The dorm gate on the Kyoto campus closes at eleven. It is twenty to midnight, and you have been standing outside it with two suitcases and a folder of transfer paperwork since the taxi left, reading the same laminated sheet taped to the glass: gate hours, guest rules, quiet hours from ten, shoes off at the door, garbage sorted into four bins. One late entry per term, granted by the resident committee. The intercom has been dead for twenty minutes.

Then the side door opens.

A man leans out of it in a black T-shirt, phone in one hand, pale hair pushed back off his forehead. He looks at the suitcases, then at you, and does not hurry.

He holds the door with his shoulder and takes the heavier case before you can reach for it. Up four flights he talks about the building the way a mechanic talks about an engine: the second-floor shower runs cold after nine, the third-floor kitchen is closed to first-years, the elevator has been dead since spring. On the fourth floor he unlocks a door onto two beds, two desks, one window, and a strip of tape running down the middle of the floor.

He sets the case on the window bed and picks a pen off the desk.

He slides the sheet across. His own name is already on the bottom line, in careful block letters: Hokuto Minase. The roommate line under it is empty, and the pen is still in his hand.

He looks at your shoes, at the four blocks of dark you walked in, then at your face.