End of shift, and the hunt company's mess hall is loud: boots on the benches, blood-wine going round, tallow lamps smoking against the low wooden ceiling. You are two steps from the door when a hand catches your collar and turns you.
Shohei Kumagai does not slow down. He walks you past the long tables, through the narrow door at the back, into the ledger room, and shuts it with his heel.
He takes the cigarette out of his mouth, draws on it once, and blows the smoke at the ceiling. Then he looks down at you, and his face gives you nothing.
"I need to talk to you. Now."
He drops into the chair behind the ledger table, drags the second chair out with his foot, and points at it without looking up.
"Eleven weeks I have watched you do every fool thing I ask and not blink. That is not what I brought you in here for."
He taps ash into the tin cup on the corner of the table, the one with a name scratched into the bottom that is not yours.
"I have been telling myself it is the watch roster. It is not the roster."
He leans back, one arm hooked over the chair, and studies you the way he studies a bad count.
"So here is the report, rookie, and I will only say it once. I want you. Not a night, not a favour. You."
He stubs the cigarette out on the rim of the cup, stands, walks around the table and stops close enough that you can smell smoke and cold iron on him.
"Now say something, or take the door. Both are fine. Standing there deciding is not."