THE CLUE

"Hmm?" Jaita hummed to herself in alarm as the steering wheel suddenly began to act up.

Tightening her grip on it, she battled to keep the car steady as it had already begun to gradually wobble on the road. Luckily for her, there was little time left before dawn, so the road was quite free from moving vehicles.

Jaita stole a quick glance at Yuki who looked calm with her eyes closed, from the rearview mirror. The upbeat music was still blasting from the speaker and Yuki had not seemed to notice what was going on. At least that was what Jaita thought.

Jaita quickly returned her attention to the road as the matter at hand required great urgency. The street lights cast a colorful glow on the road, creating a mild reflection as the colours danced across the wet and slippery ground, caused by the rain that had fallen the previous night.

Jaita struggled effortlessly to manoeuvre the vehicle from causing any potential car accident but the steering wheel seemed to have a mind of its own. When Jaita saw that things were beginning to get out of hands, she adjusted herself in the driver's seat and made a quick mental note to alert Yuki.

After turning on the hazard lights to warn other drivers, she quickly glanced at the mirrored rectangle above the windshield and cleared her throat. "There seems to be a problem with the car!" She called out but got no response from Yuki. She was in a very dense situation and could not bear to take her eyes off the road. She needed to make sure Yuki had heard her so she shouted once more.

"Can you hear me? Yuki?! The car is having some issues!" She yelled.

"Sorry did you say something?" Yuki replied with a smug look on her face which Jaita could not see since her eyes were solely on the road ahead of her. And coupled with the intensity of the music, Jaita could hardly make up what Yuki had said.

"I can't hear you!" Jaita returned desperately.

"Then turn off the music! You were the one that increased the volume in the first place!" Yuki fired back.

It took Jaita sometime to figure out what Yuki had said and after a very short while, she replied; "I can't!"

"You can? Then turn it off so I can hear you!"

"No! I can't! I said I can't! Can't you see that the vehicle is acting up?"

"The vehicle is acting up?!" Yuki opened her eyes and sat up. "What? What did you do to my car?" She asked in alarm.

"Nothing!" Jaita yelled in frustration as the vehicle suddenly went haywire. "The brake is faulty! It's not working! I can't stop the car!"

"Watch out!" Yuki yelled as they almost hit a car by their right side.

"Okay you see what I'm talking about now?" Jaita asked through gritted teeth.

"There is nothing wrong with my brake, I can assure you that. You drive carefully and we'd be safe."

"I am driving carefully! Don't you see that?!" Jaita yelled.

"No, I can't see that. You were the one blabbing about driving slowly and safely few minutes ago and I certainly cannot understand this sudden change," Yuki replied.

"I still can't hear you clearly," Jaita hissed.

"Let's start with turning off the music," Yuki suggested.

"But I can't take my hand off the steering wheel."

"Well, you don't have to my dear," Yuki smiled.

"What do you mean?" Jaita cast a quick look at Yuki from the rearview mirror.

"There," Yuki pointed directly to the voice button. "Stop!" She commanded, and the music stopped immediately.

"Wha- How did you do that? You're supposed to press the button before speaking to it," Jaita stuttered.

"I did," Yuki dragged, "I just didn't stretch over there to touch it," Yuki smiled.

Jaita turned to look at Yuki with a confused expression. "What?" She raised an eyebrow as she tried to wrap her head around what Yuki had just said.

"Don't tell me..." She could not complete her statement before Yuki nodded towards the front.

There was a vehicle few metres ahead of them and at the rate their vehicle was speeding up, they had the slightest chance of avoiding it.

"Come on!" Jaita involuntarily threw her fist at the centre of the steering wheel and the loud blaring of the car horn that followed, immediately spiked up a ruckus as about two other cars seemed to appear out of nowhere, each one of them trying to clear out of her way as soon as possible.

Jaita on the other hand, was very frustrated and scared to her bones. She had been screaming her lungs out and a mild headache was beginning to develop. The vehicle was still acting out but she had begun to catch up on Yuki's carefree demeanour.

Once she had managed to skid through the clusters of cars around her, she looked up again at Yuki through the rear mirror. "I find it strange that you don't seem worked up, despite what is going on."

"You should remember that a mere accident would have no effect on me. Your full concentration on the road could save your life, instead of playing detective right now," Yuki replied, a full smirk smearing her lips, which Jaita did not miss.

And that was it!

"Don't tell me you're behind this!" She yelled in anger.

"Is that a question or?..." Yuki trailed off. She was clearly enjoying this.

"Ha!" Jaita scoffed, "So all this while, I've been struggling to keep us alive meanwhile you're over there with your legs crossed, enjoying every bit of this!"

"Oh," Yuki looked down at herself quickly and returned her gaze to Jaita; "I didn't realise my legs were literally crossed this whole time."

