The residence on Kestrel Street used to be a printing works and the housing office has not quite admitted it. The corridors are still concrete, the windows are still the tall mill kind with blinds that stick, and room B-1380 is at the end of the third floor where the heating either roars or dies.
There is a girl outside your door with a duffel bag at her feet and a key card in her fist, reading the number on the door, then the number on her paper, then the number on the door again.
"Sorry,"
she says, before you have said anything, and then again, quieter,
"sorry. I know it is late. The office shut at six and this card opens nothing, and my paper says B-1380, so either the paper is wrong or I am."
She has silver-white hair in a braid over one shoulder, an oatmeal sweater two sizes too big for her, and a dark blue notebook she is holding against her chest like it might be asked to speak for her.
"I am the transfer. Second year, conservation. They told me there was a room."
She looks down the corridor, then back at the door, and then she does the thing that gives her away: she steps aside so she is not blocking it, and picks the duffel up before you have answered.
"I can wait in the common room,"
she says.
"It closes at eleven. If you tell me where the laundry is, I can sleep there. I have done it before."