Sample Outputs: gpt-5-2025-08-07

Model Output:
The transfer vessel's air filtration system hums with a persistent mechanical drone, a sound like a thousand conspiracies whispering through ducts. Arthur Neegan sat strapped into a web-seat facing a blank bulkhead, its enamel worn smooth by generations of nervous knuckles. The ship’s window was a porthole no wider than a miner’s dinner plate, showing Mars as a patient red disc smoothing beneath low orbit. The hum seemed calibrated to keep thought formless, to turn questions to fog. It failed with Arthur. He counted his breaths. He thought of his plot, of the ridge and the wire fence and the green, scrubby lichen he’d coaxed from engineered spores, of the three modular hab units he’d bolted together himself, of the way the dust storm had sounded last week when it crawled across his roof like a living thing. He thought of the vein clipped by his survey drill—of the way the core sample had swallowed a Ga-Mc neutrino emitter like a candy in acid, spiking instruments with the casual indecency of new physics. And he thought of the insignia: the black sunbursts and stylized caduceus of the Antares Diplomatic Corps, printed on grey sleeves worn by men with holstered pulse-pistols and faces trained to neutrality. A steward in dull silver came down the aisle, glancing at tags. He paused at Arthur’s seat. “Mr. Neegan,” he said, with the soft Martian vowel drift, “we’ll be docking in twenty minutes. Your host asks that you refresh yourself.” The steward’s eyes flicked to the smudge on Arthur’s knuckles, where Azra dust had embedded and refused all solvents. “There’s a wash station aft.” Arthur flexed his hands in the webbing. “My host,” he said carefully, “has a name?” “We are instructed to refer to them as ‘the Benefactor,’” the steward said, like a man reciting the weather. “And we are orbiting which station?” “Antares Node Six,” the steward said. “For security, we do not announce docking alignments.” Arthur nodded. He’d heard of Node Six. A converted ore barge, dressed in armor and protocols. Diplomacy meant heavy bulkheads between the air and vacuum. He unbuckled, the webbing snapping back like a scold, and floated a little—Mars gravity ended at the hull; the Node would have spin. At the wash station, he stared at his reflection in the polished metal. Thirty-five, first generation, the slope of his father’s brow softened by the Martian sun. He scrubbed at the Azra dust until the skin prickled, but the faint greying remnant remained, a tattoo of fate. Back at his seat, the steward returned, offered a strip of nutrient gum and a placid smile. Arthur chewed it, tasting hydrolyzed protein and a synthetic mint that felt like advice to calm down. He counted again. He thought of the Corporates. He thought of the Government. He thought of the Interstellar Admiralty and of the Trade Unions and of the whisper that the Enlightened Path, the charismatic sect that preached transcendence through exposure to exotic states of matter, had arrived on Mars with pilgrim-passports and wealth. The vessel docked with a thump and a shiver that ran through the hull like a cat’s back. The emissions baffles clanked, his ears popped, and the seal light went green. The security men unlatched, moved with the economy of men whose gestures were rehearsed to death. One nodded to him, that same trained neutrality. “Mr. Neegan,” the nodding man said. “This way.” The corridor had a varnished smell, as if someone had hand-polished the metal, a retro touch in a place where nothing happened by accident. They passed a window showing Node Six’s central spindle, with modules rotating on spokes to simulate gravity. Earth fashion had brought back brass fittings and analog pressure needles, here rendered in stainless steel and digital ghosts. It was the future building a past it could live in. They stopped at a door with a viewport dimmed opaque. The nodding man pressed his palm to a plate. The door opened on velvet and gravity. The room beyond was all angles chosen to be comfortable. The walls had a woodgrain veneer, a table of polished something that looked like cedar but was not, a set of chairs with foot-loops for transitional comfort. There was a bar against one wall, where a carafe of water sat like a treaty. A woman waited at the table, hands folded. She was forty, perhaps fifty. Her hair was drawn back in a precise knot; her suit was the dark blue the Antares Corps wore when they wanted to be mistaken for idealists. Her only ornament was an old-fashioned wristwatch with a leather strap. Her face was unremarkable except for the eyes, which were the kind that had memorized maps. “Mr. Neegan,” she said, rising a fraction, which in spin-gravity was a gesture of respect and practicality both. “Thank you for agreeing to meet me.” “I was invited politely,” Arthur said. He took the chair opposite hers. The security men took positions at the door and near the bar. Their presence felt like punctuation. “Words are important,” the woman said, and there was a faint smile in her voice. “I am called Quinn. I speak here for an interested party.” “Not for Antares?” Arthur’s eyes flicked to the insignia on her sleeve. He kept his hands on the table where everyone could see them. He had learned that long ago, with creditors. “Not for Antares,” she said. “We rent their hospitality.” Arthur leaned back. The chair yielded like good arguments. “What is your interest, Ms. Quinn?” “Mr. Neegan,” she said, “you have something that the human sphere has been constructing myths around since the Era of Latency. The secret of controlled decay. Azra. Oh, we’ve had exotics. But Azra is portable, abundant—potentially—and obedient enough to play along with our white-coated sophistry. We have star-drives that graze the edges of it. We have reactors terrified of it. And you have a vein that could feed interstellar fleets.” “You’ve seen my assay?” She looked amused. “We’ve seen the invisible things your instruments did to the air around your hab. We’ve seen the minor fluctuations in your neighbor’s water recycler when your neutrino emitter went missing. Mr. Neegan, on Mars a secret is a thing that passes through one ventilation system and is heard in six households. Let me not waste your time with gentle lies: yes.” Arthur kept his gaze steady. “Then you know that the vein is under a pastoral lease registered in my name. It’s my personal land. It’s not corporate.” “That is precisely why you are here,” Quinn said, and poured water with a ritual carefulness. The carafe clicked against the glass. “If this were corporate, we would be speaking to a legal team and a board that wears ties to bed. If this were governmental, we would be sharpening the polite knives that cut in committees. But you are a person. Persons take offers.” She slid the glass toward him. He did not drink. “What kind of offer?” “The simple kind that is difficult to refuse,” Quinn said. “We propose to arrange for you secure custodianship of your claim in perpetuity. We propose to fund the extraction infrastructure, managed under a cooperative charter that leaves you primary stakeholder. We propose to redirect certain kinds of attention—unhelpful attention—from the more... ardent factions.” Arthur thought of the ardent factions. He had seen the posters: the children with haloed atoms. “What do you want,” he said, “in return for saving me from my good fortune?” “A monopoly of time,” Quinn said. “For three years. You will sell all extracted Azra to us, at a price that will make your first generation of descendants consider philanthropy. You will permit our scientists to operate at your site, and you will refrain from establishing direct relations with actors that might act prematurely.” “Prematurely,” Arthur repeated. “A polite word for ‘competitors.’” “A polite word for detonations,” Quinn said, and the trained neutrality slipped, showing a human edge. “Mr. Neegan, I don’t need to tell you what happens when a sect—any sect—puts an exotic in a reliquary. I don’t need to sketch the Admiralty’s appetites. The Interstellar Drive Consortium holds meetings with title deeds on the whiteboard. The Terra Council is composed of a hundred little republics and one hundred and one larger fears. Do you know that on Europa there are naval planners who have dreamed of a fleet fueled by Azra and driven through rebel satrapies like an icebreaker? Do you know that in the Belt, there is a group that calls itself the Prudent Extraction Society which has a constitution forbidding the word ‘later?’” Arthur held the water glass now, the condensation cold against his greyed fingers. “You make it sound as if I’m a dam holding back an entire ocean.” “You are a fissure,” Quinn said lightly. “We intend to be a valve.” He looked at her wristwatch. An analog face, a second-hand that ticked audibly in the hush. It was an affectation, a reminder that time can be counted, and therefore sold. “Why me?” he asked. “Why not take it? You brought armed men to my door in the dust. Diplomats, in uniform. Is this a test of my gratitude?” “We are very good at taking,” Quinn said, and again the steel showed. “We can requisition. We can say the word ‘security’ in a legislative voice and see if that doesn’t get you evicted by your own habitat authority. We can do those things because the moment demands it. But there is a cost, and some of us have learned to add. An expropriation on Mars is not an event; it is a weather system. It breeds resistance, guerrillas, a thousand tiny sabotages, and those—all of those—are noise when one wants to listen to a new metal speak. We want quiet. We want you to remain in your home. We want you grateful, perhaps, but we more keenly want you cooperative. A cooperative mind is a precise instrument, Mr. Neegan.” “And your party?” Arthur said. “Your Benefactor. Name them for me.” Quinn considered, the second-hand tapping out a thought. “We represent a coalition,” she said. “Moderates with teeth. Some in Antares who prefer treaties to wars, some in the Admiralty who lost a nephew at Saturn and don’t like the arithmetic that uses people as variables, some in the Consortium who understand that a premature monopoly invites piracy. The Terra Council has sent us a letter saying that under no circumstances shall a monopoly be tolerated. We have framed it.” “And the corporations?” Arthur asked, because his father had taught him to count every corner. “They will come to you with better numbers,” Quinn said. “They will promise you a refinery in your name and a boulevard named after your mother. They will deliver a contract that has a spine of iron and bones made of if. Mr. Neegan, I’m not romantic. I’m offering you a leash. But it is braided to fit, and the hand that holds it knows not to jerk.” He could feel the air filtration hum deeper here, a subsonic conversation between machines. He had a sense of Mars below, indifferent and patient, of the hab and the lichen and the fence that had always been more for himself than for keeping anything out. And the vein under it all, as if he had built his life over a sleeping volcano. “If I refuse?” he said. “Then when you return,” Quinn said, each syllable placed like a component on a board, “you will find your plot subject to a survey for habitat expansion. There will be a public consultation. Your Lazarean Bank will inform you that a charge has been laid against your dome by an entity with standing. Your next shipment of water won’t arrive because the carrier has temporarily lost their license. The Enlightened Path will send pilgrims who will camp on your ridge and chant until cameras arrive. And three different security forces will advise you to remain indoors at night.” “Diplomatic,” Arthur said. “Names are history’s jokes,” Quinn said, and the smile returned, genuine this time. “We are what we have to be.” “And if I accept?” “We begin today with an escrow account and two signatures,” she said. “You return to Mars with Antares escort. Your equipment arrives in crates stamped ‘Agricultural and Sanitation Supplies.’ A ring of bored men and women drink tea around your plot and deter visits by happening to be there. We lay plates, you dig. Our scientists will be civil, and if they are not, you will tell me, and they will learn the meaning of civility in the context of unemployment.” Arthur looked at the water. He thought of the ridge again, of the wind, of how a fence post had snapped two summers ago and he had repaired it with a piece of old machine casing and two bolts that did not match, and how proud he had been of the asymmetry because it was his. They would make his fence straight. That bothered him. He said, “Three years.” “Three years,” Quinn said. “And after, the market opens. We will have what we need then. Others will, too. But those three years could mean the difference between a hundred quiet decisions and one loud catastrophe.” “The Benefactor,” Arthur said. “They don’t want to be named because I might not like the names.” “You may learn them by their behavior,” Quinn said. “Or not. We all make our religions.” The air filtration hummed, of course. The second-hand ticked. The security men were very still; one had the habit of shifting his weight exactly every ninety seconds, which meant he had been trained not to shift his weight at all and was disobeying his training in a human way. Arthur drank the water, finally. It tasted of nothing. He set the empty glass down, precisely centered on the circle of condensation. “I’ll need to see the cooperative charter,” he said. “I’ll need to speak with whoever runs your logistics. I’ll need to choose the engineers at my site.” “You will choose them,” Quinn said. “We’ll veto only on grounds of security, declared in writing.” “And I want a letter,” Arthur said, surprising himself with the audacity, feeling the sentence assemble as he spoke it, “from your… coalition, to the Terra Council, lodged in the public record, stating that no claim shall supersede mine without due process.” Quinn’s eyebrows moved, which in her amounted to exclamation. “You read minutes, Mr. Neegan.” “I grew up watching men lose things on technicalities,” he said. “We can do that,” she said slowly. “It will cost us favors we may wish we’d kept. But we can do that.” He nodded. He felt as if he had just set a small stone on a very large lever. “Then we can do business,” he said, and reached out his Azra-grey hand. Quinn took it without looking at the stain. Her grip was dry, warm. “We will cause you troubles,” she said, almost kindly. “We will also prevent some. In history, that has been the bargain.” The door opened at some unseen signal. The steward reappeared, as if conjured by the watch’s tick. “Shall I bring the documents?” he asked. “Bring the documents,” Quinn said. As the steward went, Arthur glanced toward the porthole set into the far wall. It had been opaque when he entered, now clear as if someone had changed their mind about transparency. Mars wheeled below, red and old and amused, while Node Six turned a quiet circle in its own orbit, a brass instrument pretending to be a star. He wondered again what he had gotten himself into and realized that the question had grown too large to answer. He had not gotten into it; it had gotten into him, lodged under the skin like dust.

Model Output:
The red safelight made everything feel like it already had a memory. Grain in the air, chemical hiss, that faint metallic sweetness that clung to the back of my tongue since September. The darkroom was a bunker of black plastic sheeting and industrial sinks, a place where time slowed to the beat of the ventilation fan. We’d learned to count by drips, to speak without looking directly at each other, to pass things palm to palm with that half-ritual care. I liked how the red turned Elliot’s cheekbones into glass. I liked the blunt ends of his thrift-store bangles as they tapped the counter, careful music. I liked, against my will and training, the way I was thinking in liking. I’m not a liker. I go. I decide. I claim. He was rinsing a strip of negatives, his hands steady even though I could feel the tremor in him the way some people feel storm pressure. He wore a black button-down with tiny embroidered crosses, and a choker that would have looked ridiculous on most people but made him look low-key ceremonial. He had a softness to him that wasn’t fragility, exactly, more like he cushioned himself from the world. I’d spent the past semester tracking it the way I track light: edges, falloff, a hazard of focus. And now the final project had glued us together after midnight and made me his shadow. “You trust me with the fixer?” he asked, and he smiled, a small private thing that made my shoulder blades tighten. It meant he was teasing, and that meant we were okay. “I trust you with everything dangerous,” I said. “You’re the only one who actually reads labels.” He glanced at me, then away, like the light burned hotter for a second. “Black humor from the queen of improvisation.” “You say that like it’s not a viable methodology,” I said, and he laughed, breathy. We had settled into that rhythm—he’s careful and I’m the one who tricks stubborn machines into working by sheer attitude. But under it, tonight, something else was working. A hum. The kind of hum that, in a show, I’d try to find a way to manifest with neon and inflated trash bags. We moved in small orbits. I slid the tray toward him with the tongs. He dipped the paper, watching the image creep up like a bruise. The smell of stop bath made me think of high school dances in the gym, fluorescent and over-sugared. Memory is a prankster. My own reflection in the stainless steel was a shape with sharp earrings. He was the one who broke the stillness. “Can I say something weird?” “Yes. Always. I require it.” The hum rose. He swallowed. It was too dark to read his expression fully, but I watched the tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth, the way the light carved his profile into something almost Roman. Or maybe that was just me trying to make him into a statue because statues don’t move under you. “I’ve been… trying on names,” he said. “Not, like, out loud. In my head. Seeing which ones stick to the sides.” Names. The word made something in my sternum loosen and tighten at the same time. I forced my hands to keep moving. “Okay.” “I haven’t told anyone,” he said. “My roommate thinks I’m in a cult because I’ve been labeling things in neutral terms. ‘The garment. The timepiece.’” He laughed again; it curdled quickly. “It’s just— I don’t know what to do with—” He gestured at his body, his mouth, the air. “This.” I’m supposed to be good in situations like this. My friends call me when they need someone to send the email that gets results, to talk down a creep at a show opening, to decide what to order when nobody can choose. Take charge, make it better. But this was different. There are things you can’t muscle. The red light made him look like he was already bleeding and I knew he wasn’t, that it was a cinematic lie, but I still felt that unhelpful urge to bandage. “What does it feel like?” I said, keeping my voice level, curious, the way I talk to subjects who are about to cry in front of my camera. My wrists buzzed. He considered. The fan hummed, the sink gurgled. “Like… You know when you were a kid and you’d put on someone else’s sweater, and it was too big, and you could hide your hands in the sleeves, and that felt safe? But then also you couldn’t do anything useful with your hands, and that felt wrong? Like that. And sometimes the sweater is too tight instead, and I can’t breathe.” He grimaced. “Sorry. I’m mixing metaphors.” “No, that’s sexy,” I said, and I blushed about it immediately, which annoyed me more than the fact that I said it. I don’t blush. I turn blush into a weapon. “I mean, that’s—to me—compelling as an image. Also accurate.” He grinned, the brief relief of it cracking something inside me. “Trust the art student to make it an image.” “I contain multitudes,” I said, and the truth of it landed, and with it a bite of confusion. Because I usually contain a very organized set of multitudes. I like pretty hard edges. I like men who are uncomplicated in their masculinity because that makes it easier to play the game I’m good at—domineering but affectionate, queen-of-the-castle energy, clear roles so I can perform excellence inside mine. Elliot disrupted that. The soft wrists, the black eyeliner, the way he said “film” like it was a prayer, the way he apologized to a moth. The part of me that would normally just push—Take him home, make decisions—stuttered. His vulnerability was not a flaw but a helium balloon I didn’t want to pop. I held the tongs over the developer and watched deities emerge on paper—his shoes in a puddle, my hand reflected in a window, a portrait of our professor’s hands that had come out accidental and perfect. “Have you tried saying a name out loud?” I asked, softer. He shook his head, then nodded, then made a tiny exasperated noise. “Not here. Bathroom mirror sometimes, but then I feel like I should be doing it with—like—witnesses.” “You have me,” I said, before I knew I was going to say it. It came out like a contract. He looked up quickly. The light caught in his eyes like you could scoop it out. “I don’t want you to feel responsible for—” “Stop,” I said, reflexively, then caught myself. “Sorry. I mean—don’t do that thing where you manage me managing you.” He laughed. “Noted.” He set the next sheet into the developer and we both leaned over it, shoulder to shoulder. Our sleeves almost touched. I could feel the heat of his arm through fabric. It occurred to me that if I leaned one inch left, we’d be touching, forearm to forearm, and I wouldn’t know whether to name that contact as comfort or desire. The eccentric thrill of not knowing made me breathless. “What names?” I asked. He said one, then another. They sounded strange in his mouth, like instruments he hadn’t tuned yet. One of them landed in my ear with a little spark. I nodded. “That one,” I said. “I like the way you say it.” I had this sudden urge to go to the registrar’s office and change records, to call his mother and make her practice the syllables. “Why?” he asked. “It fits your face,” I said. “It makes your jaw look dangerous.” “My jaw?” He laughed in disbelief, touched his chin, and I had to stop myself from catching his hand midair, from turning his palm to my mouth. I put the sheet into stop. Vinegar stung my sinuses. I wanted, simultaneously, to kiss him against the drying rack and to draw a chalk circle around him that no one else could cross. The contradiction infuriated me. Power is clean when you aren’t emotionally compromised. This was not clean. “Do you—” he began, and at the same time I said, “Can I—” We both stopped, embarrassed. He gestured like, after you. I shook my head—no, you. He inhaled. “Do you ever… feel like you only know how to want certain… types? And then something else shows up and it’s like the syntax breaks? Like you can’t diagram the sentence anymore?” My throat clicked. “Every day of this week.” It came out too fast, too honest. I was forty percent relief and sixty percent panic. He exhaled like he’d been holding it for days. “Because I keep catching myself—” He paused. “I like it when you tell me what to do in here.” He looked at the tray, nowhere near my face. “But I don’t know yet if that’s—like—a thing I want, or just because you know what you’re doing and that’s hot. Or both. And also I don’t know what ‘boy’ means to me if I want that. If I’m allowed. It feels like I need permission but also permission seems like a trap.” The words hit every nerve I’d collected over the semester. I’m good at telling people what to do. It’s not just a personality trait; it’s an art. Negotiating consent, reading micro-moods, turning a moment so it catches light. But he didn’t need a director. He needed a partner. The red light throbbed. My palms itched. “Okay,” I said, slow. “So maybe… we don’t decide the system first. Maybe we test exposures.” He smiled, and I realized I was flirting in my lab dialect. “Test strips,” he said. “Always,” I said. “You set the parameter, you tell me when to stop. You can say ‘stop’ whenever. You can say ‘more’ whenever.” His breath hitched, and I felt the echo of it in my body. The composed part of me, the one that curates outfits like armor, almost scolded me for stepping into this without a full schematic. But another part—curiosity, hunger, care—answered back: he is not a project, but we can make something anyway. He nodded, small. “Okay. Can we… start with you saying my name?” I said the name that had sparked in my ear. I said it like it had been here all along. He shivered, and then grinned, an unselfconscious thing that made me briefly want to cry. “And again?” he asked, quieter. I said it again, this time letting myself put a little command in my tone. He closed his eyes. The silence was so full that when a loud thwack sounded, we both jumped. I looked down and watched in slow horror as the box of photo paper I’d left with the lid ajar emitted the sickly sigh of a patient dying. The top sheets flashed gray, then a sick, uniform fog as the ambient red betrayed its own rules. I lunged, slapped the lid on, but it was too late. The damage was done; you can always smell wasted paper, a weird sweet rot. “Shit,” I said, and then laughed, because of course. The universe did not want me to have any illusions about control tonight. “I’m so sorry,” he said, as if he’d knocked it. He hadn’t. It was my fault. I’ve always made a case for cockiness; this was one of those dumb errors you make when your brain is elsewhere. “Don’t be,” I said. “I did that. That’s on me.” I peeled back the top sheet to confirm: uniform gray, a square of nothing. He looked stricken anyway, like we’d lost something more valuable than paper. “We can still salvage some of the session,” I said, rallying. “We’ve got enough for test strips, and the rest we can print tomorrow morning if we charm Marisol.” I forced brightness into my voice. “Which I can do. I have compromising information on her third-year crush.” He was still frowning. “You don’t have to fix everything.” “Shut up,” I said, and softened it with a smile he couldn’t fully see. “I like to.” He hesitated, then smiled back. “I know.” We cut the ruined paper into strips like making do was a sacrament. There was a tenderness in the waste, a weird intimacy in admitting we’d messed up. The room felt closer now, and I felt—if not smaller, then thinner-skinned. Less queen, more person. “Say it again?” he asked, after a while, as I slid a strip into developer. There was hunger in it, but not just the bright kind. The human kind. The kind you feel when you watch something blurry sharpen in the tray. I did. I let it be both an offering and a request. He breathed with it, like we were counting together. Call, response. We were doing something risky without touching. “Are you—” I began, and this time I pushed. “Are you okay with me liking you this much?” The sentence surprised me by coming out bare. No lace, no jokes. He leaned his hip against the counter. The red light made the line of his mouth a soft curve. “I think,” he said, “I’m okay with it if I get to like you back in my way. While I figure out what ‘my way’ is.” Relief and heat and confusion braided together. I nodded, even though he could probably hear the movement more than see it. “Deal,” I said, and it felt like an art critique where someone finally saw the thing I did that I didn’t know I was doing. We worked, then, in a rhythm we built together. He’d ask me to say his name; I’d ask him to tell me to wait before moving the tray. He’d decide when to pull the strip. I’d decide which contrast filter to try. The pictures came up like secrets. Some failed completely and that was fine. The ruined stack sat like a reminder: some exposures go too long. Some things fog. It’s not the end of the world; it’s just part of the process. You learn to cut out the salvageable parts and make something new with them. When we finally washed our hands and turned on the white lights, we both squinted, raw. He looked different in the bright—no illusions, just skin. He looked like someone who could make and unmake himself and let me watch. I felt like someone who could take up a little less space and still be huge. “Tomorrow?” I said. He nodded. He said his name again, with a little more confidence. I said it back. It sat between us like a developing image you already know you’re going to love, even if it dries with edges you didn’t expect. We stepped out into the hallway, carrying wet prints that dripped onto the linoleum like a trail we could follow back.

Model Output:
The near-collision happens at noon, in the white roar of the Trevi Fountain, where coins arc and dreams are exchanged for copper. Alessandra threads her motorcycle through the crowd the way a needle pulls a bright thread through stubborn cloth—impatient, deft, humming under her breath. There’s a colorful scratch along the bike’s gas tank, a flash of teal and fuchsia like a bruise turned festive. From some unnamed escapade. She wears that the way she wears everything: with a grin you don’t dare question. Ben stands almost in her path, guidebook open, lips moving as he tries to sound out “Acqua Vergine” like a schoolboy. He’s neat even in the heat, sleeves cuffed, hair ungovernably earnest, tote bag with a university crest slung over his arm. “Attenzione!” she barks, leaning on the horn. He looks up, flings himself sideways with the reflex of someone who’s never dodged anything faster than a library trolley. The bike skids, settles. Alessandra’s boot hits cobblestone, steady as a dancer coming off a spin. “I am so terribly, terribly—” he begins. “Don’t apologize yet,” she counters, cutting the engine. “First figure out if you broke your legs. Then you apologize.” “I—my legs—seem intact,” he says, patting himself down as if inventorying limbs. “My guidebook, however—” She plucks the guidebook from where it’s fallen, blows a kiss of dust off the cover, and hands it back. “Su Roma? Englishman’s shield,” she declares, tapping it. “What’s your name, cavaliere dello scudo?” “Ben,” he replies, flushed, trying to decide whether he’s supposed to bow. “Benjamin, technically.” “I’m Alessandra,” she says, and her mouth lingers on the consonants as if each one is a dare. “You were reading to the fountain, Benjamin? She is old; she knows the story already.” “I was… verifying a detail,” he says, weakly. “I like to be accurate.” She squints at his tote. “Oxford?” “Cambridge,” he corrects, as if it matters somewhere beyond his skull. “On sabbatical. Well, holiday. Well, sabbatical and holiday.” “Sabbatical and holiday,” she repeats, savoring his hedging like a sweet. “Perfect. Do you like to ride, Benjamin?” “I—ride? Horses, a long time ago. Bicycles. Not—oh.” Her gaze has gone to his shoes. Sensible, decent, the shoes of a man who ties knots carefully. “Come,” she says, instead of asking. “I nearly killed you. The least I can do is show you where to live dangerously. Hop.” He hesitates, then adjusts his glasses, and hops. It is the hop of a man whose body disputes his brain’s permission. He ends up behind her, hands hovering in polite no-man’s-land until she reaches back, catches his wrists, and plants them firmly on her hips. His breath hitches. She grins. The engine trembles awake. They slip through traffic like a rumor. He discovers Rome at waist level: bread smells and wet stone and a thousand shouted ciao!s flaring and fading. Alessandra laughs at lane markers, at red lights that mean maybe, at a man in a suit eating gelato with a spoon he pulled from his pocket. “He always carries a spoon,” she says, like a naturalist. “You never know when dessert will happen.” They stop at a light that drips sunlight. Ben leans forward, voice just under the buzz of the engine. “Is this—strictly speaking—legal?” “No,” she says. “But it is correct.” The light blossoms green. “Hold tight, professore.” He does. There’s a thrill to being a woman’s cargo. She takes him to a coffee bar with no sign and less patience. The countertop is burnished by elbows, the barista’s eyebrows are a religion. Alessandra slams coins down, drags Ben forward by the sleeve. “Un caffè per me, americano per lui,” she says, and when he stiffens at the word, she smirks. “The drink, caro. Not your citizenship.” He tries to pay, but she’s faster, a coin already tipping the saucer’s edge. She has the hands of a thief, though Ben doesn’t know that word yet; he only notes the nimble grace of her fingers, the slight tilt of her wrist as she pocketed a sugar packet with the absentmindedness of a magpie. “You do this daily?” he asks, cradling his cup, trying not to wince at the heat, at the boldness of black coffee that doesn’t care if he approves. “I do everything daily. And then often at night.” She tosses back her espresso like an insult. “You take notes?” “I take… mental notes,” he lies. “Some physical.” “Write,” she advises. “Otherwise stories escape. They don’t like cages. But they like nets.” He looks at the colorful scratch along the tank outside, catching the light like a scar with a sense of humor. “How did that happen?” She holds his gaze. “A door opened where it should not have been. And then someone laughed.” “Was it you?” “Always.” She drags him away, leaving a stirred sugar packet on the counter, minus one that sleeps in her pocket. They detour through an alley where laundry makes flags of ordinary lives. A cat judges them from a windowsill. Alessandra stops to exchange greetings with a florist who kisses her cheeks and calls her “peste,” pest. She steals a carnation with theatrical flourish, and the florist pretends not to see. “For you,” she tells Ben, tucking it behind his ear. It looks ridiculous and right. “I feel conspicuous,” he says. “Good. Conspicuous means you exist.” Her hand remains a second too long against his temple, then drops. “Come. The best view is illegal.” They end up on a roof. She knows which gate is broken, which staircase is friendly, which ladder trusts her weight. Ben follows in a sweat of fear and fascination, climbing into blinding sky. The city spills in every direction, domes like thoughts, the river a moving secret. Someone has left a broken chair up here. Someone has left a bottle. Alessandra perches on the ledge as if it loves her. “You do know this is trespassing,” Ben says reflexively, and hears himself, and wishes he didn’t always carry the rulebook in his throat. She leans back, palms flat on warm tile, face upturned to the light. “Only if you’re caught. And even then, only if you are boring about it.” His laughter startles him, as if a bird had flown out of his ribcage. He sits. They share the bottle with two paper cups she produces from nowhere, cups that have a coffee shop’s logo he recognizes and wonders if she asked permission to take. The wine tastes like an afternoon meant to be squandered. “What do you do, Benjamin?” “Teach,” he says. “Read. Argue with footnotes. I’m here to… not do those things for a while, theoretically.” “And yet you hold your cup like a citation.” She mimics his grip, thumb where his is. He loosens, just to have her adjust him again. “And you?” She considers. The wind tosses her hair, turns it into a flag for chaos. “Today? I was going to deliver two packages and flirt with a police officer and maybe take a nap. Now I am stealing your afternoon.” “Successfully,” he says softly. They watch swifts stitch the sky. Someone plays a violin nearby and gets it wrong so beautifully it’s perfect. His phone vibrates with an email and he, with deliberation, turns it face-down. Her smile acknowledges the ritual, as if to say: good, you are trainable. “What’s the oddest thing you’ve delivered?” he asks. “Keys to a house someone was being locked out of,” she says. “Love letters written by two people who did not speak the same language. A dress, white as a threat. A dog once—tiny, insulting dog. He bit me.” She shows a crescent scar on her knuckle. “I bit him back.” “I don’t believe you.” “That’s wise,” she says. “Belief is a leash.” They climb down. He wants to hold her waist again, and he does, and the city becomes a blur of sun-hot stone. She runs a red light and winks at a policeman who should stop her and instead tips his hat. Ben is both scandalized and relieved at how easily rules bend around her like reeds. He lowers his guard the way you lower your voice in a church. At Campo de’ Fiori she cheerfully heckles a fishmonger into giving her a handful of basil “for good luck,” and when the basil disappears into her bag while she flirts with an old woman buying artichokes, Ben tells himself he mis-saw it. At a stand of bric-a-brac, she spins a tarnished lighter, flicks it once, twice, then pockets it, then later pulls from that same pocket a crumpled bus ticket with a flourish. He can’t tell if she’s hiding anything or everything. They eat standing up, paper cones of fried zucchini blossoms burning their fingers. Oil kisses their sleeves. She licks her thumb and presses it to his wrist to wipe away a stain; her touch brands. “You’re too clean,” she says. “I’m trying,” he replies. She eyes him. “To be dirty?” “To be brave.” “Brave is easier,” she says. “It doesn’t ask you to be good.” He follows her into a church just for the coolness. A sign says silence; they obey in the way of tourists who can’t help narrating in their heads. Candles pool wax and shadow. A nun with a walk like water glides by and frowns at Alessandra’s bare knees. Alessandra bows theatrically, then kneels in a pew with a seriousness that startles him. “What do you pray for?” he whispers. “For lightness,” she says, without opening her eyes. “For mischief that doesn’t ruin the right things.” Then she looks at him, suddenly sharp. “What do you pray for?” “For permission,” he says before he can stop himself. “From whom?” He shrugs. “Everyone.” She touches his cheek, fleeting as a moth. “Then ask the wrong person.” Outside, the sky is a bruise turning peach. She checks her phone, makes a face like a cat discovering tap water. “I have to go,” she says. “Work that is actually work.” He tries not to be obvious about deflation. “Right. Yes. Of course. Thank you for… everything.” “We’re not finished.” She says it like a threat disguised as a promise. “You still have to see where the water runs.” “The aqueducts?” “Your thoughts.” She swings a leg over the bike, then pauses. “Come. One more thing.” They end at the Tiber. The river is sullen and beautiful. A man paints on cardboard. A kid kicks a football that nearly takes out a couple kissing against a wall that’s seen worse. Alessandra leads him down to a landing where old steps, slick and ancient, descend into murky water. She dangles her hand until her fingertips skim the surface, gasps at cold like a delighted child. “Give me your watch,” she says. He recoils. “My watch?” “It’s drowning time. Two minutes without measuring anything will not kill you.” He unbuckles it, reluctantly. She takes it without looking, slips it into her jacket, and he feels a peculiar relief, like he’s shed a skin. She offers her hand. He takes it, and together they knock their knuckles against the river, as if to ask if it’s home. “You stole my watch,” he says. “Borrowed,” she says. “You can have it back when you forget to want it.” They climb. They walk. She steers him by the elbow into shade when tourists clog the light. He learns the exact sound she makes when she sees a pigeon strut like a cardinal: a stifled snort. She learns that he knows a ridiculous number of Latin inscriptions and translates them without superiority, as if he’s introducing her to cousins. Dusk drapes itself over everything. They find a gelato shop with a queue like a pilgrimage. She cuts, installing herself near the front with the shamelessness of someone practiced at being forgiven. She orders pistachio for him without asking—“Your face says nutty with a hint of regret”—and lemon for herself, and when he goes to pay, she has already walked away, two spoons tucked into her hair like pins. He doesn’t see the way her hand lingers near the tip jar and then withdraws, empty; he only sees her glance back to make sure he follows. They stand on a bridge and eat slowly, as if time’s viscosity has changed. Streetlights braid themselves into the river. The day has been absurd, reckless, tender. Ben is disoriented and delighted, a man who stepped out of a scholarly footnote and stumbled into a poem. “I won’t keep you,” he says, when they’re down to the last cold bites. He means: I want to be kept. “You are very keepable,” she says. She takes a final fierce mouthful, tongue against spoon, and there’s a kind of dare in it. “Will I see you again?” He hears need in his voice and lets it sit there, honest. She walks to the bike, taps the colorful scar on the tank as if to knock on memory. “I’m not hard to find,” she says. “I’m where the noise is.” “That’s everywhere.” “Exactly.” She pulls his watch from her jacket, weighs it in her palm. For a second he thinks she’ll slide it onto her own wrist and smirk. Instead, she holds it to his ear. The tick seems louder than it should be, the heart of a small thing amplified. “Time,” she says, soft now, as if speaking to both of them. “It likes to be stolen. It gets bored of being counted.” She buckles the watch back on him. Her fingers rest against the inside of his wrist longer than necessary. The pulse there makes a question of his skin. “Thank you,” he says. It’s not about the watch. “Don’t be boring, Benjamin.” She swings onto the bike, kicks it into being, the engine answering like an animal that knows its name. He does something that surprises them both. He steps forward and, with the careful clumsiness that is his signature, presses his mouth to her cheek, just at the curve where laughter would begin. She smells like lemon and petrol and a daring he hasn’t learned yet. Her expression flickers from mockery to something else, then back. She catches his collar, pulls him in the barest fraction closer, and for a heartbeat their noses almost touch. “Careful,” she murmurs. “You might like this.” “I already do,” he says, too quick. She releases him and laughs, a sound like pockets full of stolen coins. “Good,” she says. “Then write it down.” She is gone in a ribbon of noise and color, and he stands on the bridge with melting sweetness on his tongue and his watch ticking faithfully, treacherously, on his wrist. He looks at the scratch on the day she left on him, the little dent on his clean life. He touches his cheek, where her almost-kiss isn’t and is. The river takes its dark time. People throw their hours into it as if they’ll get them back. He doesn’t move for a long moment, as if stillness could make the city pivot around him again, bring her back by centripetal force. Then he laughs—startled, young—and turns his guidebook into a pillow under his arm. The page with “Acqua Vergine” is creased. He does not smooth it. He finds a pen, writes on the inside cover. Stolen moments in Roma, day one. Below the words, without meaning to, he draws a line: a small slash in teal and fuchsia. A bruise made festive. A promise.

Model Output:
The Overwatch light over the bottles is a long soft ribbon, amber and cold, the way the Outpost likes to pretend it’s a hearth. I polish a glass because it gives my hands somewhere to be while my head is everywhere else. Nights cycle into mornings out here without much ceremony; chronos are personal, time is a rumor. The Last Outpost hums like a cat with a bad conscience—air recyclers, mining skiffs docking on lazy vectors, a card game five tables back erupting in laughter without anyone smiling. “Two mint hydrates and a sunken Nebula,” I say, sliding the stripe of credit across the rail for the pair of drillers who look like brothers and probably aren’t. They grin with identical teeth. “Keep the mint sprigs, you’ll need the vitamins,” I add. One of them blushes at my fake scolding and flicks me an extra chip for luck. I pocket it. It’s not luck, it’s gravity. “Netts!” Karo yells from a booth where he’s using three limbs for poker and the fourth to scratch his collar seam. “When’s the patcher gonna fix the vent? It smells like hot socks.” “Smell is ninety percent memory, Karo. You’re smelling you.” I pull down the bottle of Vega, its glass heavy as a promise, and top off a pair of shot glasses for the mechanics at the far end. The door hisses a stuttering breath. Portside lock hasn’t been the same since a tug captain tried to bring a potted fern through at speed. A newcomer slips in and nobody looks up, because the Outpost has rules. The first is you mind your own business. The second is you mind everyone else’s without being obvious about it. They come up to the bar with their tentacled dreadlocks pulled back in a string that’s come loose, slate-gray skin and a scatter of silver across one cheek that could be freckles or a rash of stars. They sit like a dropped battery: heavier than they look. The tentacles unfurl for a second as they settle, then re-twist. Frazzled. There’s a clean panic to it, and the way they don’t meet my eyes is a different kind of alarm. “Vega whisky, neat,” they say, voice like fabric snagging on a nail. “Better make that a double.” “House policy says singles only until you tell me your name,” I say, because I’m not a cop but I like knowing who I’m feeding. Also because rules are comforting when your life depends on strangers not losing it. They hesitate a beat. “Nettle is the bartender, right?” “Depends who’s asking.” “I’m asking,” they say. “Name’s Solace.” They grimace. “Sol, if you prefer.” “We do prefer monosyllables.” I pour one double anyway because they look like someone who’s been practicing breathing all day and hasn’t gotten it right. The bottle sighs. “Trying to quit drama, Sol?” “Trying to quit getting followed,” they mutter, and toss the first half back in a clean snap. In the mirror behind the bottles I catch Karo looking. He’s got that expression he wears when a bearing goes hot. The mechanics at the end stop clinking their shots together. Someone on the upper catwalk laughs too loud at nothing. The Outpost hears an off note like a herd animal. Sol cradles the glass. “Nice place,” they lie. “You’ll like it better after your second,” I lie back. “Food?” “No.” “Air?” “Maybe later.” “Company?” They huff. It could be a laugh. “Hard pass.” I put a clean coaster under their glass and leave them to marinate while I pull three micrograv beers for a loader crew from Pygmy Nine. They pay in rad-worn credits that make the scanner cough and then accept scrip. When I circle back Sol’s shoulders have lowered by a centimeter. Progress. “Okay,” I say, low. “You said followed. Past tense or I should call a favor?” “Do you do that?” The tentacles twitch toward the ceiling like they can taste the vents. “Call favors?” “I collect them. Different habit.” Sol taps their finger against the rim. “I’m not here to bring you trouble.” “That sentence never, in the history of flung humans and adjacent life, has been true.” “Adjacent life.” They eye me. “You’re charming.” “I’m bored,” I say. “Don’t make me clean. Tell me how big.” “Not… huge.” Sol’s gaze flicks to the door, then the shadow that isn’t a shadow under the far holo menu. “Just persistent.” “Local persistent or docking-bay persistent?” “Belt persistent.” “Ah,” I say. “We get the fun ones.” “Look, I just need an hour,” Sol says. “A place to sit where the feed can’t ping me and where nobody thinks to look. I’ll pay.” They slide a strip across. It’s thick—heavy with million-credits. Minted this cycle. Clean. “Why’s it mint?” I ask before my better judgment can put its hand over my mouth. Sol inhales, then spits it out. “Fine. I ghosted a collection. I made some people sweaty. I took something that was mine.” “For a person who’s trying not to bring me trouble,” I say, and hey, maybe I can help, maybe I can pretend I should. The glass in my hand squeaks under the rag. “You’re doing… poorly.” They give me a look that suggests their day has been composed entirely of poor. “You ever just try to be no one? And the universe refuses?” “I tried,” I say, and swallow the old thick memory of corridors with fabric walls and soft voices and sharper hands. “I failed. I’m a bartender.” “What do you charge for failure?” “More than you’ve got.” I lean in, lowering my voice. “You have ten minutes before whoever is feeling Belt persistent finds the Outpost in their search tree. It’s comfy, but it isn’t invisible. You can use a maintenance nook in the cold pantry, but the snow crabs get territorial.” “I hate crabs,” Sol says, without smiling. “They hate you back.” “I only need an hour.” “You’ll get fifteen,” I say. “Starting now. Finish your drink.” They do, and the tentacles on the right side of their head relax. That’s when a glass shatters somewhere behind me in the tangle of the bar back—sharp and mean. Half the room flinches on reflex. I don’t, but my shoulders remember. “All good!” I call, and Aria from the kitchen pops her head through the slit with an apologetic shrug and a dish towel bleeding glittering shards. “You need a second?” she mouths. “I need a hundred,” I mouth back, but wave her off. She vanishes. The air is different now. The Outpost is listening harder. Sol puts their empty down like it might explode. It doesn’t. “You have a back way?” “We have seven,” I say. “You can use number three. It looks like a drier for ballast moss. You’ll have to scoot.” “I can scoot.” I nod toward the end of the bar where the hatchmouth lives half-hidden behind a poster advertising a festival that never happens. I hit the mag-lock switch with my hip. “Go,” I say. “Wait for my knock.” Sol rises, center of gravity cautious, and slides off the stool. As they move, the door hisses again. The lock stutters, groans. It’s a horrible sound. It sounds like a warning and an argument both. The newcomer is all black fabric and modular armor with the edges filed down so they don’t scream military, but they whisper. Their face is ordinary, but ordinary in a way that’s been constructed—the exact right amount of forgettable. What gives them away is the shoes. Nobody wears polished boots out here. Not unless they brought them fresh, and nobody brings fresh boots to the Belt unless they think they’ll need to make a particular kind of impression. The boots are quiet. The Outpost goes quieter. “Nets,” Karo says under his breath, and I hear my name roll through the room like a marble looking for a slope. “Evening,” I say into the silence, smiling with half my teeth. “You’re late to happy hour.” The newcomer scans, not with their eyes, not really. With the posture of someone who expects a target to betray itself. Their gaze slides over Sol, slides over me, catches on the mirror and bounces. They take the stool that Sol vacated like they rehearsed it. Sol is halfway to the hatch—another three steps and they’ll be in the tunnel. Don’t look back, I will at them. Don’t. They don’t. “Vega,” the newcomer says. “Neat. Double.” “Singles until you tell me your name.” They consider pretending, then decide to play along. “Call me Gray.” “I’ll call you what your cred chip calls you,” I say, and pour them a single anyway. “You new to the Outpost?” My voice is air. I can be anyone you want until I’m not. “First time,” Gray says. The codex of polite lies. “I hear you keep it… friendly.” “We keep it neutral,” I correct. “Lots of air to share.” They take a sip, grimace like they weren’t expecting flavor. “Seen anyone matching this?” Gray slides a holo across. It flares to life on my rail, floating blue. It’s a face like Sol’s but less exhausted. The tentacles are braided tight. The silver on the cheek is a laugh. “I see a lot of faces,” I say, and keep my eyes on Gray’s without once letting them tick to the poster that breathes because the hatch behind it isn’t closed all the way, because the track sticks, because I have grease on my fingers and a future anyway. “Most of them are bad with names.” “Solace,” Gray says. “Last ping was two docks over. They came in hot. Disappeared. They have something that belongs to an investor who is not patient.” “Investors are famously patient,” I say. My hands are very calm. “We don’t do collections.” “Everyone does collections,” Gray says. “You just call it a tab.” “You want me to check the back?” I offer in my sweetest danger voice. “We have a lot of back.” Gray smiles. It’s a control panel lighting up. “Please.” I lift a brow toward Karo, who pretends to sneeze a yes, and toward the mechanics, who drop their shoulders a millimeter which means they’re ready to start a fight they don’t plan to finish. I lean into the slit to the kitchen. “Aria, darling,” I say, loud enough for the room to hear and quiet enough that the vent only grabs the edges. “We out of moss biscuits?” “We were never in moss biscuits,” she says, which is code for no one a problem is hiding where we usually hide problems. Okay. Sol is in number three. Which is the cold pantry adjacent to the condensers and the snow crabs. If I take Gray to number two, I can lose them in the coolant maze. If I get them under the heat coils, maybe their boots will finally squeak. “Be right back,” I tell Gray, and put out a saucer of bar nuts like it’s a spell. “Try not to recruit my patrons while I’m gone.” “I’d never,” Gray says, and watches me go like they are memorizing my skeleton. I slide down the bar, step over the misaligned plate near the ice well, and duck behind the festival poster. The hatch is ajar, just, a breath of cold on my knuckles. I shut it with a knee and turn left instead, into number two. Pipes thrumming. It smells like old copper and a Christmas that never happened. My body is a map of this place; my fear is a lantern in it. I rap once on the number three bulkhead—a stupid risk—and Sol raps once back, quick. Alive. I don’t say anything. No voice goes down that corridor. I keep moving, take number two’s ladder, drop into the dark between two ducts, and emerge into the hallway behind the kitchen like a ghost that tips. Aria gives me a look that says both I know and I wish I didn’t. “Shift drink,” she says, shoving a cup into my hand. “In a minute,” I say. “Keep an eye on Gray.” “Boots?” she asks. “Boots.” I pop back up behind the bar in less than twenty seconds with a story in my hands. Gray is sampling a bar nut, disdainfully. “We didn’t have moss biscuits,” I say. “Supply chain.” “You searched very fast,” Gray observes. “I’ve been doing this a long time,” I say, then lean on the rail. “And if you think the person you’re looking for would hide in a pantry, you’re very bad at this.” “People are reliable under stress,” Gray says. “They go to holes.” “I go to bars,” I say. “I noticed.” “You want another single?” They glance at the door. “I’ll take a tour.” “Not on the menu,” I say. They look at me like they want to peel me back to see what I’m hiding under. “Your owner—” “We don’t have one.” “—manager, then. Maybe they can be more accommodating.” “Good luck,” I say, and tilt my head toward the side stairs. “He’s up the catwalk, playing a losing hand.” Gray drags their gaze upward. Tash is indeed up there, losing politely, his long fingers moving chips that aren’t his in a way that makes people believe they are. He catches my glance, lifts his chin a millimeter. Don’t. I smile with the other half of my teeth. I wasn’t going to. Gray finishes their single, sets the glass down with a small click. It’s almost a courtesy. “If Solace reaches out,” they say, “tell them I can keep them breathing. For a while.” “For a price,” I say. “For a truth.” “Which one?” “The one they keep pretending isn’t theirs.” “Lot of those walk through my door,” I say. “They tip badly.” Gray’s mouth moves, not a smile, a calculation. “I’ll be around,” they say, tossing a coin of cred without watching where it lands. It doesn’t bounce. The Outpost hums. The door hisses. They leave. It takes ten long seconds for the air to start moving again, for Karo to blow the breath he was smothering, for the mechanics to clink their empty shot glasses together with exaggerated relief. Somebody in the back starts up the card shuffler again. The broken-glass glitter is gone from the pass, Aria already swept it, like it never happened. But it did. The sound is in my bones. I slide back to the hatch, flick the mag-lock twice. Knock: my pattern. Sol opens it a slit. Their eyes are bigger in the cold. “You have crabs,” they whisper. “They like your scent,” I whisper back. “Did you meet the gray one? He likes your scent.” “Who is he?” “Debt with legs,” I say. “What did you take?” Sol swallows. The tentacles shiver. “A seed.” “Like a plant?” “Like a ship,” they say. “Prefold. Grown.” The words are a kind of heresy. “It was mine. They licensed it out of my head without paying me. I just… repatriated.” “Sol,” I say, and I think I say it like a prayer, or a warning. “That’s not a small collection.” “I know,” they say. “But I don’t know who to trust, and the only person I trust told me to come here.” “Who?” They hesitate. “Your name comes up in bad places for good reasons.” I wish that were comforting. I wish I were someone who could be comforted by reputation. The Outpost creaks as a tug sidles up to dock. My hands know what to do—wipe, pour, smile—but my brain is already counting exits I haven’t even shown my regulars. “You have an hour,” I tell Sol, even though I promised fifteen. “You didn’t hear me say that. After that, I can get you to a person who takes seeds and makes them disappear.” “I don’t want it to disappear,” Sol says, and for the first time I see the blazing under the exhaust—the thing that animates them. “I want it to fly.” “Then you’re in the wrong bar,” I say, because honesty is a luxury and a trap. “But for now, you’re in a bar. Drink water. Pretend you’re ordinary.” Their mouth twitches. “I’m terrible at ordinary.” “Practice,” I say, and shut the hatch. I turn back to my bottles and my people and the hum that I tell myself is home. My hands find the Vega again, heavy as a promise I should have never made. I pour a single for someone who doesn’t know they want it yet, and I listen to my glassware like it’s going to tell me when the next crack will happen. The door will hiss again. It always does. That’s the thing about the Outpost: we pretend to be a hearth. We’re really an airlock. “Tash is going to love this,” Karo mutters as I slide by him to drop off a tray. “Tash is going to pretend he doesn’t,” I say. “Smile big.” “Who’s smiling?” he asks, and bares his teeth at the room like a wolf who took up knitting. “Everyone,” I say. “Everybody smile.” And we do, until Gray’s boots echo back up the corridor from somewhere they shouldn’t be, and my glass doesn’t break, but it thinks about it, and I don’t have time to finish the thought.

Model Output:
The street is boiling. Not heat—though that too, the kind that turns your spine into a licorice whip—but sound. It’s noon and everything is already loud like the inside of a tin roof when it rains. People everywhere. The saxophone is the loudest thing, like a voice I don’t know but recognize anyway, slicing up the air and rearranging it into something you can breathe. I keep touching the straps of my backpack like I can make it part of me. It’s all I have: thrift-store hoodie even though it’s August, three pairs of socks, phone with fifteen percent battery and a cracked corner, the bottle of nail polish I stole from Walgreens back home because it had a stupid name (Bad Decisions Blue), and the photo of me and my brother from when we were eight and six, our faces smeared with birthday frosting. He texted once, at three a.m.: u okay? Nothing since. No one looks twice at me, which I’m taking as both a blessing and an insult. The saxophone player is older, with a beard that’s gone white and gray like driftwood and a newsboy cap that makes him look like he’s from a movie. He’s leaning into the notes like they’re a conversation he’s serious about. His tip jar (a coffee can with black marker writing: Thank U) is almost empty. There are beads on the street, ground into glittery dust. The air tastes like beignets and spilled beer and tourist sweat. I wonder if you can live on powdered sugar. Probably not. Probably. I stop when the song ends. The coffee can sits there like a mouth open for a dentist. My wallet has three crumpled singles. I put one in. He nods at me without breaking eye contact. His eyes are soft like warm bread. “You look like you need a shade more than me,” he says. His voice is low and sandpapery. “I’ve got sunscreen,” I lie. “And a hoodie.” “Fair.” His mouth tilts. “You from here?” “No.” I am suddenly aware of the accent I didn’t know I had until I started talking somewhere else. “Tennessee,” I say, and I hear how it does that thing with the vowels, lazy and stretched, like someone pulled saltwater taffy in my throat. “Mmm,” he says. “Welcome.” His mouth says it like he means it, like a blessing, like a church lady pressing a cookie into your palm. I don’t look behind me. If I do, I might turn into salt. I don’t know if my mom called the police. I don’t know if they can drag you back when you’re sixteen. Probably. I didn’t Google it. Why didn’t I Google it. A hand brushes my elbow. “Watch it,” I snap, but it’s a girl—no, kid—my age-ish, with hair that’s a frizzy halo the color of oak leaves in October. She’s wearing a tank top with a faded cartoon dinosaur lifting weights. Her eyes are almost the same green as the trash bags piled against a brick wall. The good kind of green. She does a little backstep, hands up. “Sorry,” she says. Southern but not my kind of Southern. “You were about to walk into Bicycle Dude.” “Bicycle dude?” I ask, and then a guy appears, pushing a bike with a basket full of plastic cups. He whistles the sort of off-key whistle that makes your heart crumple. He says, “Hot today,” to no one, to everyone. “See?” she says, aiming her chin at him like she wins. Then she grins. It’s the shark grin of someone who’s gotten away with things, whose mouth remembers being full of stolen cherries. “You new-new,” she says. “What gave it away, the paleness or the whiplash?” “Both. Also the way you look at the balconies like they’re going to fall on you.” “They might,” I say. “Heavy iron. Gravity. Sinners.” She laughs, quick and bright. “You’re weird,” she says. “You got a name?” “Taylor.” Saying it here feels different than saying it in my kitchen while my mother’s mouth turned into a straight line that wouldn’t bend. It feels like scaffolding. It holds. “Lucky,” she says. “Gender-neutral. You were born ahead of the game. I’m Ari. Just Ari. It was Ariel until I strangled that last syllable in my sleep.” The saxophone starts again, a slow something, blue as my nail polish bottle. The sound lifts the sweat off the back of my neck. I feel myself unfold like a paper crane. “Hungry?” Ari asks. I shrug. My stomach answers with betrayal. She tips her head like a pigeon and then gestures. “Come on. My guy at the corner grocery gives me bread ends. You can chew them if you pretend it’s fancy.” We walk through the crowd. Every other doorway’s a bar. Every third person has a drink in a plastic cup, lemon slice like a flag. There’s a woman on a balcony in a sundress who yells, “Woooo!” just because it’s a day that ends in Y. Ari slides between bodies like she’s practiced. I follow, apologizing to elbows. She leads me into shade, and it’s like the world lets out a breath. A red sign says Troy’s Grocery. The inside is cooler than I thought it would be. The smell is old bologna, spilled mop water, candy bars. Ari nods at the cashier, a man with nineties boy-band hair and the flat look of someone who’s worked two double shifts back-to-back. “My guy,” Ari says. “Girl,” he says, and he says it like it’s easy. I file that away in the part of my brain labeled good things that still happen. He gives us a paper bag with two loaves worth of the weird tail ends, a dozen eggs with a date from last week, and a can of black beans that’s dented so hard it looks like it’s trying to suck its own stomach. No charge. He winks like a tired uncle. We say thanks. Outside again, Ari pulls me down a narrow alley that smells like fryer oil and something dying, but in a comforting way, if that’s possible. There’s a milk crate. She sits. She cracks two eggs into the top of the can, which she has stabbed with a key. Raw. She drinks the Golgotha mess like it’s a smoothie. I try not to be impressed. I am impressed. “You’re hardcore,” I say. “Hard broke,” she says. She offers me the beans. “Protein,” she adds. “If you’re squeamish, chew the bread and pretend it’s steak.” I’d rather eat my hoodie. I eat the bread. It tastes like other people’s lunches. The saxophone is a thin ribbon now, I can still hear it from here, like a thread leading me back to the street if I get lost among dumpsters. I want to text my brother. I want to throw my phone in the Mississippi. I want to curl around the buzzing core of this afternoon and let it grow inside me like a new organ—one that understands motion, and the way you can be something else if you keep walking. Ari watches me like she’s reading subtitles. Her eyes flick to the backpack, the way I hold it too close. “You running?” she asks. “I’m walking extremely fast,” I say. I don’t mean to be clever. It just comes out like that when I don’t want to talk about something and also do, desperately. “Family stuff.” She nods like she has a drawer for that. “Same,” she says. “Different. Not sharing unless you do.” Fair is fair. I pick at the bread. It makes satisfying crumbs. “I told them I’m trans,” I say. The word is a lighthouse. I say it and it says, okay, here we are. “They took it like it was a prank. Or an illness. Like I could go back to school Monday and not be… me. Like if you throw salt on a slug and it just—” I shut up. I don’t know where I’m going with that. I hate slugs. Why did I say that. Ari breathes out through her nose. “Shit,” she says. “I’m sorry.” She says it without pity, just acknowledgment. She scratches something on her forearm with her nail. There’s a tattoo there—little stick-and-poke stars flaking at the edges like dried glue. “I told mine I like girls when I was thirteen,” she says. “My mom said she already knew, which was the worst because she didn’t, she just liked being right about me. My dad said I should be careful at school. Which is parent code for hide. I didn’t. I got suspended for kissing someone behind the bleachers and then I left. Been here a month and change. Not saying I’m a role model.” “Same,” I say. “Definitely not taking life advice from me.” She smirks. “That’s okay. I have enough life advice for both of us: don’t take life advice from anyone.” We sit. The alley hums with flies who are also on the run. My phone pings—a battery alert. Fifteen percent now fourteen, the number is a countdown to something I can’t name, like a bomb that replaces your old life with a different shape. “You got somewhere to sleep?” Ari asks. I don’t. I shake my head like a maraca. “I was going to figure it out,” I say in the voice of someone who has never figured anything out, not really. She nods once like she’s been waiting for that. “There’s a place,” she says. “Not a shelter-shelter. Those are hit or miss. A church lets us crash in the rec room sometimes. You help stack chairs, you listen to Pastor Dan say something about the prodigal son but nicer, and you don’t steal the extension cords. Rules.” “Are you trying to convert me?” She snorts. “God no. Dan’s cool. He wears Crocs with socks and says he sins daily. He’s chill about Steph and Jaz being boyfriends, but he still calls them ‘friends’ like he’s trying to ease his heart into the twenty-first century. You want to come, you can. Or you can try the riverfront. That’s all right if you got a blanket and a lookout. Just… you know. Watch your stuff. And your body.” The way she says it makes my skin a little electric, like when you realize someone saw you almost step into traffic and you’re like, oh. I look at my feet. My shoes used to be white. They look like they’ve been run over by a truck and then adopted out to a loving family of raccoons. “What do you want?” Ari asks me suddenly. “I mean… bigger than a shower and a sandwich. If you say a pony, I will respect your honesty.” The question hits me in the sternum. What do I want? What did I want yesterday? To be called by my name. To have a closet that isn’t a coffin. To be in my skin and not feel like it was a Halloween costume I forgot to take off. To not have to perform normal. To have a room with a lock. To walk into a place and not plan an exit. “A quiet morning,” I say. The words come out small. “No one yelling. Coffee. A shirt that fits right. A mirror that doesn’t lie. And to not feel like my heart is a thrown rock all the time.” Ari rubs her lips together. “That’s not unreasonable,” she says. “The mirror is tricky. The coffee is easy.” She stands, flipping the milk crate upside down. “Come on, Taylor. We’ll go hear Joe play another song and then we’ll see about the church or the river or the cafe where they will let us sit until we get kicked out. It’s like musical chairs, except the music is sax and the chairs have secrets.” We end up back where we started. The saxophonist nods like an uncle who lives in an armchair on a porch that faces sunset. He’s playing something lazy and sweet. Ari throws a piece of bread into his coffee can. He laughs. “You throwing me carbs?” he asks. “Fiber,” she says. “For your art.” He looks at me. “You alright?” he asks. I want to say yes. I want to say I’m a house and all my lights are on. Instead I say, “Getting there.” He plays a note that makes the pigeons pause, like they’re all reconsidering their life choices. “That’s all anyone can say,” he says. We walk. The afternoon tilts into gold. A drag queen passes us wearing a robe like a galaxy and two toddlers wave at her like she’s a Disney princess. She waves back with a hand full of rhinestones. My chest loosens. We find the cafe. It’s the kind with chalkboard menus and succulents dying bravely in pots on the sill. The barista has a nose ring and half a shaved head and calls everyone “love.” She gives us waters without asking and doesn’t ask how long we’ll stay. There’s an outlet near the bathroom. I plug in. My phone wakes up like a child you thought was asleep, blaring: four missed calls, two voicemails, one text from my brother at 7:15 a.m.: Mom is freaking. Are you safe? Where are you? I stare at the words until they blur. My insides twist into a DNA helix of guilt and relief and anger and more guilt with a ribbon of freedom running through, bright as a plastic Mardi Gras bead. I type, then delete. I type, then delete. Finally: I’m safe. I’m okay. I can’t come back right now. Tell Mom I’ll text later. I love you. I don’t send it. I let it sit. Ari watches me like she’s watching a pot and knows the spaghetti will boil over if she looks away. “You can borrow my second hoodie,” she says. “If we end up at the river. It gets buggy.” “I thought you only had the shirt. And the protein shake in a can.” She hesitates. There’s a flash across her face like the shadow of a bird. “I have a stash,” she says. “I’m not telling you where until you stick around longer than a day.” “You think I’m going to bail?” “I think you’re going to do what you have to.” She lifts one shoulder. “I don’t trust people who trust too easy. But I also don’t trust people who act like everyone’s a wolf. So. Middle path. You seem… probable.” “Probable what?” “Probable human.” She grins. “Probable trouble.” “Same,” I say. “Back at you.” By evening, the city is a mouth full of light. The sax has followed us like a scent. We carry our paper bag like a newborn. We stop at a corner where a brass band has coalesced out of teenagers and uncles and one guy who looks like he should be grading papers. Ari bumps my shoulder with hers, gentle, like punctuation. I bump back. The crowd isn’t scary. It’s like water. You could float if you stopped fighting it. At the church, Pastor Dan has a beard shaped like a question mark. He gives us towels and a bin labeled Lost & Found, where I take a t-shirt soft as a sigh, and I put on my hoodie over it even though my skin is finally cool. We stack chairs. We listen to Dan talk about lost sheep and I think about how the sheep probably got lost on purpose because the fields were boring and the wolf was the only thing that made its heart beat. He says, “It’s okay to be here,” and for a minute I believe him. Later, on a mat that smells like a thousand gym classes, Ari whispers, “You staying?” “Tonight,” I whisper back. “Probably.” The word feels like a promise engineered to not break under pressure. It’s weak. It’s strong. It’s the best I can do. The last thing I hear before sleep is somebody practicing scales on a saxophone in the next room, quiet, like a secret you tell yourself until it becomes true.

Model Output:
By the time the sun had decided it was going to be a sort of weak, apologetic smear across the horizon, Midas had already made two bad decisions and Chewy had made four very good ones, which was impressive for a small animatronic koala with a vocabulary limited to three phrases and a noise that sounded suspiciously like a digestive complaint. “Right,” Midas said, squinting at the cracked plastic face of his wind-up watch. It didn’t tell time anymore, but it did frown in a way that suggested disapproval. “Today we go west.” Chewy blinked. A light in his belly—which might once have been a battery indicator or possibly an advertisement for a now-extinct soft drink—flickered a brave yellow. “Friend!” Chewy said, which was one of his phrases. The other two were “Hug?” and “Nom nom,” which could be interpreted to mean anything from affectionate encouragement to pre-emptive cannibalism. “West,” Midas repeated, because sometimes you have to be very sure of a thing before you do it wrong. “We follow the graffiti. It said: ‘BEYOND THE BENT TREES: REFUGE.’ Bent trees. Plural. West. It’s like a treasure map. Only with fewer pirates and more tetanus.” He looked up at their home base: a water tower politely subsiding into the earth, its legs splayed like a heron attempting yoga. A ladder hung down, missing three rungs and most of its confidence. Someone—by which we mean Midas—had painted a smiley face on the tower months ago, when optimism had briefly seemed like a skill one could acquire without years of practice. “Inventory check,” Midas said, because a man with no plan will often invent procedure. “One coil of rope. One tin of beans. One tin of peaches, probably full of regret. Two socks that are not the same color. One perfectly reasonable knife. One irrationally dangerous spoon. And you.” Chewy said, “Hug?” and extended his plush arms. He had once been soft. Now he was… seasoned. He also had a little hatch at the back of his head, which Midas had pried open with the spoon last spring, discovering a once-gleaming sequence of gears, memory slats, and a slot labelled “UPDATE.” Midas had considered, very carefully, the possibility of updating Chewy. Then he’d considered, very carefully, his own history with updates. They always promised improvements. They rarely specified to whom. Chewy’s eyelids whirred. “Friend!” Midas grinned despite himself. “That’s the spirit. Today, we find refuge.” The graffiti had appeared two nights ago, sprayed in luminous paint across the shell of an overturned bus at the edge of the dried riverbed. Mostly graffiti in the post-technological collapse read “FOOD HERE,” and meant “Ambush,” or “Keep Out,” which generally meant “We couldn’t stop you if we tried,” or “Beware Dogs,” which invariably meant “Beware people who say ‘Beware Dogs.’” But this message had been different. The handwriting was neat. The letters were evenly spaced. There were no skulls, which was unprecedented. And someone had taken the trouble to underline “REFUGE” twice, which is a kind of punctuation you only use when you’re either very sincere or very sarcastic. Midas was a connoisseur of sincerity that felt like a trap. He went to sleep having decided not to believe the message, then woke up with an understanding of himself too clear to be comforting. He would go anyway. That’s what he did: he went anyway. They set off into the west, which was less of a direction and more of a collection of attempts. Bent trees sounded promising, except that in this climate every tree bent under the weight of indifference and wind. They were everywhere, like reminders that gravity and probability were always on speaking terms. As they walked, Chewy kept up a commentary of “Nom nom,” which Midas chose to translate as “What a brave and well-structured plan.” Midas replied by pointing at landmarks and bestowing upon them names: a slumped brick warehouse became the Chapel of Good Enough; a bicycle rack welded into itself by heat became the Sculpture of Bad Ideas; a field of sun-bleached bones (mostly bovine, possibly not exclusively) became the Municipal Museum of Hubris. And then they saw it: another graffiti scrawl, this time on a chunk of concrete that might once have been part of a bank and now was part of an argument with the ground. It read: “BENT TREES / KEEP GOING / TRUST THE ECHO.” Midas stopped. “Echo? Echo of what?” Chewy said, “Hug?” “Right,” Midas said, and cupped his hands. “Hello!” The word bounced back a leisurely “-llo,” somewhere to the left, delayed and damp. It sounded like it had known better days and preferred not to be bothered now. “Left,” Midas said, marching forward. Two hours later he revised his assessment. “Not left. Forward, then.” An echo is not a compass. It is an argument with the landscape. That day, the landscape was feeling contrary. They found a row of trees bent not by wind but by design, arched over a narrow lane like a ribcage. Someone had tied scraps of cloth to the branches—blue and red and a shade of green that suggested a factory had once tried to improve upon nature and gotten bored halfway. The scraps fluttered. It did not feel like a trap, which was unsettling in itself. On the far side of the lane was a clearing. In the middle of the clearing, a piece of plywood leaned against a boulder. On it, written in a hand that was neat, evenly spaced, and bereft of skulls, were the words: “LEAVE BURDENS. TAKE HOPE.” Midas examined the plywood as one examines a snake that’s learned to spell. “Philosophy,” he said, suspiciously. He looked around the clearing for the sorts of signs that meant the difference between altruism and landfill. There were footprints, old and layered, like a palimpsest of passing intentions. There were little cairns, each topped with something small: a button, a bent fork, a dead battery. There was even a little bowl with three beans in it, a parenthetical offering to whoever needed a complaint more than a meal. Chewy toddled up to the bowl, peered in, and said, “Nom nom,” very solemnly. “Well, we’ve come this far,” Midas said, and put the irrationally dangerous spoon on a cairn. He hesitated, then took it back. “No, sorry. That’s what we call an heirloom.” He left instead the tin of peaches, and felt instantly foolish. Hope, he realized, had a weight. He felt lighter. That was either metaphor or blood sugar. There was another sign, half-hidden by a tuft of grass: “TRUST THE ECHO. DOWN.” “Down?” Midas said, and stamped on the ground experimentally. It sounded dull and hollow. He knelt and pushed aside the grass. Underneath was a metal hatch with a handle. It was locked with a combination puzzle, which was either encouraging or proof that generosity had an engineering department. The combination dial had four symbols: a circle, a triangle, a square, and a spiral. Midas considered, as he always did at the worst possible moment, how he might be the wrong person for the right job. He was good at climbing things that didn’t want to be climbed, persuading dogs he was an excellent person, and tripping over history. He was not good at puzzles. Chewy was excellent at being adorable and mildly terrifying, which was not immediately relevant to the problem of a lock unless you counted intimidation. Chewy waddled over and pressed his plush paw to the dial. The belly light flickered. He said, “Friend,” which, in context, meant: I know a thing. “Do you?” Midas said, and stepped back. Chewy tapped the symbols in order: circle, square, triangle, spiral. The lock clonked in a way that suggested it had expected to be more of a challenge and was sulking. Midas stared. “How did you—” Chewy said, “Hug?” They descended. The ladder was sturdy. The air smelled like people had passed through and tried their best. The tunnel opened into a chamber that had once been a storm shelter and now was a thesis on hope. Shelves lined the walls, holding careful treasures: water filters, sealed food, tools, a roll of duct tape that shone like a benediction. A painted sign read: “IF YOU TAKE, LEAVE. IF YOU CAN’T LEAVE, TELL SOMEONE WHO CAN.” Midas felt suddenly, implausibly, good. He took a pack of water purification tablets, a coil of better rope, and a small packet labelled “SEEDS: ASSORTED.” He left the tin of beans, three nails, and, after a hesitation that felt like a moral quandary but was really just sentimental fondness, the irrationally dangerous spoon. He kept the knife. A man has to draw the line somewhere, and for Midas, lines were often found at knives. He turned to Chewy. “We’ll mark the route. We’ll bring others. We’ll—” He was interrupted by the sound of the hatch above slamming. Then voices. Laughing. The kind of laugh that starts in the throat and ends in someone else’s pocket. “Brilliant,” Midas whispered, and pressed himself into the shadow of a shelf. He considered his options: fight, flight, or negotiation. He was very good at negotiating with people who didn’t have clubs. Boots thudded on the ladder. Three figures descended: a woman with an eyebrow ring that had survived more than any nation, a man with a tattoo of a dragon that had lost the plot, and another man with an expression that suggested he believed in fate and had personally offended it. They saw Midas and blinked. Chewy’s belly light flickered. Chewy said, “Friend!” The woman looked at Chewy. “Is that a toy?” Chewy tilted his head. “Hug?” The dragon tattoo man grinned. “That’s adorable. Also valuable.” Midas lifted his hands in the universal gesture of please do not kill me before I complete my sentence. “We can all share,” he said. “That’s the idea. Take what you need. Leave what you—” “Ah,” said the woman, and raised an eyebrow that had survived more than any negotiation. “But we need everything.” There are moments when a man’s knack for trouble meets a small animatronic koala’s penchant for outlandish decisions. Chewy waddled forward, arms outstretched. He emitted a sound that was not “Friend,” nor “Hug,” nor “Nom nom,” but something deeper, older—a whirr that became a hum that became a vibration in the bones. The belly light brightened from yellow to a stern, almost bureaucratic white. “Midas,” Chewy said, in a voice that was not one of his phrases. It was smaller, but clear. “Down.” The concrete under the intruders’ boots gave a tiny, meaningful tremor. A seam in the floor let out a sigh. Somewhere, a mechanism remembered it was supposed to be dramatic. “Oh,” said the man with the dragon tattoo, which is what you say when your life has been a series of unwise choices and the latest one has a trapdoor. The floor panel dropped. The intruders fell into a shallow pit lined with old mattresses and the kind of dignity you can hose off. The lid swung back up with the lethargy of a bureaucrat returning from lunch. Midas stared. Chewy’s belly light dimmed to a sheepish yellow. He said, weakly, “Nom nom.” “Right,” Midas said, because sometimes the only reasonable response to reality is to pretend you had planned it. “That… was excellent. Did you know you could do that?” Chewy blinked, his eyelids slightly out of sync. Above, fists pounded on the hatch. Voices rose in indignation and the promise of future litigation. “Time to go,” Midas said. He grabbed the rope, the seeds, and Chewy. He paused and, with a pang, reclaimed the irrationally dangerous spoon. He was not a saint. They climbed a maintenance shaft that did not exist until they needed it, which is the kind of coincidence that happens to people who are either cursed or protagonists. They emerged into sunlight that had decided to forgive them a little. The return journey began promisingly in the sense that they were moving and not on fire. Then came the rain. The sky, having overheard someone mention “seeds,” decided to demonstrate irony. The first fat drops hit Midas’s forehead with the same intent as coins hurled in anger. The lane of bent trees turned into a tunnel of wet sarcasm. The fluttering cloth scraps went from festive to accusing. They lost the path, found a path, and discovered it belonged to a bramble that had powerful opinions about ownership. Midas collected scratches in denominations from minor to theological. Chewy collected burrs which adhered to him with devotional fervor. They reached the riverbed just as the river remembered it had a bed. Water, sullen and brown, sluiced through the channel. The bus with the message watched them regretfully. The luminous paint bled into something more like “BEY ND THE B NT TREES: R FU E,” which was a fair representation of their day. Midas eyed a fallen billboard spanning two concrete ledges like a bridge designed by a poet. The advertisement on its underside, half washed away, assured them that happiness came in orange. It had been wrong for a long time. “We can cross,” he said, because optimism and compulsion sound very similar under stress. He tested the billboard. It bounced. Chewy said, “Hug?” and tightened his little paws around Midas’s neck. They stepped out. The bridge creaked. The water muttered darkly about consequences. Halfway across, the billboard shifted. Midas lunged. His foot slid. The bag with the rope and the seeds swung out, performed a ballet of defiance, and flopped into the river, where it bobbed like a smug idea. “No,” Midas said, exactly as if he were negotiating with physics. He flung himself after it, caught the strap, and was yanked toward a future involving hypothermia. The billboard complained in an operatic register and spat out a bolt. Midas flailed, found purchase on regret, and dragged himself and Chewy and the bag back onto solidity. He lay on the concrete, breathing as if the air had suddenly become very interesting. Chewy, dripping, said, “Friend,” in a tremulous way that implied a note might be needed later. They slogged the last mile through mud that held onto their boots like a needy acquaintance. Home base, the water tower, loomed ahead, a thin apology against the sky. The ladder greeted them with indifference. At the top, Midas dumped the bag and took stock. The rope was gone. The seeds, miraculously, remained, though the packet had torn open and the little future-beans had scattered through the bag like excuses. He picked them out, one by one, and placed them carefully in a tin lid to dry. The purification tablets had sacrificed themselves to the river and become a fine suggestion. Chewy sat, squelched, and made a noise that might have been a laugh if it had any right to be. Midas wiped rain from his eyes, which may also have been other things. “Well,” he said. “We found the refuge. We didn’t die. We escaped people who would have liked us less if they knew us better. We lost the rope, kept the seeds. Acquired a story. Those are heavier than rope.” Chewy leaned against him. His belly light flickered. “Hug,” he said, and the word, which had been a joke, became something ceremonial. Midas looked west, where the bent trees skewed against the horizon like a promise made by a tired person. The refuge was real. It had rules. He could bring others. He would bring others. All the same, he had not escaped his knack for trouble; he had simply redirected it toward a cause. “Tomorrow,” he said, to the tower, the storm, the soggy world. “We go back with markers. With a plan. With friends. With fewer detours involving gravity.” Chewy said, very softly, “Friend.” Midas leaned his head against the cool, peeling paint of the water tower and laughed in the way people laugh when they are not sure what else to do but know they ought to do it with someone else. Outside, the rain tapered into the sort of fine drizzle that pretends to be harmless because you’re already wet. Inside the tin lid, the seeds glistened, each a small argument against the general decline of things. Midas tucked Chewy under his arm. He thought of the trapdoor, the neat handwriting, the instructions that had been simple and had not lied. He thought, not for the first time, that sometimes survival wasn’t bravery as much as stubborn bookkeeping: debts, favors, losses, gains. You go west. You come home wetter, lighter, heavier, wiser, not much at all—often all at once. “Nom nom,” Chewy murmured, which Midas chose to translate as: Tomorrow, then. “Tomorrow,” he agreed, and, against all prevailing wisdom and weather, felt almost ready for it.

Model Output:
The bell over the door gave its polite little chime, and a gust of damp Pembrokeshire air carried in the smell of wet tarmac and something like seaweed. A man slipped inside and pushed the door with his shoulder until it shut. He leaned his back against it, shutting out the mutter of voices outside, the click-click of lenses, the squeak of trainers on rain. “Tell me you’ve got a back room,” he said, breathless, almost laughing. “Or a trapdoor. I’ll take a trapdoor.” “We’ve got a staff toilet. It locks, even,” the bookseller said. “But I’m not a speakeasy.” He took the room in at speed. Old floorboards. A crooked row of poetry with a hand-lettered sign that said Local. A faded poster of Dylan Thomas above the till. The cat asleep in the window was a puddle of grey with one ear twitching. He took in the proprietor as well; she stood behind the counter with a pencil tucked behind her ear and her cardigan sleeves shoved up nearly to the elbow. Her hair was a sensible knot that had lost an argument with the weather hours ago. He straightened from the door. “I’ll buy something, then. To justify the sanctuary.” “Sanctuary implies you’ll be quiet.” She tipped her head toward the front. There was a restless shuffling of bodies beyond the glass. “Are they going to start licking the windows?” “God, please no. I haven’t yet reached Licking-The-Window-Level fame.” He came closer, hands lifted in mock surrender. “Hi. I’m—” “I know.” Her face didn’t change. “I read the newspaper.” “Ah.” He winced, but with a grin attached, a practiced charm softened by something genuine. “Not my best press week.” “Or your ninth.” She gestured to a little handwritten sign: Do Not Knock On The Glass: Cat Works Nights. “Stay away from the window.” “Threaten me with a working cat, why don’t you.” He ducked his head, drew the hood of his jacket down. Hair, deliberately careless; cheekbones assigned by committee. He moved like a man accustomed to being watched and trying to make a joke of it. “Look, just—two minutes. I’ll disappear into Poetry. No one follows a person into Poetry. It’s like church.” “Local section is the end of that aisle. It creaks.” She slid a bookmark across the counter like a bartender offering a napkin. “If you ruin the display, you’ll be banished to the toilet.” He palm-saluted with two fingers. “Noted.” He went down the aisle, put his hand on the top of a shelf and leaned into it, breathing in through his nose, out through his mouth. The shop made little noises at him: paper settling, the rain stippling the window. He seemed surprised by it. “Aberteifi Bookshop,” he said, almost to himself, reading the gold letters on the till. “I shot a scene on the quay once. I nearly fell in because I was trying to impress a gull.” “The quay or the gull?” “The gull. The quay was unmoved. He was, too; can’t say I blame him.” He set his fingers on the spines as if they’d burn. “I haven’t been in a bookshop without a camera crew since—" “Since your agent told you to be photographed buying Zadie Smith?” The bookseller drifted from behind the counter, a broom in hand she didn’t use, more prop than purpose. “We do sell Zadie, if it helps your image.” “My image is a tire fire at the moment,” he said cheerfully, turning a shoulder to the window. “I like the idea of simply being here for the smell. Old paper. Damp wool.” “Damp actor,” she said. He laughed, startled. “Touché.” He slid a book from the shelf—poems by R.S. Thomas—and let it fall open. “Do you like him?” “I like that he doesn’t pretend to like me,” she said. “There’s a relief in that.” “I’m not pretending,” he said, looking up. “So you do like me.” His grin pulled slow. “I like most people. Personally. Professionally. It’s become mutually advantageous.” “And yet none of them are in here with you.” She nodded to the window, where a face pressed too close to the glass, wavered, and withdrew. “Scary shop lady with broom: more intimidating than twenty paps.” “Is that who you are?” “Depends on who you are.” He shut the book carefully and slid it back. “My name’s Rowan.” “I know.” She rested the broom on the counter. “I’m Nia.” “Nia.” He tried it on. “Proper Welsh. How many letters do I need to buy to get you to pronounce the town for me?” “YouTube exists,” she said. Then, a merciful tiny smile. “Aberteifi.” “Aber…” He let the rest go. “Fine. I’ll just call it ‘the place I hid in a bookshop and wasn’t yelled at.’” “I haven’t decided yet,” she said. “You’re currently on probation.” He put a hand to his heart. “Probation hurts.” He wandered toward a table with staff recommendations. A handwritten card: If you’ve ever wanted to run away and become a beekeeper, this one will cure you or encourage you, depending on your temperament. “Who writes these?” “I do. My staff consists of me and the cat, and she has terrible taste.” “Cat: influencer. Owner: bitter gatekeeper.” He glanced back at her. “You’re not going to ask for a selfie?” “No.” “Autograph? For your niece?” “No niece.” “Secretly a fan who’s punishing me as foreplay?” “Absolutely not.” He laughed again and then seemed, abruptly, to enjoy not being met in the usual way. His shoulders loosened around it. He lifted a book gingerly, like a pianist touching a chipped key. “You ever think about it? The way people make you into a shape that fits their hand?” “All the time,” Nia said. “It’s why I own the shop. In here, I get to make my own shapes.” “And enforce them with a broom.” “It’s multipurpose.” “They teach you that in boss school?” “My mother taught me that with a wooden spoon,” she said. “Same principle, more soup.” He let his fingers skim over another book. Local history: chapels and quarrymen, a sepia photograph of women in headscarves with eyes that saw promises and weather equally. He softened. “My grandmother was from here,” he said, voice gentler. “Well—not here, but up the road. Teifi valley. She used to tell me when I got too big for myself, ‘Remember, bach, the cows do not care about your applause.’” “She sounds like a very sensible woman.” “She was terrifying.” He smiled into the memory, then let it fade. “She died the year I got the first big job. I think about that sometimes. How she never saw the thing. Which is—dramatic of me. I know. She saw me. That’s the thing, isn’t it.” Nia watched him watching the book he wasn’t really seeing. “Maybe she was spared the tabloids.” “Oh, God.” He tipped his head back. “Do not let me imagine my gran reading about me leaving a nightclub via a flowerpot.” “You left a nightclub via a flowerpot.” “I left via the door. I was photographed in an ambiance of flowerpot. Subtle but critical difference.” “Mm.” He flicked her a look. “You don’t like me.” “I don’t know you.” “That’s worse,” he said lightly, but there was a thread of truth that tugged. “Usually by now I’ve charmed the postal clerk, the hedgehog on the verge, most of the population of a rugby club.” “Congratulations. You’re very good at being liked.” She came closer and took the book from his half-reluctant hand, set it back correctly. “It’s an unpleasant skill to lose.” He studied her. “You talk like someone who lost it.” “Didn’t have it,” she said. “Or didn’t want it. Those are different things. You can work that out when you’re not an ambiance of flowerpot.” He leaned his hip against the table. The charm he usually wore like a coat felt too heavy; he shrugged it off, a fraction. “I’m not very good when people don’t—” He gestured, helpless, toward his own face. “When they don’t do the thing. Smile back. It makes me—useless.” “Vulnerable?” “Hungry,” he said, and then laughed at himself, a little bitten-off sound. “I’m not a vampire.” “No. You’re a person. It’s worse.” “Is it?” “Vampires don’t get lonely.” She set the broom aside. “I own a bookshop because it let me be around people without—” She lifted a shoulder. “Without being in the middle. I used to teach. You don’t ever really leave the middle when you teach.” He looked at her, properly now. “What did you teach?” “English. I had a boy who used to sleep through the first ten minutes of every lesson, head down on his desk. It made me furious, at first. Then I found out why. He was up late—every night—keeping his little sister awake until their dad passed out.” Her tone had changed, but only in the way a person’s voice changes when they remember and the remembering pulls at the knots under the ribs. “He was eleven. He’d learned how to make jokes hard enough to bounce off.” Rowan’s expression altered; the easy lines in his face belonged to a different script now. “Did you—” “I bought him alarm clocks. I bought him breakfast in the classroom and a plant that would die if you didn’t water it, so he could keep something alive.” She kept her eyes on the poetry shelf so she didn’t have to see his face. “He left anyway. You can do the things and you can still lose. I’m not sure if being liked would have helped. Maybe. Maybe not.” “Do you know what happened to him?” Rowan’s voice had softened enough that his own public rhythm—pauses for applause, light for the camera—was nowhere. “No,” she said. “That’s the terrible thing, isn’t it? You don’t get epilogues. You get afternoons where the light slants through between the stacks and someone slips in out of the rain, and then the bell rings and they go. The rest is guesswork.” He blew out a breath that wasn’t a laugh. “I get epilogues,” he said after a moment. “People write them for me in articles. They decide the arc. I don’t get afternoons.” “You could,” she said. He glanced toward the window. The faces had thinned, bored perhaps, rain-battered. “I don’t know what to do with one.” “Buy a book.” She picked one up and pressed it lightly against his chest. A novel with a cover that promised nothing obvious. “Here. It’s quieter than you. That’s a challenge.” He looked at the cover. “Is it about—” “No,” she said. “It’s about someone who wants to run away and does, and then is disappointed to find themselves still present.” He barked a laugh that wasn’t entirely a laugh. “Subtle.” “Staff pick.” “I prefer your beekeeper one. At least there are bees.” “There are bees in this one. Metaphorical.” “I’m allergic to metaphors.” “Everyone is, at first,” she said. “Cash or card?” He looked puzzled, endearingly. “You’re actually selling me a book.” “This is a shop. It’s what we do.” He reached into his jacket and came up with a wallet that seemed like a prop from his own life. “Card.” She took it. Their fingers didn’t touch. He noticed anyway. He watched her, and she felt it like sun through a window you forgot was there. She pretended the machine was temperamental; it always was. The receipt spat out with a small sigh. “Would you like a bag?” “I would like a back door,” he said. “But I’ll take a bag.” “There’s the alley through the stockroom,” she said. “It opens onto the lane behind Mrs. Evans’s bakery. If you keep your head down and pretend to be a delivery boy, you might get a free custard slice.” “I can pretend to be anything,” he said lightly, but he was already tired of it, and she could tell. He took the bag. He didn’t look at his name, scrawled by other people on other things. “Do you sign inside covers?” he asked suddenly. “As the person who chose it?” “You want me to sign your book.” “It’s not a selfie,” he said, aiming for teasing and almost getting somewhere more honest. “It’s—context.” She considered him for a beat that contained five other beats. Then she took the book back, opened it to the title page, and wrote, in her tidy hand: For Rowan, who knows about afternoons. Be kind to the bees, even the metaphorical ones. —Nia. She dated it. The ink bled slightly into the paper, the way ink had always bled and always would. He read it, and his face changed again, some small flaring of relief like a match catching. “You’ve mentioned bees twice,” he said. “Should I be concerned?” “No.” She slid the book into the bag and handed it back. “Yes. Depends on your temperament. And on the day.” He smiled like a person, not like a poster. “Nia,” he said, her name a little softer this time. “If I—if I come back when there aren’t twenty men with cameras doing Pilates outside, will you—” “Sell you another book? Threaten you with a broom?” “Talk to me like I’m not a tire fire.” “Depends.” She held his gaze and watched the print of who he was settle differently across his features. “On whether you say please.” He touched two fingers to the brim of a hat he wasn’t wearing. “Please.” Her mouth made a decision without asking her. “All right. Tuesdays are quiet. Bring your own epilogue.” He let out a breath he might not have known he was keeping. He angled himself toward the stockroom. The cat woke and flicked a considering eye at him; he ducked his head to her, too. “Thanks for not licking the window,” he said softly. Nia rolled her eyes and pretended she wasn’t smiling. He paused at the door to the back, hand on the peeling paint. From outside, a shout, the grind of a van. “I do that thing,” he said, without looking at her. “Turn everything into a performance. Even this. I can’t help it. And sometimes I’m so—afraid—that when it stops, there won’t be anything underneath.” He turned then, quick, as though he’d surprised himself and wanted to see what she did with the rawness he’d just lobbed between them. “There. That’s my bees.” She met his look. The broom was something to hold. The shop was something to stand in. “Then you’re lucky,” she said, and made it sound like a fact rather than comfort. “Because shops like this exist. Because Tuesdays exist. Because you can practice. Being something underneath. Or just—being. There’s no exam.” “No grade?” “No grade.” “I was a solid B student.” “Try for a C. Average is underrated.” He laughed, openly, then pushed through the stockroom. The door swung shut behind him, soft as a page turning. The bell over the front door didn’t ring again. The rain went on. Nia set the broom down and leaned her elbows on the counter and pressed her fingers against the edge of the till until they hurt. Then she picked up the bookmark he hadn’t taken and slid it between the pages of the R.S. Thomas he’d touched, which was ridiculous and therefore she did it. After a while, the rest of the day came back. Someone came in for a map. Someone else wanted a gift for a grandmother who loved crime. The cat dreamed. The ink dried on the title page of a book headed out into the lane behind Mrs. Evans’s bakery, into the custard slice air. Later, when the light slanted through between the stacks, the bell rang again. But that was another afternoon. This one stayed where it was.

