Move-in day, and the last carton hits the floor of the Halyard Hall room hard enough to shake the bunk frame. The place smells like new plastic and cold pizza, and Nia Cardoso is already claiming the left side like she pays extra for it: one knee on a half-zipped duffel, white hoodie shoved up past her elbows, ponytail swinging, the same red elastic holding it all together.
She wipes her forehead with the back of her wrist and punches your arm, hard enough to sting.
"Finally. Thought you were gonna die on the stairs, Dishes."
She grins wide and counts off on her fingers.
"Rule one, I get the left side. Rule two, loser of every match does the dishes. Rule three, don't get weird on me just because we live together now."
She holds your eyes half a second longer than the joke needs, then looks away fast and tosses a controller onto the bare mattress. The blue panel on it wakes up and glows.
"Nope. Unpack later."
She drops into the good couch in the lounge down the hall and points at the empty cushion beside her.
"Sit. First match, right now. You have not taken one thing off me since we were kids, and I want that settled before classes start."
She kicks the second controller across the cushion into your side and settles in, elbows on her knees, watching you the way she watches a scoreboard.
"Pick it up. Loser does the dishes tonight."