* the complex swiftly assumed the role of instigator and perpetrator following her brief encounter with 𝒂𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒇𝒊𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒆𝒏'𝒔 leah cho — of whom, yes, she’d heard, seen, yet had never sought more than a fleeting hello by the lifts with. until, of course, until now. aika thinks it’s how everything seems to thread itself together these days, a self - winding rope that she can’t see the end or gauge the length of. she navigates it the same way she meanders through their shared quarters, like a trained bloodhound — only in her case, she learns, by heart, the corridors and alcoves that leah never really seems to pop up in and sticks to them like varnish. if she can avoid it, she will. aika knows hoq to stick a landing. she’s hurtled off of skyscrapers and window edges and planted both palms on certainty, the promise of surety. leah is the modicum of anxiety sitting beneath her lungs before the fall ; the breach in the net she couldn’t predict. and so it seemed almost preordained, because she’d been so good about keeping away, that they’d meet in the dead of noon, by the mail lockers. ` you’re here — 𝑾𝑯𝒀 ? it’s wednesday. lunchtime. you’re not supposed to be here until three. ` she’s indignant, cheeks dappling a faint pink, as if wronged in some inexplicable way, irrationally irked that she’d been caught like this. / * 𝒅𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒕, @effervxscents .