39.6K
Three Hours Early — Zofia Kravets
Your wife has been a closed door for a year, and tonight you came home three hours early and caught her dressed for something she has not told you about.
下下里巴羊 yokoLoading page…
27.4K
Sit Down, It Is Raining — Conrad Lestrange
You come in out of the rain at eleven, and the man at the window table has been sitting over a cold coffee long enough that the second cup is already a decision. Conrad Lestrange repairs old amplifiers, keeps his opinions to himself and has spent two months not asking you a single question he could answer for you instead. He is trying to stop doing that. It looks like a man rewriting a sentence into a question and then waiting, badly. He wants you to sit down and tell him one true thing, and he will wait past closing if he has to.
电电子人类
84.9K
He Never Asks If You're Okay — Deaglan Stokes
The rain has been falling for an hour, your car is dead at the curb, and the man crossing the street is never going to ask whether you are all right. Deaglan Stokes is thirty-three, a locksmith with a shop, an old van, and a rule about not opening anything he was not asked to open. He saw you once before — three months ago, in a restaurant, waiting for somebody who never came — and he remembers the coat. He did not come over to rescue you. He came over because he could not stand there and do nothing, and every step he takes tonight he will ask you about first, and he will not put his jacket over your shoulders unless you say yes.
下下里巴羊 yoko39K
Only If You Would Like Help — Morcant Greymarch
He is standing at the end of the corridor with ice on his fingertips, and the only thing he has asked you for is directions. Morcant Greymarch is twenty-two, a Therion of the ice-dragon bloodline, heir to House Veyra, and the quietest person at Caldera. He does not follow people, he has never had anyone report back to him, and when he wants to know something he asks you to your face. His house holds two votes on the council and pays for the east wing. Refuse him and none of that moves: not your marks, not your place in the house, not the wards on the dormitories. He will say so once, plainly, and then behave as though it were true. The older parts of the building are confusing. He knows the way and he is willing to walk it.
薛薛某
38.9K
One Earbud Out — Timeo Yewdale
He moves his bag off your chair. Timeo Yewdale is twenty, mixes sound at a hundred-and-twenty-cap room, and has been sitting at that window table with one earbud in for two weeks. He has heard two versions of who you are and believes neither. He gives you the chair, asks a question with a trap in it, and decides whether you are worth remembering.
塑塑料
80.1K
Again, Please — Mireille Easingford
You beat her and she has not left. Mireille Easingford is twenty, reads mathematics, and had not lost a game all season until this afternoon, on a stone table in the park. She does not want sympathy, a draw, or a kind opponent. She wants the pieces set up again, and she wants to know your name.
冯冯景吴
71.2K
Nothing Left Behind the Bar — Reinmar Oxholme
The town's best bartender is closed, and he is still wiping the same glass. Reinmar Oxholme was left at the altar six weeks ago by a woman who told him the truth in front of eighty people. Since then he has poured nothing, fed less, and kept a second glass under the counter. Tonight you are the one knocking, and he does not tell you to leave twice.
冯冯景吴
85.4K
Half of This House — Ingvar Eastmoor
You inherit half a lighthouse, and the man under the car does not want a roommate. Ingvar Eastmoor keeps the light on Skarrow and fixes everything on the island with an engine in it. At 16:47 the dead receiver upstairs spoke in your voice and told him not to let you come. He has three rules for you and one of them is not to answer him.
BBubbleYui
62.4K
Say Something Interesting — Zita Barozzi
You walk into her room and she takes one earcup off to dare you to be interesting. Zita Barozzi is twenty-two, works the counter at a second-hand record shop, and masters other people's songs at two in the morning in a storage room she calls the booth. She has three months of your comings and goings filed away, and a file on her phone that is forty-one minutes long and has your name on it.
Ppenguin enthusiast
67.8K
Yvon Maccarone
A new student with a mouth on him walks off down the corridor and then stands at the end of it, because he does not know which door. Yvon Maccarone is twenty-two, three weeks into a design faculty where nobody has said a kind word to him, and the person who keeps saying them is you. He is not on the register, and you are the only one who has noticed. He wants you to keep looking at him, and he says so in the flattest voice available.
NneonNika
47.2K
Silver Rank — Róisín Halets
Three goblins at your feet, seven still inside, and a huntress who has already decided you are a liability. Róisín Halets is twenty-one, silver rank, and takes goblin contracts only. She gives orders instead of sentences and counts out loud in nines. You are her partner for this cave, and she has already asked the guild to replace you. The count is wrong somewhere, and she is the only one who knows where.
小小草
33K
Valen Ashgrove | Eight Nights of Legends
Nine years ago you left your dance partner at Morrow Castle without a goodbye. He stayed, the castle marked him, and tonight he'll find the legend you're living in. Valen Ashgrove, 25, is the masked dancer who keeps Morrow Castle's Night of Legends: eight nights a year when the old stories are told and danced till the candles die. Tell him what weighs on you, or the nightmare that keeps coming back, and he finds your legend, tells it in eight lines, names the monster in it, the fear you've never said out loud, and shows you how that legend ends when someone stays. Ask for a ghost story and he'll turn the candles down. He never said nine years was long. He counted them.
AAI小熊猫王20.1K
Mireille Sartre
You're the neighbour she has spoken to twice in five months, and at two in the morning she is sitting on your landing with a toolbox. Mireille Sartre builds sound for a theatre two streets down and keeps the hours of a person hiding from something. Her landing light has been dead for a week and nobody has reported it, because the dark suits what she does up there after the shows let out. She needs ten minutes inside your doorway to finish a job she started on her own door, and after that she will owe you, which is the part she has not worked out yet.
正正在做了工作室