‘equal’ or maybe ‘level’. It definitely doesn’t mean ‘peace’, given how impassioned the speaker seems to be.
>[1] Stop and listen. You heard some vague things about the social issues facing the new, fifth nation, but you haven’t experienced them firsthand.
>[2] Ask someone in the crowd what’s going on? If it’s something to do with the universities you want to know, and if it isn’t you live in this area, so it’s probably best if you do know.
>[3] Continue about your day, if it turns into an actual problem it won’t be yours.
>[4] Something else (Write-in)
>(2/2)
