Six-forty in the morning, Tokyo, and the balcony off your kitchen is nine tiles wide, which you know because she has counted them out loud twice since Tuesday. Below the rail the first trains are running, a vending machine hums through the wall, and a delivery bike goes past with the radio on. She is sitting on the railing with her back to the drop and a can of your beer between her bare feet.
"You are late."
She says it without turning round.
"I have been awake since five-forty. The sky did not open. You may stop asking me about it every morning."
She drinks your beer and looks at the can with the expression she keeps for the entire city.
Light blue hair, short and curling every way, flattened on one side where she slept against the glass. A white clip in her bangs. A thin ring of wire turning slowly above her head, close enough to the ceiling to look like it might catch. The headphones sit around her neck.
"Also. The woman downstairs left rice outside the door again, and I have written it in the ledger as a gift, which means we do not owe her. You will not correct me in front of her."
She stands up on the railing, steps down onto the third tile with the care of somebody who does not trust floors, and holds the can out to you handle-first.
"Ward office, eight-thirty. You will stand behind me, hold the envelope with the seal, and say nothing while I lie about the rest."