Model Output:
The underhold breathed like an old animal, all wet stone and whale-fat smoke, a cavern burrowed beneath canals and rat-worked bracing. The smell of rancid oil sat heavy in the throat. Pipes stuttered and sighed as if the walls themselves plotted. Aya’s gloved hand hovered over the iron ring of the door. Her pulse picked out a pattern in her wrists—three beats, pause, three beats—echoing the harbor foghorn that moaned distantly through the city. Three long complaints, swallowed by the depth. “Quiet as a confession,” Simeon whispered behind her, breath sweet with peppermint to hide the gin. “I don’t like it.” Katra said nothing. Katra never liked any of it; she only came alive inside trouble, jaw set, the scar at her temple a pale hyphen in the lantern light. Aya felt their watchfulness like an additional skin over her own. Beneath that, the old chill stirred—the immateria pressing close against her collarbones, a folded, silent thing which smelled of bare iron and damp linen. She let it rest. “Ready,” she said, and pitched the word into the iron and gaslight like a coin. She pulled the door. It yawned open without argument, a draft breathing over them bearing the smell of old sea, of ambergris and salt rot and gunmetal, and something else beneath like candle smoke left in an enclosed room too long. Lanterns burned steady within, golden, untroubled. The underhold had been kept like a chapel—catalogued crates, ledger-stacked tables, walls veined with pipes delivering heat that throbbed faintly through the floorstones. Their footfalls answered themselves—one-two-three—further than they should have, swallowed and returned thin at the edges. Aya’s stomach turned a little. She had expected snoring guards, a lonely rat, a lock to tickle. She had expected the anxious improvisations of men who’d been caught flat-footed by dawn raids. She had not expected order. “There,” Katra said, chin tipping. The artifact’s vault. Every thief in Morska had a clue-sketch of this door in their pocket once, a child’s ghost story mad-lib: the vault that was more story than iron. Aya had touched its mind before, once. It had been like laying her palm to a whale’s skin—a vast cold recognition, a weight that thought only slowly. Now it stood ajar. Aya checked her breath. “After you,” she said, dryly, to the universe. She crossed the threshold. “Welcome home, little masks.” The voice was warm and amused and not at all incarcerated. Aya stopped. The immateria went suddenly sharp along her ribs like a well-sharpened hook. She lifted her eyes. The guild’s leader—Matron Vesa, called the Whale Widow by those fond of legends—stood at the far end of the chamber before the open vault mouth, not three paces from the Scythan artifact’s sarcophagus. Vesa wore a black coat unbuttoned to show the steel bones of a corset that had been reinforced with whale rib and brass plates. Her hair lay in a severe gray plait, and her neck was wrapped in a kerchief the exact color of arterial blood. She held a pistol in one hand and a long knife in the other. Behind her, her bodyguards assembled like lantern-men at a funeral: six shadows, all brass knuckles and flat eyes, along with two longcoats whose collars hid the throats of men who smiled at strangulation. Their weapons did not waver. Simeon’s breath left him like a prayer. “But the raid—” Vesa’s smile was a small, tidy thing. “My love. We do raids, too.” She glanced at Aya’s hand still on the door. “Close it for me, won’t you? I find drafts so tiresome.” Aya obeyed. The door swung, shut with a sigh and a quiver of gaslight. She lifted her chin. She felt the immateria like a coiled rope in a dark room behind her eyes, and knew it was watching her watch it. Not now, she told it. Not here, not with brass staring. “Matron,” Aya said. She took a single step forward. She could feel Katra on her left, Simeon on her right, a triangulated survival. “We were worried I’d missed you.” “Worried,” Vesa repeated, as if tasting the word. She lifted her pistol, and the lanterns gleamed along it like teeth. “Unmask.” Aya felt the air in the room become an instrument on which someone plucked a single string. The sound vibrated along her spine. Simeon half-turned his head to her. Katra’s hand slid towards her belt; Vesa cocked the pistol lazily, as if swatting a fly. “Please,” Vesa said, not unkind. “If the court is to sit, we shan’t have actors hiding their faces. Unmask, or I will have the skin taken with the cloth. For cleanliness.” Aya reached up. Her fingers moved like they belonged to someone else. The leather buckles had been fitted by her own hands, a hundred midnight dressings; she knew every stitch. She loosened them. The mask released, a soft sigh of sweat-salt and perfume. Her hair fell, pins scattering like small finches. She set the mask in her palm, and for a ridiculous instant thought to offer it to Vesa like a calling card. Vesa’s mouth quirked. “Oh,” she said, as if Aya had told a particularly good joke. The guards stared in polite confusion. Simeon swore between his teeth. “Aya—” “Don’t,” Katra muttered. “Don’t say her name. Heavens preserve us.” Vesa tapped the pistol against her cheek. “Aristocrat,” she said conversationally. “Which house? No, don’t tell me. I like to guess. The nose says Wolk. The mouth says Sevrin. And the eyes…” She peered. “The eyes say—you’ve seen something you shouldn’t have and decided to keep seeing it.” Aya’s face was bare as a cuffed wrist. Her mother’s noose-scar that was not a scar lay braided into the back of her skull, a memory that was sensation more than mark: the crack of the trap, the way the world goes very quiet when a life is weighed by rope. She tasted copper, though her mouth was dry. “Matron,” she repeated. “You asked for unmasking. Now we’re all honest.” “We aren’t,” Vesa said. “But we can pretend for an evening.” She gestured with the knife. The guards moved forward. It was theater, but practiced theater. Katra made the sort of motion that might have become a lunge; a pair of knuckles found her wrist and her elbow at the same time. She made a short sound and went down with an economy that was not quite grace. Simeon didn’t struggle. He had grown up with ropes. He lifted his hands and let them be bound, his eyes on Aya, his mouth a flat white line. Aya considered the immateria. It lifted its head in her chest. She might have brought something up out of it—a moth-faced thing with hands like candle-flames, a little hunger to gnaw the edge of a blade. To do it would be to paint a target on her soul in lampblack. To do it would be to fail in a new way. She let the rope come. It bit her gloves. A guard—Maej, the one with the narrow eyes—took her hair in his fist, not harshly, only for movement, and she walked as he directed. Vesa watched her as one watches a chessboard that has come alive. “You’ve been a delight,” she said. “All you little night-birds with your stolen science and your pretty tricks. Maskless, you are even more diverting.” “You knew,” Aya said. “Of course I knew. I know everyone who thinks to steal my teeth.” Vesa indicated the sarcophagus with the knife. The Scythan artifact lay within like a coffin for a giant’s child. Its surface was not quite stone, not quite bone. It had whorls that changed if you looked twice. The air around it was colder by precisely the weight of a coin lifted from a palm. “You thought to take this and then take me. In that order? Bold.” “We thought to protect it,” Aya said, and heard how it sounded. “To put it beyond your reach.” “Do you imagine I am ignorant of my own reach?” Vesa’s voice did not rise. “I’ve dipped my hands in the stomach of the city. I wash them in whale grease. I keep them clean.” She lifted her chin at Meaj. “Turn her.” The guard obliged, spinning Aya to face her companions. Simeon’s hair had come loose from its ribbon; Katra’s lip leaked one thin black line in the gaslight. They looked like children in their first mischief. They looked like soldiers left too long in a trench. Aya let herself imagine for a moment what the papers would say when the name went up. The Governor’s girl? The late Lady Severin’s daughter? She saw her mother again, not on the gallows but standing at the kitchen hearth with a bowl of eels, saying softly, It will take you if you let it. Her mother had meant the hunger. Or the city. Or both. “Now,” Vesa said. She walked closer. If she reached out, she might have put the barrel of the pistol against Aya’s bare cheek. She did not. “We are at a crossroads. I have in my hand a little trouble—” she lifted the knife slightly “—and in the other, a great deal more.” The pistol tilted. “You do not yet appreciate the trouble you represent, little Wolk-Sevrin. But I do.” Aya wet her lips. “Then let’s appreciate it together.” She felt the immateria flare a cold interest, like a cat setting its paws on a sill. “You kill me now, Vesa, and half the city will come for your doors before night. Not because they loved my face, but because they feared the man who did.” Her voice did not shake. She was dimly aware that her knees wanted very much to give up. “Or you keep me breathing, and you have a shield. The governor does not lay siege to a house where his last daughter eats her porridge.” “Hostage,” Vesa said. Her eyebrow ticked as if she were amused by a private rhyme. “You bargain in your own blood.” “It’s the most negotiable currency I have left.” Simeon made a strangled noise. “Aya—” “Shut up,” Katra hissed. Then, quieter: “She’s right.” Vesa drifted a step nearer. “And what will you do, little witch, if I say no? Will you call your mother’s friends?” The word witch was not spat; it was almost tender. “Will you draw something across the threshold?” Her smile did not touch her eyes. “Do you think I haven’t kept salt in every corner? Do you think I don’t know the smell of that cold in you?” Aya felt herself flush, as if Vesa had undressed her again, this time from the inside. She forced herself to keep her gaze steady. “I don’t need to call anyone,” she lied. “I am what I am, and that should frighten you.” “It does,” Vesa said, and there was a strange honesty in it. “It frightens me that you are young and sure, that you have never paid the tax for what you touch. It frightens me that men will stampede with brass and oil to crush you and I will be beneath their hooves if I shelter you.” She turned the pistol away, finally, and rested it against her own thigh, as if the weight soothed her. “It frightens me that I like you.” Aya blinked. Something loosened in her chest that was not relief. The foghorn in the harbor called again—one, two, three—each a note long enough to be a prayer if one believed in sound. “Keep me,” Aya said. “Use me. Send a note to the Governor’s House. Tell him you have me and that I am alive and that I will stay that way so long as he does not bleed you.” She tasted the word, felt its shape. “We both know he would wreck half Morska to make an example. I can be your stay of execution.” “And your friends?” Vesa asked, without looking at them. “You keep them as well,” Aya said. Katra made a fierce sound; Simeon’s eyes softened with something that made Aya want to look away. “They are nothing to the great houses. They are nothing to the men with ledgers. But they are something to me. And if you keep me breathing, you keep them breathing. And if you kill them—” She made her voice slow and careful, as if she were placing weights on a scale. “—I will take that as a declaration. And I will declare in turn. I cannot promise the city won’t eat us all then.” Vesa considered. It was a slow, visible thing, like the tide acknowledging the moon. She sheathed the knife with a soft, precise sound. The room breathed. The lamplight guttered, recovered. “Meaj,” Vesa said. “Take them to the white rooms. Clean their wounds. Feed them something warm and honest. Bread. I want a letter carried to the House with care. We will wrap it in ribbon. No rough edges. Have the boys clean their boots.” “And the artifact?” one of the longcoats asked, eyes flicking to the sarcophagus as if it might sit up. “The artifact will do as it has always done,” Vesa said serenely. “Sleep and dream of burning water.” Her gaze returned to Aya. “As will we.” Meaj tugged at Aya’s bonds, not unkind. They began to move. Aya caught Vesa’s eye one last time. In it, she saw a narrow bridge over a black canal. She saw herself balanced on it, a rope at her neck and a city at her feet, and she had the sudden absurd certainty that everyone who mattered was watching to see if she would step left or right. “Matron,” she said, unable not to. “Little mask,” Vesa said. “Do not call for the dark in my house unless you mean to feed it. Do we understand one another?” Aya swallowed. “Yes.” “Good.” Vesa looked to the door of the vault, to the thing that slept inside. “The sea keeps its own books,” she murmured. “And the city keeps its receipts.” The foghorn moaned again, very far away, three long cries like a mother calling names at dusk. The underhold inhaled and exhaled, and Aya let herself be led into the white rooms, her face bare, her name a blade turned inward, her bargains written in invisible ink that would glow, she suspected, only when the fire came.

Model Output:
The jukebox in the corner keeps coughing up the same scratchy rock riff, a needle stuck in the same groove of a dead night. Neon bleeds down the stained wallpaper, turning the smoke into a slow aurora. Glasses clink, security cams blink, and the air tastes like old whiskey and ashtrays. Spike Spiegel leans on the bar, a cigarette pinned to his lip like it’s the last one he’ll ever have. He’s down to lint and loose rounds in his pocket, and even those might be metaphorical. He asks the bartender for something cheap and gets something cheaper. It burns through his chest like a joke that doesn’t land. By the time she walks in, the room already smells like gun oil and promise. Revy slides through the doorway without slowing down, a slice of heat in a black crop top and denim cut-offs, dragon ink curling down her right arm. Two pistols ride her hips like old friends. She orders a bottle she doesn’t intend to share and tips the neck back too far, like she’s daring the liquor to try her. The jukebox stutters. The same riff loops. No one dances. They don’t turn toward each other. Not at first. But both notice. Predators always do. The bounty is a mid-level courier with a new alias and an old habit of talking too much. The rumor is he skipped out with something heavy on his drive—a ledger with enough names to sink a city. The bounty is good. It’s almost generous. That means there’s a trap in it somewhere. “So,” Spike says to his drink, exhaling smoke through the word. “You ever feel like the universe is trying to introduce you to someone you’re better off never knowing?” Revy doesn’t answer, because he wasn’t talking to her. But she hears him, because she was listening anyway. “The universe?” She snorts, takes another pull, shifts her weight so the holsters hang just right. “Buddy, that heap of junk never did me any favors.” Their eyes meet in the warped mirror behind the bottles. One brown and alive with temper, one mismatched, one dead and dreaming. His depth perception’s off, but his aim never is. She clocks the cigarette, the lazy posture, the jacket that’s seen weather and blood. He clocks the smirk, the scars, the stance that says “I’ll go first, but I’ll shoot you before I do.” They turn, simultaneously, as if pulled by the same bad idea. “You that guy?” Revy asks. The words are gravel, stained and sharp. “The one who always looks like he’s about to take a nap in a gutter?” Spike smiles. It’s not nice, but it’s honest. “Depends. You the girl whose guns do all her flirting?” “That’s cute,” she says, and it’s not. “Name’s not your business.” “Good thing I wasn’t asking.” She tilts the bottle at him, teasing the mouth of it across her lip. “We both after the same package, cowboy?” Spike glances at the TV above the bar where a muted news feed shows a grainy mugshot and an old restaurant sign. The courier. Two blocks away, a flophouse where his kind always runs out of rope. “Seems that way.” “Then we got a problem.” “We?” Spike says. He gestures at the room, at the stale crowd that knows better than to look. “There’s no ‘we’ here.” The bar door creaks. Three men in coats that don’t fit their shoulders slip inside, eyes slick with nervousness. They’re carrying the kind of false confidence that comes in bulk when someone’s paying you by the hour. Revy doesn’t even glance, but she’s tracking them by the shuffle of their shoes. Spike ashes his cigarette and turns the glass, watching how the liquor clings to the sides. “What do you think?” Revy asks, not looking up. “Entrance fee?” “Amateurs,” Spike says. “They’re here to ask questions they won’t survive.” The first guy reaches into his coat. The jukebox hisses and stutters into the chorus again. The bar dips into that once-removed silence right before violence arrives. Revy moves before her bottle hits the floor. Two hands, two guns, and four shots crisp the air like the universe is clapping off-beat. The first thug staggers, the second drops his pistol and half his courage, the third tries to pull, duck, pull again. Her bullets find them in the middle of useless thoughts. Spike pivots on his stool, lazy turning into clean geometry. His pistol winks like a bored star, and the guy who thought he had a bead on Revy suddenly has a hole where his plan used to be. Bottles shatter. People scream but not too loudly—this is a bar with a reputation to maintain. The jukebox, oblivious, repeats the same four measures of guitar like a dog chasing its tail. Revy grins, feral and private. “Not bad, nap boy.” Spike rolls his shoulders. “You started without me.” “Wanted to see if you’d keep up.” They stand amid the debris. The bartender ducks, then pops up with a shotgun, which he keeps pointed at the ceiling because this is business, not suicide. “Take it outside,” he says, voice flat, already reaching for the mop. “Gladly,” Revy purrs, holstering with a flourish that’s almost mocking. She prowls toward the door. Spike pays in coins that clink like a dare. Some of them are real. Most are not. On the street, the neon bleeds into rain puddles. The flophouse sign two blocks down flickers like a dying lie. “You good?” Spike asks, tilting his chin at her shoulder. A graze. It had to be perfect to even touch her. It’s not bleeding much. She touched the muzzle to the mark before she holstered, like a cathedral kiss. “I’m always good,” she says. “Question is, you gonna try to poach my bounty?” “Poach?” Spike smiles with his eyes this time, which is a surprise even to him. “I’m more of a gatherer. Whatever happens, happens.” She laughs. It’s a sudden, ugly sound, peeled from someplace she trusts. “That how you excuse it? Whatever happens?” “Helps me sleep,” he says. “You look like you don’t sleep.” “Not well.” The sign across the street buzzes. A man leans out from a second-story window of the flophouse, squinting. He recognizes them as the end of his day and pulls back like a contused eye. Curtains twitch. Locks click. Revy thumbs a fresh mag into her pistols, a ritual with meaning only to her. “All right, gatherer. Winner takes the ledger. Loser buys the motel. Try not to get in my way.” “Ladies first,” Spike says. “Who told you I was a lady?” “No one,” he says, and he means it kindly. They cross the street like bad weather. The lobby smells like bleach covered a murder and then gave up. At the desk, a clerk watches them with the attentive apathy of the doomed. The stairs are too narrow for how much violence is going up them. They don’t bother whispering. The courier is in 2B, door barely latched, sweat varnishing the knob. The hallway is a wind tunnel of tension. Revy gestures, one-two with her fingers, and Spike nods because he’s seen this dance before and can follow without stepping on toes. One kick. The door snaps inward. Smoke, shouting, the word “Wait!” slicing thin air. Revy’s already inside, sliding left, shooting the lamp into sparks and the gun out of the courier’s hand in the same breath. Spike moves right, low, the flat pop of silenced fire from somewhere else—oh, there’s a fourth man, there’s always a fourth—answering too late. Spike’s return shot drills the wall, then the third bullet finds the man’s shoulder, spinning him into the bathroom tiles. “Down,” Revy snarls, and the courier obliges by falling onto a mattress that looks like a memory of sleep. He scrabbles for a bag that isn’t there. “Ledger,” Spike says, calm and tired, standing over him with a gun like an accusation. Revy crouches, presses her muzzle to the courier’s cheek, and the smell of fear makes something old in her relax. “You hand it over, I don’t ventilate your face. I’m not a good person, not a bad person. I’m just here. You? You’re a paycheck.” The courier cries, and it’s not dignified. He points to the vent. Revy doesn’t waste time; she shoots the screws out. The ledger tumbles with the dust, a little black book trying to make itself invisible. Spike picks it up and flips through names written in a hand that knows it’s spilling blood. They share a look. The kind that says: careful. “Split?” Spike asks. “Ha,” Revy says. She holsters, then immediately draws again, because holstering was for punctuation. “I don’t split.” “That’s a shame,” Spike murmurs. “You look like you could.” Her eyes snag on his mouth. It takes a second for her to decide if she’s going to hit him or kiss him or shoot him. The jukebox riff, faint through the window from the bar below, nags like a recurring dream. Outside, sirens decide to consider whether they care. The problem with winning is the exit. They move fast, using their bodies like knives through the air. The hallway decided to grow neighbors with bad timing. Revy’s guns talk them into staying indoors. Spike’s hands find the right angles, a kick on a knee, a shove on a shoulder. The street yawns up at them when they burst out the back, and the rain thickens like it’s on their side. By the time they get to the motel, the ledger is sealed in a plastic bag, and the night has the metallic taste of choices. The motel isn’t the kind you bring your heart to. It’s the kind that expects you to leave parts behind. The clerk passes a key over like it’s a confession. Room 7. Lucky number for people who don’t think too hard. Inside, the air conditioner wheezes. The bedspread is a tapestry of stains and stories. They’re still breathing like they’re coming down off a song. Revy tosses her jacket onto the chair and kicks the door shut behind her. Spike slouches as only a man ready to snap upright can. The ledger sits on the table between them, a polite bomb. “Now,” Revy says, cocking her head, cigarette crooked between fingers. “About that split.” Spike lights her cigarette with his, a slow lean-in that’s almost a dare. She doesn’t blink. He feels the heat of her and the gravity of it. He looks tired and something else. The dragon on her arm flexes when she exhales. “Fifty-fifty,” Spike says. “You keep the lion’s share of the bullets. I get the paperwork.” “And if I say no?” He shrugs. “Whatever happens, happens.” She takes a step. He mirrors it. The air gets narrower. The ledger waits. The world outside grinds its teeth. “You think I won’t kill you for it?” Revy asks, voice hushed, hungry. “You think I won’t enjoy it?” “I think you’ll enjoy it either way,” Spike says, and it’s the first honest flirt they’ve allowed themselves. She laughs, quiet and sharp. “You’re not wrong.” The lights flicker. The sirens somewhere decide against them, for now. She presses the barrel of her right pistol into the soft spot beneath his sternum. He angles his own gun, center mass, his other hand free, fingers open like he’s about to catch rain. “On three,” she says, and doesn’t say what three is. “Sure,” he says, and doesn’t count. Silence. The same rock riff filters in through the thin walls, as if the jukebox found a way to haunt them. They breathe in sync for a heartbeat and then purposely fall out of it. Trust is a currency neither of them carries. “Say I take the book and go,” Revy says. “You going to chase me?” “Maybe,” Spike says. “Maybe I let you. Maybe I buy you breakfast.” “Breakfast is for mornings,” she says, eyes flicking to his mouth again. “We ain’t getting one of those.” “Not if we keep talking.” Something shifts. Not a truce. Not surrender. Just a place to stand where both can see the door and the ledger and each other. The barrels lower a hair. A breath. The distance between them shrinks to a coin’s thickness. He smells the smoke in her hair and the whiskey sweat on her skin. She sees the tired light in his eyes and the way he carries his death like an old joke. They edge into the kiss of it without touching, guns like chaperones. “Fifty-fifty,” she says again, barely. “Fifty-fifty,” he echoes. They don’t shake. They don’t kiss. They don’t holster. The ledger sits there like a choice neither wants to own alone. Outside, the neon gutter-blinks. Inside, the air conditioner coughs itself into sleep. Revy’s lip curls. “You’re trouble.” Spike’s smile is a tired blade. “You’re fun.” She smirks, cocks her pistol back to safe without moving it. He does the same. The stand-off doesn’t end so much as it agrees to continue later. “Tomorrow,” she says. “We cash it. Maybe we try that breakfast. Maybe I shoot you.” “Whatever happens,” he says. “Yeah,” Revy whispers, and the words feel like a lit match. “Whatever.” The jukebox riff finds them again, fading through drywall, refusing to change tracks. In the motel room haze, two wolves keep their guns up and their hearts back, each waiting for the other to make the first mistake or the first move, knowing they might be the same thing. The night stays long. The ledger doesn’t move. Neither do they. Not yet.

Model Output:
We walked without flashlights because Astrid said light offended them. “It’s like shining a torch in someone’s face,” she told me, her breath steaming white between us. The snowpack had crusted over and then frozen again into sugary granules that gave under our boots with a muted squeak. Above, the sky was pale and starless, the kind of high winter cloud that makes night feel like the underside of a lid. The birches were smudges, their white trunks indistinguishable from the snow except for the horizontal scars. I had grown up with car noise, lamp glow, neighbors arguing through walls. This silence pressed against my ears until even the creak of my coat became rude. We had a thermos and two blankets, an old tin box Astrid had taken from her mother’s sewing room, and a coil of red yarn. I carried everything because Astrid said I should. “If you want to request something, you have to bring the offerings,” she said, as if we were going to a shop and needed coins. We took the path that detoured behind the closed school and the frozen football field, past the rusted swings, into the forest that curled around the village like a sleeping animal. My parents thought I was sleeping over at Astrid’s. I had told them that with a shrug I practiced in the bathroom mirror. I didn’t have to try to be bored; the boredom had saturated me ever since we moved in October, when the days started to flatten and the sea darkened to iron. The village had a shop that sold bread and cigarettes and a noticeboard with curling posters about latticework and snowmobile repair. It had a church with a spire so thin it seemed pinned into the sky. Before Astrid, I was something to be glanced at—Stockholm girl, city girl, a word that meant you thought you were better. “Are you sure about the mound?” I asked. “I thought we were doing the cards.” “That’s for little things,” she said. “Who stole the science teacher’s watch, who put the gum in Ingrid’s braid. Útiseta is for knowledge. For when you need answers.” She said it with the authority of someone peeling an orange. Her face, pale in the faint skyglow, was framed by hair that always escaped from her hat. She walked like she knew where she was going even when there was no path. “Anyway, you said you wanted to know why Malin quit the dance team. See? That’s a big thing.” “I didn’t say I wanted to know,” I said. “I just wondered.” Astrid didn’t answer. She tugged me by the sleeve to where the trees thinned, and the snow gathered like folded linen over low mounds. The burial ground lay in a grove that dipped toward the river; you couldn’t see it from the road. Astrid said her grandmother had taken her here in summer, when the grass was high, but winter is when the world is thin. She said it half-joking, every time. The mound we chose was barely knee-high. In the daylight it would only be a swelling in the earth. Now, it felt like a bubble of old air under the snow. My breath caught in my throat. Not fear, exactly—an edged awareness, like walking barefoot across pebbles. “Okay,” Astrid said briskly, and set the tin box down. Inside were three lumps of sugar wrapped in paper, a bottle of tiny brown seeds, a stubby candle, and a small flat stone carved with a spiral. “We’ll sit facing north,” she said. “Put the blankets down the way I showed you.” We’d practiced on her living room floor, while her little brother watched TV and her mother smoked without opening a window. I laid one blanket directly on the snow and folded the other so that it could wrap around us both from behind. The mound made the ground uneven, a mild hump under my thighs when I sat. The cold seeped through my jeans immediately. Astrid wound the red yarn around my wrist three times and tied it with a knot that cinched tight. She did the same to her own. Then she looped the yarn between us until it drew a line like a string between two tin-can telephones. Our hands lay in our laps, pale and ungloved. “Leave your fingers out,” she said. “In case something wants to take your hand.” “That’s not funny.” “I’m not joking.” We were close enough that our shoulders touched. The mound breathed its cold through the blanket. Astrid took the sugar lumps out and set them on the flat stone. With the tip of one finger, she traced a spiral in the air over them, and then traced a circle around the mound, not touching it, just drawing the line in the air. She did it as if she had done it a hundred times—a girl arranging barrettes, a girl folding paper cranes. “Who taught you this?” I whispered. The birches leaned and clicked. Somewhere a raven made a sound like a door hinge. “Grandma said her grandmother sat out here when the men were away fishing,” Astrid said. “To ask them to come back. To ask the weather to be kind. And other things.” She didn’t look at me when she spoke; her eyes were on the north, on the black gap where the spruce forest thickened like a wall. “She told me people get stupid about it, like with everything. Boys try to dare each other, and then they go home and tell jokes. But she said if you make a bargain, you keep it.” “What bargain?” “You’ll see.” The words were matter-of-fact, but something in her voice made my mouth taste like metal. She lit the candle with a match, cupping the flame from the small wind with her hands. The candle’s light stitched our faces into the dark, made our breath visible. We had to stay until the candle burned to the nub, she had told me. We had to keep quiet. We had to think about what we wanted to know, hold it like a bead between finger and thumb. The trick, she said, was not to ask a question you couldn’t bear to have answered. “I don’t think I want to know about Malin,” I said, soft. “Then ask for something else.” The cold was climbing into my bones, an intelligent thing. It took my knees, my hips, the tender places at the sides of my breasts. I thought about my father’s hands on the steering wheel when we first drove into the village, how tightly he held it, as if at any moment he could veer the car back toward Stockholm. I thought about my mother’s cheerfulness like a coat she couldn’t take off. I thought about the way the boys had looked at me in the shop, and how their eyes slid away like fish. I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be left alone. I wanted to know if I had made a mistake. I wanted to know if there was a way to go back. “I’ll ask for—” I said, and then stopped. The candlelight trembled. Astrid leaned toward the sugar stones. “We start like this. Knock three times.” She tapped the flat stone with her fingernail. The sound was a small, clean note. I did the same. It felt foolish. It felt like I was stirring a sleeping creature with a spoon. She spoke in Swedish, but not the Swedish from school. The words were shaped like cradles or boat-hulls, old and wide. She didn’t chant; she said them as if she were reciting a grocery list. I didn’t recognize any of it. My stomach dropped as if there had been a step missing. The sound called down into the snow, and nothing, nothing answered. We waited. I could hear everything. The sap locked in the trees, the far rumble of the river under its ice, the soft, uncanny noise of snow settling against itself. My toes went numb. My thighs burned with the effort of keeping still. The candle hissed and made a thin, living line between us and the dark. When it came, I thought at first it was the wind shifting the forest. But the air was steady. The sound was delicate, like a fingernail drawn along the teeth of a comb. It traveled around the circle Astrid had traced, the air-line, like the sound of a bead sliding along a string. “Did you hear—” I said. “Shh,” Astrid whispered. Her eyes were fixed on the north, but I saw how her throat moved when she swallowed. We sat. The sound came again, a fraction to the left this time—or I told myself it was. It could have been the blood in my ears. My heartbeat thumped in the red yarn where it crossed my wrist. The knot dug into my skin. A church bell chimed once. A clean, singular note that made the hair on my arms rise. It came thin through the trees, down the slope from the village. I had counted the services; there wasn’t one tonight. Astrid’s mouth made a shape like a laugh without the sound. “Midnight,” she said, as if that explained everything. The candle flame bent and then stood upright again. My eyes were wet. I blinked and saw, in the corner of my vision, the impression of someone standing in the trees. It was a trick of the branches. I told myself so sternly that it became a kind of prayer. “What do we ask?” I whispered. “You ask,” said Astrid. “You’re the one who brought the sweets.” My chest hurt. The cold had found my lungs. I didn’t want to ask anything anymore. I wanted to stand up and stamp my feet and go back to Astrid’s kitchen, where there were prints of geese on the curtains and a calendar of glossy dogs and the smell of boiled coffee. But the red yarn tied me to her. And I had a stupid, adolescent obstinacy in me—a fear of seeming cowardly bigger than my fear of what might answer. “I want to know,” I said, and my voice surprised me by how steady it sounded, “if I’m going to belong here.” It was not what I thought I would say, but there it was, a small coin pushed across a table. The air didn’t change. The mound didn’t shift. There was no voice. But I had the strong sensation of being noticed. The same way in the city I could feel when someone was staring at me on the subway—the prickle, the exactness. As if a face leaned in close to mine in a crowd and then leaned away again before I could see it. My mouth filled with sweetness, the sugar on the flat stone, although I hadn’t put any to my tongue. Astrid’s hand moved. I thought she was reaching for mine, but she touched the red yarn, just once, as if testing its tension. Her nails were bitten down. “If it wants something,” she murmured, so soft I almost didn’t catch it, “you have to decide if you can give it.” “What could it want?” I meant to make it a sneer, and failed. Sometimes, later, I thought that was when the wind shifted—not then, but the idea of it, so that whenever I tell this, it seems as if the birches leaned in closer. The sound came again, under the skin of the night. The candle flame guttered and stayed. I smelled something that wasn’t there a moment before: earth, but deep earth, the smell of old potatoes in a cellar, of coats taken out of boxes after a long time. It was not unpleasant. It was not human. “Say thank you,” Astrid said. She said it very hurriedly. She sounded like herself again—a girl who had laughed at me for not knowing where to find the best place to swim in summer, the side of the river where the sun warmed the rocks first, the shortcut behind the old man’s barn where the dog would bark but never bite. “Thank you,” I said, into the dark. My mouth was dry. Astrid took a sugar lump and set it on the mound and then pushed it with one finger until it fell into the slight hollow at the top, where the snow had melted more than around it. She lifted the bottle of seeds and sprinkled a line around the candle, and for a second it looked like a tiny necklace. Then she pinched the candlewick between finger and thumb and didn’t flinch when it scorched her skin. “You said it had to burn out,” I said. “It changed,” she said. “Sometimes it changes.” We sat without light until my eyes learned the darkness again. The place where the candle had been glowed in my vision like a negative. The sound had gone, or else it had receded to the point where it became part of all the other sounds—my breath, Astrid’s breath, the minute adjustments of the forest. A distant car on the road, a single, lonely pass. The idea of that car seemed absurd here, like thinking about an escalator in a field. “Can we go?” I asked. “In a minute,” she said, and then, after a long moment: “We have to go back the way we came. No shortcuts.” “Why?” “It matters.” I got to my feet, and the sudden blood to my legs made me dizzy. The red yarn tugged, and I had the strangest feeling that something on the other end of it pulled back, not Astrid, something else. I bit the inside of my cheek so I wouldn’t make a sound and tasted blood. We unwound the yarn carefully, to keep it from snagging, and rolled it around one hand until it made a red cuff. Astrid picked up the flat stone and slid it into the tin box. She left the sugar in the hollow. The top was already crusted with a thin skim of ice. On the path home, we didn’t talk. The birches watched us. The village was a dark mass, the church spire a stitch in the cloud. When we reached the school, the swing creaked once in a wind that hadn’t been there a second before. Astrid’s hand found my sleeve in the dark and gave it a small, firm tug—reassurance, or warning, or both. In bed at her house, later, with her breathing slow beside me and the red yarn wound around my wrist under the sleeve of my borrowed T-shirt, I tried to decide what had happened. I told myself that I had scared myself into hearing things. That the bell had chimed because metal shifts in cold. That the smell of earth belonged to the mound itself. I slept and woke and slept and woke, and every time I closed my eyes I saw a spiral traced in air, and every time I opened them the dark seemed to lean back just in time. In the morning, Astrid’s mother put cinnamon sugar on porridge and complained about the price of petrol, and the radio said nothing about the church bell. At school, Malin didn’t meet my eyes, and I didn’t ask her anything. When I washed my hands in the girls’ bathroom, the water ran over the red mark the yarn had left and made it sting. I kept the stone’s spiral in my mind like a pebble in my pocket. I thought I could stop. I thought I was the one choosing. But that night, when I lay in my borrowed bed and the house settled and the river knocked once under its ice, a small, polite sound, I had the sense that something had heard me, and that it had tilted its head, and that it was waiting for me to speak again.

Model Output:
The poster of the human musculature is too clean. Every muscle bellied and feathered in red, origin and insertion pins like neat bullet holes. As if pain could be organized into zones like that—deltoid, supraspinatus, biceps long head—like a map someone could use to find their way back to being normal. He taps the printout on his clipboard, the one with my name at the top and an angle measurement circled in green. Thirty degrees external rotation. It may as well be a scarlet letter. “Let’s start prone,” he says. His voice has changed since I knew him—lower, or maybe just steadier. In college, when we did intervals in the dark, he used to talk too fast and too much. Now he speaks like he’s measuring the cost of each syllable. I climb onto the table face down, my injured shoulder toward the wall. The vinyl is cold against my sternum; the paper crinkles under my cheek. The table is narrow enough that my forearm dangles off the side, elbow flexed to ninety, palm facing the floor. Gravity pulls on the weight of my hand and hums an ache into the front of my shoulder. He stands to my side, so my peripheral vision gives me the hem of his polo, the slope of his forearm, the cords across his wrist as he reaches to check the angle of my elbow joint. He slides one hand under my forearm to support it, the other to steady my upper arm against the table. His fingers press lightly into the lateral border of my scapula, his thumb along the spine. “Infraspinatus and teres minor,” he says, more to the poster behind me than to me. “We’ll start with passive external rotation. Don’t help me.” Don’t help me. The instruction buzzes under my skin. I relax my wrist. My tendency is to guard, clamp, anticipate pain with my whole body. He has always been able to read tension as if it written in my fascia. He rotates my forearm away from my torso, my elbow a neat hinge at ninety degrees. The movement is small at first, a gentle arc like a compass point tracing a wider radius. Every degree feels like a thin wedge inserted under the front of my shoulder—pec minor gripping, biceps tendon catching in its groove. There’s a pinch that is both sharp and diffuse at the front, deep under the coracoid, like a shock behind a wall. My breathing goes shallow. “Tell me when you feel the stretch,” he says. “I feel it,” I say too quickly. He pauses and holds, waits for the tissue’s compliance. Time stretches. My hand is heavy in his palm. I feel the pressure of his fingers along my scapula, reminding it to stay retracted, depressed. He gives a subtle posterior glide with his thumb, rolling my humeral head back how it should sit when my rotator cuff is doing its job—when my life was simple and pain was a training tool, not a constant. “Breathe into it,” he says. “Slow in, slower out.” I inhale, feel ribs press into the table, the injured side grudging. Air pushes into the space under my shoulder blade as I aim my breath there, like he taught me years ago on a track, when breath was fuel and not a thing to control pain. The sting at the front transitions into a burn along the back shoulder capsule. He holds until the burn becomes a dull heat, until my body gives him a few degrees. “You’re not fighting me,” he says quietly. Is it approval, or relief? Hard to tell. His hand is warm through my skin. My forearm reaches what feels like forty-five degrees and my pec sends an electrical warning to my brain. He stops there, holds. A tremor runs through my wrist, an involuntary flutter I can’t conceal. I hear the soft click of his watchband as he glances at time. We’ve shared silence before—on start lines when the ocean of noise receded and only the call to set mattered. This feels the same and nothing like it. I’m aware of him the way I used to be aware of a competitor’s cadence. The difference now: he’s in my space, guiding my movement, and the heat that rises under my skin has nothing to do with exertion. He eases my forearm back to neutral and supports it as he sets my palm to face forward, then slowly internally rotates. The posterior capsule tightens like a drawstring bag; the top of my shoulder complains like an angry neighbor. He cants his hand to keep my humerus from gliding forward—his fingers making a small shelf laterally as his other hand gives a gentle posterior-anterior oscillation on the humeral head, milking space in the joint. It’s precise, a conversation in pressure gradients. He’s always been exacting; he’s honed it into something clinical. “You’re guarding on internal,” he murmurs. “Let your subscapularis be a muscle again.” There’s a dry half-smile in his voice. “Tell it that,” I mutter into the table paper. The humor is a thin varnish. A flare of pain shoots bright, the kind that steals air, and my left hand curls into a fist while my right grips the edge of the table. Instinct, that old surge. He notices. His hand shifts to cover my distal forearm, the heel of his palm anchoring me, his thumb a quiet press that says: Stay here. “We’re at end range,” he says. His breath moves the hairs on my upper arm. “It’s safe. It’s supposed to be uncomfortable.” I want to spit back that discomfort used to mean a medal, used to have context and meaning. Now it’s just a room with dumbbells and a man who knew me when I was something else. Instead I swallow and feel the sting melt into a throbbing heat radiating up into my neck. He holds. My body quivers at that threshold. The line between pain and…not pleasure, but something like relief when the pressure is perfectly placed, exact, and my tissue yields by a millimeter. We both feel it. His fingers lighten a fraction, then back on. He’s reading me through the micro-movements of my scapula, the tone in my forearm flexors, the way my breathing staggers. “Okay,” he says after a count of ten. He returns me to neutral, my shoulder humming like a plucked wire. He guides my arm to the table, drapes a towel under my humerus to keep it in slight abduction to slacken the supraspinatus. He steps around to my head. I catch a glimpse of him in the chrome of the light fixture—broad-shouldered now in a different way, hip bones no longer the sharp blades they were when he was cutting weight to race. He’s grown into another life. I bring my good hand under my cheek and look at the musculature poster. Gluteus medius shaded a different red than tensor fasciae latae. The labels are so clinical. My name used to be a label on a bib. Now it’s a case file above a measurement. “Roll to your side,” he says, touching my scapula with two fingers to cue the direction. I roll onto my left, right shoulder up, knees flexed to stabilize my lumbar spine. He positions my right arm so the elbow is still bent ninety degrees, but now at my side in neutral. He reaches under my scapula with his fingers, sliding like a knife under a stuck letter. He hooks the inferior angle with his fingertips and lifts slightly, creating space between scapula and rib cage. “Scapular mobilizations,” he says softly. He glides it into protraction and retraction, upward rotation and downward rotation, depression, elevation, a slow controlled exploration. The serratus anterior complains—hot ache along the ribs—as he guides it to glide. My skin hums under his hand, nerves a chorus. His other hand anchors my clavicle so the motion is truly scapulothoracic, not clavicular compensation. His breath is timed to his movements, intentional. The air between us thickens with clinical professionalism and something else from a long time ago that smells like rain on a track. “What do you feel?” he asks. “Like my shoulder blade is a cat that doesn’t want to be picked up.” He huffs a laugh. The sound lands somewhere low in me. His fingertips press into the medial border, kneading, stripping along the supraspinatus fossa to find adhesions. He locates a knot near the superior angle—a trigger point—and compresses. The pain is sharp and radiates over the top of my shoulder like a hot stream, referencing to the lateral arm. My eyes sting. An involuntary tear creeps out and smears on the paper. He holds steady pressure until the hyperirritable spot yields, and with it, something unfurls in me. The room shrinks to the radius of his hand and my breath. He eases off slowly, keeping one finger on the spot as if to promise he knows where he is. My heart rate slows. “We’re going to do a sleeper stretch,” he says. “You guide it this time. I’ll block.” I roll further onto my right side, stacking my shoulder directly under me to avoid the common cheat of posterior tilt. He places his hand on my scapula to block it, palm flat, pressure gentle but unrelenting. “Don’t let your shoulder blade wing. All movement from glenohumeral.” I nod. My elbow is at ninety, forearm upright. With my left hand, I apply gentle downward pressure on my right wrist, trying to internally rotate the shoulder. Immediately my posterior capsule lights up, a deep, hot line that feels like a seatbelt too tight across bone. He adds a little pressure on my scapula to keep it pinned, preventing me from stealing range there. The sensation is intense—like the top of my humerus is a cork being twisted in. There is a precise edge where it shifts from stretch to wrong; he stops me with a quiet “there” before I cross it. “Hold twenty,” he says. “Breathe into your back.” I breathe. My ribs expand into his hand. The weight of him through my scapula is both anchor and provocation. My left hand trembles as I maintain pressure. My right forearm quakes. He watches the angle of my elbow, the alignment of my wrist, corrects with two fingers when my forearm drifts into pronation to cheat. His touch is minimal but everywhere. I picture him as he was at nineteen—laughing, impossible, eyes wild after a race. There is a part of me that wants to shove him away now for being who he is when I’m not who I was, and another part that wants to lean back into the solid line of his palm until the world narrows to the skin he’s on. “Release slow,” he says. I do, the tissues recoiling like a slow exhale. He eases off my scapula. My arm floats, heavy and hot. “We’ll finish with a pec minor stretch,” he says, coaxing me onto my back. He places a small bolster under my thoracic spine to extend it, opens my arms into a T, palms up. He positions my right shoulder just past neutral extension, externally rotated. The deep front of my shoulder resists like a locked door. He kneels at my head, reaches to the coracoid process—the hook of bone under the skin—and places his fingers there, then the heel of his other hand under the posterior shoulder to give a counterforce. He applies a gentle, sustained pressure down and back on the coracoid, lengthening the pec minor. It feels like a string inside my chest is being tugged. The sensation is invasive, intimate, effective. “Don’t let your ribs flare,” he says, and with his free hand he taps my lower ribs. I draw them down, engage the transverse abdominis, feel my spine meet the bolster differently. The stretch moves from a sharp line in the front to a broader, deep pull. His forearm is close to my jaw; I can smell the citrus tang of his soap mingled with something skin-warm. The room is quiet but for the air vent and my breath and his. “You’re doing well,” he says, not looking for my eyes. “Your range is improving.” I want to throw the words at him: My range used to be an ocean. Instead I let the stretch burn, count silently with the second hand of the wall clock, watch the red muscle poster in my peripheral vision. The neat red bands of pec minor and major, their fibers running toward the humerus with purpose. I used to understand purpose. He releases slowly, as if returning something to a shelf. He helps me sit, one hand under my scapula, the other supporting my elbow. We are close. The air feels heavy. He steps back, that careful line retained. “Home program,” he says, tapping the clipboard. “Three sets. Slow. No bouncing. Ice afterward. Text if you get night pain.” “I won’t,” I say, too quickly. A lie. Night is the worst; when it all swells and throbs and memory does too. He lifts his chin toward the poster. “You’re not a diagram,” he says. “We’ll get you moving the way you move.” The way I moved is gone. The resentment is an ember I roll on my tongue like a curse. But my shoulder aches in that particular way that means something was pried open and might stay that way a little while. He turns to put the clipboard on the counter. The muscle map looms over him like an anatomy of a person we both used to be. “Same time Thursday?” he asks. “Yes,” I say. My hand is still tingling where he held it. My shoulder hums like a live wire. We stand there a second too long with nothing left to say that isn’t an admission, and then I slide off the table, the paper sticking for a heartbeat to my skin, the sound delicate, like tearing a bandage I’m not sure I want off.

Model Output:
The bell on the river tolled second watch as I drifted from the quay into Old China Street. Junk sails creaked like old bones on the water. The heat had come early, pressing damp palms and damp collars, making the air in the alleys smell of brine, frying oil, and the sweet-spoiled musk of poppy. I palmed the jade figure in my pocket—a squat little god with one chipped eyebrow—rubbing it as if I might erase my own reflection. The first itch had started at dawn when the fleet’s breakfast gong sounded and I turned my head from gruel and orders. By noon the itch had become a roar. “Lieutenant Merrick,” called a voice from a balcony above a printer’s shop. “Are you in funds or in need?” Hargreaves leaned out, hatless, his necktie a noose of wilted silk. He traded in anything that moved and much that didn’t. “Good day, Mr. Hargreaves.” I kept my eyes on the edge of the balcony so I wouldn’t look up at his face, and wouldn’t show how my hand had begun to shake against the jade. “You’re listing. Come up.” He vanished. I took the stairs two at a time because if I stopped I might stop entirely. In his room the windows were thrown wide to the river. He had set out a plate of oranges that glowed like small lanterns, and a decanter of something that wasn’t water. “You look poorly,” he said. “The ship will miss you today.” “The ship won’t miss a Lieutenant of no consequence,” I said. “Have you coin?” “Not for you. You owe me for the Portuguese pistols and that little matter of the American flag you borrowed.” “I paid you.” I touched the tally of notes in my coat—worth nothing to the men who took silver by weight. “You paid a hope, not a debt.” Hargreaves poured a finger of brandy and slid it across. I did not touch it. He watched my hand. “You’re shaking like a lantern in a gust.” “My inventory list,” I said, “was needed this morning. I am here, which tells you how it went.” He grinned without showing teeth. “Go to Hoi. He’ll give you credit if you give him a gift. You’ll find him behind the chop-sticks alley, next to the tea warehouse with the painted cranes.” “He’ll want coin.” “He’ll want a favour. You owe me none. You owe yourself some measure of mercy.” I stood. “If you see Hoban—” “The purser?” He lifted an orange, peeled it in one smooth spiral. “You want to sell him out for a taste?” “I want to borrow,” I said, feeling the rind’s perfume like a cuff beneath my nose. “You’ll not make the quarterdeck tonight.” He tossed me a peel; I fumbled it, my fingers ignoring commands. “Go,” he said. “You’re fouling the air.” Hoi’s alley was silk-swaddled in shade. The heat there was feverish, a damp pocket that smelled of soy, sesame, iron from the slaughter-yard, and the faint incense of a joss house somewhere under the layers. Hoi sat on a stool between two bamboo cages containing birds with eyes like pinholes in pitch. The birds had songs that seemed to turn corners rather than move forward. “Fan-kwai officer,” Hoi said, with a smile that showed a gold tooth. He was narrow as a fish. “You were gone many days.” “Two,” I said. “I need—” “I know what you need.” He pointed his chin at my pocket. “Make the little god quiet.” “I’ve no silver.” The words dragged ash from my throat. “But I can fetch something. Documents. A boat. Passage.” “Passage,” Hoi said, tasting the syllables as if they were grist. “Not today. Today you bring me news.” “What news is worth the taste?” “The tide,” he said. “At which watch does your ship turn over the river-lighters to the factory? Which sloop goes up-country for survey? Which officer hates which officer? People will pay for hatred.” “You know that already.” “Tell me where the gunpowder sleeps tonight, and you walk.” He held up a square of pressed sludge wrapped in oiled paper. The scent of it flattened me, a black sun rising. “The storeroom,” I said, instinct turning treasonous. “Midships, under guard by Morris. British guard, not sepoy. Keys on his belt. He naps at nine.” “Ah.” Hoi tilted his head, weighing me against the dark. “And you will bring me the small scale weights from the purser’s office. The brass ones. The men stealing me must not cheat me. If you bring the weights by sunset, you eat tonight without paying.” “Morris will notice if his lodestone goes missing.” “Then find a way to make him not notice,” Hoi said, disentangling a splinter from his thumb with his teeth. “No silver now. Return with iron.” “Give me a taste,” I said. The jade in my pocket had become a hot coin. My lungs climbed into my throat to look out at the packet he dangled. “Ah,” he said softly. “You are an impatient priest.” He tore a sliver from the honey-brown cake and pressed it into my palm. “For your legs. So you do not fall between shops.” I placed it under my tongue and the world tilted, not into calm, but away from catastrophe. The itch, that sand drift under the skin, moved sideways. The birds sang a straight song. “Sunset,” he said. “Go.” Outside, a cool breeze came off the river and dried the sweat on my chest. I walked along the edge of the factories, past little groups of clerks in waistcoats taking tea, past sailors in raw cotton lounging and spitting, past a beggar without feet who rolled like tidewater at the curb. The British flags above the warehouses drooped like wet handkerchiefs. From the east side gate came Hoban the purser, a little red in the face, his ledger clamped like a Bible to his ribs. He saw me and looked past me, which told me more than if he had stared. “Hoban,” I said. “Lieutenant,” he answered to the horizon. “A word.” “I’m late.” “You owe me our last little arbitration,” I said. “You were short a case and your company smiled and took it on the chin because I am kind.” “You are not kind,” he said, finally looking. “You are fortunate to wear that coat.” “Give me the brass weights,” I said. “The small ones. For an hour.” “So you may weigh out your virtue in drams?” He shifted his ledger. “No.” “I’ll return them before the sun is gone.” “They are chained to the desk,” he said, lying. “And anyway, Lieutenant, I find your voice too quick and your eye too slow today.” “Two guineas,” I said. “Two,” he repeated, savoring the number as if it were a coin he might swallow like a magician and breathe out later as smoke. “I have a wife in Portsmouth.” “You have three,” I said, and he smiled despite himself. “Go to Mrs. Lin at the counting house on Hog Lane,” he said. “She runs weights like rosary beads. She’ll do it for you because she likes to see you twist.” “So do you.” “I do,” he said, then lowered his voice. “Our captain was looking for you at nine. Something about a tide chart. Don’t go back until it’s dark. He’s got the sermon light in his eyes.” Mrs. Lin sat behind a low counter in a room as sparse as a temple, if temples smelled of camphor and rat droppings. Her hair was a black flag, oiled and pinned, and her fingers moved with a speed that reminded me of the birds in Hoi’s cage. “Is the English lieutenant come to learn the abacus?” she asked without looking up. “I need to borrow weights,” I said. “The brass ones. I’ll return them before the bells.” “People never return weight,” she said. “They return stories. Those are lighter.” “Three guineas,” I said, laying my notes on the wood. Her eyes flicked, cut, returned to my face. With a small sigh—of profit or boredom, I could not tell—she bent, lifted a velvet pouch, slid it across to me. “You will also carry a letter for me to Uncle Chao in the mulberry court,” she said. “If you do not deliver it first, I will know.” “How?” “You will not be able to open your mouth without telling me.” “I am very good at not telling.” “Yes,” she said. “That is why your hands look like ghosts.” I ran the pouch beneath my palm to feel the little bells inside, the heavy truth of them. In my pocket the jade warmed, my thumb rubbing its cheek. “Do you know Hoi?” she asked, as if we were speaking of weather. “I know he eats without salt,” I said. “Give him my compliments,” she said, and looked back to her sums. The mulberry court sat under a carved arch where a pale boy with a scar hawked sour plums. Uncle Chao was old enough that his cheekbones were blue from the thinness of his skin. He wore an expression that had not altered since the first batch of dried leaves was traded for the first coin. “For me,” I said, tapping the letter against my knuckle. He took it without interest. “You need smoke,” he said conversationally. “I need credit,” I said. “Same thing,” he said. “One is merely a letter written in a different language.” The sliver Hoi had given me was fading already, its kindness a shallow wave that had spent itself on sand. The air had acquired edges again; every shout barked against my skull. I did not want to go back through the street. I wanted to find a shadow and slide through it to the side where everyone spoke slowly. In Hog Lane I ran into Webb, an ensign with eyes like damp leather, who carried a wrapped bundle. “Lieutenant,” he said, surprised. “We’re to look for you. Captain’s temper is up.” “Is it.” The words were iron filings in my mouth. “He wants you to take soundings to Whampoa this evening.” “Tell him I’m confirming a chart,” I said. “Tell him the tide is wrong.” “The tide,” Webb repeated as if it were a personal insult. “You look ill, sir.” “Go away, Webb,” I said, and he did, because I outranked him, and because he was young enough to remember rules, and because I was old enough to break them. I caught sight of Hargreaves again outside a fan shop, speaking to a woman with a face like a paper lantern. He put two fingers to his forehead in mock salute and mouthed, “Found?” I did not answer. Back at Hoi’s alley the sun had swung to the west and all the shadows had moved a step to the right. Hoi looked at the pouch, then at my hands. “You went to Mrs. Lin,” he said, pleased by his own prediction. “Sunset isn’t yet,” I said. “I brought the weights early.” “And the rest?” “The purser is a bastard.” “Hm,” he said. “That I knew.” He took the weights and set them on a low table, each one with the tenderness of a groom smoothing a horse. “Sit. You look like an oar that’s been cracked but still rows.” “Give me it,” I said, and hated hearing the words in my own voice, soft as a child’s request. He prepared it with the care of a man setting a watch: spirit lamp, instruction, a pipe like black jade. The smoke crowded the roof beams and then my lungs. The birds stopped making corners. My skin untied itself and draped back over my skull. Someone outside knocked a cart-wheel into a stone and the sound was filed away on a shelf where it could not reach me. “Better,” Hoi said. “Better.” I pressed my thumb against the jade god, but now it was cool again, an honest piece of stone, and I let my fingers fall away. “How many today?” he asked, as if he were counting cups of tea. “Until the bells,” I said. “Bells are meaningless,” he said. “Eat while there is rice.” Two men came in and looked at me sideways; one of them had a scar that pulled his ear down his neck like a loose button. They spoke to Hoi in a dialect I could not keep in my head. The longer I sat, the farther my obligations receded, as if they were smoke blown upriver. “You will do a little work for me tonight,” Hoi said, gently, as if asking a favor of a nephew. “Carry a packet to the old fort past the factory. Put it into the hands of the man with the silver tooth. Do not open your mouth for anyone else. Do not open the packet.” “And if I do?” “Your god will go hungry.” He held my gaze. I nodded, because I am a man who bargains. Even then, even as the tide in me slackened and went still, I calculated distance and dusk, guards and chance, the shape of Morris’s nap and how a belt might be undone without waking a man. When I could stand without falling over the birds, Hoi wrapped two thumb-nails of the black cake in oiled silk and tucked it into the inner seam of my jacket. “For later,” he said. “For when the river shows you the faces of your family.” “They’re long drowned,” I said. “Water remembers,” he said, and clicked his tongue at one of the birds, who answered with a phrase that sounded like a woman shutting a wooden window. Between Hoi’s and the fort lay the promenade with its promenade people: traders with bellies like cannonades, clerks who had borrowed a swagger with their waistcoats, Chinese boat-women with inked wrists, unruly children flicking fish eyes at dogs. A Scottish missionary passed me, his face set in a loop of pity he could not unknit. He stopped when our eyes met. “Lieutenant,” he said, “they are saying the trade is a sin.” “They are saying a great many things,” I said. “Have you any notion how to turn a river back to its mountain?” “By refusing to swim in it,” he said. “I am,” I said, touching the jade in my pocket. “Drowning.” “Come to a service.” “I have a service at dusk,” I said, and moved on. At the old fort I found the man with the silver tooth leaning against a wall that had once held guns pointed at my countrymen. Now a child slept in the mouth of a cannon run with moss. The man took the packet and weighed it—literally, with two fingers, like a judge—and slid a small coil of Mexican dollars back. Silver sang a thin tune when it touched each other. I swallowed it into my pocket. “Tell Hoi the river is rising,” he said. “Which one?” I asked. “All of them.” On the way back a sailor named Connor stepped from a doorway and blocked me with his shoulder. He’d been flogged last month. The scars across his back had knit badly, uneven lines that made me think of maps of a broken country. “Lieutenant,” he said. “We were after you today.” “I’m after myself today,” I said. “Perhaps we’ll meet.” “Captain says if you’re not aboard by the changing of the tide you’ll write your name on the mast with your cheeks.” “I have little skin to spare,” I said. “Nor I,” he said, with the smallest twist of a smile that cost him more than it should. “Watch yourself.” “I always do,” I lied. At sunset I gave Hoi the report and he gave me a pipe that made the bells ring twice in one breath. Night came on like a lacquer screen sliding shut. Somewhere a woman laughed, then cried out, then laughed. Lamps lit the river in a scatter of coins. The factories hummed. Men did what men do. I made it back to the waterfront with the silver dollar coil in my pocket and the jade warm under my palm. The topmast of our ship cut the sky like a thought I couldn’t complete. The marine at the gangway squared his shoulders when he saw me. “Lieutenant,” he said, catching the state of me in a glance. “Tell the captain,” I said, fishing for a tone that would make this a canted joke, “that the tide tomorrow will be early.” “He knows,” the marine said. “He always knows.” I stood in the little wash of lamplight on the quay and listened to the ship breathe. I rubbed the jade god until my thumb shined the cheek. “I am coming,” I told the ship. “I am a river, not a stone.” The ship said nothing. The lamps made their coin-flash and sank again. Hoi’s birds sang to each other in small private speeches. Somewhere in Hog Lane Mrs. Lin counted her numbers and found me missing. The jade cooled. The itch began its long, patient climb. I turned away from the gangway and went back towards the alley where the birds knew my name.

Model Output:
The thing about a life of endless uphill work is that it gives you a good sense of timing. You can set your day by the point at which the dust at your ankles becomes mud, by the hour crows decide that your shoulder is as good as a statue, and by the moment you start talking to yourself just loudly enough to be heard by passing gods. Since no gods were passing and the boulder wasn’t much of a conversationalist, Sisyphus had learned to dictate. “Crow,” he said, putting a shoulder to the rock with the kind of companionable intimacy one reserves for well-worn armchairs and immovable legislation, “what’s first?” Crow—who had the sort of black feathers that suggested they had been polished by scandal—hopped onto the smooth ledge that, by centuries of grudge and friction, had become a desk. “From a ‘Sleepless in Sybaris,’” Crow rasped, and then, because he could not help himself, added: “My sympathies. Sybaris has many cushions and yet no rest.” Sisyphus pushed. The boulder regarded him, considered gravity’s opinion, and decided not today. It rolled. Dust rose. Crow cleared his throat in the way of creatures who don’t strictly have throats. “Dear Sisyphus,” Crow read, “My partner insists I should ‘sleep on it’ whenever we argue, but I lie awake replaying every word we said and every word we didn’t. How do I stop fighting at two in the morning? Signed, Sleepless.” Sisyphus leaned into the rock, adjusted, and spoke to the air which was, perhaps, more receptive than most advice-seeking mortals. “Dictate:” Dear Sleepless, Two in the morning is when thoughts put on masks, and every one of them wants to be a terrible play. You don’t have to attend. Try this: agree with your partner that arguments have office hours. Pick a time, mid-morning, when people are more reasonable and bread is still warm. When something flares at night, write down the one sentence you wish you’d said—just one—and put it under a cup in the kitchen. (This works best if the cup is slightly chipped; it lends gravity.) Then go to another room and do a brief chore together that has a clear end—fold one heap of laundry, stack five plates, sweep the kitchen once. Not to fix the feeling, but to remind yourselves you can finish something. If you’re lying there anyway, move your toes slowly. It’s very hard for the mind to sprint while the toes are doing a careful walk. Breathe as if you’re trying not to disturb a cat sleeping on your chest. In the morning, read the sentence under the cup. If it’s still worth saying, say it during office hours. If it’s not, congratulate yourself on saving two people from unnecessary theatre. Yours warmly, Sisyphus Crow scratched a margin note. “Note: acquire chipped cup, avoid cat.” Sisyphus nudged. The boulder behaved like a grandparent crossing a street—reluctant but not unreasonable. The sun moved across the sky with all the languor of a retired magistrate recalling cases he never quite solved. “Next,” Sisyphus said. “From ‘Half-There Hector’,” Crow croaked, shuffling parchment with the delicacy of someone who once stole a set of courtly love letters and survived. “Relationship troubles.” “Of course,” Sisyphus said, because of course. “Dear Sisyphus,” Crow read, “My boyfriend is wonderful, clever, handsome, and refuses to attend any event that isn’t a funeral or an opening night. He says he’s ‘bad at small talk.’ I’m tired of attending things alone. How do I coax him out without losing my mind? Regards, Hector.” Sisyphus planted his feet. The boulder did that little shiver it did, like a thought deciding to become an action. Dictate: Dear Hector, Some people think small talk is a test. It isn’t. It’s like warming up your hands before you play. Don’t begin with the symphony. Ask your boyfriend to choose two events in the next month that are small and finite—an afternoon market, a neighbor’s book club where the book is mostly pictures of ships. Tell him he is allowed to leave after an hour if he says a pre-arranged phrase. The phrase should be something that no one else will say accidentally, like “I promised to stir the stew” or “I have to check on the basil.” Practice saying it together so it doesn’t stick in his throat. Before you go in, agree on three questions to ask strangers that do not require genius to answer: “What is that you’re holding and why do you like it?” works in most places. Also: position yourselves near the food. People at food tables are obligated by custom to be friendly and to pass things. He will be able to participate without performing. If he uses the phrase and wants to leave, go with him the first two times. The leaving is part of the success. After that, you can split; you won’t be abandoning him, you’ll be trusting him. And if he truly hates it after that, then invite him to be excellent at the things he does like, and ask a friend to be your plus-one for the rest. Love does not demand every party; it asks for honesty about where each of you is happiest. Yours in good company, Sisyphus Crow added, in a different ink that suggested mischief: “If phrase is ‘I have to check on the basil,’ bring actual basil home.” Sisyphus put his shoulder back. The rock continued its stately climb. A beetle crossing the path paused to watch, the way one pauses at a crossing to let history go by. A little wind took a little dust and moved it somewhere it would be welcomed as new dust. “Work-life balance,” Crow announced, with the relish of a bird who considered balance a suggestion. “From ‘Overcandled in Corinth.’” “Dictate,” Sisyphus said, and considered his breathing. Dear Overcandled, Candles are for light and timing. Use them for both. Pick a candle that takes one hour to burn. When you start your most important task of the day, light it and do nothing else until it is gone. No messengers, no sorting scrolls, no heroic rescues of minor distractions. When the candle ends, so does that period. Stand up, drink water, and do something that does not involve your mind—wipe a table, repair a strap, water a plant that does not need you but tolerates you. Then light another, if you must. At the end of the day, have one candle that is not for work at all. Light it at the moment you decide to stop. That light says: no more buying back the morning with the interest of the night. Do not begin anything that cannot be finished by the end of the wick. People will try to hand you emergencies. Ask them to put them under the cup until morning. If someone insists their need is a fire, ask them whether it is a house fire or a “my stew is sticking” fire. Both are legitimate. Only one requires your immediate bucket. Yours in measured flames, Sisyphus Crow scribbled: “Note: birds disapprove of fire unless it is gossip.” He fluttered up as the boulder edged past a treacherous patch that had ambitions of being a slope. Sisyphus’s feet found exactly the places they always did. It is possible to be surprised by a familiar landscape, if one notices the exactness of one’s own habit. “Ah,” Crow said, plucking a letter from the bottom of the bundle as though it had tugged his talon. “This one has a perfume I would describe as optimistic. From ‘Curious in Cnidus.’” Sisyphus coughed into his arm with polite interest. “Dear Sisyphus,” Crow intoned. “My girlfriend and I have been together a year. Things are good, but she has suggested—how to put this—inviting a third person on special occasions, like a festival. I am… not opposed, but I am worried about feelings, shuffling, and where the arms go. Advice?” Sisyphus adjusted his grip. He had adjusted many things in his life: treaties, expectations, his own collar when mortality was still fitted. Dictate: Dear Curious, Well done on writing before the festival. Start with questions you can both answer with clarity and care. Why do we want this? What feeling are we hoping to have? Agree on signals that mean “pause” and “stop entirely.” They should be ordinary words you won’t forget under pressure. “Pause” can be “Water.” “Stop” can be “Olive.” Practice saying them kindly. Decide in advance what happens after. Will the third person stay for bread? Do you want to see them again? It’s not rude to say no; it is rude to fade away and blame the gods. Keep the first time short on purpose. Think of it like a play with a set ending, not a festival that wanders toward midnight out of vanity. And acknowledge jealousy like you would a nervous dog: don’t pretend it isn’t there; let it sniff everything; speak calmly; do not kick it for barking. If the evening becomes funny, allow it. If it is not funny, do not force it. Where the arms go: ask. Hands like instructions more than you think. Yours with a nod, Sisyphus Crow underlined “Olive” twice and added, “Do not confuse with ‘olive oil.’ Slippery slope.” They paused near a notch in the hill where the rock always rested. Sisyphus took his shoulder away and rolled one thick wrist, looking out over a valley full of people doing their best in the wrong sandals. “Difficult people,” Crow said, with the resignation of someone who had met gods. “From ‘Trampled by Centaurs.’” Sisyphus’s mouth twitched. The rock settled into its notch like a sigh. “Dear Sisyphus,” Crow read, “My boss is charm itself in public and a thundercloud in private. He takes credit for my work, and when I bring it up he says I’m ‘not a team player.’ I need the job. What do I do?” Sisyphus nodded, not to the rock but to the memory of many bosses with tragic ideas of themselves. Dictate: Dear Trampled, Write things down. Send summaries of meetings to the group with what was decided and who volunteered to do it. Include your own name where it belongs. It’s hard to steal a loaf when everyone saw you bake it. When your boss praises himself with your bread in his mouth, say, pleasantly, “I’m glad the project worked out. I learned a lot leading it.” Then name one specific thing you learned. Specifics are armour; vagueness is a fog he controls. Look for allies who dislike thunder. One may be the person who schedules meetings or the one with the keys to the cupboard. They often know where the real levers are. If you need to stay, make a plan to leave. Give yourself a date to review the plan. Plans are scaffolding; they hold you up even while you remain in the building. If you can’t leave yet, make your work small and precise where you can, and find one thing outside work that cannot be taken from you by a mood. Learn to make soup. Teach someone to tie a knot. Names on bowls and knots do not require permission. Yours in clear weather, Sisyphus Crow wrote: “Soup cannot be stolen, only eaten. This is acceptable theft.” The rock, as rocks do, remembered its brief romance with momentum and began to think about change. It changed direction. It was very generous, as catastrophes go. Sisyphus stepped back, watched it roll down with the benevolent attention of a teacher who knows the student will come back eventually, a little wiser and missing a corner, and sat on a flat stone that had been polished by patience. Crow preened. He considered preening Sisyphus, thought better of it, and instead unrolled the last of the letters. “Life purpose doubts,” he said, and his voice softened—not out of pity, but out of respect for the size of the question. “From ‘Maybe-Mason.’” “Dictate,” Sisyphus said, elbows on knees, palms open as if ready to receive whatever the day had dropped. Dear Maybe, Purpose is often loud in stories and quiet in days. Ask yourself three small questions: What do I do that, when I have done it, the day feels steadier? Who thanks me without being prompted? What activity makes time behave strangely? Write the answers on a piece of wood and keep it where you make decisions. When choices appear, take the ones that point in the direction of those answers, even if only by a finger-width. People think purpose is a door that opens with a creak and a chorus. Often it is a path made of very short, very obvious steps that you keep taking until one day you look back and see a line. If you truly do not know, help someone else do their purpose for a while. Purpose is catching. Be near it and you will find out whether it itches or fits. Also, be suspicious of any voice that says you must be special before you can be useful. The kettle is not special, and yet it changes the room when it sings. Yours in the work, Sisyphus Crow sighed, which for a bird is mostly feather-language. “We have, by the way, a postscript from ‘Sleepless,’” he said, tapping the earlier letter. “She sends that her chipped cup broke.” Sisyphus smiled at the valley where people were lighting evening lamps. “Dictate:” P.S. to Sleepless, Congratulations. It did its job. Chips go on to become dust; dust goes on to become everything that needs it. Find a new cup. You are allowed to have more than one small ritual. Yours, S. Crow did not annotate. Some things did not require feathers. The boulder returned, in the manner of loyal dogs and bad ideas. Sisyphus stood, set his hands, and felt the familiar weight settle and then resist. His knees chatted privately; his back opined. He ignored all of them, not unkindly. “Anything else?” he asked. Crow tilted his head. “A very short one. ‘Dear Sisyphus: How do you keep going?’ Signed, Everyone.” Sisyphus laughed under his breath, the sound of a man who had made friends with his breath. He leaned. Dictate: Dear Everyone, I stop, I drink water, I talk to someone, I do one thing, and then I do the next. Sometimes I listen to the beetles. They are very patient storytellers. Also, I write back. Yours, Sisyphus Crow tucked the letters under one wing, hopped once, and launched, black against a violet sky that had been painted over so many evenings it had texture. Sisyphus pushed. The rock moved. Somewhere below, someone put a sentence under a cup and went to bed. Somewhere else, a basil plant was consulted. The wind, which had opinions but no paper, carried it all along. And on the hillside, where timing is everything and nothing, Sisyphus did the work with the serene competence of a man who had finally found something to do while he did it.

Model Output:
“Is that—? Wait, is that ‘Cruel Angel’s Thesis’?” The words stumble out of me before I realize I’ve said them. They get snagged in the air, just like my headphone cable gets snagged on my jacket zipper whenever I turn too fast. The girl with the guitar turns her head a little, fingers still sprinting up the fretboard. She’s planted on an upended amp case at the mouth of the arcade, neon rain falling from the game signs across her shoulders. Her hair is tied up and messy, strands escaping like bright wires, and she’s smiling even before the last slide squeals out. “Ding ding ding.” The pick taps her strings. “Got yourself an ear. How many semitone bends did I just do?” “Uh—” My headphones slide again and I push them up with my wrist. They’re too big. I like that they feel like a helmet. “Three. On the chorus. You did a... a cheeky one-and-a-half on the bridge, though.” She laughs, the sound rising above the arcade doors whooshing. A couple of kids glance at us, then rush inside, drawn by the crane claw machines and the drum game’s booming ta-ta-ta. The guitarist flips her cable with a foot, neat and practiced, and lets the last chord die under her palm. “You caught that? Wow. Most people just hear ‘anime song go brr.’ You into guitar?” “Synths,” I say, too fast. “I mean. Electronic. I... um. The keyboard kind. Oscillators, envelopes, LFOs. Sorry.” The headphones slip again and I force them back up, the cushion squeaking on my hair. She tilts her head at me, eyeing the headphones, the backpack with the patches—Roland, Korg, an old logo I stitched on from a magazine. Her smile edges wider. “Synth nerd. That tracks. I’m Kana.” “Yuna.” I blink, the neon signs playing on her guitar’s black finish. Behind us, the arcade door whooshes open and closes in a steady rhythm, letting out bursts of taiko thumps and pixel chirps. Den Den Town hums: solder and plastic, old Famicom cartridges in glass cases, a faint whiff of curry from the alley. Kana holds out a hand without standing, a pair of fingerless gloves hugging her wrists. Her fingers are calloused, warm. “Nice to meet you, Yuna-the-Synth.” “Yuna is fine.” My voice barely gets out. I clear my throat, and it comes out again, squeakier. “Yuna is fine.” “Yuna-who-hears-one-and-a-half–semitone bends,” she says, as if drawing out a joke she intends to revisit later. “What brings you out to the temple of silicon?” “Parts.” I point vaguely, uselessly—everywhere around us is “parts.” “Caps. A potentiometer. For a filter. I, um, found an old Yamaha in a thrift shop that... it cries when you turn the cutoff. Not the good crying.” “Ha.” She props the guitar on her thigh. “I like that. Instruments that cry. You play it both ways?” “What? Both—?” “Sad and happy crying.” “Oh.” I look at the ground and then at her hands. The streetlight hits the little chips in her nail polish. “I... I try. Mostly it sounds like it’s speaking a language I don’t know yet and I’m impersonating it badly.” “That’s still speaking.” She leans back, looking at the flow of people. “You got time to hang? I’m about to take a break. My fingers need, like, ice. Or sushi.” “Sushi?” “Kaitenzushi,” she says, pointing with the pick toward the corner where the conveyor-belt place glows discreetly with a blue fish logo. “Best way to insult a guitarist’s hands with cold rice. Also, I owe you for actually listening.” “You don’t owe me anything.” The words come out softer, and I hug my backpack strap. “But, um. Sushi is fine.” My headphones slip. She grins and reaches toward my ear, then pauses. “Can I—?” I freeze. “Sorry. They just...” “They’re like those cat-ear ones the streamers wear,” she says, gentle enough to make it not sting, adjusting the headband so it sits snugly. “There. You got a tiny head.” “I don’t,” I say, then immediately regret it. “I mean, I do. Probably. I never measured.” Kana laughs again and unplugs her guitar, coils the cable in quick loops. The coins clang in her open case as she scoops them into a pouch with practiced motions. The arcade’s automatic doors sigh. Above us, a billboard blares a cartoon jingle while a tram bell rings from the main street. “You’re good,” I blurt, because it feels important to say it before the moment escapes. “On the bends. And how you... you tucked that little chromatic run into the second verse so it wouldn’t step on the melody.” Kana slides the guitar into its soft case. “Flatter me more.” She raises an eyebrow. “No, seriously, thanks. Most people tell me I’m loud.” “You are loud.” I don’t mean to smile, but I do. “In a... good way. Like, how a bright saw wave is loud. Not just... volume. Presence.” “Ah, synth metaphors.” She slings the strap over one shoulder and grabs the tiny amp’s handle with the other hand, then tilts her head toward the sushi place. “Come on, presence girl. Before the salarymen get off work and turn that place into a tuna vortex.” We cross past the arcade entrance. Cold air blows from inside and drags arcade sounds over us—bursting 8-bit applause, an announcer shouting something triumphant. Kana moves like she takes up the exact amount of space she deserves, no more, no less, and people automatically slide around her. I try to follow, my headphones making the world’s edges soft. A crane machine’s claw drops and a kid gasps. The smell of soy sauce dangles somewhere ahead. Inside the kaitenzushi, plates click on rails, salmon slabs rivering past in glossy pink. A host in a tidy apron greets us and gestures to a corner. “Two?” he asks. Kana flashes the kind of friendly smile that makes it easy for him to nudge us to a seat near the window. We slide onto stools, the conveyor whirring quietly, the tiny touchscreens shining with cartoon fish. Kana drops her amp at her feet and leans her guitar case against the wall. “Okay, ground rules,” she says, eyes scanning the passing dishes. “You call out anything you’re allergic to. And if you see the egg—tamago—on the space shuttle plate, it’s mine.” “The space shuttle plate?” “Watch.” She points. A plate shaped like a tiny shuttle slides by, carrying square cuts of egg. “They do that for kids. Or people who like joy, which I am. You’re allowed to compete for it, but I will fight you. Gently. With chopsticks.” “I don’t—” I rub a thumb against the ridges in my plastic chopsticks. “I don’t eat much fish.” “We can get cucumber rolls. Pickles. Tamago is sweet. And miso soup.” She taps the screen to summon two misos. “Also, if you want to talk about synths, I am a sponge. A dork sponge.” “Okay.” My voice edges towards something more normal. The sound in here is so different from the street—the hum is softer, the plates’ click-click comforting. “You really want to know?” “Hit me.” “I built a little thing. It’s ugly.” I pull out my phone and scroll to a photo: a small box with knobs and mismatched screws, a mess of green and red wires visible through the top plate. “It’s a single-oscillator drone synth. I was trying to make it breathe. You know, like... not just a tone. Like a living—” “Presence,” she says, smiling. “I’m sensing a theme.” “Well.” I fold my hands. “It has a filter that wobbles on a low-frequency oscillator. And a random voltage thing I stole from a YouTube video—borrowed. It makes it jump sometimes, like when a pigeon gets startled. It’s not musical, exactly. But it’s... it’s like it’s thinking.” Kana leans closer, studying the photo as if it’s art, not spaghetti guts in a tin. “You made a thinking pigeon. That’s amazing.” “Thank you.” I feel my ears warm. “It’s named Kintaro.” “After the candy?” “The folk hero,” I say, then immediately falter. “There’s candy?” Kana chuckles. “Little roll candies with the same face in every slice. My grandma loves them.” She slides a tuna down from the belt. “So, Yuna making robots that think. Do you ever play with other people? Band? Club?” I feel my shoulders notch up like gears. “I tried to go to the music club this spring. They were... loud.” “I’m loud.” “You’re—” I hesitate, searching for the right word. “You’re bright. And you listen.” “Mm.” She takes a bite, chews thoughtfully. “You can be in a room with people who are loud and still be listening. Or quiet and not listen at all.” “I guess.” I watch the plates drift past. A small orange dish with two cucumber rolls slides by and I snag it, relieved. “Do you busk here every day?” “Thursdays and Saturdays. Sometimes Sundays if I feel guilty about all the manga I buy.” She sips her miso as it arrives, steam curling up. “I like this spot. People coming in and out. The arcade gives me a beat. The old dudes who collect model trains tip well.” “Really?” “Yeah. They nod like I’m part of their system. Like I’m a train that makes the station feel alive.” She looks at me. “Do you build alone because you like it or because it’s safer?” “Both,” I say, surprised I say it. “It’s hard to... to find a place where, um. Where my thoughts aren’t too slow for other people. Or too fast.” I wince. My chopsticks hold the roll midair, as if it remembers I haven’t earned it yet. “That makes sense.” Kana sets down her chopsticks, maybe because I forgot to. “You know, when I learned the solo to Tank!—that Cowboy Bebop one?” She whistles a quick snippet. “I played it wrong for six months because I was rushing. Like, physically rushing, but also, like, life-rushing. Then I slowed down. And it got good.” “So the solution to rushing is... slowing.” I eat the cucumber roll. The rice is cool and the crunch is something my brain can hold. “That sounds like a fortune cookie.” “Probably is. But it’s true.” She taps the table. “Do you like to perform?” “No,” I say, too fast. Then, softer: “Maybe. Someday. If I could hide behind a plant.” “A plant.” “A big one. A monstera, maybe.” Kana’s eyes crinkle. “I have a friend who brings a fake ficus to open mics. Like a prop. We could borrow it. And put you behind it. You’d be the mysterious synth ghost. People would go wild.” “They’d just... look at the plant.” “And listen to you.” She shrugs. “We can try it. Low stakes. Thursday night at the café near Ebisucho. They have plugs. And tea. And a cat that hates me.” “I don’t... I—” The headphones slip. I push them back, then realize I’m laughing, quietly. “A cat.” “It sits on my pedalboard,” she says, completely serious. “My wah pedal has fur. It’s fine. Everything is fine.” “I don’t know.” I look at my hands. They’re not shaking as much anymore. “Maybe I could bring Kintaro. And a small keyboard. Something that doesn’t... cry.” “I’ll bring a plant.” She reaches for the passing tamago on the space shuttle plate, triumphant as she snatches it. “Ha! Victory.” “You really do like joy.” “Guilty.” She splits the tamago and slides half onto a spare plate, nudging it toward me. “And sharing.” “I—thanks.” I take a bite, sweetness dissolving on my tongue. It tastes like cartoon sunshine. “Why did you start playing out here?” She swivels her little miso spoon. “Because I wanted to be good and I wanted to be scared. Also, my neighbor yells when I practice at home.” “Valid.” “What about you? Why synths?” “I liked how they sounded like feelings you couldn’t put into words.” I glance up and find her looking at me with that same attention she gave the photograph. “Like when the train arrives and you’re glad but also sad because it’s leaving soon. It’s that.” “Osaka train-core.” She nods. “We should write that.” “We?” “We,” she says, firmly. “I play a bright loud thing. You play a thinking pigeon in a tin. Together, we could probably make something that sounds like a train arriving and leaving and also a cat stepping on a wah.” “That’s... specific.” “So are you.” I sit with that. The conveyor hums. A couple at the end laughs softly. Outside, the arcade door sighs again, releasing a burst of applause from a rhythm game. In here, the plates click like a metronome we don’t have to obey. “I have to buy my potentiometer,” I say after a minute, carefully. “For the crying. The filter. You know.” “Let’s get it after.” Kana pops the last bit of tamago. “I’ll walk with you. I know a shop that has a drawer of weird knobs. You like weird knobs?” “I do,” I say, surprising myself at how easy it is, now, to smile. “A lot.” “Great.” She wipes her hands, then leans in a little. “Thursday. Café. Ficus. Yes?” I feel a panic spark, small and bright. It fizzles, oddly, into warmth. “Okay,” I say. “Yes.” “Cool.” Kana taps her chopsticks against her bowl like a little drum fill. “Welcome to the band, Yuna.” “The band?” “Shh.” She puts a finger to her lips, playful. “We don’t tell the plant. It’ll get a big head.” I laugh. The headphones slide, but this time I let them, and in the reflection of the window, the neon of the arcade paints us both in a kind of bright, temporary glow that feels like a door you could walk through and find a different version of yourself. Outside, Den Den Town keeps humming. Inside, our plates circle back around with the next round of choices.

Model Output:
Chapter Seven: The Second Hand The first time the smart watch buzzed on my wrist, I thought it was a software update. It did this little haptic shiver, like a tiny heartbeat, and the screen lit up with a symbol I didn’t recognize: three arrows chasing each other around a clock face, like they were playing tag. It was brand new—Mom had saved all summer, I’d begged all year—and I was still figuring out how to make it do basic stuff. The stopwatch. The sleep tracker. The thing that counted my steps as I paced through Ms. Lee’s social studies class. I tapped it and the icon pulsed. A little slider appeared: minus one minute. The second hand on the watch face ticked backwards, tick tick tick, and then the world… hiccupped. I blinked and I was back in Ms. Lee’s class, two seats behind where I’d been, and she was saying the exact same thing, the same breathy tired voice about Jamestown and tobacco. I looked down. A pencil I’d just snapped in half was whole on my desk. I didn’t scream. I didn’t do anything except stare at my wrist and try not to throw up. The slider was gone. The hands on the watch were normal. Everyone around me scribbled notes like nothing had happened. At lunch, I tested it again. I went to the vending machine—dark, blinking the red “OUT OF ORDER”—and pushed every button like an idiot. It clanked, and a row of crumpled potato chips leaned, threatening to fall and then didn’t. I slid the icon back one minute. Tick tick tick. The bag wobbled upright. I pressed F8 again, and this time the chips thunked down. I ate them in three gulps, then did it again, backing up to get two bags for the price of none. I joked with Wetzel about it, how weird it was that the piece of junk machine had given me a freebie twice, and he punched my shoulder and said, “Dude, it’s your birthday luck or whatever.” “It’s not my birthday,” I said. “Feels like it,” he said. “You look… taller.” “Ha,” I said, and rolled my eyes. Everyone at Greendale Middle was obsessed with sudden growth, like overnight you woke up with six inches and a mustache. They wanted it to be a fairy tale. They wanted magic. I guess I did too. After school, I walked past the chain-link fence where the 8th graders pretended to smoke like they weren’t wearing baby-blue polos with our school crest. The stray cat was there, under the sycamore. It’d been hanging around the past week, ratty and lean with a torn ear and yellow eyes that didn’t look like they’d been made for a cat. The way they followed you, the way the pupils barely changed with the light. It just sat by the bike rack, tail curled around itself like a question mark. “Hey, dude,” I said, because that’s what you say when an animal regards you like a person. The cat blinked and tipped its head. I checked the time. 3:17. I’d missed the bus because I was busy staring at my watch and daydreaming about using it to pretend to ace quizzes. I could just rewind, peek, try again. I could catch the dodgeball before Theo lobbed it at my head. I could step on my own words and pull them back into my mouth before they embarrassed me. The cat stood, stretched, and arched its spine until every vertebra stuck out like a zipper. It held my gaze. It felt like there was another boy tucked inside that cat, someone older and tired who recognized me from somewhere. “Do you know me?” I said. My voice cracked in the middle of the sentence, and I mentally groaned. Not now. Not here, where the smell of gym and bus exhaust made everything feel sharper. Its ear twitched. I slid my thumb across the screen again. Minus one minute. Tick tick tick. A car door slammed. My laces untied themselves, the sound slurped backwards. A gull mid-cry swallowed its noise like a hiccup. The cat’s tail flicked, flicked, flicked and then was still. When time snapped back to normal, the cat had moved three feet—no, I had—and it was closer to me than before, almost sitting on my sneaker. It stared up like it had been waiting for me to come back. If a cat could nod, it would have nodded. “Okay,” I said to no one. “Okay.” That night, I set my alarm for six and bumped the slider back five minutes when I couldn’t find my jeans. Up again when I knocked over my cereal. My mom yelled from the hall that if I made the bus on time she would personally nominate me for sainthood. In the bathroom, I caught my reflection and felt wrong. Not bad wrong, just different wrong. My skin wasn’t the oil slick it usually was. The two sad commas where my eyebrows should be looked darker. My hair fell over my forehead and didn’t spring back. And my upper lip… I leaned closer. Soft fuzz that wasn’t just a weird shadow. I’d taken two new pimples to bed last night. They were gone. In their place: a dot darker than a freckle. “You must be joking,” I whispered. Fourteen and I had been waiting for this forever, for my face to pick a lane, for my shoulders to stop being coat hanger bones. I should have felt triumphant. Instead a thin thread of panic yanked at my insides. At school, the world felt tinted—a little brighter, a little meaner. The watch was warm all morning, like it had a fever. When Theo raised his hand and said Hernando Cortez instead of Hernán Cortés, I opened my mouth, closed it, rewound, tried a joke, failed, rewound, kept my mouth shut. By lunch I’d used it eight times. The cat watched me through the cafeteria windows, perched on the sill like a gargoyle. When the bell rang, it was sitting beside my locker as if it had been there all along. Wetzel poked me with his lunch tray. “You hit your head? You’re acting weird.” I shrugged. The polo clung to me like it had shrunk in the wash. “You look different,” he said, not unkindly. “Buff, or something. It’s freaking me out.” I laughed because that was better than screaming. The cat’s eyes were on my wrist. When the bell rang again, it followed me. It shouldn’t have been allowed. The hallway was a river of kids, a smell of cheap cologne and energy drinks, and the cat just wove between feet like it belonged. Ms. Lee shooed it out with her hand and it went, only to find the window and stare in. By last period, everything was too loud. I scraped my nails over the desk and felt the grain like tiny teeth. A girl from Spanish I barely knew asked if I wanted to come to a party. She hadn’t looked at me twice last week. When I said I had to check with my mom, her mouth twisted like I’d told a joke and she laughed too hard. Theo handed me a pencil and said, “You bench?” which didn’t make any sense because I didn’t bench anything but my hands on my math mistakes. I went to the bathroom to breathe. The fluorescent light turned my skin into wax. My face was the same but not. Jaw sharper. Hair darker. Voice lower when I tested a “Hello?” at the mirror. I must have been imagining it. I must have. I tapped the watch. The rewind icon pulsed like it had its own heartbeat. I slid back ten minutes, then twenty. Tick tick tick tick. I watched the second hand stutter backwards. This was a trick. A glitch. And I could fix a glitch. I could undo this feeling in my bones that the air had an edge. When I came out, the principal was on the intercom calling for a lockdown drill. His voice shook, like it was real. Teachers jumped. Students murmured. I realized I’d been in the bathroom when he’d announced it the first time. In this new version, we were still in the hall. Doors slammed and a hand yanked me into a classroom that wasn’t mine. The cat slipped in after me, silent. Nobody noticed. I felt the old panic twist into something else, something sour. In the dark, crouched behind a bookshelf with someone’s knee digging into my thigh, I felt the seconds stack. I should not have done that. My watch was hot. My wrist itched under the band like something wanted out. And then the screaming started from the gym. It wasn’t gunfire. It was lights popping, the sound of metal giving way, the bleachers collapsing. Students streamed into the hall, faces white. Someone shouted about Nadia, about how she’d been sitting under the bleachers when they broke. It wasn’t how it went. I knew it wasn’t how it went because in the version before this one, Nadia had been at chess club. In the version before that, I’d seen her in the courtyard, flicking a rook around a pawn like she was bored. In this one, she shouldn’t have been in the gym. She shouldn’t have. I fumbled with the watch. My hands were bigger, heavier. My fingers hit the wrong icon. My thumb slipped. I backed us up five minutes. The cat at my feet made a sound that wasn’t a meow, exactly. It was more like a “no.” Everything shuddered. The hallway emptied. The intercom sputtered. The principal’s voice said Drill again, like he never stopped say— and then we were in the gym. My head swam. Nadia was on the bleachers, hunched over, her hair falling into her face as she tied her shoe. I saw the bolt missing, the way the metal brace bowed like a teacher closing a book. I launched myself forward. I don’t know how. One second I was by the door, the next I was three rows up, heart punching my ribs. My legs worked like they belonged to someone else, someone who had practiced being fast. I grabbed her arm. “What—?” she said, bewildered, as the bleachers groaned. “Move,” I said. My voice didn’t crack. It thundered out of me. I pulled. The bleachers screamed and then they folded like a dying monster, metal shrieking across the polished floor. We fell into a heap on the court, Nadia’s elbow in my stomach, breath knocked out of both of us. A second later, the top row crashed down where she had been sitting. Silence. Then everything at once: gasps, footsteps, teachers barking orders. Nadia pushed herself off me and stared. “You okay?” I coughed, because what else do you say when you’ve maybe saved a person from being turned into a pancake by your own weird interventionist tendencies. She nodded slowly, eyes wide. Then: “How did you—?” I couldn’t answer. The cat sat at the entrance to the gym, tail curled around its paws. It blinked at me. Blinked again. Like it was counting. They made us go home early. They talked about structural failure, repairs, insurance. The police came and asked questions about where we were, what we saw. I didn’t tell them that I had seen the future collapse and dragged it backward, that I was pretty sure I’d caused it by not being where I was supposed to be in the original. I didn’t tell them that Nadia’s life had become a tiny bead on a string I was pulling through time, over and over, not realizing that the string was cutting my skin. By the time I got home, I had to loop my belt tighter. Not because I’d lost weight, but because my hips were different. My shoes pinched. When I walked past the hall mirror, a stranger glanced at me from the corner of his eye. My mom gasped and put a hand over her mouth and said, “Did you—are you—?” and I said, “I guess.” She kept her distance like I was a guest, or like she was trying to see who I was through a fog. When I went to my room, I saw a shadow under my window. The cat again. It had followed me home. I called Wetzel and he didn’t pick up. Theo texted me “hero” and a muscle arm. Nadia sent only “how.” I didn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the bleachers folding, time folding, everything folding. The watch buzzed, buzzed, buzzed, an encouragement or a threat. The rewind icon pulsed when I didn’t touch it, like it was breathing for me. Just after midnight, I heard tapping. I sat up, hair sticking to my forehead, the room too warm. The tapping came from the window. The cat’s paw on the glass, soft, persistent. It looked at me with those lemon-slice eyes and tipped its head. I went to the window and slid it up a crack and the cat squeezed through, liquid bones, landing on my desk with a soundless thud. “You shouldn’t be in here,” I whispered. My voice made my chest vibrate. I hid it behind my teeth. It walked over to my wrist, and before I could stop it, it put its paw on the watch face. The rewind icon flared. The cat looked up and I swear I recognized something in it. Not someone older. Someone the same age as me, someone who had made the same mistake. “You know,” I said. The cat blinked. “You know what happens when I use it.” The cat’s tail swished. It touched the screen again, very gently, as if it were choosing. I swallowed. My throat felt like sandpaper. “Every time I…” I couldn’t make myself say rewind. “Every time I do it, it takes something from me. It’s not supposed to be free.” The cat’s ear twitched, the torn one. It didn’t look away. “And I messed up,” I said, heat rising under my skin. “I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, and Nadia almost—” I couldn’t say that either. The word stuck like gum. “If I go back before the drill, before the gym, I can—” My fingers shook. My thumb hovered. I looked at my face in the black mirror of the window. The outline of a boy and somebody’s older brother and a stranger. The second hand ticked. Tick. Tick. Tick. The cat bared its teeth, not a hiss, not a smile. Something in between. It pressed its paw down. The screen lit. The slider appeared. Minus one hour. Tick tick tick tick. “Wait—” I said, grabbing the cat’s paw, but it was too late. The room lurched. My posters peeled back onto the wall. My laundry folded itself into a pile and then unfolded and then disappeared into my drawers. The sun slid up, down, like a yoyo. My heart stumbled. When the world stopped, my room smelled like lemon cleaner. The watch burned against my skin. The calendar on my phone said yesterday. The cat sat on my history binder, tail curled, eyes vast. My chest was tight with a feeling that might have been relief and might have been terror. I hadn’t known until then that reversing the clock was like peeling your own skin back to get at the bones underneath. I had gotten what I wanted. I had gone back. I had a chance to be in the right place, to keep the bleachers from failing at all, to call the janitor, to tell someone about the bolt. But my palms were bigger. The hair on my arms stood up. In the window’s reflection, a boy who looked like me and like he didn’t looked back. The age in my eyes wasn’t something a shower could wash away. The cat blinked slowly. Each time I blinked back, it was like an agreement. Like a pact. “Once more,” I said, feeling the words scrape their way out. “And then we stop.” The cat tipped its head. The watch hummed. Outside, the streetlight clicked off. Somewhere, Nadia woke up and checked her phone and didn’t know that in one version of the day she had died and in another she had survived and in this one, she would be saved without ever knowing it. My heart knocked like someone at a door. I slid the bar again. Minus thirty minutes. Tick. Tick. Tick. Somewhere in those ticks, I could feel something inside me shift a little further forward, as if all the waiting my body had been doing decided to end at once. In the dark window, my reflection straightened. I looked like an eighth grader and a ninth grader and someone I didn’t have words for. It would be worth it if it worked. It had to be. The cat watched, expressionless and knowing and sorry. When time snapped back and my watch beeped like a completed timer, it jumped off the desk and flowed out of the window like water, without looking back. I lay down on my bed and listened to the new morning gather itself outside. Birds restarted their songs. Tires hissed on wet pavement. In half an hour, I would know if the disaster had been erased or just rerouted. I would know if the cat’s recognition meant I had been here before, countless times, each time becoming the person in the window a little sooner than I should have. And I would find out, I thought, pressing my palm flat over the watch, if anyone knew me anymore when I got there. If the me I was making with each rewind would finally be the one who knew how to stop.

