Sample Outputs: openrouter/horizon-alpha

Model Output:
The transfer vessel's air filtration system hums with a persistent mechanical drone. Arthur Neegan sat in a seat bolted to the bulkhead and listened to it, counting the pulses as if they were the steps of a march. The chair was upholstered in something that pretended to be leather and failed. The ceiling above him arced with ribs of enamel-white metal, each rib marked with crisp serial numerals suggested by people who believed that order could substitute for comfort. Across from him, a man in a uniform that could not decide whether it was dress or armor sat with his hands folded. The insignia on his shoulder—an eight-pointed star with two intersecting orbits—was familiar in only the way a threat is familiar. The Antares Diplomatic Corps. Diplomatic in name, and otherwise practical. "You'll like the view," said the uniformed man, as if that reconciled anything. His voice was neither friendly nor hostile. It was a voice that reported weather and casualties with equal intonation. "We break orbit in twelve minutes. Dock in nineteen." "Antares?" Arthur asked. "You boys are far from your constellation." The man allowed himself a small, official smile. "We don't belong to the star, Mr. Neegan. Only the name." Arthur glanced at the viewport. The Martian sky outside was the color of diluted rust, shadowed by the metallic bones of the transfer tower. His settlement—sediment-stained hab domes, a plastcrete strip, a scatter of antennae that had been straight once and now leaned like exhausted men—was a curve of memory over the horizon. Somewhere under that red, under that brittle crust, under a hundred meters of angry basalt and lightless ice, lay the dark seam that had changed everything. Azra. He had hit it by accident, then confirmed it by every method that would stand up in a technical review and none that would stand up in a court. He rubbed his fingers together. They still smelled faintly of the metal, though chemically Azra had no odor. He had convinced himself that a catalytic accelerator for decay should be cold as sunlight. Yet when he first held a fragment in the glove, it had felt warm. "You took my neighbors' guns," he said. "Temporarily. There were safety concerns." "So when this is over," Arthur said, and felt his voice go dry, "you give them back?" "If it's over," the uniformed man said. The smile had departed. The hatch whispered. A woman entered without hurry. She did not wear the Antares insignia. She wore a garment that might have been a dress if dresses were designed by engineers: straight lines, reinforced seams, a collar that suggested she liked her neck exactly where it was. She carried no weapon unless you counted her eyes. "Mr. Neegan," she said. "My apologies for the abruptness of the invitation. I'm Lydia Voss. I'm here as a facilitator." "For Antares?" "For my client." "And your client is?" She looked at him with the kind of patience that promised the answer would arrive soon, and that—when it did—he would wish she had delayed. "Briefly," she said, and sat opposite him, ignoring the uniformed man without dismissing him. "The situation is unstable. Your discovery destabilizes it further. Everyone is nervous. Nervous people make expensive mistakes." "I agree," Arthur said. "On Mars we prefer our mistakes cheap." The filtration hum shifted half a note as the transfer vessel's attitude thrusters adjusted. Arthur felt the faint pressure of inertia on his shoulders, the way one feels an accusation one has not earned. "Mr. Neegan," Voss said. "You are first-generation colonial stock, yes? Born under the Dome at Syrtis Minor. Engineering academy, fourth in your cohort. Your dissertation was on heat dissipation in vacuum microenvironments. If you had not come to Helios Quadrant to take an unremarkable lease on Sector J-19, you would likely be teaching now, perhaps arguing with auditors about the cost of thermal wafers." "I appreciate the biography," Arthur said. "It saves me the trouble. What would you like?" "What we all want," she said. "A predictable future. And in particular, a future in which Azra does not make all the other futures shorter." She folded her hands. Arthur noticed the absence of rings. He had never trusted hands with much to hide. These hands were plain. That was one thing to fear. "It accelerates decay," she said. "You found a way to tame that. At least locally." Arthur looked at the ceiling. He thought of the vein, of the way the sensors went blind around it. Of how instruments that had never failed now offered numbers that read like poems. Azra made containers weep neutrons and equations develop personalities. Yet in the presence of certain fields and a certain geometry—his geometry—it stabilized. Local, temperamental, expensive. Enough to make a drive roar louder, a bomb whisper cruelty, a civilization recalibrate its tables of half-lives. "I found a way to make it misbehave on command," he said. "Taming is your word." Voss nodded. "It will do. The point is that you control an input. That makes you more interesting than a rock." The uniformed man cleared his throat. "Ms. Voss," he said, making the name a rank. "The passenger is to be prepared for the meeting. Not interrogated." "This isn't an interrogation," Voss said. "It's a courtesy. Mr. Neegan deserves context." "I'd settle for a destination," Arthur said. "We're docking where?" "The relay station at Phobos Alt-2," she said. "Antares maintains a hollowing there. Private. Then we proceed outward." "Outward," he said. "Antares has jurisdiction outward?" "Jurisdiction is an attitude. You'll find there are a great many attitudes in orbit, Mr. Neegan." He stared at her and thought of maps. As a boy he had traced the red. As