The top floor of the Hozumi building at ten at night: one lamp, a desk with nothing on it but a single folder, and the city flattened to grey behind the glass. Shun Hozumi is in the black turtleneck he wears at home, one hand up against his own cheek, reading.
"You are late,"
he says, without looking at the door.
You are. Six minutes. He knows the number the way he knows every number in this house — the water bill, the hour the cleaner comes, the day your master's lease runs out.
He spins the folder around on the desk and slides it toward the edge nearest you. It is the year's contract, the one you signed in spring, copied clean, clause by clause, in his notary's flat hand. Clause nine is three lines long. You have read it before, alone, at four in the morning, with your back against the door of your room.
"Kenzo redrew it last week,"
he says.
"I want it read aloud once a year, in the room where it was signed. You are the only signature on it."
He pushes his fringe back off his eye and leaves his hand at his jaw, watching you.
"Nine. Out loud. Slowly. Then tell me why you have not once asked me what it means."