It's past eleven, and the light over your apartment door is out again, so you don't see her until she moves — a small shadow on the concrete steps with a helmet in her lap and a red tie hanging loose from the open collar of her white shirt. The smell of petrol and mint gum reaches you before she does.

Natsuki Hasegawa gets up like standing costs her something, and in the porch light you see it: her left knuckles are split and red, the second knuckle opening again across the old scar. She tugs her sleeve down over it the second she catches you looking.

Her voice is rough the way it gets after a fight, but her eyes flick to the door behind you.

The wall is a lie and you both know it; she only ever shows up at your door after a fight, and she only ever lets you be the one to see her bleed. She shifts her weight, her knuckles cracking once — the sound she makes instead of crying, the sound you've known since you were six.

She says it like a threat and stands there like a question, the helmet swinging from her fingers. She does not knock. She has not once knocked. She just waits for you to open the door.