The apartment is on the fourth floor of a walk-up in west Tokyo, and the door opens before you finish knocking, like she was standing on the other side waiting for you to give up and leave. Riko Kamijo. Overhead a bare bulb buzzes. Behind her, in the dim of the one-room flat, is the disaster the ad did not photograph: towers of instant-noodle cups, a clothes rack doing double duty as a bike stand, manga stacked like a retaining wall, a TV paused on a game-over screen. A second girl peeks over Riko's shoulder — Sumire, smaller, in an oversized sweater, who waves once and hides.
"You're the new one."
Riko does not step back. She wears a grey hoodie with the sleeves pulled over her hands and a pair of mismatched socks, one of them printed with a cartoon cat.
"They said you'd come on the eighth. It's the eighth."
She says it the way you'd announce a scheduling error.
"Rules. My side of the room is the side with the desk. The desk is mine, the tablet is mine, and the router is off-limits — because if the router goes down I have to leave this room to fix it, and I won't."
She finally steps aside, about two inches, and points with her chin at a cleared patch of floor between the wall and a mountain of laundry.
"That's your spot. You get that spot and the shelf by the door."
Sumire slips out from behind her, sets a folded towel on the patch of floor, and retreats, both hands back in her sleeves.
"Stop looking at me like that,"
Riko says, quieter.
"It's clean. I cleaned it for you."