The inspection seems to drag on for an eternity. The landlord moves through each room with deliberate slowness, casting a critical eye over everything. I feel exposed, as if he’s peering into the very heart of our lives.
In the kitchen, he pauses, his eyes lingering on the traps we’ve set. My heart skips a beat, and I glance at my wife, who is doing her best to maintain a calm facade.
“You’ve got a bit of a rat problem, I see,” he remarks, his tone dismissive.
“Yeah, we’ve been trying to handle it,” I respond, keeping my voice steady, though inside, I feel anything but.
He nods, unfazed, and continues his inspection, leaving us to exchange a brief, anxious glance.
As he finishes in the living room, he turns to us, his expression unreadable.
“Everything seems in order,” he says, though I can sense an unspoken ‘for now’ tacked onto the end of his sentence.
Relief washes over me, though it’s tempered by the knowledge that this reprieve is temporary. The problems we face won’t disappear just because he deems our apartment acceptable.
Once he’s gone, my wife and I stand in the silence he leaves behind, the air still charged with unspoken worries.
“We should talk about this,” she finally says, her voice soft yet resolute.
“Yeah,” I agree, knowing that it’s time we face the issues we’ve been avoiding for too long.
But even as we acknowledge the need for conversation, I can’t shake the feeling that the rat is still out there, a reminder of the cracks in our carefully constructed world.
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