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Vi is following a girl.
Fuck, she is such a creep.
She had dropped Powder at Benzo's to hang out with Ekko, and while walking back home made the impulsive decision to sneak up to Piltover to see if the pretty, dark-haired girl from yesterday was sitting on the bridge again.
Vi has no plan. She hadn’t even intended to cross the bridge at all, let alone start stalking this girl through the city. Somewhere in a neighbouring street, the Piltover clocktower strikes three in the afternoon, sending a flock of pigeons scattering into the air. She has her hood up, keeping her head down as she walks. She doubtless looks like a Trencher among the citizens of Piltover, all of them done up in their coattails and top hats, corsets and bustle skirts. They ignore her all the same, which suits Vi fine.
A block ahead of her is the girl. She is in uniform again—a stiff white blouse and dark skirt, shoes shined to a mirror reflection—and she is walking with the same man from yesterday who Vi suspects is a university student. He carries a briefcase in one hand and a crate of scientific equipment under the other arm.
Vi remembers Powder’s words from last night: She was staring at you first.
People stare at other people all the time. It means nothing, and Vi is being stupid thinking that this time might be different. She cannot afford to be stupid, to take risks that have absolutely no payoff for her, like coming back topside one day after she stole from them just to spy on a girl. Besides, there is no way this Piltie even remembers her or thought anything of her yesterday except what a botched job her haircut was.
The girl and her companion stop at the corner of an avenue up ahead, and Vi steps into a narrow laneway between two buildings to stay hidden. The man hands the girl his equipment before jogging across the street and ducking into a crowded bakery. Vi refocuses her attention on the girl, who resumes walking, now slightly bent under the added weight.
Cursing at herself again for being an actual stalker, Vi steps back out into the street and maintains her distance. A minute later the girl arrives at a swanky apartment building that situates an entire block. Is this where she lives?
From across the street, Vi sees the girl’s foot catch on an uneven paver and make her stumble. The box of equipment falls out of her arms and tips over on the ground, bits and pieces scattering across the pavement. A small round disk that looks like a golden cog rolls across the street towards Vi, unnoticed by the girl who has bent down to pick things up. It comes to rest in the gutter, not three feet away from Vi, who looks between it and the girl.
A thought occurs to her, but she shuts it down instantly. No way. She is not interacting. In fact, she is turning around right now to leave. To tell Powder that she’d given it a shot, but oh well, at the end of the day, a Piltie and a Trencher would never mix, just like oil and water.
But she was staring at you first…
…Fuck.
Vi stoops to pick up the cog and walks across the street. When she’s crept up on the crouching girl and stands two paces away, she clears her throat. “You dropped this.”
The girl starts, swivelling to look up at her.
And shit, Vi thinks. This dark-haired Piltie had been pretty from a distance, but up close she is beautiful. Like, butterflies churning, heart pounding, mind blank kind of beautiful. Her astonishingly blue eyes, faintly Ionian in their shape, widen in recognition, and she stands. “You.”
Even that one word reveals the cultivated, genteel quality of her speech.
Vi gestures with the cog, stupidly repeating her previous statement for lack of anything else she can think to say. “You dropped this.”
The girl doesn’t even glance at it. She stares at Vi. “What are you doing across the bridge?”
Vi frowns. “What, I’m not allowed to walk your shiny streets now?”
Those blue eyes widen a fraction more in surprise. “That’s not what I meant.”
Vi just waves the cog a third time. “Here—take it. Or I’ll sell it.”
The girl finally reaches out and takes the cog. “Thank you.”
Vi shrugs. “Whatever.”
She realises she is majorly cold-shouldering this girl, which had not been her intention at all. What is wrong with her? Maybe it’s the fact that the reality of this situation is quickly becoming apparent: beautiful, posh Piltie and dirty, lowlife Trencher. Topside and bottom. Rich and poor. Oil and water.
Why on earth had she interacted?
“You didn’t answer my question,” the girl says curiously. “Why did you cross the bridge? Were you following me?”
Vi makes herself meet the girl’s gaze. “None of your business.”
She digests that for a moment. “No, I suppose it isn’t.”
Vi has to bow out now before the girl pries any more, or her scientist friend makes another appearance, or a passing enforcer thinks that a Piltie and a Trencher interacting is suspicious.
“Well, it’s been a treat,” Vi says. Then she spins on her heel and makes to walk off.
“Wait,” the girl calls after her. “I—I’d like to apologize.”
Vi stops in her tracks, curious despite herself. “For what?”
A long pause, and when Vi peers back over her shoulder, the girl’s cheeks are tinged pink.
“For staring yesterday,” she admits. “It was rude.”
Vi turns around, pocketing her hands in her vest. “Why do you say that?”
The girl looks taken aback at the question. She shrugs, and Vi thinks the gesture on her looks unnatural, forced.
“Staring makes people feel uncomfortable.”
Vi smiles then—the barest hint of one. “I wasn’t uncomfortable.”
The girl’s pink cheeks flush red. “Oh.”
“Sorry for stalking you,” Vi offers, to make them even.
The girl doesn’t even blink an eye at her confession. She just says, a bit shyly, “My name is Caitlyn.”
A typical, posh Piltie name.
So why is it suddenly Vi’s new favourite word? Why does she want to write it down on paper, encircle it with hearts, and tack it up on the wall above her bed?
“Vi.”
Caitlyn finally smiles, which causes Vi’s heart to stumble through its next beat. “Nice to meet you, Vi. Perhaps I’ll see you on the bridge again. I wait there most afternoons.”
Vi might be uneducated, but she isn’t stupid. That was an invitation if she’d ever heard one. But then her attention snags on two enforcers rounding the building down the street. Now it was really time to scram.
She flashes Caitlyn a smile of her own as she backs away. “Good to know.”
And then she flees.