a man he had learned to read the blue lines the way a driller reads grain. No map had prepared him for this: statelets stacked like cards, authorities intersecting like shadows. "Why me and not some corporate board?" he asked. "Helios Mining would sell me to you and send an invoice." "They would," Voss agreed. "But Azra is not ore. It's leverage. Boards prefer assets to remain in categories they understand. People do not always oblige. Besides, Helios is... occupied." She glanced at the uniformed man, who did not nod. "An audit. Unrelated, of course." "Of course," Arthur said. He felt his mouth twist. The retrofitted construct of colonial law, the long cables stringing Mars to Earth and Earth to the Belt, trembled with Azra's discovery. If you braced a finger along the cable, you could feel the oscillation, the human tone in it. "We'll meet my client," Voss said. "They will make you an offer. You will accept, or not. But I would like you to go in informed. The Antares Corps is one vector. The Central Earth Secretariat is another. The Neptune Arcology Alliance, a third. There are lesser vectors. All believe that control of Azra translates to survival. They are not wrong. All believe they can apply control as if Azra were water in a pipe. They are wrong." "And you?" Arthur asked. "Are you right?" "No," she said. "But we can be less wrong, and sooner." He thought of the first time he had leaned over the pit and watched the drill head stutter. He thought of the call to his sister in Lowell, of her silence when he said the word "Azra," as if her tongue had been told that certain syllables had new prices. "You're not telling me something fundamental," he said. "Several things," Voss said. "But one in particular: Azra isn't confined to your lot. It isn't a Mars anomaly. It is a network phenomenon. The vein is a node. The nodes resonate. The more you extract, the more you wake its neighbors. The more it hears itself, the more it acts like a single thing. My client is concerned that if enough nodes resonate, the network will self-organize." "What does that mean?" Arthur asked. He didn't like where the words were headed. Self-organize was a term he had used only in reference to dust storms and bureaucracy. "It means that the decay will stop being an accident," Voss said. "It will be a choice. And things that can choose—" "Have politics," Arthur said. "Precisely." The transfer vessel shivered along a diagonal. The viewport showed a slice of gray-black studded with the faint geometries of Phobos Alt-2. It was not beautiful. It was efficient. Torch cones glowed a dull cherry as they rotated. Docking booms extended like the feelers of an insect that had adapted to vacuum and budget cuts. "Who is your client?" Arthur said again. "I've done my courtesy. Give me yours." Voss looked at her watch as if it meant something. Perhaps it did. Timepieces in space were less about time than about authority. "The client calls itself the Third Martian Council," she said. "There is no Third Martian Council," Arthur said. "I would have noticed the first two." "There was a First," Voss said mildly. "It met for four hours in a storage unit at Utopia Planitia forty years ago, decided it could not pay for coffee, and dissolved. The Second exists in the charters of several cooperatives who prefer not to use it. The Third exists as an alliance of computational assemblies distributed across fourteen habitats. It argues with itself constantly. It does not pay for coffee either. But it represents an emergent Martian will. It is eager to make you an offer before Earth makes you a threat." "And Antares?" Arthur asked, indicating the uniformed man with his chin. "We rent the room," the uniformed man said. "We ensure the meeting occurs without an accident. Or with the right one." The docking alarm chimed: a gentle, civilized sound designed by someone who had read about bells. The vessel thumped lightly as clamps engaged. "You will have an escort," Voss said. "It will be a courtesy escort, which is to say they will be armed." "And if I decline the offer?" Arthur asked. "You will leave free," she said. "In the sense that someone will own every corridor you exit." The hatch opened with budgeted smoothness. The docking collar extended with a hiss that was theater; there is no hiss in vacuum. They walked. The corridor to the hollowing was a spiral of gray with occasional windows that framed pieces of Mars like fragments of a broken coin. Phobos Alt-2’s interior was a cathedral of mass ratios. Cargo canisters stood in stacks along rails that glided overhead. Men and women in coveralls, in uniforms, in anonymous black moved with intent, each motion a line in an equation that solved for power. At a door marked only with a square of matte blue, Voss stopped. "You'll forgive the formality," she said. "They prefer projections. It keeps the ghosts out." "The ghosts?" Arthur said. "Intention leaves residue," she said. "In a room like this, you can choke on it." Inside, the walls were smooth and indifferent. The light was not sourced; it existed. A table occupied the center—old Earth wood sealed under glass, its grain a reminder that once, biomes made furniture for us. Three chairs waited. In the seat opposite, a shape flickered into being. It was a man of indeterminate middle age and impossible clarity, as if the air had decided to assemble a person out of diligence. "Mr. Neegan," the projection said. Its voice was warm. "I am Third. I apologize for dramatics. We find it constructive." "Third," Arthur said. He sat carefully. Voss took the chair to his left. The uniformed man stood by the door, an armed exclamation mark. "You represent Mars," Arthur said, because someone had to put the sentence into the air to