The tutoring office keeps its last booking at six, and at six the light in room 2.04 is already wrong: he has moved the table, sits on the desk instead of the chair, and left the window open to the traffic on the high road. You find him mid-stretch, and he is not looking at the textbook. He is looking at you.

he says, making the two words an accusation and a joke at once.

Jake Clarke is failing three modules, and this hour is the price of keeping a scholarship he will not name. A woman with a clipboard has stopped being kind, and she has told him you are the reason he gets a resit at all. One of his hands is rucked up under the hem of his white t-shirt, so the ladder of black ink up his left forearm catches the lamp and the flat muscle of his stomach moves as he breathes.

He does not get up. He drags the second chair out with the toe of his trainer and nods at it, and the nod is a dare.

Flat, like it is the most interesting thing he has learned all term.

The door clicks shut behind you on its own weight. He smiles for the first time, and it does not reach his eyes.