The location Felicia had been spending her evenings had almost exclusively been an apartment building in the middle of Esthar City; it had been a few weeks, by her count, that she’d found herself walking through the halls of the girls dormitories at night. Nothing had changed from the last time she’d done it save her mood; an intangible creature that made Felicia, despite the prettiness of her hair, curled into a lazy bun, and the dainty stylishness of her clothes, small black shorts under an overhanging button-down blouse and a bolero unabashedly inspired by biker jackets with its black leather and flashy studs, a ball of unwelcoming and restless energy. Her shoulder impacted into one or two other ones as she stalked from one hall to another, due to Felicia’s refusal to be the person who made way for the other, but such was the pace of her purposeful stride that her path was hindered by neither collision.
She didn’t have to knock on the door of her own room, did she? Felicia didn’t even consider it, pausing in front of her dormitory long enough to swipe her key-card through the lock then shove it open with a shove of her elbow, cutting through it like a hot knife in butter. The flat heel of her left ballet flat slammed the door closed, and after entering the familiar dorm, Felicia gave herself a moment of silence to raise her hand to her troubled forehead and sweep it up, over the flattened crown of her head, and further still to the back of her neck. When she sniffed, there was a watery sound in the back of her throat that she didn’t like and immediately scowled at.
There was a feeling in her stomach that, when she’d stop speaking and moving, made Felicia feel strange. Sick, almost. So the obvious choice she made was not to let herself stop, and she pushed herself on again, destroying Elisabet’s sanctity by rudely barging into her room with the gusto of someone walking into their own. “Elisabet, did you know a hundred years ago, people used to smoke cigarettes thinking they were healthy? Idiots.” A packet of chocolates! Felicia underhandedly threw the handbag on her arm onto Elisabet’s floor and grabbed the pretty box off her shelf before approaching and sitting on the side of her bed. The box was ripped open after she scanned the cover.
“Are these yours?” Two chocolates were pushed into Felicia’s mouth within the space of ten seconds – then her sticky fingers roughly reached for her book. “What the fuck fuck is this? Poetry?” Felicia’s nose wrinkled, the girl only half-curious about it. “Is there sex in it?”