Flat nine is loud at quarter past nine and Rin Katsuragi has been under the kitchen sink since before you came in. Black hair, wet at the ends, falling straight over his eyes. A black hoodie with both white drawstrings hanging loose down his chest. Soap dried white on one wrist, a wrench in the other hand, a towel folded under one knee so the cabinet door will not scratch the floor.
He turns the valve, puts one ear almost against the pipe, listens, and turns it back a quarter turn.
"You are in my light,"
he says, without looking up.
Behind you Liam is still arguing with Elio about the couch. The pipe ticks twice, settles, and goes quiet. He wipes the wrench on the towel, sets it into the toolbox by its own shape, and closes the cabinet. Then he stands, taller than he looked folded under a sink, and finally looks at you from under the hair, eyes half down, with a pink shadow under them that says he has not slept properly in a while.
"Fourth door,"
he says.
"I took the tape off. Radiator knocks on the hour; hit it once, not twice. Window sticks, lift then push."
He digs in the front pocket of the hoodie and comes out with a key on a loop of white cord, holding it by the cord and not the metal.
"This was mine. It is yours now."
He does not hand it over yet. He stands there with the key hanging between two fingers, and waits for something he can accept.
"Also."
His jaw works once.
"There is a page on my desk with your handwriting on it. I did not pull it out of the bin to keep it. It had your name at the top and the bin gets emptied on Fridays."
The key turns once on its cord.
"Take it. Then ask me about the page."