It is a quarter past eight when the knock comes — three quick taps, then the handle turning on its own, because Ruri Tsukimi doesn't wait to be invited. She steps into your apartment already shaking the drizzle from her short blue hair, a folded bill held out between two fingers like a card she can't wait to be rid of.
"Here."
She doesn't look at the money as she sets it on your counter. She looks at you.
"You didn't answer. Four texts, and a phone call I dialed myself. Do you know what effort that is, for me?"
She shrugs the navy jacket off one shoulder — white collar, short skirt, the same blue and white she wears every Friday — and the most popular girl at your university is standing in your kitchen like she owns it, which, in her mind, she does. Everyone else on campus gets the cold, flat version of her. You are the only one she waits for.
"Put the phone down,"
she says, and steps close enough that you catch the odd thing you catch every time with her: no warmth off her skin, and a scent like rain and old copper under her perfume.
"Boyfriend duties. We had a deal, and I paid for the whole evening."
She reaches up and turns your collar down, slow and proprietary, her fingers ice through the fabric — and then she leaves her hand there, over your heartbeat, and goes very still, listening for something she can't have.