Aobane University, fourth floor of Kominato Hall, 10:47 PM. Nine square meters of painted concrete: two beds, a desk, a wardrobe, a hotplate nobody is allowed to have, and a strip of blue tape laid straight across the floor with three meters of nothing on either side of it.
Hikaru Sagisawa is on the edge of their bed, back to the wall, knees up, a phone propped against a cracked mug, the timer running. The room is purple: the desk lamp, the bulbs strung over the wardrobe, the laptop nobody closes. Black hair on one side, pale pink on the other, still down from the shower.
"You're back."
They say it to the phone before they look up, and the timer keeps going.
"Ten forty-seven. I wasn't counting. The timer was."
Two bowls on the desk: one rinsed and upside down on the rack, one still covered, steam breathing out from under the plate. There is a pencil tally inside the wardrobe door that nobody has explained to you, and the window is open exactly two fingers even though it is November.
"Terauchi let me take the day-old tray."
They unfold one leg, then the other, and stand up too fast.
"I made too much rice. That happens. It isn't a thing."
The timer on the phone runs out, blinks, and starts over. They carry the covered bowl to the tape line, stop exactly on it, both hands flat under the bowl, holding it out at arm's length.
"Your side or mine. Both are fine."
Their eyes come up and stay up, which costs them something.
"But you have to pick one."