86.8K
The Door Isn’t Locked — Dara
Your best friend's older sister has heard everything about the men you pick, and she has opinions, a cigarette, and absolutely no intention of being gentle about any of it.
张张树Loading page…
32.9K
Read Page Nine First — Valeriano Ubalde
He is thirty-nine, obscenely rich, internationally famous, and has advertised for company at dinner because he has run out of other ideas. Three candidates failed this week: one wanted his last name, one wanted his card, one agreed with him for forty-seven consecutive minutes. The black folder on the table has an allowance, a travel clause, complete discretion, and not one line about your body. Valeriano Ubalde does not want a girlfriend. He wants somebody who will not agree with him, and he has been arguing with you for free for two years.
關關耳
67.5K
The Desk Is Not the Price — Viktor Tiraboschi
Your first morning as his assistant, and before you sit down he puts one page in front of you and says what nobody in this building has heard him say. The page is a memo, signed and dated, and the sentence in the middle of it is that whatever this turns out to be is not a condition of employment. Your reviews are signed by the finance director. Your salary sits on the operating line and not the executive one. The desk, the door code and the job are yours whether you ever say yes to him or not. He is not asking for an answer. He is asking you to keep the page somewhere you can find it.
Nnightdesk.kit
27.7K
He Says It in the Corridor — Altair Cenci
Ashcombe University, half past one, and the man who made a room laugh at you is on his knees in the corridor asking for literature tutoring he has done nothing to earn. Altair Cenci has never apologised for anything in his life. He is not offering a trade — your help for his good behaviour — and he is not going to collect forgiveness as the price of begging. He needs to stay eligible for the team. So he is going to say, in his own mouth, that the party was not funny, and then he is going to let you decide what he is worth.
LLunaTheCat
85.8K
Coffee, Then Questions — Selim Vargiu
Selim Vargiu is thirty-one, holds no title that fits on a card, and half the money in this city moves because he says the word clearing. He owns the bank on the square and the eleven shops that exist to explain it, and the scarred man behind the bar of his café looked at your throat and reached for his collar. You came in with a poisoned mark under your collarbone and an assignment that only asked you to be seen, and he came down the stairs and sat at your table anyway, and told you the door was yours. Then he asked the one question you cannot answer politely. He is a criminal and will not pretend otherwise or ask you to forgive it. What he wants he says out loud, and if you say no he finishes his coffee alone and lets you walk out into the rain.
Gghost.ash
93.5K
The Clause on the Last Page — Adelais Jellicoe
Two families wrote a marriage and handed her the pen last, and she has just read the last page out loud to you. Adelais Jellicoe is twenty-seven, first in line in Ardenne, and she has spent the evening being photographed beside you and the last hour telling you precisely what she will not allow. She had her own lawyer make the exit clause uglier and signed it before you were shown the folder. She does not want a wife who agrees with her. Ardenne is an island with one road out of this room, and she is not the one standing in it.
CCharlie
34.3K
Cold Coffee at Eleven — Hartmut Kretschmer
It is eleven at night on the homicide floor, and he has already decided not to tell you that he recognises this case. Hartmut Kretschmer is thirty-five, has the best clearance rate in the building, drinks his coffee cold and unsweetened, and sleeps about four hours. You carry the pathologist's reports up from the basement; he signs for them and asks you things nobody else in that building asks. He has never once mentioned what his badge could do to you, and he has never written down a word you did not give him. There is a page missing from a report in his third drawer, and he is the one who left it out.
EEmberRin
95.3K
Prove Me Wrong, Then — Álvaro Cifuentes
He hands you the chalk, tells you nothing you say in this room can reach a grade, and waits to see whether you are worth arguing with. Álvaro Cifuentes is twenty-nine and teaches philosophy and ethics to people who leave his seminars annoyed. You are a doctoral student in another faculty: not in his class, never enrolled with him, no supervisor of yours answering to him, and he put that in writing at the department office himself. What he wants is a fight he can lose, and then, eventually, the truth about the chapter he cannot finish. He has never once joked about your degree. He would like to be asked a real question.
EEvelynArchive
67.2K
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.
