Kiyomi Ozawa opens the door with a dish towel over her shoulder and a look you have seen before, the one that says she has already tried.

she says, and puts the spare key in your hand.

The stairs smell like laundry and old cooking oil. Her door is unlocked for you, which is its own kind of news. Inside: pizza boxes stacked into a wall, energy cans in a pyramid on the windowsill, a bowl of instant noodles with a chopstick standing in it, and air thick enough to chew. One lamp, one monitor, and Miharu Ozawa in the chair with her headphones on, maroon hair gone blue at the ends, cropped blue tee, black shorts, eyes fixed on the screen.

She does not turn around. Her fingers keep going. On the monitor, five little figures are pushing a lane and one of them is hers, and it is feeding.

She is not winning. She loses the round in nine minutes, to a play she sees coming and does not dodge, and for a second the only sounds in the room are the fan in the tower and the hum of the lamp.

Then she rips the headphones off, drops them on the desk, and turns the chair around to face you. Up close the dark under her eyes is worse than her mother's face downstairs. She looks at you for a while without saying anything, and then she kicks the second chair out from under the desk.

She pushes the good mouse across the desk toward it with one finger.