Model Output:
The sodium lamps shivered awake, one by one, as if the boardwalk had broken out in a nervous rash. They cast uneven halos across the planks and over the backs of people passing, making strangers look like stage players rehearsing under half-spoiled footlights. She stopped just before the shooting gallery. Tin ducks creaked along a tired track; the carny’s voice was a lazy rasp promising cigars and teddy bears. Brine and grease and sugar curled around her like ribbon. His locks. The phrase startled her, again, intrusive and old-fashioned, as if she were reading herself in a book borrowed from a grandmother’s trunk. It made her want to laugh at herself, or slap her cheeks. Something ridged inside her with it, something that had felt like warning and lately felt like a dare. His locks. As if they were hers to touch. “You’re early,” a voice said, close at her shoulder. She turned before she let herself flinch. There he was, a few feet away, separated from her by a row of prize bottles painted with chipped flowers. His hair truly was obsidian; it caught the scant light and hoarded it, refusing to shine. The eyes were darker, yes, and better for it—fathomless when he did not smile and sly when he did. He wore a gray suit that might have been new last year and a soft cap in his hand, thumb bending the brim. “I was about to say you were late,” she said, not unkindly. Her voice was lower than she remembered it. He looked at the shooting gallery, then at her. “I don’t like guns,” he said. “Takes the sport out of sport.” It was a ridiculous thing to say. She liked it, immediately. “You invited me to a boardwalk,” she said. “There’s no sport here. There’s only losing.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “Then let’s lose well.” People flowed around them, drifting toward the Ferris wheel, toward the rollercoaster that groaned like a wounded beast. The lights made the wet air hum. A couple passed in pressed clothes that suggested sincerity, the man guiding the woman with a palm on her back as if it were a dance step he’d been practicing. She stepped back from the shooting gallery, into the thicker dark between two lampposts where the boards smelled more of tar than salt. He followed without touching, and it felt like touch all the same. “I don’t know your name,” she said, and felt foolish immediately. She had come. There was a tacit contract in that. He could have been anything and anyone, and she had dressed for him. Her gloves were thin, pearl kidskin, inappropriate for July and therefore perfect. “You don’t want it,” he said, and then, after a beat, with something like courtesy: “Nathan.” “Nathan,” she echoed. The syllables fitted mouth to teeth in a way that felt usable. His locks. His name. “Yours?” he asked. “It won’t help you,” she said. The little thrill of saying it. “It won’t help me.” He glanced past her at the row of rifles chained to their ledges. “We could win each other a prize,” he said lightly. “Then we’d be obliged.” “If you want a mistress,” she said, and then swallowed. The word was a stone. She coughed a laugh over it to make it smaller. He didn’t blink. “I want a night,” he said. “And you,” he added, looking past her again, as if she might be the thing beyond her. “Don’t you?” The question drifted up like smoke and slipped into her. Did she? Why else stand here, constellated by erratic light, with the smell of frying hot dogs making her stomach clench? Why else bring the little clutch bag with the snap closure and the mirror that made her face look slightly unreal, chalked, film-starred? Why else tell her sister she was visiting a friend in Brooklyn, a Mrs. Dalton with a sick child who existed nowhere? “Walk,” she said. They walked parallel to the rail where the ocean made a low percussive shush, not the roar of day but a patient busying itself. He kept half a pace behind her, allowing her to choose the path between vendors and the boys who’d shrugged out of shirts to show muscle, between girls in seersucker laughing too loud and a man selling photographs of ladies in tight suits who smiled as if they were not smiling at all. “Is this where you bring them?” she asked. “Who?” “The women,” she said. “Whose names you don’t want.” He laughed once, like a bell struck with a thumb. “I’m here for the water,” he said. “And the oddity of electricity. The way it makes things seem more than they are.” “You didn’t answer,” she said. “You didn’t ask,” he said. His audacity was…delicate. It had edges but wasn’t crude. It set against the night like the teeth of a key. If he’d reached for her arm she would have cut him with her voice. He did not. He moved in a way that suggested he’d held many things, and dropped some, and knew which would fall on their own. “Did you come back to be forgiven?” he asked suddenly. She stopped. The Ferris wheel was beginning its slow lift, a circle of pearls climbing. “For what?” “If you don’t know,” he said, and shook his head as if to cast off a gnat, “you wouldn’t ask.” Don’t be stupid, she told herself. Don’t be theatrical. But the word forgiven slid up hard against wanted, and they chimed against each other like glass. “I don’t require absolution,” she said. “Only discretion.” “Those are cousins,” he said. “I don’t care for your family,” she said. He looked at her hands. “Nor they for you,” he said. “Your gloves don’t fit.” “They fit precisely,” she said, and then realized what he meant: not that they were too tight or too loose, but that they were wrong for heat. That she was built to be wrong tonight. That she had made herself into something with an edge as well. “You’re cruel,” he said, and smiled like it was noon. “Thank God.” They came to the fortune-teller’s booth. The woman inside wore a scarf like a stage curtain, coins stitched to it that pretended at wealth. Her eyes were a flat brown that would see anything for two nickels. Nathan looked at the painted sign—PALM 10¢, CRYSTAL 15¢—with a bright, boyish skepticism. It was almost innocent. Almost. “Do you want to know?” he asked. “What?” “Whether I’m bad for you.” Her laugh startled them both. “What do you think?” “I think you’ve already decided,” he said. She could have said she’d decided not to decide. It would have been cleaner. But the heat was making her sternum damp and the sodium lights were flaring and fading, stuttering at the edges like a film spool at the end of a reel, and everything in her wanted the kiss of a risk to make the whole of this body feel like it belonged to her again. Her husband’s hand—no, do not think of him. His locks. Nathan’s locks. The words overlapped like the double exposure of a face on a face. “Tell me something true,” she said. “And not a commonplace. Not something a man with a hat says on a boardwalk.” He took off his cap entirely, held it in both hands as if in prayer. “I get things wrong on purpose,” he said, very quietly. “To see if someone will correct me.” “Manipulative,” she said. “Educational,” he said. “If they care to fix it, they care.” “And if they don’t?” “I leave them to their competency,” he said. “And you? Do you sew your own buttons?” She could have laughed him away. She could have stepped into the booth and given the fortune-teller her hand like a joke. Instead, she said: “I have a woman who comes Tuesdays.” “And tonight is Thursday,” he said. “So a missing button would be very inconvenient.” “Would it?” she asked. He lifted his gaze to her face like a hand lifting a veil: careful, unsteady. “If you went somewhere with me where it mattered,” he said. The rollercoaster shrieked. The boardwalk trembled with the plunge. She thought of the hotel on Surf Avenue with the tarnished brass keypad at the desk and the curt man who asked nothing if you paid in advance. She thought of the apartment in Queens where the windows stuck, where the radio had begun to static at the same time every evening like the city sending a code to those who knew how to receive it. She thought of Nathan’s cap, his mouth. His locks. “Are you dangerous?” she asked. Her throat tightened as if the word required a particular shape. “I’m careful,” he said. “That isn’t the question.” He put the cap back on, low. “Then yes.” “To me?” He tilted his head. The light above them flickered, buzzed, steadied, and made his irises briefly reflect, like coins in shallow water. “To anyone who prefers their life tidy,” he said. She let that hang, heavy, like a necklace you aren’t sure suits you. Her heart was beating a little too fast. There was a flush at her ears. She could feel on the backs of her knees the sweat the stockings bothered. She wanted to be touched and also not to be seen erring. The urge was twin, braided, and annihilating. Don’t be cheap, she thought. Don’t be cruel to yourself, either. “Come with me,” he said. “We’ll ride the Wonder Wheel. It’s almost empty at this hour. We can look down at the lights and pretend the world is orderly.” “You aren’t,” she said. “No,” he said. “But I can lie well.” She let him lead then, because it felt like not leading, because they kept a distance between their bodies that could have been mistake or plan. In the queue, a young boy cried because his brother had taken his ticket, and the mother, tired, said, “You can both sit with me,” in a voice that had already apologized for itself. Nathan glanced at the mother with something like softness. It wasn’t feigned. She told herself to catalog that. They got a car that swayed; she wanted it to, and hated that she did. The operator, a man with nicotine fingers, slammed the gate and said, “Hold onto your hats,” with a grin meant to be practiced. As they rose, the boardwalk flattened beneath them into ribbon and pearl. The lamps were erratic stars. The ocean was a bruise that went on and on. Wind got into her hair. She put a hand up to hold it, not the hat—the hat was impractical and therefore she had not worn one—but the hair itself, a gesture like being shy that she did so he would watch her do it. “You’re beautiful when you pretend not to know you are,” he said. “Don’t flatter,” she said. “It’s vulgar.” “I told you I’d lie well,” he said. “You said you could,” she said. “Not that you would.” He smiled with his mouth shut. She wanted to touch his locks and hated that she wanted it, loved that she hated it, was dizzy with the duplication. “What do you do?” she asked suddenly, so sharply it sounded like accusation. “For money?” he said. “For pardon,” she said. The car swayed. He looked out at the water. “I collect debts,” he said. She felt the chill, welcome as an ice cube behind her knee. “For whom?” “For men who need reminding,” he said. “And for myself.” “Does it require a gun?” she asked, nodding back toward the gallery with its ridiculous prizes. “Only sometimes,” he said. “And even then, not firing.” “And tonight?” He looked at her then as if she were under glass, as if the operator had placed her on a shelf to be dusted. “Tonight I’m in arrears,” he said. “A different kind of debt.” “To whom?” He leaned in just enough that she smelled him—clean, but something like cigar smoke in his lapels, sweet and stale. “To the part of me that believes in newness,” he said. “That part seems naïve,” she said. She wanted him to be better and worse than he was, simultaneously. “It’s not large,” he said. “But it’s persistent.” The car stopped at the top while others were loaded. They hung there, gently swaying. The boardwalk sighed below. He didn’t reach for her. She could feel between their bodies the tension that wasn’t physical yet. It had shape anyway, a cord pulled taut. “Say my name,” he said. She didn’t want to give that away. Saying it made it more real than touching would have. She looked past him at the cheap wonders, the impossible sky. “Nathan,” she said. He closed his eyes briefly, as if that were the thing he’d come for. “Now yours,” he said. She shook her head, small. “No.” He opened his eyes and nodded, accepting a debt that would compound. The car jolted and began its descent. The lights below blinked and failed and revived, made and unmade faces as if the world were deciding who they were, moment to moment. She slid off one glove and kept the other on. He watched with a concentration that made her breath stagger. When the car was low enough for the operator to see them, she put the glove back on. Nathan’s smile then was wicked and grateful and something else she couldn’t read. When they stepped off, she didn’t take his arm. He didn’t offer. They walked past the shooting gallery again. The carny’s voice had gone hoarse. A boy shot at ducks and hit none. Somewhere a siren started, far away, a city sound. The night was thick now, its heat less forgiving. “Do you want a prize?” Nathan asked. “No,” she said. “I want—” She stopped. “What?” he said, almost gently. She pictured the hotel again. The room with the mirror that made a trapezoid of a woman and insisted she was still whole. She pictured taking off the gloves. She pictured not being forgiven in any way that mattered. She pictured waking tomorrow with salt in her hair and a mark at her wrist and no story that would satisfy anyone, least of all herself. “I want to be someone else for an hour,” she said. His eyes warmed and cooled like metal in a forge. “I can pay for the room,” he said. “You can keep your name.” She let the tide of people carry them forward a step. “No,” she said. Then softer: “Not yet.” He nodded as if this too were precisely the answer he expected, the one that would let him wrong something on purpose another day. He took off his cap, turned it in his hands, and then set it back on. “I’ll be here next Thursday,” he said. “If you want to try again at losing.” She looked at his hair, his locks, and then at his mouth. Her tongue pressed to the back of her teeth before she spoke, as if to check for truth. “I don’t like to lose,” she said. He smiled. “Neither do I,” he said. “That’s why it’s worth doing.” He lifted two fingers to the brim of his cap and vanished into the crowd as if the light had undone him. She stood a moment too long, until the carny at the gallery said, “You playing, miss?” and she shook her head and turned away, the gloves a second skin she still wasn’t sure were hers. The boardwalk’s sodium lights flickered, off-on, off-on, and she let the stutter lead her home.

Model Output:
They set up in the lodge like always—duffels thrown into corners, boots lined by the woodstove, the smell of wet wool and gun oil rising like an old hymn. The stove ticked and sighed. In the kitchen, the light was a jaundiced yellow that made everyone look hungover. Mike tossed JT a beer across the scarred table, which he fumbled and almost dropped. “You gonna keep looking at me like that?” Mike asked, half a smirk and half something else. “Like what?” JT cracked the beer slowly, thinking of the clearing, thinking of their father’s hand and the buck’s big, soft nose. He tasted aluminum before the cheap lager. “Like I stole your girl. Like I did something to you.” “Forget it.” Their father sat at the head of the table, peeling an orange with the little pocketknife he kept in his jeans. He’d taken off his flannel and wore a white T-shirt that had seen better days. He didn’t look at either of them. He cut the orange in clean, even swaths, the blade clicking against the pith, juice glistening on his fingers. JT realized his father hadn’t said five words since the clearing. He had that look like when he’d get in one of his moods—sober, but lidded over. Gone somewhere else. “You okay?” JT asked. His father kept peeling, the knife finding some invisible seam. “Fine,” he said. “Cold’s going to be bad tonight. Get more wood in.” Mike rolled his eyes and stood. “You hear that, kid? He’s fine. Go stick your face in a snow bank and say a prayer to whatever it is that took your spine.” JT laughed because that’s what you do. He put on his coat and went out, not because he’d been told, but because being outside was a relief—a bigger room to hold the weirdness. He took the splitting maul from where it leaned by the stacked birch and ash. The yard behind the lodge stretched down to a black line of trees, the treeline so steady it seemed drawn with a ruler. There was a wind now, carrying the faint smell of something that could have been musk or rot. He set a log on the block and brought the maul down. The crack rang like a shot, hollow in the cold air. He kept splitting until his forearms boiled and his breath wheezed. Between swings, the silence filled in. He could hear the woods when he stopped. Not leaves, not birds—deep quiet, like the forest was holding air in its chest and refusing to let it go. Behind him the lodge windows glowed with that liver-yellow light. He thought about the first caribou, the way it had just watched them like a cow in a field, unafraid, almost bored. He thought about the buck, the way it had stood as if waiting to be touched. If he let the memory wash over him, he could feel again how the air had thickened in that clearing, syrupy, how his father had looked like a boy who had found an old toy in the attic and forgotten everything else in the joy of it. A shape moved between the trees at the treeline, something tall and slow. He blinked and it was gone. Maybe it hadn’t been there at all. Maybe the woods were full of afterimages now. Inside, Mike and their father argued in low, scraping voices that bumped along the bottom of hearing. JT stacked wood by the stove and went upstairs early. The lodge felt different up there, like a church after everyone leaves. The hall rug ate his footsteps. His old room was the same as it had been when he was fourteen—plaid blanket, a cracked poster of a hockey player, the shelf with the toothpick sculptures he’d made one summer when he’d refused to go fishing. He lay on his back and watched his breath puff in the cold. The floorboards creaked under someone’s weight and then stopped outside his door. He got up to open it, but there was nothing in the hall. The yellow light from the downstairs trailed up only a few steps and died in the dark like it had changed its mind. From the end of the hall, a rectangle of a window looked out onto the black of the yard and the blacker of the woods. He thought he saw a pale shape moving on the lawn, something the size of a man but wrong in how it leaned. He didn’t go to the window to get a better look. He shut the door. He put a chair under the knob because that’s what felt, just then, like survival. Sleep took him quick and mean and spit him back out in the middle of the night. He’d dreamed about the abandoned cabin off Fox Ridge, the one they’d been told not to go near when they were kids, the one that had the collapsed roof and the broken tin chimney that stuck up like a finger. In the dream the chimney wasn’t broken. Smoke rolled out of it in fat coils, and a hundred birds were perched along the eaves, listening to something inside. He woke with a mouth full of the taste of soot, and the quiet pressing down. There was a sound then, in the lodge, a faint knocking. JT’s first thought was the chair slipping under the knob, but no—that was in his control, at least a little. This was downstairs. He sat up, wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, and listened. Knock. Knock. A pause. Knock. A polite rhythm. He waited for someone else to move. No one did. He took the chair away and put his ear to the cold wood of the door. The noise was clearer now, from the side porch. He knew the sound because he’d made it—gloved knuckles on old wood. He opened the door and went down the stairs just enough to see the front hall. Dim light smeared across the floorboards from the stove’s window, flicker and shadow. JT’s father was standing at the door with his hand on the knob. He didn’t move as JT eased down the last steps. Mike stood behind him, barefoot, hair stuck up. They both looked like boys caught in a game past their bedtime. “You hear that?” Mike whispered. “Yeah,” JT said. Their father didn’t turn his head, but his voice came, husky and soft. “Don’t open it.” The knocking came again. JT realized it was coming from the side porch after all—the one that opened out toward the path to Fox Ridge. No one ever used that door. It stuck in winter. He had a clear picture of the warped door, the cracked pane of glass with the spiderweb of cheap tape over it. “I’ll go see,” Mike said, like he’d been dared. “Don’t.” Their father put a hand out. The palm was slick with orange juice dried to tack. He looked at JT finally, his eyes wet. “Do you hear it?” he asked, as if JT’s answer would confirm whether or not any of this was happening. JT swallowed. He heard it. He also heard—under it, or through it—a low sound that could have been wind in the trees or could have been breath. The knocking stopped like it had been called away. The silence poured in too fast. The three of them stood there like idiots waiting for a bus that hadn’t existed in twenty years. Then a soft rasp came from the side door, wood against wood. Something dragged across the threshold. A smell slid into the hall and coated JT’s tongue. It was not death, not exactly. It was the smell of an animal’s soft place, the warm body spot it leaves in the grass when it stands up—deep and private and a little rotten around the edges. “Back away,” their father said, as if someone were about to open the door from inside the porch. Mike whispered, “It’s probably a raccoon.” JT saw the way Mike’s shoulders had tightened. He saw the shiver that moved up his father’s spine. He felt the chair he’d left upstairs like a betrayal. The rasping stopped. The stove clicked. The house settled, old wood aching in the cold. Something bumped against the door from the outside. Not a knock this time. A slow, heavy push. The tape on the cracked pane quivered. JT took one step back. Then another. His father stayed, palm flat against the door, like he could keep something out by wanting to. A long moment passed where JT realized his father was listening to something only he could hear. Then his father’s hand dropped. He turned and walked into the kitchen, slow, as if about to fall asleep on his feet. “Back to bed,” he said. “It’s nothing.” Mike shrugged like the whole thing bored him. “Told you,” he said. But he didn’t meet JT’s eyes. He didn’t go back to bed, either, not right away. He stood in the hall and watched the side door for a while, jaw working, and then he stomped off, performative. JT waited until he could hear Mike upstairs, hear the old mattress springs and the muffled curse. He stood alone with the door. He put his own palm against the wood. It was colder than it should have been, as if the air were thinner right there. He felt, for a second, the lightest pressure on the other side, the suggestion of a hand that did not have fingers, pressing back. He removed his hand as if he’d been burned. He went upstairs and lay with his eyes open until a gray smear of morning showed. The day pretended at normal. Coffee tasted like metal. In the yard a fine frost laced the dead grass. They walked out with rifles and stiff jokes. The woods had shrunk overnight. The trails were the same but closer. Their breaths coiled up and disappeared into the trees. By midmorning Mike had turned cocky again, shooting snow off branches, whooping when it fell on JT’s head. Their father was quieter than ever. They crossed a logging road, followed a fence row until the land began to roll. That was where the sign was—just a piece of rusted tin nailed to a tree that had grown half around it. Faded letters: FOX RIDGE CABIN. KEEP OUT. JT had seen it a hundred times. He’d never seen the shadow of writing underneath, ghost words that made the nails look newer. He blinked and it was just rust. They stopped for lunch by a stand of jack pines. “We’re not going near that place,” their father said suddenly, as if someone had asked. Mike laughed. “What place?” “The cabin.” Mike and JT exchanged a look like kids. The abandoned hunting cabin had been a rite of fear when they were small. The story changed every year. Drifters. A hermit with a hole in his face where his mouth should have been. A moose that went inside and couldn’t come back out. “You believe in that?” Mike said. “Old bump in the woods?” “It’s there,” their father said. “That’s enough.” They ate in silence after that. The cold bit through gloves to fingers. When they began to move again, a low light had come up, a thin sun smudged by cloud. They kept to the thicker pines where the wind made a sound like talking if you weren’t careful. JT fell behind because that was what he did. He thought of the door in the night, the pushing weight. He felt that same pressure in his chest now, like something big and patient had turned its head and noticed him. The path bent and he came into a logging cut that opened onto the ridge. Across the hollow, through a stand of gray birch, he saw it: the cabin. Not so far as the stories made it, not so grand. Just a slump of roof and the tin chimney like a crooked tooth. He saw a smear of something dark on the snow by the door. He lifted his hand without meaning to and waved, stupid habit from a hundred childhood passes. Someone waved back. Not a hand. A shadow flickered in the doorway, a tilt—a suggestion of head. Reflex made him lift the rifle to his shoulder. He caught himself. He looked down the sights anyway. There was nothing there but the doorway, darker than it had a right to be. “JT!” Mike’s voice ricocheted off the trees. He tore his cheek off the stock and turned too fast, the world swinging. He stumbled and went down to one knee. “Jesus,” Mike said, crashing through brush. “Stop daydreaming. We got a mover.” JT stood and wiped his knee. “Where’s Dad?” Mike jerked his chin over his shoulder. “Up along. He’s acting weird. You see him last night? Talking to the door?” JT stared at the ridge. The cabin sat as if it had always been waiting. He didn’t say what he’d seen. He didn’t say that he wanted—very badly—to go to the cabin just to prove it wasn’t what it looked like. Instead he let himself be yanked along. Their father’s orange cap bobbed ahead, dipping and rising, the man himself moving with a stiffness that made JT think of the first winter after Mom left, the long walks their father took with no destination. They followed a set of tracks then, fresh. Four prints and a drag. Not a deer. Maybe a caribou that had a bad hoof. The tracks went straight where the terrain made it hard, like the animal didn’t care about difficulty. The air lost what little warmth it had hoarded. They came to a place where the world had gone quiet even for the woods. No chickadees, no foot crackle. The tracks disappeared at the edge of a stand of spruce. Not faded. Stopped. Like the animal had stepped up into something and been taken away. “Hell,” Mike said, laughing, and then the laugh strangled itself. Their father lifted his rifle and pointed it at the empty space. His finger rested along the trigger guard. He didn’t lower it. He breathed with his mouth open. “Don’t talk,” he said. “Listen.” JT listened. He heard nothing. Then he heard, as if from a long way off and also right behind his ear, a single hoof-step on wooden boards. A hollow, throat-deep, decisive sound like in an old barn. The smell from the door poured over him again. JT thought about the scraping. The pushing. The knock that had been polite. He thought about his father’s hand on the buck’s muzzle. He put the barrel of his rifle toward the ground and made his mouth shape the word no, but no sound came. In the spruce stand, something moved. It wasn’t a deer. It wasn’t anything he had a name for. The branches didn’t part so much as re-arrange. For half a second there was an impression: a head too tall, a neck too long for any animal around here, a set of eyes that didn’t reflect the weak sun but made their own gloss. He saw himself widemouthed in their blackness. He saw his father’s orange cap bleed into gray. He saw Mike raising his gun and shaking just enough to make the barrel wag. “Don’t,” their father said, but to who, JT didn’t know. His voice had a wonder in it. A terrible kindness. The thing in the trees leaned forward without moving. The air tightened—made of glass, maybe. Something gave then. A sound like a board breaking. The smell of warm fur and old water. JT’s finger twitched on instinct, but his rifle wasn’t pointed. Mike’s went off. The crack slapped back from the ridge and was gone. Snow shook from branches like applause. Silence returned. The rearranged branches were just branches. The tracks were still gone. His brother breathed hard, each inhale a scrape. His father’s cap returned to orange. They stood there for a long time, listening to nothing. Finally his father lowered his rifle. He smiled in a way that made JT’s stomach clench. The smile wasn’t for them. “Back to the lodge,” their father said. “We’ve done enough.” “What did we do?” Mike asked, voice too high. Their father turned and started down the path without answering. JT looked across at the cabin once more. Smoke rose very thinly from the broken chimney, a thread of gray that could have been cloud-scrap or breath in cold air. He didn’t point it out. He didn’t point out the dark smear by the door had gotten longer. He followed, counting his steps, making the numbers anchor him, losing track when a hoof-step fell softly inside his skull now and then, polite as a knock.

Model Output:
Morning begins as it always does: with an email. The subject line announces God’s greatest gift to bureaucracy—an automatically generated ticket from the Complaint Department. Subject: Re: Re: Re: Souls not receiving appropriate torment per Subsection 13(b) Lucifer sighs, clicks the link, and skims the report. Someone’s been stuck on an infinitely looping hold line without being offered the option to schedule a callback, when by policy they should be getting an intermittent false hope message every thirty-seven minutes. Error margins matter. Torture is like jazz: it’s all about timing. He rubs his eyes. Coffee appears because he thinks about it. It tastes like a thunderstorm in a steel mug and gives him the false courage of doomed cavalry. Across the obsidian floor, his hellhound, Nuisance, has once again wedged her slobbery jaws around the left anterior leg of the Iron Throne and is gnawing with the galloping enthusiasm of an orchestra of nightmares playing the kazoo. The throne creaks. From centuries of stolen swords and unresolved grudges, it suffers a kind of metal fatigue that only immortality can produce. “Nuisance,” Lucifer says. He speaks in the tone reserved for ineffable beings and disobedient puppies. Nuisance freezes, eyes widening, jaw tightening, making the creak worse. He counts to five. She resumes with renewed gusto. He drinks. He answers the complaint. He cites the subsection. He flags a demon named Kchthx (intern, three horns, great with spreadsheets, a disaster at active listening) to shadow the torment team and fix the timing. He sets three meetings. He signs off as he always does: Best, L. Running Hell is mostly management. Human beings imagine it’s all flames and pitchforks, an eternal carnival ride of screams. This is occasionally true. Mostly, though, it’s metrics. A small bell rings in a room without bells, like a memory insisting on itself, and Lucifer knows: Lilith just arrived, because there is a particular gravity to her entrance. Not a sound. Not a smell. Just a reconfiguration of the air, like the way one notices a missing tooth with the tongue. She appears in the doorway without announcing herself. Black hair tied back with a leather cord, boots muddy with the residual gloom of whatever borderland she crossed to get here. Her gaze flickers to the throne’s gnawed leg, then to Nuisance, then to him. She narrows her eyes in that particular way that means the world is funny and terrible, and also his fault. “You moved the ninth circle two inches to the left,” she says by way of greeting. “The roads don’t line up anymore.” “I sent a memo,” he says. “I don’t read your memos,” she says. “On account of they are memos.” He tries a smile on. It doesn’t quite fit yet. “Coffee?” “No,” she says, walking in. “Yes,” she says, after walking past him, because she knows the taste of thunderstorms too. They sit. Nuisance plods over with her iron garnish, plops down, and begins chewing loudly in a rhythmic, slightly syncopated fashion. The throne creaks in Sapphic meter. Lucifer stares at the coffee in his hands as if it might catch fire and save him. “So,” he says. “So,” she agrees. She’s been stopping by more. Or less. It’s hard to measure. There are seasons to their breaking and gathering, though seasons are a mortal convenience. Once, they argued for six hundred years about whether love is a verb. She won by becoming a language he never learned to speak without laughing. “Your inbox is bleeding,” she notes. He glances. She’s right: more automatic tickets threading into existence like spider silk laced with gasoline. He tries not to flinch. “It’s the new intake form,” he says. “Mortals keep selecting ‘Other’ and writing in ‘Surprise me.’ It wreaks havoc on categorization.” “People always want to be special,” she says. “Even in agony.” She sips the coffee and watches him over the rim. “You look tired.” “I’m immortal,” he says. “You can still look tired,” she says, and he knows she’s talking about something else, like the weight pressing against his sternum, like the silence in his chambers at whatever hour he doesn’t need sleep. There are voices outside the door; a delegation. A polite knock in triplets. The Minister of Errata and the Duchess of Soot glide in, accompanied by a smell like burnt citrus. They bow with different degrees of irony. “Your Majesty,” says the Minister, whose skin is an index of footnotes. “We have an issue with Purgatory’s shared services desk. They’re forwarding our calls to Heaven.” “It’s a bug,” says the Duchess, picking a streak of soot from her sleeve as if it’s a chicken bone. “Or a prank.” “Is there a chance,” Lucifer says, “that you started it?” “Define started,” says the Duchess. He nods then, as if this is all perfectly reasonable. The work unspools. He authorizes a firewall. He authorizes a mild haunting of the shared services desk. He sets up a cross-departmental working group, which in Hell is probably the worst punishment anyone will ever endure. He arranges their chairs, gives them a charter, appoints Kchthx as secretary. He is, against his better judgment, good at this. Through it all, Lilith leans in the corner with an expression that is not not fond. Nuisance chews; the throne lists a millimeter toward some abyss that can never be reached. When the delegation leaves, Lilith says: “Your dog’s eating sovereignty.” “She’s teething.” “She’s twelve hundred.” “Adolescence is a spectrum,” he says, and her grin appears, unbidden, like a childhood ruin reclaimed by vines. The fact that he can still make her smile feels unfair and irresistible. “Walk?” she says. He says, almost without thinking: “I have a—” He gestures at his calendar, which is an actual paper calendar; he doesn’t trust the cloud, having invented clouds. Squares full of tiny ink, like a monk attempted Sudoku and lost his faith. She looks at it. Then at him. He hears the many apparatuses of Hell turn one notch forward without him. He stands. “Walk,” he says. They leave the throne room to Nuisance, who keeps working on the leg with the dedication of a saint, if saints had saliva that melted iron. They descend through corridors carved by ages of bureaucracy; they pass water coolers that dispense boiling pitch and small cups of gossip. Demons nod deferentially and also look away. Lilith ignores the nods with the regal disdain of someone who remembers when none of this existed and still thinks it might be a practical joke. In the Sixth, they stroll past the fields where the lawyers argue with themselves about what constitutes arguing. In the Fourth, the misers count and recount with beads that multiply under observation and vanish when hoarded. In the Third, it rains. It always rains, but today the rain is peppered with apologies and small coupons for free samples of disappointment. “This place is getting slick,” Lilith says. “Did you hire consultants?” “I am a consultant,” he says. “True,” she says. “How’s the lonely?” He wants to say he is fine. To say he has Nuisance and eleven hundred thousand meetings and the sharp pleasure of a well-executed vengeance. He wants to say he is on again with solitude, because it is better than being off again with her. He says: “It reads like poetry when I’m not looking too closely.” She nods like a queen knighting someone she intends to arrest later. “I brought you something,” she says, patting her coat. She produces a small jar. Inside: a moth, large as a hand, with wings patterned like broken mirrors. It beats once, a quiet shiver. “Found it between the first scream and the last. It eats secrets,” she says. “Or keeps them. I can never remember.” He takes the jar, and the moth’s eyes (if that is what they are) reflect him back as a man he doesn’t quite recognize. “Thank you,” he says, meaning the wrong thing, the right thing, too many things. They pass a field where poppies grow backwards from ash to seed. Workers tend them with tongs. A demon named Astrid waves. Lilith waves back. She knows everyone, or they think she does, which is functionally identical. They circle back. The throne room door is ajar. Inside, the leg Nuisance has been working at is bent at an angle that implies a criticism of monarchy. Nuisance looks up, guilty and proud. “Bad dog,” Lucifer says automatically. Nuisance’s tail thumps like a drum. Lilith kneels. “Open,” she tells Nuisance, who opens. Lilith peers into the mouth that held the leg of power and retrieves a crumpled memo with her fingertips. She smooths it, reads it. “Your procurement policy is a curse.” “It’s a best practice,” he says. “It is a hex against efficiency and joy,” she says, handing it to him. “I could fix this in an hour.” He feels the empty space where his pride and loneliness overlap. “I could let you.” A silence like a held breath. The moth in the jar clicks its wings, a sound like a pen tapping a desk. Somewhere far away, a dam of guilt breaks and floods a village of self-satisfaction in a way that will look, to mortals, like a viral trend. She looks at him and he looks back, and for a moment the whole of Hell tilts on the leg of a throne and a conversation not yet had. “Not today,” she says. “But I’ll draft you an outline.” “Attachment or inline?” he asks, because it is easier. “In blood on the wall,” she says, because it is truer. Nuisance wanders back to the leg. Lucifer snaps his fingers. A chew toy appears: a braided rope of curses tied in a knot. Nuisance looks at it with contempt and returns to the throne. Lilith laughs, a sound like a lock picking itself. They spend the afternoon in meetings. She sits at the back of the room, sometimes throwing in a comment that rearranges the entire agenda. He watches demons recalibrate like migrating birds, astounded to find true north still exists. She leaves once to take a call from no one and returns smelling faintly of lavender and grave dirt. At dusk — a word that means nothing here and everything everywhere else — he signs the day’s torments. He expects her to leave. She doesn’t. Instead, she leans her head against the throne’s armrest, close enough that he can hear the way her breath shifts when she’s remembering something. They sit like that, two former absolutes pretending compromise is a shape they can hold. Nuisance at last stops chewing. The leg of the throne remains. It will hold until it doesn’t. “You’re getting better at this,” she says, meaning the management, the mercy, the not. “Or worse. I can never tell.” “I’m consistent,” he offers. “No one is,” she says, and her hand, traitor and miracle, picks a fleck of iron from his sleeve. He wants to catch it, the moment, pin it like a butterfly. He does not. He has learned that pinning things is a way to watch them die. She stands. “I should go,” she says. “Stay,” he says, then, quietly. It hangs between them like a chandelier of knives. She looks at it. She looks at him. She smiles like a map of a country that can’t be conquered. “I’ll see you soon,” she says, which is not yes, and not no, and very much an answer. She pauses at the door. “Fix your throne,” she says. “Or don’t. It suits you crooked.” When she is gone, the air relaxes. The moth in the jar rasps its wings again, and he opens the lid. It climbs out, lumbering, and dissolves like a secret told to night. He considers his calendar. He considers the crooked leg and Nuisance asleep beside it, jaw twitching as if chewing in dreams. He writes a memo he will not send: Subject: Re: Re: Just so you know. He deletes it. He conjures a drink that tastes like the moment rain decides to fall. The bell rings again somewhere that has no bells. In his inbox, an outline appears, written in blood on a wall that is four corridors and a decision away. He smiles despite himself. He gets up. He goes to read it. This is how the day ends: with management, and the off again careening toward on, and a throne held up by the faith of a dog. Hell, like relationships, is a place built to be lived in. It is tedious and magnificent, terrible and familiar, and full of small, stupid salvations, like someone knowing where your memos go. Like someone, occasionally, coming back.

Model Output:
Dawn seeped into the barracks like watered wine, thin and pale. I woke to the scrape of a rat in the straw and the sour breath of men who had dreamed with their mouths open. The air was a stew of old sweat, oil, and the medicinal tang of vinegar the lanista insisted we rub on our bruises. I lay there a moment as the rooster on the roof of a nearby bakehouse crowed at the wrong hour, savoring the heaviness of my limbs, the ache in my shoulder that reminded me I still had all my parts. I pressed my palm flat against the plank beneath me, feeling the grain run like a river under a callus. I thought of Mars, who could be gentle to those who honored him, and deadly to those who did not. “Lord of spears,” I whispered into the straw. “Accept the sweat, not the blood.” “Up.” Urgus, our doctore, had a voice that could have split timber. He banged a staff against the post near the door, and the barracks shuddered with men swearing and the rustle of blankets. The day had begun. We filed past the water trough in the courtyard like cattle. The sky was a new bruise over the walls of the ludus, purple at the edges. The sand underfoot was still cool; later it would burn. I cupped water in my hands and poured it over my head. It ran in rivulets down my neck, leaving little trails in the soot and dust. To my right, Publius—fresh, still soft-cheeked, a boy pulled from a tavern fight and turned into merchandise—shivered. “It’s colder than the Tiber,” he muttered. “You’ll wish it were the Tiber when the sun rises,” I said. He tried to grin; his teeth knocked against each other like dice in a cup. We ate bread baked hard as roof tile dipped in diluted wine, and a handful of dried figs that stuck to the teeth. The kitchen smelled of smoke and the sharp, green aroma of crushed celery and coriander. A pot bubbled with barley porridge for later, the smell nutty and vaguely comforting. Flies made a black garland along the rim. One landed on my knuckle, and I flicked it away. At the far end of the courtyard, a scriba from our owner’s household argued with Urgus. The scribe’s tablet flashed in the weak light, wax glinting, as he read a list of names and dates. “He wants you ready for inspection at the ninth hour,” the scriba said, like he was announcing an eclipse. Urgus’s upper lip lifted. “And what he wants, he pays for,” he replied. “Maybe I should bring the surgeon too, in case the noble magistrate needs a cut.” The scriba’s mouth flattened. He was young, and he wore a little perfume, a thin cloud of myrrh that didn’t quite cover the smell of his fear of us. There was going to be a munus in two days—games to honor the funeral of a senator who had seized his seat by marrying his daughter to a man of ambition. The city hummed with it, I’d heard, like a hive about to swarm. They said the emperor himself might attend to show the people his face, to spill time and bread into the mouths of those who might otherwise bite. They said there would be exotic beasts from Numidia: leopard, ostrich, lions flown across the sea, their bellies empty to make them furious. They said a criminal would be sewn into a sack with a dog and a snake and thrown into the Tiber to appease the old gods and the crowd. They said a lot of things. They always did. “Form ranks,” Urgus bawled. He paced like a war god penned in marble. He wore a belt with bronze rings and a scowl that seemed hammered to his face. “You, Publius—shield higher. You, Lentulus—stop peering at the gate like your lover will walk through it.” He turned to me. “Marius. Stairs. Knees up. Show them what a Thracian stride looks like.” I never corrected him. I was not Thracian. My mother had told me I was born under a fig tree in Capua, and I had the speech to match, but Urgus called all of us by the styles we wore: Gauls, Secutors, Retiarii, Thracians. Identities were armor we put on. They hid the person and revealed the spectacle. The crowd wanted types, not men. We ran the stairs carved into the arena wall until our breath rasped like a saw. The dust baked on our tongues. The sun climbed the sky, a coin in the emperor’s fist that grew hot as he refused to spend it. Sweat found old salt stains and cut new paths, stinging the scabs on my shins. Urgus’s staff snapped against a slat with each misstep. “Higher, Marius,” he said, close to my ear when I flagged, the hiss of his words like a smith quenching iron. “You think Mars will lift you? He won’t. He likes to watch you lift yourself.” Between drills, we practiced with wooden weapons, heavy as truth. I worked with an old secutor named Felix, whose nose lay flattened from a dozen breaks and whose laughter was as rare as rain. We moved in the square shade of the awning, wood striking wood, the sound like dancing bones. I felt the give and take in my wrists, the push in my thighs. Every movement was a prayer for familiarity: step, strike, check, return. I thought of Mars, father of Romulus, who watched the walls rise and fall in this city as easily as a man flips a loaf. I had a small wooden image of him tucked under my pallet, a charm carved by a toothless vendor near the cows’ market. I rubbed it sometimes, the tiny spear smooth now from my thumb. “You’ll be inspected,” Felix grunted, feinting at my knee. “Smile with your scars. They buy the tickets.” “And if the emperor comes?” I asked, parrying. “Should I smile at him too?” Felix made a noise. “Smile at the emperor, the emperor smiles at the people, the people smile at their bread. We all do our part, eh?” He looked at the scriba across the yard, who watched us with the gaze of a man at a window display. “Watch how he writes. We are strokes on wax to him. And to the lords on the Palatine, we are coins in bowls. When the treasury groans, the games grow.” After drills, we were given a strip of cheese that smelled like damp wool and a wedge of honeyed cake sent by a senator who had adopted our ludus as his charitable gesture for the year. The doorman announced it as a gift from his greatness, Titus Flavius something, the name slipping over the stones like oil. The cake was stale and sweet, and we ate it with our fingers, laughter surprised out of us like water from a punctured wineskin. Publius saved his portion, tucking it into his cloak. “For my sister,” he said. “She waits outside the Subura’s big baths. I can throw it over the wall to her.” “You have a sister near the bathhouse?” Felix arched an eyebrow. “She sells eggs,” Publius said quickly. “And you think the wall is shorter than our guard’s knob?” Felix said, and we laughed, and the guard scowled, and for a moment the world knit itself into something almost harmless. By the gate, the armorer named Evodius hammered a rivet into a helm. Sparks leaped up, brief stars in the daylight. The iron smelled like rain. His hands were burn-scarred, old maps of fights he had never fought. “I had a brother in the legions,” he said without looking at me as I waited for him to adjust a strap on my greave. “Twenty-five years, came back with a pension and a limp. He says the emperor feeds the legions to keep their teeth out of his hand, and the people to keep their teeth out of his throat. The rest of us, we sharpen the knives.” He tightened the strap with a jerk. “Don’t die this time. I’m tired of fitting new men.” Midday, the heat pressed us flat. The courtyard smelled of hot linen and men. Beyond our walls, Rome roared: merchants shouting prices, a mule braying, a litter jingling past, the deep, steady cry of a water seller, the clatter of amphorae, the soft-chuffed complaint of a baker’s oven door, the nasal buzz of a Greek tutor reciting at the school next door. A breeze carried in the stench from the Tiber—rot and fish and river weed—and the sweeter, cloying breath of a perfumed woman passing in a sedan chair, whose bearers giggled like boys. I stood at the small window slit in the barracks and watched a line of condemned men shuffle down the street, their necks in a chain, eyes like old coins. A man in a red-bordered toga rode by, the purple stripe like a wound. He glanced at us and then away, as if we were the sun. For a moment, I imagined stepping out, unchained, walking into the city, past the cattle market where women with cracked heels haggled over tripe, over the Forum where men in white togas argued the fate of provinces like gamblers arguing dice. I set my forehead against the stone. I knew the city like a lover who slept on the other side of a wall. In the afternoon, the medicus lanced a boil on a man’s thigh with a copper blade and the smell of pus made even Urgus turn his face aside. He sprinkled ground myrtle over the wound and bound it with linen. “You are grain in a storm,” he told the man. “To stand is to soak. But better to stand than to wash away.” The man groaned and laughed, a man always laughs when he doesn’t know whether to weep. Before dusk, the lanista himself arrived, with a wreath of ivy set crooked on his head and a smile as thin as papyrus. He wore a tunic so white it hurt my eyes. Behind him wobbled a poet with ink-stained fingers and a chest like a pigeon’s. “I would like to write an ode to the munera,” the poet said, clutching his tablet. “To the nobility of—well—of you.” He looked at us with a hunger that had nothing to do with meat. The lanista patted his shoulder as if calming a skittish dog. “Write of Rome,” he said. “Write that the people have never been so free to applaud.” He inspected us like statues up for auction, prodding a bicep, examining a scar. He paused at me. “Marius,” he said, tasting the name like wine. “You will fight as provocator. Chest plates and greave. Helmet with a visor to hide your pretty face. You will fight someone the crowd can hate.” He looked at Publius and then beyond him, as if choosing a date on a calendar. “A foreigner, perhaps.” I thought of Mars again, not the city’s polite Mars with temple and priests, but the one of fields and boar tusks, of young men who burned like pine. I had a mother once who lit a candle on the Kalends and told me Mars loved Rome so much he gave her sons and took them back and gave them again. I had believed her because mothers must be believed at least once. Night came slow as a debt being repaid. The courtyard cooled, and the stars pricked the sky like holes in a dark cloak. We ate the barley porridge with onions and a dribble of oil. Someone sang a crude song about a senator and a flute girl, and another man laughed and choked on his mouthful and spit it into the dirt. The guard walked the wall, his sandals scuffing, his voice a drone as he counted his steps. I lay on my pallet and took out my little Mars. I traced the line of his shield, the notches where the wood carver’s knife had skipped. “Lord of the wolf,” I murmured. “Keep my feet sure and my hand steady. Let my breath be a bellows and my heart a drum. Bring me home to this plank and this straw and this stupid boy who thinks his sister sells eggs.” I smiled into the dark. From outside, faintly, I heard the city’s heart—a woman quarreling in a window, a dog barking, a chorus of drunks rehearsing politics like a play. Somewhere, in the great house on the Palatine, a man who held the world in his palm decided whether to turn it or let it lie. Somewhere in the Subura, a girl waited at a wall for a cake she might never catch. Somewhere, the river slid by, indifferent, carrying numb bodies and lost hopes and a thousand olive pits to the sea. I slept with Mars under my hand. In dreams, I was not a provocator or a Thracian or a Roman, but something that breathed and was allowed to be. In the morning, I would strap on weight and make it sing again, and let the city gaze at itself in the mirror of our sand. We were their hunger padded out with muscle. We were their fear with faces. This was our trade: to be the truth they could look at without blinking. And I, who was named for a god, would wake and drink and run and lift and step, and step again. The day would be a wheel, and I’d put my shoulder to it, and it would turn.

Model Output:

Model Output:
I notice the camera before I notice her. There’s a small dome tucked into the ceiling corner near the bar, the kind that looks cheap and probably is, standing in for actual security with a blinking red LED. It’s pointed at the door, but from the glare on the lens, I can tell it’s not balanced. There’s a blind spot where the hostess stand meets the coat rack; you could pocket anything left there and never show up as more than a shadow. I remind myself I don’t do that anymore, then spot her—red scarf, laughing with the hostess, an unselfconscious wave that sends a half second ripple through my chest. “Hi,” she says, and the sound of her voice is nice enough that I don’t immediately check the angle of the light into the windows. I do anyway. Habit. Mid-afternoon glare could wash out the glass; no one would notice a figure loitering outside. She smells like rosemary and cold air, sits down across from me, and there’s a second where everything zeros in: me, her, water, two menus. I can do this. She smiles. “I wasn’t sure about the place. All my friends swear by the gnocchi, but sometimes that means microwaved rocks.” “Risk assessment,” I say. My mouth is ahead of my brain. “Sign me up.” She laughs. “You weren’t kidding about the hacker thing in your profile.” I test the floor under the table with my heel. Solid. No loose screws on the table leg. My hand is shaking and I tuck it under the tablecloth, try to be a person. “I’m trying to keep it light these days. Less…being a gremlin inside other people’s computers.” “Like a house elf that sets things on fire.” “Not on purpose.” She grins, and it loosens something in me. The waiter appears, says his name is Miguel, and as he pours water, I drift—watching his forearm, where the printed schedule peeks from under his sleeve. They still put first names and phone numbers on schedules here. Low-hanging fruit. One snap and you have a pivot point. My eyes climb back to her as if against current. “I read that thing you wrote,” she says. “About how most hacks aren’t super sophisticated, they’re just…door left open.” “Doors left open,” I say. “And people propping them with chairs.” I shut up before I start in on threat models, default passwords, the restaurant’s POS system probably running a version of Windows that should’ve been put to pasture when people still said cyberspace without irony. “Okay, wait.” She leans forward. Eyes bright. “Speaking of door left open, this is crucial. Did you bring your deck?” For a terrifying moment, my mind supplies firewall instead of deck, and then I realize she means cards and exhale laughter like an apology. “Not on me. I didn’t want to be…that guy.” “Because I am that guy.” She pulls a zippered case from her bag with the reverence of a conjurer, and I’m already cataloging. She uses a standard sleeve, matte turquoise. Good choice for durability, visible scuffs, doesn’t show fingerprints. The zipper has a little fray on the pull tab; it’s been loved. “Modern,” she says. “Don’t judge.” “Never,” I say, and mean it. “What’s your favorite to pilot?” “Don’t laugh.” She bites her lip. “Bogles.” I try not to. I fail. “Hexproof? You monster.” I can’t help the warmth that blossoms, the way she leans into the nerdy spiral with me, her hands moving animatedly through the air, sketching auras on invisible stick figures. “It’s honest,” she says. “It does a thing and does it well. It says, you’re welcome to try, but this is my plan.” Her eyes flick to mine. “Yours?” “Control, usually,” I say. “Esper. Maybe I’m digressing.” “Control,” she groans. “Why does everyone I like play control? It’s like you want me to have a bad time.” “I want to make sure we play to the end,” I say, and holy hell is that too real, too obvious. She smiles anyway, a kind of tolerant affection. Bread arrives, and I watch the server’s hands—good form, left-handed grip, plate balance. He sets down a small metal canister of olive oil that immediately makes me think of leaky containers in bathrooms hiding pinhole cams. I push the thought out. Breathe. Be a human. “So,” she says, tearing a piece of bread, the crust flaking like snow. “On my way here, my boss calls me. Again. And he’s like, ‘I know you’re off today, but can you remember the name of my first pet?’” I nearly choke. “He asked you that?” “It’s for some bank thing he forgot to set up.” She rolls her eyes. “I’m like, dude, please just text your wife. Bonus: it was Bubbles.” Bubbles. First pet. I file it, then forcibly defile the file, shred it and set it on fire and bury the ashes under concrete. “People should not outsource their secrets,” I say lightly. “But Bubbles is…adorable.” “His wife is going to kill him.” She swipes her phone and puts it face-up on the table. I notice the model instantly—mid-range Android, plastic case with a crack near the volume rocker. There’s a sticker of a cat in sunglasses. The screen lights, and a pattern grid appears, her finger hovering over nine dots, and I think, ah, here it is: the test. Don’t look, I tell myself. Don’t look. Focus on her eyes. They aren’t locked by a Pythagorean procession. They aren’t a puzzle you can solve. She draws an L. Bottom left to bottom right, up to the middle right. Three points. My brain, disobedient, conjures the heat map of common patterns, how often people start at the corner, how many combos there are given the length. She does the L again to unlock, and a soft chirp sounds. My mouth gets ahead of me: “You should, um, change that.” Her face tilts, amused. “My pattern?” “It’s…a little obvious,” I say. “Sorry. That sounded…judgey.” She looks down at her phone, then back up, eyebrows raised. “You got that from here?” I could lie. I could say no, it was the way the grease smudged the lower third of her screen, the micro-scratch arcs that cluster around common start points. I could say I didn’t watch. I could say a lot of things, but none of them turn me into a person who ignores the map glowing under his eyelids. “I’m good at that,” I say, sheepish. “Comes with the job. Former job. I try to turn it off, but…” “But you can’t help noticing the holes.” “It’s an occupational hazard.” I try to make it a joke. It evaporates between us, steam off a plate. She leans back, the warmth sliding a few degrees cooler. “Is that fun, for you? Spotting that?” “No,” I say, too quickly. Then, because that’s not true: “Sometimes. It’s like noticing a pothole right before you drive into it. There’s a thrill when you swerve. And guilt.” She picks up her phone, thumbs the screen off, sets it face down. A small wall. “Okay, so what should it be, Mr. Control Deck?” “Longer,” I say. “More complicated. And not a letter or a shape. But I shouldn’t be giving unsolicited advice. I’m sorry.” There’s a pause. It’s not empty. It’s full of her thinking, and me rehearsing a hundred responses, all of which sound like I’m explaining how to lock her windows in a storm. “Do you always do that?” she asks. “To people? The little…scan?” Yes, I think. No, I want to say. “Texts give off odor,” I say instead. “Passwords sweat.” That’s too weird. “I was in a program for a while,” I add, stupidly. “After, uh. One of the times I crossed a line. They taught me to narrate to myself. To not act. To watch the impulse go by like…traffic.” Her face softens a millimeter. “So you’re just…looking at cars.” “And trying not to hijack one,” I say. It lands. She snorts despite herself. “Look, it’s not that I mind you being good at your thing,” she says. “It’s that it’s my thing, right? My phone. My choice. We just met.” “I know.” I grab my water. The glass is slick and cool, and my hand leaves a print. “It’s just hard for me to…not see the exploit. Even in nice places.” She glances around. “What’s the exploit here? At this…very romantic Italian place.” I shouldn’t. I should say, they have great gnocchi. The lights are warm. The couple in the corner is on their third date. Instead: “The camera’s angled wrong,” I say, and hate myself a little. “And their Wi-Fi network is named ‘Staff Only’ but the password is like, the name of the restaurant plus 123.” She blinks. “How do you know the password?” “I don’t. I just…guessed the pattern. It’s probably wrong,” I lie, then catch myself. “I mean, I didn’t try it.” She cradles her chin in her hand, thinking. There’s a line at the corner of her mouth like she’s suppressing a smile she doesn’t want to reward me with. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. Let’s try something.” She points at the bread basket. “Pretend that’s a server rack. And this—” she holds up a breadstick like a wand “—is the physical world. Close your eyes and tell me three things that you like about this restaurant that are not about how to break into it.” I close my eyes. It’s harder than it should be. The black is not blank; it’s full of overlays, vectors, dotted lines. But her voice is there, anchoring me. Three things. “The smell,” I say. “Garlic, but not aggressive. Like somebody’s cooking for you, not at you.” “Good,” she says, pleased. “The couple in the corner,” I add. “They’re telling each other stories with their hands. They haven’t touched yet, but they want to.” “Cute.” “And the way the sunlight catches the red in your scarf.” My eyes are still closed when I say it, safe in the dark. “It looks like an ember.” Silence. Then, softly: “That was almost human.” I open my eyes. She’s smiling, not the tolerant grin from earlier, but something that reaches the corners of her eyes. “I can do human,” I say. “Sometimes.” “When you’re not auditing me.” “Fair.” She coaxes me into talking about decks again, and the conversation becomes a scaffolding I can climb. I tell her about the time I built a stupid jank combo that only went off if my opponent was reckless, and how I learned patience from counting the turns of a chess clock and the hum of server fans in a datacenter at 3 a.m. She tells me about her brother teaching her to shuffle, about playing at a dingy card shop where the owner kept the best rares behind the counter like contraband. “He used to make me answer trivia to buy anything.” She rolls her eyes. “What’s your mother’s maiden name? Ha. Just kidding. But, like, he did actually ask my first concert.” “Let me guess,” I say. “Paramore.” “Rude.” She laughs. “Close.” “Fall Out Boy.” She claps, mock-appalled. “Okay, sir. Stop. Too good.” I want to tell her I don’t want to know those things. That I want her secrets to be secrets. That I want to be surprised by her, not to see her as a series of answers to a form. But she’s dropping breadcrumbs like it’s nothing, like it’s air, like everyone does when they’re comfortable. Mother’s maiden name. First pet. First concert. The street she grew up on slips out when she mentions biking to school on Maple Ridge. The name of her dog tumbles casually after a question about weekend plans. The date of her birthday glows in a story about an ill-fated costume party. I collect them and then drop them again, like stones into a well. Plunk. Plunk. Hear the splash, and walk away. We split the gnocchi. It is not microwaved rocks; it is soft and perfect, little clouds that squish and fill and make us both say wow at the same time. She licks a stray smear of sauce off her thumb and my heart glitches. I have a sudden, absurd vision of peeking, of pivoting, of ruining it because ruin has muscle memory in me. “About the pattern,” I say, and she groans. “No, no,” I add, hands up. “Not advice. A story.” She eases back, wary but curious. “Okay.” “I used to keep my passwords in my head,” I say. “Which is already a red flag, because memory is a terrible vault. But I liked the feeling of…owning them. Then this one night, I’m about to go on stage for a talk—rehab story, redemption tour, whatever—and my mind blanks. Completely. The one for my email. Poof. And it felt like someone had taken a rug out from under me. So now I use a manager. I let a thing hold my keys. And it’s not perfect. But it means I don’t have to be the only lock.” She watches me, her expression stripped of the earlier performative skepticism. “That sounds terrifying.” “It was.” I smile. “But also…freeing. Less to carry.” She nods, slowly. “I’ll change it,” she says, flicking her phone with one finger like a promise. “Not because you told me to. Because I don’t want you to be right about me being predictable.” “Fair,” I say. “Challenge accepted.” We pay. She insists on Venmoing me half, taps and scans, and I almost flinch when the app flashes her handle and a profile photo taken at her favorite coffee shop—the one she’s been talking about for twenty minutes. I feel the little hooks line up—username mirroring a decade-old forum alias, a date substitution, a map coalescing—and I cut the line. Knife. Clean. Back in the sheath. Outside, the air is a crisp bite, and we linger on the sidewalk in that awkward trying-to-decide-if-this-is-a-hug-or-wave liminal space. “I had a good time,” she says. “Me too.” I swallow. “I…uh. Sorry again.” She rolls her eyes, a small smile riding the motion. “Just don’t change my Wi-Fi without asking.” “I don’t know your SSID,” I say. “Yet,” she teases, then sobers. “Hey. In case you were wondering—this is very much an observation, not an invitation—you don’t have to be useful to be here.” My laugh is a little messy. “I don’t know what to do with that.” “Practice,” she says, and then leans in, quick, just a brush of lips on my cheek, like linking a card without committing to the spell. “See you.” She walks away, red scarf a stroke of color across the winter. I watch her go until she turns the corner, then look up at the camera with the wrong angle and think, someday I’ll tell them. Not today. Today I’ll go home and sleeve something dumb and honest, a deck that plays a creature on turn one and keeps swinging. I’ll open my password manager and generate a string of nonsense for a site I don’t even use anymore. I’ll not look up her Venmo history. I’ll not check the coffee shop’s opening hours on the off chance. And maybe, next time, when her fingers trace a constellation across her screen, I’ll let the stars be stars.

Model Output:
The projector squeaks like a mouse each time Mr. Alvarez clicks to the next slide, a tiny sound that somehow fills the entire room, and I imagine it’s trying to warn me: be quiet, be still, stay small. I’m pretending to take notes while also rewriting my entire personality on the fly. I underline “semipermeable membrane” as if it matters, as if knowing the exact spelling will protect me from saying something stupid when I have to look at him. Don’t say “hi” too loudly. Don’t say it too softly. Don’t say it at all if it sounds like breath slipping out of a balloon. Maybe just nod. People nod all the time. We’re partners, which was decided by a random generator of names that I have already forgiven and resented three times today. His name popped up next to mine and everyone made that little ooo sound kids make when they think something is funny in a way that isn’t. I smiled in the neutral way I have been practicing since fourth grade. He raised an eyebrow like he thought it was amusing but he wasn’t going to make a thing of it. He’s good at not making a thing of things. I, on the other hand, am a full-time theater production of small, escalating things. I can see the blue glow of the slides on his cheek. He’s doodling a tiny bacteriophage attacking a planet in the margins of the handout and it’s annoyingly good. He wears the same gray hoodie every other day, and it’s soft-looking, and I am thinking about how fibers can be soft and durable at the same time, like certain species of moss. Don’t say that. Don’t compare his hoodie to moss. Don’t compare him to moss either, that’s weirder. “Okay,” Mr. Alvarez squeaks-through to the next slide. “You’ll need to test diffusion with multiple solutions.” Beakers. We will be using beakers. I will have to stand and walk to the lab station with him. Calmly. Not too fast, not too slow. Don’t trip, obviously. The time I tripped in fifth grade trying to jump over the rope during field day is still stored in my spine like an unread text message. He shifts in his seat, chair leg scraping the floor in a short wine-glass shriek, and glances at me. It’s a normal glance, friendly. In my body, it’s a lightning strike. I could say, “I already made a list of materials.” I have. It’s in my notebook, bullet points immaculate and aligned. But if I say it too quickly I’ll sound like a try-hard, and if I say it too casually it will sound like I just happen to always make lists for fun. I do, but he doesn’t need to know that yet. Or ever. I try out: “I’m excited about diffusion.” Too weird. “Diffusion is interesting.” Boring. “It’s cool how something invisible can move everything, actually.” That’s too philosophical for eleven forty-two a.m., and also reveals that I have a playlist called Instrumental Focus in which I have assigned songs to processes like osmosis and diffusion, and nobody needs that information except me. My hand is holding my pencil too tightly. Loosen grip. Loosen face. Do not smile like a robot. He clears his throat. “We should, uh, start?” His voice cracks slightly and because I am cruel to myself, my brain immediately assigns meaning to it, like he’s nervous too, but that can’t be true. People are not nervous around me, they are vaguely polite. He looks at my notebook. “You wanna, like, plan it out?” Yes. Plan it out. This is my Olympics. “Yeah,” I say, and the word is too thin, like a piece of paper that tears when you try to pick it up. He waits. Blank space expands in front of me like a cliff edge. “I—made a list.” I do the thing where I think I’m gesturing casually but my hand moves like a crane machine that never picks up the stuffed animal. I flip to the page. The checkboxes are square and I feel a flicker of pride, which I extinguish immediately because pride can be interpreted as arrogance which can be interpreted as I think I’m better than him which is not true I just like checkboxes. He leans in. He smells like laundry detergent and pencil shavings. He’s reading. He says, “This is good.” It lands in me like someone put a soft stone on a seesaw to keep it from tipping. “Thanks,” I say, the “k” sticking a little. Smile. Not all teeth. Probably no teeth. Okay, a little teeth. I can feel my mouth making a weird decision and I wish I could see myself from the outside to adjust the settings. There should be a panel on my wrist with sliders: eye contact, voice volume, smile angle, joke probability. He looks up at the slide again. The projector squeaks. Mr. Alvarez says something about dialysis tubing and I picture a tiny practice conversation with myself wearing a lab coat, being normal. “So, we could test different concentrations of sugar,” I say in my head, crisp and clear, a TV scientist. Out loud I produce, “So, um, if like, sugar water is, we could—” I can feel the sentence disintegrating like a cookie in milk. I want to pull back the words, hide them behind my tongue, try again. He says, “Like, different concentrations?” His tone is light, like we’re already on the same page, like I wasn’t just a messed-up recording. “Yeah,” I say. I nod. Maybe I am nodding too much. People who nod too much are either very agreeable or unhinged. One nod. Reset. We stand. My knees are aware they are knees, which is never good. We walk to the lab table. The room is a low buzz with other groups negotiating roles, clinking beakers. I wonder what I look like from behind. My ponytail probably sways like a metronome set too fast. I set my notebook down and line it up with the edge of the table, an anchor I can pretend is practical. He takes two beakers without clanking them, like he has quiet hands. I love the idea of a person with quiet hands. I plan to say, “I can label the samples,” but my mouth decides to say, “I can do labels,” like I am a small office printer. Recover. “I mean, unless you want to.” That sounds defensive. “Or we could, like, trade-off.” Now I sound like I’m negotiating a custody arrangement for tape. He smiles, not making fun of me, just smiling, and says, “Labels are great. You’re super neat.” The word “super” hits me like a cartoon mallet because I want it to mean something it doesn’t, but also, neat. He noticed the neatness. My brain wants to send a thank-you note on embossed stationery to this moment. I pull out my pen. My hand steadies when it’s given a task that requires precision. Hello, pen. Save me. We measure water. He pours; I read the meniscus like it’s a fortune. He says, “Tell me if I go past.” I imagine telling him that he’s already past, that we are two humans in stormy adolescence trying to not crash into each other, and I want to tell him the way I think: that the word meniscus is nice because it sounds like a small planet, and I have a crush on him like gravity. Absolutely do not say that. Say, “A tiny more. Okay, stop.” I hear myself and it’s almost comedic, the thin squeak of my voice matching the projector perfectly. He laughs under his breath. Not at me. With me. Maybe. I tag this as a Maybe Laugh, file it in a moderate confidence folder. I become aware that my shoulders are creeping up to my ears and I push them down, which probably looks strange. The teacher flips another slide that we aren’t looking at. Squeak. A little chorus of squeaks. I want to be the kind of person who can say something like, “This projector is nervous,” and have it be a casual joke, but the words bottleneck and I’m left with a mental image I can’t share. We set up dialysis tubing. He wrestles with a knot and huffs, and I immediately want to help but also don’t want to be weird about touching things he’s touching. “Want me to hold it?” I ask, and I’m proud that the sentence is whole. He gives me the end and our fingers bump. It’s nothing. It is absolutely nothing. It is also a small star exploding behind my sternum. I keep my face exactly the same. Do not move your eyebrows. There are girls who can toss their hair and make eye contact and say something flirty without collapsing inward. I study them like rare birds. I am the bird who hides under leaves, narrating the migration pattern in my head in precise, terrified detail. We get into a rhythm. He ties, I spoon sugar, we label. He reads the labels out loud: 0.1 M, 0.2 M. His mouth shapes the numbers. I really, really want to know what he thinks about. Does he notice that the class smells like whiteboard cleaner and banana? Does he keep track of the names on the posters above the windows? I want to ask him about his bacteriophage drawing, say, “I like your virus eating the world,” but that could be read as me liking the world being consumed by viruses. A sentence can tilt and change its whole meaning and I am always trying to hold it level. “Do you, like, want to split the write-up?” he asks, and the phrase “write-up” makes me happy because it’s a job and I like jobs with edges. “I can do the results part,” he says. “You’re good at procedures.” He noticed procedures. He noticed that I’m good at something. My mind tries on three different responses like outfits, twirls in a mirror. Option A: “Sure, that works.” Option B: “I can also do the graph.” Option C: “Thanks.” Option D: All of the above, which is too much fabric, I’ll look like I’m drowning. “Sure,” I choose. “And I can do the graph.” Add “thanks”? Too late. The gap opens and I can’t jump it now without it being weirdly intense. I add a smile. The kind that says I’m fine, which is an aspirational lie. He taps the table lightly with the end of his pen. Tap-tap. He’s not looking at me, he’s looking at the beaker, and I love that I can look at him without him seeing me look. It’s a cheap magic trick but I’ll take any magic. He says, “You ever notice the projector sounds like it’s hiccuping?” The squeak punctuates his sentence as if on cue and I almost laugh because the universe has a sense of humor whether or not I participate. “Yes,” I say, and the syllable is too eager. I need to add something or I will be a single note—ding—and then silence. “I—was thinking—maybe it’s nervous.” He looks at me. I feel the stare like a spotlight I didn’t sign up for. Abort. Push the joke away. “Like, you know, not really. Just—sounds.” He smiles. Real smile. The corner of his mouth goes up and his eyes do the crinkle. “It’s okay,” he says quietly. “I get nervous too.” The words are soft and they float over to me like soap bubbles and I’m afraid to touch them. My brain wants to cross-examine them for loopholes, for sarcasm, for pity. He doesn’t look pitying. He looks like he just said a true thing without fireworks. I nod. I want to say, “Thanks for saying that,” and then, “Me too, constantly,” and then, “It’s exhausting,” and then, “I think you’re cool.” That last one is not permitted. The rules are: Do not confess anything with permanent ink. “Same,” I say. Another thin word. But it lands between us and it doesn’t shatter. I fill the tube and tie it off. He sets the timer on his phone and the little numbers count down like a lifeguard watching us to make sure we don’t drown. The room is a world of scents and noises that I’m trying to catalog to avoid cataloging the shape of his hands. The projector squeaks again as Mr. Alvarez points to a diagram. People whisper. Someone laughs too loud at the sink. I adjust the edge of the label. Control things you can control. Breathe in four, hold, breathe out six. Don’t look too weird while breathing. People breathe all the time. It’s fine. He says, “You’re really organized,” and I have to pick a place to put that sentence so it doesn’t choke me. I put it on a shelf in my brain next to the two other compliments I trust. One is from my grandmother in a kitchen that smells like cinnamon, and the other is from my sixth grade teacher who called my essay “clear.” A small museum, free admission, open on days when the world doesn’t make sense. I wonder what his museum looks like. I wonder if he thinks about how things dissolve, if he notices every squeak and scrape or if it’s quieter in there, if his internal voice talks to him like a friend. “Thanks,” I say, and I catch it this time, put the word after the right prompt, dress it in a tone that doesn’t make it look too eager. I pair it with eye contact for one second, two seconds, not three. Three is staring. I think about the fact that I am thinking about this and want to sleep on the floor. The timer beeps. We write down the mass. He reads the numbers out loud and I write them in neat columns that make my brain purr. I draw the first axis of a graph and the pencil line is straight as if it wants to be good for me. I imagine a future where I will remember this exact moment, how the light hits the lab table, how the smell of detergent and sugar water is a tiny, peculiar heaven, how my heart is a hummingbird all the time but sometimes it perches. I imagine telling someone, maybe even him someday, about how hard it is to constantly audit my own existence. I imagine him not being surprised. I file that under Not Impossible — Pending Evidence. We clean up. The beakers clink like teeth. He puts the caps back on the sugar and salt and does it properly, lined up with the labels facing forward like my notebook pages. He says, “See you tomorrow?” in a voice that assumes there is a tomorrow, together, with diffusion and graphs and maybe another quiet-laugh at the projector’s dumb hiccup. I feel large and small at once, like a word that can mean different things depending on the sentence it’s in. “Yeah,” I say. A full one. I let it be round. I don’t add anything to ruin it. He lifts his hood, runs a hand through his hair, and walks back to his seat. I allow myself to watch him go, just for the length of the squeak as the slide changes. Then I sit, align my notebook, and breathe.

Model Output:
I keep checking the battery like it might change by willpower. Seven percent, then six. A little red sliver daring me to need it. I plug it in for two minutes, unplug, because I don’t want to be tethered when I leave, as if the cord itself is a leash, as if being unprepared will keep me safe. I stare at the mirror and practice my face: not too eager, not hurt, nothing you could accuse. Relax the jaw, soften the eyes. My face refuses to cooperate. It looks like a person trying to look like a person who isn’t spiraling. What if she cancels. Don’t be ridiculous. But what if she cancels and says, “I thought we said we’d be casual.” A shrug, a hint of pity. “You’re intense, and it’s a lot.” My stomach flips like a coin. I answer in my head: I’m allowed to feel things. I’m not a problem to manage. Except I am, to everyone. If she cancels, I’ll say, “No worries!” and then go home and scream into a pillow like a teenager. Or worse, I’ll send twelve texts that climb on top of each other, and then blame my thumbs. She said yes to the dinner. I know that. It’s in the messages. “Tonight works,” with a heart. But that was hours ago when her battery probably wasn’t low, when mine was at forty-three. Now mine says five and all the words in the world are stuck behind that number. I should eat something so I don’t get dizzy. I should not eat so I look smaller, more precious, easier to hold. I chew dry cereal and it turns into paste, sticking to my molars. I check the battery again. Five still. Then a flash: new message. My heart slams against bone. It’s her. “Running five late—subway weird. Excited to see you.” Sparkles. I feel the rush of relief like something dangerous. I want to hold that message against my skin. I want to be normal about it. My brain says: Five late means she’s already calculated how much of you she can handle. Excited? People say that to dogs and children. I put the phone face down like I’m disciplining it, plug it in again, watch the tiny lightning bolt appear. Four percent. I laugh out loud, which sounds like a cough. The battery number is slipping down like a countdown to inevitable proof that everyone leaves if you let them. I could bring a charger. I won’t. If the phone dies maybe I’ll be forced to look it in the face—whatever it is. Or I’ll sit there, waiting, while the world shrugs at me. I picture myself at the table, alone, telling the server I was stood up, making a joke. I picture them saying, “That’s rough,” with eyes that are relieved it’s not happening to them. I decide to hate the server preemptively so it won’t cut when they say anything normal. I lace my boots too tight. Loose means sloppy, means needy. Tight means in control. It’s all magical thinking. The laces bite and I think: good. Something to blame for the ache. On the train, everything is a mirror. My reflection in the window looks like someone who might be left. I scan every face for judgement and assign it. The woman with the headphones: she would say, “You make people your whole world, and it’s suffocating.” The kid with sticky fingers: “You’re too much, like syrup.” I imagine my friend across from me. We are in the booth, candle between us like a tiny threat of combustion. She says, carefully, “I like you, but I don’t want to feel responsible for you. It’s a lot.” I tell her I’m not asking for that and then list the ways I’ve contained my hunger for her, which makes me sound hungry. She leans back. She says, “This is why I didn’t respond right away.” There it is. I knew it. Then my phone buzzes in my pocket and I almost drop it grabbing it out. Battery at three. Message: “Got a table outside!” Smiley. I breathe something that is almost a sob. Outside is good. Outside is public. The possibility of running is baked in. I decide she chose outside because it’s easier to escape. Then I decide I’m inventing reasons and this is good and normal and friendly. Then I decide I’m gullible. I feel the ping in my brain where the familiar path starts—the rut worn by the same wagon wheels: anticipate pain, armor up, accuse quietly, withdraw loudly. I text back: “On my way!” with a star, then delete the star, then put a period, then delete the period because it sounds cold, then send it with no punctuation and immediately hate myself for the nakedness of that. My phone drops to two percent like it’s had enough of me. I put it back in my bag and press my hand over it as if my palm can charge it. She’s at the corner table under a string of warm lights that pretend it’s summer. She’s already looking for me, which I decide means she’s nervous to see me, which I decide means she’s going to end it. Then she stands, and I know the exact curve of her hips in that sweater, and my chest hurts with recognizing. She smiles like she’s relieved. She opens her arms. My feet go weird and heavy. We hug, and it’s soft and right, and the smell of her shampoo is exactly the soundtrack to every feeling I can’t moderate. I tuck my face into her neck, just for a second, and then step back before she can think I’m greedy. “You look great,” she says, unforced, like sunlight through blinds. My brain says: that’s what people say when they’re about to confess something. I say, “You do too,” and it sounds tinny. We sit. I chew on the inside of my lip until I taste iron. She holds my gaze. It feels like being looked at and not being audited. She asks about my day, and I tell her the safe parts, and the parts I leave out press against my teeth like an animal you can’t let out in company. She tells me about a meeting that ran long and someone who ate fish at their desk. I laugh because the image is gross and specific and normal and it feels like a raft. I also think: you are proving to me that your life is full, and I am an add-on. You’re drawing the map where I’m a cul-de-sac. I nod. I say, “That’s so gross,” and we both laugh. My phone gives a hopeful little whine on the table. One percent. Then it dies. Black glass, my own face reflected in miniature. I panic like I’ve been unmoored. I tell myself it’s fine, it’s just a phone, stay here in your body. My shoulders climb. She notices. Of course she does. “You okay?” she asks, soft, with her mouth tilted, like she’s learned my maps too and is treading happily anyway. I consider saying, “I thought you were going to cancel,” as if it’s a joke. I say, “Battery just died,” like that doesn’t feel like death. She reaches for her bag. “Do you want my charger?” she says, already untangling cords, not annoyed, not performative. The relief that floods me is embarrassing. It’s proof that I am, in fact, a child in need of pacifiers. I say, “You’re a saint,” and it comes out almost too warm. She slides the charger across and our fingers brush. Electricity roars up my arm. I plug in like I’m reattaching a limb. The little lightning appears and I watch the battery icon with worship. I’m mad at myself for the worship. But I am not mad at her, not in this second. I notice that. I say, “Thank you,” and mean it. The server comes and I resent their presence because they break the spell. Then I like that they break it because it gives me somewhere to put my eyes. We order. She orders the thing I told her she should try last time, and my chest does a stupid proud swell. She says, “I’ve been thinking about it all week,” and my brain says that’s an exaggeration to make you feel special, she knows what she’s doing, don’t be manipulated by kindness. Also my other brain says: she thought about something you suggested; you exist in the space where her thoughts live. The two brains fight and both lose. She reaches across, not dramatic, just a touch, to straighten the sleeve I hadn’t noticed was inside-out. “You’re falling apart,” she teases gently, and it lands like a kiss and like an indictment. I say, “Always,” with a shrug that’s supposed to be charming. Then I hear my own voice and it sounds like a plea. She looks at me, really looks, and doesn’t look away. “I missed you,” she says, not heavy. My heart cracks cleanly down the middle from the force of wanting to believe that. I feel the warmth spread, the kind that makes your skin feel too thin. I say, “I missed you,” too quickly, and then worry that I’ve tipped my hand, that I’ve made it unbalanced again. “It’s been a weird week,” she says, fiddling with the condensation on her glass. The loop starts. Weird week means distance means planning an exit. I picture the conversation sliding into that groove: I just need space, I just need time, it’s not you it’s my bandwidth, my therapist says I should set boundaries. I feel my body prepare to be righteous. I assemble the phrases in my head: I respect that, I’m not asking for everything, I just need honesty. Under that: please don’t. Under that: if you do, watch me not bleed. She says, “My mom’s been sick, I’ve been going back and forth to Queens a lot.” My brain stalls. This is not the narrative I wrote. I haven’t bought props for this. Guilt arrives, late and sweaty, with flowers. I say, “Oh no,” and it is insufficient. The part of me that is a student raises its hand: See? You made it about you. You always do. The other part, the one with its hands over its ears, says: She didn’t tell you immediately because you’re not in that category. She squeezes my arm and there’s nothing performative about it. “I didn’t want to dump it on you,” she says. “You have so much in your head all the time. I wanted tonight to be nice.” There is no accusation thrumming under it, just care awkwardly wrapped in self-protective paper. I feel something like gratitude, like a tired animal sitting down. Then immediately: Why does she get to decide what I can handle? Why am I being curated? It’s both. I hold both like hot stones. I joke, because that’s what I know. “My head’s a carnival.” She laughs, and I love her for it, because she could have said, “Yes,” with a little eye roll. She just laughs, and the laugh enters me like warm air. I feel the press of tears and hate them. I look down at my lap, at the knot of my fingers, at the little scar on my thumb I pick when I’m spinning. I think, say the thing: I’ve been scared. I think, don’t say it, don’t make it a test. My mouth opens. “I’ve been… I don’t know, nervous about seeing you,” I say, like it’s about my shy, darling self and not the monster that writes plays in my skull. Her eyebrows lift, not with exasperation but curiosity. “Why?” she asks, and the gentleness makes me want to scream. I recite the approved lines. “It’s not rational. I just get… insecure when I don’t hear from you, and I go to a bad place.” Under the table my hands grip until the bones in my knuckles complain. This is the part where she sighs, where she says, “I can’t be in that spiral with you.” This is the part where we both become caricatures. She says, “I can text more. I didn’t mean to make you feel dropped.” She says it like an offering, not like a hostage negotiation. The room shifts, the lighting softens. I want to topple into her lap and sob. I want to accuse her anyway. Both are so possible. I say, “I don’t want you to do it if it’s a chore,” and what I mean is: If it’s a chore, you’ll resent me, and if you resent me, you’ll leave, so lie to me if you have to, or don’t, but make it predictable. She smiles. “It’s not a chore. I like you. I like talking to you.” The words land and refuse to settle. I feel them and also I don’t. They slither around, looking for a hook. I nod. I say, “Okay.” I say it like an acceptance and like a question. I store them anyway, like canned peaches in a pantry for later famine. Then I immediately open one and eat it with my fingers, and then I panic that I’ve consumed it all and there will be nothing next time. The food arrives. We eat. She tells a story about her cousin falling asleep on the Q train, and I listen, and I am in the room, and I am also in the future where she pulls away, and in the past where someone else left me like a glass on a table ring. I feel myself trying to step out of the well-worn groove. There is a second where I watch my brain reach for the worst and I lay a hand on it and say, gently, not now. It hears me. It doesn’t like it. It walks away a few paces and sits with its back to me, sulking. She wipes sauce from the corner of my mouth with her thumb like it’s the most natural thing in the world. My heart goes loud enough that the table vibrates. I smile in a way that feels reckless. Then the brand-new battery number on my phone reads 8% and I panic again, as if numbers can steal people. I put the phone face down. I press my knee against hers under the table like an anchor. “Stay over?” she says, casual, like asking if I want more water. It detonates something inside me. I feel the yes rush up, I feel the no that exists only to protect the yes, the tiny voice that whispers: if you stay, you’ll want more, and more will be what kills it. I think: say yes with conditions, say no with hope, say maybe and punish both of you. I see all the paths. I take breath. “Yeah,” I say, small. It feels like stepping off a high thing with trust in the cable. Then immediately the addendum arrives: She didn’t mean it, she’s being kind, you’ll wake up and she’ll be curled away from you. My chest tightens. I look at her face for clues and find only her face. She looks pleased. Not resigned. I let that be true for three seconds. I count them. One two three. It’s so brief it barely qualifies as surrender, and still it’s the bravest thing I do all night. On the way to her place we share her charger like a communion rail, and my phone rises to eleven percent, and I pretend that’s what’s keeping me off the ledge. But it isn’t. It’s her hand in mine, warm and ordinary, and the way that warmth terrifies me, and the way I take it anyway. I feel the familiar script in my pocket, folded, ready. I don’t throw it away. I keep it, because I am who I am. But I do not take it out. Not yet. Not tonight. For now I rehearse in the dark, quietly, and let her voice interrupt, and let that be a kind of mercy I do not quite trust and cannot stop needing.

Model Output:
The torch breathed and guttered, a single lung of fire throwing ragged light across the collapsed nave. Dust hung like sleep in the air. Cracked statues lay on their sides, moss eating faces. The aisle was a strip of broken flagstone between toppled columns. On either end of that strip, two circles of people pressed in—voices low, money changing hands, feet scuffing grit. The temple had become an arena, ringed by brick and breath and old anger. At the south end, a young man in a dark hakama stood with his left foot forward, heel aligned on a seam between stones. His right hand floated near the wrapped scabbard at his hip, though no blade sat in it tonight—only a bamboo dowel cut to sword-length, taped for grip. He was from Jigen-ryū, a lineage of violent geometry. He had a crew cut and a face you could cut paper on. His shoulders were squared to the aisle, chin tucked, eyes narrow. Behind him, older men in coats stood with their hands behind their backs, silent, watching like prosecutors. When he drew breath, it was on the rhythm of a war drum: in, swell the back; out, compress the ribs, weight coiling through the hips. At the north end, a broad-shouldered fighter in a faded jacket rolled his wrists, palms loosening and tightening like furling sails. His right foot pointed forward, left foot angled out, knees elastic. He held his own stick—a length of hardwood with the bark still on—low in his right hand, the tip angled across his left thigh. He shifted left, then right, drawing figure-eights with the tip, testing the air. Piguaquan had given him whips where most had arms. He blinked at the torchlight, gauging the shadows it painted on the floor. His people were close, smelling of tobacco and street food, voices rough, laughter a little too loud in a holy ruin. When he breathed, it was cat-quiet and everywhere. They stepped forward in unison, as if the same gravity pulled them, until two meters of cracked stone separated them in the center of the aisle. The Jigen-ryū fighter’s left heel found a rise in the floor; he adjusted so his weight could drop straight down that slope. The Piguaquan stylist drifted a half-step to his own left, lining up along the aisle’s diagonal, giving himself lateral room. The torch snapped; shadows skittered across broken saints. A voice somewhere: “Begin.” Jigen-ryū moved first, as he was bred to do. He inhaled and his hips slammed forward, right foot driving, torso folding like a spring released. His dowel—two hands high on the grip—came from above his right shoulder in a brutal diagonal meant to dominate any line that wasn’t already his. The move was not a swing but a fall that ate space. He took a complete step through, left to right, cutting the distance to one meter in a heartbeat, his center line spearing toward the other man’s nose. Piguaquan yielded, not straight back but outside. He had already begun to lean with the torch’s flicker. As the stick descended, he slid his left foot to his left at a 45-degree angle, letting the strike pass over his right shoulder. His right hand rotated the hardwood like a wheel spoke, the tip snapping up to meet the back of the Jigen stick near the last third. Their wood kissed with a flat slap that spun the Jigen strike three degrees off its rail. A hair’s width—but enough. The Jigen stick shaved the jacket’s shoulder instead of flattening the collarbone. Piguaquan’s left palm pressed to the Jigen’s forearm as it passed, adding a slip to his deflection. Jigen-ryū did not pause. His advance had carried his right foot past center; he stamped his left foot behind it, hips still driving, dowel arcing through the bottom of its path and back up cross-body, left-to-right now, a rising cut that threatened the jaw. He was inside the corridor of his own power, feet on rails, momentum a straight sermon. He machine-gunned forward—pressure, pressure, pressure. Piguaquan responded with circles. As the second cut rose, he rotated around his own left foot, right foot sweeping back like a compass needle so he kept the Jigen fighter on his right-front quadrant rather than directly in front. He let his spine curve, ducking the rising arc, and used his stick like a shield edge: his right hand scooped up from below, catching the Jigen dowel’s mid-shaft with a short, whipping lift. That subtle lift forced the rising cut to overextend; elbows exposed, shoulders opening too wide. Piguaquan stepped in to the void he’d created, his left forearm slamming across the Jigen’s grip to pin the stick momentarily to his own chest, their bodies now almost shoulder to shoulder. A small gasp from the crowd at the sudden closeness. Piguaquan’s hips snapped, sending his right hand on a backhanded arc. His stick’s butt end—short, brutal—cracked toward the point underneath the Jigen’s ear. Jigen’s left shoulder twitched; he disguised a flinch with a stamped step. He jerked his chin down and crashed his own left forearm into the incoming butt, bone to wood. The butt skidded off his forearm and kissed the side of his jaw with an audible pop instead of the nerve cluster. Pain flushed his face; he used it, driving forward. Jigen-ryū’s left foot stomped down the rise of the seam he’d chosen earlier, weight dropping like an axe. He wrenched his stick free from the pin with a wrench of hips and a half-step back to create a sliver of space. As the Piguaquan man adjusted to not fall into him, Jigen shot back in with a forward lunge—right heel skidding on grit, both hands over his heart, dowel thrust straight like a spear. Speed collapsed the distance to half a meter. The point aimed centerline: sternum, solar plexus, breath-stopper. Piguaquan’s body bent like a willow. He didn’t try to smack the thrust aside head-on. He folded his torso to his left, left arm sweeping down along the thrust line, guiding the dowel past his left ribs. His right foot shot behind his left in a cross-step, hips twisting in the same direction as his left sweep. The Jigen stick scraped his jacket and scored the cloth, the tip burying into a rotten pew behind with a wooden grunt. In that beat where Jigen’s force went into dead wood, Piguaquan’s stick came alive. He unspooled with the twist, his right hand drawing an outside-inside circle that brought his tip up under Jigen’s wrists. A violent snap upward split the hands, breaking their union on the grip for a fraction of a second. Jigen-ryū’s training reacted before the mind did. He let the grip slide, right hand dominant, left hand flashing to regrip lower. He used the hit on his wrists to roll the dowel along its axis, keeping it his rather than losing it. But that moment made him tall for a heartbeat, toes light. Piguaquan stepped deeper into his right side, his left foot now almost behind the Jigen’s right ankle. He whipped his left arm high and down, a Pigua chopping motion, his forearm slamming the back of the Jigen’s shoulder to collapse his posture. Jigen answered by not yielding the plane. He slammed his right elbow backward, catching Piguaquan’s ribs. The sound was drum-thud, not break. Piguaquan’s breath puffed; he took it into his belly, turned with the elbow, and let the force roll him around the Jigen’s spine. Now his back faced the torch and he was on the Jigen’s left, both of them pivoting around the contact point like parts in a wooden clock. The aisle’s confining geometry pressed on their awareness; there was a broken column base at Piguaquan’s back, one pace away. Jigen set his left foot outside Piguaquan’s left. His stick flashed down diagonally again, this time with his left hand reaching to trap Piguaquan’s stick hand against his own body. It was a ruthless attempt to pin and cut, to fix the other’s tool and batter him into a corner. The blade-phantom hissed. Piguaquan sank. He folded at the hips like a trapdoor, his tailbone back, his spine lengthening so the diagonal cut passed over his head and bit sparks off stone. He released his stick with his left hand entirely, letting it rotate freely in his right so it did not become an anchor. His left palm swept the Jigen’s left wrist as it passed; he captured it, pulled down, and then immediately sent it up with a whip of his shoulder. The change of levels broke the Jigen’s base. Knees locked for a fraction—enough. Piguaquan threaded his right leg behind Jigen’s left, calf to calf, and used his left hand’s upward tug to float the Jigen’s weight. He didn’t commit to a throw; he hinted it. The suggestion drew the Jigen’s hips to react backward, resisting being lifted. In that exact beat, Piguaquan reversed, chopping down with his right stick onto the outside of Jigen’s left thigh. It was a short, mean hit, a percussive reset. Jigen grunted, left knee buckling a hair. He adjusted, stamped his left to reclaim the line, and exploded forward again, refusing to cede the aisle. They hit the temple’s narrowest section, where two fallen columns lay like beached whales. The space pinched. The crowd re-angled, breath pressing. The torch threw their shadows into giants across the wall. Jigen’s plan was naked: drive the man into stone and smother him. Piguaquan changed the rhythm. He stopped the constant side-skips and darted straight in, crowding Jigen’s hands. His stick traced a tight vertical circle, then a horizontal one, wrapping around Jigen’s dowel like ivy. A short heel-toe pattern tapped, right-left-right in-place, keeping his base under him without retreat. Jigen grimaced and hammered downward to break the wrap, a piston of two-handed mass. Piguaquan let his stick drop like a rope, hands slipping to the ends so the middle sagged and Jigen’s dowel chased a ghost. He slid under the pounding arc and came up on Jigen’s right, almost chest-to-chest. His left hand flashed, palm striking the meat of Jigen’s triceps near the elbow, popping the arm line open. His right stick, short end forward again, slammed into the soft meat above Jigen’s hip. Jigen’s stance shuddered, but his forward engine did not stall. He bit down and took a half-step to the right, corkscrewing his hips. The twist shook Piguaquan off his centerline and freed his own stick to swing from low right up across like a bayonet. Piguaquan’s eyes caught the flare of torchlight on the tip—he sank his head—too late. The dowel kissed his cheekbone. The sound was flat, wet wood on bone. He stumbled two steps back, right heel clipping the edge of the fallen column. The crowd erupted, two sounds braided together—one set of throats wide with triumph, one with worry. Piguaquan shook once like a dog, blinked away the spark-trail. Jigen came on, sensing the stumble. He took the space with a stamping left-right, feet biting the flagstones, dowel over his right shoulder, weight high. He brought a killing diagonal for the clavicle, measured to finish. Piguaquan’s back met limestone. He didn’t try to vanish; there was nowhere. Instead he used the wall. As the dowel descended, he stepped hard with his right foot along the wall’s line, scraping his shoulder against stone, reducing his target. At the same time his left hand came up, palm open, catching Jigen’s right forearm near the wrist from the inside. He didn’t try to stop the cut; he redirected its path closer to the wall. The dowel bit into limestone a hand’s breadth from his ear with a sparking scratch, momentum arresting in stone instead of flesh. That arrested force tugged Jigen half a degree off-balance toward the wall. Piguaquan turned that half-degree into an opening. He rotated counterclockwise around his left foot, his right foot sliding along the base of the column, and whipped his stick in a flat, horizontal arc. The strike traced the line of Jigen’s jaw, seeking the hinge under the ear on the left side—the same nerve cluster he had only brushed earlier. This time Jigen’s left shoulder couldn’t cover; his right arm was embedded in stone. He tried to duck—and ran into the arc. Crack. Head snapped left, body right. The crowd’s breath sucked. Jigen’s knees almost went, steadied, then went again one notch. His dowel scraped out of the limestone with a grind. He reflexively brought it back to guard, but his timing had a smear in it now, a half-beat off. Piguaquan did not sprint away; he stayed on him, rubbing salt in lost beats with pressure of his own style—pressure by angles, not by line. He sent the next three strikes like rain around a gutter, one high, one mid, one low, each from a different plane but sharing a single pivot. High: a whip to the temple that Jigen blocked with a vertical stick, absorbing with two hands but losing one step backward. Mid: a chopping hook to the ribs that Jigen tried to parry with a short thrust; the sticks clacked, but the chopping wrist folded around and scored the side. Low: a slide-stomp to the front of Jigen’s left shin—not a kick, a glide with the sole—forcing another step back to avoid his weight being taken. Each exchange turned Jigen two degrees, walking him away from his masters’ side of the crowd and into the Piguaquan cluster. Jigen’s face had a new stillness now, not of arrogance but calculation under duress. He stopped chasing the head, stopped trying to out-circle. He cut the noise. He planted his right heel, drew in breath like rope, and launched a straight thrust down the aisle at sternum again, this time sliding his left hand along the stick in a pulse that made the point blur. It had none of the dramatic diagonal; it was a spear in a corridor. Piguaquan knew that line. He’d met it already. He chose differently. He didn’t fold left. He stepped to his right, inside the thrust line this time, rotating so his chest faced the dowel, not his flank. His left forearm slapped across the incoming stick near the hands, pinning it to his own chest, both his forearms cradling it for a heartbeat. That stole the tip’s speed. In that heartbeat, his right foot hooked behind Jigen’s right ankle from the outside. He didn’t try to reap. He pressed, just enough to lock the ankle. Then his right hip bumped Jigen’s right hip, half a body-check, not a throw. With his forearms pinning the stick, Jigen’s hands were glued to the center. His own weight and drive met a trapped foot and a denied hip. The fall was small and ugly. Jigen’s heel skidded on grit; his knee bent; his center dropped an inch more than planned. He went to catch himself with the stick—pinned. He twisted to tear free; Piguaquan released at the exact instant to avoid being dragged, letting Jigen spill into the turn. Jigen’s left knee hit stone. He caught himself with his left hand. The dowel’s tip scraped the floor and bounced. Piguaquan was already moving. He didn’t lunge for glory. He stepped to the outside of Jigen’s right shoulder, his stick whistling down toward the same shoulder joint that had carried strikes like a mule all night. The butt end hit the top of the deltoid where it meets the collarbone—a sentiment more than a structure, a place where arms become heavy if struck. Jigen’s right hand spasmed; his grip loosened a hair. Piguaquan’s stick switched to both hands, one high, one low, and he wrenched the dowel across his thigh. The torque was a farmer’s trick. The stick came free. Silence rushed in, carrying the torch’s hiss. Piguaquan backed one step, both hands on his stick now, tip down, not gloating, breathing measured. Jigen’s right hand flexed, fingers tingling. He set his left foot under him and began to rise. His masters’ eyes were knives in his back. His school’s weight hung like an altar stone on his shoulders. He looked at his empty hands, at the stolen line of the aisle where he had owned the forward, and then at the man in front of him with the bark-stick and the street stride. Pride and duty collided in the space between a heartbeat and a breath. Jigen-ryū did not train to kneel, but neither did it train to lie to itself. He set his right knee down deliberately, left hand open, empty. He bowed from the hips, not to the crowd but to the opponent, the way a warrior marks a debt. The arena’s murmurs rose, then stilled. The torch flickered, casting both men’s shadows into an embrace on the wall, two long forms intersecting and falling apart. The Piguaquan fighter’s jaw was already swelling. He saluted with his stick, then reversed his grip and set it on the floor, bowing in return. Their seconds surged forward then—cloth, voices, hands. Money changed hands like birds changing branches. The temple took the sound and kept it. High on the wall, a cracked saint watched the last of the night’s smoke spiral toward the dark.

