Quoted By:
“Look,” you pop the piece of fish offered to Itiqqa in your mouth and start working on it, the sound of you clumsily unfolding a map masks the chewing pretty well anyway. “This,” you swallow harshly, now painfully aware of just how thirsty packing only salty snacks is making you, “is where my apartment is, we can go there and figure out what we’re going to do and maybe get some rest.” You poke at the dot you made on the map, adding offhand, “I think we’ve both had a pretty long day.”
“How did you—” Itiqqa looks up from the map when you say that, “I mean, y-yeah, I did.”
Itiqqa specifically requested you not take any of the city’s trolleys to get to Union City’s university district on the other side of the lively and modern downtown. It just makes getting across town tedious, especially because you convinced her to skirt the government district, where, among other things, the police headquarters are. Going that way would’ve meant traveling in basically a straight line to get to where you were going, and the trolley would’ve been even faster, as your destination is just past the city’s central station.
There isn’t much conversation on your hours-long trek through the city, as Itiqqa’s doing her best to be inconspicuous, even keeping her hood up, and you’re still really thirsty. Even keeping up a good pace, you arrive at your apartment just after midnight.
A moment of panic passes over you when you don’t feel the key in your pockets before you remember that it never left your bag. It takes some pawing around between your journals and everything else you brought with you before you finally feel the keyring with a pair of identical keys to the apartment.
“Got it,” you say under your breath. Itiqqa barely reacts, the slighter girl is leaning against the wall in the hallway, head slumped. She’s basically asleep on her feet.
The sound of the tumblers moving jolts her into alertness, and she ducks into the front room even before you do. You shut and lock the door behind you when you enter behind her, and finally get a look at where you’re going to be living for at least the next six months. If you don’t get arrested for being a part of whatever’s going on with Itiqqa, that is.
>(1/3)