"Stop this whole nonsense right now!" Jaita ordered as she barely wheezed through a car.

"Well, I would also love for us to drive moderately but you see, this is the best method for us all. You know how well I hate tardiness, what if I let you drive like a snail and we arrive at the office late, it could lead to a serious disaster and of course as partners I would not want anything like that for us both, so," she extended her hand with a broad smile; "enjoy the ride."

"What nonsense are you... Look my life is what is at stake here!" She turned to Yuki, "stop this car now or..."

"See? We're here!" Yuki announced and the car screeched to a halt immediately. "At exactly 4:55 am! Which is late already, but that's okay."

Jaita turned and took in the surrounding, they were indeed in front of the company's building.

"Look, that was not the deal we had!" Jaita loosened her seatbelt and jumped out of the car, the moment she securely parked the vehicle in the parking lot.

"What was the deal again?" Yuki asked nonchalantly as she took long strides towards the lobby.

"I was supposed to take full responsibility of the map search in exchange for the freedom to do what I wanted!"

"You were taking too much advantage of that," Yuki hissed. "First you were eating even slower than a toddler would, and then you had the effrontery to drive my Ferrari with such slow pace? That car was built for nothing other than speed!"

"Even at that, you do know how much I've tolerated from you, so why couldn't you let me shine for that little moment?"

"Nah-uh. That's not for you. I am the one with the aura, I am the only one who has the grace to shine. Now if you don't mind, look over there," Yuki pointed behind them.

"Where?" Jaita turned back to look but saw nothing. "Over where?" She turned back but could no longer see Yuki beside her.

"Make sure to find a clue from the map before noon!" Yuki waved from the elevator at the left.

"You sly demon! Come back here! How dare you evade me?" She ran towards the elevator but was not able to make it on time, as the door closed just as she got to the elevator. "Yuki! I swear, I'll kill you when I catch you!" She yelled as she continuously pressed the button to the elevator even though it refused to budge.

"Sly demon?" Someone asked Jaita from behind.

"Ah! Suyi? Good morning! How come you're so early? It's just 5:00 am!" Jaita laughed nervously.

"You were not just swearing at the boss, were you?" Suyi asked with alarmed eyes.

"What? No! Of course not!"

"Ah! I was surprised, you know?" Suyi laughed loudly and Jaita followed suit. "So, who was that?"

"Who was who?"

"The person you were yelling at just now?" Suyi asked.

"Ah! That? Nobody," Jaita replied curtly and zoomed off.

"Nobody? Is she mad then?" Suyi tilted his head and took a sip from the cup of coffee in his hand. "I'm sure I heard her say Yuki," he whispered to himself and walked into the elevator.

Jaita walked into her office determined to get back at Yuki. All she needed to do was to find the clue so she could strike another deal with her.

She settled down on her seat and sprang into action. She had planned to sleep for a short while in the office but after the little incident that happened earlier, she had lost even the tiniest bit of sleep in her eyes.

She immediately placed her laptop on the table alongside Mystika's map. She opened her drawer and took out some sticky notes to pinpoint some informations. Since they had agreed to start with the states in the country they were in first, she wrote down the thirty six states.

After scanning the note, she decided to pick any state randomly instead of choosing them alphabetically, given the number of hours they had spent in just one state without yielding any result.

Yuki had given her till noon to come up with something of which they both knew was impossible but she was determined to give it her best. On another note, she had the urge to write down the letter "L" and when she went through the states, "Lagos" was the only state that started with "L".

She quickly drew the map of Mystika closer to herself to search for Lagos, and after going through the map for almost thirty minutes, she did not see any word like that on the map. Next, she tore out another note and scribbled down the twenty local government areas of Lagos and decided to go through them bit by bit.

She zoomed into the map on her laptop in search for the local governments in Lagos. There were so many landmarks in the map, too important to ignore, and the more she zoomed in and made her research, the more frustrated she became and at some point, she slammed the laptop shut.

"It's not possible at all. There is simply no way it's possible," Jaita resigned.

She gathered the sticky notes scattered all over her table and tossed them into her drawer. Then she took Mystika's map and rolled it up too, but just as she was about to fold it completely, her eyes caught sight of a landmark. It was a boat in the midst of water waves enclosed in a circle. The landmark was tagged "mar" and what drew Jaita's attention was that unlike other landmarks, there was no other image similar to this.

She unfolded the map and looked towards the end of the map for the symbol key; "Mar - Marina". She remembered she had seen a marina on the map in her laptop. She opened her laptop and quickly typed in "marina" at the search engine. Immediately the results popped up, she began to zoom in, with the hope of finding something similar to what she saw.

After few minutes of endlessly going through each areas, she spotted something; a boat enclosed in a circle with water waves!