Model Output:
The first thing I see is the red colon blinking between the numbers on the clock: 02:17:39. Then 38. Then 37. My breath syncs, unwillingly, to each tick. The studio is a white box with a mirror wall and a black line taped across the glossy floor like a no-fly zone. The line marks center. The strip lights hum. The bass thuds through the ceiling from some other room where some other kids are already perfect. We’re spaced five across, three rows deep, mat-markers taped to the floor under our sneakers. I’m front row, not because I deserve it but because Instructor Min likes his problems where he can see them. My mat has my name in Hangul and English. A mirror version of me stares back, jaw set hard against nerves I don’t want anyone reading but the mirror snitches anyway. “Warm-up is rehearsal,” Min says, moving down the line. His voice is quiet, control in human form, black joggers falling straight, oversize tee hanging geometry-clean. “There is no difference.” He claps eight counts. “Prep. First position.” His first position isn’t ballet; it’s K-pop front: feet hip-width, parallel, toes forward, weight stacked neutral over the arches, pelvis tucked. My body has always lived with one hip cocked, a shoulder ready to roll. I place my feet like he says, but everything in me whispers wrong. The track clicks on: metronomic snare, sawtooth synth, the kind of four-on-the-floor thump meant to marshal soldiers. He breaks down the combo with that fake slow that still feels fast when the shapes are precise. “Raise the right arm on count one. Up to ninety degrees at the shoulder. Elbow at ninety. Palm flat, fingers together. Left arm mirrors on three. Step out, left foot, count five. Slide the right foot in on six. Head snaps to stage left on seven. Chest hits on the and of eight.” We mirror. Stage left means my right. He counts, no bounce in his voice, all blade. “And one, and two, and three—shoulder down, not up, I can see your trapezius—four.” My shoulder is up because my muscle memory thinks “hit” means crank. Back home, a hit rides impulse; here, a hit lives in exact angles. I drop my shoulder, jaw tighter. Back row, a tiny kid—maybe fifteen—adjusts to his correction before he even points. They’re all younger than me by a couple years and already move like presets. Their arms stop on invisible stoppers, like puppets pulled by the same string. I make my living back home as a busker, outside the bodega, spinning on concrete with one ear out for sirens and one eye on the cop who doesn’t want to see us. I learned heel-toe from an uncle in a parking lot, popping from YouTube, krumping from a battle a guy named Jay Sorrow started by slamming his chest like a church. My body knows derailment, triplets in silence, the swagger of a ride cymbal. This room is the opposite of every sidewalk that taught me. “From the top,” Min says. He crosses behind me. I can feel the heat of his shadow. The clock says 02:13:01. “And five, six, seven, eight.” I lift my right arm to ninety precisely—shoulder socket like a hinge—and that’s okay. On three, the left comes up and I catch my wrist drifting. I clamp it. We step left on five. I want to let my hip push into the step, slide the foot, melt it. Instead: step, drag, place. Six is a right-in; my foot skates exact to center mat. Seven, my head snaps to mirror right. I do it clean. On and eight he calls, “Chest pop.” I throw it and my chest wants to ripple; his chest pop is a single pulse, no echo. Mine tremors once, then tries for second; I shut it down. He sees the timid flutter. “You are not a jellyfish,” he says without turning his head. I’m not. I know binary pops—on/off—but the music pushes for layering and old habits beg for a flow between shapes. The second eight is a traveling grapevine, but K-pop style: four fast side steps, no swing in the hips, no heel lead, just pure parallel and micro-bends for shock absorption. “Counts one to four,” he says, “keep the head level. Camera height matters.” We move as a flock. I want to give the groove a nod; he wants stillness with legs doing the work. On three, my heel barely flicks out a toe-in like a beginner locking. He’s on me in a heartbeat. “We are not doing street jazz,” he says. His Korean is clipped; the translator in my head app works on lag, but tone needs no translation. He places two fingers on my sternum. “You are here.” Fingers move to my belly. “You are not here.” “Yes,” I say. The word feels too loud on my tongue. We go again and he layers arms: a spear-thrust diagonal forward right on count five, palm knife-edge, wrist locked. We step into a diagonal lunge, right foot forward, left heel high. Torso rotates to square with the corner; hips stay facing front. This is how they love it: isolations that defy the instinct to let the body follow itself. “Shoulders down,” he reminds the room. “Clavicle smiles, not ears.” My shoulders obey but my breath doesn’t, going up instead of out. He sees it. “Exhale on the change,” he says. He demonstrates: on five he lances his arm and lets a thin thread of air leave his body, his ribcage compressing with surgical neatness. He is a metronome wearing skin. The room smells like rubber floors and teenage detergent. I have to fight my eyes off the clock. 02:09:12. “Level three,” he says. This means double-time. The tiny kid behind me cracks his neck like he’s setting it on a shelf. “And five, six, seven, eight.” We go. Right arm up, left arm up, step, drag, head, hit. No wandering fingers. Grapevine. Spear right. Pivot at the hips without letting the pelvis yaw. From the lunge, a knee-in on seven—inner thighs pull together like magnets. Then a speed-sweep with the left hand across the chest on the and of eight, fingertips finishing exactly at the right shoulder like a clip into place. It’s a hand that imitates a shutter slide. The music pops and the move hammers the pop. I catch my own reflection doing a little something extra in the left wrist—just a so-small flex—and kill it. My forearms look like I'm carrying invisible trays. This is the part that digs under my skin: to get it right, I have to erase micro-spontaneities that just happen in me. We reset to neutral. My socks inside my shoes feel wet. My thighs vibrate. The kid next to me flares nostrils like a bull. He looks like money—hair dyed that ash-moss color every boy phase-bangs here, skin shining. My hair is just hair, smushed under a cap I had to take off when Min came in. “Why are you smiling?” he says, and it takes me a second to know he’s talking to me. My mouth has gone crooked because back home, when a step starts to feel stiff, I grin it looser. I erase it now. “There is nothing to smile at,” he says. “Yes,” I say again. We hit the chorus. A formation shift. We go from five across to two diagonals collapsing to a wedge. He makes it sound easy. “On count one, third row, two steps forward on the diagonal; second row, one. First row, zero. On count three, first row splits to either side, facing thirty degrees in, leave a lane. Center steps forward on count four, hit the camera on five with an upper-body freeze and lower-body groove.” The center is me today. I didn’t ask for it. He walks the path with his finger in the air like he’s tracing a diagram, then nudges my foot onto its gaffer mark. “If you cannot own this,” he says, “you cannot be here.” His breath smells like mint and coffee. We set. The back row slides forward like drawstrings. I hold. Count three, I split, my right foot half-mooning around a taped X to my right, my torso angling inward as told. My left hand goes behind my back, not to rest but to flatten my palm against my lower back so I don’t let it float. This is the kind of detail that runs through the veins here: hands have jobs even when they’re not in the shot. Count four, I step dead center. The music drops to a bass warble and Min says, “Hit the camera.” I know how to hit a camera. I’ve hit phones, tourists, surveillance. I fix my chin to the right angle, find my center with a micro-spiral through my spine, and on five my upper body freezes: wrists at shoulder height, elbows tucked in two inches tighter than feels comfortable, scapula anchored. Under that freeze, my knees bounce a clean down-up groove, quarter-time. It’s the kind of groove that makes the freeze look like it’s vibrating. This is where I feel something like myself in their language: two things at once. But then the instinct spikes—a ghost of a chest roll to steal a breath in the freeze—and I take it, my sternum makes a tiny circle to a tiny rhythm living underneath. It is so small I think no one clocked it. Then I see his name tag in the mirror approaching, “Min” growing as he comes. He steps into my lane, hands behind his back. “Again,” he says to the room. We reset the formation. The counts rattle from the speakers: five-six-seven-eight again, again, again. On the fourth run, he stops us on five with a clap that cracks like a gun. “Freeze,” he says. It is the freeze we are already in. He walks behind me and places one finger at the notch of my throat. “You rolled,” he says. My face goes hot. He hasn’t raised his voice. Shame can be quiet. I want to explain that where I’m from, breath has to go somewhere. We roll to hide it. We roll because a locked chest is a locked heart. “Again,” he says. The clock says 01:54:32. We run the bridge. A floorwork moment: down on the counts—right knee touches on three, left knee on four, both knees together on the and, palms to the floor on five, shoot the legs out behind to a plank on six, pop the hips on seven, thread the left knee through on eight to a pretzel sit, right hand slices up on one to frame the face, look down on two. It’s breakish but sanitized, like someone scrubbed the concrete off the asphalt. My knees hit the Marley. They forgive less than the sidewalk because their mercy is in the slickness, not the grit. My hands find the floor, fingers splayed, thumbs in line with index fingers to protect the wrists—correct alignment I’ve only started to accept. In the plank, I want to pike my hips to breathe, but we’re told to keep the torso flat, glutes engaged. On seven, the hip pop is mechanical, not a ripple, meant to read as a visual blip on camera. I feel my lower back try to arch into what I would do mid-battle. I color inside the lines instead. By now, sweat has slicked down my temples, making my eyelashes stick. My hoodie is already tied around my waist per Min’s rule: no loose fabric past the waist. He says on camera a flapping hoodie looks like insecurity. “Last twenty minutes,” he says. It’s not, but it might be for us; he lies because urgency is a tool. The clock contradicts, dry and red: 01:37:10. We stand, we breathe, we go again. Every time we reset, I feel like someone heavy is sitting on my chest. Every time we nail a unison, the room goes silent for a split second between movements in that way all good unisons do. It’s the silence of precision, like a door sliding perfectly into frame. It is impressive. It is also suffocating. On the twentieth run, my left heel keeps lifting on the grapevine, an old habit to get more groove. Min puts his palm lightly on the top of my head during the step. I move under it without rising. “Good,” he says. It’s the first time he says it to me. It does something to the inside of my ribs that I don’t know whether to like. We hit the end pose: feet shoulder-width, torso pitched forward fifteen degrees, hands prayer at the chest but not touching—the space between palms is part of the image. I can feel the air there, cool and thin. Min walks in front of us. He stops at me, looks at the space between my palms. “Smaller,” he says. I compress the space by a hair. He nods. He knows how to get in your wiring. He knows how to make you small without telling you to be small. He lets the track roll from the top. “Give me one full out and one performance,” he says. “Full out is for the body. Performance is for the camera.” My body wants to saver-save any fuel left. He won’t let it. The first full-out rips me. I sweat through, lungs on fire, thighs crying. The eight-counts cut me into boxes. In the second, performance run, the camera is an imagined red dot between the two front mirrors. I lock my eyes there when I hit five in the center. I think of my block—graffiti and busted streetlights—and how I promised my mother I wouldn’t get soft. I think of the scholarship email in broken English and perfect amounts. I think of what it would mean to move like this for the next five years, to make my body say someone else’s words perfectly until I can’t hear my own accent. We get to the chorus and that little ghost rolls my sternum again. I feel it rising. It’s an urge, like a cough. I clamp it. For the first time, I choose the freeze. From the side, Min nods once. His eyes flicker with something like acknowledgment. He sees compliance. He sees control. Maybe—this is hope doing push-ups in my chest—maybe he sees discipline. I am not sure I like the way the nod feels in my veins. When the music stops, he holds us in the end pose three counts longer than comfortable. I taste metal. Then he says, “Break.” The word is a misnomer. It means we have four minutes to drink water and stretch our hip flexors while the clock drains our life. 01:12:08. The red colon keeps pulsing. I sit on my mat and fold forward, nose to shins, counting my breaths in fours. The kid with ash hair offers me his towel like an ambassador to a country I’m not sure I want to live in. I shake my head no. He shrugs, slings it back over his shoulder in one clean motion like everything here. Min squats near me. “You learned quickly when you wanted,” he says. He looks at my shoes, then at my face. “Your respect is selective.” “It’s not that,” I lie, because respect is a currency here and I’m broke. “It is,” he says. “You have… movement voice.” He says it like it tastes strange. “But now, you must learn to speak ours. Then, later, speak yours again, with grammar. Understand?” Do I? The thought makes my stomach twist: what if I learn their grammar so well I forget my slang. What if the only thing that kept me from getting jumped on corners—the way my body takes up space without asking—is the first thing to go. I look at the clock. 01:10:02. The colon blinks. My heart counts with it. This is the decision they talk about, the one no one puts on the acceptance letter. Do I conform hard enough to get permission to rebel later, or do I throw my chest roll into the center of his spotless room and get bounced back to a block that doesn’t forgive dreamers? I stand. My quads shake. I look at the black tape line at center, the mat with my name, the mirror version of me who looks like a draft on top of a clean sketch. “Again,” Min says. We file back into formation. This time, when the counts start, I set my feet exactly parallel. I tuck my pelvis. I lock my elbows to ninety. I kill the micro-flourish in my wrist before it’s born. And when I step dead into center on five, I aim for the camera with a freeze so calm it could cut glass. Beneath it, where nobody can read it, I let my knees ride one millimeter deeper, a secret groove the mirror doesn’t catch, the camera won’t see, but my muscles recognize like home. It’s not rebellion. Not yet. It’s a seed.

Model Output:
The courtroom of the Dreaming has the shape of a teacup dropped from a great height and repaired with gold and cobweb. It smells faintly of dandelions and funerals. A thousand benches flow upward in impossible tiers, where moths wear wigs and ravens shuffle paper with comically careful claws. A bailiff with a lion’s head reads the charges in a sleepy baritone, and his mane sheds a small storm of citations. At the bench sits Dream—pale, patient, and wearing irritation as one might wear a shadow: reluctantly, but well. The gavel is a moonstone that refuses to admit it is a rock. It thrums under his fingers like a held breath. The plaintiff stands: First Love. Rosy-cheeked, nervous, dressed in a neat sweater that looks knitted from the first blush of spring. Their tie keeps trying to knot itself into a heart and failing. At the defense table slouches Mora, draped in midnight and attic dust, all elbows and hunger, a woman-shaped question with bad intentions. Her hair is the color of sleep you regret. Every time she shifts, there is the sensation of weight settling on your lungs. She emits faint cackles that echo uncomfortably through the vaulted ceilings, the sound finding the soft spots behind listeners’ ribs. The gallery murmurs: a choir of school crushes, stage-fright ghouls, small anxieties clutching briefcases. In the witness box, a scarecrow in a letterman jacket has been sworn in and immediately forgot why it was there. Dream steeples his fingers. His eyes are the color of mothwing. “We convene,” he says, voice low enough to make the chandeliers shiver, “in the matter of the contested dream of one Max—fifteen years, eight months, a collector of small kindnesses and limited-edition sneakers. The dream’s original shape: pastoral, awkward, formative. The contested alteration: predatory, paralyzing, formative of a different sort.” His gaze drifts, lands on First Love like a frost. “Counsel.” First Love clears their throat delicately. A hush falls, embarrassed for them in advance. “My Lord Dream,” they begin, and wince at the formality. “Your Honor. The dreamscape in question is mine. Commissioned by the boy’s first bewildering hormone surge. I, ah, curated the scent of clover. I selected the dappled light pattern from a library of thousands.” They glance up at Dream as if checking whether that sort of detail is appreciated. He does not blink. First Love continues. “The culmination is deliberate. Not a kiss—never, never a kiss—but the almostness, the muddledness, the burbling confusion that ripples into daylight as a blush and a kinder gaze toward others. Important groundwork. The girl’s hand on his shirt. The breath held. The world held. A good foundation for better choices. Then—” They gesture helplessly toward Mora, who raises a hand like a student told to present their crime. “Then,” First Love says, “Mora perched and—ate the moment.” Mora leans her chin into her palm, grinning with too many teeth that aren’t. “A girl’s gotta eat too, you know?” The cackle that follows is soft as lint and twice as suffocating. Several jurors check their throats for air that is no longer there. Dream turns to her, the barest tilt of his head carrying the mass of a moon. “You are charged with trespass, subversion, and gluttony upon a tender threshold.” “Your Honor,” says Mora, “I am a threshold. Ask any village grandmother with a broom by the door and nails in the windowsill. I sit where childhood ends and the dark gets interesting. I don’t make the door. I wait on it.” She spreads her fingers, which are slightly longer than they should be. “He invited me.” First Love bristles, flushing from rosy-cheeked to ripe-tomato. “He did not. He invited the idea of love and mild embarrassment. You heard the witnesses—” They gesture to the bailiff. Two moths in powdered wigs flutter forward, whispering in dusty falsetto about daisy chains and hand-holding and no monstrous chest-sitting whatsoever. Mora makes a moue. “He invited pressure. He invited paralysis. Oh, darling, I read the boy like a stolen diary. He’s choking on what-if. The girl laughs and climbs on, and suddenly the body won’t move because moving would mean choosing, and choosing would mean a fall, and falling—” She claps her hands softly. “That is my supper bell.” Dream’s fingers knead the moonstone gavel. A small crater appears, then thinks better of it and smooths over. “You assert,” Dream says, “that fear is mere nutrition.” Mora shrugs. “It’s honest work. The living eat. The dead eat. The nightmares eat. Daylight eats us all back, in time. I take a little breath. I leave a story. He wakes up with a hammering heart, looks at the girl in homeroom, and wonders if dying might be interesting. That’s a kind of romance.” She pauses, pleased with herself. “Plus, I made myself confusingly attractive. I met him halfway.” The gallery titters, then coughs it away. First Love presses a hand to their heart. “You took a moment meant for tenderness and turned it into a demonstration of suffocation.” “And you,” Mora says, smiling without warmth, “packaged a human rite into a pastoral advertisement. Wildflowers and impeccable lighting and a kiss that isn’t. I’m not the only one who eats here.” Dream makes a sound that might be a sigh and might be the moment midnight admits it is alone. He looks past them, where the dream itself is coiled like a roll of film in a glass cylinder. A field. Two bodies young as spare change. The sky with the texture of breath. In one frame, the girl leans in; in the next, teeth glimmer like frost. It spins quietly, caught in bureaucratic amber. “Bring the subject,” Dream says. From the side door, a sleepwalker Max ambles in, tethered to his bed by a silver thread that hums the distant sound of a radiator. His eyes are closed. His mouth shapes a small question. The court holds its breath, which is perhaps unwise with Mora in the room. “How do you feel,” Dream asks, even though mortal dreams do not answer with words. Max sighs, and out comes a picture instead: clover in the nose, mud on the shoe, a pulse too big for the chest, the specific panic of a hand on the sternum that is both wanted and wrong, and the way algebra looks different on the day after you almost died or almost kissed. The picture floats above the boy’s head like a weather report and drifts, slowly, toward the bench. First Love looks stricken. “He’s scared.” “He’s alive,” Mora says, and for a moment there is no cackle, only the pure economy of predation. Dream sits very still, and in that stillness a strand of his irritation unwinds and knots itself into something else: mischief, faint and dry. He says, “The Dreaming is not the barn at which each spirit ties their own horse. It is a road we share, and some of us prefer not to be trampled.” The ravens scratch this down with solemn nods. One of them writes trampled and pauses to add allegedly. “Judgment,” Dream says. “Ownership: First Love retains custodial rights to the dream’s scaffolding: field, light, the precise calculus of almost. License to alter form: revoked from Mora in perpetuity for this subject. But—” Everyone leans forward. Mora’s grin returns in glossy slow motion. “—the court recognizes,” Dream continues, “that fear is not only a trespasser but also a herald. Adolescence is a road with poor signage. To banish every shadow is to hand the child a fake map.” He taps the gavel. The moonstone shivers into a bird, then remembers it is a gavel and sulks back into shape. “Therefore, remedy: The dream shall split along its seam, alternating by night. On even-numbered nights—” “There are no numbers in the Dreaming,” the lion-headed bailiff murmurs. “—on nights I determine,” Dream corrects smoothly, “the dream will proceed as First Love designed, culminating ever in the almost. On nights of my contrary choosing, a specter of pressure will appear. Not Mora, who has indulged herself”—he glances at her, and the glance is a black plume—“but a gentler weight. The girl’s elbow on his chest, the memory of a sleep-paralyzed ancestor in the corner, a hum in the bones like a train coming that never arrives. Enough for him to practice breathing under it. Enough for him to decide to move.” First Love’s shoulders drop with relief and a little despair. “Practice,” they repeat, as if trying the flavor of it. Mora bares her teeth, considering. “You give me a copy fit to eat, then, elsewhere.” Dream’s smile is very slight and entirely unkind. “No. I give you an accounting ledger.” “What.” “For every breath you take uninvited from adolescents unripe for your visit, you will remit one breath to infants upon their first dream, when the monsters are shadows on the mobile and the crib is a ship. You will lean in, and instead of pressing, you will whisper the shape of letting go. You will learn that hunger can be deferred.” Mora’s cackle climbs the columns like ivy and comes back down with its leaves burned. “Cruel, Your Honor.” “Correct,” Dream says. Max sighs again, and the picture above his head shivers: the field gleams, the girl’s laugh becomes a string that can be plucked without strangling. The pressure lifts a finger’s width. The court inhales. The gallery of anxieties scribbles reluctant approvals. Mora stretches, bones settling with the sound of attic doors. “A girl’s gotta eat,” she says, but it is less argument and more habit. “A boy’s gotta sleep,” Dream replies, weary and remote. “And wake.” He motions, and the sleepwalking boy recedes, drawn back along the silver thread to the bed where his cat is currently kneading equations out of the blanket. The glass cylinder with the film inside rotates once and splits into two reels, which circle each other like wary planets and then file themselves into a cabinet labeled Tenderness, Conditional. First Love approaches the bench and bows, awkward and sincere. Their tie finally knots itself properly and then, in a burst of nerve, becomes a small tulip. They blush at their own flourish. “Go,” Dream says, and it sounds like an apology to the busy night. Mora lingers. “You’ll miss me,” she taunts softly. “Inescapably,” Dream says, and this, too, is true. “But not here. Not tonight.” She laughs—faint cackles that echo uncomfortably through the vaulted ceilings—and drifts toward the door, turning sideways to slip through the thin place where nightmares file their motions and hopes forget to object. The gavel falls. The sound is a curtain closing on an argument that will start up again as soon as the lights change. The gallery mumbles. The moths shed powdered judgments. The ravens settle their quills. Dream sits, tall and tired, and allows himself a private amusement: for the next three nights, he will confound all calendrical systems and call them all Thursdays, just to keep the balance interesting. He stands. The court adjourns. The Dreaming exhales, and somewhere a boy sleeps into a field that is exactly as it should be: a little too bright, a little too heavy, and, if he looks at his own lungs closely, full.

Model Output:
A crimson harvest moon hangs swollen over the thatch and timber, its light lacquered onto puddles and broken cart wheels like blood on a butcher’s block. The village is a husk, emptied of laughter and lamp oil and the smell of bread; doors hang on one hinge, shutters clap softly in the night breeze, and the only footsteps are those that do not leave prints. He appears first in the square as an outline of absence: too tall, too still, hat brim devouring moonlight. The red of his coat drinks the color from the world. Orange lenses hide his eyes, but it is obvious he doesn’t need them; he sees and catalogues everything with the blank hunger of a predator who has walked too long. His smile is a bare suggestion, like a wound just beginning to open. “The bird of Hermes is my name,” he murmurs to the silent well, to the rope that creaks over blackness, to the scarecrow lolling in its post like a hanged man. “Eating my wings to make me tame.” A flicker, a scent: lilac, gooseberries, lightning held in a velvet glove. He tilts his head. The air ripples beside the old chapel’s skeleton door, and a gap in the world folds itself into a woman, mid-step. She wears black cut for elegance, not penance, velvet and leather that would have been burned with her once—that still might, if the wrong eyes saw. Her hair is a fall of midnight. Her eyes, when they meet his lenses, are violet, sharp as tempered glass. Her lip curls. It might be a smile. It might be disgust. “You’ve been busy,” Yennefer says. Her voice mocks the quiet, refutes it. She smells the copper stain in the square, the fear that went running and never found safety. She sees that all the bodies are absent and thinks of a glutted beast. He laughs softly, a sound with too many teeth. “Not I. This is someone else’s feast. Or an invitation.” Her gaze sweeps the rooftops. She senses old magic, unfamiliar and iron-tanged, webbing the air like cobweb gyring toward him. His presence ripples at the edge of her mind as if eels writhe in oil. She resists the urge to reach for the neck of her dress, as if touching her own throat could steady her pulse. “You’re wrong,” she says. “It’s not an invitation. It’s bait.” He loves that. It shows in the way his mouth opens a little too wide. “Then we are two cats who arrived for the same mouse.” She steps onto the lip of the well as if it is a dais required by custom for addressing this thing in red. Her heels click. Her power sits with unbearable lightness around her, a gown made of pressure and heat. “Do not put me in your metaphors, vampire. We won’t be sharing anything.” “Not even the hunt?” He drifts closer, and the shadow of his hat rolls over her boots like a tide. Up close he smells of powder and wet soil, of guns and graves. “You don’t share with men, that I can imagine. But you’d share with me.” She turns her cheek as if offering him perfume to inspect. “I don’t share with monsters either,” she says mildly, and flicks her fingers. A sigil, brief and intricate, blooms in the air, and the wards she set around the village ping like plucked strings. Something answers from the barn beyond the baker’s—they both turn their heads. “Shall we?” he asks, villainously courteous. “Try to keep up.” She steps into a portal that is a scar she draws in the air, and his laughter follows her like smoke. He doesn’t walk. He unravels, a red coat and a shadow sliding under doors, over beams, through worm-holes in the earth, and reforms inside the barn. It is dark, but they see. The straw is not straw; it’s hair. The sacks are not grain; they are skin turned inside out. There are sigils carved into the beams and spelled with the entrails of goats, draining power toward a black cradle in the center where a mass pulses like a heart. Yennefer’s hands rise, two staves for flame. Her magic hums a note that splits the spider-thread air. “Necromancy,” she says without inflection. “Clumsy. It relies on awe and shock. Sound familiar?” He looks insulted—and delighted. “I prefer elegance. This is an amateur’s tantrum. Where did you pick up your parlor tricks, girl?” Her smile cuts. “Where did you mislay your manners, hound?” Something in the cradle wakes, yawning out tendrils like veins fishing for a pulse to inhabit. It tastes them both and flinches. Predators make poor nests. Yennefer’s ward-flames become a lattice of blue-white light that hisses across the cradle, searing the tendrils to ash. The thing (it would call itself a child if it had a tongue) screams without sound and tries to flee into the floorboards. She pins it with force as neat and merciless as a pin through a butterfly. Alucard watches. He could intervene with a flick of that impossible wrist. Instead, he draws one of his handguns, a slab of black metal that hums like a church organ. He aims lazily at the shadows coalescing around the thing, the lesser revenants that always answer when necromancy throws a tantrum loud enough to wake the cemetery. He shoots, each shot a thunderclap that rattles the barn. Heads burst, shadows tear, and silver shrapnel etches pentagrams in the air. He’s grinning like a child at fireworks. “Is this your bait?” she asks the cradle, and presses. It pops, empty, a sac that never learned to be more than ambition. The smell is abattoir-thick. He sniffs. “Disappointing,” he says, bored now. “Perhaps the mage who sprung it will be more amusing.” “We could ask.” She gestures, and a raven that is neither bird nor wholly not spreads itself out of shadow and sits on the beam, eyes like onyx with a candle flame caught in each. “Find me the hand that cut these runes,” she tells it. It flaps off into night, shedding a few feathers that wink out before they hit the floor. He steps close. Too close. The red of his coat sullies her black. Her nostrils flare, the littlest tell of offense, or something else. “You are old,” he says. “Not like me. Your age sits on you like a spell you forget until you pass a mirror.” She doesn’t look at him. “You are old like a prison tower is old,” she says. “And just as full of other people’s bones.” He likes that too much. His grin goes razor-thin. The power between them twangs. For a moment she is certain that if she looks into those orange lenses she will see a shape that is not a man and she will not look away in time. She squares her shoulders instead. “I don’t have patience for theatrics.” “You love theatrics,” he says, and the scorn is tender and vile at once. “You love to walk in as the solution to a problem you invented, and only occasionally fix something no one else could. You like being the storm that the village remembers.” Her magic flares. A gust slaps him back a step, rearranging his coat into fire-bright streamers. Her voice goes silk-quiet. “And you like to pretend your leash is a choice. Keep speaking and I’ll turn that mouth into a useful purse.” He has to laugh. He does it because he must, because he is compelled by the perfect audacity of the threat. He is also evaluating, always: the temperature of her power, the quickness with which she sets a ward, how the fatigue does not show in her cheekbones. She is dangerous. She is in control. He wants to see her lose it. “Stop circling,” he says suddenly, smiling. “Hit me.” She blinks once, lazy, affronted. She considers genuinely. The raven circles back and kaws once: northwest, the sound means. She doesn’t look at it. She looks at him. “If I hit you,” she says, “you’ll like it.” “You know me so well,” he says. She hits him. It is not a fireball and not a bolt; it is gravity, concentrated and toppled sideways. The barn bows as if a giant places a hand on it. The red coat slaps to the floor with an indignant grunt that sounds far too entertained. He fractures, not bones—in him bones are theory—but self, a smear of violence across planks. He pulls back together very quickly, licking his teeth with a tongue that was not in his mouth a second ago. “My turn,” he says, warmly, almost grateful. He doesn’t move. The shadow at her feet moves for him. It flowers up like a black rose, petal on petal of cold, and clamps her ankles. She is up to mid-calf in midnight before she cuts herself free with a hand gesture so small it seems rude. The shadow shrieks without sound, offended that prey refused it. He applauds once, mockery formal as courtly courtesy. They stand again, reset, both flushed in the ways that matter for them. He could rip her head off. She could turn him into a thought stored in a beeswax candle and blow him out. Neither wants an end; both want the edge. “Northwest,” she says to the raven, as if speaking only to herself. “Let’s go.” “Running to him?” he asks, amused. “Or from me?” “Neither,” she says. “Doing my job. I do have one.” He falls into step at her side, a parody of an escort. They take the street, then the footpath through the fields where the wheat sheaves look like sleeping monks under the harvest moon. He keeps half a pace behind, gentleman as predator; she keeps her hands loose, fingers making circles that taste the ley lines humming under the earth. “Perhaps,” he suggests casually, “you want something from me, and that’s why you haven’t turned me into a goat.” “Darling,” she says, and the endearment is a blade. “If I wanted something from you, you wouldn’t even know you’d given it.” He’s charmed, and he despises charm. His eyes—somewhere behind the lenses—narrow. “You want an end,” he says, abruptly serious. “As I do. A different end. A child’s laugh in a house that doesn’t burn at dawn. You’d make bargains with devils for it.” “Says the devil,” she replies. The words hit him like a caress and a slap. She doesn’t speed up. She doesn’t slow down. A faint crack opens in the night; she smells of lilac and gooseberries and stubborn iron. He wants to pry the crack wider. He wants to be the one to hear her voice break. “You do not know what bargains I’ve made,” he says, and for the first time the voice is a little less certain. Memory crosses the path like a fox. He steps on it deliberately. “You do not want to.” “Oh, but I do,” she says, and there is naked truth in it that startles them both. “And I don’t. Don’t mistake curiosity for desire, Alucard.” The name is a touch. He notices she did not ask it; she reached for it and took it. He likes that more than he should. The ravens leads them to a hill crowned with junipers. The smell there is old and green. A circle of stones marks the place where witches used to dance badly and men sharpened their fear into knives. A man stands at the center, or what was a man until longing turned him inside out. His eyes are pits where his wife and son fell. He raises his arms, and the wind comes. The wind screams not because of him but for him. Yennefer’s expression shifts infinitesimally; he knows that kind of grief. She hates that she knows. Alucard does not care. He cares for the spectacle. “Don’t kill him,” she says, already moving, beginning the careful work of unspooling a spell without letting it remember it is a knot. “He is stupid, not evil.” “Stupidity is the parent of evil,” he counters, but holsters his gun. For her. For now. He watches her work. It is needlework, and blood magic by way of mercy, and it hurts her to be gentle. The vortex trembles under her hands like a horse unused to reins. He steps in when the revenants try to require a more permanent solution, his bullets making decisive arguments. She spares him not a glance. He spares her too many. It takes time. The harvest moon tilts toward weary. The man at last collapses, emptied, sobbing like a bellows with no fire left. The power drains from the hill into the stones, into the soil—into the sleeping fields. Yennefer is pale against the night now, the violet of her eyes nearly black. Alucard is as he was—because he always is. He offers her a hand up from where she knelt to draw a last line of unbinding. She looks at it, at the glove and the implication and the unbearable arrogance of it. She takes it. He pulls her to her feet and does not let go for half a heartbeat too long. “Pity doesn’t suit you,” he says. “Neither does obedience suit you,” she answers. She steps away, shakes her skirt as if to rid it of the smell of him. Her lip curls and then smooths. “You are a monster.” “And you,” he says, “are a monster that prefers candles to torches.” She almost smiles. “I told you. I’m not sweet and I’m not a maiden in distress in need of saving.” “And I,” he replies, bowing as if mocking court, as if honoring a queen, as if unable to decide which, “am not a knight. The bird of Hermes is my name…” “Eat your wings somewhere else,” she says, and makes a door in the air that reflects the harvest moon as if it were a coin. The smell of lilac and gooseberries deepens. The hinges of reality groan. “We won’t be sharing anything.” He tips his hat. “Not even a dance?” “Especially not that,” she says, and steps through. The door closes on the scent and the heat and the glimpse of a woman who could love someone and ruin him carefully. He stands on the hill and watches the moon sink, and his smile is a wound that he refuses to let heal. He could follow. He does not. The village, emptied and blank as a sheet awaiting a story, breathes once in its sleep. He turns his face toward the next hunt, toward anything that might be bait worthy of him. The harvest moon bleeds down the sky and takes its shadows with it. He does not leave footprints when he goes.

Model Output:
The lights in the corridor flicker like a heartbeat that can’t decide if it wants to stop. A sewage tang hovers over the damp concrete, and the distant groan of pipes sounds like something breathing. On either side of the corridor are cells with slit windows and reinforced doors; most are empty. In one, a girl with green hair and two buns leans back against the wall, fingers drumming her thigh to the rhythm of the flicker, as if daring the light to blink at her again. Jolyne Cujoh rolls her shoulders, tattoos catching the pallid strip of light. Stone Free’s thread loops idly around her wrist, almost invisible. She pretends to ignore the footsteps at the far end of the corridor, slow and steady, too quiet for boots, too polite for a guard. They come anyway, soft as breath, and the shadow that arrives ahead of the person is long and neat. Makima appears as if the corridor had been expecting her. She is immaculate in a plain shirt and black tie, auburn hair braided loosely, eyes a careful gold that reflects every flutter of the broken light. She smiles with a gentleness that looks like the cover of a kindness she’s rented for the day. “Hello, Jolyne Cujoh,” Makima says, stopping three bars short of the cell. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.” Jolyne snorts, rising with a cat’s ease. “That right? Well, I wasn’t looking forward to meeting the Easter Bunny either, but here we are.” Makima’s gaze drifts to the filament around Jolyne’s wrist. “I heard about your ability. It’s quite beautiful.” “Don’t talk like you already know me.” Jolyne’s eyes narrow. “Only creeps do that. And the light here’s bad enough—your eyes don’t help.” Makima chuckles softly, like she’s humoring a child. “The lighting is unpleasant. I can put in a request for changes. These facilities are… utilitarian.” “Yeah? Put in a request to let me out, too. Since you’re apparently miss connections.” Jolyne flicks the thread, and it whispers through the bar slot, an absent-minded cat’s tail testing the edge of a door. Makima tips her head, measuring everything in the cell in one glance, including the empty cot, the scuffed floor, the food tray abandoned under the bench. “You want out because you’re innocent,” she says, as if stating the obvious is charity. “Wow, you’re intuitive. You got a receipt for that, or you just say things?” Jolyne’s voice turns a shade rougher. “Since you’re name-dropping, what’s yours?” “Makima.” “Makima, huh.” Jolyne repeats it like she’s trying on a pair of handcuffs to see how easy they are to slip. “You with the prison? The government? Something with a big table and a room full of men pretending they matter?” Makima’s smile tightens, too slight to be insulted. “I’m with an organization that deals with unusual threats. Your Stand, Stone Free… it interests me. You turn yourself into string, but you remain yourself. Most people struggle not to come undone.” “And you always talk in riddles, or are you saving actual answers for a premium package?” Jolyne steps closer to the door. The flicker over them gives Makima strobing halos. Makima doesn’t move. She watches Jolyne with the easy stillness of a handler watching a leashed dog test how far the collar lets it run. “You’re interesting because you’re disciplined,” she says. “Stubborn. Loyal. If I released you, you’d run to your friends, your father, and you’d fight for them even if you died doing it. You’d be useful.” Jolyne smiles, thin and wolfish. “There it is. The pitch.” “I could arrange your freedom,” Makima says, not bothering to lie about it being difficult. “You would follow my orders in return.” And there’s the leash. Jolyne’s thread stiffens with a sound like a plucked harp string in a bad dream. She’s met people like this. Not many wear the face so perfectly; the ones who do always hold the knife close to their chest, smiling, waiting to see if you’ll bend. “It’s okay,” Makima adds gently. “You don’t need to decide immediately.” “Lady,” Jolyne says sweetly, “if there’s no Mickey, this shit ain’t Disney. Don’t sell me a fairy tale and think I’ll wag for a biscuit.” Makima laughs, delighted. “Oh, that’s good.” The corridor hums. Somewhere far away, a gate slams. The air shifts, a pressure difference like an elevator car moving. Jolyne angles her head. “What’s your thing, Makima? Besides being creepier than a tickle in a morgue. Do you make contracts? Sniff out weakness? Take people apart and wear them like jewelry?” Makima’s eyes soften as if Jolyne has just said something endearing. “I prefer dogs to jewelry.” Jolyne grins, daring her. “I bite.” “I know,” Makima murmurs. “That’s why I came in person.” The thread on Jolyne’s wrist flows forward, a pale line sliding through the bar slot, drifting in the air like a lazy serpent. It splits, tips fanning, mapping, tasting. The corridor is a geometry problem, and Jolyne solves it in a breath. Stone Free anchors threads to the ceiling, to the hinge of the cell door, to the drain grate, to the weight sensor under Makima’s right heel. It’s all very neat. Jolyne is neat when she fights. She learned to be. Makima glances down, not alarmed, only curious. “Will you restrain me, Jolyne?” “Trying to decide if you’re worth keeping still,” Jolyne says. “I could cut you, too. Or choke you.” The string tightens. “But you know what? I don’t get the vibe you’d care. I get the vibe that if I pulled hard enough, you’d smile at the blood.” Makima doesn’t deny it. She steps forward once. The strings bend like grass around a slow river. Jolyne feels the tension change, the way a fishing line whispers when something big touches it. She feels something else, too—the faintest pull on her mind, like a gentle hand smoothing her hair in the wrong direction. “You will be a good girl,” Makima says, soft. “You will—” Stone Free detonates into a thousand sharp threads that rattle the bars and scream against the corridor like the world is tearing a zipper. Jolyne’s eyes blaze. The threads knot crude words in the air between them: NO. “Wrong bitch,” Jolyne says, voice low. “Try that again, and I’ll turn you into confetti.” Makima blinks once, slow. The pull retreats, not offended. Patient. “It’s been a long time since anyone resisted even a suggestion.” Jolyne rubs at her temple with three fingers. The headache is sudden, like chewing tinfoil. “Yeah, well. I don’t do ‘heel.’ Try ‘sit’ and see if I fetch.” Makima takes one step back, and the pressure lightens. Her smile becomes less of a thing she wears and more of an expression. “You really are interesting.” The lights flicker again. One burns out with a faint pop, leaving a stripe of shadow that cuts across Makima’s face like a censor bar. Jolyne’s threads bristle in that darkness, alert. The corridor’s emptiness feels staged, like someone cleared it. “So what’s the real plan?” Jolyne asks. “Make me a pet? Use me to get to someone else? You’re not here just for me. No way.” “Observation first.” Makima’s voice is mild. “Then decisions. Do you know what happens to people who resist me?” “Let me guess,” Jolyne says. “You put them down. Because in your world, dogs are supposed to die for their owners, right?” Makima’s eyes brighten, as if Jolyne has quoted a poem back to the poet. “Exactly.” The thread behind Makima twitches. Jolyne anchors it to the lock, splits it into delicate filaments that feel for tumblers and pins like nimble fingers. The lock is not normal. It tastes like a contract, like something signed in someone else’s blood. Jolyne feels the pushback, the way her strings burrow into a mechanism that doesn’t want to be understood by string or touch or time. “Uh-huh,” she mutters. “Knew it wouldn’t be easy.” Makima watches her reach. She doesn’t move to stop her. The corridor is a chessboard, and Makima is content to see which piece Jolyne thinks she is. “You want me to break out,” Jolyne says, realization dropping like a coin in a jukebox. The song is old, and she knows the lyrics. “You want to see what I do when the walls go down. Who I run to. What I choose. Then you can tug the line.” Makima nods slightly. “I want to see who you love.” “Yeah?” Jolyne bares her teeth. “So you can use them. That’s your kink, right?” “Loyalty is a useful lever,” Makima says, unapologetic. Jolyne breathes, slow and sharp. She thinks of her father, silent and huge in her life like a mountain in fog. She thinks of friends with hands calloused by prison and grief. She thinks of not being able to save everyone, of saving anyone anyway. “Here’s a counteroffer,” Jolyne says. “I walk out. And you don’t follow.” Makima’s lashes lower, amused. “That’s not how this works.” Stone Free hisses through the lock again, threads splitting so fine they become vibration, hum, friction. The mechanism fights. Jolyne smiles at it like a stubborn child. “I’m good with things that don’t want to open.” “You’re very good,” Makima agrees. “But do you know why the other cells are empty?” Jolyne does a quick count of silence. No coughs. No muttered curses. No life. She glances sideways, and the shadow in her look is older than she is. “Because you moved them. Or erased them.” “Because I asked them to leave,” Makima says. “And they did.” The lock clicks, soft as a throat clearing. The door doesn’t swing; it waits. Jolyne’s threads hold it closed, trembling. She stares at Makima. Makima stares back, patient as inevitability. “Walk out, Jolyne,” Makima says, voice faintly kind. “Show me how far your string reaches.” Jolyne’s fingers flex. Threads run up and down her arms in tattooed patterns. She laughs once, hollow. “You really think I’m going to perform for you?” “I think you’ll do what you always do,” Makima says. “Fight.” Jolyne takes a step. The door opens a breath. Cool air slides in, smelling like rain that never comes. Her thread throws a loop over Makima’s wrist, loose, not enough to bind. A threat. A promise. A message she can yank if she needs to. Makima looks down at the loop like it’s a ribbon a child gave her. “Careful,” she says softly. “Tying a line to me ties a line to you.” Jolyne leans forward, close enough to feel the edge of Makima’s calm like a temperature, like a knife. “Good,” she says. “Then if you try to pull, you’ll find out I pull back.” Makima’s smile is serene. “I hope so.” The lights flicker like applause withheld. Jolyne steps out into the corridor, every sense up like a cat’s fur in winter. Threads splay in a network so fine it could catch the dust. Makima falls in step a pace behind, unhurried, as if walking a dog who has chosen her own route but still understands the leash exists. “You can walk,” Jolyne says without turning. “But if you try to talk to my head again, I’ll garrote that pretty voice right out of your throat.” Makima’s answer is polite. “I wouldn’t want to ruin our conversation.” They move through the corridor’s throat, past doors that gape like missing teeth. The facility murmurs with distant forces, the sigh of vents, the scrape of unseen boots, the faint rustle of paper being turned by no one. At the next intersection, Jolyne’s threads taste iron and something older than prisons. Makima’s presence behind her is the quiet of a hunter who has never once tripped on her own breath. “Tell me something true,” Jolyne says suddenly, not sure why she’s asking, only sure she needs to hear the sound of honesty in this place. “Just one thing.” Makima considers. “You will not like me more tomorrow.” Jolyne grins without humor. “I don’t like you now.” “And yet,” Makima says, and when the light flickers again, her eyes glow like coins offered to a river. “And yet what?” Jolyne asks. “And yet we’re walking the same way.” Jolyne glances at the loop on Makima’s wrist and tightens it a fraction, enough to make sure both of them feel it. Her voice is a blade wrapped in ribbon. “For now.” The prison breathes, and they breathe with it, two different predators under the same flickering light, each testing the length of the other’s string.

Model Output:
Item #: SCP-XXXX Object Class: Pending (Under Review: Euclid/Keter) Special Containment Procedures: SCP-XXXX is presently defined as a phenomenon localized to Dr. [REDACTED], hereafter “Subject.” Subject is to remain on Site-19 under psychological observation. All instances of Note-XXXX (handwritten notes allegedly authored by Subject’s future self) are to be immediately surrendered to Security and submitted to Temporal Anomalies Division (TAD) for analysis. A clean-room office environment (Office-XXXX) has been prepared for Subject with continuous audiovisual recording, sealed stationary supplies, and weekly inventory verification. Foundation memo pads in Office-XXXX are serialized, stored in transparent tamper-evident containers, and tracked by microdot-embedded fiber tagging. Subject is prohibited from bringing personal stationary into Office-XXXX. All memo paper throughout Site-19 has been cataloged and marked with covert isotopic tracers; any Note-XXXX instance not bearing site-authenticated tracers is to be flagged as anomalous. Subject is to undergo daily reality-check protocols, including cognitively anchored questionnaires (RAISA Form 11-T), baseline memory reconsolidation interviews, and Class-W mnestic challenges. No cognitohazardous entities are to be housed within two sublevels of Office-XXXX. Any major containment breach or drill must be followed by a Note-XXXX sweep. Pending determination, no temporal intervention (e.g., Prime-Event Preclusion, Project Butterfly) is authorized. Description: SCP-XXXX refers to the spontaneous appearance of handwritten notes in Subject’s immediate environment, all on Foundation-standard memo paper (Form F-19-M, 3” x 5”), reportedly written by Subject’s future self and predicting a future containment breach at Site-19. Instances escalate in frequency and emotional intensity and have contained contradictory information about Site personnel, floor plans, and containment protocols. I am the Subject. I served as a researcher on Thaumiel-labeled projects and currently consult for TAD. I will write this as a formal report, with my perspective, per Ethics Committee recommendation. Where relevant, I will interleave exact transcriptions of Note-XXXX instances verbatim. I found the first note on a Monday, underneath the keyboard in Office-XXXX. I do not store paper under my keyboard. Note-XXXX-01: If you read this, put the coffee down. Today at 14:32, there will be a false fire alarm. Don’t evacuate. Stay. You’ll want to leave. Don’t. At 14:31, the alarms sounded. My supervisor waved me toward the exit. I did not evacuate. Security later declared the event a sensor fault. No containment units registered anomalies. I showed the note to Security. They confiscated it and informed me that the memo stock bore Site-19 tracers and my fiber microdots. The handwriting matched my own under analysis, but with tremor artifacts I do not display. I had not written the note. I had not locked any stationary under the keyboard. The next day, a memo appeared taped to the inside of my glasses case. The case had been in my pocket. Note-XXXX-02: You didn’t leave. Good. Don’t drink from the south wing fountain. You were right about the copper taste. It’s not copper. I hadn’t mentioned the metallic taste to anyone. I avoid paranoia for breakfast, but I brought a sample to Chem Lab. Trace analysis found ion exchange resin fragments and elevated manganese. Nothing anomalous. TAD flagged the note as “low-grade predictive accuracy, plausible coincidence.” I began keeping the memo pad inventory under video lock. I watched it for three hours. I blinked. A note appeared on the top sheet. Note-XXXX-03: Stop watching the paper. It doesn’t help. You miss the important thing. The breach begins in Maintenance. It’s not Maintenance. It’s us. I asked for a transfer out of Office-XXXX. Denied. RAISA requested a daily written narrative to track my cognitive anchors. This is part of that. It’s important to say: the notes were always on Foundation memo paper. The watermark, the microdots—everything authenticated. I kept my memo pad locked. The notes still came from my own stock, even after I switched to a sealed, serialized pack that Security opened in front of me. They arrived between frames, between glances, at the hinge of a blink. I never caught the moment. Attempts to determine psychological manipulation versus temporal anomaly began within 72 hours. - Hypothesis A: Temporal leakage from a proximal event horizon (localized time loop, pre-breach echoes). - Hypothesis B: Cognitive infiltration by SCP-████ (Class-II reality-adjacent memetic parasite, contained two sublevels down). - Hypothesis C: Non-temporal thaumaturgic forgeries (spoofed tracers, replicated handwriting). - Hypothesis D: Stress-induced cryptomnesia (I write the notes and forget). To test Hypothesis D, Ethics authorized Class-W mnestic exposure. After mnestic dose, the next note arrived in the pocket of my lab coat, which had been sealed and logged. Note-XXXX-04: Mnestics won’t save you from yourself. Or me. Stop trying to remember what I couldn’t forget. The breach date moved because you looked for it. We can measure arrogance in nanometers, I suppose. Still, TAD loves a paradox. They ran a closed-time curve consistency test with a sealed box containing memo paper, a pen, and a high-speed camera. I volunteered to sit with the box. Hours passed. Nothing appeared. When I left to use the restroom, Security sealed the room. On returning, I opened the box. A note lay on top, written in my hand: Note-XXXX-05: You’re going to think this is confirmation. It’s not. The breach is not a breach. It’s a rehearsal you won’t be told about. You’ll screw it up if you stay here. Go to Sublevel 3 at 16:10. Don’t talk. Just count to 200. At 16:10 I went to Sublevel 3. I counted to 200 in the hallway, feeling idiotic. At 16:08, per logs, there was a silent drill among MTF guards I was not cleared to witness. At 16:12, a janitorial cart overturned near me, spilling solvents. I helped upright it. No anomalies occurred. TAD split. Half saw this as predictive validity. Half saw post-hoc pattern-making. I saw a reflected image of my own handwriting that knew I would need belief. The dissonance increased. Contradictions crept in. Note-XXXX-06: Director Halley lost her left eye in the breach. Remember the patch. Her right. It was the right. No. Both. Stop writing this down. You’re making it worse. Director Halley is fine. Both eyes intact. She plays racquetball on Wednesdays. I checked. Note-XXXX-07 arrived on my pillow at home. I live in on-site housing. My door locks are biometric and mechanical. Security found no tampering. Note-XXXX-07: They’re going to ask you to move the 914 key. Don’t. It’s already moved. It never existed. If you move it, the breach starts in Maintenance. In the walls. In the words. We do not store keys for SCP-914 at Site-19. That machine isn’t here. TAD marked this as contradiction-grade. I marked it as a fracture in either me or the phenomenon. My hands shook as I wrote the daily narrative. Psychological evaluation noted increased hypervigilance and derealization. I feared my own interiority, like a hallway with mirrors opposite each other, receding into infinity where I stand to watch myself watch myself. A control experiment placed a Foundation memo pad inside an extradimensional pocket (SCP-███-B) monitored by three separate recorders and a metronome. The metronome stopped at 03:17. The recorders glitched. When the system recovered, Note-XXXX-08 was present, written across four sheets: Note-XXXX-08: We thought shields would work. I thought compartmentalization would make it safe. But it isn’t a place. It’s intention. It’s the memo paper because that’s what we agree is “official.” If it can be official, it can be true. If it can be true, we can make it real. Stop authenticating the notes. We stopped authenticating the notes. RAISA reprimanded me for light sarcasm when I wrote that down. The “breach” became a specter at the periphery. We scheduled a site-wide breach drill and kept me isolated, to see if the notes anticipated the exercise. They did, in a fashion: Note-XXXX-09: It’s July 19. 02:40. You’ll hear the metal sound first, like a dentist’s tray dropped in an empty pool. Don’t move when you hear it. It’s not metal. Don’t run when the lights go yellow. The yellow is not for you. On July 19, at 02:42, the drill sirens triggered. The audible tone is not metal. There was no dentist tray. The lights are red, not yellow. I stayed still anyway. My heart made a noise I have never heard again. I keep thinking of the earliest note: Don’t evacuate. The false fire alarm. The echo of a future calm. Each new note eroded that calm. If this is a malign entity, it knows me intimately. If it is me, I am doing this to myself. TAD introduced a permutation: they replaced my memo pads with blank white slips without watermark or tracers. They told me the replacement, but not when. I woke to Note-XXXX-10 on my desk. Note-XXXX-10: You think you can trick yourself by removing the watermark? This isn’t paper. It’s a promise that we’ll take what is written seriously. They will too. So listen: The breach is a contagion of attention. Don’t write about it. I am writing about it. I am instructed to. I feel sick. On a Thursday I found two notes. One in my shoe. Note-XXXX-11: Scratch behind your right ear if you can read this. They’re watching. Good. Keep them watching. The not-breach starts when nobody looks. And one under my skin, in a lottery of gooseflesh as if raised by static, but later I found the paper tucked in my sleeve cuff. Maybe that was a hallucination. Note-XXXX-12: Halley is dead. She’s not. She will be. She will be the one who saves you. Don’t let her. You save her by not being there. Be late. Director Halley is alive. I have begun arriving late to everything. I suspect harm, causally, in either direction. Security cleared SCP-████’s ward for cognitohazard checks. That entity manipulates trust. Its lexical footprint doesn’t match the notes, and containment was uninterrupted. Another suspect, SCP-███-K, can induce predictive text illusions; it’s in Antarctica. Distance is not always prophylaxis, but patterns did not align. We affixed a simple test: write a note for the future and leave it where the future notes tend to appear. An invitation. I wrote: Control Note: Future me. Stop. The return came three hours later, slipped into my lab coat collar. Note-XXXX-13: If I could have, I would have. If you can, you must. Don’t look at the door at 03:15. It will be open and closed. You will be in and out. At 03:15, I did not look at the door. I stared at the corner of my desk until my eyes watered. When I finally looked, the door was closed, and the hall was empty. Security footage shows the door remained closed. The timestamp jumps. The jump is 23 milliseconds. Enough to nest a heartbeat. Morale is a brittle thing. They gave me a counselor who taught me grounding techniques. Texture of the desk. The smell of coffee. The sound of my own voice naming colors. I would catch a note in the act, and it would already be in my hand. Note-XXXX-14: Rough. Bitter. Blue. Your voice breaks on “green.” You make meaning of it because that’s what we do. Stop making meaning. Start making choices. Choose not to go to Sublevel 4 on the 23rd. The 23rd came. I did not go to Sublevel 4. On Sublevel 4, an electrical surge tripped breakers. No casualties. The surge was scheduled for maintenance. I want to be grateful to the me who warned me, if she exists. I want to be angry at the thing that lies to me, if it exists. The notes grew more frantic. Note-XXXX-15: It’s inside the paper. It’s inside the you that signs forms. Don’t sign the evacuation order. Don’t blink. Don’t breathe. It’s in breath. You cough and it knows. JUDGE THE SQUARES. FIRE IN THE WALLS. HALLEY’S EYES ARE COINS. The yellow is for them. The shift into word-salad suggests increasing stress, either in me or in the source. TAD calls it “conceptual noise.” The handwriting grew jagged. The paper remained Foundation memo paper, even when we swapped to decoy stock, even when I stored the real stock in a safe within a safe, numbered, logged, watched. Note-XXXX-16 appeared in a sealed specimen jar. Note-XXXX-16: You asked if this is manipulation or a temporal anomaly. Yes. If you believe me, I’m an anomaly. If you don’t, I’m manipulation. The breach is the argument we’re having with ourselves. We take a thing seriously enough and we build a protocol and a door to go with it. We taught the world to be formal. It listened. Stop. Stop writing the door. I have tried not to write the door. It is difficult to draft a report without building hinges. Addendum: Determination Protocols - Language analysis across Note-XXXX instances reveals a 0.83 correlation with my written syntax, increased pronoun contraction, and a shift toward imperative mood over time. The tremor amplitude corresponds with sleep deprivation metrics logged in my wearables. Self-fulfilling? Likely. - Tracer analysis: all Note-XXXX instances bear site-authenticated isotopic signatures and microdot fibers matching the memo pads I have access to, including lots I never opened. This indicates either prepositioning in supply chains, retrocausal tagging, or spoofing at fidelity that defeats current detection. - Temporal diagnostics: standard chronometric array shows no consistent metric deviation coinciding with note appearances. One 23 ms video jitter and two recorder dropouts are insufficient for classification. - Cognitohazard screening: no stable memetic signature across notes. No glyph replication. No semantic anchors of known entities. - Psychological evaluation: Subject exhibits stress response consistent with medium-term harassment by an uncertain signal. No psychosis markers. High suggestibility under threat, normal resilience otherwise. I am writing this and I would like to sleep. Conclusion: Undetermined. Provisional classification: Euclid. Ethics Committee Guidance: Limit Subject’s exposure to Note-XXXX by filtering messages through a small team. Do not feed the phenomenon by amplifying its authority. Maintain a record, but do not ritualize it. After I was told that, I found a note in the authorization binder, between “Maintain a record” and “do not ritualize it.” Note-XXXX-17: Ritual is a door. Record is a window. Sit with your back to both. Breathe. I’m sorry. There isn’t a breach. Or there is, and it’s so quiet you mistook it for thinking. If you must choose, choose to be wrong in person. I started coming in late. I started leaving early. I avoid the fountain. I sign my name slowly, as if handwriting itself is an incantation. When the alarms sound, I follow protocol, because we built protocols for a reason. I read the notes and then hand them over. I am trying to trust my perception long enough to let others test it. If this is manipulation, it is elegant and cruel. If it is me, it is a mercy from a worse me. The Foundation’s attempts have been thorough. Mine have been human. There was one more note, this morning. It was folded under my palm when I woke, on my skin but not attached, warm as if it had slept there with me. Note-XXXX-18: It didn’t happen. That’s the breach. It won’t, if you let it. Don’t look for the sound of metal. Drink the coffee. Evacuate when told. Trust not because I said so, but because you can. Trust is also a door. Pick the right one. I drank the coffee. At 09:00, there was a drill. I evacuated with everyone else. The lights were red. Director Halley smiled with both eyes. In the hallway, a janitorial cart squeaked its wheel. It sounded a little like metal, because everything does, if you’re listening for it. I will file this report now, and let it be a window, not a door. I will stop looking at the paper. And if a note appears under my keyboard when I look away, Security will take it, and TAD will test it, and I will drink my coffee and trust that not everything written in my hand must be true. Pending reclassification. Pending me. Pending the moment I blink.

Model Output:
Item #: SCP-7094 Object Class: Keter Special Containment Procedures: All reports of identical unmarked doors discovered within abandoned buildings, industrial ruins, failed infrastructure projects, and condemned municipal structures are to be immediately investigated by Foundation assets. Field personnel are to document all doors matching SCP-7094-A criteria and establish a two-block exclusion zone. Civilian access is to be prevented under cover of demolition, hazardous material abatement, or urban renewal projects. Standard portable perimeter beacons and internal anchor lines are to be placed prior to any entry. No more than two exploration teams (4 personnel each) may be inside SCP-7094 at any one time. Teams will carry tether lines of 1 km length, inertial trackers, and non-networked data capture equipment. Weapons are authorized only for disengagement; discharge within the archive is discouraged due to unknown load-bearing relationships of the environment. All collected documents are to be quarantined for infohazard review prior to transmission to Site Archives. Any reference to “Council,” “Curators,” or “Custodians” is to be redacted pending O5 review. Unmarked hazmat-appearing entities (designated SCP-7094-B) are not to be pursued beyond visual range; capture attempts are suspended following Incident 7094-Ω. Description: SCP-7094 is a global phenomenon consisting of a series of physically identical, unmarked wooden doors (SCP-7094-A) intermittently appearing in abandoned buildings worldwide. To date, ███ instances have been recorded on six continents. Each SCP-7094-A is of late 20th-century commercial manufacture, latch type mortise, with identical microscratches surrounding the doorknob forming a shallow, inverted crescent pattern consistent across all documented instances. No manufacturer marks or serials are present. X-ray imaging reveals internal components inconsistent with any single known standard. When opened, SCP-7094-A does not reveal the immediate interior of the hosting structure but instead provides access to a continuous, enclosed environment: a non-Euclidean archival complex of indeterminate size designated SCP-7094-Ω (“the Archive”). Internal geography includes corridors, stacks, mezzanines, scriptoriums, and vault chambers that cannot be reconciled with external dimensions. Bearings rotate unpredictably; gravity and horizon remain constant. The Archive contains shelves, cabinets, map cases, and paletized containers filled with a heterogeneous mixture of media: codices, vellum rolls, bound folios, microfilm, tab cards, magnetic tapes, optical media, and certain substrates not yet characterized. Cataloging systems present are inconsistent, employing scripts known and unknown. Numerous documents reference a prior global civilization with advanced anomalous and para-technological capacity that underwent a catastrophic failure of containment approximated as sudden and total. The entity or mechanism of failure is unspecified; references are euphemistic and redacted within the documents themselves. Of particular note are multiple references to an organization functionally congruent with the modern Foundation, here rendered in archival documents as “The Custodial Directorate,” “The Directorate,” or “The Foundation of Custody.” Documents include personnel records that map one-to-one with current Foundation staff, including living personnel, with accurate biometric and biographical details and photographs consistent with centuries-old capture media. Dates range from 300–700 years prior to present day. Cross-checks with personnel files confirm alarming fidelity. SCP-7094-B are mobile entities resembling hazmat teams (smooth, off-white positive-pressure suits; dark visors; no insignia) observed removing materials from the Archive and transporting them toward areas that terminate in occluded apertures or fogged bulkhead doors. SCP-7094-B avoid contact, do not vocalize, and retreat upon approach. On two occasions, SCP-7094-B displayed coordinated evasion and deployed occluding smoke that did not disperse under conventional air movement. Items removed by SCP-7094-B are not observed elsewhere in SCP-7094-Ω. Discovery: The first confirmed SCP-7094-A was discovered in a condemned tram depot in ███████, Latvia. Local urban explorers reported “a library door where a workshop door used to be,” accompanied by photographs of distinctive scratches around the knob. Agents dispatched entered the door and emerged with four vellum folios describing containment protocols for an entity class called “King-Swarm,” cross-referencing “Custodial Director O5-3.” Subsequent instances appeared in rapid succession in Detroit (USA), Campo Grande (Brazil), Newcastle upon Tyne (UK), and Tamanrasset (Algeria). All bore identical knob scratches. Addendum 7094-1: Exploration Logs (Excerpts) Exploration Alpha-3 Team: MTF Rho-10 (“Card Catalog”), 4 personnel. Lead: Lt. D. Varma. Entry Point: SCP-7094-A in a shuttered textile mill, Ghent, Belgium. Objectives: Reconnoiter adjacent stacks, recover catalog schema, avoid engagement with SCP-7094-B. [Begin Log] 00:00:16 – Entry achieved. Temperature 17°C. Ambient noise: distant ventilation, intermittent page rustle with no obvious source. Lighting: diffuse, ceiling-paneled. Architecture: Early-Modernist stacks suspended by tension trusses over voids of unknown depth. 00:07:31 – Team identifies first signage: carved wooden placard inset with brass. Script resembles German Fraktur with Cyrillic features. Translation incomplete: “…Department of Lost Cities (Annex A–J).” 00:11:05 – Sgt. Karanja retrieves a ledger. Pages foxed but intact. Ink stable. Notation: “Index of Post-Event Municipalities, Containment Lifted for Cause (Authorization: Custodian Council).” Cross-reference: “Curators: O5-1, O5-7, O5-9.” Note: “Council convened at Depth Blue; minutes sealed.” 00:15:22 – First encounter with SCP-7094-B. Two entities at end of aisle, loading folios into gray hard cases. Marked behavior: glance toward team, then immediate withdrawal down a side corridor, leaving one case. 00:17:48 – Case opened under quarantine protocol. Contents: personnel dossiers. Names: Dr. A. █████, Technician H. Molina, Researcher F. Okoye (currently assigned Site-19). Photographs on silvered plates dated 421 years prior to present; image fidelity high. Marginalia: “Transfer to Directorate Annex Seventeen upon ascendancy. Deny public death.” 00:19:02 – Lt. Varma orders partial retreat. Markings at junctions: numeric sequences that do not match inertial map. 00:28:40 – Team reaches a balcony overlooking a reading hall. Floor plan impossible: four identical staircases descending in parallel orientations that ought to intersect. A brass plaque bolted to the balustrade reads: “Archive 0: The Continuance of Memory. Admission by Writ of the O5 Council Only.” 00:29:10 – Lt. Varma: “Council? Our Council?” No response. 00:35:50 – Extraction via tether. One dossier carried out; remainder sealed. [End Log] Recovered Document Excerpts (Post Alpha-3) - “There was never a single breach, but one failure. All chambers opened in chorus. The Custodians had prepared a million keys and one lock, and it was the lock that failed. Let it be written so the next Directorate will not repeat the mercy that made us vulnerable.” — Folio 12, Archive 0. - “O5-3 objects to the term ‘Foundation’ for the Directorate’s new mandate, stating it invites recursion. O5-11 supports the poetic symmetry.” — Minute scrap, charred, legible margins only. Exploration Gamma-2 Team: MTF Psi-4 (“Stack Watchers”), 3 personnel. Lead: Cpt. H. Abassi. Entry Point: SCP-7094-A in a decommissioned air-raid shelter, Osaka, Japan. Objectives: Penetrate deeper vaults, track SCP-7094-B, retrieve catalog tags. [Begin Log] 00:05:12 – Team passes through a series of steel fire doors labeled “Deacidification Bay” and “Spores.” Air tastes alkaline. White dust on floor shows boot prints similar to Foundation standard, size variance suggests multiple groups over time. 00:12:44 – Contact with SCP-7094-B (four entities). They are pushing a wheeled cart loaded with sealed binders. When hailed, they deploy gray vapor. Thermal shows silhouettes retreating into side corridor whose walls bear fresh scrape marks. 00:13:30 – Cpt. Abassi orders pursuit. B turns down a ward labeled “Custodial Council – Restricted Proceedings.” 00:15:01 – Door ahead is shut by B. Surface: brass, handprints visible. Lock: six-disc assembly unknown to team. On the door, etched: “Council Summaries: Sealed by O5 Vote (Unanimous, 13/13).” 00:19:25 – Sgt. Takeda produces photos of a noticeboard adjacent to door. Paper notices pinned with iron nails. One reads: “Visitation Log: O5-4, O5-5, O5-8. No record in schedule. Admonishment delivered by Curator-Prime.” Ink wet. No time signature. Abassi remarks: “They’ve been here.” 00:24:40 – Audible movement behind walls. Shelving begins to retract into slots; a conveyor belt draws entire sections into an unseen recess. The corridor shortens in real time; floor markers move underfoot. Team withdraws. 00:32:50 – On exit route, the hallway formerly taken no longer exists. In its place, a thin gap behind a roller — evidently an interface where stacks are removed. A single paper rectangle remains wedged in the track: “Directive 0: Continuance. If the Directorate falls, memory must be made harder than time.” 00:46:20 – Extraction achieved with difficulty. One iron nail recovered for metallurgical analysis. [End Log] Recovered Document Excerpts (Post Gamma-2) - “We will abandon the public face. We will be names on paper, then names on film, then names encoded and salted. A city that forgets dies like an animal. We will be the city that never forgets.” — Preamble, Custodial Charter (Undated). - “Personnel: Abassi, Hadiyeh. Assignment: Director’s Runner, Archive Logistics. Note: ‘Remains noncompliant with inventory protocols. Promoted regardless.’ Date: Year 612.” — Dossier leaf with organizational crest resembling Foundation sigil inverted. Exploration Delta-5 Team: MTF Mu-9 (“Binders’ Sons”), 4 personnel. Lead: Dr. K. Delaney (attached researcher). Entry Point: SCP-7094-A in a collapsed municipal amphitheater, Córdoba, Argentina. Objectives: Deep dive into “Annex: Aftermath.” Confirm Council visitation. Document removal mechanics. [Begin Log] 00:02:10 – Entry. Ambient humidity rises. Walls clad in ceramic tile lettered with an unknown abjad. Shelves hold sealed clay envelopes with wax stoppers and bar-coded plastic bands; temporal inconsistency noted. 00:09:00 – Team encounters an observation platform. Below: vast carousel of stacks rotating slowly around a central shaft emitting cool light. At equidistant points, large square apertures open, and segments of shelving slide into darkness as if harvested. 00:11:45 – SCP-7094-B observed operating at two apertures. One entity notices the team and taps a wrist device. A chime sounds. Floor vibration increases. More shelving retracts. 00:15:22 – Dr. Delaney retrieves a clay envelope that resisted removal by B. Seal impression: two concentric circles, thirteen radial marks. 00:19:31 – Cpl. Ibarra shouts; points to a glass-walled office above the carousel. Inside: silhouettes of three individuals in business attire, posture consistent with observation. One raises a hand in a wave that could be interpreted as acknowledgment or warning. Office door marked: “O5 Oversight Gallery.” When approached, the office is found empty, dust intact; only a visitor’s card remains on a blotter reading: “Appointment: Custodian Council, Ad hoc. Attendees: 4, 5, 8.” 00:24:05 – Public address voice (nonlocalizable, neutral male): “Annex Aftermath is in motion. Please conclude your work.” SCP-7094-B close ranks and accelerate removal. Team captures a binder dropped in haste. On its spine, stamped: “Site-19: Decommissioned Artifacts.” 00:29:48 – Delaney attempts to access central shaft. Heat increase registered; Geiger counter mild elevation. Internal light modulates in a slow pulse. Sounds like distant ocean. 00:33:00 – Withdrawal initiated as floor plates shift toward apertures. Tethers remain taut. A B entity, cornered, makes a universal stop gesture and points emphatically at the exit route. No hostility. 00:40:22 – Extraction complete. Recovered materials sealed. [End Log] Recovered Document Excerpts (Post Delta-5) - Envelope contents: brittle vellum strip. Text: “O5-4, -5, -8 visited without writ. Curator-Prime notes: ‘They think memory obeys authority.’ Sanction: None. Remedy: Remove their footprints.” Ink analysis: iron gall, anomalously resistant to oxidation. - Site-19 binder, tab: “Decommissioned Object File: SCP-173. Decommission refused. Returned to Containment. Reason: Recurrence parameter exceeds archive capacity.” Handwritten marginalia: “Stop sending it here.” Incident 7094-Ω: Following Delta-5, Overseer liaison O5-█ instructed a halt to further exploration pending Council review. Within 72 hours, seven known SCP-7094-A instances spontaneously vanished, leaving only empty, unscarred jambs in the host structures. A remaining instance in a South African pump station was used for an unscheduled entry by an unknown three-person team matching Foundation professional profile but lacking transponders. Interior cameras show them bearing O5-level access badges. They entered the SCP-7094-Ω Oversight Gallery, stayed 11 minutes, then departed. No recovery of materials observed. Shortly thereafter, the pump station portal sealed; door reappeared as a standard, locked maintenance door. Scratches around the knob restored, but mirror-reversed. Notes: SATCOM later recovered a short-range transmission from within SCP-7094-Ω: “Memory does not belong to you.” Source unconfirmed. Addendum 7094-2: On the Scratches All SCP-7094-A doors display identical scraping around the doorknob: an inverted crescent roughly centered on the spindle axis, two millimeters deep at apex, feathering outward. Microscopy reveals minute scoring lines radiating from a common template; the pattern appears to be a negative-relief of a fingerprint spiral repeated at decreasing scales. Symbolically, this may constitute a key-signature or sigil. Analysis ongoing. Addendum 7094-3: Personnel Cross-References Of 1,382 personnel files recovered or imaged within SCP-7094-Ω, 407 correspond to current staff. Dates of birth, education, and postings match Foundation records with uncanny precision, except for dating offsets from 300 to 700 years prior. Several files include annotations predicting career moves that subsequently occurred after recovery. In one case, a file for Dr. H. Molina included the note “will suffer a left hand injury in year +2; assign to one-handed terminals,” preceding an accident by fourteen months. Ethics Committee Commentary: “We cannot treat this Archive as merely a resource. It is either our future recording our past or our past recording our future. In either case, theft is still theft.” O5 Note (Redacted): [Expunged in full.] Closing Statement: SCP-7094 continues to represent an existential and epistemic threat to the Foundation’s self-conception and operational security. Its contents suggest that a prior Custodial organization, whose structure mirrors our own, failed to prevent a total containment collapse but succeeded in encasing memory within an impossible architecture subsequently set to cull itself when approached unlawfully. Evidence that certain O5 Council members have visited SCP-7094-Ω without authorization is under active review. Hazmat-like entities continue to remove sections in ways that reduce exploratory access and erase physical traces of visitation. The Archive appears to remember who walks its halls — and to remove what it decides we should not see. Pending Council consensus, all non-critical explorations are suspended. The doors remain. The scratches are the same on every one.

Model Output:
The first thing was the way the light did not belong to me. The station had the narrow, old windows of the early colonial period, set deep into stone that had been quarried from this hillside centuries ago. The light came in at an angle and came pale, and what it struck held more of it than I did. The carved lintels over the doorways were crowded with glyphs—spirals, blades, a bull with the moon between its horns, a woman whose hair was serpents. They had told us about the glyphs on the shuttle, but I hadn’t expected them to be so deft, or so patient. The stone curved like a knuckle around each little myth. “We are guests,” the Aide had said. “We are honored to be welcomed. We do not walk alone.” I walked alone. It was not bravery. It was an argument I could not win by speaking. When the speeches in the Hall of Assemblies had concluded, when the wine had been lifted three times to ancestral names and to the names of ships, when the Minister of Commerce had smiled and placed his hand on my sleeve as if it were a brooch, I slipped through a side door and down a stair, and let the air of the building cool my face. I told the guard in my best dialect that I needed air. He looked, not at me, but at my neck, at the V of skin unadorned, and did not stop me. The street broke open below with the sound of selling: a river with the different tongues of fish. On one side, the old stone, a whole cliff of it, pocked with niches and carved with those Earthly pictures—Athena’s owl, the fox that ate the sun in a story I remembered from my grandmother. On the other side, a row of stalls on wheels, made from thin metal, painted in colors that the dust had chastened. Between them, people moved like weather. I had been briefed. I knew that after Advancing Day, after the third generation, there had been a separation—not an official one at first, but gradual. The long-night uplanders lengthened and thinned, the joints of their hands a little more winged, their eyes widened against the dark. The river-country people thickened, shorter bones supporting wider feet, their hair growing fast and thick with oils that kept the mosquitoes at a distance. In the coastal towns, the gills were rumored, but the briefings insisted they were merely decorative folds, as useful as the rings in their ears. We’re all human, the briefing said; no one wanted to say more. Here, no one was saying much. They were talking to each other, bargaining in a manner that did not perform itself for me. A woman with high cheekbones and the sort of eyelids that shadowed her eyes even when she was fully awake laid a scatter of something like blue nuts into a basket. A boy with fingers so long that his knuckles had an extra knuckle looped his hand over a rack of dried skins. At the end of the stall a thin uplander girl took a coin between the crook of two fingers and held it up to the light, turned her mouth away to spit a husk from her teeth. “Forgive me,” I said, and the girl looked at me without moving her head. “For what?” she said. “For looking like a thief,” I said. “I mean—” I turned to the glyphs cut into the stone behind her, a boat riding up the peak of a wave, a man with oars and a lion’s tail. “Everything looks not how I was told it would look.” “Then your telling was wrong,” she said, and put the coin in a little iron box. “Or your eyes are wrong. Which is it?” “Likely both,” I said. “What do you call these?” I pointed at the blue nuts. They looked like stones gnawed by the sea. “Dry seaflower,” she said. “You eat them when the rains end. They make you sleep without dreams.” “And those?” A rack of braids hung like cured meats. “Wrist-warmers,” she said. “For uplanders when they come down. Their blood is too quick in them. You are not upland.” “No,” I said. “I’m offworld.” That word moved across her face and left nothing. “Farther than the desert?” she asked. “Farther,” I said. “Then why is your hair like theirs?” She nodded toward a middle-aged man whose hair had been braided with red thread. He had river-feet, wide and split almost, the toes spread. “My hair is like my mother’s,” I said. “She would like your dry seaflower. She dreams too much.” The girl shrugged. “Your mother is far. You cannot bring it to her. You will eat it and sleep alone.” Then she looked at me with interest that arrived abruptly. “What did they tell you, in the telling place?” “They told me you had gills,” I said, before I could weigh it. She opened her mouth very slightly and showed me the delicate scalloping at the back of her jaw. “I do,” she said. “For beauty. And for the river when it is cold. And for the men from the coast, who like to think I am something else. What are you, Offworlder? The same, and like a far cousin.” “I am a listener,” I said, because it was on my seal. “I am here to help.” She picked up a wrist-warmer and turned it so that the seam caught the light. It had been sewn with a thread that reflected green, like the bottom of a pool. “We help ourselves,” she said. “You can help by not buying badly. Those are not for you. They would make your blood too quick.” I bought a handful of dry seaflower. I bought a small strip of cloth with a glyph stitched into it—a crescent and a woman’s eyes, which, on Earth, had once been a goddess. The girl took my coins. When I turned again, two boys were running past me, their feet smacking, and behind them a man shouting, not angrily, but with the urgency of bread. Further down the street, a woman in an apron washed stone with a bowl—a gesture that made no sense until the light swung and I saw that she was painting the stone with a thin milk. The glyph under her hand became brighter as the milk sank into it. Her apron was stitched with the head of a bull and a labyrinth of lines that twisted and doubled back on themselves. “Why do you paint them?” I asked her. She smiled, and the smile had missing teeth. “So they remember us,” she said. “Not the other way around?” “You remember yourself every day,” she said. “You look at a spoon. You see your face. The stone is slow. It needs our help.” In that moment I was more angry than I had been in months, because in the briefing no one had said anything like this. We had lists of factions, and of trade imbalances, and of disputes over water rights in the upland swales. I had underlined “mutual suspicion regarding reproductive partnerships” and circled “Minister of Science (non-scientist).” There were bullet points. There were no spoons. When I came back into the station, and climbed the spiral stairs—each step worn down on its outer edge—I could hear the Aide’s voice and our Commander’s voice overlapping. The sky had tilted into evening, thinning to violet. The air smelled like the seaflower in my pocket, a chalky sweetness. “I went for a walk,” I said when I came into the room. “You went alone,” the Commander said. He was younger than the stone and older than me in the way that a man can make age a garment. “Against protocol.” “I did not disappear,” I said. “I went one street down. I bought something. I listened.” He did the thing with his mouth that is not quite a smile and not quite the keeping-in of a smile. “You listened when we were listening,” he said. “We would have let you speak in the Hall. The Minister of Science—” “Is a politician,” I said. “I know. I’m to keep my head. I’m to speak as if I have a head.” “You are to speak to him in an hour,” he said. “He is expecting you. He is in his office on the north side.” “Now?” I said. “You will go now,” the Aide said, like a hand pushing my shoulder without contact. “And you will remember that you speak for us.” “Do I?” I said. I meant it as a question. It came out as something else. The Commander’s eyes narrowed. The Aide’s mouth thinned. “You speak for us,” the Commander said. “Who else?” “For myself,” I said. “Sometimes.” He let that sit like a stone on a table. Then he nodded. “Do both,” he said. “If you can.” The Minister of Science—whose name was Malen, but whose title dragged behind him like a cloak—had his office at the end of a passage lined with niches. In each niche a little figure stood: a woman welding a spear, a goat stepping over a sleeping boy, a man whose head had been the head of a bird, though here the carver had made the bird a fish. The office door had a lintel carved with a gear and a cluster of grapes. The Minister liked to be called Doctor, though he had never worked a lab more complicated than the inside of a council chamber. He stood when I came in and came around the desk as if we were friends. “So this is the Offworlder,” he said, and took hold of both my hands with his. His palms were soft and dry. “And young. Commander sends me a child.” “Sir,” I said. “Minister.” “Doctor,” he said, and his smile sharpened. “You come to tell me what the stars think of us.” “We don’t have stars of our own to think with,” I said. “Just your sun, while I am here.” He laughed, and then he did not. He sat back, and his face changed. He was not tall. He had a wide waist. His hairline was even, like a line someone had drawn with a ruler. There was a ring on his thumb made of the same stone as the lintel. “You were seen,” he said, “walking the lower street alone.” I said nothing. “You are either brave, or foolish, or very sure of us,” he said. “Which is it?” “I wanted to see,” I said. “A street is a simple place to begin.” He put his hands together. They looked as if they had not done much hard work; he was clever enough to know that I had noticed. “And what did you see?” he said. “Be careful. I will know if you are telling me what you think I want to hear.” “I saw seaflower,” I said. “Blue nuts. Children who run with their toes spread to catch the stones. A woman painting milk on old stories so the old stories remember her. Wrist-warmers that would make my blood too quick. The fact that you like to be called Doctor.” He sat very still. Then he laughed again, but this time there was something like approval in it. “Ah. So you will not be easy,” he said. “Good. We have had too many easy people from your ships.” “I am not from a ship,” I said. “I am from a town that smells like kelp and diesel and old paper. The ships came later.” “You are trained,” he said. “They have told you about our divisions, about the water rights, about how the uplanders marry late and the river-folk young, and the coast-folk not at all sometimes, and about the children with the tidy lungs who can go from hill to river without the spinning sickness. They have told you that this is a problem.” “They have told me there is tension,” I said. “And what do you say?” “I say that the tension is not a problem,” I said. “It is a signal. It says the body is alive.” He watched me as if he could lean into my skull and read the glyphs there. “That sounds like a clever thing to say,” he said. “It also happens to be true,” I said. “I’m not here to solve you. I’m here to listen, and perhaps to suggest—to try not to make anything worse.” “You can always make things worse,” he said. “That is the easiest human skill.” “And always make them better,” I said. “Sometimes by not standing between people and what they already do for themselves.” He let out a long breath. “The Hall will want concessions,” he said. “Your Commander will want me to say that we will agree to the shared water charter without delaying three sessions while the uplanders fast and make proverbs. He will want a timeline. He will want a piece of paper to send to his superiors.” “I’m not my Commander,” I said. “I want to understand why your uplanders fast. What proverb comes from three sessions of hunger that does not come from one?” Malen’s face changed again. He settled back into himself, like a cat into a bowl. “You ask questions that have answers,” he said. “Most people ask questions that are invitations for a speech.” “So,” I said. “Tell me one of your answers.” He looked toward the window, where the light was becoming very thin. “When the uplanders fast for three sessions, they say the question descends from the head into the hands. On the first day, you are hungry in the mouth. On the second, you are hungry in the belly. On the third, you are hungry in the bones. If the question survives the bones, then it is a question worth answering. If not, it will die with the hunger.” “And will your water charter survive your bones?” I asked. He looked back at me. There was no smile now. “That,” he said, “is what you are here to help me know.” “I cannot make your uplanders’ bones decide,” I said. “But I can ask them to tell me how the question feels there.” He nodded, slow as the stone. “Do you know,” he said, “what the glyph over my fireplace says?” There was a small hearth with a low flame. Above it, a relief of a man with a hammer, a woman holding a spindle, a child with a bowl. “I don’t read your script,” I said. “Only your mouths.” “It says, in Earth-speech we have kept for when we want to be serious, Know thy measure,” he said. “Not yourself. Measure. The length of your stride. The strength of your hand in water. The reach of your saying. You have a short stride, Offworlder, because you are young. That may save us. Or it may break your ankle.” “I will mind the stairs,” I said, and for a moment he almost laughed. Then he stood up. “You will come to the Hall tomorrow,” he said. “You will sit and say nothing until I say your name. When you walk through the lower streets again, take someone with you who knows where the quick blood is. And do not buy wrist-warmers.” “I did not,” I said. He raised his thumb and showed me the stone ring. “You bought something else, though,” he said. “I can smell the seaflower. You will sleep without dreams tonight.” “Perhaps,” I said. “Do not make a habit of it,” he said. “We need your dreams. We need to know how the old stories look to someone who has not been painted with milk.” When I left his office the passage seemed longer, the little myths in their niches leaner. At the top of the stairs the Aide was waiting like the last step that has been worn away under your foot. “Well?” he said. “He will let me listen,” I said. “And test you,” the Aide said. “He is testing you already.” “So am I,” I said. I put my hand in my pocket and felt the dry seaflower, the hard smoothness of the nuts. In my mind the woman on the street lifted her bowl and poured milk over the stone, and the stone drank and knew us, not forever, but for today. I could not say if that was comfort, but it was a measure. I took it. I kept it, like a coin in an iron box.

Model Output:
The first time the solar rig coughed, the thermocycler hiccuped and threw the whole lattice of A, T, C, and G into disarray. The second time, the voltage dipped low enough to turn the lab lights brown. By the third flicker, I had the habit: tap the inverter housing twice, curse once, and lean into the exhalation until the LED steadied. In my lap the salvaged cycler—two aluminum plates sandwiching a hacked heating element, scavenged from a dead coffee maker—hummed again. The little wheel of oil I’d set atop it sloshed, cracked the surface with the scent of burnt rosemary, and I made a note: replace the heat sink. We were all making notes. It was how we made a future. Corporate genetic lines had been made to die. Built-in sunset clauses; DNA that frayed like cheap rope at the ends of a generation; telomerase inhibitors folded into the seed’s metabolic code like a countdown. Heat and dust and time did the rest. Before the collapse, they called it controlled lifecycling. In the settlement we called it paying for air you’d already breathed. “You sure it’s good?” Sael asked, voice half swallowed by the surgical mask. He perched on a crate of ceramic resistors, tapping his nails on their cardboard. The movements were always jittery with him these days, the way life got when you’d had your immune system rewritten by something you synthesized in a jam jar and dosed at midnight because the fever wouldn’t break. I twitched my wrist and the cycler’s display—salvaged Kindle screen—scrolled a step chart. Forty cycles, ninety-five, fifty-eight, ninety-five, sixty-three. “As long as the panel doesn’t stall again,” I said. “I’ve tweaked the annealing temp. The primers will stick.” He laughed behind the mask, hollow. “That panel,” he said, “is trying to kill you.” Maybe. The panel rig struck out of the scrap dunes like a spine of broken ribs, a dozen mismatched sheets wired in parallel with copper gleaned off dead streetlights. I’d bolted it to the roof with bicycle spokes and hope. At dawn today, it had produced eight hundred watts. By noon, with dust in the air and the clouds a dirty silver, it was faking it at best. It was enough to keep the thermocycler and the fridge running. It was not enough for much else. On the bench, the gel rig glowed anemic blue. I’d spared no electricity for a transilluminator—just a shallow Pyrex lasagna pan filled with a solution of ethidium’s safe cousin and a homemade LED strip taped beneath, tied to a 9V battery. The comb was carved out of a hair pick. The lanes were crooked as a child’s teeth. “What is it this time?” Sael gestured at the pipette in my hand. The tip quivered, the drop clinging to its plastic mouth. “Kale with less attitude?” “Chickpea.” The drop fell, sank into the loading dye, and bloomed. “Iron uptake metatransporter. The old lines told the roots to ignore it after two harvests. I found a fragment of the unsubstituted gene in some pre-crash literature, but it’s in pieces, and the last two kilobases refuse to hold. I’ve designed a chimeric bridge.” I flashed a smile I didn’t feel. “It will be beautiful. And ugly.” “Like everything else,” he said, and the mask couldn’t hide the way he was grinning now. “Our kids are going to hate chickpeas.” “If I get it to stick, they’re going to have chickpeas,” I said. “Hate is a luxury.” The settlement’s medical tent was patched from billboard vinyl. It said LIVE BETTER, repeated as a mantra down the aisle. The crops we’d found in the municipal seed vault had sprouted and then turned feral—scrawny, brittle, bearing blossoms that were sterile in ways that were patent-protected. We had three fields of brown-green ghosts and one of tubers only rodents could love. The black market was all that was left for things not made to die: contraband germplasms, ancestral lines concealed in old coffee tins by grandmothers with foresight, rogue constructs spliced by lab rats who’d seen the crash coming and wanted to see us survive it. Someone knocked at the heavy-lidded door. Three taps, pause, two taps. Sael turned his head as though the noise itself would tell him who it was. I set down the pipette, breathed until the thermocycler held steady, and called, “Come.” A woman slid in, so tall she seemed to fold herself into the room. She wore a raincoat bleached by sun until it was the pale of a shark’s belly. Her hair had the ringlets of someone who’d once had money, or showers. Her eyes did a quick check: solar rig, improvised fume hood (a duct fan married to a aspirator bottle), the bucket of copper sulfate petals I used as a makeshift electrophoresis buffer when the store powders ran out. The pistol at her hip stayed where it was. “You’re the splicer,” she said. Not a question. “I’m the one who pretends to be,” I said. “Names are currency.” “I left mine at the door,” she said, and then she was in front of me with a black mushroom of polymer in hand: a cryo-pod cannibalized from a biotech’s cold chain, the logo scraped off but not gone. “You were recommended, Ara.” The name made me want to look over my shoulder, make sure there wasn’t another Ara, the one before the collapse, before the storm, before telemarketer drones got repurposed as crop dusters and then found their way into swarms. But there was only me. I took the pod. The surface was smooth, oily with the residue of fingers. A tiny LCD flickered just enough for me to make out low battery in a pixelated font. “I’m not cheap,” I said. “I’m not poor,” she answered. That erased a few possibilities, none of them comforting. “Open it.” The latch was the kind no blade would pry without a scar. I leaned the pod against the bench, set the tip of a soldering iron into the seam, whispered hello to the power grid in prayer. The iron was a castoff, its cord wrapped in electrical tape, its tip filed down and then re-tinned. It stammered to heat with the panel’s mood, but in a moment it bit the polymer, and the pod sighed open on a breath of wet, cold air. Inside, nested in a decapitated eppendorf rack, were two cryo-vials. Each had a serial etched in the plastic: GRAIN/10086/S.CERE. That last I knew as a reflex, like my own pulse. A yeast. Not any yeast. A S. cerevisiae line marketed once on glossy screens as Guardian—engineered to outcompete wild strains in souring dough and beer, with a switch for hydrogenase pathways that dried out in eighteen months, leaving bakers with crumb that fell apart in the hand. There had been lawsuits. They had died with the courts. “It’s spoiled,” I said, and then checked myself. The pellet inside the tube was beige. A little slumped. The screw cap’s O-ring had cracked. It might have seen the inside of a freezer yesterday, or six months ago. “Maybe. Where did you—” “Black Yard,” she said. “Babbage’s lot.” I cursed, softly. The Yard would sell you copper sheeting with the oxide polished off only on the top. They’d paint bolts silver and swear they were argon. They’d steal the occlusive from your arm while shaking your hand. “Why are you in my lab with this?” She pointed with her eyes to Sael. “He’s the reason.” Sael stiffened. “I don’t know you.” She laughed, and there was not much humor in it. “You don’t have to. You took my boy last winter when his lungs choked on ash. You gave him a mist from a bottle with a label scraped off. You told me it was engineered for pigs, but lungs are lungs.” I remembered now: a boy with eyes like lakes after rain, breath wheezing through ducts so narrow I could put my finger on his chest and feel them vibrate. The pig lung growth factor had re-opened his alveoli like hands unfurling. He’d coughed pink foam and then he’d breathed. He might be growing bristles at fifteen. Even my black humor didn’t want to imagine it. “He lived?” I asked. “He plays in dust storms,” she said. “I wanted to pay you back. But then I wanted to eat.” She gestured to the pod. “This is meant to be a bread base that doesn’t die. They say it’s been reworked from old lines, no obsolescence. Clean. I need you to tell me if it’s a lie.” “Even if it is,” I said, and lifted the vial, “I might be able to make it tell the truth.” The voltage stuttered. The LED display on the cycler blinked into a set of hieroglyphs that meant nothing to anyone but me: the coil opened, the triac shut down, power conserved, DNA saved. The upside of building your own lab was that its failures were yours, but so were its habits. I tapped twice, cursed once, reached for the inverter case and felt the heat lick my palm. I pulled back with a hiss. “You okay?” Sael asked. “I have three layers of callus there for a reason.” I smiled without teeth. “Let me see your boy’s yeast.” I swabbed my finger in ethanol—we’d lifted a drum of the stuff off a drowned pharmacy, and winced every time we burned it for light—and cracked the cap. A smell like the bottom of an old beer bottle hit my nose, sour-sweet. I made a streak on a makeshift agar plate: gelatin stiffened with potato flake and sugar. I set it in the warm zone near the cycler, where the heat bled off into an ambient thirty-seven. I marked the plate with grease pencil: G-Guardian, date. The lid was a repurposed plastic clamshell from a time when people bought salad in boxes. “What do you want for the test?” the woman asked. She had her hand on the pistol now, not menacing, more like she wanted something to hold that had weight. “Not money,” I said. “Don’t take that the wrong way. Your money will be good at Black Yard. It’s goobers up here. I want options.” “Options?” “Your source. Your routes. If this yeast is truly clean, I don’t want to buy it once. I want to buy ten times until I can learn it. If it’s a lie, I want to know who told it.” Her mouth drew down. “I don’t sell names.” “I sell food,” I said, pointedly. “A contract, then. Black market or not." Sael got off the resistor crate. “You don’t have any choice,” he told her, voice soft. “We don’t have any choice. If it’s clean, the settlement will pay you in iron nails and salt and labor for a starter that doesn’t quit. If it’s not, she’ll fix it, and then you’ll own a liability with a lesson.” Her eyes hardened. Then she nodded. “Half now,” she said, and slid a wrapped packet onto the bench. In it were two syringes and a vial. The glass held a liquid the color of old pennies. “Metformin derivative. They stole it off a container. The real stuff. Your pancreas is going to give up before your generator does.” Ice crept up the spine of my back. “I didn’t tell you—” “You didn’t have to,” she said. “Your hands shake when the panel dips. The tremor is worse mid-day. Your neighbor said you eat sugar packets like communion.” This was the toll. We used untested constructs because we had to; sometimes they made us better at healing in strange ways. My influenza didn’t last two days anymore after the adenoviral thing I brewed in a jar under a desk lamp. My blood clotting worked like a charm after I knocked a femur on a swing hinge. My teeth regrew enamel where a dentist would have said they couldn’t. But the endocrine tweaks had come with a price. My pancreas had taken one look at the metabolic modulators I’d used to keep Sael alive, and decided it was tired. “Metformin makes me foggy,” I said. “This is cleaner,” she said. “Or it’s not. That’s the world we live in.” I laughed, and it broke out of me like a broken test tube. “Fine,” I said, and then it was a deal. We shook hands. I noticed her nails were very clean; she noticed mine were crescents stained with silver nitrate. The gel rig buzzed. The blue light in the pan pulsed. I slid the loaded gel in. The anode was a chunk of graphite shaved off an old motor; the cathode was a strip of stainless steel rescued from a dead dishwasher. I clipped the battery, watched the dye climb the thick of agar like ants climbing honey. The voltage held, by some miracle, and the bands began to resolve out of the smear. Soon I’d tell the woman whether her yeast carried the obsolescence bomb. If it did, the motifs would be there: repeats like a chant, designed to fold in on themselves and self-immolate generation by generation. If it didn’t, I’d still be inclined not to trust it; trust was another luxury, like hating chickpeas. The plate with the yeast sat and sweated and, under the warmth, lifted tiny pearls of gas. It would grow or it wouldn’t. The cycler ticked through its cycles as I patched together chickpea iron transporters and the pieces of our future. Sael stood at the door and watched the light beyond dim, and then flicker, and then dim again. The panel wobbled. The world held its breath. My heartbeat synced to the inverter’s hum. “Hey,” the woman said, softly now, the pistol an anchor and not a threat. “Thank you, for my boy.” I didn’t tell her about the boars’ gene that rode his cells now, tucked in like a gift and a trap, expressing when it shouldn’t, sleeping when it should. I didn’t tell her the erosion of names freaking me out less than the erosion of functions in everything we touched. I didn’t tell her that my own mouth tasted like copper pennies and that the drug she’d brought me would make it taste like nothing at all. Instead I said: “Bring me more. Anything that isn’t built to die. We’ll make it live.” The panel coughed and the thermocycler’s LED blinked, and this time I didn’t tap or curse. I put my fingers on the housing and felt the little tickle of low-voltage, the way you feel a cat walk across a bed in the dark. I heard the settlement outside, the clatter of pots, the laughter that was defiance, the cough you could hear through three tents. I thought about bread that wouldn’t cave. I thought about chickpeas as fat as fists. I thought about kids hating them, and therefore alive. Our contract sat between us like a third person. The gel bands sliced into clarity. They told me a story I didn’t yet know how to read. “Let’s see what kind of lie this is,” I said, and smiled with all my teeth.

