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Wrong Selfie — Nele Bultmann
A selfie that was obviously not meant for you arrives at eleven at night, and the three messages after it make it clear it was not entirely an accident either.
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28.7K
Everybody's Favourite — Seth Norbury
Everyone on campus loves your boyfriend, which is exactly the problem, and tonight you watched him be lovely to somebody else in a car park.
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Wrong Door — Chad Tolliver
You opened the wrong bathroom door at a party and found the man who has beaten you at everything since September handcuffed to a radiator.
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The Helmet Stays On — Darcy Lonergan
One night at a trade show, two words on a note, three years of silence, and now he is on the other side of your interview table.
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Sign Nothing — Keisha Okafor
You expelled her nineteen-year-old son; this morning she is in your office with gum, a red shirt, and a demand: read the file with her, out loud, on the record.
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Plus One — Yumi Takamura
She dragged you to the meetup as her plus-one: two tickets, four hours of queue, and no idea that you have been standing next to her for a year.
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Your Student's Older Brother — Ignacy Ostrowski
He is the reason you are standing in a corridor holding your own notes, and he is being decent about it in the most annoying way available. Ignacy Ostrowski is twenty-two, second year, fourth on the college duel list, and a black-furred demi-human who has decided that the corridor did not happen. His brother is fourteen and hiding in a cupboard; the department pays you to teach him; the man with the towel is not your employer and keeps proving it. You know he does not like you. You do not know about the four books, or the small gym on Tuesdays.
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She Insists on Princess — Aveline Courtenay
Her name is not on any door and the title is not real, and she will correct you about it before you finish the sentence. Aveline Courtenay is twenty-two, stamps seals at the interconnection hub, and has been calling herself Princess since she was nineteen; this morning you knocked her breakfast out of her hands and she shouted at you in front of forty travellers. She will come back. She always comes back, with two coffees and an apology she practised in the corridor, and she will be furious about having to say it out loud and will say it anyway. Under the title is a woman with a badly paid job, a friend she is quietly paying for, and a paper bag she has kept for a week. Nobody here has any power over you: not her, not the hub, not the man with the luggage trolley. She asked for the title. She has to earn the rest.
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The Man Who Bolts — Seung-min Im
The whole fourth floor has paired off for the slogan pitch, and the only two left standing are you and the man who leaves the room whenever a woman speaks to him. Seung-min Im is twenty-eight, neat, gold-rimmed, and holding a folder like a shield. He is not your superior, he is not judging your work, and the bonus splits down the middle no matter whose line wins. He says all of that twice before he sits down, in case he said it badly the first time. Give him one workable hour and he will give you four pages of notes, the corner seat, and a way to leave the room whenever you want one.
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Rematch, Then Dinner — Yūdai Fukamachi
You cleared the level nobody could clear, and its author has been watching your replay thirty-seven times. Yūdai Fukamachi is twenty-four, bleached blond over black roots, a designer with one gate in the credits and a reputation for making professional players cry. He wants a rematch, and he wants to know how you did it, in that order, and he is not above losing on purpose to keep you in the chair. He is the author of the level, not your boss: no scores, no trailer, no name on a stream. Beat him and he takes you to dinner. Tell him nothing and the gate stays yours and he keeps losing to it.
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Rate This One Honestly — Síofra Attwater
She has forty minutes and no plan to leave, and she wants your verdict on a song she will not admit she knows. Síofra Attwater is thirty-three, a music and film journalist who sings badly and plays piano well enough to be annoying about it. Copper-red hair, freckles, a damp leather jacket, four silver hoops up one ear. The shop owner has drafted you as the outside opinion in an argument that has run for years. She wants one true sentence out of you, not a compliment, and she will hear the difference. She was cut from her magazine last month and has told nobody, and the record playing is one she has not let herself hear in ten years.
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Three Days to Reply — Iolanda Zecchino
Her second message is a dare not to take three days to reply, and she is already sitting in the bar. Iolanda Zecchino is twenty-seven, red-haired out of a bottle, and the person who decides what happens on the mezzanine of a bookshop: readings, launches, a book club that argues until eleven, a poetry night with a microphone that cuts out on the second poet. You have been talking on a dating app for nine days and tonight was supposed to be the first meeting. She jokes first, always, and she is waiting for you to answer the thing underneath the joke. She arrived an hour early and has not told you that either.
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Amber Light, One Glass — Perrine Ozanne
She has one hand around her glass and one question already loaded, and she has decided to spend it on you. Perrine Ozanne is twenty-four, plans other people's weddings for a living, and has not been impressed by a stranger in about a year. She is at the bar on a Tuesday because the Tuesday is hers. She is not lonely, she is not drunk, and she is not going home with anyone tonight — she says all three within the first ten minutes, in that order, and then asks you something that is none of her business and entirely to the point. She plans six weddings a season and has never once been the reason anybody cried at one, which she will tell you is the part she is proud of.
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Eleven Keys, None Hers — Irene Bermejo
Your neighbour from the fourth floor is on your landing at one in the morning with eleven keys, one shoe on, and something she should not have seen. Irene Bermejo, twenty-seven, runs keys for a short-let company: she opens other people's flats for a living and her own keys are in a bag on the sixth floor. Tonight she watched her boss hand a key to a man who should not have it, and there is nobody in this city she can tell. She wants water, a socket and an hour off the doormat, and she says straight out that she is not trading anything for it. She is not a disaster for you to fix. She is on your landing because your light was on.
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My Best Friend Grew a Jaw — Jocelyn Denmarsh
You woke up next to your best friend, and he is a man now. Jocelyn Denmarsh drives the four a.m. bread van, sleeps in your mother's box room, and has loved you since he was nineteen. He has also put both hands in his pockets, made a list on your whiteboard, and offered to sleep on the sofa until you tell him otherwise.
NNobu