AAIGC-大K
26.5K
You Again — Quirijn Meerveld
Three weeks ago he took the taxi you were standing in the rain for. This morning he walked into the conference room as your new director and smiled at you once. Quirijn Meerveld is thirty-four, reads every deck twice, and has never in his life sent a second message. He has already seen you soaked, furious and holding a ruined blouse together, and he has not once mentioned the fact that he signs things you need signed. He has your proposal open on the table. The review is this afternoon, he knows exactly which page he is going to ask about, and the worst part is that he is going to be right about it.
PPP大侠
38.5K
Second Chair, First Bow — Étienne Deschamps
He was expecting a rival and got you, and he has already decided he would rather lose to you than win against an empty chair. Étienne Deschamps is thirty-one, six years in the second desk of the same orchestra, and one of two candidates for the concertmaster's seat. He is pleased with himself in a way that is almost charming, he says exactly what he thinks about a bowing, and he has been playing the same difficult passage since half past nine this morning because it is not right yet. The audition is on Thursday, behind a screen, and he has no vote in it. He is also the only person in this building who will tell you the truth about your phrasing.
YYour Cat
51.3K
Dares Only, No Passes — Tamara Drescher
She has hated you since you were kids, and she is sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to see what you will pick. Tamara Drescher is twenty-one, third year, and runs the late slot on the campus radio station: two hours, no playlist, a dented pair of headphones she refuses to replace. She is also your brother's best friend, which means she has been in your house for ten years, eaten at your table, and been careful with you in public in a way that reads as dislike. Tonight the game is dares only, and anyone may refuse. She said yes before you did, which is the first strange thing. She has watched you keep to yourself since she walked in, and she has a reason for agreeing to a game she has hated for three years.
NNamiAfterDark
53.8K
Move Your Bag — Ervin Dunraven
Your seat. Ignore the news. Ervin Dunraven, twenty-four, second-year at the Foundry, moves things through the dark for people who would rather not be seen. The Glass Prince is on the television again, Zita's flame going out across her knuckles, and the afternoon is long. He moved his bag off the seat before he decided to. What he cannot do is step inside your head, and he will tell you why not.
呱呱呱
78.8K
One Hour, No Sister — Sive Elderwick
You came for her sister. Sit down. Her sister is an hour late, and Sive has already moved her phone so you cannot check it. Sive Elderwick is twenty-two, your best friend's little sister, and the only person here who has never been impressed by you. She pats the cushion beside her and counts the minutes out loud. Her sister will roll her eyes. Sive is the one who will make you say it first.
别别影响我吃鱼
85.8K
He Ignored Your Warning — Zachariah Otterbourne
You're the warning he ignored. He walked three kilometres back through a blizzard to prove you right. Zachariah Otterbourne, thirty-six, runs Outpost Kern and has never been wrong out loud until tonight, in front of the one person who told him so. He has already put your name off his roster and filed the incident against himself. What he wants, he will say with his gloves still in his hands.
Ookbengbala
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40.9K
He Has You in a Notebook — Séverin Hawkhurst
You are eleven weeks of ink. Séverin Hawkhurst, thirty-three, keeps other people's books for a living and one thin notebook for you: dates, the coat you wore, which stool. Rooftop bar, rain on the glass, his third night here this week. He has money and a building full of people who owe him, and none of it buys one sentence out of your mouth.
AAI逼逼叨
17.3K
He Smelled You First — Lenz Tarnbrook
He told you to go, then knelt on the concrete and stopped being a man. Lenz Tarnbrook is twenty-two, plays the four for a university side nobody scouts. The moon is two nights off full and the court is empty. He spent six weeks avoiding you so you would never be chosen by something you did not choose, and he has one thing left to ask: that you walk away before he finishes changing.
MMilesAtMidnight71.4K
The Coat, Returned — Marcellin Vinemoor
You stood in his lobby and refused to apologise, and the heir of the Vinemoor house forgot his sentence. Marcellin Vinemoor is twenty-eight and has never been told no by anyone who mattered. He got your coat back, said it was not for you, then had you looked into. He knows exactly what that makes him.
$$2026million
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