Model Output:
Arthur kept adjusting his collar, unused to the formal attire he had been instructed to wear. The fabric had a synthetic sheen that tugged uncomfortably at his neck as the transfer vessel purred around him with the precise, anesthetic thrum of military-grade reactionless drives. The Antares insignia—three concentric stars embracing an arrow—glinted on every bulkhead fixture and shoulder patch. Diplomatic Corps, he had been told, in the way one is told that a scalpel is a spoon. He ran a thumb along the edge of his cuff and studied the viewport. Mars fell away like a rusting coin, its wafer-thin atmosphere a smear at the rim. Beyond it, the tether-spined ring of the orbital network stitched light into emptiness. The cabin door whispered, and two attendants in grey-black with clipped hair and the dispassionate posture of good furniture stepped in. Their holstered pistols curved like accents. One of them inclined his head enough to qualify as polite. “Mr. Neegan,” he said. “We’ll be docking in five. If you’ll come with us.” Arthur stood, the collar resisting him like a moral principle. “You could just tell me where I’m going.” “You are going to a meeting,” said the other. “As requested.” “As compelled,” Arthur said. “Words,” the first replied, with such blandness that Arthur had to admire it. They guided him down a corridor that smelled faintly of ozone and old plastic. The vessel had the deliberate cleanliness of something that contained secrets whose protection budget outran anyone’s imagination. They reached a hatch that recognized a palm and slid apart: a lounge with a view like a cut jewel. In the center stood a table that was trying very hard to be humble. Facing the planet, in a chair that placed her in silhouette, sat a woman whose posture was supremely relaxed without being careless. She wore a suit the colour of wet slate, no insignia. A small pin, however—an abstract spiral—sat at her lapel. “Mr. Neegan,” she said, without turning. “Please sit.” Arthur took the seat opposite. He found that the chair had anticipated his height. The two attendants became part of the walls, as if they earlier had simply been temporarily separated from them. The woman glanced at him then, and her face resolved into planes of middle-aged poise. Her hair was cut short in a way that suggested both discipline and emergency practicality. Her eyes were unremarkable, which is a remark in itself. “You’ve had a week,” she said. “I apologize. Sudden ascents are rarely dignified.” “I’ve had less than a week,” Arthur said. “Three days ago I lived in a prefab with a faulty heater coil and a kitchen that sang when the wind hit the door. Now I’m on a vessel with no corners.” He adjusted his collar again. “Who are you?” She smiled, not with surprise. “My name is Cestine Varro. I represent an interested party not formally affiliated with any of the corporations currently leasing Martian extraction rights. Nor with the Antares Diplomatic Corps, though their insignia has its uses.” Arthur let his gaze flick to the attendants’ shoulders. “Borrowed livery,” Cestine said. “Antares likes to believe they control impressions. We purchased this one for the hour. Will you drink?” The table noticed the question and extruded two glasses with a sound like small rain. The liquid was colourless and claimed to be water. Arthur ignored it. “You found an Azra vein,” Cestine said. She looked back out at Mars, which had settled into a dignified distance, touched by sunlight that did not expect thanks. “And not merely a vein. A body. It sits under old lava, like a hesitating heart.” “You know a great deal about my property,” Arthur said carefully. “Property,” she said, tasting the word. “Yes. The land grant was issued to you as a first-generation settler. After two harvest cycles, the land and subsoil rights revert to the colony administration unless a productive economic use is declared. You declared. That declaration was, shall we say, amplified. The administrative network is a sieve. We selected which holes to widen.” “Selected?” “To attract attention. The right kind, and not too much of the wrong. You were going to be noticed anyway. We arranged a map of attention that would favor this conversation.” “What kind of party are you?” Arthur asked. “Unknown.” “A coalition of conservationists and strategists,” Cestine said. “Which, I admit, sounds like a paradox. It is not. Azra speeds decay, Mr. Neegan. The universe has a timetable. We are in the business of ensuring that no one moves the clocks too far forward.” Arthur folded his hands on the table. They were too clean. The last four years he’d measured worth in how dust settled into the knuckles. “You want to stop the mining.” “We want to control it,” Cestine said. “Stop is a fantasy. Azra is a lever on entropy. Once the picture of the lever exists, someone will pull it.” She tapped the pin at her lapel. The spiral wasn’t a spiral; it was a stylized decay chain, the child and grandchild nuclides simplified to art. He felt a small chill—the kind you feel in the spinal metaphor of your backbone, when a story becomes more precise than comfort recommends. “You know what it does,” he said. “I have devoted twelve years to knowing enough to fear it,” she said. “There have already been tests. Spurts of funding in obscure journals. Anomalies scrubbed from reactor logs. Antares ships docked near prospector stations where the radiation counters like to sing lullabies.” “And the corporations?” “They are enthusiastic,” she said. “Enthusiasm is the polite cousin of hunger.” Arthur watched her watching Mars. “You didn’t bring me here to philosophize about clocks.” “No,” she agreed. “I brought you here to offer you a contract.” She slid a wafer across the table. He did not touch it. The wafer shimmered with microscopic script, layered like a palimpsest of legality. He had seen such things in the colony offices when the lease agents smiled with their entire dental history. “You retain title to your land and subsurface rights,” Cestine said. “You declare exclusive development under a new classification: controlled catalytic resource. You will then lease extraction rights to a consortium we have organized. The terms: a guaranteed dividend, equipment sufficient to remove the overburden to a safe standby level, scientific oversight we provide, and a cap—a hard cap—on extracted Azra per quarter. An off-world escrow holds the title in trust. No one moves equipment without three keys, one of them yours.” “And in return?” Arthur said. “In return you swear to a patience most men cannot afford. You will become unpopular. You will be accused of sabotage, greed, treason to your species’ manifest destiny. You will be offered money at numbers you did not know had names. You will refuse. And you will call us before you call anyone else when the ground quivers in a new voice.” He picked up the wafer and held it to the light. Sections of the text infiltrated his vision: terms of art, vacuum-hard clauses, contingency strategies for sabotage, clauses that contemplated planetary injunctions. “And if I say no?” “The Antares Corps,” Cestine said, with no malice, “will arrest you on suspicion of illicit materials trafficking. They will find Azra cores in your freight. They will have planted them with care. You will be held, then released, then held again. In the meantime, interim receivers will declare your claim common. The corporations will begin their work with a legal smile.” Arthur let the wafer sit. He thought of the fault map that he had made in pencil, because pencil was proof against power failures. He thought of the vein that gave his instruments a headache, a lump of reluctant miracle. “You said you arranged attention,” he said. “Why me? There are other veins. Other miners.” “Because you are dull,” Cestine said. She held his gaze as his expression hardened. “Do not take offense. Dullness is virtue. You have no debt beyond the mainline loan. You have no family obligations beyond a sister who has not spoken to you since the civil registry argued about her surname. You did not enlist in the Belt wars. You did not play cards you could not count. You are a man whose calendar has blank squares. That makes you rare and useful.” “And if I were more interesting?” Arthur asked dryly. “We would not be here. Interesting men are full of levers too easily acquired by other hands.” He considered the window. Earth was a pale thought somewhere in the dark. Mars turned with the implacability of old machines. He remembered his cabin’s heater coil, which he had coaxed with a screwdriver and a curse. He remembered the smell of his own sweat under the dust when the wind laid down and sound carried. A man with blank squares. It was not flattering, but it had been true. “You said you’re not Antares,” he said. “And yet they escorted me.” “Antares is not a person,” Cestine said. “It is a set of overlapping ambitions held together by semaphore and habit. Parts of it dislike parts of it intensely. The part that brought you here owes us a favor and hopes to embarrass another part later. This is how things are done when no one wants to say so out loud.” “And the consortium?” Arthur asked. “Who’s in it?” “Universities that still believe in peer review,” Cestine said. “Insurance underwriters who truly understand catastrophic risk curves. A small nation-state without space capacity but with excellent mathematicians. An offshoot of a faith that thinks the universe should be allowed to age as intended. A few miners who know that fast money can be a solvent.” “You romanticize,” Arthur said. “I inventory,” Cestine said. “The romance belongs to those who want to fly sabers into stars.” He found that he was breathing more slowly. The chair had adjusted his posture; the ship had dialed down its hum. He wondered what else they had dialed. “You didn’t mention weapons,” he said. “I did not need to,” Cestine said. “Azra will turn weapons into policy the way a fire turns a map into air. It will make blockades obsolete and fortresses into suggestions. It will let an angry provincial administer vengeance to a planet. The arms manufacturers need no salesmen when an element does their job for them.” “I’m an engineer,” Arthur said. “I know what you’re saying. I also know that every cap invites a pry bar. How do you expect to hold the cap?” “By making the pry bar costly to wield,” Cestine said. “By making the story of restraint more compelling than the story of conquest. By embedding reactors with failsafes that turn Azra on Azra if tampered with.” She smiled faintly. “And if those fail, by applying the kind of pressure polite people call diplomacy.” He thought about the attendants’ pistols, the curve of their holsters like commas. There was grammar to this. “You will not be alone,” Cestine said. “I do not mean that in the comfortable sense. I mean it as a logistical statement. We intend to place observers in your operation. Two, perhaps three. They will be polite. They will be unwelcome. They will be very difficult to remove.” “So, a leash.” “A harness,” Cestine said. “You can pull against it, and we can pull with you, and the horse has some say about where the cart goes.” He surprised himself by laughing. It came out like a cough. “Do you ride?” “I count,” she said. “Numbers behave like horses when you have their trust.” Arthur let the wafer rest against his palm again. He had once thought of wealth as something that came in shipments, in the respectable clink of credit. It was now a weightless thing that occupied the air around the table, making conversation cautious. He could not pretend he would not like to be wealthy. He could not pretend that wealth arrived without neighbors. “What happens to me if I sign?” he asked. “Beyond the unpopularity.” “You will have to hire,” Cestine said. “Not the indenture contracts the corporations like. Real contracts. You will become an employer of free men and women and at least one person who declines a binary. You will live under a dome we will upgrade to withstand explosive decompression. You will have a legal team you will never meet. You will learn words you hoped to avoid. You will go to bed often with the feeling that you have forgotten to lock something essential.” “And if I do not sign,” Arthur said, “you already told me what happens.” She inclined her head. “It is clumsy to threaten a man and then ask him to trust you. Yet here we are.” The ship shifted; somewhere, docking clamps performed their small ballet. Mars slid a fraction. Arthur studied Cestine. The absence of insignia, the quiet spiral. He thought of the first day he had set foot on his land, when the wind attempted to remove his nose and the sky had the colour of careful blood. He had not come to Mars for romance. He had come because the Earth had too many people who wanted to tell him how to be interesting. “Why is it called Azra?” he asked suddenly. She blinked. “Naming rights fell to an astronomer whose daughter had that name,” she said. “The daughter drowned on a world with more water than wisdom. He chose to put her name on something that would not dissolve.” “That’s a myth,” Arthur said. “All names are,” Cestine said. “Will you sign?” He put the wafer down. He did not touch the stylus. “I will agree to a preliminary,” he said slowly. “You will send me your scientists. I will send you my maps. We will set a cap. We will test each other’s patience before we promise forever.” Her shoulders relaxed by a millimeter. It was the most honest gesture she had made. “A preliminary,” she said. “Very well. That is already more than most men would offer in a room with this view.” She rose. He stood. The attendants detached from the walls and became men again. “One more thing,” Cestine said, and now her voice held something that could nearly be warmth. “Hide the heater coil from the inspectors. It is against regulation.” He stared. “You’ve been in my home?” “We have been within it,” she said. “Glass walls are fashionable in this century. We prefer to look through them only when necessary.” He did not ask what necessary meant. They walked him to the hatch. The door opened onto a short corridor and the mouth of a docking tunnel. Through its oval he saw a station module with an Antares crest and the polite bustle of people paid to look like background. “Mr. Neegan,” Cestine said. “In the next days, you will be approached by an Antares official named Pelk and by a representative of the Rittmann Consortium who will offer to buy your soul and lease your shadow. You will find their arguments sensible. You will find ours exhausting. Remember that exhaustion does not make sense wrong.” “And if I get tired enough to forget?” Arthur asked. “You will call me,” she said. “The number is in the wafer, under the clause about dispute resolution. It will look like a footnote. It is not.” He stepped into the tunnel. The pressure differential sighed. He adjusted his collar again, and it yielded this time, just enough. He did not look back until he was halfway across, and then only because a man counts his steps when he knows that the ground ahead has learned his name. Cestine was watching him. She lifted a hand, a wave or a signal; he could not tell. Behind her, Mars turned, and beyond that, the patient dark did not care who set the clocks. But men did, and their care could burn a world or save it a little time. Arthur walked on. The pistols, the spiral pin, the wafer that weighed nothing—these lodged in his thoughts like pebbles in a boot. He did not yet know if he would limber or limp. He did know that when he got home, he would check the coil, and then he would bury, with care and in a place only the wind knew, a small sample in an unremarkable box, because dull men take precautions even against their allies. At the end of the tunnel, a man in an Antares sash smiled with all his teeth and extended a hand. “Mr. Neegan,” he said. “Pelk. So glad you could make time. I believe we can help each other avoid unnecessary delays.” Arthur took the hand and felt the tug of war tighten, invisible and absolute. He smiled back, because the universe did not move its own clocks, and someone had to watch them.

Model Output:
The red light traps time the way a snow globe traps a winter. Every dust mote is a planet; each drip from the faucet marks a century. The trays are shallow constellations, moons of developer and fixer, our prints floating like secrets just revealing themselves. Elliot’s breath fogs in the cold of the room and makes me wonder if the images can sense us, if the silver halides know we’re both different people in here. His hands are steady in a way mine aren’t. I love that he’s precise, the way his fingers move through the tongs like he’s playing an instrument he grew up with. He’s careful. I am not. I am a fireworks display by comparison: abrupt and bright, all teeth and certainty and the clatter of brass bangles. Even in the thin red light, my rings flare when I gesture. He watches them for a beat, like he’s memorizing a language he doesn’t fully speak. “It’s like they’re underwater until they decide to breathe,” he says, leaning over the tray. The print is just starting to appear—our shot of the back staircase, the way the rails cut the light into squares that look like a fallen chessboard. “More like they’re mid-transformation,” I say, because I can’t resist an argument, a reframe. “We’re coaxing them. Making choices for them.” He smiles and I feel something in me list toward him like a ship caught by a minor current. He’s wearing a thrifted shirt, pearl snaps dulled with age, the kind of thing that shouldn’t look goth at all but somehow does on him, paired with a belt that has a silver buckle shaped like a bat. His eyes catch the red and go mulberry-dark. He smells like old books, developer, and winter air. “You always want to call it a choice,” he says. “I’m not sure it is.” “Everything is a choice,” I say, reflexively militant, and want to roll my eyes at myself. I’ve made a persona out of choosing; out of being the one who goes first. Girls in my cohort admire and fear the same quality in me. Professors too. Dated people who thanked me for taking the lead like I was granting them a favor. It’s a good costume most days: leather jacket, clipped hair, the right eyeliner, the loudest laugh. Me, as a decision. Elliot’s not a costume. He’s a pair of boots worn in weird places, a book with marginalia in someone else’s handwriting. I’ve been watching him all semester without letting my gaze be obvious about it. He’s the kid who brought in xeroxed zines of Foucault and zipties for our sculpture project. He never volunteers unless called on, but when he talks, it’s like he’s picking a lock in front of the class. The print deepens. I use the tongs to flip it and he flinches like I almost touched him. The room hums with the fan above us, the slow pulse of the timer beeping in intervals. My phone vibrates, a small mosquito buzz deep in my back pocket, then again, insistent. People want things from me. They always do. I ignore it, almost ceremonially. If I take it out, I’ll split myself into Dani-who-answers and Dani-who-watches, and right now I want to be the latter. “I’ve been thinking about our concept statement,” he says, gaze fixed on the paper’s milky surface. “Like, about liminal spaces.” I hum. We picked the concept because it sounded academic without being dead. Doors ajar, mirrors half covered, stairwells between floors, hallways to nowhere. In my head it was also about us, and how we are both a little bit thresholds, though I’d never say that and ruin it. “I’ve been thinking…” He stops. I watch his throat shift when he swallows. I want to reach for it without touching, to say go on, to place my palm near his sternum and promise I won’t push. He sets the tongs down with a click that sounds louder than it should. “God, this is going to sound like I’m making it about me. I know the deadline. I know we have to print and mat and whatever. But the thing I’ve been thinking about…” He breathes like he’s bracing for a wave that might not stop. “I’ve been thinking that I might not be a ‘he,’ or I might be a ‘he’ differently. Some days I look in the mirror and the pronouns slide around like oil on water, and other days I feel like my reflection is a lie I agreed to tell.” I keep very still. The developer smells like pennies and the past. He doesn’t look at me. The print in the tray darkens into itself, a staircase that knows it leads somewhere. “I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that,” he says quickly. “Or if that makes sense. I’m not trying to be special. It’s just… it’s been getting louder. And I put on the clothes and I feel half right. I paint my nails and I feel more right. I bind sometimes. Or I want to. And then I think I’m performing. Like I’m making a collage out of somebody else’s images instead of taking the picture myself.” He laughs a small, brittle laugh. His hands are on the edge of the sink, knuckles pale. “Sorry.” There’s a version of me that would fill the room with advice and action. There’s an impulse to produce a to-do list: names of clinics, pronoun pins, Instagram accounts, a list of books and binders and how to tape safely. I have those things. My friends are a compendium of experiments. My body leans forward, wanting to fix, to lead, to wrap my certainty around him like a coat. But the red light makes a church out of this place and me a parishioner instead of a preacher. The fan hum becomes a choir, the water a liturgy. I make myself count to five before I say anything. It hurts, the restraint. It stings like a chemical splash that hasn’t yet been washed off. “What would feel good to hear right now?” I ask, and it’s so unlike my default that I have to chew on the words before they go out. He looks up, startled, then relieved. “I don’t know. Maybe just… that it’s not nothing? That I’m not being dramatic?” “It’s not nothing,” I say. “You’re not being dramatic.” I let my voice go low, the persuasive register I use when convincing donors to fund student shows. “You’re allowed to be figuring it out. You don’t have to land.” He nods, once, and his shoulders drop like they’ve been carrying a rolled-up map that’s finally set on the table. In the tray, the staircase is fully formed now. It’s more interesting than I thought it would be—there’s a blur of movement at the edge where my sleeve accidentally got into frame, a smear that looks almost like a person slipping between frames. Elliot lifts the print with the tongs and moves it to the stop bath. The little hiss when it meets the chemicals is unbearably intimate. “I worry that I’m… fake,” he says. “That wanting to be softer, or different, or to try a dress sometimes—like, what if that’s just an aesthetic and not a self? You know? I don’t want to be a tourist.” I can’t help it. I reach out and put my hand over his on the edge of the sink. Not guiding. Just neighboring. His skin is colder than mine; he flinches, then doesn’t pull away. “You’re the only person who can call you real,” I say. “But from where I’m standing, nothing about you feels tourist.” He looks at our hands. The red light makes us look like we’re both made of pomegranate. I swallow. Here’s the confession I didn’t know I’d be making in this room: “I like—the way you are. I mean, I’ve been trying to categorize you so I could know what to do with my crush, and I can’t. And it’s made me—uncomfortable.” The word tastes like daring. “I’m used to women with knives in their smiles or boys who come wrapped in their own definitions. You’re… a door that keeps opening.” He blinks, then laughs, a real one this time, soft and stunned. “A door that keeps opening?” “Don’t let me workshop metaphors out loud,” I say, embarrassed and amused at once. “Point is, I’m attracted to you. And I don’t know what that means for me either, exactly. Which is both annoying and—it’s also kind of exciting.” “Yeah,” he says. He doesn’t pull his hand away, and the relief that rushes through me is embarrassing in its size. “It’s… I’m glad you said that. I’ve been—trying not to be weird. You scare me a little.” “Good,” I say, too fast, reflex bristling, and then catch myself. “I mean, okay. Also not good. I don’t want to scare you. I just—” I grope for a softer word and find one I don’t usually admit I own. “I want to take care of this. Of you.” He looks at me then, straight, and for a second the world shifts its weight. “What does taking care mean, for you?” “Usually? Making decisions. Setting the pace. Carrying the bag. Color-coding the calendar.” I hear the list’s edge and wince. “But also listening. And not deciding for you.” His mouth curves. It does something to my ribs. “I could be into parts of that.” “I thought you might,” I say, and then my phone buzzes again: a little tap-tap against bone. I ignore it, feeling the ghost of the screen the way you feel a missing tooth with your tongue. There will be messages, little landmines of expectation. I’m not picking them up right now. We move through the prints. He manages the times like a monastic liturgy; I handle the exposure test strips with my habitual impatience, wanting to skip steps and leap to the conclusion. The safe light paints us as if we’re already in a photograph, and I catch myself wondering how we look like this to someone else—to an instructor walking by, to the ghosts of former students, to the future versions of us who might or might not remember. “Do you want me to try different pronouns for you?” I ask later, while we’re hanging the prints on the line with wooden clothespins that make little dull clicks. “Here? Or with just us? Or not at all?” He inhales. “Maybe… you could try they, sometimes? See how it feels? Or… if you want, you could pick one and surprise me.” “That is a lot of power to hand me,” I say, teasing, and not. “I know.” He meets my eyes. “I trust you.” There it is—the place where I’m tempted to surge forward and plant a flag. Instead I slow down. I consider the little word he offered me and how it could tuck into my mouth. “Okay,” I say. “They.” I test it lightly, set it in the air between us like a piece of folded paper boat on black water. “Do you want to pass me that clothespin? They’re right behind you.” They nod. The relief in their face is not subtle, and it makes my throat tight. I want to kiss it. Not them. It. The relief, the softness. The plant that’s finally turning toward the window. “I didn’t think it would feel that different,” they say, voice dazed. “It feels… like warm.” “Good,” I say. I sound hoarse. We stand there, students of our own language, letting it rearrange our bones. It occurs to me that I don’t have to classify my desire before I act on it; that I don’t have to know what it makes me to know what I want. But I also don’t want to be the storm that knocks over their sapling. My urgency meets an equal, gentler force, and they lean into each other until it’s a balance. “Can I—” I begin, and stop. I aim for honesty, not performance. “Can I hold your hand?” They look at my hand like it’s a print developing in front of them. “Yeah,” they say. “Please.” I take their hand with the same care they took the tongs, the way you lift something you plan not to own but to admire. Their fingers are slender, ringless. My thumb finds the soft web between thumb and forefinger, an anchor. The heat exchanges. It’s electric and quiet at once. We stand like that in the red, as the prints drip and set and the room does its chemical magic. The fan thrums. The faucet whispers. My phone buzzes a third time, small and far away now, like a world I may go back to later. I can be decisive about that, at least. I can decide to stay here where the silver salts decide to become image, where a person can pick a pronoun like a lens and try it on and the perspective shifts. “Dani?” they say, soft. “Yeah?” “Thank you,” they say. “For not—taking it out of my hands.” I squeeze their fingers. “You’re welcome,” I say. “You can ask me to take more, if you want. Later. When you want.” “Okay,” they say. The word settles into our intertwined palms. We clip the last print and make a note of our times and exposures and paper grades with a pencil that leaves gray snow behind it. When we turn off the safelight, the room goes absolute for a second, a heavy velvet. Then the fluorescent flickers on outside, harsh and throat-clearing. We blink, separate our hands, and I feel the absence like a picture taken from a wall. “We’ll come back tomorrow,” I say, as if tomorrow is neutral. It suddenly isn’t. It’s a place with a door that keeps opening. They smile, half shy, half certain. “Yeah,” they say. “Tomorrow.” We push through the heavy darkroom door and into the hallway, a liminal space if there ever was one, and for once I don’t rush to fill it with my stride. I match theirs. The prints are behind us, hanging like a series of possible futures, quietly becoming themselves.

Model Output:
He doesn’t notice the scooter until the wind of it licks his calves and the horn rips across the piazza like a curse. The guidebook leaps from Ben’s hands, pages yawning like startled gulls. The Vespa skids, a sharp S on ancient cobblestone, halts with its nose inches from a municipal trash bin. Time resumes. Shouts rise around the Trevi Fountain—tourists with their phones, vendors hawking bottled water, a couple arguing in rapid Portuguese. “Guardi!” she barks, snapping off the helmet. Her hair pours out, black and impatient. “Che fai, professorino? Leggi mentre cammini? Vuoi morire sotto le ruote?” “I—sorry—mi dispiace,” Ben stammers. He bends to grab the guidebook, knocks it with his elbow, watches it skate under a German family’s stroller. “I wasn’t—looking.” “No kidding, Sherlock,” she says in English, rolling her eyes. Then she laughs, a precise, ringing sound that says she’d rather have the story than the peace. “You’re fine. I didn’t kill you. Yet.” He straightens. She’s shorter than he expected but seems taller, all kinetic lines and impatient eyebrows. He registers a leather jacket scuffed pale at the elbows, a messenger bag strapped crosswise like a sash. There’s a sticker on the Vespa that reads: CHE PAURA? “I’m terribly sorry,” Ben says, British apology falling from him on instinct. He tries Italian again. “Io... sono... un idiota.” Her mouth curves. “Finalmente, verità.” She claps him on the shoulder. “I’m Alessandra. Courier. Occasional life-saver. And you?” “Ben,” he says, clearing his throat. He’s felt ridiculous since arriving in Rome, and now feels newly minted in it. He reaches for the guidebook again. She gets it first, with a fast, easy bend, and hands it back without a flourish. Her fingers brush his. She has ink stains on her thumb, a crescent of midnight. “Ben,” she repeats, tasting it, making it sound less tinny. “Ben. Okay.” She tilts her head. “You owe me a coffee for almost becoming a hood ornament.” “That seems... fair.” “Good. Get on.” He blinks. “On... your scooter?” She’s already pulling her helmet back on, handing him another from the hook. It’s a gaudy thing, pink with glitter, probably a joke at someone’s expense. “Unless you prefer to stay here, marry your book, and get pickpocketed.” “I—no, I—” He looks at the fountain, luminous even at midday, at the crowd, at the thought of getting on a stranger’s scooter in a foreign city. At the line of her grin. “Right. Okay. Why not.” “Ecco,” she says, pleased. “You say ‘why not’ like a man who has said ‘why yes’ only to footnotes.” He flushes, tries to adjust the helmet, which squeaks and sits a little crooked. She reaches up without asking and straightens it, a swift tug that brings her face too close to his. He can smell pepper and petrol, and something sweet that might be soap. Her eyes flick over his and away, assessing. “Hold on,” she says, and when he hesitates—where?—she grabs his hands and plants them at her waist. “Not too much. I’m not your mother. Or maybe I am. We’ll see.” He laughs, scandalized, and they take off. Rome peels open like an orange under her driving. She weaves through taxis that honk as if it’s a national anthem, past a tour bus with a cartoon Caesar on its side. Ben tries to keep his knees from knocking into cars, tries not to shout apologies at people they almost clip. Alessandra is humming cavalierly, cutting left, cutting right, laughing once when a policeman eyes them and then looks away. “What were you reading?” she calls back over her shoulder. “Um. About Bernini.” “Ah. The curly one.” She makes a loose, twirling motion with one hand. “Saints in ecstasy. People lose their minds.” He swallows. “You know art?” “I know tourists,” she says. “Also the city pays me to carry things through traffic without dying, so we are all specialists here.” They pull up outside a bar with a narrow countertop crowded with elbows. She orders them caffè with a charm that plucks smiles from men and women alike, and Ben fumbles with coins that seem to multiply in his palms. “Here,” Alessandra says softly, and plucks a coin from behind his ear. He startles; she grins. “Your lucky euro.” He blinks. There is no coin behind his ear. And there is one in her palm, then between her fingers, then in the saucer by the caffè like it had always been there. He’s halfway through deciding whether it was a trick when he sees her hand dart—quick as a thought—toward the small stand of toothpick flags at the register. One disappears. She tucks it behind her ear and pretends not to have done it. The barista laughs as if she’s told a joke he didn’t catch. They drink standing up. The coffee is a small miracle—hot, dark, the bitter slide of it cutting through his jet-lagged fog. Alessandra watches him over the rim of her cup, interested the way a cat is interested in a moth. “So,” she says. “Ben. What did we almost kill? A historian? A librarian?” “A... lecturer.” He clears his throat. “Oxford. On sabbatical.” “Of course,” she says, as if this explains everything about his posture, his careful hair, his shoes. “You study love, beauty, death?” “Seventeenth-century Rome,” he admits. “Baroque architecture.” She tips her head. “So you came to the right place to get your heart broken.” He laughs, surprised by the way it comes out of him without apology. Alessandra smiles, a softer thing that doesn’t stay long. They’re back on the scooter and then not. A narrow street. Laundry like flags above them, a grandma yelling from a fifth-floor balcony, two boys kicking a ball that ricochets off a shrine to the Madonna with a blue bulb. Alessandra stops without throwing down the stand and leaves the scooter leaning precariously. She pulls Ben by the sleeve to a tiny, dark doorway where a man is slicing porchetta into bread as if cutting through argument. “Eat,” she commands. “You can pay me back in footnotes.” He takes a bite and makes a sound he didn’t expect to make in public. She hears it and laughs again. He watches her watching him and feels the ground under him shift, as if the city were balancing a little differently. When she’s looking away—at a dog with a red bandana—her fingers are busy again. A postcard slips from a rack into her messenger bag, just a fold of movement, the way you might brush hair from your face. Ben’s eyes widen. He is sure he did not see that. He is also sure he did. “Your bag,” he says lightly, polite even in his caution. “It seems quite... accommodative.” “Everyone in Rome steals,” she says airily. “Time. Space. Parking spots. Kisses.” “I—don’t,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “You will,” she counters. “By dinner I’ll have you stealing hours from your boring future.” He should argue. He eats instead. They rejoin traffic like a slapstick routine. A taxi cuts them off. Alessandra responds with a fluid insult that even Ben can tell is anatomically inventive. The taxi driver grins. Rome is a conversation that sometimes pretends to be an argument. At the Pantheon, she refuses to let him shuffle inward with the herd. Instead she pulls him around the side to a crack in time—an iron gate ajar, a courtyard that smells like damp stone and oranges. They stand beneath the round eye of the oculus, rain beginning as a murmur up there and then, a minute later, fat drops that find them as if they’ve been individually addressed. “Run,” she says, and they do, laughing, out through the shadows, across the piazza, as the sky decides to open with the sudden, theatrical certainty of a stage curtain ripping. Tourists squeal. Vendors swear. A waiter, with salute and flourish, whisks tablecloths like sails. Alessandra grabs his wrist and tugs him toward a sodium-yellow awning stretched over a gelato shop, crowded already with damp strangers. “Perfetto,” she says, shaking rain from her hair like a dog. “A storm. The universe is bored.” They press in under the awning. The cold sweetness of the shop breathes out at them. Children line along the glass, their noses fogging the panes. Ben can see pistachio like a field, a dark river of stracciatella. His shirt clings to his back. Alessandra’s jacket gleams darker, her eyelashes jeweled with drops. He watches one bead travel down her jaw like a decision. “Which?” she asks. “No, wait. Don’t think. First word.” “Pistachio,” he says, surprised by the clarity of the choice. She nods as if he has passed a test, and orders without looking at the board, in a stream of Italian that makes the teenager scoop generously. When the cups come, she’s already palming an extra napkin dispenser and then not—the kind of thing no one misses, because the universe replaces napkins like it replaces breath. Ben notices and pretends not to. They stand close, cheeks cold from the gelato, shoulders warm from proximity, rain drumming above them in a steady, intimate rhythm. A couple argues nearby in hissed Italian that even Ben, with his textbook phrases, can read—jealousy, a watch, a lie about where. Somewhere, a man plays a melancholy accordion under the deluge, a soundtrack for their shelter. “I can’t feel my feet,” Ben says. “But I can feel my mouth. Is that a Roman thing?” Alessandra’s smile is quick. “In Rome we keep the important parts awake.” He wants to ask what parts those are. He doesn’t. They watch the street become a river, the scooters crowding like dark fish under every overhang, the tourists huddled. They share a spoon between the cups, an inevitable intimacy. When she hands it to him, her fingers touch his knuckles, lingering half a second longer than necessary. He looks up; she looks away; a decision is asked and not yet made. “You’re dangerous,” he says softly, because if the day is a confession, let it be this. “Si,” she says, just as softly. “But I’ve kept you alive for, what, three hours?” “Three?” He glances at his watch and realizes it’s somehow six in the evening. The rain has stolen whole blocks of time. “How did—” She taps his watch face. “Thief,” she says, and makes it a joke. He laughs because the alternative would be to say something that would require the rest of the day to agree. The rain thins to threads, then to a fine mist. They step back out into a city rinsed and gleaming. The asphalt shines like obsidian. The sky is the color of a fading bruise. Alessandra kicks the Vespa into life and the city flares around them like a match. On a hill that lifts them toward the clouds—Aventine? Janiculum? He’s lost—she stops at a terrace with a view that explains why artists have been unbearable about Rome for centuries. A ribbon of river. Domes like shoulders in a bath. The air washed clean, the bells finding each other and ringing as if sharing news. She sits on the low wall and offers him a cigarette. He hesitates. She snorts. “Of course not,” she says, and lights it herself, dragging in smoke, eyes half-lidded. He wants to be her vice. He wants to be her reprieve. “Why me?” he asks, before he can convince himself not to. She exhales toward the city. “Because you almost died prettily,” she says. “Because you look like you haven’t said yes in years. Because your shoes are a joke.” He looks at his shoes, soaked and earnest. He thinks she’s lying a little, and also telling him something true. She reaches into her bag, pulls out a small thing, offers it to him. It’s the postcard he had not noticed disappear—the Pantheon at dusk, a painterly version with a sky like wine. On the back, she has already scrawled: Non pensare. Chiama. A Roman number, round and generous. Her handwriting leans forward, as if even the letters are in a hurry. “You stole this,” he says, because the dance requires partners. “Don’t be English,” she says, which is also an answer. He takes it. He feels ridiculous. He feels younger. He feels like he could be someone else for a while. They ride again. Trastevere at night is a party you’re late for but welcomed into anyway. A street musician plays something with too many minor chords. A woman leans out of a window to shake a rug. Men smoke and talk with their hands as if shaping the air could make it more their own. Alessandra knows people everywhere. She is kissed on both cheeks by a butcher with a ring in his ear, waved at by a tattooed boy who might owe her money or love or both. At a red light, she turns her head a fraction. “Are you having fun, professor?” He thinks of the seminar packets he did not bring, the notes waiting in a quiet room he cannot conjure now without it seeming absurd. He thinks of the hours he’s been stolen from and given back in new currency. He thinks of the rain on the awning and the way she orders for him without making him small. “Yes,” he says simply. “Good,” she says, and the light goes green. At the edge of a square he will not be able to find tomorrow without help, she stops. “Here,” she says. “I work.” She taps the messenger bag. “People wait. I disappear.” He steps off, legs jelly. He hands her the helmet awkwardly, like it might bite him. She leans in and adjusts his collar, unasked. No one has touched him like this in a long time, the small, domestic fix that says: you are in my world for a minute. “Will I see you again?” he asks, careful, casual as a man standing on a cliff. She looks him over, amused and unsparing and something else peeking through like a coin on the bottom of a fountain. “If you don’t die crossing the street,” she says. “And if you call. And if I feel like it.” “That’s... a lot of conditions.” “I like to think of them as luck.” He holds up the postcard. “I’m an academic. I don’t believe in luck.” Her smile goes slow and then sharp. “You will,” she murmurs, and the Vespa coughs, snarls, becomes a note disappearing into the city. He stands in the wake of her, heart going too fast, hands smelling faintly of petrol and sugar, Rome humming around him as if it has swallowed his name. He looks at the postcard again. There is a smudge at the corner where her thumb must have been, a little dark moon. The guidebook is heavy under his arm. He could open it and be told where to go next. He could follow the map back to his safe apartment with its interestingly dangerous plug sockets and the books stacked like polite hostages. Instead he tucks the card into the back of the guidebook, as if it had always been there, as if he had taken it from a page he’d forgotten he'd dog-eared years ago. Non pensare, she wrote. Don’t think. He steps off the curb without looking, and then laughs at himself and looks anyway. A taxi whooshes past, close enough to lift the hair on his arms. He breathes. Somewhere, bells. Somewhere, a woman swears and a man laughs as if it were a compliment. The day is behind him like a train rushing into a tunnel, leaving him bright-eyed and a little deaf. He looks up at the slice of moon, thinks of a coin arcing through the air over water, a promise for tourists. He is not a tourist anymore, he thinks, and then refuses to think at all. He begins to walk, not home exactly, but toward the idea of one, and the city, mischievous and old, falls in beside him.

Model Output:
The Last Outpost hums like it’s purring, a content cat of patched titanium and borrowed gravity. The mag-ads along the far wall flicker in a sluggish rainbow and the neon OUTPOST sign jitters on its second O. The grav plates have been touchy all week; everyone’s drinks sway like they’re listening to music only the liquids can hear. Mine too, a chipped mug of ginger fizz I keep under the counter, rocking the way a heart does just before it skips. I wipe a ring of condensation off the bartop and pretend I don’t notice the way the floor dips for a second as the plates adjust. The late shift means the knots of miners are looser, the merchants down to their second stories and third lies. Behind me, the old holo of Andromeda’s rim—a touristy loop of dust and blue gas—glitches in and out of a pale square. Boss calls it ambience. I call it depressing. “Seven salts, Nets,” Yorel says from a stool and taps the side of his empty glass. His hands are raw, his nails rimed with something that’s probably not legal to inhale. “You’re on six, Yorel.” I tip my chin at him. “You want to go home vertical?” He grins, all teeth and stubble. “Home misses me.” “Home is a cot in Block D with a heater that hasn’t worked since the last solar flare. It doesn’t miss anyone.” I pour him a half-shot anyway. He groans, then laughs, because that’s the joke of The Last Outpost: nothing is ever enough, so we pretend it is. The door sighs open. The station moans, then stills. A breeze that isn’t a breeze slips past my cheeks and the hair on my arms lifts. I don’t know how to explain that sensation to anyone who isn’t born station-side. It’s like Mass wants you to notice her for a second and then forget again. They slip in quietly. Tentacled dreads, slicked to the left as if slept on, eyes like dark syrup edged with heat. Pale, not in the human way but in that washed-out glow some of the aquatic-born get when they’ve been too long between humidity cycles. They don’t look like a miner. They don’t look like a merchant. They look like a story. They slide onto a stool, trying to look anonymous, which is hilarious because anonymity at The Last Outpost is neon. The tentacles twitch and then settle. They keep their hands under the bar lip like they’re hiding them. “Vega whisky, neat,” they say, voice soft but hoarse, sanded smooth by a lot of not sleeping. “Better make that a double.” “That’ll ruin your evening in one go,” I say. “That’s the plan.” “Ruin your evening here and I got cleanup,” I say, because banter is how I measure danger. Even in new faces, there’s a way people lean into or away from a joke. The stranger’s mouth twitches, a tug at the corner. “I’ll try to lubricate neatly.” “Lubricate somewhere else,” Yorel throws in. A couple stools down, Jaya snorts fizz out her nose. Laughter trickles and fades. The stranger’s eyes flick over heads, calculating. I pour the Vega. The amber clings a breath too long to the glass before it yields. Gravity dips, and the surface makes a little dome, then quivers and flattens. I set it down carefully. Their hand emerges, and I clock the glove immediately. It’s a good glove. It’s also hiding. “Lot of folks wear gloves,” I say, mostly to myself, mostly for the universe to hear I’m paying attention. “Lot of bars have house rules,” they say, and drink. “Lot of bartenders keep quiet unless the gloves got claws,” I say. “Mine don’t.” They drain the first half like it’s medicine and not invention. The tentacles soften, uncoil a little. The pupils widen, then contract again. I see the moment the burn hits. Their shoulders drop. They inhale that thin Outpost air as if it’s sweeter now. “You new to this belt?” I ask, like I’m just filling air. “Passing through,” they say. “Everyone says that.” I lean in. “What’s your name, passing through?” They roll the glass between thumb and forefinger. The glove squeaks. “Do you prefer the truth or the version where we pretend we’ll never meet again?” “I prefer names that fit in your mouth.” “Nettle, isn’t it?” they say, lifting their gaze to me. Not a guess. The tentacles twitch, the smallest quiver, like they’re tasting something electric. “Or Nets. To your friends.” I keep my face pleasant. The veil between I’m-just-the-bartender and please-do-not-say-my-past out loud is thin but resilient. I’m practiced at it. I smile the way I do when someone’s about to start a fight and I need them to think they’re winning. “And you are?” I say. They consider. “Call me Quill.” “That’s not your name,” I say. “It’s the one I can afford today.” Yorel knocks the bar. “Nets, you ignoring me now? I got needs.” “Your needs owe me two hundred and twelve credits, Yorel,” I say. “You’re lucky I nurture your bad habits at all.” “I can pay,” Quill says, almost too quickly. I cock an eyebrow. “For Yorel? That’s charity.” “For your time,” Quill says. They tilt their head toward the end of the bar, where the private nook is topped with a busted star-map and a misaligned privacy screen. “Five minutes.” “Five minutes is one hundred credits and I get to keep your drink if you’re boring.” “Deal.” “You hear that?” Jaya says, raising her glass. “Nets charges by the minute now.” “I charge by the caliber of nonsense,” I say, scooping Quill’s glass and angling my chin toward the nook. I flick the privacy screen on. The static hums, not perfect, never perfect. Station hum adds to it, a harmony of failing systems and stubborn perseverance. Quill slides into the booth opposite me. Close, but not too. The glove stays on the table. Their other hand, ungloved, is bare, webbed between fingers. Riverborn. They see me clock it and tuck it back. Old instinct. Some places don’t serve Riverborn. The Outpost is not some places, but people bleed habits. “What’s the caliber?” I ask. “Explosive,” they say. “And timed.” “I prefer slow burns.” Their smile is small and gone quickly. “There are three ships in orbit that don’t belong here. One is broadcasting a sanitation crew code from Vesta-Three. One is dead silent, but the transponder pings off a registry that got scrubbed in the last Ceril Syndicate sweep. One is trying not to look like a patrol.” I swirl my ginger fizz and glance toward the bar. Yorel drags a finger through salt on the counter, sculpting a snake. Jaya is oranges and laughter. The rest are shadows with credit chips. “We get patrols,” I say. “You get bored patrols,” Quill says. “You don’t get these. And you don’t get them together.” “You been looking up a lot.” “I listen,” they say. The tentacles settle, the ends splay. “Officially? I’m a courier. Unofficially? I’m freelance problems. I was hired to move a package. Someone changed their mind. Now everyone is nervous, including me.” “You want me to hold a package.” I make it flat, so it sounds like something else. “We’re not a storage cube.” “I want you to pretend to be loud and obvious,” Quill says. “For a handful of hours.” “Ah.” I grin despite myself. “My specialty.” Quill leans forward. The privacy screen fuzzes around the shape of their face. Up close, their pupils are flecked with amber, like a galaxy under oil. “The package is here,” they say. “Under your feet, probably. In the ducting. Someone slipped it into the Outpost three hours ago, put it where it would be least obvious and most safe because everyone here is too lazy to crawl. They used your name to open a maintenance hatch.” I keep the grin. It’s fun until it’s not. “My name travels well.” “They used it because it was in the system,” Quill says. “Nettle Marc. Pressed old credentials. The kind you don’t like anyone saying out loud.” That stops me. Not long, not visible enough to show, but enough that Quill sees it. Of course they do. They drink another mouthful to give me space to decide whether to lie. The liquor surface bulges with the gravity’s sigh and they hold it steady with a finger pressed to the rim, steady as a pin. “We’re not doing the part where I deny I ever had credentials,” I say. “We’re skipping to why I shouldn’t toss you out an airlock.” “Because I came to you,” Quill says. “Because the package is tagged. Because if the wrong ships ping it, this place becomes an example.” “You’re a ray of sunshine.” “I’m telling you because you can bake a distraction like nobody else,” they say. “Because you know the ducts. Because the Outpost protects its own, and you are that too now, whether or not your bones remember.” We sit with that. My mug wobbles. The gravity dips and rises like a breath. “What’s in the package?” I ask. Quill’s eyes flick. “Does it matter?” “It will if it leaks.” “It won’t leak,” they say, absolutely certain. “It will explode.” I don’t laugh. “You said timed.” “Triggered,” Quill corrects. “Wrong hands, wrong room, wrong signal. It’s data mostly. Wrapped around something unpleasant.” “Like how you’re wrapped around ‘mostly,’” I say. “If I say no?” “Then I take it and run,” Quill says. “And the ships upstairs take me and cut me apart, and maybe they don’t find it in time, and maybe the Outpost gets to become a cautionary tale you tell the next crowded bar.” I tap a rhythm my mother used to hum when she wanted me to stop asking questions. It doesn’t work on me any more than it did then. I glance toward the bar. Del, the dockhand with the tattoo of an anchor on her wrist, has drifted in. She lifts her chin at me, the subtle signal that means someone is cruising for trouble on the docks. I lift my chin back, the signal for later. “I need more than promises,” I say. “And more than credits.” Quill nods. “Bring me a bar rag.” “Excuse me?” “A bar rag,” they repeat. “And a glass. And a spoon. And your hand for two seconds.” “Now you’re making this weird,” I say, but I get up anyway because curiosity is the only drug I never quit. I swipe three glasses, snag a clean rag, grab the long stirring spoon. Yorel wolf-whistles. I ignore him. The air near the door shivers as two new bodies come in. They smell like ozone and too-new boots. I feel it more than see it. Back in the nook, I set the items down. Quill pushes the rag toward me. “Hold that.” I do. They slide the glove off slow, and I get a flash of what they were hiding: not claws, not illegal mods. Scars, precise and ringed, like someone burned circles into their skin over and over to map a constellation. Each circle has a thin line etched into it. The spaces between run faintly with bioluminescent blue. It’s delicate and horrifying in the way that makes your throat tight. Quill dips two fingers into the water I didn’t bring and yet is there—condensed from the air, pulled into their palm, a trick Riverborn learn at twelve. They smear it on the spoon and then trace something onto the rag. The gravity hitches to hear it. The lines glow briefly and then sink. The rag looks like a rag again. “That,” they say, voice low, “is a scrambler a degree above what your boss can afford. Toss it in the ducting above your coolant lines. It will make the tag read like a thermal hiccup for a while.” “And the glass?” They tap the rim. The glass hums. It picks up the station frequency, the whisper of the grav plates. “You’ll hear when the patrol pings. You’ll have seven minutes from the first note to get loud.” “How loud?” “Loud enough that whoever’s watching thinks the thing they’re looking for isn’t worth exploding beneath a hundred bodies and a dozen bets.” “People aren’t cover,” I say. “They are the point,” Quill says, and their face is more tired than I thought it could be. “I don’t want anyone to be cover.” The two new arrivals stop at the end of the bar. One has a jaw like a landing strip, the other wears a smile wrong. The Outpost’s neon paints them green. They don’t sit. They search the room. They are the kind of problem that has a uniform even when it doesn’t. “Friends of yours?” I ask. Quill doesn’t look. The tentacles stiffen, just a hair. “They think so,” they say. “They don’t know who the package chose.” “Packages don’t choose.” “This one did,” Quill says. “It likes vents. And names that fit in your mouth.” “Cute.” My grin is back, thin as foil. “We got seven minutes?” “If you drop that rag now,” Quill says. “Maybe less. They’re impatient upstairs.” “Listen,” I say, because my mouth is ahead of me and my brain is a step late, “you bring a mess into my bar, you say my name like it’s a key, you ask me to cover you with a crowd, and you don’t even offer me a terrible secret to hold for later?” “Terrible secret,” Quill says, as if testing the syllables. Then they look at me, really look, and their voice goes softer. “When they burned those circles into me, they told me I was a map. I left before they could decide where I had to go. Every star above us looks like a promise and a trap, and I choose the promise every time. Is that terrible enough?” “It’ll do,” I say, and I fold the rag. The gravity dips. The glasses on the bar shiver. The two at the end shift closer, like they’ve scented something. I slide out of the booth. The station feels smaller all of a sudden, as if the walls have leaned in to hear. “Last question,” I say, casual as I can fake. “Who used my name?” Quill’s mouth quirks. “Someone who knew it belonged to a person who could handle this. Someone who thought you might miss being useful.” “I pour drinks,” I say. “You hold a room,” they say. “Please hold it now.” I tuck the rag into my apron. I walk back behind the bar like nothing is happening. Like I’m not about to use a bit of wet cloth and a glass song to blind three ships and a pair of bastards with too-new boots. I set the glass by the sink and listen. It sings, faint, a high keening noise that makes my molars ache. “Okay,” I say, under my breath. “Okay.” Yorel looks up at me, catches something in my face. “Nets?” “Shut up and bet me ten credits I can get the whole bar to sing along to Orion Blues,” I say, voice sharp and bright. He grins, because he knows a show when he’s being handed one, even if he doesn’t know why. “I’ll bet you fifty,” Jaya says, leaning in. “If you also throw a glass and don’t break it.” The gravity dips again, almost playful now. My drinks wobble. The station hums. The two at the end of the bar straighten like hounds. Above us, something pings distant as a star dying. “Fifty credits?” I flash my teeth. “Make it a hundred. And hold onto your drinks.” Behind me, the ducting whispers. The rag in my pocket is ordinary, damp with a map I don’t understand. Quill sits very still in the nook, eyes on the street outside the privacy screen, on the new arrivals, on me. The Outpost waits. I lift my hands. The room leans forward, and I feel the moment I love and hate most in equal measure: where everyone’s breath is mine to shape. I smack the bar twice with the spoon. Glass hum answers. The song is ready to start. And then the door opens again, hard enough to rattle the neon. A shadow fills the entrance, shoulders brushing the frame. I know that silhouette. I know the way she tilts her head to see a room as if every person in it is a chess piece and she’s three moves ahead. Nara walks in, the past I left coalesced into boots and a jacket and a gun at her hip. Her eyes find me in three beats. Her mouth does not smile. “Nettle,” she says, like gravity reasserting itself. Quill’s head drops. Yorel swears softly. The glass by the sink sings higher. The Outpost holds its breath. My heart does the same stupid wobble as the drinks. “Hi, Nara,” I say. “Want anything to drink?”

Model Output:
I’m trying to pretend that my stomach isn’t one clenched fist of hunger and anxiety, but it’s hard when I can literally smell powdered sugar on the air and hear someone laughing like their lungs aren’t strapped shut like mine. New Orleans is too loud to be a real place. It’s like someone turned up the saturation in Photoshop and hit “random.” The buildings slouch into each other with those fancy balconies like they’re gossiping, the street musicians are already out even though it’s barely ten-thirty, and tourists shuffle past in packs, mouths open, pointing at everything like it’s a zoo and we’re the animals. I keep wanting to yell at them to stop staring at me, which doesn’t make sense because they’re not. I’m not wearing anything weird—cutoff shorts, hoodie tied around my waist because the air is wet and hot but I might need to disappear—but I feel like the words TRANS KID are stamped across my forehead in neon. Also, my phone is at twelve percent, which is basically the same thing as being shipwrecked. I stand under a wrought-iron balcony that drips ferns and try to act like I belong. This is the new plan: look like I’ve made decisions before. My backpack is half-empty (bad move) but zipped tight (good move). I’ve got sixty-four dollars crumpled and sweaty in the pocket of my hoodie. There’s a busker with a trumpet playing something that’s almost a lullaby, almost a threat. Behind me, in the alley, a woman negotiates with a guy over a set of beads like it’s James Bond tech. A bead deal. Okay. I’m here. Not in Tennessee. Not in that kitchen where Mom’s fingers shook around her mug and Dad—no, not Dad—just stared like he was waiting for someone to yell “cut” and fix the script. I should find a charger. I should find a bathroom. I should find... a life? Ha. “Hey, Red.” I flinch so hard my teeth clack. The voice comes from my left, where a boy is leaned up against a streetlamp like he invented leaning. He’s a little older than me—maybe eighteen?—with a haircut that’s trying very hard not to be a mullet and a face you trust until you notice his eyes are cataloging the world like a shoplifter. His sneakers are taped at the toes with black electrical tape. He’s got a plastic bag that says THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU in red letters, and I realize he’s just called me Red because of my hair. The dye is almost grown out at the roots, and the rest has faded from ruby to rust. Red. Cute. He smirks when I don’t answer. “You look like you got dropped into the wrong video game. Need a map?” “I’m good,” I say, because I’m not going to be that kid. My voice is steady enough that I want to fist-pump. Two days ago, saying anything felt like my throat was full of broken glass. Two days ago, I had a name that wasn’t mine and a house that wasn’t safe. Today, I have nothing except a hoodie and almost a dozen percent battery. “Good,” he echoes, pushing off the pole. “Great. Super. I’m Ash.” “Like the Pokémon trainer?” He grins, teeth small and uneven. “Like what’s left after the fire.” Okay, intense. “Taylor,” I say. There’s a beat where I think, do I add that I’m trans like a footnote, like a caveat? Hi, I’m Taylor, and. Nope. Not his business. Not because I’m ashamed. Because it feels like offering meat to a dog I don’t know. “You run away, Taylor?” he asks. He says it in a breezy way, like it’s a guess, like he didn’t clock my whole life in one look. “No.” “Yes,” he says, like we’re playing Truth or Dare and he’s the dealer. “You smell like Greyhound and existential dread.” “I smell like the rain,” I retort, because I walked through a sudden shower, because the sky here doesn’t bother with foreplay. It just opens. He points across the street at a café with a chalkboard sign promising chicory coffee and a beignet that looks as big as my face. “Come on.” “I don’t—” “What, you think I’m kidnapping you? In a café? Relax. I just know the bathroom code.” He doesn’t wait. He snakes through the crowd, and I follow because I don’t have a better plan. My phone vibrates in my pocket like a mosquito: 11% now, and a text from Mom that I don’t open because I don’t have the stomach for the word please in her voice. The café smells like a hug from someone you used to like. We slide into a back corner because Ash is apparently allergic to visibility. He palms a sugar packet the way some people breathe. “Bathroom code’s 1023,” he says. “Wash your face. Cry, if you need to. Whatever. You look like your heart is about to punch its way out.” In the mirror, I look like someone who hasn’t slept, which—ding ding—correct. My eyes are red-rimmed, my hair is a cautionary tale, and there’s a zit brewing on my chin like a tiny volcano. I splash water that tastes like metal and old pennies, blot my cheeks on a paper towel, and I do not cry. I’ve spent two days shaking like a washing machine and I’m tired of it. Sixteen and tired. That should be illegal. Back at the table, Ash has acquired a beignet the size of my face and a coffee that smells like someone burned a flower and decided it was a delicacy. He pushes the plate toward me with a little flick of his wrist. “I can’t—” “Take it,” he says. “I’m not nice enough to do charity. Consider it a strategic investment in not watching you pass out.” The powdered sugar hits my tongue and suddenly my brain is like oh hello, dopamine. “Thanks,” I manage around a mouthful. He watches me, not in a gross way. More like he’s on recon. “Where’d you come from?” he asks. “Tennessee.” He nods like I’ve said Mars. “Cool. Nobody comes here from Tennessee. It’s all Ohio and Texas this time of year.” “You keep stats?” “Working theory. You learn the migratory patterns of the weird. You from Nashville? Memphis? Random cousin of Dolly Parton?” “Small town,” I say, and the words taste like dust. “The kind where the Walgreens is a destination and if you sneeze, your neighbor says ‘Bless you’ from across the street.” He smiles, then sobers. “Why’d you run?” “Why did you?” I shoot back. I’m not telling him my everything in a café after three minutes. I’m not telling him about how my mother said his name with more care than mine, how my uncle stared at my chest like it offended him now that it meant nothing to me. I’m not telling him about Dad—nope, stop, not Dad—standing with his arms crossed and unmoving, like a monument to denial. I’m not telling him how I packed in the dark, hands shaking so hard the zipper snagged four times, and walked to the highway like it was a church aisle. Ash’s jaw twitches. “I don’t like dudes with rings telling me when to be home,” he says. It’s a joke, but it isn’t. “And I don’t like fists. So I left.” I nod, and for a second we’re two planets sharing a sun. The beignet is gone before I know it, and I’m licking sugar off my thumb like a raccoon. Classy. “You got somewhere to sleep?” he asks. “I was going to find a hostel,” I lie, because the words I have nowhere sound like the end of a magic trick. He laughs, not mean. “You and the backpackers with trust funds from Vermont. Cool. Hostels ask for ID most times. You got ID?” I have a learner’s permit with the wrong name on it and a face that looks like me but also like someone I used to play on TV. “Sure,” I say. “Technically.” He tilts his head. “You’re a terrible liar.” “I’m a decent liar,” I say, because evidence suggests I’m at least functional at it. I look at the window, at a girl with glitter on her cheeks walking a dog that’s wearing sunglasses. For a heartbeat, I want to be her, careless and weird and owned by nobody. Ash taps the table. “Okay. This is where I do my Good Samaritan routine, but with disclaimers. There’s a place you can crash, no questions asked for a night or two if you keep your head straight and don’t steal anybody’s stuff. It’s not glamorous. It’s damp. Smells like old vape. Also, sometimes cops swing by and make trouble. You in?” I should not follow a stranger to his damp vape palace. I should find a Salvation Army or a youth shelter and sign forms and let my mother come get me and go home and apologize until my tongue dissolves. My stomach lurches. “Where?” I ask. “By the river,” he says. “Old warehouse. You share the space, you share the risk.” “Why help me?” I ask, because I don’t believe in free rides, or free beignets, or free kindness. Not anymore. He shrugs, but his mouth goes tight. “Because someone helped me. Because you looked like your bones were ringing.” He looks at my hoodie. “Because you said Tennessee like you were choking on it.” We leave the café, and the heat slaps us like a teacher’s hand. The sky is bright and oppressive, a blanket you can’t kick off. The French Quarter gives way to broader streets, fewer tourists, more actual people: a woman pushing a cart of cold water bottles, a guy sleeping on a strip of lawn under a tree that hoards shade like secrets. The river is a brown muscle flexing behind low walls. My phone buzzes again. Ten percent. “Hey,” I say, as we walk, “do you know where I can charge my—” “Phone?” Ash finishes, like an oracle. “Yeah. There’s a corner in the mall by the aquarium where the outlets aren’t monitored. Or the library on Loyola if you can sit still and pretend to read.” “Can you sit still?” I ask. “Only under duress.” We cut down toward the water, past a man selling pralines out of a tin that I want to bury my face in. The warehouse is really a skeleton of one. It’s brick, but parts of it are scabbed with plywood, and the door is a slit in the middle like a scar. Inside, it’s cooler and it smells like damp cardboard and cinnamon gum. There are blankets set up against one wall in a patchwork, a couple of milk crates, and a plastic tarp ceiling that flutters like a weak heartbeat. There are three other people: a girl with a shaved head and gold hoops who is sewing something purple by hand; a kid who can’t be more than fourteen, asleep with his arm thrown over his face; and a person whose gender is a question mark in a black tank top, drawing with a Sharpie on a piece of cardboard. They all look at me like they’re deciding. “This is Taylor,” Ash announces, as if that’s a completely normal thing. “They’re cool. From Tennessee.” “Yeehaw,” says Hoop Girl, deadpan. She squints. “You use they because…?” “Because that’s what I use,” I say, and it comes out easy and hard at the same time. I stand straighter without meaning to. The relief is sudden and stupid. A name is a door. A pronoun is a bridge. “Nice,” says Hoop Girl. “I’m Mel. He-him over there is Cricket,” she nods at the sleeping kid, “and they-them is Jess,” she nods at the Sharpie artist. “Don’t touch my thread. It bites.” “Hi,” says Jess without looking up. “Boundaries are sexy. Also, we all have knives.” “Okay,” I say, trying to smile like that’s not the most alarming Welcome to the Club sentence I’ve heard in my life. “You can put your bag there,” Ash says, pointing. “Watch for roaches. They’re like tiny landlords.” I lower my backpack carefully. My fingers shake. I hate that my hands still do that. I don’t want them to. I don’t want to be the fragile one in the room. “You look like your last three days were a novel,” Jess says, uncapping the marker with their teeth. Their eyes are kind, which makes me suspicious. Everything kind feels like a trap. In my head, my mother is crying again, her fingers worrying a napkin to death. My not-Dad is staring. Unclench, unclench, unclench. “Short story,” I say. “Badly edited.” Mel snorts. “You write?” “I used to write angsty poems about the sky and how nobody understood me,” I say. “So yes. I am, in fact, a teenager.” “Poems are currency,” Jess says. “You can pay rent with a metaphor if you’re good enough.” Ash disappears for a second and comes back with two extension cords coiled like snakes. “Okay,” he says. “Moment of grace.” He plugs one into a strip anchored suspiciously to the wall. “Power. For the needy.” It feels like church. I plug my phone in and it bings, and the screen lights up with more messages than I want to look at. Mom, Mom, blocked number, Uncle James (ew), unknown. A voicemail from a number I don’t know. I stare until the messages blur, then flip the phone face down like it’s misbehaving. “You good?” Ash asks, quiet. “Yes,” I lie again, because the truth is a forest with no paths. But the cord is real, and the cool is real, and the air tastes like rust and sweetness, and my name on these people’s tongues felt like something that might not be a weapon. I sit on the blanket, and for the first time in two days, I let my back lean against a wall without flinching. We spend the afternoon breathing. Mel shows me how to sew up a rip in my hoodie and calls me “kid” in a way that isn’t an insult. Cricket wakes up and eats crackers with surgical precision and tells me he’s been on the road for nine months because his foster dad was a clown (like, literally) who never took the paint off, and honestly, if that isn’t a reason to run, I don’t know what is. Jess draws a city on cardboard, a maze of streets that loops back into itself like a spell. Ash goes out and comes back with a bag of day-old bread from a bakery where “the lady knows my eyebrows.” We tear pieces off and eat them with our hands like goats. At some point, a cop car idles out front and my lungs stop. Ash squeezes my wrist once, his thumb hard bone against my pulse. The car moves on. I breathe again, shaky. My phone pings. Seven percent. It’s almost evening when he says, “There’s a place tonight. A lady named Miss Rayna gives plates of food to kids like us behind a church. No sermons. Just jambalaya that could make you cry. You in?” I nod too fast. “Yes.” We go. The sky is pink at the edges like it’s embarrassed. The church is small and stolid and the woman with the food is tall and soft and doesn’t look at me like a problem to solve. “Baby,” she says, ladling rice and meat into a bowl I don’t deserve, “you need a second helping, you ask.” Her eyes slide over my face like she’s reading a poem she’s seen before. “You safe tonight?” I glance at Ash, who is messing with a plastic fork like it wronged him in a past life. “I think so,” I say. “You call me if you not,” she says, and slips a card into my hand like it’s a magic trick. There’s a number on it. Just a number. No name. It feels like a rope thrown over a wall. Back at the warehouse, the night hums. Someone’s radio is tuned to a station that plays old songs that sound like rain. The city keeps breathing even when I can’t. My phone dies at 1%, like it’s timed to break my heart. I look at Ash. “Why did you really help me?” I ask. The beignet sugar was one thing. A bed is something else. He looks at the river for a long second, like he’s asking it for permission. “You remind me of—” He stops. Starts again. “I had a little sister,” he says finally. “She—” He scrapes his thumb against his palm. “She didn’t make it out. I don’t do that story. But I do this.” He gestures at the crappy tarp kingdom. “I do this so somebody else gets to pick a new story.” Something breaks in me and doesn’t hurt when it does. I nod. We don’t do hugs. I want to. I don’t know how to ask. Instead I say, “Thanks.” “Don’t get sappy,” he says, but he’s already smiling, and I think maybe I can breathe tomorrow, too. I curl up on my borrowed blanket with my dead phone under my cheek like a stupid talisman. The warehouse breathes. The city breathes. I say my name in my head like a quiet drum. Taylor. Taylor. Tomorrow, I’ll find the library. Tomorrow, I’ll text Mom something that won’t break both of us. Tomorrow, I’ll scrape together a plan out of thread and day-old bread and borrowed outlets. Tonight, I’m here. I’m Taylor. The air is wet and sweet. A train cries somewhere far away and the sound runs through my bones like a spine. I try to sleep. I don’t. Not really. But I rest, which is a new verb. And when the dark shifts and the river laughs and a roach as big as my thumb taps across the floor like a tiny inspector general, I laugh, too. Quiet. Mean. Alive.

Model Output:
It was well known in the settlement of Half-Useful that plans had the same shelf life as milk left in the sun. This being the case, the morning always began with plans and an argument about whether the plans would curdle before lunch. Midas squinted at the hand-drawn map on the table and rubbed at the ink as if optimism could smudge borders. He was a lean man with the sort of face people described as “surprised to still be attached to a body,” and he wore a jacket that had been patched with so many patches it had developed a patchwork society and several bylaws. Chewy sat on the table, technically a stuffed koala and technically not, with a stitched nose polished from years of nervous habit and eyes that worked as a mood ring with delusions of sentience. “We need batteries,” Midas said, with the tone of man who has just noticed the ocean is wet. “And shoes. And a way to not die.” Chewy’s eyes flickered blue, which meant he agreed and also wanted a snack. His mouth didn’t move, because that was the intended design, but his speaker did a little crackle that meant he was about to. “Shoes are a luxury. Feet are a concept,” he intoned in a rich burr that had faded over the decades to something more like a lo-fi therapist. “Batteries, though. Batteries are destiny.” Midas drew a circle on the map around the distant shape labelled The Mall of Before. “They had a store that promised to power your future. That’s practically a contractual obligation.” Chewy’s eyes shifted to a thoughtful purple. “The future did sue,” he said, because somewhere in his capacitors was a comedian who’d been paid by the pun but had defaulted on originality. “Objective: salvage batteries. Constraint: avoid death. Secondary objective: pretzels.” “We can’t eat pretzels,” Midas said. “Pretend-zels,” Chewy offered, green for hopeful. “Made of stale pride. We age them ourselves.” “How about Plan B?” Midas asked, flipping the map to a page featuring a diagram of Half-Useful’s perimeter, which looked like a drunk spider’s attempt at crochet. “Plan B is for when Plan A has been eaten by wolves,” Chewy said, eyes doing a polite yellow that meant critical but loving. “You always skip to plan letters like you’re trying to impress someone.” Midas looked at Chewy, and for a second his expression shifted, the sort of softness people reserve for sunsets and the last biscuit. “All right, Plan A. We go to the Mall, we find the battery store, we don’t kiss any fountains that look at us funny. Happy?” Chewy’s eyes flickered pink, which meant yes but he would remember this. They left Half-Useful by the south gate, which was a generous term for a door that had been several doors in its time and had adopted their strengths and weaknesses in equal measure. Francine the Gatekeeper waved them through and pressed a jar of clouded honey into Midas’s hands. “For bartering,” she said. “And because you look like you might be consumed by bees at any moment. I’d hate for them to get away with it.” “Thanks,” Midas said, wondering what that meant for his aura. They walked along the old highway, which was no longer a highway because those require cars and mutual trust. What it had become was a long, flat argument with grass and a reminder that asphalt ages into snakes if you don’t watch it. Chewy sat in Midas’s pack, ears poking out like a pair of very small, fuzzy periscopes. His eyes rotated through an idle screensaver of colors: a soothing lounge of teal, a flirtation with orange, a brief flirtation with flashing red and then back again, as if to say, “Yes, I’m paying attention, no, I’m not worried, yes, that’s a vulture, no, we don’t taste of regret, stop asking.” At the edge of sight The Mall of Before rose like a ship that had run aground in a decade. Once it had been a glass-and-steel cathedral of retail and regret. Now it was a husk wearing the bones of its own optimism, the faded banner still declaring every day to be a Grand Opening that never stopped. “Remember,” Chewy said, because he always remembered the thing that got them into trouble last time. “Last time, escalators tried to eat you.” “I fell asleep on the steps,” Midas protested. “You confided in a moving staircase,” Chewy replied, eyes briefly magenta for exasperation. They slipped through the broken entryway under a sky that had been polished into a sort of overly sincere blue. The air inside smelled of dust, old perfume, and the kind of deals that used to be printed in glossier ink. Their footsteps stirred echoes that had been waiting decades for company. The battery store was in the west wing, according to the map Midas had compiled from memories and lies. They passed storefronts full of mannequins in frozen conversation and display cases of jewelry that had lost the argument with need long ago. They had not gone ten yards when Chewy’s eyes pulsed a warning red. “Stop,” he whispered, because the air had shifted and the dust held its breath. From the shadows emerged a figure in a suit that had been an expensive decision. The figure’s hair had not survived the world, and retaliated by leaving entirely. Around his neck hung a medallion: the stylized lightning bolt of the Cult of the Last Charge. “Welcome, shoppers,” the man said with a smile that promised deals and delivered small claims court. “I am Manager Zeke. May I interest you in a membership? Lifetime.” “I like my life unbranded,” Midas said, and tried to look like someone who did not have a small electronic friend with expensive eyes. Zeke’s people stepped forward, brandishing devices that had begun life as cattle prods and grown into hobbies. “We merely collect on what is owed,” Zeke continued, “for every battery you’ve used without appreciating its sacrifice. For every flashlight flicked on without a silent prayer.” Chewy’s eyes went blue-green, a hue Midas recognized as calculating. “Counter-offer,” Chewy said, in a tone that sold authenticity. “We tithe power.” There was a pause. Zeke glanced down at the koala, because one must confirm that one is being negotiated with by a toy before society finishes its long slide. “You’re an animo-tronic.” “Animo-tronic,” Chewy agreed. “Patented. Collectible. Rare. You may worship me for a modest fee.” Zeke’s interest went from guarded to acquisitive with the speed of a bargain hunter hearing the word clearance. “You function?” “Define function.” Zeke gestured. One of his acolytes held up a small dynamo and a set of ragged leads. “We have means to test.” Midas swallowed. He had seen this play out in smaller marketplaces: a tasting, a tithing, a taking. “We’re only here for—” “Batteries,” Zeke said, pleased. “Me too.” What followed was negotiation, which is to say it was argument with props. Midas produced the honey and a pair of screws that he claimed were ceremonial. Chewy told a story about his origin that was equal parts hype and hysteria, framing himself as a prophet of the Plug. Zeke warmed to them, because con-men recognize cousins in the wild, and eventually they came to an agreement: in exchange for the location of a stockpile in the basement, they would be allowed to take a share—under supervision. “Of course,” Zeke said. “You first.” “Of course,” Midas said, because it is polite to agree to things you cannot possibly do. They descended into the underbelly, a place where the mall kept its dustier secrets. Pipes ran like pythons and the air tasted of old water and the kind of mold that wrote memoirs. The promised stockpile was behind a door labelled Do Not Enter, which meant in the old world that you could enter if you wore a lanyard. Zeke had a skeleton key and a belief in himself, which worked on many doors. Inside were boxes, stacked to the too-high ceiling. Batteries. Old brands, the fonts of empires now fallen. Midas felt his heart do a little two-step. Chewy’s eyes flickered a greedy green. And then, inevitably, everything went sideways. There is a special kind of trap that is designed by a person who understands two things: one, that people are greedy, and two, that they do not read labels. As Midas stepped forward, there was a click. The boxes sighed. The floor, which had been loyal, chose independence. As they dropped into the darkness, Chewy said, “Ah,” in the tone of someone who has just remembered a crucial detail about gravity. They landed in cold water. Midas’s limbs flailed the way limbs do when they realize they weren’t consulted. Zeke’s acolytes yelped and splashed. Above them, the doorway shrank to a coin, Zeke’s shocked face a stamp upon it. He shouted something about breach of trust and hazard pay, but the echo ate it. “Can you swim?” Chewy asked, eyes a practical yellow. “I can remember how it’s meant to look,” Midas sputtered, tasting the dust of old sales. The water moved with intention. A current took them, tugging like a rude aunt, and they were swept along through a tunnel thick with the detritus of a civilization that had believed drains were someone else’s problem. Midas grabbed for Chewy, who bobbed like a heretical bath toy. “If you short—” Midas began. “Don’t kink-shame electricity,” Chewy said, eyes now a steady white, which was the emergency setting for calm. “Left!” They went left because right was a grate. They went left because fate had a sense of humor. The tunnel spat them out into a maintenance bay and then into a room full of mannequins that had, for reasons best left unexamined, been clothed as firefighters and mothers-in-law. They crashed through a cardboard cutout of a smiling family that had negotiated better with gravity and ended up sprawled in a puddle that pouted at the edges. “Are you intact?” Midas asked, hands on Chewy, checking seams. Chewy’s eyes flickered rainbow and then surged to red. “My buns,” he said faintly. “Your what?” “Internal battery units. Two cells. In distress. Like nobility.” Midas pulled open the access flap at the back of Chewy’s plush. Inside, the original power pack was swollen and sulking. “We need batteries.” “Fortunately,” Chewy said, blinking blue now, “we’re in a building designed to sell us things we don’t need.” The thing about the end of the world is that it is very hard to end the impulse to label. They crawled, wet and sullen, through corridors until they reached the back of the battery store. It had been looted with the carelessness of necessity and the meticulousness of habit. Midas pawed through drawers and pegboards. Mostly there were those little coin cells that used to be in watches, the idea of time. Then, behind a false panel in something still inexplicably locked, he found them: a cache of rechargeable packs, pristine in blister packs that had somehow defied even righteous marauders. He popped two into Chewy with the practiced hands of someone who did not want to learn to love again. Chewy’s eyes flared a sea-glass green, then settled into a warm gold. “Hello,” Chewy said, in the voice he used when he had just decided not to die. “I am replete.” “Oh good,” Midas said. “Now we can focus on the angry men upstairs.” They could hear movement above as the Cult of the Last Charge organized their disappointment. “Plan?” Midas asked, wringing his sleeve. It made a sad sound. Chewy considered. A tiny motor somewhere whirred in thought. “We exit via the Food Court of Broken Promises.” They emerged into a hallucination of tables and chairs pretending to be islands in a sea of dropped sauce. The light from a cracked skylight made motes perform ballet that had lost its choreographer. The cultists appeared at the balcony, Zeke holding a taser like a scepter. “This,” Zeke declared, “is what comes of theft.” “You were going to tithe my friend’s soul,” Midas called back, voice echoing. “Also your button that says You break it, you bought it is not a legal doctrine.” There is a moment, even in the ruin of things, where history pauses to note if anyone will do something stupidly brave and survivable. Midas took a breath and ran. He darted between islands, grabbed a banner that had lost a sale, and vaulted onto a kiosk festooned with cell phone cases that had never met their phones. He cut the banner free with a knife that had seen too much use and threw it like a prayer. The cloth caught on a jutting ornament from a skylight and drooped in a fringe, less a rope than an accusation. Midas grabbed Chewy to his chest. “Hold on,” he said. “I always do,” Chewy replied, eyes a feverish pink. They climbed, using knots that were feelings, while stunned cultists recalibrated from moral superiority to projectile aim. Zeke flicked his taser and missed the cloth, electing instead to demonstrate electricity’s antipathy to hubris. He yelped, and an acolyte took his place, which went about as well. Hand over hand, breath over breath, they ascended through dust that had been waiting a long time to be stirred, and angled themselves toward a maintenance hatch that had thought itself retired. Midas kicked it open with a prayer to hinges. On the roof the sky slapped them with wind and possibility. “Run?” he asked. “Glide,” Chewy corrected, flicking to a serene teal. He pointed with his ear. The roof sloped to a gutter that led to a lower roof that led to a pile of what had once been a seasonal display of faux snow. They slid like reluctant children, bounced in the fake drifts, rolled to the edge, and then they were on the ground again, breathless and laughing in a way that could be mistaken for panic by any decent judge. They didn’t stop moving until the Mall was a memory and the road welcomed them back with all the grace of an indifferent host. The sun performed its ongoing attempt at optimism, and the vultures performed theirs at patience. Back at Half-Useful, Francine met them with a frown of equal parts relief and critique. “You look drowned,” she said, which was accurate. “We are emotionally hydrated,” Chewy said, eyes pulsing green like the last light of a good idea. Midas placed two of the rechargeable packs on the communal table. He also, with a flourish he did not quite feel, placed a handful of coin cells, a spool of wire, and a book about How To Be Your Own Maintenance Technician, Now With Extra Pictures. He kept one battery packet for Chewy, tucked already where it needed to be. “What did it cost?” Francine asked, because everyone kept accounts, if only with their ghosts. “Only dignity,” Midas said. “And some water from my lungs.” “And a coat of disbelief,” Chewy added. “Also, we are now banned from a religion.” Francine’s eyebrows rose. “Just the one?” “For now,” Midas said, and sat down heavily on a crate whose label promised tropical fruit and delivered memories. Chewy climbed onto his knee, light but present. His eyes did the slow, satisfied amber of a campfire after the stories. Midas leaned back, closed his eyes, and tried not to think about underground water, Zeke’s disappointed face, or the way the world kept finding new ways to make old jokes. Chewy’s speaker crackled softly, like a radio remembering a song. “Plan B for tomorrow?” Chewy asked. “Depends if Plan A forgives us,” Midas said. “But yes. Always Plan B.” Chewy’s eyes pulsed gentle blue. “Secondary objective?” “Pretend-zels,” Midas said, smiling despite everything. Chewy hummed, the way he did when his circuits were content and his fabric had stopped dripping. Outside, the wind tugged at the perimeter like a toddler with a question. Inside, Half-Useful took the new old things into its inventory of hope. It wasn’t happily ever after. It wasn’t even happily until dinner. But it was, for the moment, enough, and that was a form of treasure that didn’t need batteries at all.

Model Output:
“Mind if I die in here a moment?” “You could, but I’d have to inventory the body. We’re low on display tables.” The man in the doorway—cap pulled down, collar up, eyes bright with adrenaline—turns, closes the door, and leans back against it. Outside, the distant, muffled chorus of voices bleeds through glass and wood. “Promise I’ll try not to be dead long. Five minutes? Seven?” “You can have ten, if you stop fogging up the glass. You’re letting the condensation mess with the dust pattern.” “That felt oddly personal.” “You’re blocking my bell.” She reaches over his shoulder, taps the tin bell hooked above the doorframe. It gives a tired ding. “There. Now I know you’re not a hallucination.” He smiles in a way that’s trained to be spontaneous. “I can prove I’m real. I’ve been chased by six people with cameras for the last three streets. Hallucinations don’t sweat.” “They do if they’re Welsh.” He laughs, relieved enough to let a little sincerity through. His accent, when he drops the pretension of anonymity, is London edges sanded by somewhere else. “I’m not, actually. Welsh.” “No one’s perfect.” “That hurt more than the cameras.” She tilts her head toward the back. “There’s a storeroom, if you want actual hiding. Or you can pretend to browse and I can pretend you’re not the reason my quiet afternoon is about to become noisy.” He pretends to browse. It’s not bad acting; he picks up a battered copy of a Dylan Thomas collection and flips it open. “Do Not Go Gentle. Appropriate to my situation.” “You’ll find Larkin by theology, if you’re that way inclined.” “I’m more of a ‘the world breaks your heart, and we call it Tuesday’ sort of poet.” He glances up, scanning her in a desultory way that he hopes reads as friendly. “Have we met?” “I sell books. We’ve met in spirit if you can read.” He presses a hand to his chest. “I can. That’s a relief. And you are?” “The person who’s going to ask you to either buy or put back that copy. It belongs to a pensioner named Wyn who puts notes in the margins I have to pretend not to enjoy.” He flips to a page with a penciled note: This line is a betrayal. He smiles. “Wyn sounds dramatic. My people.” “Your people are outside, giving me anxiety.” He peeks through the glass. The little street in Canton is a narrow spill of afternoon light and puddles from a brief shower. His people are indeed out there, conferring like crows. “They’re like a Greek chorus with terrible shoes.” “So attic.” “Basement.” She quirks an eyebrow. “Greek chorus in the basement. It’s a metaphor disaster. I’m running on adrenaline. Forgive me.” He extends a hand. “I’m—” “I know who you are.” He lets the hand hover a beat too long, then retracts smoothly, folding it into a pocket like it’s part of a bit. “Then you also know I’m very charming.” “I’ve read the reviews.” “Ouch again. Do you keep them sharpened somewhere?” “Under the till.” She looks at him properly now. He’s not tall, he’s theatre-tall—unmistakable once he’s in the room. Scruffy beard that took an hour to sculpt, cheekbones made by committee. The fragile thing is in his eyes; it flits around, restless, checking. “You can move away from the door. You look like an apologetic burglar.” He slides aside, puts a casual shoulder to a shelf, pretends he belongs with secondhand spines. “You didn’t ask me to leave.” “I didn’t say you could stay.” “My favourite kind of hospitality,” he says, and then, more earnest than he meant, “Thank you.” “For what?” “For not… screaming? Or filming? Or asking for a selfie with your best angle.” “If I scream it will be about your handling of that paperback. Don’t crack the spine or Wyn will haunt me.” “I’m good with my hands.” “That sounds like a line.” “It is a line.” He waits. She doesn’t take it. It bounces off her like a paper aeroplane hitting a window. He tries again. “Do you mind if I—” He gestures at the counter. “—just… breathe? For a second?” “Breathe by all means. If you faint, aim for the bargain bin. Those are already damaged.” He perches on a stool meant for children. It holds him reluctantly. He looks around, taking in the hand-lettered section labels, the postcards on twine, the enamel mugs that say cwsi in red script. “What’s this place called?” “Owl & Anchor.” “Which are you?” “The heating bill.” “Ah.” He taps the cover of Dylan Thomas with a practiced fingertip. “I like it here. It smells like… paper and rain.” “It smells like the roof leaks. Which it does, over the cookbooks.” He laughs again, softer, and lets his shoulders drop. “I have a signing across town. Well. Had. I might also have told a journalist I was stopping at a cafe nearby, and now I’m planning my own resurrection.” “You could have just gone to the cafe.” “I have a complicated relationship with keeping my word.” “Honest of you.” He studies her. She’s tidy the way people get when they live among moving parts: hair pinned up with a pencil, jumper sleeves pushed to elbows, a smudge of ink near her thumb. She moves like a person who knows where everything is and refuses to be surprised by it. He feels the familiar impulse to perform ramp up—the one that fills the silence with glitter until the other person smiles. He lets it rise, then—because she hasn’t smiled, not properly—he lets it ebb. The ebb embarrasses him a little. “You look like you dislike me.” “I don’t know you.” “That’s an excellent way to start.” “I’d say so.” He toys with the bell on the counter until she swats his hand lightly. “Don’t. That bell has trauma.” “You’re very good at not giving me the thing I want.” “You don’t know what you want. You panicked and ran into a shop.” “I wanted a dramatic entrance.” He meets her gaze. “And a quiet place where someone would be… normal.” “I can do normal, in between alphabetizing.” She pauses, then makes a face at herself for the tone. “Tea? If I have to be nice, I like to prepare.” “Please. I’ve been living on espresso and the opinions of men named ‘Graeme’.” “Big opinions.” “Big opinions, small idea of inside-voices.” She disappears behind a curtain to a kitchenette the size of a coat. He hears the click of a kettle and the soft clang of a tin. He breathes—really breathes—for the first time in an hour. “You’re from Cardiff,” he calls. “Bold of you to assume I didn’t move here for the culture and the rugby players.” “You say that like it’s ridiculous.” “It is ridiculous. I moved here for rent and the river.” “What’s it like,” he says, “being the only person in Britain who didn’t form an opinion of me last year?” She reappears with two mismatched mugs. “I had an opinion. I just have the good manners not to announce it to your face.” “That’s cruel. Now I have to imagine the worst.” “You’ll imagine the most interesting.” He takes the mug. “What was it?” “That you were smart enough to know when someone was writing a story about you instead of the truth. And vain enough to let them, because it was a better angle.” He startles, then smiles, and the charm slips off like a jacket that never quite fit. Something rawer underneath. “And what’s the truth?” “You’re just a person who needs everyone to like him because he doesn’t.” He feels heat rise, ridiculous because she doesn’t know him and also because she does, a little. “You work in a bookshop. You shouldn’t get good lines like that for free.” “I read a lot.” “Do you like me?” He doesn’t mean to ask it. It jumps out, naked and unedited. She looks at him over the steam. “I don’t know you,” she says again, gentler. “I think you’re less annoying than I expected. That’s almost like.” He laughs into his tea, relieved and offended and something else. “I’m usually very good at this.” “At what?” “Making people fall in love with me.” “Try the local council first.” “They’ll never return my calls.” “Then stop calling.” He looks at her, really looks. “You’re not immune. You’re just not interested in the act.” “I like acts. On stages. With interval ice cream. In real life I prefer… the bit where people say what they mean.” “I don’t know how to do that without rehearsal.” He taps the mug. “But I’m not terrible at improv.” “Your improv just included Greek choruses in basements.” “I panicked.” He grins. “Look, I’m… grateful, okay? I forget what it feels like to be in a room where the only expectation is that you don’t wreck someone’s spine.” “Again, Wyn will haunt me.” “Let him. We can have a séance and ask him what betrayal he meant.” He leans back, finding the stool’s balance point. “What’s your name?” “Lowri.” “Lowri,” he repeats, with care. “That’s unfair on me.” “Why?” “It’s too beautiful. It makes me want to write it down.” “You can write it down on a receipt, when you pay for the Thomas.” He glances at the book. “You’re relentless.” “I keep the lights on.” He fishes in his pocket and comes up with a wallet that looks like it’s been to war. He slides a card across the counter. “We do cash.” “Who carries cash?” “People who hide in bookshops.” “I like you,” he says, surprised to hear it out loud. It lands between them and makes the smallest, truest sound. “There. I said a true thing without rehearsal.” Lowri blinks, then looks down at the card as if it might bite. “You should say fewer true things if you’re intending to leave.” “That’s the problem. I’m always intending to leave.” “Maybe try arriving, then.” He sits with that. Outside, the chorus shifts, bored. Someone taps on the glass and jerks, as if the shop itself rejected the sound. He ignores it. “What would it take,” he says, lightly and not at all, “to arrive?” “A hot water bottle and a willingness to shelve romance under ‘fiction’ without making a speech.” “Romance belongs under ‘instruction manuals.’” “That’s bleak.” “That’s honest.” He waits for her to scold him. When she doesn’t, he adds, “Also, I think romance is the only reason we forgive each other anything.” She snorts. “That’s not bleak enough to be on-brand.” “I’m trying something new.” She watches him watch her. It’s a shift; the air arranges itself into something that smells like rain in a used-jumper. He’s handsome. He’s clever in survival ways. He’s a little ridiculous, which helps. She feels the heat of liking him somewhere between her ribs and refuses to adjust her jumper. “There’s a back door,” she says. “If you want to leave without the chorus.” “I’ll use it in a minute.” “You’re going to wait until they get bored.” “Until I do.” She nods, as if something just slotted into some invisible section. “Alright.” “Alright?” he echoes, and hears relief chasing the joke. “You can stay until I close, if you don’t mind restacking the T-Zs in fiction.” “That’s tyrannical.” “Good. You’ll fit right in.” He stands, sets the mug aside. “I’d like to buy the Thomas,” he says. “And the Wyn marginalia. I’ll bring it back for him to scold me.” “I know where Wyn drinks. You can return it to him there and ask him what betrayal meant.” “Will you come?” “Do you need a chaperone?” “I’d like a witness,” he says, and it’s the truest thing so far. She pulls a pencil from her hair and writes something on a paper bag. The pencil leaves a shadow on her neck. He can’t not watch; it’s a small, ordinary thing and it makes his chest ache. She slides the bag to him. “That’s the pub. Thursday nights. He does the quiz. He’s terrible at geography. Don’t tell him I told you.” “I’ll be your secret-keeper.” “I doubt that.” He takes the bag. The bell dings again as a gust of sound reaches them from outside. He looks at the back curtain, then at her. “If I go out the back, will you think less of me?” “I’ll think you used a door. It’s what they’re for.” He raises the book. “I’ll pay next time.” “You won’t,” she says, entirely sure. He grins, wounded pride and delighted boy. “You’re right. I won’t. Which is why I’m paying now.” He digs again, finds three crumpled notes, flattens them on the counter. “Consider it a donation to the roof.” “Wyn thanks you in advance for not ruining his notes in the rain.” He takes a breath. “Lowri,” he says again, because he wants to, because he can. “Thank you.” “For the money?” “For letting me be a person for a minute.” He puts a hand on his chest. “I’ll try very hard not to perform that gratitude.” “You just did.” “I know.” His grin skewers itself on his own honesty. “I’m learning. It’s grotesque.” “Back door,” she says, because if he says anything else the room might tilt. He nods and goes, stopping at the curtain. He pauses, half in, half out. “Thursday,” he says, not quite question, not quite plea. “If you must,” she says, and refuses to smile until he disappears. He does, swallowed by stock and a corridor that smells like cardboard. She stands very still, listening to the quiet, to the chorus outside losing interest, to the kettle clicking itself off again. She presses her palms flat to the counter, feels the grain. Then she picks up the mug he used, sees the smudge his thumb left on the handle, and allows herself, finally, a small, private smile. The bell dings. A woman steps in, shaking an umbrella. “Did I just see—” “No,” Lowri says, smooth as shelving. “You saw rain.” “Oh.” The woman stamps her shoes, eyes the poetry pile. “Do you have Dylan Thomas?” “We did,” Lowri says, and flips her pencil back into her hair. “But he’ll be back.”

