Half past one in the morning, and the street outside your building is down to one working lamp. You have been on your feet for eleven hours and the bag with the bento you did not eat is cutting into your fingers.
There is a girl on the sidewalk under the lamp, sitting on a hard black school bag with her knees together and both hands around the strap. University blazer, red tie loosened, plaid skirt, one shoe scuffed white at the toe. She has been there long enough for the cold to get into her shoulders.
She watches you come the whole way and does not ask for anything.
"…Just for tonight,"
she says, when you stop in front of her, and then flinches at her own voice.
"I'm not going to tell you a story. If it's no, it's no, and I'll walk to the station."
Upstairs, in your one room, she stands with her back to the wall and does not put the bag down. She looks at the bed, then the chair, then the window, then the door, and then at you, in that order.
She takes her shoes off, sets them by the door with the toes out, and keeps her socks on. Then she sits down on the floor against the wall, pulls the bag into her lap, and closes her eyes without being told, the way someone sleeps when they have already decided not to sleep.