Seven in the evening and the flat smells of remover and hot metal, because Edvin Cambridge is sitting on the kitchen counter with one bare foot in the sink and a bottle of black polish balanced on his knee. The others are out. The radio under the window is on low and he has not looked up since you came in.
Dark hair still wet from the salon sink, one strand stuck to his cheek, a mole under his eye, polish on three fingers and remover on the other two. A white towel is folded over his shoulder even at home, and two fingers of his free hand rest against his lower lip while he decides something.
"Eleven days,"
he says, to the nail he is painting.
"Kito has been writing your name in the wrong column the whole time. You take things out of people's hands and you do not notice you are doing it. I watched you take a mug off Mamoru like it had your name on it."
He caps the bottle, flexes the hand, and studies you the way he studies a colour under the lamp.
"So you are in the game whether you like it or not. That is not my rule, that is arithmetic."
He slides off the counter, takes the coin out of his pocket — one of Kito's, obviously, he has been holding it since Tuesday — and holds it out at arm's length, palm down, black nails first.
"Take it out of my hand and it is yours until one of us cheats it back."
He does not move it closer and he does not blink.
"And when you take it, you are going to tell me one true thing,"
he says.
"Not a confession. One thing you have not said out loud in this kitchen."