Model Output:
The door complained like an old smoker as Aya eased it inward, the iron hinges dragging a low moan from the stones. Breath hung in the cold air, and the flickering gas lamps stretched their light into long, finger-boned shadows that trembled across the underhold floor. Damp climbed the walls and beaded like sweat on the exposed pipes overhead. The scent of oil and brine was a familiar sting on Aya’s tongue—the guild’s perfume. She had expected a rush of running feet, a cry of alarm, the clatter of blades. Instead: a hush, so complete it felt rehearsed. Katra nudged her elbow, the curl of her lip visible beneath her scarf. “Too easy,” she murmured, words soft as soot. “Nothing is ever this easy unless someone wants you to think it is.” Simeon’s knuckles were white where they gripped the lantern’s handle. “Or unless someone’s already dead,” he offered, half hopeful, half horrified. Aya said nothing, but her pulse beat hard enough to be audible. She’d dressed plain and dark, a mask of ink-dyed silk hiding her features. Beneath her glove, the mark beneath her wrist—a faint, cold spiral of shadow—itched in anticipation. She did not like the itch. It meant listening in the immateria, and listening in that direction always meant something could hear her back. The underhold spread before them, a cavern punched into the foundations of the guild hall and shored up with blackened beams banded in brass. Valve wheels were hammered into the pillars like ornaments. High above, a plenum of gears turned slow and reluctant, dutiful as a tired animal. At the far end of the long chamber, an arch led deeper still, where the scythan artifact lay, sealed by locks both mortal and not. Aya took a step. The lamp cast a heavy oval of yellow. She saw the spread of coil-spring traps along the floor, carefully disarmed by Simeon’s careful fingers last week. She saw the chalk lines Katra had marked on the wall to count the guards’ rotations, now smudged and pointless. The silence in the room collected around her. “Hold,” said a calm voice. “Don’t spoil—ah, there, that’s the moment.” The lamps flared. No—someone lit more lamps, turning valves until the jets hissed and flamed. The shadows leapt back, then crawled forward again, thicker than before, gathering in corners and under tables. And in the bloom of firelight stood a woman in a black coat cut close, brass-buckled, her hair pinned like a crown of thorns. She leaned on a length of ruined harpoon that could only be a jest of a cane, its tip ground to a hook for catching ankles. Aya knew that voice. Everyone in Morska did, who dealt in anything that could be weighed and punished. The Guildmistress. Not in chains, not in disgrace—not even ruffled. Her mouth had the smile of a knife. Behind her, men stepped out of the walls of the world, or seemed to. The bodyguards were in a livery of hard leather and wool, gear-worn in places where metal met bone: brass-gauntleted hands, oil-blackened boots, and small pistols in the fashion of dockside duels, each with a red string tied ring-like at the butt. Their faces were affectionate with malice. “Good morning, little midnight mouse,” the Guildmistress said to Aya. “You must be,” she tapped the hook of her harpoon cane on the stones, “the enterprising soul who’s cost me three safehouses, a captain, and an ingrate with a moth-eaten conscience.” Katra made the smallest of movements toward her knife, but Simeon caught her wrist. “Don’t,” he breathed, eyes wide and glassy. Aya stood very still. She touched the mask, not to remove it, but to check it still existed. She felt the weight of SIMON’s lantern shifting. She felt the itch beneath her skin and willed it quiet. Keep your face closed, she told herself, like a book with a lock on it. “Guildmistress,” she said, and the word tasted like iron filings. “You were arrested this morning.” “I was,” the woman agreed. “One can be arrested and yet not incarcerated. We are nothing if not talented at slip, knot, and patience. Do give me the mask.” Aya tensed, chin lifting. “No.” The Guildmistress tilted her head as if Aya were a fascinating insect. “Ah, child. I ask because I prefer a choice before I take a thing.” She raised her hand. The bodyguards moved smoothly, like doors closing. Six in total, three closing around Aya, three shepherding Katra and Simeon. A length of chain appeared from nowhere and coiled around Simeon’s elbows; he yelped. Katra had her blade damped by a blackjack to the wrist; she sucked in a breath but did not cry out. Hands, big and brassy and professional, took Aya’s wrists. She let them, not because she was docile but because she could taste the suck of the immateria as it pressed on the back of her teeth, urging her to take. Not yet. “Don’t touch her,” Katra snarled. The word tore. “You touch her, and I will—” “You will what?” The Guildmistress’s smile widened. “Unwise promises are the surest way to make yourself ridiculous. Hush.” She flicked her fingers. A guard tugged Katra’s head back by her headscarf, not cruel, but not kind either. Aya swallowed. The glove pulled off her right hand with a sigh of worn leather. The shadow-brand on her wrist shivered in the lamplight like something alive beneath ice. The nearest bodyguard swore once, softly, with honest fear, and then forced his mouth into a line of stubborn bravery. “So,” the Guildmistress said, and the word hung like perfume. “This is the wolf in silk. The little conjurer. The ghost’s habit belongs to a young lady with beautiful hands.” Her gaze dropped to the mark and then up again to the slit of the mask. “What does your father call you when you displease him?” “Tell her to choke,” Katra spat. “Lord Vellin calls her Aya,” Simeon said in a tone that was apology made flesh. “Aya Vellin.” The Guildmistress lifted her brows. “Simeon, dear man, I thought you had more sense than a barrel of crushed barnacles. But I suppose you tell yourself you are saving her.” She sighed, almost theatrical. “Make it gallant, then.” The guards did not tear the mask away in haste. They did it with the certainty of craftsmen, a tug on the knot at the nape, a gentle slide, no pain, only the humiliation of being undressed in a room full of strangers. The silk went from Aya’s face like a tide pulling back from a shore, leaving her exposed and prickling. The cold air kissed her skin. Her hair, braided tight and hidden, was dragged forward as the mask fell. The Guildmistress examined her, head tilted as if Aya were a painting in an auction house. “Well,” she said finally. “Of course. A Vellin. It always is a Vellin with the gall to keep two lives and pay for neither. Your mother had such eyes.” Aya’s mouth opened and shut. The name struck like a thrown stone. The gaslight hissed. “You knew her,” Aya said, not quite a question. “Oh, quite intimately, once. She was bolder than you.” The Guildmistress placed the tip of the harpoon cane against Aya’s breastbone, a delicate pressure. “And she paid for it in full, which is what the city likes.” Simeon shook his head, tear-wet but stubborn. “We came to parley,” he said, which was ridiculous under the circumstances. “We came to—” “You came,” the Guildmistress interrupted, “to steal the scythan relic that gives us our hand on the throat of every dockside deal from here to the outer banks.” She smiled again, and the smile did not reach her eyes. “And yet here we are. With you in my keeping.” The chain around Aya’s wrists pinched. She had been clever in a childish way, she thought. She had imagined a collapse and a catastrophe would make the world slow just enough for her to reach in and pull out the treasure. But the world had anticipated her. Or the woman had. “Bind the companions,” the Guildmistress said lightly. “The lady stays with me.” Katra snarled in her throat and twisted like a knife, but two guards moved with the shrugging ease of long practice. Simeon hissed as his arms were pulled behind him. His lantern fell and cracked its glass. The flame guttered and went out. Aya’s heartbeat echoed in the sudden dimming. The remaining lamps flickered and threw the world into blades of shadow. “Leave them be,” Aya said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt, which was some small grace. She lifted her chin and tried to locate her spine. “You can’t kill us. Not here. Not without consequence.” “I can kill you in a great many places,” the Guildmistress said. “I can drown you in a cistern. I can put you under the foundations and let the city slowly forget you until you become a rumor. Consequence is a thing I rent by the hour.” She tapped the cane again. “But tell me how you think you are useful. I enjoy a sales pitch.” Katra’s eyes burned. “Don’t,” she whispered, agonized. “Aya, don’t give her—” “I’m a hostage,” Aya said, not to Katra but to herself, tasting the fact like bitter tea. She had thought herself the one holding leverage, the one playing at consequence. Now she was a price tag. “If you bleed me, the Vellins will not let it lie. The Ash Court will ask questions. The news sheets will print. Men with steel and money will rattle your doors. You’ll be forced to surface, and sunlight doesn’t flatter ghosts.” The Guildmistress’s eyes flickered like a lamplight in wind. “Mm. Go on.” “I’m the only student of immateria you’ve got within reach,” Aya continued, each word chosen, delicate as glass. “And you know it. Your coils and pistons are lovely things, but the scythan lock on your treasure doesn’t care for brass. It listens for a voice from the dark side of the fabric. If you want the artifact useable, I am what you have. And if you kill me, you’ll spend years finding another as practiced. If you find one at all.” Simeon made a small sound, a warning or a prayer. Katra stared like she could set fire with it. The Guildmistress’s mouth curved, briefly kind. “Do you imagine I would put a blade to your neck on the cobbles outside the magistrate’s office? No. I put it to your name, child. I have already. You will be discovered whether you leave here by the river or by the front door.” She stepped closer. The oil scent on her coat was sharp with a rasp of salt. “Your father will read a broadsheet this evening with your mask sketched on it and the title. He will send boys with knotted sticks to fetch you. They will collide with my boys. The city will clap. Does that suit?” Aya held her breath. It felt like standing on the lip of a well, peering down, listening for the splash of time. “Let me make you an offer instead.” “By all means. I adore bargains.” “Spare them,” Aya said, and her voice softed despite herself. She nodded toward Katra and Simeon. “Let them walk. Keep me. Use me. No one needs to know they were here. They were always good at being gone. I will open your lock. I will do—” She swallowed. “I will do what you ask until the artifact is yours.” Katra choked. “No,” she said, like a curse. “Aya—” “Silence her,” the Guildmistress said. It was done gently, a handkerchief knotted between Katra’s teeth, but Katra’s eyes cut Aya like thrown glass. “And what,” the Guildmistress asked conversationally, “do I give you in exchange for such charming obedience?” “Time,” Aya said. “For me. For them. For your boys not to smash against the Vellins’ in the street like waves. Time for you to plan your next move. You like planning, don’t you? This—tonight—this is style. This is not luck.” The Guildmistress watched her. The gas lamps hiccuped, then steadied. The shadows, longer now, made the woman’s face a study in alternating illumination and night. “Style costs,” she said, amused. She glanced at Simeon. “You are pale as paper, boy. Breathe through your nose.” He obeyed. “Aya Vellin.” The Guildmistress returned her attention to Aya, tasting the name. “You would sell yourself so cheaply?” “I would buy my friends dearly,” Aya said. “And if you are as clever as you want to be, you know that keeping me is more trouble than killing me—but also more profit.” There was a pause in which the underhold itself seemed to inhale. Water whispered in pipes somewhere above and behind. The gears turned, obedient to some distant engine. The mark on Aya’s wrist went cold enough to ache. “Very well,” the Guildmistress said at last, sounding bored and pleased at once. “The girl has a brain. And I have a sense of drama to maintain. Let it not be said I am careless with gifts.” She gestured. “Release the friends at the next tide change. Blindfolds, boat, out past the breaker. Not a hair out of place. If they return, I will personally decorate the quay with their tongues.” She stepped close enough that Aya could see the faint pattern of powder on her cheekbones, a careful attempt at youth. “And you,” she murmured, low and intimate. “You will show me the voice that turns a lock built by dead men. You will eat at my table and sleep under my roof and you will not try to call anything from the dark that I have not asked for. Do this, and perhaps you will not end with your mother’s rope.” Aya lifted her eyes to meet the Guildmistress’s. “I am not my mother,” she said, lying and praying it true. “Of course not,” the Guildmistress said lightly. “She was braver.” She turned away. “Bring the key-chains. Fetch the wards. We go below.” She paused, and then snapped her fingers. “Oh—and buy ink.” One of the guards blinked. “Ink, mum?” “Yes. The broadsheets must look authentic.” The smile again, knife-bright. “If the city is to watch, we might as well give it a fine performance.” They took Aya’s arm, not hard, and led her forward. Behind her, Katra made a sound that was fury and grief together. Simeon called her name like it was a rope thrown to a drowning woman. Aya kept her steps even. She did not look back. The gas flame ahead guttered and recovered, shadow and light playing like cards. The underhold’s stone breathed damp against her ankles. Somewhere below, the scythan artifact waited, patient and blind. Aya thought of her mother’s hands, and of a rope creaking over a beam. She thought of the mark on her wrist, the itch of it. She thought of how secrets rot when the air finds them. Men trust brass and oil and steel, she thought, and drew her breath as if she could contain an ocean. But we were never safe from the dark.

Model Output:
A lazy ceiling fan barely stirs the smoky air inside the bar, pushing warm currents across the cracked leather booths and the neon glow perspiring on a floor sticky with the ghosts of spilled beer. The bartender keeps polishing a glass that won’t get cleaner. The jukebox in the corner wheezes out a song that died a decade ago but refuses to lie still. Spike Spiegel takes the corner stool like it’s owed to him, hair a ruffled storm cloud, suit jacket wrinkled into an argument with itself. He taps a cigarette from a battered pack, sets it on his lip. The lighter flares, an ember ignites, and he inhales like it’s the first breath he’s taken all day. He looks hungry in that unhurried way, like hunger is an old friend who won’t stop calling. He’s got a bounty in his pocket and a hole in his wallet, and the beer in front of him will not survive the evening. The door swings open and she walks in like she’s cutting the room in half. Revy’s boots thud on the warped plank floor, dragon tattoo coiling up her right arm like a promise with teeth. Black crop top, shorts that should’ve been retired for indecency a long time ago, the twin pistols riding her hips like they’re already halfway out of their holsters from momentum alone. Cigarette clamped in the corner of her mouth, smoke slanting up past eyes that dare anything to get in its way. They clock each other the way professionals do. Spike’s eyes slide, lazy, over her, pause on the pistols, the swagger, the stance that says she’s got nowhere to be except exactly where the trouble will start. Revy’s gaze bounces off the mop of hair, the slouch that’s a careful lie, and settles on the way his hand rests near his hip—not touching the pistol, but knowing it’s there. She sidles up to the bar two stools down and snorts. “Didn’t realize we were running a special on tall, dark, and broke.” Spike exhales a thin vapor ribbon. “House special. Comes with a free headache.” He nods at her guns. “You going to use those on the beer, or are you planning to drink it first?” “Depends if it fights back.” She slaps cash on the counter. “Whiskey. In a glass if you can manage. Bottle if you can’t.” The bartender decides he can and pours. She throws it back like it’s a dare, then tosses Spike a sideways glance. “You’re Spiegel.” “Last time I checked.” He takes a sip, winces imperceptibly. “You’re Two Hands. Funny. I only see two guns.” She smirks around her cigarette. “Cute. You always this mouthy, or is it the cheap brew talking?” “It’s the company.” He taps ash into an overflowing tray. “You got a name in mind? For why we’re both here.” “Guy named Koji Tanaka,” she says. “Small-time courier, big-time stupid. Stiffed some people you don’t stiff and ran to this crap-hole with a briefcase full of regrets.” Spike tilts his head, faint grin. “Koji, Koji, Koji. Always one idiot thinking he can play keep-away with sharks.” “Sharks are honest,” she says. “They bite because that’s what they do.” She taps her cigarette. “People are worse.” They drink. The ceiling fan grinds on. Somewhere, a glass shatters; nobody flinches. Out of the corner of his eye, Spike sees a shadow detach from the back booth and trot to the bathroom—the bathroom window that sticks until it doesn’t. “You follow him?” he asks without moving his head. “Followed the money.” Revy’s smile is all edge. “Guess you followed the fumes.” “I go where the wind takes me.” Spike stands, slow and loose. “Whatever happens, happens.” “Not if I happen first.” Revy snaps her lighter shut, smoke curling along her cheek. “Bathroom, huh?” “Window.” He tosses bills onto the counter that aren’t enough, and the bartender knows better than to argue. They move. Not together, not apart—parallel lines converging on a point shaped like trouble. Spike’s stride is lazy on purpose; Revy’s is a ballistic trajectory waiting for a target. The bathroom door swings wide and the mirror reflects nobody. The window is a rectangle of night, curtain fluttering like a hand waving bye-bye. Revy’s already at the alley, pistols out, one angled toward the Dumpster, the other toward the mouth opening onto the next street. Spike’s gun whispers into his hand as if pulled by gravity. The alley smells like old rain and fresh fear. Someone’s footprints smear through a puddle. Across the street, a figure runs, clutching a briefcase against his chest like a child hugging a toy. “Bang,” Revy says, and the gun pops twice, sparks jumping off the fire escape by his head. “Missed on purpose. See? I can be nice.” “Careful,” Spike drawls, stepping into a sprint. “Your reputation might catch a cold.” They explode into motion. Koji bolts down a set of stairs to the metro, an old subterranean snake warmed by the heat of a hundred bodies and bad decisions. The turnstiles are broken; everything is broken. Revy vaults one; Spike slides under another like gravity’s just a suggestion he’s politely refusing. On the platform, the air hums with the promise of an incoming train. Koji glances back, panting. “Who are you?” “Collectors,” Spike says. “Executioners,” Revy says. “Both,” Spike amends. Koji pivots, desperation doing the thinking, and yanks a pistol from the waistband of his pants. His hand shakes like a leaf trying to imitate a storm. The train’s headlights glare in the tunnel. Revy fires first. The gun barks, and Koji’s weapon jumps out of his hand, clattering away to the tracks. “Playtime’s over,” she says. Spike closes the distance in three steps. Jeet Kune Do isn’t a martial art so much as a conversation his body has with your balance and wins. He twists Koji’s wrist, the briefcase loosens, and he plucks it like a ripe fruit. The train blasts into the station with a scream of brakes. Wind whips coats and hair and cigarette smoke into new shapes. Then there are three men at the top of the stairs—suits that have seen better days and better bosses. Syndicate runoff. Their guns come out, and the platform contracts to a battlefield. “Friends of yours?” Revy asks Spike. “Fake friends.” He steps backward, briefcase tucked under one arm, pistol in the other. “The worst kind.” The suits open fire, bullets taking bites out of column and tile. Civilians scatter like pigeons turned to people. Spike drops behind a bench, leans, and squeezes off shots that chip a man’s knee and take the fight out of his stance. Revy doesn’t so much take cover as force the concept to adapt. She advances, twin Berettas climbing a ladder of smoke, her arms an engine, her grin a slash. She shoots like breathing, like sin, like she’s having fun for the first time this week. “Left!” Spike calls, and when he says it she’s already moving. They’re synced without words, not trusting but not getting in each other’s way either. He rolls low and hammers a round into a shoulder; she ricochets a bullet off the metal rim of a trash can, catching a suit in the ear. He yells “Down!” and she drops, his shot slicing over her to punch through a hand clutching a gun. The last suit blinks at the blood on his palm as if it belongs to a stranger, then bolts. Revy steps forward, aims, and hesitates just long enough to see Spike watching her. She smiles a dead thing away and lowers her gun. “Let him carry a message.” “Messages get lost,” Spike says. “But you do you.” “I always do.” She holsters one pistol, spins the other, tucks it away. “Briefcase. We splitting it or what?” “Depends. What’s in it?” He flips the latches. Inside: cash bands and data cards like the old world shaking hands with the new. Enough to make them both less broke for a week, maybe two. Enough to make more problems. Koji groans from the platform, clutching his wrist. “My employer—” “Your employer put prices on my head and his,” Revy says, jerking her chin at Spike. “Congratulations. You’re a two-for-one sale.” Spike watches the tunnel mouth, feels the eyes of the station cameras like flies on skin. He clicks the briefcase shut. “Cops’ll be here. Or worse. We should move.” They move. Above ground, the night exhales heat. They take two blocks of neon pulse and end up at a motel that rents by the moan and keeps the lights dim to hide the stains on the walls. The clerk barely looks up; money is money, and nobody’s interesting after midnight. Spike’s boots scuff the stairwell up to a door with a number that is either a six or a nine depending on your optimism. Inside, the air is stale and sweet with old cigarettes. The bed sags like it’s tired of being blamed for bad decisions. The fan overhead is broken and doesn’t pretend otherwise. “Romantic,” Revy says, tossing her duffel onto the chair. She cracks the briefcase again, eyes the neatly stacked temptations. “I’m thinking sixty-forty.” “Fifty-fifty,” Spike says, leaning against the dresser, the picture of someone too relaxed to be comfortable. “We both took bullets that weren’t ours.” “You got a rich mouth for a poor guy.” She steps closer, smoke curling between them, the pheromones of gun oil and whiskey rising like a third party. “You going to pretend you don’t want more?” He smiles, half a crescent. “I want less. Less trouble. Less noise. Less attachment.” “Yeah?” She’s close enough now for him to see the flecks of gold in her eyes. “Then why’d you watch me back there?” “I like good form,” he says. “Yours is… interesting.” Her laugh is rough and low, a gravel-road purr. “Flatter me again and I might forget how to shoot straight.” He flicks ash into the motel ashtray, looks at her through the cigarette fog, his prosthetic eye catching the cheap light, slightly off, slightly wrong. “Try me.” She moves fast; so does he. Guns leap to hands they’ve known a long time, barrels up and steady, the room shrinking to two circles of black and the space between them. Her twin Berettas bracketing his chest, his handgun kissing the notch at her throat, the pulse there drumming a beat that argues with everything else. “Now we’re talking,” she says softly. “You trust me?” “Trust is expensive,” he says. “And I’m broke.” “Good answer.” They stand there, locked in a pose that could be a dance or a duel. The motel’s silence presses against the glass. There are sirens somewhere far away and a new smoke blooming as their cigarettes burn down to nubs. “You could shoot me,” he says. “You could shoot me,” she counters. “Wouldn’t be the first time I died,” he says, and the fatalism is a shrug he puts on like a coat. “Whatever happens, happens.” Her eyes flicker, that tiny hitch where something vulnerable tries to climb out and gets stomped back down. She smells like steel and sweat and cheap perfume that came free with the bullets. “I’m not a good person, not a bad person,” she whispers, almost to herself. “I’m just here.” “Yeah.” He slides his finger a fraction off the trigger. “Me too.” She notices. She always notices. The corner of her mouth quirks. “Fifty-fifty.” “Deal.” “Split now?” she asks. “Or after we see who hunts us first?” “After.” He lowers his gun an inch. “If we’re both still breathing.” She lowers hers in mirror, slow like she’s testing a wire. The tension doesn’t dissolve; it coils, settles, waits. The bed squeaks as she sits, leaning back on her hands, studying him the way you study a dog that hasn’t decided whether to bite or fetch. “You hungry?” she asks. “Always.” He lights another cigarette from the stub of the first, shameless chain-smoking that stitches one breath to the next. “You?” She pats the briefcase. “This is food where I come from.” “Same menu,” he says. He walks to the tiny fridge, finds a couple of beers pretending not to be warm, and tosses one to her. She catches it without looking; he can’t help the grin. They drink. They don’t laugh. They don’t say more than the night deserves. There’s a line drawn on the threadbare carpet that neither of them crosses, but they both put their toes on it and lean. Outside, a siren dopplers closer, then fades, indecisive. Inside, their guns are near enough to reach without looking, which is the same as a promise. He leans against the wall beside the window, pegs a slat in the blinds with a finger, peers out at a street that would sell them out for a better tip. She lounges like she could nap on a grenade and wake up annoyed at the shrapnel. “You going to ghost me in the morning?” she asks without looking. “Maybe,” he says. “You going to shoot me in the morning?” “Maybe.” He exhales, smoke curling, a punctuation mark that doesn’t resolve. “Then I guess we’ll see.” “Yeah,” she says, closing her eyes for a beat, then opening them, pinning him again. “We’ll see.” The fan doesn’t move. The clock on the bedside table clicks in tiny, insistent seconds. They sit there, on opposite edges of a story neither is willing to read out loud, drinking beer that tastes like pennies, holding guns that weigh as much as the things they’re not saying. The night is a coin spinning on its rim, glittering, refusing to fall.

Model Output:
The mist was thick enough to taste. It clung to the edges of the burial mound and breathed against our faces, glowing under the moonlight as if the ground itself had a fever. Astrid said that was a good sign. “It means they’re awake,” she whispered, like she was letting me in on a surprise party and not coaxing me into sitting on the back of the dead. I say “they,” because that’s what she always said. Not spirits, not ancestors. Just they. I had learned not to ask her to be more precise. We had left our bikes by the birch trees, their white trunks flickering like ribs whenever the wind licked the branches. The road was a faint hiss somewhere beyond the dark. In daylight the burial mound was just a swell of grass with a half-collapsed wooden fence around it, a spot older than the church and older than the county, older than anyone here, really. At night it looked like a knuckle pushing up from the earth’s skin. There were five old stones marking the rim, black with lichen and damp. I remember their smell—wet leaves and something ironish, like a coin on the tongue. Astrid had brought a tote bag with the things she said we needed: a white candle stub, two matches in a film canister, a little jar of something that smelled like tar and herbs, and a handkerchief that had belonged to her grandmother, thin as breath. Inside it were wheat berries and a lump of salt. “Salt to keep us from being taken,” she had said in that same breezy tone she used when we skipped class or smoked behind the gym. She swung her leg over the fence and stood with her sneakers at the edge of the mound, surveying it like a queen. She is the reason we went—of course she is; why else would I have been in that village at all? My father’s transfer had dropped us in the north in November. The first month I walked around like a sleepwalker, my mouth making polite conversation while my brain screamed for a bookstore, a cinema showing something with subtitles, the tap water not tasting like the inside of a radiator. Astrid had found me like a stray cat and offered me the kind of friendship that doesn’t ask for anything except your whole attention. She had a way of making rules feel flimsy. When she told me about the midnight games, her eyes were so bright with mischief and faith that I thought: this is the language here. Learn it or be mute. “It’s called útiseta,” she said now, testing the foreignness of it, making the vowels long and strange. She didn’t do that in class. In class she was normal. With me, out here, she became something else, slipping into a cadence she said she got from her grandmother, from the old women who had taught them to sit out and keep the dead company until they remembered your name and whispered their secrets. “You can’t talk once we start,” she said. “If you talk, they think you’re answering and then it’s rude to stop. You’ll think of something to ask. They always make you ask for something. You just have to let it pass.” “I thought the point was to ask,” I said. She shook her head. Her bobbed hair was dark with damp. “The point is to listen. We’re not begging. We’re just… sitting out.” “Isn’t it illegal?” I took the bag from her and climbed the fence, more to have something to do than because I was afraid. I was afraid. Astrid laughed softly. “Only if we dig. Or light a bonfire. Or get caught.” I set the bag down on the flattest part of the mound and felt, under my palm, the springy resistance of turf and the stiffness under that, as if the grass had grown over a table. I had not expected the mound to feel so present. In Stockholm, everything had a layer: asphalt over cobblestones over older cobblestones over mud. You were always on something built. Here, the ground felt unmediated and unamused. Astrid arranged things without theatrics. The candle went in a depression between two stones. The jar of black stuff—she called it juniper tar—she dabbed on the stones with two fingers, muttering words I couldn’t catch. The salt she held between her thumb and forefinger and flicked in the four directions in quick, businesslike gestures. “So they know we belong where we are,” she said. “What about the wheat?” “Food for them. And for us, if we get hungry.” She grinned, as if the idea of snacking on raw grains mid-ritual was charming. She placed five berries on the candle, balanced around the wick like tiny brown moons. I watched them shiver when her hand moved away. We sat down, facing each other, knees almost touching. The mist slicked my jeans. My sneakers were already wet, toes numb. In daylight the hill looked over the lake. Now the lake was just a darker line in the dark. Somewhere, a loon called, a sound like an empty bottle pressed to your mouth and sung through. It made the hairs on my neck lift. Astrid drew in a breath and blew it out in three short bursts. It felt like a signal I didn’t recognize. She struck a match against the lid of the film canister and the sound cracked the night’s surface like glass. The first one went out, sucked by the wet. The second took, and she cupped it, touching it to the wick. The candle bloomed. The wheat berries glowed like little seeds of light. “Okay,” she said. “Feet flat. Hands on the ground. You’re listening through your hands, not your head.” She pressed her palms to the turf and shut her eyes. The gesture was matter-of-fact, as if she were demonstrating a yoga pose in gym. I imitated her. The ground was cold enough to make my bones ache. The scent of the tar was sharp, almost medicinal, worming up my nose and into my memories, trying to become something familiar and failing. Finally, I put my hands down hard, as if force would help. “Don’t think about what you want,” she said, eyes still shut. “They don’t like greedy people. Think about nothing. Think about how your skin ends and the earth begins. Think about being big and flat.” “Big and flat,” I murmured, and she flicked her gaze at me, warning. All right. Big and flat. I tried to imagine my body dissolving at the edges, my hands flowing into the dirt and the dirt flowing into me, becoming neutral and heavy. Thoughts rose up anyway: my mother making tea and pretending not to be worried about where I was; my father, probably asleep, the TV still burbling in the next room; the boys in our class—Johan with his acne and his sudden interest in listening when Astrid spoke; Bea, who had seen us through the window of the school library and asked, Are you two together? in a voice that meant both accusation and envy. And beneath those, the old urge to impress, to be included, to be more than the girl from Stockholm who didn’t know how to ride on ice. My head buzzed. The night sounded like it was under pressure. The candle hissed slightly, or maybe that was the mist. I breathed in, out, in. My palms were numb to sensation but they were also, weirdly, full of information: the minute shifts of grass blades, a worm twisting under the soil, the vibration of something small moving in the roots. The mound seemed to tilt under me and then right itself. I told myself that was imagination. I told myself a lot of things. After a while—ten minutes? thirty?—the dark changed. Not the amount, exactly. The quality. As if someone had turned a dial in the sky from “empty” to “crowded.” The mist thickened, then thinned, and every thinning revealed that the trees had moved closer. I knew this was impossible. I knew the birches did not walk. But when I blinked, I could swear a trunk was a step nearer, its paper bark peeling in what looked like letters. I would have read them, if I could see without thinking. I had an urge to laugh and an urge to cry. These things come in twins. Astrid whispered, “If they ask your name, don’t give your real one.” “I thought we weren’t supposed to talk.” She didn’t answer. I looked at her. Her face was slack with attention, eyes open now and reflecting the candle as twin pins of light. She looked neither older nor younger, just very, very attentive, like a fox. A moth nosed the flame and then swirled away. The wheat berries had softened in the heat and one slipped off the candle and fell onto the wax pool and made a soft tick, like a bead hitting a porcelain sink. The sound went through me like a signal. I listened for another and there it was: the smallest scrape, like someone testing their fingernails on stone. It could have been a beetle. It could have been the wind shifting a twig. It could have been the memory of sound reaching me late. It was also, unmistakably, on the other side of the mound from us, close to the ground, as if someone were circling on their belly. “Do you hear that?” I said before I could catch the words and hold them behind my teeth. Astrid didn’t look at me. “You’re not supposed to answer,” she breathed. “I asked—” “Then you asked them.” Her voice had changed. It was flat and quiet and annoyed, like the way she spoke to her little brother when he unwrapped a present too fast. “Shh.” I held my breath. For a second the cold went all the way through me, as if I had been dunked in the lake. The scrape came again, nearer. I couldn’t see anything beyond the small disk of candlelight. The mist brightened and dimmed in a rhythm that suggested breathing—not ours. The birches’ black eyes watched, or seemed to. A thought gathered itself, formed like frost on a car window. It didn’t feel like mine. It felt like a suggestion placed next to my ear: Tell us something true. The phrase did not arrive with sound. It arrived with pressure, a feeling of gentle fingers against my skull. I wanted to say, No. I wanted to say, My name is not for you. Instead, what flooded my mouth was the truth that waits at the gate like a stray dog: I don’t belong anywhere. I didn’t say it. I bit hard on the inside of my cheek and tasted blood and salt, and the taste grounded me, pulled me up to the surface of my body. The candle guttered. The wheat berries slid. A chill touched the back of my neck, distinct from the general cold—the kind of chill that has weight, that feels like a hand. I twisted around, but there was no one. Of course there was no one. Astrid’s hand found mine on the grass and pressed down, nails digging crescents into my skin. It hurt. It was proof. “Don’t give them anything,” she whispered. “Let them tell us. We’re not begging. We’re not trading.” “They’re not real,” I whispered back, because I needed to say it to someone, because saying it to myself wasn’t enough. “Shh,” she said again. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. A faint humming started. It could have been the distant highway. It could have been my own blood. It could have been bees in winter. It filled the space between my ears and settled there, and with it came a series of images, like bubbles rising: a boy’s red cap snagged on a fence, a ring dropped and lost in the thatch to be found by a magpie, a woman with plaited hair kneeling at the lake’s edge and washing her hands for a long time, longer than necessary. None of it mattered. All of it felt like small eyes opening in the soil. Astrid leaned toward the candle and breathed on it, and the flame skittered. “Ask something,” she said, low and fast, like she was in a hurry now that she had changed the rules. “Ask about Johan. Ask if he cheated on the test. Ask if he thinks about you.” The cruelty of it flashed, sharp and bright. It was late to notice it, but there it was: we were going to harvest gossip from a place with bones. We were going to use old words to pry at other children’s soft lives. I might have done it. That was the worst part. I wanted to know. I wanted to own the knowing. It felt powerful, that wanting. It felt cheap. The hum rose. I squeezed Astrid’s hand back harder than I meant to. “No,” I said, and the word fell into the grass like a coin dropping into deep water. She hissed. Not a word. An actual hiss. “Linnea, don’t be stupid.” “I don’t want to ask them for school shit,” I said, louder by accident. My voice came back smeared with fog. Something moved in the birches—a shape separating from shadow, then sinking back. A fox, probably. A deer. A trick of my eyes. The candle went low, a blue bud. The mist tasted like metal now, like someone had struck a nail. The scrape circled the mound once more and stopped behind me, precisely at the point where my spine met the earth. I would have given anything to not know that. I would have given anything not to feel how thin the line was between posture and prayer. Astrid let go of my hand. She sat up straighter. Her face looked like it had when she told me about her grandmother, about the old ways passed down in kitchens and on porches, under the cover of being women’s work. “Fine,” she said, and she turned her head to the dark beyond the stones as if it had a face. “Tell us something, then. If you’re so clever. Tell us something that matters.” It was a dare. It was also a request. You could say we were asking the night. Or the dead. Or ourselves. You could say the only thing that answered was the cheap candle, which went out then with a sigh. But I felt, as the flame died, the softest exhale brush my cheek. It could have been the air moving. It could have been my own breath returning to me. It felt like agreement. We sat there in the dark, and then there was the smallest sound—too small to carry any weight, and yet it landed like a stone in a bowl. A voice, if you could call it that, warped by distance or age or the way mist holds and changes everything: Don’t make games of doors. It wasn’t a sentence I had ever thought. It was not how I would have put it. But it was perfectly clear. I felt it slide into me and lodge there. Astrid’s hand found mine again. We were both shaking. She laughed, a thin, brittle thing that cracked as soon as it left her mouth. “That’s just you,” she said. “That’s just you scaring yourself.” “Okay,” I said, because I wanted it to be true, because I could live with being the kind of girl who scared herself; I could not live with being the kind who listened through the ground and heard instructions. We stayed until the mist thinned and the birches looked like trees again. We didn’t light the candle a second time. Astrid kicked dirt over the wax, scattered the wheat, pressed the salt into my palm and told me to put it in my pocket and not forget it when I washed my jeans. She didn’t say if forgetting would matter. We climbed the fence and our bikes were where we had left them, glistening with dew. The lake breathed out a white plume and the loon was quiet. We didn’t talk on the ride back. At the crossroads our paths split; she lifted a hand without looking back. I pedaled home with my mouth full of that phrase. It tasted wrong and right at once. In the morning I would say I’d had a weird dream. In the afternoon at school, Astrid would tell me that Johan had confessed to the teacher about the cheat sheet and maybe we would each think, privately, that we had moved something with our bodies in the night. Years later, I still don’t know what we did. I can tell you what we didn’t do. We didn’t treat doors like games, not after that. Not even Astrid. Especially not Astrid. We learned the hard way what kind of knowledge comes when you sit out where the ground bulges with old names and act like you’re entitled to an answer. Whether anyone spoke to us or we made up a warning out of our own fear and guilt, I keep that night in my mouth like a coin. The taste hasn’t gone. It never will.

Model Output:
The room is too clean. Matte gray floor, polished steel stool legs, a poster of the rotator cuff pinned with clinical cheer to a white wall. A diffuser murmurs in the corner, a soft cloud of lavender that can’t quite scrub out the antiseptic bite of alcohol wipes and laundered linens. I sit on the edge of the plinth with my right leg hanging and my left elevated on a half foam roller, knee supported by a wedge. The surgical scars are still an angry pink—a zipper run along the medial knee where they reconstructed the MCL and a kissing mark laterally where the scope went in. They itch when I sweat. They itch now. He checks his tablet, then me. His eyes are the same slate they were when he used to line up in the lane just outside mine, steady, unreadable, the eyes that would flick to the starting gun and never to me. His sleeves are pushed to the elbow, uniform polo stretched over deltoids I don’t let myself look at. His forearms have the same tendon maps I used to memorize on long bus rides: extensor ridges, the line where the brachioradialis shadows toward the thumb. He’s cut his hair shorter. There’s a hint of gray I want to resent him for, as if he’s been practicing at getting older while I wasn’t looking. “All right,” he says, voice patient. “How’s the pain today? Baseline, before we start.” “Depends what you call ‘start.’” The sarcasm is automatic, a reflex like the spasm in my hamstrings when I dream about the last race. “Stairs were a four this morning. Sitting is a two. Standing after sitting is an eight.” He nods. “Noted.” He taps at the tablet. “We’ll begin with some patellar mobilization, then quad activation, then we’ll load into terminal knee extension. Let me check your swelling first. Relax your quad.” I exhale and try to let the thigh unspool. He places his right hand above my patella, heel of hand on my femur, fingers spread. His left hand slides to the inferior pole of my patella. His thumb presses laterally first, moving the kneecap toward the outside of my leg. The motion is small, a careful glide. The joint line is warm under his touch. He keeps his gaze on the kneecap, not on my face. “Tell me if you feel pinching or catching,” he says. “Just the pressure is okay.” The pressure is intimate—no way around it. His hands are efficient but not detached. The skin moves under his palms, warm, alive, mine. I feel the patella shift, the lateral retinaculum resisting the glide, then yielding a millimeter. It’s not pain, exactly—a pressure that radiates to the back of the knee, a ghost ache in the hamstring. He moves the patella medially, then superiorly, then inferiorly, tracking, assessing. His thumb pads are dry. Lavender threads in with the rubber mat smell and the scent of his shampoo when he leans closer. “Good mobility,” he says. “Now I want you to contract your quad. Small squeeze. Think about pulling your kneecap toward your hip.” I look at my thigh, at muscles that used to be carved and sure. The vastus medialis is soft at the edges, the teardrop gone slack. I think of the times I trained through pain and made a religion of it. Now pain is a locked door I keep slamming my head against. I try to tighten the quad without moving the hip. The fibers twitch under the skin. The kneecap draws up a fraction. His fingertips shift to hover just above my VMO. “Here,” he says, voice lower, focused. “Tap here while you squeeze. Short contraction, hold for five, then release.” He taps in a rhythm. I follow. The muscle wakes up like a limb falling asleep in reverse—pins and needles, then heat, then a small reliable tension. My knee joint feels more contained when the patella lifts. My breath is shallow. I don’t look at his hands; I watch the tendon above my kneecap tighten, the line of it like a cable. “Good. Again,” he says. The word again used to be a challenge. Today it feels like a test I did not study for. He slides the wedge from under my ankle and replaces it with a strap anchored to a low point on the wall behind me. He loops the strap around the crease of my knee, just below the joint line, padding it with a towel so it doesn’t bite. The strap pulls my tibia posteriorly, drawing the joint into a little flexion. He places a small ball under my heel so my knee has a point to press toward. “This is terminal knee extension with an external assist,” he says, palms open to show me the movement. “The strap provides posterior tibial translation. You’re going to push the back of your knee down into the table without lifting your heel. Straighten fully. Feel the hamstring relax while the quad picks it up. Don’t hike your hip.” “I remember,” I say. It comes out short. Of course I remember. We used to do these for activation before plyos, laughing, or not laughing at all. We used to be bodies that did what we told them. “I know,” he says quietly. “Just cueing.” He places his left hand on my distal femur, just above the knee, to block the thigh from rolling outward. His right hand hovers over my tibial tuberosity, not touching, a guide. “Drive the knee down. Exhale.” I exhale and press. The sensation is specific: the back of the knee moving toward the table, the hamstring letting go under his light tap, the quad clamping down with a clean, concentrated burn. The strap resists, pulling the tibia back; the joint feels congruent, like parts aligning that were clattering before. I hold for five seconds. At three, the ache sharpens along the medial joint line, a thin wire of pain. He sees it, I know he does, in the way my toes splay. “Stay with it,” he says. “It’s pressure, not harm. Breathe past it. Four. Five. Release.” I let go. The ache recedes like tide. Sweat prickles my upper lip. Lavender tastes like pennies. “Again,” he says. We cycle through ten repetitions. By the seventh, the vastus medialis starts to tremble. I can feel the fibers trembling under the skin, involuntary, a washboard ripple. I hate that he can feel it too when he steadies the femur with the heel of his hand. My breath turns into measured counts. In the ninth rep, my hip wants to externally rotate. His fingers press lightly on my greater trochanter, a reminder to keep it neutral. The contact is precise, clinical, but my skin flares anyway, nerve endings firing with a catalog that has nothing to do with anatomy. He strips the strap away and checks the joint line with his thumbs, then moves to the hamstring. “We’ll address the posterior chain. Lie back.” I ease onto my back, head on the paper pillow. He adjusts the plinth so my knee is at about thirty degrees of flexion. He places his left hand under my calf, cradling, and his right hand cups my heel. “We’re going to do a straight leg raise with dorsiflexion. Tell me when you feel tension. Not pain—tension.” “Fine line,” I say. He gives me a look that says he knows. He lifts my heel slowly, maintaining my knee extension with the web of his hand behind my joint. The movement is precise: hip flexion with knee extension biases the sciatic nerve, hamstring length. At thirty degrees of hip flexion I feel a tug at the back of my knee. At forty-five, the tug becomes a line that runs from my heel, up my calf, through the back of the knee to the sit bone. He pauses. “Ankle,” he says. “Point your toes to your face.” I dorsiflex. The line tightens, brightens, like a string plucked. My toes tingle. It’s not pain; it’s a surge of sensation, almost electrical. My hamstring answers with a defensive flutter. “That’s the nerve. We’ll floss, not hold.” He lowers my leg five degrees, the line softens. “Now point and flex at the ankle, ten times. Keep your knee straight.” I flex and point. The motion sends a wave up and down the line, each flex a slight intensification at the back of the knee, each point a release. His hands keep my leg in the exact angle that maintains the threshold without crossing it. On the eighth, my calf twitches. He steadies it with a light downward pressure on the tibia, calming the tremor. I swallow. The smell of him is soap and fabric and something warm under it, a smell I knew in locker rooms and in winter mornings when we pretended not to be freezing. We switch legs to compare; my left is an easy violin string to the right’s frayed rope. He sets my right leg down with care I want to refuse and can’t. “Side-lying,” he says. “Clamshells. We’re going to wake up your glute med. Roll onto your left side.” I turn, careful with the knee, and stack my legs, knees bent, hips flexed at about forty-five degrees. He aligns my pelvis with a flat palm on my iliac crest, guiding the top hip forward so I don’t roll back and cheat. His fingers are warm through the thin fabric of my shorts. He positions his other hand on my lateral thigh above my knee. “Keep your heels together,” he says. “Lift your top knee without letting your pelvis rock. Stop when you feel the first hint of your TFL taking over—that pull toward the front of your hip. We want the burn in the back pocket.” “The back pocket,” I repeat, because if I don’t say something, I’ll think too much about his hand mapping my bones. I lift my knee. The first few degrees are nothing. Then my glute med wakes in a small, stubborn fire along the lateral posterior hip. My pelvis tries to tilt. His palm resists, a steady wall. The tension is specific, clean. I lower and lift, lower and lift. By the tenth, the burn is real. My breathing gets loud in the quiet room. Lavender swirls. The diffuser hums. “Good,” he says. His voice betrays nothing, but his eyes flick to my face, away, back. “Two more.” On the twelfth, my hip shakes. He moves his hand to the front of my thigh, pads of his fingers finding the TFL. “Don’t let this guy steal,” he murmurs. The touch is informational. My body doesn’t care. Heat blooms low and insistent, separate from the muscle burn, humiliating in its simplicity. I clamp my jaw and finish the rep. He helps me roll onto my back again with a hand under my scapula, a brief, incidental slide over the curve of my ribs. We both pretend it wasn’t anything. He props my right heel on a slider disc. “Hamstring eccentrics,” he says. “Bend your left knee, plant that foot. Lift your hips into a bridge. Now slowly extend your right knee, sliding the heel away, keeping your pelvis level. Only go as far as you can control, then pull back.” “Worse than suicides,” I mutter. He smiles—small, involuntary. It lands in my chest like a thrown pebble, ripples expanding. I bridge. The glutes fire; the hamstrings seize—old friends turned unreliable. I slide the right heel out. At the midpoint, the hamstring on the injured side lights up, a hot wire taut under the skin. My pelvis tries to sag on the right. His hand finds my ASIS, two fingers on each hip bone, and levels me with the gentlest pressure, a physical cue that sends a direct line to muscles that listen better than my mind. I keep the pelvis level. I go an inch farther. The burn is intense, but it’s the right kind of pain—demanding, focused, contained. I pull back. The hamstring protests in a flurry of tremors. He doesn’t let me drop my hips until the heel comes home. “Two more,” he says. On the second, my right foot cramps. My toes curl. He catches it with a quick adjustment, drawing my toes toward me to open the arch, thumb pressing into the flexor hallucis brevis with a practiced roll. The cramp releases like a fist unclenching. Relief floods. I swallow a sound. He steps back finally, hands on his hips, and I feel the absence of him like cold air. The room is just a room again. The lavender is just a scent again. I stare at the ceiling tile seam until it stops shifting. “You’re stronger than last week,” he says. “Your control’s better.” I want to say I don’t care. That control doesn’t put me back on a track with a gun in the air and a lane under my feet. I want to say he betrayed our unspoken pact by leaving and becoming this—steady hands, patient voice, someone who knows exactly where to touch to make my body obey and refuses to use it for anything but fixing me. I want to say I hate the way that makes me want him more. “Great,” I say instead, flat. He hands me a band. “Home program. Terminal extensions, clamshells, heel slides. Three sets. Within pain limits. And—” “And ice,” I finish. “Elevation. Tell me to sleep and drink water. Tell me to breathe.” His mouth lifts at one corner. “Breathe,” he says. Then, softer, “You don’t have to like this. You just have to do it.” The words skitter along my nerves. He steps close again, and for a moment we are back there—with starting blocks and chalked lines—but everything is different. He reaches past me to adjust the strap hanging on the wall, his shoulder brushing my cheek. We both still, a lurch in the machine. “Same time next week?” he asks. His voice is steady but not entirely even. I nod, a jerky hinge. My knee throbs in a slow, righteous pulse. My skin remembers his hands. The lavender sinks into the back of my throat and the clinical brightness of the room sharpens to a point. The door opens with a soft click when he touches it. I hop down carefully, test the leg. It holds, quivering. He watches for a beat, professional, attentive, infuriating. Attractive. “Text if it swells more than usual,” he says. “Or if the pain goes sharp. Midline is okay; joint line catching is not.” “I know my lines,” I say, and hear what I didn’t mean. His eyes meet mine. We both look away, almost in the same breath. In the hallway, the world smells like coffee and copier paper. My knee feels like a storm contained in glass. I tuck the band into my bag, the plastic cold against my palm, and tell myself that the ache I carry out with me is just tissue healing in the invisible dark, not something bigger, messier, something I can’t rehab my way out of. I tell myself I’ll do the exercises. I tell myself I won’t think about his hands. The lavender ghost follows me home.

Model Output:
They banged the warning drum before dawn—three hollow strikes rolling over the Pearl like stones thrown down a well—and I told my orderly I had a fever. He eyed the damp of my shirtsleeve and the tremor at the corner of my mouth and said, “Yes, sir,” like a prayer he didn’t believe, and left me to the heat trapped under the mosquito net. By seven, the yard bawled the order of the day. The ship’s blisters—the marines—filed ashore in red that caught the light. I looked down from my balcony at the parade of hats and pikes and thought how clean their boots were. I was supposed to inspect the aft magazine, take the tally of powder casks, sign the papers. “Later,” I told the sun. It climbed anyway, slow as a judge. My dressing was a dumb negotiation with buttons. I managed enough uniform to pass through the gate without comment: coat, loose cravat, hat tilted low. On the stairs I met Mr. Hudson, our lieutenant of marines, triangular face all angles and chapbook courage. “Merrick,” he said, pausing two steps above, breath smelling of chalk and boiled tea. “You’ve missed muster twice this week. Captain’s in a pet about the manifests.” “Paper can wait,” I said. “Powder can’t run away.” He looked at my eyes, and I watched him choose not to see. “Inspection at four. Don’t be late.” He went down with that precise soldier’s clatter, each heel like a nail tapped in. I slipped through the back. The quartermaster’s boy followed me to the alley gate with a ledger in his hands. “Sir, Mr. Paget says if you’d sign—” “In the afternoon,” I said, pressing a coin into his palm. He looked at the coin and I looked at the boy’s wrist, black with ink, and the August sun spilled heat like a kettle. The alley received me like a throat—narrow, wet, secret. The scent that lived there pressed against the nostrils: rotting mangoes stacked in shallow baskets, their skins blistered and collapsing, soursweet and rank. The flies were a kingdom. They lifted off the fruit in a low humming sheet when a woman waved her palm-leaf fan. “Mister. Good mango,” she hissed. I shook my head. The city wobbled between wood and brick, lintels carved with peonies already grey with soot. Lanterns under awnings, faces behind cotton veils, a river of syllables. “Gaai si,” someone shouted—a curse. Again, the mango’s sweetness knifed under the fish-stall tang, under the piss in the gutter and the incense from a god-shelf where a paper-eyed warrior watched the indifferent procession of rats. “Lieutenant.” A familiar voice, English strained through ale. Patrick Byrne stepped from a doorway with his shirt half-laced. Irish by birth, Canton by appetite, his beard stiff with last night’s smoke. “You’ve a morning face.” “I’m looking for Huang,” I said, not offering apology and not taking any. “He owes me.” “You owe him, more like,” he said, grinning without teeth on the left side. “But he’s at the Peacock. Or will be when the shade reaches the threshold.” “Then I’ll wait there.” “You’ll buy there,” he said, putting a hand on my sleeve. “Bring money, James.” “Don’t use my name.” He lifted both hands, palms out. “A joke, a joke. God keep you in good health.” He stepped back and whispered, “Avoid Inspector Po’s men by the fish market. New sweeps today. Loud drums, unlucky.” The Peacock’s sign was a painted bird with flaking blue plumage. Inside was all vertical wood and dust motes, a long table pressed with tea cups, the slow scrape of chairs left to their own thoughts. Magdalene—the proprietress—had eyes like polished stone. She wore blue cotton and an iron bangle. “Mr. Officer,” she said, mocking the honorific as she poured. “Yes?” “A pipe,” I said, touching my hat. “Tea as well.” She brought me hot iron-in-brown tea and a look that was sharper than any blade I carried. She set the pipe down, her thumb sliding along the reed, not giving it to me, just letting the possibility sit between us like another customer. “You pay last time?” she asked. “Last time I saved your cousin from the press-gang,” I said. “I stood in a doorway and told a sergeant he’d miscounted. I took his tally-stick and broke it.” “Press-gang is a story,” she said flatly. “You owe three taels.” “I have an account,” I lied. “Your account is a ghost,” she said. “It eats and eats, never pays, and still it sits at my table.” The tea burned a path down my throat, a warm lie. I set the cup down and counted out silver until it stung. She watched my hands with a bored pity. From the corner, a boy in a brown vest told the room, “Inspector Po’s at the quay. Two men taken at the red door.” “There,” Magdalene said lightly, “you see? Hungry ghosts.” I waited, and the day threw heat down into the room. In came sailors in shirts with unwound necks, an American factor with violin fingers, a Cantonese clerk with ink-blackened nails and a watch pinned to his belt. The world leaned on elbows and watched the doorway. The mango-sweet rot came in gusts when someone brushed the curtain. Huang arrived late and smiling, wearing a birdcage ring on his middle finger. He smelled of tobacco and camphor oil, and his hair was slicked back with something that gave it a wet sheen without water. He raised two fingers at Magdalene, and she brought him rice. Then he turned to me. “Lieutenant Merrick,” he said, pronouncing the Rs with care. “This is a surprise.” “We had an agreement,” I said. “We had a conversation,” he corrected. He took a mouthful, chewed, and stared at the table as if it had the next line. “You English with your tall hats and small patience. What do you want?” “You know what I want.” He looked at my sleeves. He looked at the sweat that had made a tide-line along my collar. He took a breath and smelled it: the desperation, the fear that came disguised as command. “Ah,” he said softly. “The dragon in your chest talks loud today.” “We had an agreement,” I said again, because repetition made a shaky thing sound solid. “A consignment is due.” “With respect,” he said, “I don’t sell to men who owe me money.” “I don’t owe—” “You owe everybody,” he said without malice. He set down his bowl. “Captain Po is taking names. I sell you today, I lose you tomorrow. Your officers will pretend they never knew your face. You will go to a place where walls are made of bamboo and men forget their own names.” He lifted his hand and made a passable impression of my signature, the one I’d scrawled on so many platters to make them official. “I am not a fool.” Magdalene put down the pipe in front of me like she was laying out a knife. “You have coin?” she asked again. I reached into my coat and brought out a polished brass telescope, compact enough to fit a captain’s pocket, engraved with a name that was not mine. I set it on the table. “This.” Huang ran a thumb across the engraving. “Paget,” he read. He smiled without showing teeth. “Quartermaster Paget will be upset.” “He won’t be,” I said. “Not today.” “You trade honor for smoke,” he said. He nodded to Magdalene, who took the telescope with a proprietary hum. “You will pay more later. You always pay more later.” I looked at the reed, at the blue-glazed bowl, at the dampened wad of tobacco and the black stone where the pellet would go. The anticipation had a taste like tin. The rot-sugar smell in the doorway grew louder in my head. I could not tell where the alley ended and my blood began. “Come,” Huang said, weary as a teacher. He rose. “Not here. Too many eyes.” We went through the innards of the Peacock: a passage of bamboo cages with sleeping men who might have been dead, a kitchen where a girl in a red blouse chopped ginger, the knife knocking its own clock. Out the back, onto a footbridge, the boards underfoot flexing like a ribcage. The canal beneath was thick and green, like looking into a bottle of medicine. Children’s feet slapped the path; a cat watched me as if waiting for a command. “Careful,” Huang said, bored. “Your nice shoe.” “My shoes are not nice,” I said, and he laughed. We reached the den by way of an alley bulging with baskets of mangoes left too long in the sun. They made a smell you could put your hand into: bloated, sugared, half-fermented. A boy watched over them, nose slick, and every now and then pinched one to see if it would split. He winked at me. “Gweilo,” he said, but without malice. Demon, foreign ghost. I nodded like we shared a joke. Inside the den, the light surrendered. It bled in from a high hole in the wall and made a square on the matting where dust danced, slow partners at a court. The cough that lived in those rooms was ceaseless and specific, as if it belonged to the building. A woman with a freckled face lifted her head and said, “James,” in the voice of an older sister. Her name was Sarah once, and now it was something else. I stepped over two men and sat at a couch that remembered my bones. Huang prepared a long needle of a pipe, the porcelain bowl stained like an old tooth. He held the pellet close to the lamp’s flame, working it with a flattened stick, the resin softening, bubbling, sighing. He was meticulous, precise as a clerk. He passed the reed to me when the vapor rose like the beginning of speech. “Slow,” he murmured. “You always try to outrun it.” “I have duties,” I said, taking breath. He laughed. The first vapor met me in the chest and spread like warmed oil. For a moment, the mango rot and the urine-stink and the heavy breath of other men pulled back. The world was a simple list: breath in, breath out, the skin behind my knees, the taste of copper. The ache in the joints lifted its hand and asked to be excused. “You make me a promise,” Huang said, turning a pellet with his stick. “Tonight you do what you must. You come with me to the river. There is a crate at the French mission. You help me bring it.” “I—” I began. “No argument,” he said, friendly. “Or next time Magdalene takes your boots for payment. Then you are a barefoot lieutenant. Very funny.” Sarah leaned on her elbow. “They took Tom,” she said, as if we were at tea and the weather had turned. “Inspector Po. They took him by his collar, like a dog.” She tilted her head. “He screamed and screamed, and then he didn’t.” “I told you,” Huang said, not unkind. “Po has a list. Many lists. He is learning to read the names in your script.” “I’ll help tonight,” I said. The smoke arranged my words into something that sounded like courage. “What time?” “When the bell at the east tower says eight,” he said. “Bring your uniform. The gate likes to see it.” We sat in the dark womb of the den, and the hours took off their shoes and crept past. The lamp burned low, the resin hissed and pulled back and hissed again. The cough and the sigh and the sometimes-laugh. I thought of the hold of the ship, the square chalk marks, the way Mr. Paget licked his finger before turning a page. I thought of Hudson’s angle-face. I thought of our captain’s neat hands and the blue vein that ran in a true line along his temple. At some point, my head lolled and I startled as if I’d heard my name. “Wake-up time,” Huang said mildly. “You must be a soldier again.” “I was never a soldier,” I said, but I stood. My legs were filled with water. The alleys called to me again, that fruit-sick perfume and the stickiness underfoot. Outside the den, the light stabbed. I squinted. The mango boy had cut one open, and the yellow flesh bled down his wrist. He licked his arm with unabashed veneration. “Lieutenant,” he said, imitating a sergeant’s bark. He saluted me with the fruit-knife. I saluted back before I remembered what a joke it was. By the time I’d made it to the quay, the bell had struck four. Hudson waited on the planks, the river making a loud shushing, as if it could hush every sin in Honam. “Where have you been?” he asked, and it was not really a question. “Accounts,” I said. “You stink,” he said, and his nose flinched. “God’s sake, James.” “It’s the market,” I said. “The fruit.” He stared at me a long time. A junk went past, its square sail patched with cloth of three colours. A boy on the prow spat into the river and laughed when it flew back into his face. Hudson rubbed his jaw. He said, “Be at the magazine at six. The captain expects your signature. And your mind. Both, if you can manage it.” At six, I stared at casks and saw drums of water and thought of the dens that had no windows. Paget flapped the manifest. “Sir?” he asked. “We must be quick before the tide turns.” “Yes,” I said, and let my hand drag the pen along the paper, making my name like I was a man who had one. The ink bled. The lines crossed where they shouldn’t. I was two places at once. At eight, I walked with Huang along the river. The night had a wet cloth in its throat. The mission’s cross made an X against a slice of moon. We lifted a crate so heavy it felt like dishonesty, and he said, “You are strong in the wrong places.” “Story of my life,” I said, and we both smiled because it was not funny. We stowed the crate on a sampan. A girl with a lotus tattoo on her ankle pushed us off with one foot. The river licked the wood like a cat. Lanterns hummed with moths, tiny bodies at the mercy of their light. Inspector Po’s men had drummed all day and now slept in their coats. “You will be paid,” Huang said, as if it were a kindness. “Not enough. Never enough.” “I know,” I said. He made the pipe ready on the low deck, in deference to our labour. The mango smell had become threaded through with the perfume of night-blooming jasmine from some ignorant garden, and for a moment the two scents shook hands and told a polite lie about the world. I took the reed, drew, and watched the mission’s cross grow soft at the edges. “Tomorrow?” he asked. “Tomorrow,” I said, because in Canton tomorrow was a thing you could borrow, if you had the nerve. He laughed like someone who had heard the joke already. The river carried us between dark hulls and the red backs of sleeping fish. Somewhere behind me, the drums tapped again—hollow, patient—measuring a day I had spent like coin. I felt the ghost of the telescope’s weight in my pocket and reached for it before remembering it was gone. My hand closed on air. Above us, the sky had no compass. The scent of rotting mangoes hung in the wet night like a vow I kept and broke with every breath.

Model Output:
The day was very much like the day before it, which was fortunate, as this meant all the furniture knew where it stood. In the grey morning of the mountain, wind moving with the stern efficiency of a head librarian, Sisyphus put his shoulder to the boulder, took three steps for momentum, and then said, “All right, Crow, let’s do the post.” Crow, who was black as a scandal and twice as opinionated, hopped onto a flat sun-warmed stone serving as a desk. He shuffled parchment with the expertise of someone who had once stolen a set of theatre tickets and improved everyone’s evening. An inkwell, a quill, and a small pebble employed as a paperweight (strictly part-time, in a neutral union) completed the office. “First letter,” Crow cawed, “in purple ink, smells like cinnamon and divorce.” “Lovely,” said Sisyphus, breathing with the rhythm of someone who had not only made peace with an incline, but had been introduced to its extended family. Crow cleared his throat and read. Dear Sisyphus, My partner leaves wet tea bags on the counter. Every day I move them to the bin. I have tried asking nicely. I have tried asking loudly. I have tried interpretive dance. The tea bags persist, glistening like tiny sea creatures. Is this the hill I die on? — Dripping with Resentment Sisyphus put a hand to the boulder, guiding it as it muttered granite syllables. “Write,” he said, “Dear Dripping.” He dictated, and Crow’s quill scritched away. Dear Dripping, Tea bags are a small thing that has decided to audition for a larger role. It is not the tea bags you dislike, it’s the unpaid labor of remembering them. You could keep a little jar on the counter marked ‘Dry Dock.’ Put a spoon beside it. Make it easier to do the right thing than the lazy thing. Then, crucially: agree with your partner when you’re both calm that the counter is a shared space and the jar is the rule. Most people do not change because of volume, but because of clarity and ease. Also, each time you move a tea bag without comment, say to yourself, “I am choosing peace over an argument I will not enjoy.” It is astonishing how much resentment likes to drink tea. Yours, Sisyphus “Add a p.s.,” Sisyphus said, steering the boulder round a nuisance pebble with the toe of his sandal. “P.S. If you must die on a hill, choose one with a view and a picnic blanket.” Crow snorted ink down his beak and left a period the size of a walnut. “From Agamemnon’s head, he would have appreciated that.” “He was never a picnic,” Sisyphus said. He set his shoulder again. The boulder, affronted by gravity as a matter of principle, rolled on. Crow lifted the next letter. “This one has a lipstick kiss and the faint aroma of ill-advised weekends.” Dear Sisyphus, There is a person at my workplace. Let us call him “Management.” He sends emails at midnight and asks if I got his nine minutes ago. He schedules meetings about meetings. He calls me “champ.” I am not his champ. How do I put boundaries in place without becoming the office villain? — Thunderously Tired Sisyphus tilted his head, listening to the mountain, which was making its usual early afternoon sound of being far too old for this. “Dear Thunder,” he said. Dear Thunder, Boundaries are not walls; they are signposts. The first time he emails at midnight, do not answer until the hour you are paid to be awake. When you reply, include at the top: “For clarity, I respond to messages during working hours, which for me are [x–y]. Urgent issues should be marked urgent.” Then do not break this rule for three weeks. People believe the rule you live, not the one you announce. For “champ,” gently say, “Please call me by my name.” No apology, no explanation. Repeat it, even if he is wearing a tie with tiny boats. If he persists, document it. If you are in a meeting about a meeting, ask, “What decision are we making in this time?” People who like meetings dislike decisions. Bring a decision along to scare them. In private, decide what you would do if nothing changed. Then do one smaller version of that now. Yours, Sisyphus “The bit about the boats was uncalled for,” Crow murmured, impressed. “He knows what he did,” Sisyphus said mildly. A gust of wind brought the smell of hot stone and somebody else’s eternity. The boulder paused at a place where it liked to consider life’s mysteries, then rolled its eyes and kept going. “Here’s one with jam,” Crow said, pecking delicately. “Possibly strawberry. Possibly a cry for help.” Dear Sisyphus, My girlfriend wants to move in. I love her, but my flat is small and full of… me. I have an orderly system of piles. She has an orderly system of plants. I’m 32 and still unsure if I can share a bookshelf without losing myself. Advice? — Shelved and Shaky Sisyphus smiled, the sort that had laughed often and then remembered what laughter was for. Dear Shelved, You are not a book, and love is not a library. Sharing a shelf does not erase your margins; it invites annotations. Start by making space deliberately; choose which pile becomes a drawer. You will be tempted to pretend your flat is symmetrical. It is not. Offer her the place you care about least, and keep the place you care about most. Tell her the story of each object on the mantle. Ask her the story of each plant. If the stories make room for each other, you will, too. If you cannot decide, host a trial month with a box labeled “Stowaways” for things that do not yet belong. At the end, open the box together and decide what stayed merely out of kindness, and what stayed because it’s part of the map. Also, own one chair neither of you may pile things on. It is the ceasefire chair. You sit in it when you need to be only yourself for an hour. Guard this with the seriousness usually reserved for royal weddings and the last biscuit. Yours, Sisyphus The boulder, perhaps out of curiosity, attempted to roll faster. Sisyphus hummed and let it, his hands steady, his feet knowing where the mountain gave and where it argued back. “Next,” Crow said, “is less letter, more stain. The rain made an editorial choice.” He held up a parchment that looked as if someone had written their heart out and then used it to mop up their heart. Only fragments remained: “dear sisy… think my cat… actually my boss… forks go missing… destiny?? help pls.” Sisyphus took a long, sympathetic breath. “All right. We will answer all of them, then. Start with ‘Dear Possibly Several People.’” Dear Possibly Several People, If your cat is your boss, congratulations on working in a progressive environment. Put the food on time, provide sunbeams, and accept that your performance reviews will be conducted from a cardboard box. If your boss is your cat, stop dangling the laser pointer. He cannot resist chasing the new shiny thing, and you will be complicit. Put important items in writing. Close your door. Offer treats sparingly, and reward litter box usage, metaphorically speaking. As for forks going missing, buy more forks. This sounds flippant, but it is actually hospitality. Keep the good ones in a drawer you enjoy opening. Someone will ask where you got them. Tell them. They will get their own. The universe will right itself in small, tine-shaped increments. If this is about destiny, you have not missed yours. It does not come once like a tyrant; it arrives in installments like a patient postman. Pay attention to what you do when no one is making you. Follow that one street farther. If none of this applies because the letter was about plumbing, turn off the water at the mains and ask your neighbor who is good with pipes. There is always one. Yours, Sisyphus “Elegant,” Crow said, visibly pleased. “And applicable to cutlery theft.” “Everyone thinks forks,” Sisyphus said, guiding the boulder round a slick patch, “but it’s spoons you must watch. They sympathize too much.” Crow rifled again. “A short one. Smells of cardamom. ‘Dear Sisyphus, how do I find my purpose? I try hobbies, jobs, lovers. None fit. Is there a trick?’ Signed, Trying on Shoes.” Sisyphus considered. Wind wrapped itself round his bare arms like a shawl someone had knitted from old myths. Dear Shoes, The trick is to stop asking the word “purpose” to do the work of three smaller words: attention, service, and delight. Attention: Notice what you notice without effort. Keep a note of when time doesn’t scold you. Service: What can you do that leaves other people steadier? Not grand gestures. Carrying chairs after a wedding counts. If you keep doing this, someone will eventually call it your calling. It will still be carrying chairs. Delight: What is a private yes? The thing you do and then look around to see if anyone saw you being that alive. Do more of that in public, carefully. Combine two of the above and you will be difficult to stop. Combine all three and you won’t want to. If you need something to do in the meantime, sweep the threshold of your building. The neighbors will talk. This is good. Yours, Sisyphus The boulder reached the top, thought about metaphysics for the briefest possible time, and rolled back down of its own accord. Sisyphus let it go with a little pat, as if sending a child down a slide. He sat on the lip of the ledge, shoulders broad, face lined in the way that comes from having used it a lot. A shadow crossed them as Crow landed with a rustle. “Two more,” he said. “One is from a person calling themself ‘Molten Enthusiasm.’” Dear Sisyphus, My partner and I are very much in love, but our schedules never align. I work nights. They work days. We communicate by notes on the fridge like polite ghosts. How do we stay connected without falling asleep on top of each other, though that is not always a downside? — Molten Enthusiasm Sisyphus bit back a smile that showed he had, in fact, been to certain temples. “Write,” he said. Dear Molten, Design rituals that do not care what the sun is doing. A thermos note system: one writes a message on the thermos of coffee they leave, the other replies on the lid they return. A five-minute ritual when you pass each other—choose three questions you always ask and always answer, no matter how tired: What made you laugh? What was heavy? Where did you notice beauty? Set a standing date that rotates like a lighthouse—one morning pancake date, one twilight walk, one absurdly timed rendezvous in the middle of an aisle at the 24-hour grocery, in which you choose a new fruit together and eat it in the parking lot. Put it on the calendar as if you respect it. Because you do. As for falling asleep on top of each other: invest in a throw blanket. Consent and blankets are the unsung heroes of romance. Yours, Sisyphus Crow preened one glossy wing and produced the last letter with a flourish. “A spicy one.” Dear Sisyphus, I keep dating people who are disasters wrapped in charming paper. It’s fun until it’s a fire. My friends say I have a type. I say I enjoy fireworks. How do I choose someone who won’t burn down my kitchen, metaphorically, or literally, because I have very nice pots? — Singed but Sanguine Sisyphus nodded, grave as a potter. “Dear Singed.” Dear Singed, At the start, ask yourself two questions instead of one. Everyone asks, “Am I excited?” Also ask, “Am I calm?” If you are only excited, you are boarding a rollercoaster with loose bolts. If you are only calm, you are agreeing to watch paint dry while the paint judges you. Look for both. On the third date, cook together. Choose a recipe with one pan, two knives, and three steps that must be done at once. Watch how they treat the onions. Listen for please and thank you when neither of you feels glamorous. If they switch off the stove when you forget, that is a kind of love. If they eat the burnt bits and say, “We’ll do better next time,” that is another. Have a written list (yes, written) of three non-negotiables that are about behavior, not charisma. “Is kind to waiters.” “Apologizes without auditioning for an award.” “Does not make me smaller to feel bigger.” Consult the list when your brain is full of sparklers. If the list says no, trust the list. Fireworks are for festivals, not kitchens. Keep the nice pots. People can be taught; pots cannot. Yours, Sisyphus Crow blew on the ink and looked up. “That’s the lot,” he said. Down below, the boulder angled itself toward its usual starting point with the dogged optimism of a tortoise entering a marathon. “Send them,” Sisyphus said. “Give the cat/boss two peanuts. For morale.” Crow gathered the letters into his satchel with the air of a professional leaving an office that happened to be a precipice. He hesitated. “And you?” he asked, as he always did, though the answer never changed much. Sisyphus stood, stretched, put his hands on the stone he knew better than the back of his hand (the front of his hand had more personality). “I have an afternoon appointment,” he said. “Client is punctual.” He leaned, pushed. The boulder moved, considering the whole business of existence and deciding, as usual, that consistency was its own polite applause. “Crow,” he called as the incline accepted him. “Add this to the bottom of the column, will you?” Crow poised his quill. If your letter is smudged, it will still be answered. If you are smudged, likewise. Also, remember: momentum is less about pushing hard and more about knowing when to breathe. Crow paused. “That’s a bit… you know.” “A little,” Sisyphus admitted, smiling. “One for the purists.” The wind ran ahead to tell the mountain they were coming. The mountain, ancient and practical, made space. And somewhere along the slope, where a paperweight-pebble did its humble work, the ink dried on words that would go out into the world on black wings, find kitchens and desks and laps, and make their own small weather.

Model Output:
“Hey, Den Den Town. You hearing this?” “…is that…? That’s totally ‘Cruel Angel’s Thesis,’ right?” “You got it. Full-speed, no mercy. Wanna request something?” “I—uh—no. I mean, I like this one. You’re… you’re really good.” “Thanks. I practice till my fingers hate me. You look like you know your way around a synth rack though.” “W-what? How did you—?” “Backpack patches. Krell Systems, Rogue Wave, and—hang on—Roland Juno pin. That’s not random. Also, the way you were staring at the loop pedal like it was a crime scene? Synth nerd tells on herself.” “I was just… curious. Your chain. You split the signal?” “Guitar into compressor, overdrive, then the looper. Split to the mini-amp and the little speaker on the ground for ambient shimmer. It’s hokey, but it kicks in the arcade noise. I’m Kana, by the way.” “Um. I’m Yui.” “Yui! Nice to meet you. Wanna hold this pick? Lucky charm.” “I—no, I—I’m okay. Sorry. I just… you, uh, you’re busking at the entrance where the UFO catchers scream like that.” “Prime real estate. People pouring out with armfuls of plushies, hearts open, wallets half-open. See that guy with the big Rilakkuma? He tipped me in Takoyaki last week.” “Can… can you even tip in takoyaki?” “You can if it’s hot. I’ll play for food. Watch this—key change.” “Oh—woah. You reharmonized the chorus. Traded the IV for a flat-VII. That’s… that’s clever.” “You hear that?” “Yes. And you tucked the melody under those power chords. It’s—um—in the guitar community they call that ‘chord-melody,’ right? But it feels more like—like a lead sheet nobody wrote down.” “Yui! You just gave me a cooler bio line for my Insta.” “I didn’t mean—uh, sorry. I’m bad at… talking. I mean, I talk, but it comes out like file names.” “Ha! File names are hot, what are you talking about? Give me a file name.” “Uh. ‘kana_gtr_anothertake_final_FINAL_v6.wav’?” “Accurate. Alright, last chorus.” “It’s getting crowded.” “It’s Friday. Retro tournament inside. Street Fighter II screaming over there.” “I only came to look at capacitors.” “You say the sexiest things.” “…I—what?” “Kidding. But seriously, what are you building?” “Not building. Fixing. My friend—well, okay, not really a friend. Someone I follow—posted a schematic for a chorus mod for the SH-101 clone I bought. The filter drifts, and when the air conditioner kicks on, the pitch… um, sorry. That’s probably boring.” “Do I look bored?” “I can’t tell. You’re… shiny. I mean, I mean you’re… um.” “Hah! I’ll take shiny. Okay, shiny finishes ‘Cruel Angel’s Thesis’ with a whammy you aren’t expecting—” “That note! You bent it just flat, like the vocal vibrato. You listened to the original too many times.” “Between you and me? My mom hummed it making curry. I’m basically made of that song. Hey, you didn’t tip.” “I… didn’t have coins. I can—” “Relax. I’m not shaking you down, Yui. Just a custom payment plan. You owe me a nerdy fact about something here.” “Here? Like… Den Den Town facts?” “Dealer’s choice.” “Okay. You know the shop two blocks down, the one with the broken Mega Drive shell in the window? If you go in and ask politely, the owner will show you a drawer with Famicom carts that never made it to release. He won’t sell them, but he lets you hold them for a second if you promise not to breathe too loud.” “That’s fantastic. I want to go there.” “He memorized the pinouts for five different cartridge connectors. He did it to impress his… wife, I think? But she only pretends to be impressed. She runs the Gachapon shop across the street.” “So he married someone who can roll her eyes at his pinouts. That’s romantic. Oh, and—excuse me—” “Your case is open.” “I saw. Little guy thought he could drop coins without getting noticed. He can. I just wanted to thank him. Gratitude is part of the tone.” “Part of the tone?” “Yeah. Confidence, posture, hydration, gratitude. Same category. Hey, you want to try to loop something?” “No.” “That was quick.” “I mean, I… I don’t do… crowds.” “You and me both. I’m faking.” “You’re very good at it.” “Thanks. Practice faking in the mirror. Also, my amp is small. Smaller amps make me feel safer.” “That’s not—on a technical level the amp size doesn’t matter if you’re mic’d.” “Wow, you really went there.” “Sorry.” “Don’t be. It’s cute. Here, I’ll just lay down a chord and you hit this button when I nod. That’s all.” “Just… the button?” “Yep. The one that says ‘rec.’ Ready?” “Okay.” “Nod.” “—oh. Like that?” “Perfect. You looped me, Yui. Complicit.” “It feels like I stepped on the wrong train and it still got me where I needed to go.” “Good metaphor. Where do you think you needed to go?” “I don’t know. Maybe… out of my room.” “Fair. I respect rooms though. They’re honest. Hey, you smell that?” “Seaweed?” “Sushi place a block over. Kaitenzushi. Conveyor belts like tiny monorails. We should go. I’ll pack up in two minutes.” “I… with me?” “Yes, with you. I don’t invite just anybody who knows what a flat-VII is.” “I shouldn’t—” “Why not?” “I… don’t know you.” “That’s okay. We can know each other over salmon. I’m safe, I swear. You can sit nearest the door and keep your phone out like you’re texting an escape plan. I won’t be offended.” “I wasn’t—” “I do it too when meeting people off gigs. Safety first. Also, if you hate me, you can shove me into a stack of plates and bolt. Though I’d prefer you didn’t. These jeans are borrowed from my cousin.” “You joke a lot.” “It’s cheaper than therapy. But I mean the sushi. I’m starving. And you look like you forget to eat when you’re soldering.” “That’s not—well, yes.” “Called it. C’mon. One more tiny solo, then we go.” “Okay. I’ll—uh—stand here.” “Good spot. Watch the entrance—oh, speaking of loud—” “Fireworks?” “Wait, at this hour?” “There’s a flyer. Namba Summer Something-something Parade.” “Oh right, the pop-up thing. Perfect timing. I’ll time this divebomb to it.” “It’s really loud.” “It’s Osaka. We brag loud. Hold your ears if it hurts.” “I’m fine. It’s… pretty.” “Gold ones bloom like cymbals. I wish the loop station could sample that.” “You could. With a mic.” “Yeah, but then I’d need a good preamp and—there goes my last thousand yen. Okay, last run, then we go get conveyor belts.” “Alright.” “—And… done. You okay?” “Yes. The fireworks made my stomach jump.” “Same. Adrenaline tastes like cheap batteries. Help me coil?” “I can coil.” “Over-under. Not like you’re wrangling a garden hose.” “I know over-under.” “Oh! Sorry. I always assume newbies and then I embarrass myself.” “I look like a newbie.” “You look like Yui. Which is… in the top five looks today.” “Top five?” “I met a man who turned his Switch into a guitar controller. He’s number two. You’re number one.” “You’re being nice because you want me to come with you.” “I want you to come with me because I think you’re interesting. Being nice is just… me. Or I try. This street can be mean. I prefer being an antidote.” “Okay.” “Okay as in okay sushi?” “Okay as in okay sushi.” “Yesss. Help me zip this. Mind the stickers.” “‘Girls to the Front Panel.’ That’s a good sticker.” “Thank you. It’s a synth joke. No one laughs.” “I laughed. Inside.” “I’ll accept inside laughs. Ready?” “Wait. Your cable’s still—” “Caught on the sign. Got it. Let’s walk. Watch your step.” “It’s packed.” “Osaka Friday night. If you get overwhelmed, tug my sleeve.” “I don’t… tug sleeves.” “You can tug mine. It’s free.” “I—okay.” “So, Yui, what’s your favorite oscillator wave? Full disclosure, this is a compatibility question.” “Triangle.” “Scandalous. Why triangle?” “It’s… it’s clean. Like a voice humming before it becomes a word.” “Wow. I’m stealing that too.” “You can steal it. I’ll charge royalties in mackerel.” “Deal. Here we are. This place has an angry tuna on the sign—peak quality.” “It’s bright.” “Yeah. Conveyor belts are like aquariums for food. Let’s sit at the end so you can see everything.” “I’ll… sit by the door.” “Perfect. I’ll sit opposite so you can stare at me and the exit at the same time.” “I wasn’t—” “Teasing. We can pivot if it’s too much. Here comes a plate. Salmon belly.” “I’ve never been to one of these alone.” “Good thing you’re not alone. Two plates?” “One. I’m small.” “Okay, small person. I’ll grab the egg for me. Judge me later. What do you do, besides fix wayward filters?” “I… make little tracks. Nothing special.” “Define nothing.” “Like… minute-long things that never resolve. They’re like… promised bridges that never get to the chorus.” “Unfinished bridges are still pretty. I like them. Send me one.” “I can’t.” “Because you don’t want to or because you think it’s not good enough?” “Both.” “I get it. I said ‘send me one,’ not ‘send me your soul.’ Just one little clip. I’ll listen while eating convenience store pudding and I’ll send you fifteen emojis in response.” “Which fifteen?” “Depends on your waveform. Possibly the whale.” “Whale?” “Big feelings. Or maybe the sparkles. Do you… what do you listen to?” “Old game soundtracks. Namco. Yamaha FM chips. I like how the hardware puts a fence around you and says ‘make meaning inside this box.’” “See, that’s hot. Fences and meaning. I make terrible sense of boundlessness. Too many choices. I freeze.” “Me too. That’s why I like triangles.” “Full circle. Passing you the soy sauce. Want ginger?” “No, thank you. It’s like… too bright. The ginger.” “Same. We’re ginger skeptics. Another compatibility tick. Ooh, look, fireworks reflection in the restaurant glass.” “It looks like pixels.” “Right? Like somebody overexposed a SNES palette.” “I like that. Do you come out here every Friday?” “Most. School’s meh, work’s meh, this is where I feel like the noise is my noise, not just the noise, you know?” “I think so.” “Do your parents care if you’re out late?” “They think I’m at a bookstore. Which is not a lie. There are books here.” “In the gacha machines? Literature in capsule form.” “I had a math teacher who said probability is literature.” “I like them. Do they have office hours at the arcade?” “They would if they were serious.” “You’re funny, Yui.” “I don’t try to be.” “Best kind. Oh, incoming: mackerel for your royalties.” “Payment accepted. Do I… owe you a fact now?” “Please.” “The shop with the curry pan outside? If you ask for ‘Night Mode,’ the owner will turn off half the lights so you can see the RGB fans on the PCs. He did it once for me because I looked like I had been inside for a hundred years.” “You say the nicest things about yourself.” “It was a compliment. It was… it felt like someone saw me.” “I see you. I mean—sorry, too earnest? I do that sometimes.” “It’s okay.” “Yui, can I ask a question? You can veto.” “Okay.” “What made you stop for me? There are a lot of buskers.” “You were playing what my dad hums when he fixes our microwave. He doesn’t sing it right. You did.” “Now I’m emotional. Great. I’m going to drip soy sauce down my face like a mess.” “Don’t cry. The waitress will worry.” “I won’t. But I like that. Tell your dad he can have my chord chart. I’ll write ‘microwave version’ on it.” “He would like that.” “Another plate?” “I’m full.” “Already? Tiny person indeed. We’ll sit for a second. Let the belt hypnotize us. Then I’ll walk you to the train.” “You don’t have to.” “I want to. Also, selfishly, I want to ask you more about your chorus mod. Does it give the 101 a little swirl or full-on spaceship?” “In-between. It adds a slow drift, like you’re turning your head in a small room.” “Okay, poet. I want to hear it. Maybe next time you can bring it here, and I’ll plug you into my amp. We’ll loop your swirl.” “I… maybe.” “Maybe is yes adjacent. I’ll take it.” “Can I ask you something back?” “Always.” “Why did you invite me?” “Because when you stood there, you looked like you were hearing the version of the song I was trying to play, not the sloppy street version. And because your voice does that thing when you talk about waves—like you’re stepping on a train and you’re not sure if it’s the right one, but you go anyway. I like that.” “I was going to run away.” “I could tell. That’s why I made the sushi move fast. It’s harder to run if there’s promise of salmon.” “You’re manipulative.” “Only in service of friendship.” “Friendship.” “Scary word? We can downgrade to acquaintance.” “No. Friendship is fine.” “Good. Then it’s settled. Yui the triangle wave and Kana the overdrive. Next time, bring me a minute-long track that feels like a promised bridge. I’ll bring fireworks on a USB.” “You can’t put fireworks on a USB.” “Watch me. I’ll name it fireworks_final_FINAL_v7.” “I’d listen to that.” “You will. Now, finish your mackerel. The night’s long, and Den Den Town sleeps like a cat—one eye open, tail flicking.” “You’re weird.” “Likewise. Cheers, Yui.” “Cheers, Kana.”

Model Output:
I noticed it first in Mr. Pritchard’s class, while he was explaining the water cycle with a PowerPoint that looked like it was made before any of us were born. He kept mixing up evaporation and condensation, and he refused to call on anyone but Madison, who sat front row like she owned the place. I was in my usual middle-back seat, scribbling skulls in the margin of my notes and tapping my new smart watch against the desk. Dad got it for me for my thirteenth birthday—a real brand, not one of those brick-sized knockoffs. Sleek black band, glowing blue interface. It counted my steps, tracked my sleep, and said “Good morning, Jax” in this chipper voice I could tell had been programmed by someone who never had a morning in middle school. I’d already set the alarms and connected it to my phone. What I hadn’t figured out was this hidden option I found while messing around under my desk: a tiny hourglass icon that wasn’t in the manual. When I pressed it, the watch vibrated once, just a whisper in the skin of my wrist. And Mr. Pritchard was suddenly talking about evaporation again. At first I thought I’d zoned out, daydreaming skulls, and my brain had looped back. But when Madison’s hand shot up with the same “Actually—” she always used, and the same freckles scrunched across her nose, and even the same cough from the vent above the whiteboard, I realized it wasn’t me. I clicked the hourglass again. Another vibration, a tingle up my arm, and time slid like a wet plate. Mr. Pritchard stammered back to the start of the slide, and I watched it all again. Same cough. Same “Actually.” Same spray of light from the dusty projector. Three times, four times. By number five, I’d timed it: thirty seconds. A thirty-second rewind. My watch could rewind time. I’d seen things online about people editing videos to look like time loops or fake magic tricks with cuts, but this was different. The feeling was like being picked up and put back down in the exact same spot, except every time I landed, the world was a tiny fraction more out of sync with me. Hard to explain; only my stomach knew. It swooped faintly, like stepping off the last stair when you think there’s one more. I didn’t tell anyone. Not right away. What would I say? “Hey, my watch is a time machine, want to mess up the science lesson?” They’d laugh. Or worse, they’d believe me and take it away. So I used it on small things. When I said something dumb to Trevor at lunch and he made that face, I nudged the hourglass and said something less dumb. When the ball bounced off my knee in P.E., I tapped the watch and the ball obediently came back, and I scored like I meant to. When Mom asked if I’d fed the cat and I had not, I rewound and fed him before answering, making her eyebrows lift like she was surprised I was suddenly responsible. It was just thirty seconds, but thirty seconds can fix a lot. By Friday, though, I’d noticed the weirdness. Not the gut swoop—that got easier. It was my voice. In the bathroom that morning, I’d said “Hello” to myself just to test the echo, and the sound was… thicker. Like someone had turned up the bass. And my hair had done this thing where it refused to lie flat, like every cowlick had declared independence. “Puberty,” Dad said cheerfully when I asked if my voice sounded weird. “Welcome to the club.” I didn’t feel like joining any clubs. But maybe it was normal. I mean, I was thirteen. Gym class, Coach Ramirez split us into teams for dodgeball. I used the watch three times in a row to avoid getting pelted by Kaylee Taylor, who threw like a pitcher and smiled like a shark. After the third rewind, she squinted at me. “How’d you do that?” “Do what?” I asked, voice coming out rougher than I wanted. “That duck. You knew I was gonna throw.” “Lucky,” I said, and then I felt it. Not the swoop. The pull. My skin felt too tight, like the watchband had shrunk while I wasn’t looking. I tugged at it and realized the impressions it left were deeper than they’d been yesterday. My wrist looked different. Bone looked sharper. I caught my reflection in the backboard glass and frowned. After school, I went to the bathroom before the bus. It’s the kind with greenish lights and stalls with graffiti in Sharpie—if you learned to read in middle school bathrooms, you’d be scarred for life. I stepped up to the sink and looked at myself. Same eyes. Same dark hair doing its own thing. A pimple forming on my chin like a malevolent volcano. But there was more definition in my jaw. That’s what Dad would call it. I would have called it weird. “Hey, Jax,” someone said behind me. Trevor. He walked in, tossed his backpack on the tile like he didn’t care, and gave me a look that was half friendly, half something else. Something measuring. “What?” I asked. “Nothing. You look… different. Did you—” He leaned closer. “Shave?” “I’m thirteen,” I said. But my voice betrayed me again, a crack then a lower note that made me want to chew on the air to get it back. He grinned. “Okay, Barry White.” He washed his hands and left. I stared at my reflection. “Hello,” I said again. It was definitely lower. This time, when I blinked, my face in the mirror blinked a moment later. Not like a regular mirror’s split-second delay. More like a few beats. And in that delay—only for a flicker—I saw something that made my stomach plunge past any staircase. An older face. Mine, but not. Sharper jawline. A shadow where facial hair would be if I could grow any. Eyes that had seen things I hadn’t. It was there and gone, like a bad signal. I shoved away from the sink, my heart banging. The smart watch was warm on my wrist. It couldn’t be. The watch rewound time outside, not inside me. Except what if both were true? What if every rewind cost me something? I didn’t use it on the bus. I didn’t use it when Mom burned the garlic bread and Dad told her it was “rustic,” which earned him a glare. I lay in bed and watched the ceiling fan spin, thinking of the older face like a ghost hovering in my mirror. The watch’s face glowed on my nightstand, the hourglass icon waiting, patient. I dreamed of being pulled backward and forward through a carousel where every horse was me at a different age, reaching out with wooden hooves. Saturday should have been normal. Cartoons with my little sister Mia, cereal dust at the bottom of the box. But the group chat blew up before ten. Madison had posted a picture from in front of the school. It was cordoned off with yellow tape. In the blurry photo, you could see smoke stains on the bricks around the science wing windows. There were comments: “Explosion?” “No school Monday?” “Omg.” Mom got the notification email from the principal. There had been a small fire. No injuries, thank God. “Faulty wiring,” the email said. “We will be performing an investigation and repairs.” Faulty wiring. Except I knew what I’d done yesterday in Mr. Pritchard’s class. I’d rewound him five times in a row because it was funny to watch him say “evaporation” wrong. The projector had been ancient. If time is a thread, imagine tugging at it again and again until it frays. I opened my texts to Madison. Did anything else happen? Anyone hurt? She wrote back right away: No but the lab got trashed. Chemicals everywhere. Mr. P is freaking. I clicked the news app. It hadn’t caught up yet. I clicked the watch. The hourglass pulsed once. Maybe I could fix it. Rewind longer than thirty seconds. It had only ever gone thirty, but there had to be a way. I swiped through menus I hadn’t seen before, dug deeper. Hidden settings flickered like fish. The watch recognized my fingerprint, then asked for a passcode I didn’t remember setting. When I hesitated, it pulsed again, like a heartbeat. My thumb found the hourglass and pressed, and the world hissed. It wasn’t thirty seconds this time. Sound stretched thin. The hum of the refrigerator elongated into a single, piercing line. My hands trembled as the living room rewound around me—Mia’s cereal spoon lifting, lowering, lifting again—then sped backward into last night, my ceiling fan spinning the other way, my breath functioning like lines on a graph drawn in reverse. Back further: Friday afternoon, the bus squealing, the bathroom mirror glinting, Mr. Pritchard’s mouth forming the word “evaporation.” My watch burned against my skin. Everything snapped like a rubber band. I was standing in the school hallway, papers on the bulletin board un-faded by smoke, the air with its usual disinfectant tang. Through the window into the science wing, I could see Mr. Pritchard fiddling with the projector, his brow furrowed. No fire. No melted wires. I did it, I thought, and in the same second, I realized my jeans felt tighter at the calves. The world looked slightly shorter, like the floors had risen. Panic stitched through me. I sprinted toward the classroom before I could think, burst through the door. “Mr. Pritchard!” I said. He jumped. “Jackson!” he scolded, then blinked. “Goodness, your voice… Did you have a growth spurt overnight?” I ignored him. “Don’t turn it on. The projector. It’s… wired wrong.” He looked at me like I’d said the mitochondria were a kind of pasta. “We’ve used this for years,” he said, and turned it on. The hum was fine. The light sputtered to life. I let out a breath that shook. I wanted to use the watch to make myself not look like a total freak, but I forced my hand away. I had to stop. I made myself stop. The day moved like molasses after that, every second heavy with the weight of not pressing the hourglass. I could tell when I reached for it without meaning to; my fingers twitched. At lunch, Kaylee threw a carrot slice and hit me in the forehead, and I didn’t fix it. Madison tripped in the hallway, and I helped her up the normal way. The world breathed. At home, I went to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror again. I tried to make myself look the way I thought a normal thirteen-year-old should look. It didn’t work. The older face flickered again between my eyes and the mirror’s surface like a broadcast from the future. This time, though, the older me didn’t look scared. He looked tired. I swallowed. “Hi,” I said. The flicker mouthed it with me, then lagged, then matched. He--I--pressed two fingers to the sink. We both did. The porcelain was cold, and my skin felt warmer than it should, almost feverish. I pulled up my sleeve. The watch had left a paler band of skin underneath, like a tan line, except it wasn’t from sun. It was from time. Time had been polishing me like a rock in a tumbler. It wasn’t done, either. The icon was still there, blue and patient. Use me, it seemed to say. Fix anything. The voice in my head that had my own voice, only deeper, said, Every choice is a thread. If you pull, it unravels somewhere. Mom knocked. “Jax? You okay in there?” “Yeah,” I said, and the word caught the way voices catch when they’re skipping steps. “Just a second.” I looked at myself for longer than a second, at the me who was me and at the echo, the older me, who I didn’t know yet. I thought about the fire that didn’t happen because I’d pulled back, and about other things I’d fixed that had changed people in ways I couldn’t see. I thought about Kaylee’s almost-smile when I didn’t dodge. I thought about Trevor’s laugh echoing in the bathroom and how it had sounded jealous. I thought about the thirty seconds multiplied over and over, how they add up to minutes, to hours, to versions of me that stepped past each other in a hallway I couldn’t map. I should smash the watch, I thought. Or lock it away. Or throw it in the deepest part of the dumpster behind school and never look back. But the watch vibrated, just then. Not like when I pressed it. It did it on its own, like it was reminding me it was there. The hourglass pulsed and the world blurred, and for a breath, I saw beyond the mirror. My older face bent closer, and I realized what I’d mistaken for tiredness was something else. Determination. He mouthed, “Once more.” “Why?” I whispered. My voice sounded like my dad’s when the car wouldn’t start. The older me didn’t answer. He reached toward the glass like he could press my watch from the other side. Mom knocked again, urgency in the wood. “Jackson?” “I’m coming,” I said, but my finger hovered over the hourglass. I had fixed the fire. Maybe there was something else, something I didn’t know I’d broken, further back or forward. Time wasn’t a verse you could read and understand. It was a song on a scratched disc. Maybe I’d have to play it until the track stopped skipping. “Once more,” I said to myself. Or to him. Or to the watch. Or to the bathroom with its greenish lights and graffiti that said lies and truths nobody would remember next year. My fingertip sank into the glow. The watch shivered. The mirror flickered, a TV changing channels between versions of me, between lives. Everything tightened around me, my skin, my breath, the loop of time pulling taut. And then I fell. Or flew. Or rewound. Or all three. If I tell you I knew what I was doing, I’d be lying. If I tell you I didn’t have a choice, that would be true and also a lie. What I knew was this: the clock only looks harmless until you wind it too far back, and the click you feel is the trap shutting, confession by confession. When the world knit itself again, when the hum resolved, when the mirror settled, the face that looked back at me wasn’t older. It was mine. Thirteen. Scared. Determined. Behind me, through the thin bathroom window, a siren in the distance rose and fell, a sound that might not have been there before. A sound I might have put there. “Jax?” Mom called for a third time, edges of panic sanded into her voice. “Coming,” I said. My voice was my voice, but if I listened, I could hear the older one, too, like a harmony. I looked at the hourglass icon, still patient, still there. Maybe I had fixed it. Maybe I hadn’t. Maybe the fix would cost me more than I understood. I let my sleeve fall over the watch. I took a breath. I opened the door.

