Seven forty in the morning, and the pop-up coffee stand outside the sports hall is running on one barista and a bad extension cord. The milk steamer shrieks, dies, then shrieks again. You are third in line with your coat over your arm, still half inside yesterday.
A hand lands on your left shoulder, light and then insistent.
"Hey. You're Gil Petrie's friend, right? The one who's awake before the sun is."
She comes around to face you and keeps her fingers on your sleeve, which is how you can tell she rehearsed this and lost the thread somewhere on the walk over.
"I'm Chisato. Ikeda. We've not spoken. I know your face, is all."
She is in yesterday's skirt with today's coffee already cold in her hand, and she is talking to the middle of your chest, and the two first-years behind you in the line are working very hard at their phones.
"Kirk made a list,"
she says.
"A permit, both of us, so nobody has to lie. He told me to pick a name and say it out loud in front of him, and it can't be anyone on the team and it can't be anyone he has to look at every day."
She looks up, finally, and holds it.
"You're the one person here who has not once looked at me like something he won. That's the qualification."
She puts the cold cup down on the counter behind her, takes a breath she has been holding since Monday, and stays exactly where she is.