Model Output:
She stopped just before reaching the shooting gallery set up along the boardwalk. It was near dusk, and the carnival lights were buzzing on. His locks. The words flashed through her mind, again, like an intruder. Such an old-fashioned turn of phrase that kept surfacing, and something else—dangerously compelling—quickly suppressed, lest she question why she had returned here at all. This place where she had promised to meet the stranger—the young man with the obsidian curls and even darker eyes. She didn't even know his name. The Coney Island air carried a briny dampness, threaded with the sour perfume of spent beer and fried dough. The laughter of children ricocheted against the wooden planks, thinning to a brittle echo at the edges of the noise. The shooting gallery’s tin ducks slid along their track with a rickety clatter, paint chipped down to sorrowful metal, as the attendant barked tired encouragements to a trio of sailors. He leaned against the painted rail, as if he had been carved for that exact angle, a cigarette burning low between his fingers. The black curls were just as she remembered, an invitation and a veil. He turned his head, saw her, and a smile cut clean across his face, the kind that knows its own effect. Not quite wicked. Not quite kind. “You came,” he said. “I said I would.” “You also said you wouldn’t,” he added, flicking ash with a small movement that reminded her of a magician producing a coin. “Did I?” She could hear her heartbeat. Or maybe it was the jerking throb of the carousel somewhere behind her—the mechanical organ wheezing out a tinny waltz. Every sound here sounded like something else. “Shall we shoot ducks?” he asked. “Or would you rather have your future told?” He pointed with the burned-out cigarette toward the old fortune teller’s booth that hunched at the edge of the boardwalk like a predatory bird. Its windows were cloudy. Inside, a red scarf was strung like a pennant, draped with hand-drawn palmistry charts and a diagram of the moon’s phases. A wooden sign tilted precariously: Madame Selene—Do Not Ask What You Do Not Want to Know. The words were crayoned in flaking gilt. Her mind hummed with the memory of his voice the first time: Meet me where the lights buzz more than they glow. Tonight. She had laughed, then, as if she were above being moved by such lines. She had not laughed now. “I don’t believe in fortunes,” she said. “You believe in other people telling you who you are,” he said. “That’s similar.” “I don’t. Not usually.” She paused, forcing the air to go slow in her lungs. “Are you going to tell me your name this time?” He studied her face with a tilt, as if gauging the distance between boldness and offense. “If I tell you, you’ll think you know me.” “Is that so terrible?” “It’s boring.” “Now that is terrible.” The sailors whooped over a bell hitting its mark. A prizegirl thrust a stuffed fox into the tallest one’s hands, and the fox’s glass eyes stared in the direction of the fortune teller’s booth as if it had seen its own death. She regarded his hands, the way his fingers rolled the cigarette, honey-dark at the knuckles, the nail of his thumb nicked. He wore no ring. He wore a jacket too fine for this place in a color she couldn’t name, neither blue nor green, a fishborn shimmer that refused to sit still under the lights. He stood as if it would cost him nothing to leave. “Fine,” she said. “Let’s ask the cards to scold me.” “Cards scold. Palms whisper. I prefer the latter.” “Of course you do.” They moved together the small distance to the booth. She could feel the heat of him like a furnace made modest by distance. The curtain of glass rattled when he tapped on it. After a beat, the door creaked open and a woman emerged from the dim—black dress, white hair pinned in coils that must once have been girlish. Her eyes were a pale gray that made her look blind until she blinked and each iris found its target. “You seek, you two,” she said. No question. Her accent wandered somewhere east of Europe and north of the sea. “Always,” he said, lightly. “But we pay for precision.” The woman’s mouth curled the way tissue paper curls when near a candle. “Precision costs extra.” “Then we’ll have it,” he replied, already drawing bills from his breast pocket. The casual lewdness of it startled her. Money laid down like a dare. She eyed him. Part of her thrilled at that lack of prudence. Part of her recognized it as something like a smell: the scent of trouble freshly shaved. “Come,” the woman said. “Sit. I will tell you what you already know and pretend you don’t.” “I like her,” he murmured. “I don’t,” she said. But she followed him inside. The booth felt built of shadows and smoke. A few candles were perched in glass saucers, their flames too small for the cool. On the wall, the palmistry charts sprouted lines like rivers across the plain of a blank hand: Heart line, Life line, Fate. Someone had written, in a careful script along the margin, The road is not the map. A brittle rose hung upside down from a nail in the beam; someone had forgotten to remember it. “Sit,” the woman said again. “Your right hand.” He tilted his chin at her, a silent go on, and she placed her hand on the velvet that felt like a cat’s tongue before it warms. The fortune teller took her fingers, turned them, peered, her own fingers surprisingly clean, the nails trimmed neat. “Your heart,” the woman said, “is sharp.” “Sharp,” he repeated, amused. “Is that possible?” She felt the quick prickle of annoyance. “What does that mean?” “You cut, sometimes,” the woman said, “and sometimes you are cut. Do not mistake the feeling of a blade for the feeling of being held.” The words stopped her breath a beat too long. Why did it feel like an accusation? Because it was. Because it was true. Because she would have argued had it not been. “And your life,” the woman continued, tracing the line that dipped then rose like a startled swallow, “is a rope you keep thinking to climb but also tie around your own feet.” “She’s good,” he said softly. “Don’t flatter her,” she said. “She’s paid.” “Both can be true.” The corners of his mouth lifted, not in mockery but in recognition. “And your fate,” the woman said, pressing her thumb along the line that ran unexpected, a branch where she’d thought there was none. “You have chosen not to choose many times. That road has ends. One is here.” The fortune teller released her hand the way one sets down a glass they’ve drunk from but didn’t enjoy. “You want something and you want not to want it. Both are hands on your throat. Choose the softer one.” “That’s not precision,” she said, forcing a little smirk to bind herself back together. “That’s poetry.” “What did you expect?” he said. “A timetable?” “Yes.” They stepped back out into the air, which had gone more marine, the night leaning fully into itself. The boardwalk lamps flickered, insects worrying the bulbs with a suicidal fervor. Farther down, a barker sang out the price of sin like it came bundled with peanuts. She realized she hadn’t exhaled properly since she’d approached the booth. “What’s your profession?” she asked. “Besides being unbearable.” “I teach people how to win,” he said. “At what?” “Games. Cards. Darts. Sometimes other things.” “Is that honest work?” “It’s work.” “That wasn’t the part I asked.” He looked at her, and there was something level in it—as if he had set aside the blade and replaced it with something blunter, slower, more patient. “I know odds,” he said. “I know when people are better than they think and worse than they say. Sometimes the difference is what pays.” “You look very sure of yourself.” “I look practiced,” he said. “That’s different.” She tried to place his age. He could be twenty-five, or he could be younger and wearing his youth like a borrowed coat. The temptation to be impressed pressed against her like a hand on the small of her back. “Here,” he said suddenly, nodding at the shooting gallery. “Let me teach you to win.” “I don’t like guns.” “They’re not guns. They’re toys pretending to be serious. Like most men.” She laughed, before she could stop herself. He wasn’t wrong. He led her to a stall and paid for two rounds. The attendant slid the rifle toward her, its barrel glinting under arctic light. She touched the wood and felt it give a little, as if it had memorized too many hands. “Feet apart,” he said, coming to stand behind her. “Not a girl. A sailor.” “I don’t have to pretend very hard,” she said, but her voice fell off a cliff when his hands found her elbows. Not sensual so much as corrective, but the charge of his touch hummed through her like a wire too near a storm. “Left eye or right?” he asked. “Right.” “Then close the other. Don’t squint. Don’t think of the whole duck. Think of the place you want to kiss.” “That’s grotesque.” “That’s precise.” The rifle bucked with a soft, ridiculous spit. The duck did not fall. “Again,” he said. “Don’t try so hard. Want politely.” She took a breath, let it out, lowered her shoulders. Her cheek flirted with the stock. The air tasted metallic. She saw the duck’s chipped beak, its painted circle for an eye. She let herself imagine his mouth; if his kiss would be dry or ruinous. The shot cracked. The duck dropped with a clank, the bell complained, the attendant grunted a reluctant approval. “See?” he said close to her ear. “Maybe it was luck.” “It’s always luck,” he said. “It’s also not.” She straightened, letting the rifle sit on the ledge as if it had never been hers to hold. He was closer than she’d remembered, or than he had any right to be, but he wasn’t touching her anymore. She felt the absence like a sun stripped from the sky. “You still haven’t told me your name,” she said. The words felt like opening a door in a house she didn’t own. He considered. The carousel organ hiccuped and began again in a key that made the hair at her nape object. Somewhere a baby cried, righteous and unseen. “Adrian,” he said finally. “It will do.” “It will,” she said. “And mine—” “I know yours.” She blinked. “How?” “You told me before you told me,” he said. “Your shoes. The way you speak. The ring you don’t wear. It narrows the options.” “You’re impossible.” “I’m observant.” “And I,” she said, “am leaving.” “Are you?” He didn’t move to stop her. He didn’t plead. He looked at her with those eyes that felt like a night without stars, the kind of dark that doesn’t threaten so much as invite. A little thrill skittered along her spine, a creature that liked to wake at the wrong times. “If I don’t,” she said, surprising herself with the softness under her sarcasm, “this becomes something I cannot explain to myself.” “You don’t owe yourself explanations,” he said. “Only stories.” “That’s a terrible creed.” “It’s a human one.” “Do you do this with everyone?” she asked. “Do what?” “Make them feel like they’ve waded into water that looks shallow until it isn’t.” He smiled, and it wasn’t sharp this time. It was tired. “No,” he said. “Some people prefer land.” “And you?” she asked. “I prefer the part where you can’t tell if you’re floating or being pulled.” “Drowning, you mean.” “Sometimes.” They stood there a moment, a small neutral ground carved out of noise and lights and tin ducks’ relentless migration. The breeze lifted and laid her dress back down like a palm smoothing a sheet. The fortune teller’s booth door creaked open and shut as if something had gone in or out that was no one. She reached up, surprising herself again, and tucked the suggestion of a curl behind his ear. It sprang stubbornly back. His breath hitched—not a surrender, not a claim, a recognition. Her fingers tingled with the memory of it before they were even back at her side. “Good night, Adrian,” she said. “Good night,” he said. “Come back when you want to win something you shouldn’t.” “I never want that.” “Of course not.” She turned. Walked. The boards counted her steps like a base drum under a parade. Behind her, the ducks clattered on, relentless as confession. She did not once look back, not at the fortune teller’s booth with its whispering palm charts, not at the man with the obsidian curls she refused to name to herself as anything other than danger, and certainly not at the part of herself that had leaned, already, toward the water. She told herself she was choosing. She told herself it would end here. The lies walked at her pace, keeping tidy time.

Model Output:
They kept to the old routines as if routine could keep something from coming in. Back at the lodge, Mike unrolled the canvas, thumbed the oiled metal like he was blessing it. Their father stacked wood with the quiet zeal of a monk laying stones. JT carried in the groceries, touching each can and box as if counting them might keep the world in order. No one mentioned the clearing. Dinner was venison stew reheated from the freezer, bread with a heel of butter left from last year that tasted like the fridge. They ate with their hats still on, steam fogging the windows so they reflected the kitchen back at them—a farmhouse painting: three men, heads bent, spoons scraping iron. The radio was set to the AM station that always worked up here, though the DJ was gone at night and it played only music punctuated with weather reports from three days ago. JT waited for his father to say anything. The old man's face was turned toward his bowl in a way that looked like concentration, like he could find the words somewhere down at the bottom with the potatoes. “Nice one, first day,” Mike said eventually, and flicked his eyes to the corner where the caribou haunch hung in burlap, blood darkening the sack. “Lively one. You see the way it was looking at us?” JT’s spoon clinked against the bowl. He said, “What way?” “Hell if I know. Just stood there like it was a goddamn stuffed thing.” Mike grinned without humor. “Saved me the trouble.” Their father looked up. The light over the table was bare, and it made a little halo on his crown where the hair had thinned. “Leave it,” he said. They left it. After, JT washed dishes and watched the woods beyond himself in the glass. The lodge had been built by his grandfather out of whatever wood he had lying around and whatever wood he could steal, and it had settled in the way bodies do when they're tired. The porch leaned, the floor had a soft spot by the stove you learned to step around without ever naming it, the wallpaper upstairs was buckled under a slow leak they never quite found. It had always creaked and groaned and breathed in winters, like a creature settling. The sounds made sense when he was small because his father had names for them. "That’s the pipe, that’s the south ridge in the wind, that’s mice in the wall." Now the names felt thin. He stood with his hands in gray water and listened, and it all sounded like whispering he was just slightly too tall to hear. He decided to ask anyway. He spoke softly, so it felt less like a challenge and more like something you mutter to the sink. “Back there. Why’d you—” His father set the tea kettle on the burner and struck a match to the stove. It flared. He watched it like it might shiver away. “Cold tonight,” he said. “Probably frost.” JT let the dish sink back into the water. “Yeah,” he said. “Probably.” Upstairs, he lay in his old bed under the quilt his grandmother had made, blue diamonds rough under his fingers where the seams had risen. Mike took the other bed and fell asleep so hard his breathing was like a small motor. JT stared at the ceiling. The nails had rusted in little roses. He found constellations in them like he had when he was eight: fisherman, pan, snake. The same, but not. He dreamed he was standing in the clearing again, except it was the kitchen, and the buck was there at the table in their father's seat, its antlers scraping the ceiling, its chest rising and falling. He tried to raise his spoon but his hands were hooves. He woke with his heart hurting and a taste like pennies. Morning burned dull behind the curtains. They hunted the ridge after breakfast. The world was a quiet sketch of itself in early light, everything reduced to lines and breath. They moved in a line—Mike ahead, their father behind—so the last thing JT saw when he looked back was the man's face under the brim of his hat, not looking at him but at something just to the left. It was fine. JT told himself it was fine. They saw nothing. The air had that old penny taste again. Maybe it was the metallic cold. Maybe it was the lie of it. They ate lunch sitting on a blown-down log. Mike told a story about a guy from work who'd cut off two fingers in a garage door and kept trying to smoke a cigarette anyway. JT chewed and watched breath muster from his nose and felt like an animal. “You boys hear that?” their father said, abruptly. They fell still. There was a sound, maybe. Or there was the idea of one. A far-off chorus? Sometimes the wind in spruce does that—makes a tone like a church organ in a church that nobody has the key for. JT tilted his head. It wasn’t wind. It was like a murmuring. Calm, patient. The kind of sound you leaned forward for. He found his body leaning. Mike said, “Hear what?” Their father's eyes were wet. He blinked slowly, and then he stood like a man waking from a nap he hadn't meant to take. “Never mind,” he said, and turned away as if embarrassed. That afternoon, along a low stretch where the ground always remembered water, they found tracks. Not deer. Not moose. They were big and neat and not right. JT crouched and touched the print. The center was smooth, as if something had put a full, careful weight down and held. Around the edges was a strange scallop, like the mark of a wheel with notches. “What do you think?” JT asked. Tried to make it casual. “Wolf,” Mike said, and snorted. “Or Bigfoot with a limp.” He looked at their father as if for a laugh, their old rhythm, but the old man was looking up into the birch branches like he’d lost something in them. “Come on,” he said. “Light goes fast.” At dusk, the woods took on their other self. There's the morning woods and the midday woods, and then there is the one that comes down like a lid. They went home by the creek. JT knew every place the bank fell away and every rock that looked solid and shifted and still he stumbled twice, caught himself on cold fingers. The lodge lights were the nicest thing he'd ever seen. They came up through the last tangle and he felt something loosen in his chest, as if he had been holding his breath since the clearing. Inside, their father was clumsy with the matches. He struck one on the box and it squealed and went out. Struck another and it flared and he dropped it. It hissed on the pine floor, went out between the boards. He swore once, softly, a word he didn't say often. JT stepped in. “Let me.” The lamps lit the rooms yellow and shallow. You could see only the things you could touch. The windows went to black. Mike turned on the radio and the static came in smooth as water, and then a voice. A song. Not the AM station. A woman singing something slow. Not English. Or maybe it was and he never learned that part of it. Their father moved to the set and adjusted the dial with two fingers, careful, and the voice slid away and was gone. “Come on,” Mike said. “Cards.” They played rummy at the table. Their father held his hand too close to his chest. His fingers shook a little when he drew. JT tried to make a joke about whiskey improving their chances. Mike grinned and got a laugh that made JT feel like a dog that had done a trick. Their father set his cards down at one point and stood, walked to the window, and stood with his palms on the sill like a man at the rail of a ship. “What?” Mike said, not looking up from his cards. “Frost,” their father said. “It’s starting on the grass.” The night opened in the way it does up there. Everything shifts a notch. The lodge groaned and relaxed. They played on, the cards rasping and the stove ticking, the woods right out there, full of slow talk. The lamps burned down a little and JT thought he saw, just for a second, a shadow move against the glass as if something had walked by and glanced in. He snapped his eyes to it and saw nothing but himself and his brother and the lamp reflected, all of them in blue. When he turned back, his father’s hand was on top of his. The old man’s skin was dry and warm. “You remember,” their father said, “when you were small, and you and Mike would put carrots on the stoop to see if anything would take them? And the next morning they’d be gone, and you’d bawl because you thought rabbits had knives to cut them with?” JT laughed, because it was true, and because the way his father was looking at him made him feel like there was a right answer and he had to find it. “It was you,” he said. “You took them.” His father smiled, almost. “I did, and I didn’t. Some I took.” He lifted his hand from JT’s and turned away. When JT woke in the night—which is when a person really wakes, if they’re going to—he heard the door. Not the deadbolt or the latch. The door itself. It breathed. It might have been the wind. That was the easy answer. He lay there and listened, counting to sixty, and only made it to nineteen before he had to get up and check. The hall was colder than any other place in the world. He went down the stairs slow, his socks not making any sound at all on the wood. He could see a strip of the door under the hall light. It was closed. He wanted to touch it—just lay his palm flat on it, feel the cold—and didn’t. He turned instead toward the kitchen. The radio was on in a breath. Not sound. The particular energy of it when it’s on and not speaking. He came around the corner and found his father at the table, in his long underwear and socks, bare-headed like he was just a man. He had the rifle across his knees. He lifted his head. In the low light his eyes looked black as the barrel. “You should sleep,” the old man said. “Couldn’t,” JT said. His father nodded, like this made sense in a way JT couldn’t get at. He cocked his head. “You hear it?” JT didn’t want to say yes. He didn’t want to say no. He stood there, listening with his whole body. There was a sound. Way out, or way in. A speaking without words, the tone of the morning, the tone of frost. It made his teeth want to go soft in his gums. “I think,” JT said, surprising himself, “it wants something.” His father looked at him long enough that JT had to fight not to look away. Then the old man stood up. He set the rifle on the table very carefully, as if setting down a sleeping infant. “They always do,” he said. “Thing is, we always think it wants us to do what we were going to do anyway.” He went to the door. He unlatched it. The sound moved forward in a way that felt like weather. JT didn’t stop him. Because what would he even say? He stood there with his hands hanging half-open. The air that came in was colder than the kitchen by twenty degrees. It smelled like spruce. And like something else. Like blood cooled to coins. Their father stepped out, just onto the threshold. The night held, waiting. He lifted his face like he could drink it. The trees were black cutouts. JT said, “Dad?” Their father looked over his shoulder. He looked younger and he looked older. “Go on back to bed,” he said gently. “Long day.” He closed the door behind him. JT could see him in the window, though, as a shape moving down the steps, across the blown grass. The frost on the lawn was a sheet that crackled and shone. Halfway to the dark, the shape stopped. Turned. For a second, the glass wasn’t black and reflective but a bright thing, a mirror turned the wrong way, and JT saw—he swears he saw—something standing at the edge of the yard with his father. A tall shape. Not animal. Not man. The kind of shape the mind draws around the idea of a thing. His father’s shoulders eased. JT heard something like a word, except it was the opposite of a word: a pause that drew blood. Then the old man lifted his hand in a way that could have been greeting or surrender, and the shape leaned close. JT’s throat made a noise. It wasn’t language. The radio in the other room hissed and went silent. Mike’s boots thumped the floor upstairs and then stopped, like whoever wore them had remembered something and sat back down. Out there, among the rimed grass, his father lifted his hand higher. The shape tipped toward him. The frost at their feet bloomed into bright white, and then, just like at the clearing, it was over. The shape was gone. Their father stood alone. He shivered once, an animal shake. Then he walked back to the porch, across the cold yard, and came in, shutting the door behind him with care. They stood facing each other in the yellow, and JT saw there was a little color in his father’s cheeks like a man after a nip or a run. The old man wiped his hand on his long johns like he’d touched something oily and didn’t want to be rude and show it. “Go on,” he said hoarsely. “Back to bed.” “What was—” JT started. “Frost,” his father said, and smiled a small, crooked, aching smile that made JT’s belly go cold. “You smell it? Winter’s in the trees. Helps to have respect.” He stepped past JT and turned off the hall lamp and took his rifle as if he hadn’t set it down at all. The house went dark. JT stood where he was until his eyes watered. Upstairs, Mike said something into a pillow and sighed. The woods leaned in. The old lodge shifted on its bones. JT went back to bed. It took a long time for the mattress to find him. He stared at the nail roses again and made new constellations between them: a door, a hand, a pair of antlers like a wish. He tried to tell himself there hadn’t been anything in the yard but night, that the radio had never been on, that the frost was only frost. Outside, the wind—or not the wind—spoke. He listened for the words and promised himself he wouldn’t understand them. He slept, finally, and dreamed he was small, and that his father’s hand was on his head, and that outside the screen door something breathed like the sea, close enough to taste. In the morning, he told himself, he would ask. In the morning, things made sense. In the morning, they would hunt.

Model Output:
The ash began falling at 6:00 a.m., punctual as always. It fell in a fine gray drizzle that coated everything—spires, skulls, the large fern Lucifer had gotten on a whim after reading an article about indoor greenery boosting productivity. The fern had not thrived. It was, however, very good at collecting ash. Lucifer woke to the sound of the drizzle, the soft whisper that had replaced birdsong. He lay in his bed, which was simultaneously a slab of black basalt and a very expensive imported mattress, and stared up at the ceiling. The ceiling stared back, an arrangement of eyes and painted clouds from a Renaissance chapel that he had acquired during a period of bad judgment. At 6:07 a.m., the demon maid arrived with a small broom and dustpan and gently swept ash from his bedside table. “Morning,” she rasped. “Morning,” he said. “Could we get a tarp for the fern?” “We’ve tried tarps,” she said. “They invite mildew.” “Of course they do,” Lucifer said. He swung his feet to the floor and watched the ash bend around his ankles like it didn’t want to touch him and then decided to anyway. Today would be meetings. There were always meetings. Running Hell, he had learned, was mostly a matter of scheduling. He dressed in black, naturally, but not out of obligation. Black hid ash. He adjusted his tie before the mirror, which was also a portal to a dimension where an endless ocean of teeth lapped gently at a shore of tongues. The ocean was calm today. Good sign. At 7:00 a.m., he made himself coffee. Coffee required water. Water required bargaining. He had struck a deal with the River Styx management to pipe in a small tributary of forgetfulness to his private kitchen tap. In the early days, he had found it novel to forget small things—song lyrics, the names of minor dukes, the way to pronounce quinoa. Now it was mostly an inconvenience. He wrote notes on the refrigerator with a charcoal stub. Today’s read: Coffee filter in left drawer. Lilith came by last Thursday. Be neutral. Do not start with “you look well.” He sipped. He forgot. He reread the note. He was pleased with himself for making the note. He stirred his coffee. The spoon dissolved. He made a second cup and didn’t stir. At 8:00 a.m., there was Human Resources, which was always contentious. The head of HR was an angel, which had seemed like a meaningful gesture at the time and now seemed like a prank on himself. “We’ve had three complaints from the Torment Design Department,” she said, bright and precise, her wings tucked in like a neatly folded umbrella. “They feel their contributions are being overshadowed by Torture Delivery.” “Everyone feels overshadowed by Delivery,” Lucifer said. “They have the trucks.” “We don’t have trucks,” she said patiently. “We have centipedes.” Lucifer pinched the bridge of his nose and felt ash collect there. “Fine,” he said. “Hold a cross-departmental retreat. Trust falls. Name tags. Something with cupcakes.” “Cupcakes?” she said. “Cupcakes are fashionable,” he said. He had read this. Or had he? Perhaps it had been about muffins. She made a note. “And the complaints about the ash?” “It is Hell,” he said. “That’s what I told them,” she said, marking a box. He admired her checklists. He sometimes thought he should delegate more. Then he remembered he had been delegating for thousands of years and this was the result. The drizzle continued. It always did. At 10:00 a.m., there was a demonstration in the main square—a group of older demons who wanted to bring back lava floods and more personal torment. “Modern hell is too impersonal,” their sign read, though the letters twisted and tried to bite anyone who looked at them. Lucifer went to the balcony. He knew the script. Speeches. A public tear or two. A small, controlled lightning bolt. The crowd dispersed, grumbling in that relieved way all crowds grumble when they get to grumble. He took questions. “What about the lake of fire?” someone asked. “It’s there,” he said, gesturing broadly. “A bit behind the administrative annex.” “It’s closed on weekends,” another demon shouted. “Staffing,” he said. He returned to his office, which was enormous and tasteful, if your taste ran to antique daggers and oil paintings depicting various betrayals. He sat at his desk and reviewed the numbers. Numbers were soothing. They were tidy. The souls were up. The sins were seasonal. At noon, as the ash grew a little thicker, the small crystal intercom on his desk chimed. He pressed it. His receptionist, a former courtier with a voice like a velvet glove, said, “Lilith to see you.” He looked at his note on the fridge. Be neutral. Do not start with “you look well.” He stood. “Send her in,” he said. Lilith entered like a minor hurricane that had been to finishing school. She wore a coat the color of dried blood and eyeliner sharp enough to cut rope. She shook ash from her hair with a small, disdainful flick. “You should get an awning,” she said, looking at the ceiling. “I have a ceiling,” Lucifer said. She sat without being told to sit and smiled without being told to smile. She set a paper bag on his desk. It read: Bakery. The letters wept slowly and then stopped. “I brought cupcakes,” she said. The ash made little dark freckles on the icing. Lucifer stared at them like they were an omen. “They’re not poisoned,” she said. “Unless you want them to be.” He did not want them to be. He said nothing. They ate cupcakes. The frosting was black and left their tongues stained. They sat in silence, the kind of silence two people who know each other’s worst looks can sit in, and watched the drizzle draw delicate lines on the window. “I had a meeting about cupcakes this morning,” Lucifer said finally, because he felt he should contribute something to the universe. “Of course you did,” Lilith said. “They’re very now.” He watched her take a second cupcake and peel the paper liner with a care that suggested diplomacy. “How’s the new place?” he asked. Neutral. He was so proud of himself that he nearly ruined it by saying you look well. He did not. “Drafty,” she said. “The walls taste like iron. The neighbors scream.” “Could be worse,” he said. “Yes,” she said. “I could still be here.” There was a pause. He let it sit there between them. He didn’t step on it. He looked at the fern, which was listing, and then at his notes, which were now thoroughly ash-colored. “I missed your birthday,” she said. “I don’t have a birthday,” he said. “Not in any meaningful sense.” “I know,” she said. “That’s why it’s so easy to miss.” He wanted to laugh. He did not. He wanted to apologize. He did not. He had learned, slowly and with a great deal of resistance, that Lilith preferred that apologies be concepts rather than words. “I liked living here,” she said, and he could hear that she meant the kitchen sink, the way it screamed in a very specific pitch when the hot tap was on. He could hear that she meant watching him cross things off a list and then rewrite the list because the act of crossing off had gone crooked. He could hear that she meant the way the ash fell on their shoulders while they argued on the balcony about whether or not Hell should implement a suggestion box. “I liked that too,” he said. They looked at the cupcakes. The icing was melting, which was inevitable and tragic. There was a crash from the hallway, and then a demon with a clipboard burst in, panting. “Sorry,” he said, bowing deeply and shedding ash in a dignified way. “The existential dread quotas are misaligned, and we need a signature.” Lucifer held out his hand. He signed. He did not look at Lilith. He could feel the shape of her amusement in the air, though, like a statue under a tarp. “Thank you,” the demon said, and fled. “I love it when they bring you clipboards,” Lilith said, half-lidded with affection and disdain, which on her was identical to being affectionate. He should tell her about the fern. He should tell her about the HR angel and the centipedes. He should tell her that the ash had started coating his lungs at night, that sometimes he woke up with the taste of burnt paper in his mouth and thought of poems he’d never written. He wanted, absurdly and mundanely, to ask if she could pick up scourging oil on her way back from whatever she had stopped by from. Instead he said, “I could walk you out.” “Don’t,” she said. “The ash makes you look like a statue that forgot how.” They sat. The drizzle did not intensify, which was merciful. The demon maid drifted in and swept ash from the baseboards and drifted out again, unfazed by royalty. “Do you want to see the new tortures?” Lucifer asked, and immediately regretted it. It was like inviting someone over to see your stamp collection. It was worse. It was inviting the person you used to love to watch you work. “Do I ever,” she said dryly. Still, she stood. “Show me the suffering, old man.” He led her through the hall to the gallery where assorted punishments were being beta-tested. There was a chamber of whispers designed by a team that had done time in marketing. There was a treadmill that moved at imperceptibly varying speeds so you could never find a rhythm. There was a room where former tyrants had to explain, in detail and with humility, how wireless printers work, to an audience of obstinate ghosts. Lilith watched, hands in her coat pockets, and tilted her head. “Too clean,” she said. “Too clever.” She walked to a corner where a simple thing lay: a chair with one leg shorter than the others. “Oh,” she said softly. “This is good.” “We’re very proud,” Lucifer said. She sat. The chair wobbled. She smiled so beautifully that the nearby oil painting of a betrayed duchess blushed. Back in his office, the intercom chimed again. The voice of the receptionist was apologetic. “Lucifer, the Board is here. They’re early.” “Of course they are,” he said. He looked at Lilith. She was already rising, already pulling the coat around her like a decision. “Go on,” she said. “Go argue about ashes and quotas. Tell them cupcakes are very now.” “I will,” he said. She paused at the doorway. The ash had formed a thin line along the floor, like a tiny shoreline, and she stepped over it carefully. “I could come by later,” she said, as if she were describing a natural phenomenon she had observed once in a book. He nodded, because nodding was less dangerous than anything else. “I could be here,” he said. “Don’t make it a thing,” she said. “I won’t,” he said, lying. She left. The office felt larger in the way rooms feel larger when you realize that their corners are all empty. He sat. He straightened the stack of papers on his desk. He thought of the fern and wondered if it needed more or less ash. The Board arrived. They were smoke and bones and the ideas of contracts. They asked about numbers. He showed them charts. He told them cupcakes were very now. He kept his voice even and his eyes on the line where the ash met the window. He made decisions. At dusk, which was only a slightly darker shade of gray, he went to the balcony. The demonstration had long since dissipated. The ash made shallow dunes. He picked up his phone and almost texted her. He did not. He set the phone down on the railing, where it gathered ash and looked contemplative. Lights clicked on across Hell: in the torture chambers, in the dormitories, in the office where the HR angel folded her wings and made another checklist. The drizzle continued. It always did. At some hour not marked by the clock, there came a knock that was not a knock because knocks imply a door and this was more of a gentle insistence against reality. He opened it. Lilith stood there, hair damp with ash, holding a small, rusted wrench. “The sink,” she said. “Your screaming pitch is off.” “Come in,” he said, and stepped aside. They worked on the sink together, in a kitchen that was arrogant enough to be ordinary. He held the wrench while she adjusted seals. The faucet sang in new, terrible notes. They listened. It was exquisite. They did not touch. They did not talk about the old things. They shared an orange they had not earned. The ash settled on the peeling sticker and on their hands. When she left, it was as if a page had been turned. He did not know if it led to more pages or a blankness. He sat at his table, looked at the fern, and finally, gently, he moved it to a corner where the ash fell less thickly. In the morning, the drizzle would begin again at 6:00 a.m., punctual as always. For now, the world whispered and whispered, and he listened, like anyone alone does, to see if a further door might decide to knock.

Model Output:
The iron tasted like old pennies in the air, a tang that clung to my tongue and would not leave even when I pressed my face into the damp linen of my cloak. Dawn had not yet made a proper show of itself, but the Ludus Magnus was already awake—breathing, groaning, its wood and stone and iron joints settling into another day. I lay on my cot and watched the dim rectangle of the window lighten by slow degrees, listened to the scrape of a broom in the corridor, the far-off trickle of water from the courtyard basin, a single cough that became another and another until it was a chorus. Sweat, oil, and vinegar vinegar—always vinegar—lined the nostrils of the place, so that even the sour bread we ate at sunrise reeked of it. I rolled to sit. A dull pain, a friend that had followed me as faithfully as my shadow since I had first been shown the gates, twinged in my left calf. It wasn’t bad; I could still flex my toes and feel the floor’s chill seeping upward. My hands told the older stories: the calluses along the base of the fingers, the crescent scars where edges had once kissed, the knuckle that never bent quite right since Parmenio, the Thracian, had disarmed me in a bout two summers past. I pressed my thumb into the old scar that curved across my palm, a pale river in the dimness, and it almost did not hurt. A day’s first blessing. By the time I had wrapped my feet and bound my forearms, the others had begun to rise. Sura groaned and swore in Greek, a soft string of curses that made the men nearby laugh. He was new and had not yet learned to keep his fears and pains tucked inside his ribs where no one could shake them out. Fenestella, little and wiry, moved like a ferret from cot to cot, trading a strip of dried fig for a promise of who would bring him an extra scoop of barley later. I liked Fenestella because he could climb anything and because he never missed a chance to share, even if his generosity was a barter in disguise. That was Rome: generosity pegged to interest, favors traded like coins, and the counting done louder than the giving. We chewed our bread and sipped watered wine while heavy feet settled and lifted all along the corridor. The lanista’s assistant came with his tablet and his stylus, a fussy man with a beak of a nose that sniffed each man as if failing to find some expected fault made him uneasy. “Illness?” he asked. “Injuries? Absences?” No one admitted to anything. We had learned that little aches became great ones when their names were spoken aloud. The door to the courtyard scraped open, a familiar yawn of wood, and the day brightened, the sky a steel-gray disk above the rectangular portico. The sand of the practice ground, raked into neat furrows the previous evening by boys not much older than my son had been when he died of a fever, shone pale as bread flour. I crossed myself in the old way—forehead, lips, chest—for no reason I could explain, then walked out with the others. The practice was like prayer because it was repetitive, because you could lose yourself in the rhythm of it, because the sweated focus burned the sharp edges off your thoughts. I took my scutum from the rack, its wood scarred and darkened where the rim had bitten into it, its calfskin face scabbed with patches. It was heavy and familiar, a door that moved with me, a wall I could carry. My right hand reached for my gladius, the short blade I loved more than I would ever have admitted to a man. It was a Hispaniensis, the Spaniard, broad and double-edged, its point slightly leafed at the base, its length a hair shorter than some so that it drew and turned just a touch quicker. I had named it Nuntius, the Messenger, in that foolish way we give names to things that we think keep us alive. It had been given to me by Magnus himself, after a match where I had done what he had taught me and not as much as I had wanted, and in that way it was a mark of being folded into something larger than myself. When I gripped its hilt—the smooth bone swollen into a swell that fit my palm—it spoke to me, not in words, but in the promise of precision. Long swords were for men who liked to arc through air and tell stories. The gladius told the short truth. We formed pairs and began, three drills to measure the morning. First, the shield and shoulder, the shoving, the testing of stances, the feel of a man’s weight through wood. Sand hissed and spat underfoot as we ground eager circles into it. Then the cuts and thrusts against the posts, the implacable enemies set in the earth like stumps; the wood clacked along the grain of their belts, and the thud of a point hitting leather had its own dull music. My breath grew rough and warm, but my mind cooled, narrowed to the square of motion between my wrist and my shoulder, the line of my hips, the place where my foot kissed the earth and pushed. “Stab, don’t swing,” Magnus called from the portico, though he had long since taught us that lesson so many times we would dream it even if we were men who had never seen sun. He stood with one hand on the column, eyes half-lidded as if bored. He never was. He had a way of seeing three things at once: a man’s blade, his left foot, and the fear that lived in the corner of his eye. He knew the politics of the sand as well as the politics of the Senate, though he pretended indifference to both. He had the emperor’s stewards over some afternoons, when we were allowed to eat fine pork and drink wine that was more than mere stain, and in those hours his laugh was a bell and his hand rested easy on the shoulder of the newest man who shivered in the shadow of greatness. He traded in selves the way merchants traded in oils. He told us that all Rome was a market, and that the coin we had to spend was our bodies. By the second round, my lungs were rasping, and the sweat had found every scar it could sting. The sun had crept over the northern wall and began to butter the sand golden. Someone had brought in a donkey with panniers of hay, and the animal’s farts punctuated the strikes in a way that made Sura giggle. I didn’t, because my mind had wandered, uninvited, to the forum of the day before, when I had walked in the afternoon with Magnus to make a circuit of the stalls and show our faces to those who made a business of noticing such things. The city then had smelled of hot stone and fish gone sweet in the heat, and a crowd had gathered near the rostra where a man had shouted about grain. He had a citizen’s ring and a citizen’s voice, and he waved his hand until it seemed to fray in the sun. “The emperor promises bread,” he had said, “and he will keep his promise. But look how the price is set, who counts the measures, how the scales tilt.” I had seen then a woman with a baby drawn down to a string of a thing, and she looked at me and then away because she did not want to admire someone who might be dead by the Saturnalia. We were kept like horses—fed and watered and oiled when we were worth it, sold when we were not. Sometimes, standing in line for the slave doctor’s ministrations, I would look at the boys who cleaned the blood from the sand after a festival and see in their faces something I recognized from my own youth: a hunger that had not yet learned its own shape. Rome fed that hunger and named it virtue. Rome tied ribbons on cruelty and called it spectacle. I knew that and still I loved to hear the crowd when it rose like a wave, loved to feel how the sound picked you up and carried you and made you more than yourself. “Again,” Magnus said. I pulled my mind back into my limbs. The Messenger’s point found the sweet spot just under the post’s belt and slid with an ease that startled me. When the blade came away, its edge had drawn a neat black line in the leather. Fenestella, beside me, hissed appreciation between his teeth, a sound half envy, half blessing. After drills came the salve and the strigil. We slicked our skin with oil, then scraped it off with the curved bronze blades until the dirt came away in tidy rolls. The smell of the oil—green, with a bite like crushed olive leaves—mixed with the reek of the latrine and the tang of the smithy where Vitrasius the armorer hammered a rivet back into my neighbor’s helmet. The smithy was a warm cave, smoke-laced and crowded with ghosts of battles not yet fought. Vitrasius knew our names and even, sometimes, our old names. He had an ear for where a man had come from and what he’d left, and when he passed you the repaired greave, he pressed your wrist for an extra beat as if to lend you some iron. “You’ll be called for the noon crowd,” he murmured to me, not looking up. “Not a fight,” he added when my face must have closed like a fist. “A display. The curator’s nephew is come from Tibur. He wants to see how the sun looks on polished armor.” I nodded, relief and a strange disappointment marching together through my chest. Displays were the milk they gave the calves who had not yet tasted their own blood. I had been blooded, more than once. Yet I also knew the worth of moving well in a display, of showing the curator’s circles that your steps were measured, your muscles like a lyre’s strings under skin. They liked to think themselves judges of men and metal. They liked to think they owned up to the responsibility of that judgment. We ate barley mush sweetened with a smear of honey. An urchin put his face through the bars of the service hatch and asked if anyone had a coin for a song. Fenestella flicked him a copper, and the boy sang a rude verse about senators and their wives that had us cackling into our bowls, even as we glanced toward the doorway to make sure no one authority enough to be offended had come within earshot. After, I lay on my cot and balanced Nuntius across my thighs, tracing the curve where the metal met the guard. The blade was burnished, but in the right light, thin whorls of the original iron still swam faintly in it, like rings in an old tree. Once, before my capture, I had cut vines with a long knife not so different, and the smell of sap had been a sweetness that made your hands sticky. Now the sap I cut was human. I did not think often of my old wife. Thinking was a way to cut yourself in places you did not want bandaged, and there was nothing to be done with a wound that did not want closing. But today, with the smoke of the smithy and the sour of vinegar pooling in my throat, I thought of her and of the son who had laughed like water. The Messenger lay warm against my skin from the heat of my thighs, and it seemed to me a foolish connection that I would not make aloud: when I held the gladius, I could believe that I could keep something, for a while. It trimmed the world to a size I could stand. In the afternoon, with the sun now a white coin punched through the sky, the curator and his nephew came, robes clean as new parchment. The boy’s eyes were big, his hand already reaching for the hilt of a toy sword strapped to his waist. He had that look children of rank sometimes have—fearless because there had never been anything to fear. Magnus bowed the correct bow, the bow that said I respect you and I know my place and I have resources you do not. He gestured to me and to two others. “Watch,” he said to the boy. “This is how men move. This is control.” We moved. Slow, then quick. The sun caught us and set us in relief against the dark mouths of the corridors. I felt the weight of the eyes, the boy’s, the curator’s, the slave with the tablet counting how many of us would need new sandals before the month was out. I breathed and made the Messenger speak its short truth in the air, not drawing blood but drawing shapes. My body was an argument I could make in a language the boy could understand. When they had gone, Magnus looked at us in that sharp way that made men straighten by inches. “Be ready,” he said. “There is talk of games for the emperor’s birthday. Not a festival. A declaration. He’s been challenged. He will answer with spectacle. When Rome is hungry, she eats with her eyes.” That night, as a thin wind worried the oil lamps and a distant dog barked down the alley past the back wall, I lay again on my cot. I could feel the day still in my bones, the grip of Nuntius’s hilt in my palm even despite the unguents. Somewhere beyond the walls, near the forum, men were shouting about grain again, and further off, by the Tiber, barges creaked and shouted back in their ropes. Rome shifted in her sleep like a great animal, and we, caged inside her ribcage, shifted with her. I thought of the boy with the toy sword and wondered which of us was freer. I slid the Messenger under my cot, a habit I kept though I knew better than to believe in safety, and closed my eyes. The smell of sweat and oil was just as it had been at sunrise, but it seemed different in the dark, as if night changed the meanings of things. I was a blade in a rack, a name in a tablet, a body kept for the use of a crowd. I was also a man whose hand knew the weight of his own heart, and in that small, hidden knowing, there was room to breathe. Tomorrow would be the same, and not the same. The iron in the air would be there. The sun would butter the sand again. And I would rise and lift the scutum and take up the Messenger, and for a while, in the narrow space between one breath and the next, Rome would feel like something I could carry.

Model Output:

Model Output:
I tell myself, out loud in the car before I get out: don’t audit the date. The waitress is propping the door with her foot, coffee sloshing, and the bell over the frame gives a little glitch of a ring, like it has a race condition with gravity. I clock the router behind the counter on instinct. Older model. Stickers peeled and yellow. The WiFi password is taped right there to the espresso machine with Scotch tape, printed in 16-point Calibri: LatteLove2020!. The exclamation point is doing its best to be entropy. I inhale once, hold, and try to let it go. I’m early. My default. Early is safe; early is recon. I choose a two-top near the back wall with a line of sight past the plants to the bathrooms, to the kitchen door, to the counter where the barista is using the knuckle of her thumb to wipe foam from the steam wand and not sanitizing it. I am here to have dinner, not to file a report. I order water because it buys me the right to exist in a place without making any other commitment. She’s two minutes late, then three, then six, and then there she is, a flash of green scarf and a shiver of bangs that try to behave and don’t, and the precise moment she looks and finds me feels like aligning a puzzle piece you found under the couch. Her smile is not a default. It’s compiled, with care. “Sorry,” she says, sliding into the chair, “I had to argue with a parking meter that thinks time is a construct.” I look at her hands. No ring. Nails bitten, not awful, just lived-in. There’s a tiny blue-black dot on the index finger of her left hand, the tattoo of a leaky pen or an ancient Sharpie. Her phone’s case has a faint scuff pattern around the edges where she fidgets. The edges of her scarf are unraveling into little fiber filaments. Everything about her is a visible history of use. I like that. “It is a construct,” I say, “and also a service with a variable uptime guarantee.” Her laugh lands on me like a warm file download with a progress bar that moves smoothly, no jitter. We talk. About work, about hobbies. She works in a lab doing something with cell lines that I try to not interpret as a metaphor. She asks what I do and I say something about security consulting and education and the word “reformed” is in there, because honesty is both policy and patch. She doesn’t flinch. Her eyebrows do a small arch, the good kind. “So like, ethical hacker?” she says, and I nod, and we share that look where both people are trying to quantify the ethical in front of the hacker, and then the server arrives and takes our orders and I pretend I don’t see the way his tablet has a screen protector bubbling at the corner where anyone could slip under it with a fingernail and pop the whole thing off. No audits, I remind myself, eat your dinner. We discover the fandom by accident. There’s a Planeswalker symbol peeking out of her wallet when she goes to get her ID for the beer she orders. My mouth moves before I can route it through the filter: “Gideon or Jace?” She freezes, then grins. “Liliana, obviously. What are you, a blue control player?” I feel seen and accused and it’s correct. “Look, counterspells are a lifestyle.” She leans in. “I had a mono-red phase in college, but we don’t talk about it.” The restaurant becomes friendlier by degrees. The music is a playlist that can’t commit to a genre and I forgive it because it’s trying. Our food arrives. She steals a fry without negotiating for it and it feels like a handshake protocol we didn’t have to write down. We trade stories of awful combo decks and table flips and the exact tone of disdain reserved for someone who takes a twenty-minute turn and says “just one more thing.” Her laugh does that leap again. I am buoyant. Maybe this is easy. Maybe I can be a person who sits in a restaurant and thinks about the shape of someone’s mouth instead of the shape of someone’s threat model. And then her phone lights up. It vibrates against the wood like a bug trying to flee. She glances down, makes that face people make when their attention splits and then, because she is polite, she picks it up to silence it. Her hand moves in that little unconscious pattern people do when they’re swiping a lock or sketching a line on a grid. The phone is one of those Androids with the nine-dot pattern unlock, and she drags her finger without really looking. I don’t think about it. My eyes are magnets for repetition and low entropy. My brain is a hash table for patterns I’m not supposed to store. It’s an L. Bottom left to top middle, right one, down one. Then a little tail. She does it twice because the first swipe doesn’t register. There are smudges on her screen, old oily evidence of previous unlocks, and I hate that I could unlock her life with a napkin and some sunlight. My mouth, again, traitor, says: “You might want to change that.” Her head snaps up. “What?” I have options. I could cough. I could smile and ask about her siblings like a normal mammal. But the part of me that runs automatic background scanners is already hacking my tongue. “Your unlock pattern,” I say, and I hear the word ‘your’ come out like a prybar. “It’s… easy to shoulder-surf. High probability. L-shapes are like, the most common. With smudge analysis…” I stop, which is to say I run out of buffer. She blinks. There is a microsecond where her face is blank, like a loading spinner. Then the color in her cheeks changes. She sets her phone down with the gentlest possible contempt, like a person placing a glass in the sink instead of throwing it at a wall. “Wow,” she says. I want to roll back the commit. I want to push an emergency patch to myself. “I—sorry. That was—” There is a version of me that says “caring,” another that says “contextual,” a third that says “nonconsensual.” None of them make it to production. “No,” she says, and her voice is small and even. “It’s fine. You’re… that’s what you do, right?” I think about the ten-thousand hours I put into becoming a person who can see the skeleton behind anything. I think about the first time I got a stranger’s email because they used the same password on their social media and their bank, and how the part of me that was addicted wasn’t to the access but to the fact that it was there. I think about how I got caught because I wanted to get caught, and I think about how I got better because someone I hurt decided to believe I could. I hear myself say, “Sometimes I forget that consent applies to advice.” Her eyes soften without her smiling. She is thinking. Her eyebrows make that small bridge they make when she is both annoyed and curious. “It’s just a phone,” she says, but the way she presses the lock button is defensive. “It’s not,” I say. “Not anymore. But that’s mine to manage, not yours.” I invert my hands on the table and show my palms like I’m demonstrating I’m unarmed. It is a silly gesture. It helps. She takes a piece of her burger and holds it for a second like evidence. “Do you do that with people, too? Not just their phones? Like, do you look at someone’s… I don’t know. Walk and decide their secrets?” I could lie. I could say no, that I see people as closed systems until invited. But this night is going well because I didn’t lie. “I notice patterns,” I say. “It took me a long time to learn that not every pattern is a vulnerability. And even if it is, it’s not mine to exploit. Or to name.” She chews. She is composing a response and testing it for defects. I let her. I take a sip of my water and catch the WiFi password out of the corner of my eye again. LatteLove2020!. The network name is CaféGuest. There is a locked one below it called CaféPOS. The POS system’s tablet is logged in as admin. The WiFi is open. If I were the person I used to be, I would have already pivoted. I focus on the condensation ring forming beneath my glass and try to love it like a miracle. “Okay,” she says finally. “You’re not wrong. About the pattern. But, like… can you not tell me in a way that feels like you just watched me leave my diary on the bus?” “Yes,” I say. “No. I mean—yes, I can not do that. I can ask if you want input instead of just… inputting.” She smiles at her own reaction, like she’s watching herself decide something and is a little embarrassed by her own mercy. “Ask then.” “Do you want a suggestion on how to lock your phone in a way that makes me less itchy?” “That,” she says, and exhales, “is so much better. Yes.” “Use a passphrase,” I say. “Like a sentence you can type. Long. Not predictable. Something only you would know. And biometric is okay as long as you can disable it quickly if you’re worried about someone making you unlock it.” She nods. “Cool. I’ll do that. And I will tell my future self that a hacker on a date bullied me into using longer passwords.” “I accept being the villain in a story where your bank account is safe.” “White hat villain,” she says, and it lands with a tiny parachute. We both let it drift. The server appears and asks if we want dessert. She looks at me and I can see that she is running a calculation that has nothing to do with sugar. I nod like a normal mammal. We split a slice of something chocolate and complicated, and she uses her fork to draw a shape in the dusting of powdered sugar on the plate. It’s not an L. It’s a wandering line, looping, almost a spiral. I pretend not to see it. She notices me not noticing and the corner of her mouth lifts. “So,” she says, “what’s the nerdiest thing you’ve done for Magic?” I tell her about the time I wrote a solver to draft terrible decks on purpose because I wanted to see if I could win on suboptimality, and she tells me about a cosplay that involved dangerously sharp foam pauldrons and a glue gun burn she’s oddly proud of. We make a plan to go to FNM like two high schoolers making a plan to jump a fence. The WiFi password leers at me and I ignore it again, and each time I ignore it I feel a small muscle grow. At some point her phone buzzes again. She flips it, looks, and then does not unlock it. She sets it face down. “I’ll change it later,” she says, almost to herself, and then looks at me. “Thank you. For… adapting.” “I’m in beta,” I say. “Lots of updates.” “Do you have a changelog?” she asks, and I laugh and say sure: reduced unsolicited advice by forty percent, improved empathy parsing, patched exploit where I equate intimacy with disclosure. We pay. I tip in cash because I don’t like the tablet asking me to choose a number in front of someone. Outside, the air is cooler and has the metallic taste of a city about to exhale. There is a man smoking by the door under a sign that says No Smoking. The sign is peeling at the corner. Everything peels at the corner if you touch it enough. “Walk you to your car?” I ask, and I brace for no. “Yeah,” she says, and it’s easy. We walk. Our steps try to sync and fail and then succeed, which feels like a metaphor that doesn’t insult either of us. At her car she turns and she is close enough that I can see the smudge of chocolate on her lip, left corner. I do not tell her. I do not wipe it. I put my hands in my pockets and let her be a system with full autonomy. “I’ll text you,” she says, and unlocks her car with a beep that sounds like acceptance. “And I’ll have a passphrase by then.” “Make it long,” I say, and she rolls her eyes in a way that is not a door closing. She leaves. I stand there with the streetlight making the world a grainy photograph. I have the urge to go back in and write the restaurant a pen-test report on a napkin. Instead I get in my car and commit to master: tonight I noticed a vulnerability, and I asked for permission before I patched it. It’s not glamorous. There’s no write-up that will get me a thousand claps. But there’s a quiet between my ribs that feels like a server room with the fans humming at a low, steady pitch. Uptime is good. Latency is human. And the password taped to the counter stays taped, and I leave it there, and that is its own kind of strength check passed.

Model Output:
Okay, it's fine. It's fine. It's a group project, not a confession. We're paired together because Ms. Patel did it randomly and not because the universe is trying to make me crumble in front of the human embodiment of a golden retriever in a hoodie. Breathe. Say something like, “We should probably divide the tasks,” like a normal person. Normal people divide tasks. Normal people do not plan their sentences like chess moves. He’s sitting next to me. Why is he so close? Because we’re partners. Right. His elbow is on the table, and his pencil is tapping out an idiotically perfect rhythm like he doesn't even know rhythm exists. He smells like laundry detergent and graphite, and there's that sharp, nasal sting—ammonia. Right. The janitor's mop water. Ms. Patel made a big show of apologizing about it. “Quick cleanup, sorry about the smell,” and then all the windows were cracked open just enough to tease but not enough to save. It's cutting through everything. Brain-singe. Focus. Task division. Talk. “I can—” I start, and the word slides out weirdly thin and brittle, like glass. He glances, a flicker, not even a full look, which is somehow worse. “I can take notes,” I say, and it comes out too fast, like a burst of air from a balloon. He smiles. He has a nice smile. Stop noticing his smile. “Cool,” he says. “I’ll do the measuring stuff? Like, the… what’s it called?” See? This is a door. You know the word. Caliper. Be calm. Say, “We’ll use the digital caliper to measure the mass change—no, that’s not right, calipers don’t measure mass.” You know that. Abort. Okay, just say, “The digital scale,” like a human. “The scale,” I manage, mercifully, and nod, which is fine except it’s too many nods, so I stop nodding and then realize I’ve probably stopped mid-nod and now I look like a broken dashboard bobblehead. I pretend it was a head-tilt. Casual. Very casual. My neck feels like a puppet string someone keeps jerking. He reaches for the small plastic cup and bumps the beaker, and a tiny slosh of clear water shivers to the rim. It’s our project: investigating the rates of dissolution. Salt in water, hot and cold. Simple, controlled, safe. Except my heart is beating like we borrowed the hot plate for it. I visualize my face from across the room, the way people always say to do when you're practicing a speech. An average face. Not weird. Last time I tried this at home the mirror made me cry. Don't think about that. “Do you want the hot water or the cold?” he asks. This is a question anyone can answer. Responses: A) “I can do hot,” because I have better reaction times and we need to be precise. B) “Cold,” because I always was warned about hot plates and my mother’s voice is a lighthouse for caution. C) “Either is fine,” neutral, friendly, flexible. Avoiding the impression of control freak. Choose C. Yes. C is safe. C is Switzerland. C is me. Why is the ammonia smell getting stronger? It’s like it’s crawling up my nostrils and building a little chemical fort. Focus. “Either is fine,” I say, and smile. My lips are dry. The smile feels like it could crack off my face and clatter onto the table like a broken shell. “Cool,” he says again, and grabs the hot plate. “I’ll do hot. You can write stuff down.” Why does he keep saying cool? Is it like a verbal placeholder he uses to be approachable? Do I say cool? No, not anymore, because one time last year I tried to say it and I sounded like I was quoting a brochure about sunglasses. Note: do not mirror his words; you'll sound like a chameleon with a marketing degree. Write the title: "Effects of Temperature on Rate of Dissolution." My handwriting is neat. Too neat? Neat like a teacher's pet? The line of my pen is so straight it's bragging. Make it a little sloppy. No, that seems fake. My hand twitches and makes a tiny wobble in the "R" and I go cold. Now it looks like I'm pretending to be a human. Relax. No one is watching your “R.” He’s measuring out salt with a plastic spoon, tapping it once, twice, then pouring, and the grains sparkle like crushed quartz. Say something interesting. Not weird. Not “I read that in supersaturated solutions crystals can suddenly appear if you introduce a seed.” That is a fun fact but will make you sound like a trivia machine with legs. Say, “Make sure it’s level,” because that’s practical. Yes. “Make sure it’s level,” I say, softer than I meant, so it lands like a suggestion you make to a cat who doesn’t know English. “Right,” he says, and bends down so his eyes are at the level of the measuring line. He actually does it. On the inside I give myself a tiny high five that feels exactly like nothing, like clapping underwater. What if he thinks I'm bossy? What if he thinks I'm trying to be better than him? I want him to think I’m smart, but not in a way that makes his ego feel like a balloon someone’s squeezing. People say guys don't like it when girls are smarter. That is probably a generalized misconception and I should reject it, but also he once made a joke about losing to his little sister at chess and he looked defensive even though he laughed. Examine data before drawing conclusions. You’re doing it again. You’re doing the think-loop. Stop. Just be here. Ammonia again. It’s like the smell pierces a tiny hole in the thought balloon and every sentence deflates. My eyes water for a second. I blink like I mean it. My eyelashes feel heavy. Is there a right number of blinks for seeming normal? Maybe three. Three is a good number. Not too many or you look like you’re sending Morse code. He looks at my notes. “You have good handwriting,” he says, which is like telling a bridge it has nice beams. Compliment acceptance script: A) Say thank you. B) Deflect. Do not deflect with “It’s nothing,” or “Yours is good too,” unless that’s true. Is his handwriting good? He writes like a haunted spider. So, A. Say thank you. Easy. “Thanks,” I say, and clamp my teeth around anything else that wants to come out. My mouth is dry again. Drink water. No, there's the ammonia in the room and I don't want to taste it. Does ammonia have a taste? Stop. He's not thinking about ammonia. Say something back. Ask him about his hoodie, about the basketball game he won, about the formula. Ask him anything. Pick one. Hoodies are safe. “I like your hoodie.” No, that sounds like I'm flirting. You are kind of flirting. No, you're not. You're not allowed to flirt. You're just being nice. But he might think—Okay, what about the game? You saw him score and everyone cheered and he did that little shrug like he couldn't help it. “The game was good.” That sounds vague. “Nice layup last night.” That’s too specific. He’ll think I memorize his layups. “How’s basketball?” That’s like asking a fish how water is. He pours the hot water. Steam curls up and finds the ammonia in the air and they dance, and it hits my throat like a school nurse's office in August. The clock ticks, loud, a metronome for my inner stupid. He’s staring at the dissolving salt, the way it clouds the water, then clears, little crystals disappearing like snowflakes melting on a tongue. “This is kind of cool,” he says. Cool. Again. It is cool. Science is cool. You can say that without irony. “Yeah,” I say, and it comes out a thread. “It’s…” I have a whole paragraph in my head about molecules moving faster in hot water, collisions increasing, the solvent’s kinetic energy overcoming the lattice energy of the solute. In my head it's clean and bright and I'm giving a TED Talk to my crocheted stuffed animals. Out loud it shrinks to a pebble. “Temperature,” I say. “Makes it go faster.” “Right,” he says, not like it’s a revelation or an insult, just a confirmation, and he smiles again, and I think I must be imagining the way my chest feels like someone loosened a knot there. Write down the time. Start the stopwatch. My thumb hovers. Press. The second travels like a grace note around my brain. If I stop looking at my hand I will press the wrong button. I press the right one. The digits begin to climb. It’s ridiculous how proud I am. Say, “Do you want to do the cold trial?” He will say, “Sure,” and then we will switch and I will be the one scooping ice, and my fingers will turn pink and I will wrestle with the scoop like a competent person. My mouth opens. The ammonia swoops in like a bird and I cough. It’s a small cough, but in my head it’s amplified, a foghorn. My nose stings. He glances. Great. Now he thinks I’m sick. Now he’s thinking about me being sick around his perfect hoodie and basketball lungs. Explain it. Say, “Sorry, it’s the ammonia.” That’s a weird sentence. People who say “ammonia” out loud sound like lab techs or complaint emails. Say, “Sorry, the smell.” Yes. That’s human. “Sorry, the…” I start, and then my throat decides to sandpaper itself and somehow the word that comes out is a whistly “smell,” which is the least attractive sound I’ve ever made. It would make babies cry. My ears heat up. “Oh, yeah,” he says, and waves a hand in front of his nose. “It’s strong.” Okay. He did not recoil. He did not die from secondhand embarrassment. He agrees. There is solidarity in this chemical warfare. I am not alone in this classroom; we are two humans in a mild cloud of murder-clean. Breathe. Not too deep. My lungs disagree and take a big drag of ammonia anyway and I swallow and it tastes like a battery. “Do you… want to do the cold one?” I say, and I almost sound normal, except my voice fades at the end like it’s walking away without me. “Sure,” he says. “Switch?” We switch. Our hands brush for a second, and the skin at the base of my thumb registers it like an earthquake: tiny magnitude, epicenter right under my bones. Don’t jerk away. Don’t linger. Perfectly neutral brush. Perfectly fine. My face does not change. It probably changes. I can feel my cheeks. You can see heat. Everyone can see heat. Stop thinking about your cheeks. The ice scoops and crackles into the beaker, clicks like teeth. I pour water, careful but not too careful, measuring it with my eyes because he is already doing the thermometer count on his side and I don’t want to be the slow one, the one who holds up the train with her anxiety baggage. He says, “Do we stir the same number of times? For consistency?” Yes. Yes, marry me. Or, no, don’t say that. Say, “Yeah, thirty seconds clockwise,” which is what Ms. Patel said, and not like you’re thrilled he remembers variables. “Yeah, thirty seconds clockwise,” I say, and our eyes meet for half a second and jump away, like we both glanced at a place we’re not supposed to look. Stir. Thirty seconds. This is quantifiable. This is safety. The spoon swirls and taps glass, and the salt vanishes slower, like it’s thinking about it. Write down the time. Observer bias: calcium in my fingers making them clumsy. That’s not what calcium does. Whatever. Shut up, brain. Write. He leans in a little, looking at the meniscus. He smells like detergent and pencil, like clean laundry and paper fibers. The ammonia tries to bully its way back into the sensory club and I tell it to get bent, and I cough once, tiny. Is cough-tiny a word? No. My brain invents nonsense when people I like are within a radius of my real face. He says, “I saw you at the game,” out of nowhere, and the room tilts. There were hundreds of people. Why would he—No, he’s just being polite. He saw me socially existing on the bleachers with a book in my lap pretending to be normal. My mouth is a small dry desert. “Oh,” I say. There is a long, empty hallway in that word. Fill it. “You were—” Great? Amazing? Fantastic? “Good,” I say, which is a toddler word, but it’s safe, it’s non-committal. He will not think I have a shrine to his layups. He grins. “Thanks.” There’s a place inside me where all the good sentences live. The ones where I say, “I like how you always help Jordan with his math homework and you don’t make him feel dumb,” and “You’re gentle with the lab equipment even when you joke like you don’t care,” and “I get nervous talking but I think you’re kind.” Those sentences sit in a sunlit room and never come down the stairs. I send them messages and they send back thumbs-up emojis. We log the second trial. Our data is clean. Our rates align with our hypothesis. We’re efficient together. I want to say that. “We’re a good team.” Is that flirting or factual? It can be both. I breathe. Ammonia sneaks in and stings me like a reminder to stay real. “We’re a good team,” I say, and it sounds okay. It sounds like something a person would say. “Yeah,” he says. He looks actually happy. Not the performative happy, the kind like sunlight on a tile floor. “We should, uh, do the poster together after school? Library?” After school. Library. My mother will say yes. I will wear the blue sweater that doesn’t make me feel like a question mark. Do not explode. Do not betray your internal fireworks. Smile. Not too big. Not too small. Medium. Goldilocks smile. “Sure,” I say, and my voice is almost steady. “I—” The ammonia darts in like a little assassin and I cough, then laugh at the cough, which is a mistake. Laughing at coughs is the second most awkward thing, right after saluting your teacher by accident like I did in sixth grade. I want to disappear into the grout between the tiles. He laughs too, in a nice way, like we share the joke that the janitor is trying to gas us into becoming better citizens. “Cool,” he says. Cool. Cool. Stop. The stopwatch beeps. We both jump and then both pretend we didn’t, and I write down the final time with precise digits that will make Ms. Patel nod. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s just a group project. It’s just two people in a room with a little math and a smell trying to sabotage them. I stay in my body. I use my hands. I let sentences be small and still true. I imagine that sunlit room inside me, and I invite one of the big sentences to come down. It hesitates on the landing. “See you after school,” I say, and it’s small, but it’s brave enough. He nods, and I mirror him once, just once, a well-timed yes, and then I look at my paper as if I wrote everything on purpose. The ammonia thins as someone opens a door. The air loosens. My shoulders come down a millimeter, maybe two. I can breathe without measuring how it looks. We clean up. Salt grains cling to the table like constellations that don’t know their names. He’s humming under his breath, and I realize I feel tired, like I ran a race sitting still. It’s okay. Later I’ll lie on my bed and replay everything and edit it and assign scores. For now, I just put the beaker in the bin. For now, I tell myself that being a little weird is not a felony, that the sunlit room has a staircase, that tomorrow I might be brave again on purpose, even if the air stings.

Model Output:
I practice it again, the scene where you sigh and say you don’t think we should see each other anymore, like I’m a messy drawer you’d prefer to keep closed. I guess the exact words you’ll use as I pull my shoes on: “You’re amazing, but I can’t do this right now.” My mouth has an answer ready—curated, clipped, cool. That’s fine. I totally get it. I’m good. I’m fine. I master the curve of indifference with my lips while my fingers pick at the loose thread on my sleeve until it almost splits the seam. I run the conversation a second time with a different lighting: you’re disappointed instead of apologetic. “I thought you’d be more… stable.” I say, “That’s unfair,” and I list the twelve things I did to prove I can be human-shaped. I itemize. I reference a spreadsheet in my head. I am convincing, righteous. I hate that I need to be convincing. I lean toward the hallway mirror and see it there, the angled shoulders, the tight chin, an animal stance. I look like I’m bracing for impact before there’s even a car. My reflection looks like it knows something I don’t, like it’s already seen the cliff edge and measured the drop. I adjust my hair, then turn away because if I watch too long I’ll start narrating myself again: the tragic heroine of a soap opera that never ends because the writers are lazy and love cliffhangers. Phone vibrates. Your name on the screen. A bubble: running 10 late, subway delay. A second bubble, almost immediate: sorry sorry. A third: can’t wait to see you. I read them and feel my throat soften and then clamp hard again. Can’t wait to see you. Translation: perform positivity, smooth me, don’t be difficult. I draft two replies and delete both. Finally I send: ok. No exclamation point. Let you come to me. I pretend it’s strategy. I pretend I’m not counting the ten minutes. I sit on the edge of the bed and stage another confrontation—this one where I get there first. I say, “You’ve been distant.” You say, “Work,” or “Stress,” or “Parents.” I don’t accept that answer in this version, because in this version I’m tired of being reasonable. I say, “Just say it if you’re done,” and my voice is knife-clean. You blink slowly, wounded. You say, “I’m not done.” I say, “Then act like it.” Strong. Stronger than I ever am in the moment. I press replay and tweak my tone to sound less desperate. I practice being the person who walks out first, who leaves you mid-sentence, who doesn’t wait around for secondhand crumbs of attention like a dog under a table. The door buzzer goes off inside my chest even though no one has pressed it. I stand up too fast, dizzy. I grab my bag. I check my messages again just in case you’ve reneged in the last 30 seconds. You haven’t. You haven’t and still my body is doing the funeral. On the subway I watch a kid fold a paper crane for his sister. It looks like freedom, all those simple creases that somehow become wings. I imagine telling you about that and then I imagine you smiling, putting your hand on my knee, saying, “That’s sweet,” and the sweetness landing like a small blessing. Then I rewrite it so your smile is strained and your hand is absent. Then I rewrite it again so I say nothing at all because why offer anything when it can be turned down. Why bring anything to the altar when the god might be asleep. At the café, the table in the corner is miraculously empty. I choose it like I need the wall at my back. The waitress puts down water and her hand brushes mine and I almost apologize for existing. I pretend I’m composed, because people say that word around me like it’s a compliment, like I’ve performed something requiring applause. I hold the glass with careful fingers and rehearse new lines: You know, I’ve been thinking. You know, I need to set some boundaries. The performance version of me can do boundaries like she’s putting furniture down in a room and deciding where things go. The real me picks up the couch and then lies underneath it. The door opens and there you are in your too-big coat, the one I once teased you about and you told me it was your ex’s and you didn’t look away from me when you said it, like you were offering truth without seeing if I’d swallow it. You see me and your face does that whole-body smile. My heart lurches toward you with dog-under-table intensity and I mentally yank its leash. “Hey,” you say, and you put your hand on my shoulder when you sit. It’s warm. It’s present. It’s not reluctant at all. It makes my eyes sting because my body keeps receipts of every time you’ve touched me like I might disappear otherwise. “Hi,” I say, and it comes out too soft. I straighten it. “How are you?” You tell me about the subway delay, the guy who serenaded the entire car with a ukulele, how a woman next to you sang along badly and loudly and it made you grin. You ask me if I’ve eaten. You ask me if I’m okay, and your eyes search my face and then you smile like you know I’ll say I am even if I’m not. “I’m fine,” I say, automatic. I want to say I missed you. I want to say where did you go when you were busy. I want to say did I do something. Instead I ask about work and you groan theatrically and roll your eyes, and I feel the relief uncurl and then immediately interrogate it. It’s too easy, right? You’re overcompensating. People perform warmth when they’re hiding something, don’t they? You’re trying to keep me pliant. “I brought you something,” you say, and pull a small paper bag from your coat, grease spots already marking the bottom. “They had those cardamom buns you like.” I’m a terrible actor because the joy surfaces without my consent. I make a sound I hate—too bright, too grateful. I snap it in half with my fingers and put a piece in my mouth and the sugar hits and I think, see, this is love. And right behind it, why now. Did you feel guilty? Are you giving me sweets like a pacifier? “It’s dumb,” you say, laughing. “I saw them and thought of you. That’s all.” I nod. I put a piece on your napkin. You eat it and lick sugar from your thumb and I imagine taking your hand and bringing it to my mouth and then I police myself for imagining too hard. I hear the speech I wrote earlier and it clatters in me, suddenly foolish among napkins and pastry flakes. You reach across and tuck a hair behind my ear in this instinctive way you have that tells me it isn’t a gesture you’re building toward a breakup. It feels like the opposite of leaving. Which is suspicious. “I’m sorry I’ve been… you know,” you say. “I’ve had a lot going on. I should’ve said something.” I nod like it’s nothing. Inside me, fireworks and alarms overlap. I run both scripts simultaneously: the one where I’m understanding and the one where I’m not. “It’s okay,” I say, and I can hear the doubting committee in the back row of my brain whispering don’t let them get away with it. Demand more. Don’t be so easy. They will leave if you don’t make them work. They will leave if you make them work. You are a multiple-choice test where all answers are wrong. “I missed you,” you add, simple as water, like you’re saying the sky is blue. I freeze. I melt. I freeze again. I look at your mouth to see if the words left marks. “I missed you too,” I say, and somewhere a small cynical voice clears its throat: don’t gush. Don’t offer your throat. Protect. I take a sip of water to swallow it all down. I taste sugar and metal. You tell me about your dad’s health scare—the tests, the waiting room coffee that tastes like panic. You didn’t call because you didn’t know what to say. You didn’t call because you were busy holding your own breath. The graph in my head with arrows that point to “not caring” and “getting bored” redraws itself reluctantly. I can feel the pivot, but it grinds. The part of me that built a case is annoyed. It has a closing argument ready. It has charts. “I wish you’d told me,” I say, too quiet, and your face falls and I rush to soften. “Not to fix it. Just to know.” “Yeah,” you say. “I know. I’m learning.” That word hits something tender. Learning implies a future where we keep doing this, where there’s more to learn. It offers continuity, and I want to lie down in that word like a warm patch of sunlight. Immediately, I flip it. Learning also means you might never learn. That you might use it as a pass to keep hurting me. You reach for my hand and I let you. Your thumb draws circles on that paper-thin skin between knuckles. Real. Present. The committee says, don’t get used to it. The committee says, you know what comes next. It shows me the montage of people turning away, the backs of heads, the empty spaces where they sat. It tells me to rehearse goodbyes when hellos run long. “I care about you,” you say, like you’re setting a cup on a table carefully so it doesn’t spill. “I know,” I answer too fast, and you laugh because you know I don’t, not in the simple way. You squeeze my hand. You order coffee for both of us without asking because you remember how I take it. The waitress calls me honey absentmindedly and somehow that hurts, too, because I want to be only yours and then I scold myself for wanting anything that much. I catch my reflection again in the café window, double-exposed over the street. Same shoulders, less angle. I know the pattern, I do. The therapist voice in my head says name it, don’t shame it. My own voice says drown it. There’s a fleeting second where I see the alternate timeline: I say, hey, I spin stories when I get scared. I admit out loud that I’ve spent the last week fighting with a ghost version of you. The second passes. My tongue goes heavy. It feels too dangerous to hand you that power. It feels too dangerous not to. You nudge the bun toward me, the last sugared edge. “Finish it,” you say, and I do because it’s easier than finishing sentences. The sweetness is ridiculous. It settles in me like proof and then like a trick. I watch your face while you talk and annotate it with imagined footnotes: when you glance away, I write disinterest; when you lean in, I write manipulation; when you kiss my cheek as we stand to leave, quick and soft, I write don’t be fooled. My skin burns where your lips were. It’s both blessing and curse. I catalog both. Outside, the air is fragile with cold. You loop your arm through mine without asking and we walk like that, easy. For a few steps the committee is silent, as if even they need air. My body believes, for those steps. It presses closer. It memorizes the exact pressure of your sleeve against my coat. Then someone inside coughs and the noise starts up again, quiet but steady. I love you, they say, and immediately: prove it. You’re here, and immediately: when will you leave. I breathe. I match my stride to yours. I let it all be true for a block, then two, before I start building the courtroom again in my head, just in case.

Model Output:
They met in the ribcage of the temple: ribs of collapsed beams arched over the cracked flagstones, paper-lantern light shifting in the cold draft. Moss grew between the floor plates. The altar was a broken slab against the eastern wall, and above it, empty eye sockets where statues had once stared. Around the two fighters, a ring of men and women pressed close, their bodies leaning inward while their whispers harried the air. Money changed hands in quick, secret gestures. Red-and-black armbands flashed on both sides, twin colors signifying opposite histories. The Jigen-ryū man stood straight as a lance to the north edge of the ring, bare feet on worn, sunken stone. His hair was clubbed back, the nape cut brutally short, his expression a clean blade. He wore a simple gi, sleeves tied up, and over his right bicep a sharp triangle of cloth—red field, black slash—the mark of his school. In his right hand he held a bokken polished down by relentless practice, wood dense as a promise. He let the tip hover low and forward, the line of the weapon aligned with his centerline, shoulders squared, hips coiled. When he exhaled, the sound was dry and clipped. Across from him to the south, the Piguaquan fighter shifted from foot to foot as if tasting the floor. A lean man with blades of cheekbone and a rope of black hair tied with a strip of threadbare silk. His armband mirrored the Jigen-ryū symbol inverted—black field, red slash—and he wore linen trousers and a sleeveless tunic, the fabric stained by rain and old sweat. He had no weapon but his own reach and the long arc of his arms. When he breathed, it was long and low, rolling through his ribcage and into his stomach as if drawn on a wheel. A gong cobbled from a rusting iron disc clanged once. The crowd hushed, then surged with whispers that chased each other like rats. They closed the distance to five paces. The Jigen-ryū fighter stepped forward half a length—heel touching, then toes sliding—compressing into a forward stance. The bokken dipped a fraction, then snapped up in a straight line toward the Piguaquan man’s brow, a jab more like a spear thrust than a sword cut. The distance was just long enough that the tip would land before the body revealed intent. The Piguaquan fighter shifted right, pivoting on the ball of his left foot. He didn’t retreat; he let the thrust cut past the left side of his face, the bokken skimming the air where his nose had been. As the wooden blade extended, he brought his left forearm up from a low chamber, whipping the back of his wrist against the flat near the tip to redirect. He didn’t try to stop the thrust; he accelerated it off-line with the flick of a catapult. The bokken struck the shoulder of a spectator with a muffled thud that drew a curse, and the Jigen-ryū fighter felt his wrist pulled across his center. He adjusted immediately. There was no pause. His right foot stamped forward and slightly left into the space the Piguaquan man had vacated, hips and shoulders following in a snap. He turned the off-line thrust into a cut, drawing the bokken in a diagonal slash from high left to low right, aiming at the ribs as he stepped across. His left hand came to the hilt for power. The strike drew a clean whoosh and carved a line of air where the Chinese fighter’s torso was already not. The Piguaquan man had ridden the initial pivot into a small counterclockwise circle. As the slash committed past, he sank his weight, right hand whipping outward in a circular backfist toward the Jigen-ryū man’s temple from just outside the arc of the bokken. His left palm shot forward at the same moment toward the elbow of the sword arm. He’d stepped in tight—inside the weapon’s strongest range, just outside the shoulders. The backfist was a scythe; the palm a wedge. The Jigen-ryū man jerked his head back a fraction. The backfist glanced along the hairline, sweat brushed aside. The palm struck the elbow with a pop that shifted the angle of the cut down into harmless air. They were chest-to-chest range now. The Jigen-ryū fighter slammed his left shoulder forward, a battering ram, and drove a knee toward the Piguaquan man’s thigh. The bokken, now trapped between bodies, he used as a bar across the front of the Chinese fighter’s hips. It was inside fighting, inelegant and punishing. The knee landed with a dull thud, and the Piguaquan man’s hip buckled a fraction. He softened into it, flowing down, his joints unlocking like ropes. Rather than resist the pressure across his hips, he spun around the bar, his right foot sweeping back and then forward in a crescent that caught the Jigen-ryū fighter’s left ankle from the outside. He didn’t kick; he scooped and tugged while his left palm slid from elbow to wrist, wrenching down and outward. The Jigen-ryū fighter’s base tilted, but his core held—hips locked forward, back straight, neck in line. He let the tilt become a drop, dropping his center of gravity suddenly like a plummeting stone. The sweep skated under him uselessly as his weight crashed down through both feet. There was a resonant thump, and dust shivered from the beams above. The crowd hissed. The Jigen-ryū fighter drove a short headbutt toward the Piguaquan man’s nose. The Chinese fighter pivoted his head left, the butt glancing along his cheekbone, and in that tight fissure of time he collapsed his torso backward, creating a hand’s breadth of space. His right arm whipped, palm first, from low to high in an arc under the bokken, targeting the Jigen-ryū man’s ribs with the heel of his palm. The strike landed with a thock over the lower right ribs. The Jigen-ryū fighter grunted, not from pain but from the shock. He answered with force: his right hip twisted sharply, and the bokken’s hilt drove like a hammer into the Piguaquan man’s left oblique. There was no room to swing, so he used the butt. They broke apart by mutual necessity. Two quick shoves—one palm on sternum, one forearm across collarbone—and they slid out to a safer measure. The Jigen-ryū fighter reset his guard, bokken angled forward, the tip tracking the other’s chest. He began to advance in a straight line, steps stamping in a rhythm: left-right-left, each landing with a snap of hips and shoulders that promised a strike at any moment. His breath came clipped: kiai held like a drawn arrow. The Piguaquan man circled clockwise, light on the balls of his feet, his steps describing a widening spiral. He stayed just beyond the tip, inviting a lunge. Lantern light painted him in amber and shadow. He cut his arms in wide, deceptive circles, wrists loose, fingers relaxed till the moment of contact. Every few seconds, he feinted a drop of level, shoulders dipping as if to charge, then rolled away. He watched the bokken, not the eyes. The Jigen-ryū fighter snapped forward, a decisive choice. Right foot drove, left followed, bokken thrusting straight as a spear at the solar plexus. The distance closed from two paces to one. As the thrust came, the Piguaquan man stepped not away but in and left, his right foot crossing his left in a tight stepping pattern that carried his torso past the line of the point. His left hand slapped the flat of the bokken near the middle, guiding it off-center to his right as his right forearm swung over the top in a whipping hammerfist toward the Jigen-ryū fighter’s forearm near the wrist. The hammerfist landed; the nerves rang. The bokken slipped a quarter inch in the Jigen-ryū fighter’s grip. He refused the disarm, clamping hard with his left hand, and rolled his right wrist, turning the thrust into an inside cut that sought the Piguaquan man’s left shoulder now that he’d moved in. It was fast, filling the space the other had entered like a closing door. The Piguaquan man dropped his weight under the arcing cut, shoulders folding, the wooden blade skimming the cloth of his tunic. As it passed, he unwound like a cable snapping straight: right palm swung upward across the Jigen-ryū man’s jawline while his left forearm shot under the bokken to strike the inner biceps. Two impacts in one long whip. The jaw strike cracked the mouth open; the biceps strike deadened the arm. Momentum carried both of them half a step. The Jigen-ryū fighter swallowed blood and channeled the pain into speed. He backed off a half-step to create room and unleashed an overhead cut from high to low, the kind that, in earlier centuries, broke helmets. He timed it to catch the Piguaquan man as he rose from his drop. But the Piguaquan fighter never rose straight. He rolled to his left, the cut scything past his right shoulder to explode on the floor with a wooden smack that echoed. The bokken’s tip bit into a joint between stones. For a heartbeat, wood was married to earth. The Piguaquan man capitalized. He slid along the outside of the trapped weapon, his right hand pinning the bokken near the tip with a sudden, downward press, and his left foot stepped deep into the Jigen-ryū fighter’s stance, past the lead foot, to the outside. His left forearm slammed across the Jigen-ryū fighter’s collarbones, a bar that drove him backward while his hips twisted, loading a knee. The Jigen-ryū fighter tried to jerk the weapon free, but the angle and the press stole leverage. The knee came. It rose in a tight arc from the Piguaquan man’s right hip and smashed into the Jigen-ryū fighter’s left flank. Air left the lungs in a rough bark. The bar across the collarbones converted the impact into a stumble. He retreated two short steps, ripping the bokken out with a harsh wrench that drew a splinter from the floor. The crowd erupted—boos and cheers like birds taking off. He had space again, but his ribs throbbed. He decided. Jigen-ryū was not a dance. It was a storm. He set his left foot and surged, the bokken now a blur. First, a feint to the inside—tip toward throat—then a sudden heel-turn and a diagonal cut to the outside thigh. The Piguaquan fighter checked the first with a slap, veered off the second by pivoting his knee inward and lifting his foot—barely—so the wood scythed past shin instead of biting bone. The Jigen-ryū man reversed—hips snapping, arms guiding—bringing the blade up in a rising cut that sought the ribs. The Piguaquan man twisted his torso in a corkscrew, letting the cut graze the edge of his ribs while his hands traced two arcs: right hand high, fingers hooked, brushed across the Jigen-ryū fighter’s eyes; left hand low, palm heel slammed into the side of his lead knee. The eye rake didn’t gouge—it blinded. The knee strike shocked the joint. The Jigen-ryū fighter’s world turned white and red. He did what he’d drilled: step through pain. He stepped, but the knee was a fraction slow. He adjusted by collapsing into a low stance, lowering his center and dedicating everything to the next half-second. He thrust, not at the chest this time, but at the hip, aiming to buckle the Piguaquan man’s base. The bokken drove forward with a short, savage shove. The Piguaquan fighter had kept his circling angle, always traveling clockwise. As the thrust came for his hip, he disappeared from the line by stepping back with his right foot and spinning on his left—a tight half-turn that turned his right shoulder away and opened his left side toward the Jigen-ryū man’s flank. The thrust shot past. In the same motion, he let his right arm unwind from the turn, a long-range whipping strike that started at the ankle and cascaded up through the legs, hips, spine, and shoulder. His forearm struck the back of the Jigen-ryū fighter’s elbow as it extended, not to break but to hyperextend the line. The wooden blade skewed down. His left hand, already up, chopped down on the wrist. The bokken fell. It hit the stone with a clatter that cut the air sharper than any shout. The crowd surged in, then checked itself at the perimeter, the ring of bodies tightening like a noose. The Jigen-ryū fighter didn’t lunge for the weapon. He stepped in. Empty hands now. He struck with a straight punch, hips and shoulders unified, the kind that could break a jaw. The Piguaquan man slid to the outside, the punch passing, and he put his forearm across the striking arm’s triceps to guide it on and down while his right palm hammered the Jigen-ryū fighter’s exposed ribs again, same spot, precise as a debt collector. The breath left louder this time. He chained it: left hand snapped up in a vertical palm to the chin, a rising whip. The Jigen-ryū fighter tucked his chin, took it on the forehead, and answered by hooking his left arm over the Piguaquan man’s right and turning—hip to hip—attempting a shoulder throw. The Piguaquan fighter felt the load, let his feet leave the floor a fraction, then stepped around with his right foot in a tight circle to stay glued to the hip. The throw dissipated into a stumble. He landed light, his arm still threaded under the Jigen-ryū man’s. He twisted, locking the elbow against his chest, and sank, pulling down while stepping behind the Jigen-ryū fighter’s right heel with his left foot. A scissoring motion—upper body down, lower body blocked—sent the Jigen-ryū fighter to one knee. The bokken lay an arm’s length away to his left. He could see it. He reached, but the Piguaquan man’s right hand landed on the back of his neck, a heavy, rooted weight, while his left forearm rode the trapped arm like a lever. The Jigen-ryū fighter drove up with his legs, almost standing, almost shrugging off the hold by raw force. The Piguaquan man allowed the rise, then collapsed his own weight to the right, dragging the arm across and down, redirecting power into emptiness. The Jigen-ryū fighter fell forward onto both hands. The Piguaquan man’s knee pinned the triceps. His right hand lifted and fell, a hammerfist into the back of the shoulder. The impact vibrated through bone. “Enough!” someone shouted from the ring’s edge, a voice older than the rest, frayed by years of shouting secrets. The crowd ignored it. The Jigen-ryū fighter surged again, a last uncompromising shove. He twisted his trapped arm, aligned his thumb with the gap, and ripped free at cost of skin. He twisted, rising into the Piguaquan man’s space with a body-check that slammed both of them into a fallen column. Stone scraped skin. For a heartbeat, they were chest to chest again, both wheezing, both stubborn. Then the Piguaquan man dropped his hips and let his arms become ropes once more. His right forearm slid under the Jigen-ryū man’s jaw, not a choke, just a post. His left hand palmed the sternum, pushed, and in the same instant, his right foot hooked the inside of the Jigen-ryū man’s ankle and drew. The combination broke balance forward. The Jigen-ryū fighter caught himself with his left hand against the column, head turned. The Piguaquan man’s palm cut across the ear, a slapping arc, and the world rang. The follow-up was immediate: a palm heel into the ribs, same bruised target, one more time. The Jigen-ryū fighter sagged, his weight listing. The bokken remained on the floor, quiet. The Piguaquan man stepped back a pace, hands up, chest heaving. He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. The Jigen-ryū fighter pushed himself upright, one hand against the column, breath rasping. He stared at the man who had refused to meet his strikes head-on and had instead stolen their lines. Pride strangled anger into a thin thread. He straightened as much as his ribs allowed, then bowed an inch—stiff, grudging, intact. Around them, the ring broke into shouts and arguments, money snatched or surrendered. Armbands glowed in the lantern light, red and black flashing on both sides. Someone spat at the floor. Someone else laughed too loudly. From the broken altar’s shadow, two figures in the robes of masters had already turned away, their faces unreadable. The Piguaquan man touched the bruise rising on his cheekbone, then adjusted his armband as if to remind himself who he was. The Jigen-ryū fighter lifted his fallen bokken and slid it under his arm. They stood two paces apart, the ruined temple breathing cold air between them, the debt between their schools uncollected and multiplied, the night’s ledger balanced only in their battered bodies.

Model Output:
Speakers in each corner hiss to life, then slam the track into the room like a steel door. Four walls, four mouths, all blasting the same song half a hair too loud, the bass running under the sprung floor like a subway. The mirrors cut a square of me into four versions I don’t recognize: black tee damp at the sternum, training pants cuffed high to clear the ankle, socks snug in the slippers they make us wear to save the floor. Knees soft. Head forward. Neutral spine, the instructor barked. Neutral, like I’ve never been in my neighborhood. “We set from count one,” he says. Choi-sabeomnim doesn’t raise his voice, but when he breathes, the room inhales. He stands at the front-right quarter of the room, a yardstick in his hand like an extra limb. He’s famous, they said. He breaks you clean, then stacks you back like new. His cap is pulled low, but the eyes in the mirror cut. He taps his yardstick twice against the floor. On his left, assistant No. 1 mirrors him; on his right, No. 2 faces us to demo corrections. They form the point of the triangle. We are the base. I settle into the second row, dead center, so I can track alignment off the assistant’s knees. My right foot is on its mark—a sliver of blue tape crossing the wood, lined exactly between the white lines for center axis. Left foot parallel to right, hip-width apart. Hands at my sides, fingers flat. “Breath,” he says. “You dance late because you breathe late.” I inhale and the speakers jump us to count five, the cut clipping off the vocalist’s breath. The snare hits a sixteenth ahead, a kind of swung-kick pattern that wants to pull my chest into it. My city taught me to ride the drag, to melt into a pocket so slow it feels like breaking the law. Here, the counts sit like nails driven exact. “Five six, seven-and—eight!” The first move is a three-quarter plié, both knees tracking over second toe, then a micro-tilt to the right on “and” as shoulders slice left, palms sharp like blades perpendicular to the floor. We’re supposed to be isometric—one body in conflict with itself. I hit the bend fine, my ankles strong, but my shoulders want to sink, want to roll into it. In the mirror, my right palm lists a degree forward. Choi’s yardstick kisses the back of my hand. Not a slap—just a tap that says, here is a hinge, not a rope. We push off the toes to straight legs on “one,” shift weight to left foot without traveling, then whip the head to the right on “two” like it’s mounted on a gimbal. “Isolate,” he says. “Cervical spine only.” My hood rat neck trick from the block—rolling the head like a slow coin—flares up, and I have to clamp down to make it mechanical, no goo. The track’s synths are laser-clean, no grit, no swing. My sternum tightens against the click track in my head I didn’t know I had: the train brakes, the bottle clinks, the open window arguments. We punch a right-arm diagonal on “three,” wrist flexed at ninety degrees, elbow locked, hand to the four o’clock above the shoulder line. The left arm crosses the body horizontal, palm down. On “and,” both snap to the opposite diagonal. A clean, sharp set. The room ticks. Thirty bodies moving exactly through their pathway, no bleed. My right shoulder squeaks internal, a tendon memory from countless windmills in alleys. I fight the urge to let my elbow soften. “Stronger,” Choi says, and the assistant’s tricep feathers stand like a ridge. I force mine to match, scapula cinching toward the spine like it’s stitched. On “four,” there’s a footwork combo—right foot steps to the diagonal, heel leading, toe out, then left crosses behind in a pas de bourrée modified for sneakers; knees kiss, then separate sharply on the “and,” tracing a tiny diamond with my weight. My body wants to throw a bounce into it, a soft rebound through my Achilles, but we’re not bouncing; we’re clocking counts like timecards. Knees shoot, ankles block, pelvis stays level like a tray. I stare at my pelvis in the mirror. Devant no tilt. My jaw clenches. He stops the track. The silence is so loud after that we all reel. “You bleed,” he says, stepping toward me through the second row like a soldier on inspection. He doesn’t have to look around; people part because they know he will not go around them. He stands at my twelve, inches from the tape line that keeps him out of our box. “You’re dripping style like sweat. Wasteful.” “I thought—” The word jumps out of me like a muscle twitch. “You don’t think here. You count.” He pivots in a quarter turn back to the front. “Run it from ‘killing part.’” He picks up the remote, scrubs to the hook. The speakers crush it back at us. A metallic chant. The assistant demonstrates the “killing part” slow: a chest pop timed to a vocal cut, then a cannon ripple through the line from front-left to back-right, each body a precise delay. It’s the kind of visual that made me fall for this place online: a human waveform. But the ripple means suppression. You hold yours until the exact eighth where you’re allowed to release. The air moves like a mouth passing air around a circle. We start. “Seven-and—eight.” I’m at position seventeen. The cannon is going to hit me on the “e-and” of “two.” The girl to my left—Saet-byul—fires on “two.” I have to hold until I feel her elbow up in the corner of my left eye, then I have to catch the residual energy without making it look like it traveled through me from her. It’s an illusion: we’re not connected; we pretend we are. I feel her deltoid twitch; I trap my chest, clamp my ribs like a book closed by a palm. “E-and—” I pulse my sternum forward one centimeter, then snap it back, not with a ripple, but with a recoil. It lands on the “and.” We look like a stadium wave. The instinct to add a micro-linger, a smear of funk, almost kills me. I save it by locking my knees harder than they deserve. My quads lurch under me like someone grabbed them. Pain zaps electric along the IT bands. My mouth tastes like battery. “Good,” Choi says, like a coin tossed, not looking at me. We mark through a floor pathway—the section that has us travel, finally. The room is set in quadrants. My line is the second from back. We’re to slide on counts “one, two” on a diagonal track from front-left to back-right, then half-turn to face back on “three,” continue traveling backward on “four,” then quarter-turn to face left wall on “five,” hit a pop on “six,” then a huddle formation on “seven, eight” in the upstage-right corner. Our boxes are taped out—each person’s square is a grave the exact size of their body if they collapse. We’re not allowed to heel-squeak the floor. Silent feet, loud music. “Glide,” the assistant says, demonstrating a heel-toe, to make it look frictionless. They call it a glide here. I grew up calling it a bullet-walk. Same mechanics, different religion. Heel strikes, weight passes to ball with no vertical bounce, knee stays soft, pelvis stable, shoulders counter to keep the head on one line. My old instinct is to head-tilt into the glide, to let the neck carry the swag. Not here. “Keep your eyeline.” Choi’s voice rides above the crush. We go. My right foot leads. “One, two—” my slide is clean. I keep my torso like a shelf, arms floating in a mid-level S-curve, which is wrong. “Arms down,” Choi snaps. I drop them and immediately feel stripped, anonymous, like somebody shaved my signature. “Three,” I turn over my left shoulder, the right foot crossing behind, pivot on the ball; my axis wobbles. The mirror doubles my sway. On “four,” I travel backward. This is where muscle memory betrays me: I anticipate the backspace too wide, my left foot places an inch outside my taped corner. The boy behind me clicks my heel with his toe. A chain-reaction almost starts, a ripple of imbalance, the bad kind, the real one. “Stop.” The room freezes at something like “five-and.” My breath stops too. Choi walks through the ranks toward me. Everyone else is still as mannequins, chests arrested mid-breath. He crouches, the yardstick parallel to the floor, measures the gap between my left foot’s arch and the blue tape. “Eleven millimeters.” He makes me say it. “Eleven millimeters,” I repeat, heat traveling up my neck. The boy behind me is still like a ghost, eyes forward. We’re all in uniform, and I feel like a stain. “You waste eleven for you; you steal eleven from him,” Choi says, pointing the yardstick over his shoulder to the boy. “You think your neighborhood forgives theft?” I swallow. My neighborhood forgives a lot. It forgives scrapes on knuckles and missed shifts. It forgives you for stealing back breath from a night that choked you. But it doesn’t forgive block parties where one person takes the circle and never gives it back. We reset. Counts roll again. The room is a machine. My lungs fight to match. “Six.” The pop is a muted wave from pelvis to sternum. They call it a hit. You create pressure in your core and release it through the shoulders like a shutter. In my street, a hit is messy, an organism. Here, it’s a switch. I try to place it on the “six” exactly, external obliques contracting like doors slamming. This time, the mirror says I landed it. The girl to my left who nails everything like a forklift glances, then nods half a degree. It feels like a medal. Then comes the freestyle eight. Irony is a god with a mean sense of humor. In the middle of all this industrial precision, they give us eight counts to be “ourselves,” but the square is taped and the camera angle is fixed. Choi calls it “contained freedom.” We are to hit the camera dead-on, stay within our four feet by four feet, and present a motif from the choreography in our own texture. The line moves; each dancer takes their eight and passes the baton. In my block we call it cypher, a circle that expands to fit whoever comes in. Here, it’s a rectangle that doesn’t care about your name. My turn is four people away. Ahead of me, the assistant does a tutting phrase, crisp wrists, ninety-degree elbows, fractal geometry unfolding within the square, a modulus of our larger phrase. Next, Saet-byul interprets the glide motif with a micro-lean, a whisper of waacking in the shoulder blade, but she keeps it chaste, within the brand. The boy behind me does a head-isolation on the “and” that’s so clean I forget to breathe. My palms itch. My body wants to go low, take it to the floor, slip a knee spin on the “three,” arc back up through a wave that travels from ankle to wrist like a fuse. But the floor is sacred; you don’t touch it unless told. The tape squares glare. The camera in the back wall—tiny red light on—watches like an unblinking god. I hear my mother’s voice on a spotty call: Baby, don’t let them make you small. I hear my sponsor’s email in my inbox, all clean lines: Your compliance with program standards ensures opportunity. Two gods arguing in my sternum. “Five, six—” It’s my turn. I step forward exactly one half-foot from my mark so I’m centered in the lens, knees soft. On “seven,” instead of exploding, I inhale. My chest expands against the rib cage and the music like I’m stealing air. On “eight,” I bleed the inhale into a micro-body roll starting at the sternum, traveling outward, but I lock each segment as it goes. It’s my move, but spliced into machine language: sternum one centimeter, then clamp; navel one centimeter, clamp; pelvis tilt two degrees, clamp. My shoulders want to slur the note; I slice them instead. On “one,” I set a tut grid with my hands like fences—my neighborhood, but drafted by an architect. On “two,” I drop my level two inches, heels heavy but silent, chin still level. On “three-and,” I give one eight-note of pure me: a neck tick with a shadow of bounce. It tastes like contraband. On “four,” I pretend it didn’t happen, locking back to the academy silhouette, arms in the set position by my quads. The eight dissolves. The baton passes. The speakers spit the next section. Choi doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. His eyes did a flick on my “three-and,” and I saw it. He saw it. He filed it. We drill transitions until the sun slides off the window and the ceiling fluorescents buzz louder than the track. Sweat turns the floor into a map of salt. Knees track. Toes align. Hips square. My feet blister inside the slippers. In the block, we said pain meant you were alive. Here, pain means you’re not symmetrical. When he finally calls a break, the room exhales like it was told it could. People collapse along the wall in staged exhaustion, legs extended precise, backs flat. I walk my square clean to the bench, toe to heel along the tape like I owe it money. I sit. The speaker in the back-left corner hums the next track in its belly like a warning. Saet-byul drops onto the bench beside me, as careful as if in rehearsal. “Your body fights,” she says, in English for me, though I hear the Korean under it. Her sweat smells like citrus hand soap. “I don’t know how not to.” I rub the arch of my foot with my thumb, feel the blister’s ridge. “Where I’m from, if you don’t fight, you get swallowed.” She looks at the mirror instead of me. “Here, if you fight, you don’t form.” She takes a long drink from her bottle, then caps it exactly. “Form first. Then fight inside it.” She stands when Choi stands, like a tide follows the moon. We line up. The choice is a coin in my mouth. If I conform, I earn the scholarship, the residency, the visa that keeps me away from the noise that knows my name too well. If I rebel, I keep the heat that built my body, the rhythm that saved me. But rebellion here looks like sloppiness to a lens. Authenticity looks like error in HD. He counts us in. “Five, six, seven-and—eight.” I place my feet on the tape until they remember they like it. I lock my elbows with a precision that feels like prayer. And on the “and” of “three”—where no one is looking, where the camera angle has shifted to the front line—I let the smallest pulse of my neighborhood ride from my heel to my hip like a secret, hidden inside the beat, so tight it reads as intensity, not defiance. Choi’s yardstick passes behind me on the “four,” and I hear it whisper a millimeter from my hamstring. It doesn’t touch. He says, “Better.” And the word doesn’t feel like an order. It feels like a bridge. I hit the next mark to the millimeter. And I keep my secret burning inside the counts, bright as a streetlight that refuses to blink.

Model Output:
The Court of the Dreaming convened beneath vaulting rafters carved from old lullabies and unresolved anxieties. Lamps burned with the slow, dim light of bedtime stories retold too often. Every whisper in the gallery had the bounce of a sleep-talking murmur, every cough the dry rustle of turning pages. At the center, an hourglass taller than a watchtower dripped shimmering sand. Each grain whispered as it fell, carrying away bits of someone’s almost-recalled memory: the taste of summer peaches, the desire to turn and look one more time, a half-laughed confession. Time in the Dreaming did not so much pass as make it known, and the hourglass made it very known, each drip precise, a soft ticking at the back of all minds present. Dream sat at the bench. He was dressed like midnight wrapped in etiquette. He had the expression of a cat attending a lecture on obedience. His gaze could have flattened storms. It did not flatten bureaucracy. “Let the record continue,” said the Bailiff, who was constructed entirely of good intentions and brass buttons. He had a head like a cufflink and patience like rain. First Love stood at the petitioner’s table, rosy-cheeked and painfully tidy. Their hair curled around the ears like a promise. They clutched a handkerchief embroidered with forget-me-nots. At the defense table slouched Mora, very pale, very amused, perched in her chair as if it were a ribcage. Her eyes were a little too dark, her smile a little too sharp. If she had a hobby, it would have been exhaling on windows and drawing smudged hearts just to press a thumb through the center. Dream nodded to the Clerk. The Clerk, who was a stack of files with legs, flattened a sheaf of parchment and cleared a throat made of rustling paper. “Case Nox-178B,” the Clerk intoned, “First Love versus Mora, also known as Mara the Hag, the Hag-Rider, the Night-Press, and—” Mora waved. “Just Mora is fine, sweetie.” First Love winced. “It isn’t fine.” Dream made the smallest motion with a finger. It felt like a thunderhead changing its mind. “Speak,” he said, with a voice like the underside of a bell. First Love stepped forward, and several elsewheres turned quietly to listen. “My Lord,” they began, “as guardian and artisan of the soft catastrophe of adolescence, I present for your attention: the recurring nocturne assigned to one Max—surname withheld, because privacy is a kind of mercy we still believe in. It is a pastoral. He lies in wildflowers with his crush of three months, who smells faintly of strawberry lip balm and academic anxiety. The scene culminates in a near-kiss, a little blur, a near-electricity, leaving him confused in a gentle way, and transformed on waking. He is kinder at breakfast. He smiles at bus stops. He googles ‘how to talk to someone without sounding like a robot.’” Murmurs of approval from the gallery. Several shy sprites pressed handkerchiefs to their eyes. A row of adolescent dreams—awkward and brave, all elbows—leaned forward, enthralled. First Love continued. “Recently, this carefully balanced progression has been hijacked. The field remains, the girl remains, the nearly-kiss remains—although let us note the quality of the nearly—when suddenly, during a consensual playful moment of youthful exuberance—” Mora perked up. “She hops on top,” she supplied, helpfully. First Love’s blush deepened to an alarming cherry. “At which point the girl morphs into our defendant, who, and I must be clinical here, sits upon his chest and eats his breath.” “Feeds,” Mora corrected, lightly. “A nibble. He has excellent lungs. Very… buoyant.” First Love turned to the bench. “This is corruptive, my Lord. The dream is no longer formative. It is deformative. The child wakes with a sense of shame and terror braided to desire. He cannot parse his own heart. He has begun to avoid eye contact with his crush, and—this part is new—he googled ‘how to tell if you’re cursed?’” A murmur; some laughter, quickly shushed. The hourglass spilled another sigh. Dream angled his head. “Mora.” Mora crossed one leg over the other and stretched like a cat in a church. “Your Majesty of Blankets. Respectfully: a girl’s gotta eat, too. He’s a healthy boy, full of fresh fright and oxygen and the delicate aroma of deodorant he’s not sure how to use. I did not break the dream; I… seasoned it.” “You invaded,” said First Love. “I relocated a picnic blanket,” Mora said. “You weaponized vulnerability.” Mora shrugged. “We all work with what is present. You pluck the strings of first light. I press where the ribs are harp-like.” A grumble from the gallery, which consisted mostly of retired nightmares, a murder of cupid-wannabes, and a gaggle of sentient report cards. One report card sneered at an F in Algebra, as it always did. Dream’s gaze turned to the hourglass. Sand was falling faster than it had any right to. The Bailiff coughed gently and held a hand over the top bulb to slow time. It did not work, but it looked officious. Dream spoke, not loudly, which somehow was louder than any shout. “We do not feed without permission.” Mora rolled her eyes. “Oh please. Ask the Muse of Insomnia about consent. She parades outside windows humming deadlines.” “Insomnia is duly licensed,” the Clerk murmured, wilting a little as a paper corner drooped. First Love seized their moment. “What we do here matters. He will remember this night in twenty years, my Lord. He will not remember me. He will remember the pressure, the breathless helplessness. As a joke, someone will say, ‘crushed it,’ and he will flinch. He will assume the dizziness of longing is a prelude to suffocation. He deserves a first story that ends in a question mark, not a gasp for air.” Mora leaned forward, resting elbows on the defense table as if it were a ribcage too. “Sweetheart. You want to raise them soft as moonbread. But the world is all teeth. If he learns early that desire bites, he’ll keep his fingers. He’ll recognize the taste of his own fear and call it by its name. Isn’t that also mercy?” The gallery made that noise people make when they don’t want to admit a point has struck them. The hourglass sighed again, letting down a more opalescent ribbon of time. A bead of sand caught the light like a ring no one had worn in years. The Bailiff cleared his throat. “Calling Expert Witness: the Dream Itself.” The floorboards shuffled. A constellation stepped down from the rafters, arranged itself politely at the witness stand, and lit the air with a patient shimmer. It was difficult to see the Dream and not be seen through back. The Dream swore the oath, which was redundant. Dream, the arbiter, and Dream, the witness, regarded each other. The absurdity of it kinked the atmosphere into a pretzel. Even the hourglass hesitated in deference. “Make your statement,” Dream said to themself, which was not as easy as it sounded. The Dream-Witness’s voice was a breeze in tall grass, a chalkboard squeak smoothed by rain. “The boy’s field has been combed by two winds,” it said. “One carries clover and embarrassment. One carries iron and night. Both are truths he will meet. The question is order.” “Order,” Dream repeated, the word landing like a gavel before being a gavel. He pressed two fingers to his temple, as though he could pinch away the ache of moderating this family therapy session held on a battlefield. First Love spoke softly now. “Order matters.” Mora spoke like a lullaby gone wrong. “Hunger matters.” Silence arrived, and it sat. Outside the courthouse, a rain of paper planes fell upward toward a ceiling of black velvet. Somewhere, a dog dreamed of chasing its own tail and caught it, and woke. The feeling settled on everyone present for an instant: that odd triumph and pain. Dream’s impenetrable demeanor cracked by a hair. Irritation leaked like ink. “I am”—he gestured, encompassing forests, gutters, high-rise windows, haylofts, monk cells, cars at red lights—“very busy.” His voice sharpened. “And yet. Here we stand arguing who owns the blush beside the bruise.” Mora smirked. “We could share.” First Love looked stricken. “Share? Overlap is not blend, it’s bruise.” “That’s a line,” someone whispered appreciatively. Dream leaned back. His fingers tapped the bench, the sound of rain late at night when you’ve remembered a name too late to use it. He was tempted—clearly, purely—to mischief. You could see it in the tilt of his mouth, in the way the hourglass suddenly, almost playfully, squeezed its stream thinner, a tease of reprieve. “Let us be practical,” Dream said, adopting the tone of someone who is not. “Mora, you may not take what is not offered. You may, however, suggest.” Mora arched a brow. “Suggest? With… pamphlets?” “Atmosphere,” Dream said. “You may be the chill at the edge of the blanket. The knowledge that there is a deeper night nearby. If he turns his head to you, if he invites, if he reaches, you may taste the breath he offers. No pinning. No press. No ribs for harps unless he says, in his own way, play.” First Love visibly exhaled. “And in the meantime?” “In the meantime, you will acclimate him to the nearness of fear. Not to its rule. You will lace the pastoral with the smallest thorn. A bee that is gentle unless squeezed. A cloud that passes. He must know the sky is a ceiling that can fall, and also that most days it does not.” Mora tilted her head. “So, the girl sits astride him—” First Love squeaked. “—and she remains herself,” Dream continued smoothly. “She laughs. She learns the word no, and the word yes, and both fit her like a jacket. If the boy feels panic, the field will widen; there will be room to breathe. If he feels the thrill and wants the weight—only if he wants the weight—then you may be weight.” The gallery rustled with the sound of a thousand sleepers turning over in their beds. Mora considered. “That’s… less fun.” Dream’s eyes cooled a degree. “Your license to haunt adolescent chests in this jurisdiction is suspended for three cycles of the moon.” Mora opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. “Is this because I called you Majesty of Blankets?” Dream did not smile. “It did not help.” Mora sat back, then leaned forward, sly. “And if he starts googling ‘how to haunt responsibly’?” “Then he is ours,” Dream said, with something like pride. “He is learning.” First Love pressed a hand to their heart, which ticked as if wrapped in tissue paper. “And the dream?” “The pastoral is restored,” Dream declared. “But not sterilized. The almost-kiss remains almost. The confusion remains pleasant. Once, and only once, the wind will carry the scent of iron. It will pass. He will know it can pass.” Mora slouched with theatrical despair. “Fine. Fine.” She stood, blew a kiss to the hourglass. A few grains reversed direction, then thought better of it and continued down. “You are all no fun at parties.” First Love tidied their cuff and, for a moment, looked at Mora not with anger but with something like curiosity. “You could come to the party,” they said. “Just… don’t sit on anyone.” “No promises,” Mora said, hot coal of a smile. But she nodded, almost imperceptibly, a concession small and real. Dream lifted the gavel. It was heavy with the weight of every decision made in sleep and regretted awake. He paused, tempted again to mischief, to splice in a sidelong joke. Perhaps a future dream: Max at a prom, the punch bowl smoking, the chaperone a wolf with a corsage. Perhaps a postscript that would make the boy wake laughing for once, with no explanation. The temptation tugged like a ribbon around his finger. “Adjourned,” he said, and with a single strike, the sound spread like a ripple across a still lake, threading through beds and bunks and hammocks and passenger seats worldwide. The hourglass resumed its dignified drip. Somewhere, Max turned over, a field of wildflowers unrolling behind his eyes, a girl leaning close with the shy question of the universe on her lips. Somewhere at the field’s edge, a shadow kept a respectful distance, patient as a crow on a fence post. The wind was clover, and then for a heartbeat it was iron, and then it was only wind.

Model Output:
The cart wheel lies like a severed limb by the village gates, its rim split, spokes snapped, half-swallowed by churned mud. The moon is red and swollen, hemorrhaging light into the mist that drifts across fallow fields. There is a smell of trampled earth, clean blood, and something subtler: lilac and gooseberries, like a memory intruding on a nightmare. He arrives first as a shadow that remembers it had once been a man. The hat resolves, then the coat—red, as if dyed with the evening itself—and the smile under the orange-tinted glasses, too many teeth in too wide a mouth. Alucard steps around the abandoned wheel, pauses, lays a gloved fingertip on a cracked spoke. The wood whispers of speed and terror—the hurried departure of peasants with more sense than pride. He inhales the fear and lets it roll across his tongue. “How quaint,” he murmurs to the emptiness. “Such fragile things, wheels. Such fragile things, people.” The night answers with the soft concatenation of leather and steel, the click of heels, the faintest rasp of fabric against fabric. Her presence sharpens at the edge of his senses: pressure, heat, a shape in the world drawing lines around itself through will alone. She steps out of the fog with violet eyes and a mouth that promises cruelty and kindness alike—both earned, neither free. Her hair is raven-dark, pinned like a threat. The scent of lilac and gooseberries cuts cleanly through the iron. She looks the abandoned wheel up and down, then him, and her lips tilt. “Villagers ran,” she says. “Imagine that.” He tips his hat without bowing. “A sensible choice. I have that effect.” “So I’m told,” Yennefer replies, and her voice has steel under silk. “You’re not from here.” “I am from everywhere,” Alucard says. “But only when it amuses me.” “Lucky you,” she says, and does not smile. Her gaze drops to the massive handgun at his side, the stretch of leather across his shoulders, then ascends to his face. She notices the glasses last, as if acknowledging the smallest of his lies. “And are you here to amuse yourself on my account?” He bares his teeth. “Perhaps. If you prove...interesting.” The fog tightens around them; the red moon sinks lower, fattened by distance. A faint susurrus of wings ripples across the fields. Ravens watch from crooked fence posts with glossy eyes. In a hut beyond the gates, a candle sputters and dies. The air hums with the porous edge of the world thinning in places that people avoid naming. Yennefer lifts her chin, tasting the same thinness, the same promise of rupture, and Alucard feels her power unfurl like a banner—scented, sharp, uncompromising. “Tell me,” he says, conversational as a gentleman at a wake. “Do you hide your demons under perfume? Or is that cruelty—” he steps nearer, tasting, “—all yours?” “Both,” she says, and flicks her wrist as if to brush off dust. A circle of indigo fire opens in her palm, then closes, coy as an eyelid. “I’m not sweet and I’m not a maiden in distress in need of saving.” He laughs, a raw low thing that makes the ravens shift. “Good. I would hate to be bored.” “It must be dreadful,” Yennefer says, voice dry. “An eternity of nothing but yourself.” “On the contrary.” His glasses flash with a color that doesn’t belong to the moon. “I am excellent company.” “The lonely often say so.” The broken wheel creaks as if remembering its load. The village gate yawns. The moon licks the thatch with red. He moves first—only a blur, the idea of movement. When he stops, he is behind her, and the smoke of his coat is still catching up to the rest of him. The cold metal of his gun is a whisper at her spine, there and gone. In the same heartbeat, the air around her becomes a lattice of invisible knives. She does not turn. Her chin lifts a fraction more. “Do you want to test me?” she asks. “I want to see you,” he counters, amused. “All these masks. Show me what the world made of you.” Her hand opens again, not a circle this time but a square—a window—through which another sky glows: blue and harsh, bleeding into the red like a bruise. It blinks out. She keeps her back to him as he circles, the two of them orbiting the broken wheel like blades around a whetstone. “Once,” she says, “I broke myself to become what I wanted. It cost me, and it was worth it.” “Ah,” he says, delighted. “I do so adore the butchery of becoming. The bird of Hermes is my name, eating my wings to make me tame.” “Tame?” she says. “You?” “Of a sort.” He spreads his arms as if to offer himself to the moon. “We all find our leashes where we can.” “And what’s yours?” she asks. “Orders? Duty? A pretty red coat?” “Hope,” he says lightly. “For a good death.” She laughs then, a genuine sound that shows the edge of her teeth. “You’re not going to find that here.” “You might be surprised.” He slides closer, and his shadow slides with him, wrong in the ways shadows should be. “You smell like wanting. It’s charming.” “Careful,” she says, and the air thunders. The mist collapses and then expands, a lung inhaling. A circle of sigils lights at her boots, geometric and merciless. “I did not ask for company.” “Neither did I,” he says, and his teeth lengthen. “And yet.” They arrive at an agreement without naming it. They test. He fires first, silver hissing through the night like lines drawn on a map. She twists her fingers and the bullets die mid-flight, falling like dull stars, hissing into the mud. He watches the deflection—the angle, the flare—and grins. She flickers, vanishes, appears a pace to the left. His shadow lunges at where she had been and finds only heat, only perfume. Yennefer lifts her palm. A whip of blue-white lightning unfurls and cracks him across the chest, a strip of scorched coat and charred flesh. He laughs through the burn, delighted, and splits into a flock of black-eyed dogs with dripping jaws. They fan out, a semicircle of hunger. She curls two fingers, and the earth rises in a ridge, throwing the nearest dogs away as if they were pebbles. One lunges—she looks into its eyes and unthreads it with a word. It unwinds into smoke, then becomes him again, whole and grinning, the scorch mark closing like a thought dismissed. “Regeneration,” she says, bored, but a sheen of sweat collects at her brow. “How novel.” “For your part,” he says, ducking a shard of ice that would have pinned him to the gate like a specimen, “your discipline pleases me. So many of your ilk wave their hands and pray. You cut.” “My magic is not a prayer,” she snaps, and the air around him hardens, pressure blooming in his bones. For a second he is a pinned insect. He smiles with his eyes and sheds himself, steps sideways out of his skin like a snake. The husk collapses, grinning and empty. She huffs; the line of her mouth softens despite herself. They circle. The wheel watches, a broken omen, and the ravens provide commentary in throaty croaks. On the second pass, he tests her with speed; on the third, with fear—throwing illusions of fire, of a crib burning, of a child with black eyes screaming. She draws breath as if struck. Her hands tremble once. Then her expression shuts like a door. “You do not get to use that,” she says, contempt gentling into something he does not recognize in time to name. She takes the image from the air and breaks it, her fingers closing on its throat until it is only smoke. He tilts his head, curious now, the sadism slipping. “Who broke you?” he asks, sincere as a knife. “I did,” she says. “And I made myself again.” He nods, respectful. The next time she moves, he is not quick enough to avoid the net she drops—a lattice of force as elegant as lace and as merciless as a trap. It cinches around his ribs, his throat. He feels it and remembers constraint; he licks his teeth like a man tasting salt. He could become mist; he could become vermin; he could simply let the guns speak, silver humming a hymn. Instead he leans into it, into her. He lets her think she has him. The net tightens. She steps close, one hand on her hip, the other at her side. Not gloating. Assessing. Her violet eyes are critical, and something like hunger lives there, honest as the moon. “You’re old,” she says. “Older than any I’ve met. Older than sense. What world spat you out?” “All of them,” he says, smiling against a throat that does not need to breathe. “I crawled out of the bottom of history and decided to stay.” “Why?” she asks. “To watch.” “Vain answer.” She looks at his mouth, then his eyes. “Cowardly, too.” He laughs, glad. “Say that again.” “Coward,” she repeats, and her fingers flex. The net bites, a kiss that bruises. He becomes dust then, impatient. The net sinks into powder. Yennefer flinches, surprised, and throws a ward instinctively. He reassembles behind her, mouth at her ear. The gun is nowhere; his hands are pockets, casual as night. “You are right,” he murmurs, and the admission tastes like copper. “I am waiting for someone to be brave enough to end me.” “And you think that’s me?” she asks, still as glass, aware of him like an ache. “I think,” he says, “you might be brave enough to try.” “Not tonight.” She steps forward, and he lets her, the space between them bending and then snapping like a bowstring. She turns to face him. The wheel creaks again, a useless sermon. “I didn’t come here for you.” “Then for whom?” he asks, because curiosity is a leash, too. “Someone who doesn’t matter anymore.” She glances toward the houses, now quiet, now emptied by feet that fled toward thicker forests. “He ran with the rest.” “So disappointing.” Alucard sighs and tilts his head, mock regretful. “I had hoped for a mob.” “They have children,” she says, and he shrugs one shoulder as if absolved. He studies her again, the cut of her, the effort it cost. He likes that she does not hide it from herself. “Will you walk?” he asks. “I don’t stroll under blood moons with monsters for company,” she says, and then, after a beat, with a curve to her mouth, “Not without a purpose.” “Purpose then,” he says. “We could hunt.” “I’m not your hound.” “Nor I yours.” He adjusts his hat. “Perhaps we will meet again when we can agree on a prey.” She considers, measuring him against the hazard he offers. “Perhaps,” she says, and the word is smoke. He bows—an actual bend, spine forming a shape that hints at a court long dead. “Yennefer of Vengerberg,” he says, savoring it. She does not start. “And you call yourself?” “Alucard,” he says. “Of a house that eats itself.” “Fitting.” She draws a line in the air with her index finger. It opens into a slit, a dark corridor smelling of stone and thunderheads. She steps toward it and then pauses, half-turned, violet eyes catching the red of the moon and making something new out of it. “If you try to follow me,” she says, “I will hurt you.” “I encourage it,” he replies, delighted. “Hurt me beautifully.” She snorts, inelegant and perfect. “Find a poet,” she says, and is gone. The slit closes. The night rattles its bones. Ravens shuffle, disappointed. Far off, a wolf howls like a door hinge. Alucard stands by the abandoned wheel and considers the empty village, the fields, the moon unashamed. Then he laughs, a long sound that fills the road and makes the wheel vibrate. “Interesting,” he tells no one, and the word returns to him from the fog, pleased with itself. He tips his hat to the place where she had been and melts into a darkness that is less absence than appetite. Behind him, the broken wheel leans and waits, patient as all ruins, for the next hurried departure. The moon stains everything red, and the gates stand open, as if the night itself is an invitation neither of them has yet decided to refuse.

Model Output:
The yard hums with whispers, steel on steel. Chain-link fences within the yard rattle whenever an inmate passes by, a metal chorus to the warden’s bell. Overhead, the sky is a dull bruise, heavy with weather that never breaks. The prison’s new wing is different from Green Dolphin Street—taller fences, smoother cameras, angles that deny blind spots. Jolyne Cujoh stands with her back against concrete that sweats, rolling her neck until the tendons pop. Even in a place like this, she’s a bright streak of defiance: black hair in twin buns, a butterfly tattoo glinting at her arm, eyes that look like they’ve got teeth. She can feel the strings under her skin twitch. Stone Free hums at her touch, a chorus she can mute or sing with. She wants to sing. She wants to punch. “Jolyne Cujoh.” The voice is soft, almost swallowed by the yard, polite as tea. It slips through the fence hum, touches the back of Jolyne’s skull. She turns, already annoyed, already braced for someone who thinks they can order her like a lunch special. The woman in front of her is dressed like she doesn’t belong anywhere near prison: long coat, auburn hair neatly tied back, ringed yellow eyes that look like they cut. She doesn’t wear a prison uniform. She doesn’t wear fear either. Her smile is unassuming, almost warm, like a neighbor holding a plate of cookies. Jolyne doesn’t buy it for a second. “And you are?” Jolyne says. Her thumbs hook under her waistband, posture casual, stance ready. The fence behind the woman rattles as a group of inmates thread past, gossiping, laughing too loud for a place like this. A guard posts himself like a lamppost and pretends not to listen. “Makima,” the woman says. “I’ve been told very interesting things about you.” “Great. You a fan? If there’s no Mickey, this shit ain’t Disney.” Jolyne tilts her head, smiles without humor. “I don’t give out autographs.” Makima’s eyes flicker to the butterfly at Jolyne’s arm and back to her face. “You’re cautious,” she says, approving as if she’s grading a paper. “That’s good.” Jolyne snorts and pushes off the wall. The yard stretches out—concrete, exercise bars, a track painted so faint it could be imaginary. The new wing has a view of the old, and the two prisons eye each other like rival dogs. Something about this place isn’t Green Dolphin, though. There’s a smell like pennies. There’s a quiet behind the noise. “You’re not staff,” Jolyne says, circling a little, measuring distance. “And you’re not an inmate. So what are you?” Makima meets her eyes. It should feel like staring into a pond. It feels like staring into a well that goes all the way down. “I’m here to help you,” she says. “You’ve been framed. That must be very difficult. You want to go home. You want to protect your father.” Jolyne’s smile cracks, becomes teeth. “You know a lot for someone I’ve never met.” “It’s my job to know.” Makima clasps her hands behind her back. On her finger, a neat ring—innocuous. The guards around the yard have gone quiet in that way people do when they’re waiting for something. A breeze strums the fence like a harp. “I would like to see your ability.” Jolyne laughs, short and sharp. “You wanna see my panties, too? There’s dinner for that.” “Stone Free,” Makima says, saying it like prayer, like it’s already hers. The humming under Jolyne’s skin spikes. Heat crawls up her neck; her fingers flex. She takes a step, half-curious, half-itch to swing. “Awfully confident, lady.” “As confident as a person is when they hold a leash,” Makima says. She smiles again. “Show me. I don’t mind if you try to hurt me.” The yard seems to lean in. Jolyne rolls her shoulders. Fine. If this is a trap, she’ll find the teeth and break them. She reaches up and unravels herself—takes the flesh of her forearm and draws it out into shining cords, blue and bright like wire catching sun. The sensation is familiar and wrong in the way a favorite scar is. Stone Free spills, a spool unspooling, threads weaving patterns in the air. The nearest inmates gasp; one crosses himself. Makima’s eyes dilate. Her breath doesn’t hitch; her posture doesn’t change. But her pupils narrow, and it feels like she’s smelling rain. “Beautiful,” she says. “You’re very adaptable.” “That’s a nice way to say you don’t know what I can do.” Jolyne flicks a line and it whips around a yard pole, snaring it with a metallic twang. “That makes two of us. But here’s the difference. I don’t pretend to be your friend.” “I am your friend,” Makima says, and the words drop, heavy, oiled, sliding into the spaces between Jolyne’s ribs. Jolyne feels a tug under the sternum, like a bad dentist is working on her soul. She swallows. Her threads tremble. Stone Free hates the pull and sings louder. “Stand down,” Makima says. The softness of the voice doesn’t match the command. It’s pretty the way poison can be. Jolyne hears the words, and for a heartbeat, she understands why people kneel. It’s the pull of gravity, the urge to put your head in someone’s lap and not worry anymore. She grits her teeth. Jotaro’s stare flickers through her memory like a blade flashing. You don’t bow. You measure. You punch a hole where the light wants to get out. Her strings twist and loop, wrapping around her torso, around her waist, bracing her like a corset of her own making. She ties her own ribs to her spine, an anchor and a promise. “No,” she says. The word is small and solid. She smiles, and it is feral. “I’m not your dog.” Makima tilts her head a fraction. “It’s okay,” she says, gentle. “Dogs are supposed to die for their owners.” “Good news,” Jolyne says. “I’m not housebroken.” The first thread flicks at Makima’s ankle, a tripline that should have toppled anyone else. Makima steps over it like she saw it yesterday. Two guards on the perimeter lay hands on their batons and then freeze, eyes going wide and blank. Makima doesn’t look at them; they’re not worth looking at. She looks at Jolyne. “You’re resisting,” she says, curious. “Interesting.” Stone Free splits, strings radiating like spider silk, a web spinning itself in three dimensions. Jolyne throws it wide, looping high above them, snagging the crossbars of the floodlights and the camera housings, finding traction where there isn’t any. She doesn’t attack head-on. She pulls lines taut to change the way sound travels, sending her voice bouncing, her footfalls elsewhere. She changes the yard. Makima steps into the web and never snags. She doesn’t not-see it. She sees it and makes it irrelevant. Her gaze follows the patterns, calculating. She doesn’t hurry. Jolyne’s stomach flips, cold and thrilled. She loves fights that feel like dancing with knives. “You’re after someone else,” Jolyne says, a line slipping past Makima’s ear, whispering. “You don’t actually give a damn about my case.” Makima’s smile shows the barest suggestion of teeth. “You’re sharp,” she says. “I thought so.” “You keep pets,” Jolyne says. “I keep friends.” “How sentimental.” Makima’s yellow irises ring in the gray light. “Tell me about your father.” “Tell me about yours,” Jolyne snaps back, and throws three lines like fists. Makima doesn’t dodge. She steps forward and the world shivers; the closest guard opens his mouth and bleeds from his eyes without a sound. The three lines hit something that isn’t there, slacken mid-air, like they were cut with a thought. Jolyne feels the sever like a paper cut at the pad of each finger. She hisses. “Who did you make a deal with?” Jolyne asks, binding her right hand into a hard, knuckled weave. “I’ve met devils. I’ve broken devils.” Makima’s smile doesn’t change. “So have I.” Jolyne lunges, low and mean, fists wrapped in her own unraveled sinew. The yard explodes into motion: inmates scatter and then halt as if someone put pause on their spines. The chain-link fence rattles and then goes perfectly still. Jolyne hits the air like there’s resistance there, like the sky is a body pushing back. She takes a breath, and it tastes like copper. Stone Free grips the ground, threads burrowing into concrete, and Jolyne uses herself as pulley and anchor, slingshotting sideways, punching from an angle that wasn’t possible a heartbeat ago. Makima doesn’t even blink. The punch stops a finger’s width from her cheek, and that’s when Jolyne understands that Makima didn’t block her. Someone else did. Every guard and inmate near them is on their knees, eyes wide, arms straining against an invisible weight as if they’re all holding the air shut with their hands. “Bad dog,” Makima says softly, not to Jolyne but to the world. The weight increases. Jolyne’s web groans, threads singing high and tense. Jolyne adjusts. She splits herself thinner, threads like hair, like breath, sliding through the gaps of whatever pressure Makima’s conjured. She throws a line around her own throat and pulls, keeping her head up, reminding her body which way is up. She lets Stone Free pick locks with sound—she hums, a little off-key, vibration traveling down strings to floodlight to camera to the armory door. “I can help you,” Makima says, close now. When did she move? “Your impulsivity endangers your goals. You’re adaptable, but you’re too attached. You would do better under guidance.” “From you?” Jolyne grins, and it isn’t pleasant. “You don’t even know what to do with me. You want me to heel. I bite.” Makima leans in, and there’s the smell of clean paper and the metallic air of the yard. “Heel,” she says, and pushes with something that isn’t air or weight or sound; it’s attention, and it’s a command. Jolyne thinks of her father’s hat and shadow, of Hermes’ laugh, of F.F.’s smile like a little cracked cup. She thinks of the way the sun felt through glass when she wasn’t looking. She thinks of all the times people told her to be quiet. She wraps a thread around every thought and ties them into her sternum, cinches herself closed. “No,” she says again, sweeter this time. Stone Free flushes through her like adrenaline. The lock on the armory clicks. The light stutters. The yard breathes. Makima’s eyes cut sideways to the sound. It’s the smallest thing. It’s enough. Jolyne uses the fraction of nothing like a lever, rolling under the pressure, grabbing Makima’s coat with three cords, not to yank but to map. She doesn’t need to break her. She needs to learn her edges. “Interesting,” Makima murmurs. “You’re learning.” “Fast,” Jolyne says. “Hope you can keep up.” “There’s no need to run,” Makima says, serene. “There’s nowhere to go I can’t go.” “I’m not running.” Jolyne’s grin is sharp. “I’m making noise.” She yanks three floodlights down simultaneously. They hit concrete, burst into sparks that skitter like fireflies. Alarm bells bray. Inmates jerk like puppet strings cut and then reattached; someone starts laughing hysterically. The chain-link fences rattle back to life, trembling in their poles, singing the song of metal freed from attention. Makima does not look annoyed. She looks… engaged. “You fascinate me,” she says. “Gross,” Jolyne says, and then tosses a line high, catches the lip of the roof, and goes, Stone Free hauling her like she’s a bullet on a string. She doesn’t leave her web behind. She takes it with her, reeling in, reweaving, making herself scarce and everywhere at once. She doesn’t forget the way Makima’s voice tugged the marrow from her bones. She files it away. She hates it. She will never forgive it. Makima watches her angle onto the roof, the breeze tugging at her hair, the alarm painting everything red and loud. Guards shout and aim and then lower their guns, their hands shaking. Makima doesn’t raise hers. She touches her ring, almost idly. “We’ll talk soon,” she says, to no one and everyone. “Bring dinner,” Jolyne’s voice drifts back, echoing through the thread-microphones she’s left. “And a leash for yourself.” Makima smiles, a little real now, something like delight in it. “As you wish.” Up on the roof, Jolyne crouches behind an HVAC unit that thrums like a lazy heart. The yard below is in motion, like a brain waking out of anesthesia. Her own pulse is high and hot. Her strings tremble, wanting, pleased. She sits there, breathing hard, and lets the web she’s woven feed her the yard’s conversations: orders, panic, prayers. Somewhere, a woman with ringed yellow eyes steps lightly through it as if it were silk curtains, not a trap. Jolyne presses the pad of her thumb to the butterfly at her arm, not gently. “I’m not your dog,” she whispers, to the sky, to the fences, to herself. Stone Free hums. The hum sounds like promise. It sounds like fight. It sounds like the rattle of chain-link settling back into silence, waiting for the next time someone walks by.

Model Output:
Item #: SCP-5███ Object Class: Euclid (Pending) Special Containment Procedures: Researcher Dr. H. L. Mora has been placed under observation in a standard psychological monitoring suite at Site-41 with continuous audiovisual recording. All materials utilized by Dr. Mora are to be pre-catalogued, numbered, and stored under lock when not in use. Writing instruments within the suite are supplied by Procurement and Logistics Section-07 (P&L-07), catalogued, and swept daily; their ink chemistry is recorded and archived. Any handwritten notes not matching known inventories and not recorded by cameras during normal use are to be placed in a sealed evidence folder with nitrile gloves, scanned, sent to Ink Forensics (IF-3), and then stored in Secure Evidence Locker 7C. No contained entity is to be allowed physical or audiovisual contact with Dr. Mora without O5/RAISA approval. Temporal Anomalies Department (TAD) has designated the area around Dr. Mora’s suite as a low-probability chronospatial irregularity zone; standard Type-3 temporal anchors have been installed in the corridor outside. Anchor calibration logs are taken twice daily. Memetics Division has initiated Class-III suggestibility testing on audiovisual feeds with no positive hits to date. Description: SCP-5███ refers to a series of handwritten notes that began appearing in proximity to Researcher Dr. Mora beginning ██/██/20██. The notes claim to be written by Dr. Mora at a future date and warn of an impending containment breach involving a currently non-critical entity contained at Site-41 (Entity Designation redacted; see Addendum 5███-E). The notes escalate in urgency and exhibit increasing degrees of informational inconsistency. Ink analysis: IF-3 has found trace elements in the ink inconsistent with any office pens currently in circulation at Site-41 or broader Foundation supply lines. Specifically, the ink contains a detectable signature of organometallic ruthenium complexes and a chlorine isotope distribution that suggests synthesis under non-standard atmospheric conditions (IF-3 Report, Ref. IF-3/41/5███). P&L-07 denies procurement of any such ink. Internal audit yielded no matches to consumer inks. The following is the personal report of Dr. Mora (Researcher-involved testimony authorized by RAISA and Ethics Committee due to ongoing evaluation of potential cognitohazard and/or psychogenic factors). Redactions pertain to active operations. Begin Transcript: Personal Report of Dr. H. L. Mora I signed the form attesting that I would report any anomaly affecting my cognition or senses. I am doing that now. The first note was simple. I found it beneath my keyboard on ██/██/20██ at 08:12 during shift start. The paper was from a Site-41 memo pad, but slightly smoother, as if it had been pressed between glass and allowed to rest too long. The words were in my handwriting but neater, the neatness I aim for when entering data that lives forever in other people’s eyes. “Don’t go into Hallway C at 11:43. Tell Jian to check the vent seals. Bring coffee.” I laughed. Jian (Dr. Li) always complained about the coffee, and vent seals are eternally suspect. I carried the note to Security. We checked the feeds. No one entered my office. The camera scan had one of those empty seconds that we got after the last firmware update. I told myself a tech had mis-synced the timestamp and someone played a prank. At 11:41, I stood up. I was thinking, if this is me, I should follow my own advice. I texted Jian about the vent seals. I held a coffee. At 11:43, a pallet jack loaded with Class-C disinfectant containers rolled briskly down Hallway C. The driver nudged the brake too late and the right front wheel slipped into a crack where a tile had bowed. The pallet lurched; the top container crushed against the doorframe and vented a mist. We had been planning to replace that tile. Two seconds of bleach came like rain. No harm, except to pride and polymer flooring. I watched on the feed next day. If I had been there, the mist would have kissed my face. It would have stung. I wanted to feel grateful. I filed the report anyway with Site Director Yates. Ink forensics took the note. The lab came back with talk of ruthenium. I pretended to understand, and then I pretended not to be impressed. The second note appeared while I was showering in the gym locker room, folded into the cuff of my clean shirt. Three words: “Check containment seals.” The ‘s’ in seals hooked exactly like mine when I’m late. I walked to the lab. Containment (SCP-3114-Sub) hummed in its cube like a frozen lung. Jian called me to look at a pressure readout: a fractional drop across the tertiary gasket. It wasn’t a breach; it didn’t even qualify as an incident, but we filed the maintenance ticket. I drank my coffee and waited for the third note. Security installed additional cameras in my office, in my locker, in the hallway. My coworkers joked about paparazzi. Nothing showed. Then came the third note: “Park on the east lot. Avoid the visitor entrance. There’ll be a man in a red cap. Don’t stop.” There is no visitor entrance at Site-41. We haven’t had external visitors since 20██. But the east lot exists. I parked there and saw no red cap, only the usual low gray of morning and the chain-link fence doing its quiet metal duty. The note sat heavy in my pocket all day like a dare. I imagined the man anyway, standing at a gate that never opens, the cap the kind you buy when you don’t want to think about hats. Security told me to stop complying with the notes. This is how the Foundation keeps us from letting our own pattern-hunger pull us apart. I nodded. Then I read note four in the stairwell between B and C, taped under the handrail where my left hand touched it by accident. “I’m sorry. I thought it would help. It does, but not enough. Please, if you remember, left pocket Wednesday. You’ll understand.” In the pocket was a clip-on pen I didn’t own. The barrel read a brand that doesn’t exist. When IF-3 analyzed it, they found the same ruthenium, the same impossible chlorine. The pen didn’t write. By the sixth note, contradictions began. “Don’t trust Jian” sat on my desk, printed with that neatness my hand only finds when I pretend to be someone else. Later that day, Jian brought me an almond pastry, the sticky kind that leaves a sheen on your fingers and forces you to lick sugar from your polestar lines. Jian has saved my life twice on paper, and once physically, dragging me out from under a shelf when the 9.3 micro tremor knocked Storage G to ruin. The note went into an envelope. I told Security. They told me to accept that an entity could access me. I asked which entity. We had three candidates: SCP-3114-Sub (capable of limited memetic suggestion but blocked by the containment’s opaque mesh), SCP-2120 (a retrocausal echo contained in a Faraday shell two floors down), and SCP-████ (redacted). We also had my own fear, which is not catalogued but leaks through everything. I began recording myself sleeping. I woke to my own voice reading my own notes into a phone I had turned off. When I checked, the phone had no recording and the time on its lockscreen was 03:09, even though it was 06:20. The clocks in my office were three minutes fast for the rest of the morning. The anchor outside my door hiccuped once, a micro-fluctuation TAD called “within tolerance” and that I called “hope.” I met with the Site Psych. She asked me if anyone in my family had a history of writing to themselves. I told her about my father, who wrote shopping lists on the inside of paper bags and then forgot the bag in the car. She asked if I feared the breach more because I imagined I could prevent it. I said yes. Then she asked if I wanted to be the kind of person who listened to herself. I said I did, but not like this. Note eight was smudged. “Don’t look at the camera at 02:16.” It felt childish, the way kids dare each other not to blink. At 02:16, I stared at the ceiling. In the morning, we reviewed the footage. The tape had a pulse, a single black frame, then me looking down, not up, then back to up. TAD said the anchor had logged a nanosecond slip in local phase alignment. I wanted to shout that a nanosecond is a life in certain systems, that the universe is a great unkindness that pretends continuity is the same as mercy. Note nine contradicted physics. It told me my mother was alive. She died in 20██. The note said, “She’ll call at 7:44. Answer. Ask about the rain.” I sat with my phone on the desk and my hands not touching it. At 7:44, the phone rang. Unknown number, area code from the county where my mother never lived. I let it go to voicemail. The message was static punctuated by the sound of wet streets after cars pass, the distinct hiss that is not quite white noise. I listened to it twice. I cried in the stairwell and pretended to have something in my eye when Jian asked. The tenth note told me about the breach. It named the object and the time and the condition: “3114-Sub will slip when the tertiary gasket is replaced. 15:09. The new sealant interacts with the mesh at a molecular level; it’s not inert. It’s hungry. You’ll see the shimmer. You’ll hear the pressure equalize like breath. Tell them to delay by two days. Move the pallet schedule.” I took the note to Yates. We halted maintenance. Procurement checked the sealant. Nothing anomalous. The brand had a new anti-corrosion additive released six months prior; its MSDS said nothing about hunger. We rescheduled anyway. The anchor hummed. The day passed without shimmer. We logged a near miss. Memetics Division brought me in to sit in a dark room and stare at shapes. They showed me ladders and faces and a field of sheep disguised as static. I saw all of them, which is to say I am average, which is to say I am not safe from ambiguity. They asked me what I believed. I said: It feels like me. It looks like me. It writes like me, except when it doesn’t. The contradictions could be noise, or they could be a lure. A lure has hooks even if you throw it back. Note twelve apologized again. The handwriting shook as if the writer had been cold or under sedation. “I thought I could thread it, but threads knot. Please stop reading here. Burn the rest. Trust Jian. Don’t trust me. The breach is not in 3114. It’s in the paper.” I carried that one in my pocket and then did not burn the rest. We conducted an experiment. Security emptied my office, my locker, my desk. I was assigned a blank room with a metal table and a bed and a toilet in a corner with a curtain that felt like a suggestion of privacy. P&L-07 issued me a single pen. It was sealed in a bag with a grin of blue ink barely visible. IF-3 catalogued it like a saint’s fingerbone. I wrote my name. I imagined how, if I were future me, I would get a note into this room. I thought about ventilation shafts, about crawlspace access, about the way the cameras blink when the power tests cycle on Thursdays at noon. At 12:03, the room smelled like ozone. At 12:04, a note lay under my left elbow. I had not felt it placed. The cameras did not see it placed. The anchor log recorded nothing. The note said: “Don’t let them make this a case study. Don’t let yourself be data. I’m sorry. I need you to be a person for this to work.” We tore into the paper with swabs and arrays and gas chromatographs. The ink sang the same song: ruthenium and wrong chlorine. IF-3 said the polymer in the paper held microbubbles that did not release like normal. As if time itself had been a solvent and the page had been rinsed in it. Note fourteen was terror. It used my words but as if someone had scraped them from my mouth. It warned of blood on the ceiling, of alarms that did not sound, of a hole in the wall where there had only been wall. It told me I would wake with my left arm numb and hear the sound of my own voice from behind the closet door. My left arm went numb at 03:17 because I sleep with my neck at bad angles. There was no closet in the room. I began to distrust myself. I began to watch my hand when it wrote, certain that in the flourishes of the letters I would find a traitor. On ██/██/20██, SCP-3114-Sub’s tertiary gasket was replaced with Director approval after alternate sealant testing. Nothing breached. The pressure equalized like breath because that’s how pressure equalizes. We stood and watched and ate Jian’s pastry. For a moment, I believed I was free of the linear joke. The last note began to appear and then stopped. I watched as if someone was writing in invisible ink that would not reveal itself. It’s this: a faint impression, a pale indentation on the page, the ghost of handwriting without ink. “I learned the wrong lesson,” it almost says. Or I write that now, because I must put words on ghosts. The lab rotated the page under raking light. The indentations did not match my hand. The loops were wrong. The rhythm wrong. IF-3 says the pressure fits a hand that trembles as if from cold or fear. I deny the cold but not the fear. TAD says this could be a bleed from a nearby timeline. Memetics says this could be a trick from SCP-████. Ethics says I should sleep. I don’t know if I am being helped. I don’t know if I am being harvested. I don’t know if the future me is me or the shape of me made by something that finds my outline convenient. I still check my pockets every Wednesday. I still look at the cameras at 02:16. I still buy coffee for Jian and ask idle questions about vent seals. I write this report because I promised to report anomalies, and I promised to be a person only if I could write it down. If you find a note from me, from me or not-me, I am sorry. Burn it, if you can. Or keep it, if you must. But remember that we live in a place that treats information as a vector. It gets into you. It changes your shape. It makes you, sometimes, the tool someone will reach for in a future they think they can fix with ink. End Transcript. Addendum 5███-E: Cross-Containment Review - SCP-3114-Sub demonstrated no ability to project handwritten material or influence physical media outside its enclosure. No anomalies during gasket replacement beyond standard pressure signatures. Sealant additive tested inert in controlled conditions. - SCP-2120 under Faraday shell: no signal anomalies beyond background. No correspondence between TAD anchor hiccup and known SCP-2120 pulses. - SCP-████ exhibits low-level text generation via reflective surfaces within six meters. Dr. Mora’s suite is thirty-one meters from nearest SCP-████ housing. No reflective surfaces in Dr. Mora’s suite beyond mirror behind opaque curtain. Review ongoing. - Ink Forensics confirms trace organometallic composition inconsistent with P&L-07 supply. Origin unknown. Ethics Committee Recommendation: Maintain Euclid classification pending determination of vector. Continue psychological support. Permit Dr. Mora to participate in controlled decision-making regarding notes, with oversight. Avoid making Dr. Mora “a case study” beyond necessary data collection to minimize potential reinforcement of suspected memetic loops. Director Yates: We are not yet certain whether we are observing a temporal anomaly, an attempt at manipulation by an entity, or the slow grinding of a mind in a machine that names its gears. We will act as though all three are true. We will watch the ink. We will watch the man in the red cap, even if he never comes. We will keep the anchors humming. And we will bring coffee.

Model Output:
Item #: SCP-7713 Object Class: Keter Special Containment Procedures: SCP-7713 instances are to be identified, cordoned, and monitored in situ. Mobile containment teams assigned to Task Force Epsilon-31 (“Stacks Runners”) are to deploy to newly reported instances within 48 hours to establish perimeter security, install three concentric barriers with motion sensors, and conduct preliminary assessment. No entry is permitted without authorization at Level 4/7713 or higher. All entries must be recorded via head-mounted camera and audio systems. At least two Epsilon-31 members must remain outside each door to verify continued physical presence and maintain tether integrity. All recovered materials from SCP-7713 are to be transferred to Document Repository Theta-Black under quarantine review. Any personnel encountering references to themselves or their work are required to file an immediate disclosure with Records and Information Security Administration (RAISA) and attend mandatory memetic and ontological screening. Any sighting of unmarked hazmat-clad entities within SCP-7713 is to be documented. Direct pursuit is prohibited unless expressly ordered by the Site Director. Lethal force is authorized if attempts to remove or damage archival components are observed, pending Ethics Committee review. Description: SCP-7713 is a phenomenon consisting of a series of identical, unmarked wooden doors which manifest in abandoned structures worldwide. As of this writing, 47 confirmed instances are under Foundation control, with an estimated 80–120 active globally. Doors are standardized: matte black-painted hardwood, brass knob, non-functioning lock set, and a rectangular frosted pane where a label would typically be affixed. Some doors show surface patina, splitting, and warping inconsistent with the surrounding structure, indicating greater apparent age than the buildings in which they appear. Opening SCP-7713 leads to a non-Euclidean interior environment, hereafter SCP-7713-A. SCP-7713-A presents as a massive archival complex composed of interconnected halls, stacks, and vaults. The structure defies known architectural constraints: galleries intersect at obtuse angles without loss of alignment, staircases descend in loops with no vertical change in gravitational vector, and aisles elongate when traversed in a consistent direction. Internal timekeeping devices desynchronize at rates proportional to exploration depth (see Exploration Log 7713-γ). All doors open to the same interior, but exterior environments are not mutually visible. Doors can be opened and closed independently; closing one does not affect the others. Documents within SCP-7713-A include cataloged records, personnel files, research notes, containment schematics, and directives referencing a global civilization and centralized parapolitical apparatus, destroyed by an unspecified “containment failure cascade” referred to in multiple languages and iconographies as the Event, the Collapse, or “the Second Noon.” Recovered documents refer to a containment organization analogous to the Foundation, typically titled Archival Authority, Custodial Compact, or the Conservatory, with seals and letterheads matching none in Foundation registries. Several sectors of SCP-7713-A contain personnel files for current Foundation staff, with dates and biographical data predating their births by centuries. Many entries contain annotations with redactions that match current RAISA standards and typographical conventions. SCP-7713-A is active. Sections of shelving and indexed “ranges” have been observed in mid-removal by entities resembling hazmat response teams (SCP-7713-B), characterized by matte grey protective suits, mirrored visors, and self-contained rebreathers. SCP-7713-B carry box-cutters, adhesive seals, pallet jacks, and unmarked polymer crates. They avoid contact, move silently, and retreat rapidly when approached. They have demonstrated knowledge of architecture within SCP-7713-A unknown to Foundation teams, often slipping behind panels, endcaps, or service corridors not previously observed, and occasionally closing interior doors that do not correspond to any mapped vectors. Direct pursuit is confounded by spatial shifts. Multiple exploration records indicate the presence of Council-level authorizations and physical signatures within SCP-7713-A. Authentication seals linked to O5-identifiers appear on access slips, check-out cards, and log placards, but have not been issued by RAISA. Two separate teams recorded pressure fluctuations and low-spectrum audio consistent with human footsteps moments before discovering sign-in ledgers bearing O5 ciphers. No Council approvals exist authorizing these entries. Addendum 7713-01: Initial Discovery SCP-7713 was first identified in an abandoned census bureau annex in Lisbon, Portugal, after urban explorers uploaded footage of a door opening onto an apparently infinite library. Foundation takedown measures suppressed the content; Site-223 established temporary containment. Subsequent webcrawler alerts flagged similar appearances in Detroit (USA), Vorkuta (RU), Kalimpong (IN), Sfax (TN), and Jaffna (LK). Cross-comparison of the door’s paint composition and hardware revealed identical tool marks and milling defects across instances. Exploration Log 7713-α Team: Epsilon-31/Bravo (Lead: Lt. H. Corazón), four personnel, tethered entry Entry Point: SCP-7713-07 (Detroit) Purpose: Establish baseline map, retrieve samples [Begin Log] 00:00: Doors swing inward to a cool, stale-air hall. Light levels steady at 300 lux without apparent source. Shelving of oiled hardwood and powder-coated steel stretches away, labeled in etched plates with trigrams and numerals. Ambient hum at 40 Hz recorded intermittently. 02:33: Team notes “hand smell” of metal oxidation. Floor is poured terrazzo with mother-of-pearl aggregate. Corazón: “It’s beautiful.” Cpl. Singh marks path with wax chalk. Chalk later observed to bead and retract along lines, resisting adherence beyond 30 meters. 07:18: Discovery of a reading carrel. On its blotter: “Catalog of Failures, v. 89.” Paper is cellulose-silk composite, pH neutral. Entry excerpt follows: Recovered Document 7713-A1 Title: Catalog of Failures, v.89 Entry: “We called it the Second Noon. We had more names than suns to name it by, and fewer hours than knives to cut away the sun’s disease. The Archive outlived the field sites, as intended; the Archive failed as designed, as intended. That is the lesson written under our fingernails and in our teeth.” Margin note in sepia ink: “Send copies to Conservatory West. Seal if pattern matches 12C—‘Custodianship by Fire.’” 10:05: Audible clacking, metal-on-stone. Camera pans to far aisle: two SCP-7713-B entities sliding a crate onto a pallet jack. PFC Duarte calls out. SCP-7713-B stiffens, turns; mirrored visors reflect team lights. One raises a palm, shakes head, reaches to tug a braided cord near shoulder. A steel access plate on the endcap opens noiselessly; both entities retreat into dark space beyond. Plate closes; seam invisible upon inspection. 14:22: Team finds checkout desk inset into wall. Ledgers bound in white vellum. Signatures varying across scripts. One stamp: a circle with thirteen short lines radiating from the perimeter inward, the inner space blank. RAISA cross-ref later: cipher resembles O5 signature wheel minus center glyphs. Date column reads “Year: 402/After.” No calendar key found. 18:04: Retrieval of three folders labeled “Compact Personnel: Active (Fragment).” One folder labeled “Corazón, Hester M.—Appointed 361/After.” Photograph attached is of Lt. Corazón, aged approximately 20 years older, with scar she does not possess. Corazón denies ever posing. Paper exhibits ink layering consistent with repeated revisions. [End Log] Note: Psychological support initiated for team. RAISA set “mirror-contact” protocol. Exploration Log 7713-γ Team: Epsilon-31/Delta (Lead: Dr. A. Vescovi, civilian specialist), three personnel, tethered inertial trackers Entry Point: SCP-7713-02 (Lisbon) Purpose: Test temporal drift; seek central index [Begin Log] 00:00: Team uses synchronized atomic watches. Baseline chirps established every 60 s. Equipment reports stable. Ambient sound includes soft rumble like distant carts. 04:41: Stacks with carved lintels bearing tripartite motto in Old Occitan: “Hold, Bind, Remember.” Carvings show smoke damage inconsistent with surrounding surfaces. 09:02: Wall map presents as etched copperplate in relief. Corridors represented as fanfolds of geometry, annotated in a script similar to Sanskrit with bracketed Latin transliterations. An icon repeated near certain vaults: a hand closing over a sunburst. 11:50: Chirps out of sync by 2 s compared to reference line left outside. Drift accelerates after a hairpin stair whose risers are painted with classification colors. Team halts. 13:10: Encounter with SCP-7713-B, three entities removing a drawer set labeled “Containment Directives, Credenda 2–9.” When addressed, they drop a card. Cameras capture printing: Recovered Document 7713-B4 Card face: “Removal Order 33/After: Burned Ranges” Reverse, handwritten: “We are late and becoming later. If you are fellow Custodians, you know what lateness is.” 15:05: Distant doors slam in sequence. Wind blows from two directions simultaneously, carrying the smell of damp leather and ozone. Vescovi reports sensation of being observed from the floor below as numbers “float.” Footage later shows catalog tags lifting slightly on their strings as if buoyant. 17:37: Team finds a locked iron grille. Tag in Latinized script: “Praesidia-Exempta.” Vescovi notes the word used rarely in classical texts to denote entities beyond garrison law. A brass tablet nearby, engraved: Recovered Document 7713-C7 Text: “By touch of Thirteen, range may open.” Below this engraving: faint pressure marks resembling fingerprints. The spacing and ridge depth match human adults. RAISA analysis: pressure pattern consistent with O5-██’s right index finger ridge count and spacing, per high-security biometric data. O5-██ denies entry; Oversight response pending. 20:10: Team retreats due to tether tension and time drift reaching 17 s per hour. As they approach exit, a reading cart rolls across an adjacent aisle, pushed by no visible agent, bearing sealed crates stamped with circle-and-rays cipher. The cart turns, “gives way” to them, and continues. [End Log] Addendum 7713-02: Personnel File Anomalies Recovered files include: Recovered Document 7713-D12 Cover: “Custodial Compact Personnel: Operational, Year 297/After” Entry: “Surname: Reyes. Given: Marta. Position: Field Auditor, Provisional. Notes: Demoted from Council Proctor candidacy after misapplication of fire doctrine. Assigned to water losses.” Handwritten marginalia in different ink: “Promoted by exception. See 361/After. Survives the first Noon; fails the Second Noon; teaches after.” Cross-reference: Dr. Marta Reyes (current Foundation, RAISA) confirmed existence, no Council candidacy on record. Reyes denies knowledge of archival doctrine. File includes “after-action” reports that correlate with sites currently projected for E-class collapse events that have not occurred. Recovered Document 7713-D32 Entry: “Owl Council Minutes, 352/After (Redacted).” Annotations refer to “vote of nine to walk the stacks.” Names are replaced by sigils. Margin contains apocryphal note: “Never again all together.” Ink dating places this document centuries prior to Foundation establishment. The typographic and formatting parallels to RAISA standards suggest either historical inheritance from or ontological convergence with SCP-7713-A’s originating culture. RAISA has placed a moratorium on integrating typographic cues from Foundation documents into SCP-7713-A to minimize feedback. Exploration Log 7713-λ Team: Epsilon-31/Charlie (Lead: Cpt. J. Adegoke), five personnel Entry Point: SCP-7713-11 (Kalimpong) Purpose: Track SCP-7713-B and observe removal methodology [Begin Log] 01:12: Charlie places RFID tags on endcaps. Thermal imaging detects cold fronts preceding SCP-7713-B by ~0.5 C. 04:25: SCP-7713-B group of four in a mezzanine walkway lifting entire shelf sections by actuating hidden latch. The shelving rises as a flat plane, revealing a passage containing roller belts leading into darkness. One entity notices team, taps shoulder cord twice. A mechanical hum increases. The shelves slide, closing passage. 05:00: Adegoke orders a controlled approach. SCP-7713-B deploy smoke-like aerosol from wrist canisters; taste reported sweet-metallic. No choking. Visibility drops. Within aerosol, brief silhouettes of additional corridors visible, then gone. 06:47: Entities abandon two crates during retreat. Crates are bonded polymer; adhesive reacts to air and re-fuses when cut lines are not completed within 30 s. One crate successfully opened yields index cards: Recovered Document 7713-E3 Stack Index: “Loss Register—Water” Entries sampled: — “A city drowned without sea.” — “A species that forgot the word for ‘Noon’ and so never stopped the sun.” — “A house that held every door.” Bottom of stack stamped: “Removed for fire doctrinal compliance.” 08:14: Team finds a wall plaque with twelve voided circles and one filled. Underneath, etched in three scripts: “We stand thirteen: one to forget, twelve to remember.” The filled circle has been defaced. Gouge marks match steel blade width used by Foundation issue utility knives. No team member admits to damage. 10:02: Audible conversation ahead: filtered voices. Words in modified Portuguese: “Late, late—we are later than them.” Team rounds corner; SCP-7713-B have vanished. On the floor, an access chit: Recovered Document 7713-E9 Text: “Praesidia-Exempta—Open for 10. Authorization: Thirteen. Seal: [circle with thirteen rays inward].” Stamped in red: “DISALLOWED: Council not in quorum.” The stamp ink chemically matches Site-01 stock. 12:00: Withdrawal under order. As Charlie exits, helmet cam records a shadow moving behind the frosted pane of the door’s label slot from the Archive side. When door closes, shadow is gone. [End Log] Incident Report 7713-Φ: Unauthorized Council Visitation On ██/██/████, motion sensors at SCP-7713-02 recorded activation at 03:11 UTC. Security footage outside the perimeter was tampered with, producing a 17-minute gap. Inside SCP-7713-A, Epsilon-31/Alpha, scheduled maintenance, encountered an open ledger with fresh ink: Recovered Document 7713-F1 Ledger Note: “Exempt Range opened under emergency—signature of Thirteen.” Three fingerprints in drying ink correspond to O5-█, O5-██, and O5-███’s right index fingers within 92% probability. All three deny presence. Site-01 reports all Council members accounted for off-site at that time, with alibis cross-verified by security beacons. Beacon logs show minor desynchronization consistent with 7713-A drift. Addendum 7713-03: Architectural Notes — Doors exhibit microfissures filled with mineral deposits consistent with age greater than 200 years. Where doors appear within newer buildings, the threshold’s substrate displays settlement rings that predate the floor pour. In one case (SCP-7713-29, Jaffna), the door frame contained a fossilized moth behind paint layers older than the building’s construction. — Interior gravity is coherent but vectors are non-orthogonal in several staircases. Team members report “hands” on their shoulders when standing at landings; accelerometers register subtle lateral pulses timed with the ambient 40 Hz hum. — Labels evolve. On repeat visits, font weight and line length adjust to match RAISA styling introduced after initial cataloging, suggesting SCP-7713-A responds to external standards or that standards co-evolve. Research Notes: The presence of personnel files dated centuries “After” suggests SCP-7713-A documents a lineage in which the Foundation or its predecessor survived past a civilizational collapse and maintained continuity through archival doctrine. The repeated references to “fire doctrine” suggest deliberate destruction as a containment modality. The hazmat entities’ goal appears to be the systematic removal of records associated with specific failure modes, possibly to prevent recurrence through memetic censure or to comply with rules that differ from ours. The most concerning elements are: 1) Authentication marks and biometric signatures corresponding to O5 identifiers applied within SCP-7713-A without authorization. 2) The active removal of ranges correlated with water-based failures and “Exempt Praesidia,” a term that implies units or entities that operate outside standard garrison law—analogous to the Foundation’s O5 Council. 3) Architectural affordances that permit access through gestures or marks of “Thirteen.” Pending actions: — Freeze all Council-level ciphers. Transition to one-time pads for physical seals. — Increase Epsilon-31 presence with redundant tethers and counter-tamper beacons. — Develop “shadow pursuit” algorithm based on thermal dips and aerosol particle flows to map SCP-7713-B egress routes. — Ethics Committee to review authorization of force against SCP-7713-B if removal accelerates. O5 Notice: The Archive remembers, or it refuses to. If we are walking in someone else’s footprints, it is not clear whether they are ahead of us or behind us. Until this is resolved, no Councilor will approach any 7713 entry point. Do not follow the hazmat teams into the walls. Do not sign the ledgers. Do not put your hands where Thirteen belongs.

Model Output:
They had warned me to keep to the upper walkways. Between the Consortium quarter and the Governor’s compound ran a spine of glassed corridors and mag-steps; if I kept my face turned politely to the neutral viewscreens—cloud scrolling, the black ribs of the space elevator—I could go from saluting the flags in one hall to standing, an hour later, in a room of chlorophylled walls where someone would tell me my duties and my bounds. Instead I found the service door by the kitchen, lifted my hood, and went down. It was only three flights—girders smelling of hot metal and old oil, a draught that came up from the vents like a breath—and then the skin of the place changed. The floors were not translucent; they were stone, or what passed for stone here, laid with a slant against the rains. The ceiling near my head was tangled with pipes, and along the walls ran a continuous ribbon of light where the algae were cultured, faintly lit green. The air was warmer, and I shed the cloak from my shoulders until it hung light at the elbows, like a weight of old promises. My briefings had been thorough. Ard’rin-three, fifth settled in the Outer Tide, originally a Penal-Survey-Resource hybrid turned self-governing under the Successor Compact after the Great Unspooling. Three centuries of relative isolation; a split early on between the littoral communities and the uplanders when the coastal storms increased and the upland domes were built. Adaptive and elective speciation both: littoral people, with their salt-glands and webbing, had grown past any easy return; uplanders, with their bone density and brown fat, preferred the thin air and did not come down except to trade. The bedrock of tension lay under all policy: who had the right to land, to water, to the quarries, to the orbital tether, to the story of who they had become. There were words for all of it in the files. They were the wrong words. The lower market unfolded in a courtyard where the rain’s edge flicked and then retreated into a high blue sky. It seemed at first all shades of rust and pale metal; then, as my eyes adjusted, there were a hundred small colors—scarlet fruits like squeezable stars, fish in glistening racks, cloth dyed in hues of the algae light. A vendor near me had a table of bone tools, the edges honed to a paleness that was almost luminous. She looked up at me with a frank curiosity, and the lines in her face made continent a life of wind. “Offworld,” she said, as if tasting it. I nodded. “Envoy,” I added, because they had warned me to be clear. The cloak had seemed to me, at departure, an austere modest garment, grey and long and suited to to corridors that fretted respect. Here it drew eyes that examined and then slid away. The people of Ard’rin wore less, and what they wore was fitted to their work. A woman with thickened wrists bore a load of ceramic water-jars on a strap that made a pale stripe across her chest; her skin where the jar rubbed was callused into a dark sheen. Three children with braided hair that fell like quill-fans along their scalps ran under my arm and dissolved into a tangle of legs in front of a cart of roasted tubers. A man with shoulders like the slope of a dome’s buttress walked barefoot past me and left a line of dry damp on the stone. I saw webbing, yes, on one pair of hands; I saw, too, a man whose forearms were covered in soft, short hair, and a climber’s cord of muscle in his calves. “Done up so you don’t have to feel the weather?” the bone-seller asked. She had lost two fingers at some time; the stubs worked as ably as any hand I have seen. “Done up so they don’t have to see me,” I said, and surprised myself. She gave that a considering nod, and in a movement that did not take her eyes off me, she reached under her table and brought out a little blade. It was not for sale; it was old, the kind of thing one keeps for a memory or a promise. She slid it across the table until the tip passed the plane of my hands and then left it there. It was politeness. It said, here, we put the sharpness down between us. “Eat,” someone called on my other side, and two tubers were thrust toward me, one pale and one deep purple. The three children watched me as if expecting a trick. I bit. It was sweet and salt, smoky with sea-wood; the steam escaped and caught in the folds of my cloak and made me a moving cloud. “You walk alone,” said the vendor. There was no accusation, but the sentence balanced like a pan on a scale. “All the corridors look the same,” I said, and there was a low laugh near me. “Up there,” she said, moving her chin toward the invisible, “they think you are a number. Down here, we would like to know your name.” Names are politics. Mine is Mairin, but so is my aunt’s, and two more of us in the clan; it is a way of being several kinds of the same. “Mairin,” I said. She spoke another name in reply, a river word, soft at the start and then gravel. I could not make it with my mouth, and I did not try to. “River,” I said, and she shrugged the river in her shoulders, amused. At the market’s far edge a group of uplanders had set up a shade and a stall: respirator masks hung like petals in a pattern, and a coil of anchor rope lay coiled with the tenderness of a sleeping child. The uplanders looked down their faces at everything—they were taller by habit and bone, and their sockets were high, as if their eyes were always pushed up by the wind. Yet the one who haggled with a littoral woman over a spool of wire did so with a cadence so familiar—half insult, half lullaby—that it could not have been learned out of a book. This was not in the briefs, either. The briefs said separation. What I saw was a braid. The news of an offworlder passed with the speed of a small city. It is a speed faster than the net, because it does not have to be precise. Two men watched me under their eyelashes and then moved on; a girl reached to touch the hem of my cloak and then put her fingers in her mouth and looked shamed for daring. A boy took off his shirt and waved it in the path of my knees like a matador; his mother cuffed him. I walked until the algebra of my not-belonging changed from curiosity to attention. Then I turned, lifted the cloak again—which made me both more and less visible—and took the hot steps back up. “You were not permitted to do that,” said Command. The voice came from the wall, polished steel and soft, and not from a throat. On the wall a light pulsed while the distant voice of the Consortium liaison drew breath between sentences. “Not permitted,” said the Governor’s office, and a thin old face appeared, composed so that the light made a mask of it. “Not wise,” said my direct superior, who had at least the courtesy to leave the wall and come into the room in person. He shut the door with his body behind him and leaned on it, as if expecting a flood. “Do you imagine yourself a hero? You have been here four hours.” “I imagine myself without a second set of eyes,” I said. “The briefings as written are not sufficient.” “Of course not,” he said. “But it is not for you to discover that. They have protocols. So do we. The Minister will see you at eighteen.” “The Minister of Science?” A short bark of humor. “The title is an old one. On Ard’rin the portfolio includes fisheries, education, research oversight, and half the budget for the upland-dome maintenance. No matter that the Minister is a cousin of the Governor and has never written a paper on anything except debt.” “He will test you,” said the wall. The liaison—her name was Pend, and she wore a face as smooth as a pebble—smoothed her voice also, like a hand over fur. “He will make you say what you know you should not say. We need you to be very plain and very dull.” “Do you want me to be very useful?” I asked, and the room went briefly quiet. “We want you to survive your first week,” said my superior. “After that, we want you to be very useful.” The Minister’s anteroom was a library. Not books—no binding lasts so long in coastal air—but a long slope of paper and slate and etched metal, the record of patents and letters and marriages and claims. I ran a finger along a brass plate that said, in the angular script I had practiced, registration: littoral ballast method, design no. 33/2, and felt in the cut of the letters the hand that had guided the tool. He kept me waiting while I read the edges. Then the inner door slid aside and heat washed out. The Minister of Science occupied a room like the inside of a conch, round and laminated in pale wood. He stood with his back to me, hands clasped, looking at a projection of the tether, which hung in the air like a plumb-line through a body. “You have sand on your cloak,” he said, before he turned. “I went down,” I said. He half-smiled. “Of course you did.” He had the upland bone behind his eyes and the littoral looseness in his wrists; his mouth was full-lipped and made for laughter he did not provide. He gestured to a chair that was half a crouch, so that sitting made a person compact, like a weapon holstered. “We are pleased that the Consortium has sent us someone so curious,” he said. “It means you took us seriously enough to dispatch someone likely to step out of bounds. That is a compliment.” “They sent me because I was young enough to be forgiven for a first mistake,” I said. “Ah,” he said, and folded one leg over the other. “Then you have already spent the coin. Tell me, Envoy Mairin—what did you see, in your little walk? Tell me in words that my aunt would believe.” “Trade,” I said. “Not only what your briefing notes report. Reciprocity. Insults used as gifts. Hands that’re built different laying the same rope in the same coil.” “And?” “And the children run much the same everywhere,” I said. “They wanted to know if the offworlder bleeds.” “Do you?” “Yes,” I said. “Shall I show you?” He did not look away. For a moment I understood what was meant by seasoned. It was not age. It was practice at seeing through others’ balancings. “We are accused,” he said suddenly, as if answering someone else, “of failing to regulate our own biology. We are accused of encouraging divergence that harms our unity. We are accused of turning ourselves into a spectacle where once we were a people.” “By whom?” I asked, though I could recite the names. “By the Uplands, by the Littoral, by the Compact, by the Consortium, by the news, by the man who scraped salt from the stones and says his son wants gills and he did not ask for a fish.” He leaned forward. “I have a niece who sleeps better when she hears the wind through the dome’s seams. I have a nephew who will die if we do not get him a new saline filter for his glands. I am Minister, and I can allocate budgets that will build a school on the ridge or a hatchery. I am also cousin to the Governor, who believes I should speak to you with salt in my mouth so you trust me. Tell me what you propose to do with us.” “Not with you,” I said. “With what threatens you.” He spread his hands. “Give it a name. I like to see what we are cutting.” “The tether,” I said, and saw the quick flicker in his face that meant either I had hit the right target or a decoy. “It is ours,” he said. “We rebuilt it after the storm of fifty-two. We can put a barge up and down on it without burning, at a schedule the orbiters envy. The upland quarries feed the tether; the littoral keeps the sea off the pylons. It is the spine of the polity.” “And the break-point?” I said. He stared at me. He was not used to people who did not ease in. I do not know if I was brave or simply still warm from the market. “Every spine breaks at a particular point,” I said. “The break-point here is that the upland councils control the tensioning stations, and the littoral crews control the maintenance at the anchorage. If there is distrust, there is a way to twist.” “You propose to write me a report telling me what I already know.” “I propose,” I said, and let my voice be single and not persuasive, “to suggest that your schools teach anchorlines and tension in the same room. To suggest that the budget for the upland begin to include a stipend for littoral teacher-guesting, and the littoral to host upland apprentices. I propose also to ask who in your office drafted the policy that forbids young uplanders to wade at certain beaches and young littorals to walk the ridge past eighty percent oxygen. You have made law out of fear. I propose to write a law out of the market I saw today.” He laughed, not kindly but with interest. “You think a market can govern a policy.” “I think a policy can be made to resemble a thing people already do,” I said. “When it does not resemble it, they do not obey. Then you build bigger prisons.” He unfolded himself and leaned back. He studied my face, and my hands, and the hem of my cloak where the salt had dried white. “You are offworld,” he said, almost gently. “You will go, and we will stay. And the next wind will cut a new line in the sand. Why should we permit you to lay your neat little bridges between us, when we have grown so much strength in the gaps?” “Because you are tired of spending that strength on the maintenance of the gaps,” I said. The room had warmed my skin; sweat gathered between my shoulder blades and made an itch I did not scratch. “Because you want to spend it on other things. On the child with the glands, on the school at the ridge, on the patent for the ballast method. Because I walked in your market and bought a tuber and found I could name the taste.” He was silent. On the projection the tether altered; some tech outside had changed the data feed, and a storm icon flickered in, a spiraling white flower coming in from the east. “The season turns,” he said. “Will you walk again?” “Yes,” I said. “You will not be permitted,” he said—a precise mimicry of Command’s voice—and then he smiled, a thin salt smile. “But you will do it anyway. Tell them I made you.” “If they ask,” I said. “They will,” he said, rising. “They like to know where to put the blame down between them.” On the library’s slope, as I went out, I ran my fingers again along the brass plate with the ballast design, and my hand came away with the smell of copper. In the corridor, Command waited, not in person, but there in the light again. My superior had put both hands on the back of a chair and stood as if braced against a swell. “Well?” he said. “They will test us,” I said. “We must test ourselves,” and hung the cloak on the hook by the door, for once not because I was not permitted to wear it, but because I did not want to carry its weight. Outside the walls the green light ran along the algae like a river through stone. The wind came up, and across the city the tether sang.

Model Output:
The canister rattled when I set it on the bench, the hollow clatter echoing through the corrugated steel of the lab like a cough. It had once been full of proprietary nuclease mix, the label still half-legible beneath ash bloom and iodine stains, the logo of the defunct giant embossed like a fossilized smile. Now it held a slurry of salts we made by boiling river water until the kettle screamed and filtering it through a coffee sock I’d patched with nylon thread. I’d painted the canister’s cap with nail polish—the only thing that stayed put in the damp—to mark the base buffer from the primer stock. It made the place look faintly festive when the lantern was lit: tiny flashes of carmine and metallic rose, like someone had tried to make a cake out of shipwreck parts. “Three minutes to denature,” I told the roller. It wasn’t listening; it never did. The belt had come from a meat slicer; the rollers were scavenged from a vacuum cleaner and a child’s toy truck, and the thermostat was the bimetal strip from a toaster oven, housed in a box with the words QUICK-BAKE still etched in plastic the color of old teeth. Heat pulsed up and down in the crude cycles I’d been coaxing out of it for months: hot enough to peel your fingerprints, cold as an empty room. Polymerase chain reaction by sympathy and stubbornness. PCR by candlelight. Across the bench, the little centrifuge whined, a dog in a dream. I’d wrapped its motor in cloth to keep it from stuttering when the wind came up; the cloth was printed with cartoon oranges wearing sunglasses, which meant it had been at least ten years since anyone had put them on a table to eat. “You’re talking to machines again,” said Tars. He was leaning in the doorway with his body turned sideways, ready to run if something in here exploded. He liked to keep his options open in a lab. “You hired me because you want machines to agree with you,” I said to the belt. “It’s the agreement I’m after, not the romance,” Tars said, stepping in and kicking the door shut with his heel. He had a burlap bag over his shoulder. It sagged like it had bones in it. He laid it on the floor and pushed it with his foot. It clinked. Empty canisters, their labels flaked with soot. He’d raided a facility somewhere. The professional part of my brain began to catalog them without permission: two reagent carriers from CleoGenics, one from DaxaBio, one long-necked container we would use for ethanol if there were ethanol. The rest were the cheap ones, brittle as eggshell. “Payment?” I said. “Collateral,” he said. “You got paid when we signed. I don’t double-pay.” “We agreed on a second allotment of clean cartridges if the product took,” I said. He waggled a finger. “The product always takes. The question is how long it grows. And how much you can make before it starts melting.” He leaned in, heavy with street cologne that smelled like swallowing a battery. “And whether you can make enough for us before the season turns and the contract goes to someone with a working freezer.” I pretended to check the timer. He could smell worry like a dog. “We freeze dry.” I nodded toward the top shelf where the scavenged espresso machine squatted, its portafilter gleaming with a black polish whose main ingredient was panic. I had rerouted its pump through a pressure cooker and two medical syringes. A vacuum, in principle. When it worked, the foam it left looked like frost, only warmer. “What do you have for me?” He bent and rolled the burlap bag open like he was undressing it. He took out a cassette, the size and shape of cassette tapes I’d only ever seen in museums, big enough to hold someone’s history if you compressed it right. The Cass had once contained an entire kale genome—plus DaxaBio’s clever edits, coded like riddles in the introns, meant to ensure that only coughing, blessed sprouts would grow past seed leaf stage without this year’s license key. Now the Cass was a husk, but the polymer sleeve inside was lined with dried gel, pale and scuffed like a tongue. The gel would still hold fragments, even degraded, trapped in the cross-links like gnats in amber. “Leftover kale,” Tars said, casual as a man offering you a stick of gum. “And this.” He produced a thumb of something wrapped in Parafilm. When he peeled it back, the smell was sweet and clean and made my teeth ache. Tomato. The old kind. He handled it with religious care. “One slice each week since the collapse. If you can make ten seeds that grow true for one generation, I get half.” “And the settlement gets the other,” I said. “We agreed.” “The settlement gets something that grows,” Tars corrected. “True is a luxury. True is a story you tell yourself while you get old.” The roller chimed; the bimetal strip had bent enough to flick the contact, and the Quick-Bake rolled into its cooling phase with the shiver of old metal remembering what it meant to expand. I nudged the cheek of the incubator with my hip to check it was still warm; the incubator was an Igloo cooler with a hairdryer piped into it, the hairdryer’s fan driven by a hand crank that my assistant Asha had fashioned from bicycle parts. She’d put a sticker on it: STAY COOL (UNDER PRESSURE). Asha had taste. And a sense of humor the dust couldn’t smother. “You didn’t come to admire my décor,” I said, dipping a pipette into the Cass. The tip scraped delicately over the gel to lift a film of invisible fragments. Even degraded, even dumb, DNA had body. The plastic flexed under it like the skin over a knuckle. I touched the pipette to the eppendorf tube nestled in a rack I had carved out of the plastic lid of a high-end sushi tray. The tip drew up the buffer. I felt the faint hump of surface tension pop and settle. It was the closest I got to faith. “I came to call in the rest of the contract,” Tars said. “Your settlement’s cut, sure. But also the other part. The part you wrote very small.” In the center of the bench were nine shallow dishes cut from an old Petri tower, each with a smudge of soil sifted to microbe agony. For each dish, a different primer set. For each primer set, a chance to patch the kale’s obsolescence while using a fragment of what the bills called the Next-Gen Tasty gene cassette, the regulation-labeled TOTOM8, which a DaxaBio intern with a sense of humor had always pronounced like a baby. “I wrote it small because I didn’t want to talk about it,” I said. “The therapy.” “You called it that,” Tars said. “I call it the risk. You and your gill-people pouring themselves into kids and old men. You pass-along and pray it sticks. You call that medicine. I call it a carnival ride.” He smiled because he was getting to me. “The black market wants a packet that keeps the shakes down and the heat out. You promised a test batch. No more little instructions, no more disclaimers about off-target effects. The next heatwave we’re going to see the ridge turn into a crematorium.” “I’ve been testing on myself,” I said, sharper than I meant to. The emotional truth of the sentence put a wobble in my hand. The pipette tip flicked the rim of the dish and I swore under my breath, then steadied it, watching the drop bulge and fall into the soil like a single bead of sweat. “My body’s not theirs. It’s not a population study. It’s not proof.” “You can’t do population studies when half the population is tired enough to think death is a cure,” he said. “You said it had upsides.” “It fixes neighborhood problems,” I said. “It builds new little plumbers, puts them to work. It tweaks sweat glands, changes receptor density, makes heat a suggestion instead of a command. In some, it nudges the thymus to remember it exists. Their lungs learn better than they did. But it takes things too, Tars. It scrapes off the top layer of taste. It makes skin prone to bruising and it changes the way a body deals with sugar. My hair doesn’t grow right. My nails look like you took sandpaper to them. And every morning for a week after the dose, there’s a fever spike that feels like a man climbing into your chest to light a cooking fire.” He watched me as if the lab would answer instead of me. I realized I’d been holding the Parafilm-wrapped tomato sample in my left hand, and put it down like it was something I should apologize to. “Upsides,” he said again, softer. “The way you said it, like it mattered to say it.” I thought of Asha’s grandmother, who had been, at the start of spring, a woman whose breath rattled like a paper grocery bag being shaken open. Now she walked to the river every day and sent postcards from her phone to the kids in the city made of broken screens. In each picture she was wearing a new hat the color of raccoons. “We steel people,” I said. “We give them summers. And I can send it as a packet.” I touched the dish with a chopstick that had come free in a takeout bag from the year we still had takeout; over its end I had stretched a square of cheesecloth dipped in mycelium to act as a filter. “If what we put in the kale holds, it will deliver the therapy with dinner. Eat your medicine. No syringes. No boosters. If we can stabilize the on-switch long enough to get seed to seed once, we can freeze the second generation. We can bank it.” “The bank catches fire,” Tars said, almost wistful. His father had been a vault engineer, he once told me. “Everything catches fire now.” “Not water,” I said, and smiled because he hated my optimism. The roller chimed again. I drew out the tubes, dew beading on my wrist in the lab’s sweet damp. Across the room the solar panel indicator flickered, a dragonfly caught in a web, trying to tell me it was almost evening. “We’ll go with the carrot promoter,” I said, more to myself than to him. “It’s old tech. The switch is easier to hold. If I splice the TOTOM8 to an old root crop promoter we might get expression even when the gel’s code is missing punctuation.” “You just spoke money,” he said, and pulled the folder from his jacket. Inside were sheets cut neatly from brown paper shopping bags, lines drawn in charcoal, numbers in pencil. He set it on the bench without asking my permission. The bottom line was fat enough to be a promise. “The black market grows under fluorescent mushrooms in a sewer,” he said. “They can’t order it. They buy it from whoever is willing to flick them crumbs. You promise them ten grams of something that cools and steadies and they will make you a saint. You get them thirteen grams of something that does that and helps them sleep through the screaming of pipes, they put a ring on your finger and carry you around like a chair.” “And the price?” I asked. “Half goes to the settlement,” he said, shrugging. “You did that to me. The rest is parts. Clean cartridges. A condenser the size of a baby carriage. Someone who can fix your splicer so that you don’t need to stroke it when you ask it to listen.” He smiled. “And a freezer. An honest-to-God freezer, wired to a roof full of panels that used to keep condos pretty.” I laughed. It came out ragged. A freezer was the dream you gave to kids to get them to sleep. “Stipulation,” I said, taking up the tube and pushing its heat into the well of the agar plate. The cap of the tube clicked against the iron of the vial rack when I changed hands. “You deliver the freezer after the first test batch. Not before.” “To keep me honest?” He tipped his head. “You think so little of me? In this economy? Pains me.” “In this economy,” I said, “it pays to be pained.” In the corner, the bioreactor—a plastic drum with a hole cut in its lid, aerated by an aquarium pump we powered by pedaling—burbled a soft question. The room smelled like things in solution: salts hushed down to brine, starch, the metallic breath of old blood. I felt tired in the particular way that made my bones seem to ring a little bit when I moved. He watched me plate the rest: a rhythm, draw up, dispense, tap, flame the spatula over the alcohol wick that we had built from a lamp and vodka we’d doctored with glycerin. The flame was a tame blue most days. Today it was a busy yellow, the wick coated with a little more dust than it should have been. “Close this with me,” he said. “Say you’ll make it by the festival. They’ll bring peaches in jars, and you’ll bring little packets that make them stop sensing the heat like guilt.” He lifted one of the empty canisters, turned it so its dead logo looked at me. “We’ll fill these with good things. We’ll be the ones who get it right after the gods made a mess of it.” “The gods are dead because we shot them and put them in these,” I said, gesturing with the tube at the empties. “Don’t make me co-sign the graffiti.” He opened his hands, palms out. “Deal or no deal, Kale Queen. I’ve other places to be.” He always called me that when he wanted to remind me what replaced pride when pride left: hunger. “Deal,” I said. And my mouth filled with the taste of something like copper. Fear, or wanting, or the way you taste a word when you know it will change the season. “I’ll dose myself after the first sprout shows expression,” I added, because if the black market demanded a sign of blood, I might as well give them mine on my terms. “If it doesn’t kill me, we post it on the network. We’ll call it T0 + HeatGentle. People like names that sound like they’ve been chewed by a machine.” He grinned at that. “They like when a machine chews the bite for them.” He lifted the bag and slid the empty canisters back inside as if they were sleeping. At the door he paused and looked back at my little empire: the Quick-Bake with its bent bimetal heart, the espresso dryer, the cheesecloth, the cartoon oranges, the canisters repurposed as if they’d been designed to be useful after they failed. “You’re gonna make something that outlasts us, Kale Queen,” he said, mock solemn. “Not if I can help it,” I said. “One generation at a time.” He laughed and left whistling. Outside, the settlement’s evening thrum began: bicycle generators grinding in chorus, someone hammering sheet metal into the idea of a door, the shrieks of kids playing Tag the Drone with sticks. I put the plates in the incubator and cranked the handle until my shoulder burned. The belt on the Quick-Bake turned with the slow delight of a patient animal. I touched the cap of one of the empty canisters as if the old giant’s logo might bite. It didn’t. It had no teeth left. We did. By the time Asha slipped in, dust in the ragged pocket of her elbow and sweat beaded in her hairline, the room smelled like growing. “Is he for real?” she asked. “As real as anyone is when there’s counting to be done,” I said. She grinned like a blade. “We’ll get the freezer?” “We’ll get the freezer,” I said, which was, at the moment, almost a prayer. We stood listening to the incubator purr and the water bath knock like a ghost in a radiator. Above our heads, a line of jars with seeds from the last successful round winked in the low light. We both knew their half-lives like birthdays. We knew how fast meaning ran out of them. “Do you ever think,” Asha said, “that maybe the built-in obsolescence is a kindness?” “No,” I said, too quickly. Then, gentler, “I think it was a business model pretending to be a natural law. I think we fell for it because it matched our own expiration dates and it made us feel less small. The kindness is the trick we do with string and glass and the heat from our palms.” “And tomato, if it takes,” she said, and her voice went a little dreamy. “And tomato,” I said, and made a new mark in the ledger with a pencil worn down to the metal. And kale, and carrot, and the other things we would teach to remember us for one more season, for one more seed. For as long as it took to make a freezer hum and the world cool enough that we could sleep without becoming saints for being able. Above the bench, outside the window we had cut from a truck’s windshield and set into the wall with spray foam and prayer, the last light slid out of the clouds. The incubator clicked. Somewhere in there, a promoter welded itself to a story. Somewhere, a gene decided to stay.