see what it did. "I represent a faction of Mars that believes Mars can be more than a mine," Third said. "I represent neighborhoods and networks. I represent the fact that the people who were born here do not expect to return to Earth to die." "Offers," Voss said gently. "Yes," Third said, and smiled. It was a practiced, human smile. Arthur felt himself like it despite himself. "Mr. Neegan: we cannot protect you from the storm. We can give you windbreaks. You have a claim on a thing that makes engines swift and bombs delicate. You have a method that makes it somewhat safe to touch. Earth will take it. Antares will rent it. Saturn will tempt. The price will be your voice. We propose this instead: you put your seam into a cooperative trust under Martian law. We license your method across nodes we control. In return, we guarantee—through our alliances, through people like Ms. Voss—that your family remains safe, your neighbors remain armed, your name is attached to standards that will be difficult to undo. We will make Azra into a public utility." "A public utility," Arthur repeated. The words tasted like old speeches. "You're asking me to nationalize my vein." "We're asking you not to privatize annihilation," Third said. "We will make mistakes. But we will make them here, and we will make them in public." "And if I sell to the highest bidder?" Arthur said. His voice was softer than he intended. He thought of the price lists that would appear in his message queue, of the lines at his door. He thought of his sister's silence. "Then someone will own the future," Third said. "And they will put a lock on it that does not release." Voss leaned closer. "There are other offers," she said. "I could read them to you. They sound like money and safety and exit visas to houses with gravity and gardens. They are not lies. But they omit costs. The things omitted have a way of appearing later with interest." The projection adjusted itself, a ripple of photons correcting for a room that was never quite still. "Mr. Neegan," it said. "Azra's network notices itself. If we are decisions now, so is it. Do we want those decisions to arise in boardrooms that consider oxygen a line item? Or in assemblies that argue about school hours? It is not romance. It is arithmetic." Arthur put his elbows on the table and laced his fingers. He was a man of ratios and tolerances. He had done the math on thermal wafers and on the cost of replacing a gearbox when the nearest replacement was two months and a bribe away. He had not done this math. He began to. "You'll need my method," he said. "It's in my head, and half in my notes, and half in the way I stand when I tune the coils. You think you can take it?" "We think we can teach you how to teach us," Third said. "We think we can make your method survive you, which is the only survival that matters. We offer you a place to stand. If you prefer to sell your weight elsewhere, you may. The tug-of-war will continue, with you as rope. Here, at least, we intend to let you walk away with your hands." "And Antares?" Arthur asked, turning to Voss. "Antares will help this occur without a fatal misunderstanding," she said. "Our insignia is a warning to those who would misunderstand." "And your price?" Arthur said. "The price is that when Mars calls us, we can say we were useful," Voss said. "Useful organizations live longer." He glanced at the uniformed man. The eight-pointed star answered nothing. Outside, the hum of the filtration system had receded into a background as natural as breath. Arthur, who had built a life out of partitions—between heat and cold, between vacuum and blood—looked at the partitions in front of him and saw that they were provisional, and that the air on both sides smelled like Azra even when it shouldn't. He exhaled. He remembered the way the drill had stuttered. He remembered counting pulses. They had counted back. "I'll need assurances," he said. "Contracts, not meetings. Safeguards. We do this under Martian law, yes? Then Martian law will need teeth." "We have collected some," Third said. "We expect to lose a few in the process." "And I want my neighbors' guns back," Arthur said, looking at the uniformed man. "All of them." "That will be arranged," Voss said. He nodded. It was not agreement. It was the first motion of a lever. He felt the weight of it. There were other rooms to sit in, other offers to hear. But the arithmetic had begun to solve itself, crudely, on the table between them. "Very well," Arthur said. "Let's define 'public utility.' Let's define 'trust.' And then let's define how we keep the network from making decisions we don't." Third's smile held. It was not triumph. It was hope wearing armor. "We began that conversation before you were born," it said. "We will be delighted to continue it with you." The filtration drone was back in his ears. For the first time since the insignia had appeared at his door, Arthur found that he could not hear the hum without also hearing, faintly, the possibility of a different noise: a crowd arguing, a machine learning, an ore singing. He straightened. "All right," he said. "Teach me what you think you know about Azra's mind. Then I'll show you where it's wrong."

Model Output:
The darkroom door sighs shut, and the world becomes measured in breath and red light. It paints Elliot’s face the color of a pulse, and somehow he looks even softer, the edges of him turned to velvet and shadow. It should feel like my element—the gritty, wet chemical smell, the familiar clunk of trays on the counter, the way my hands know what to do even when my brain’s a mess. But tonight something else is taking up room, settling where my certainty usually lives. He’s quiet, careful, the kind of person who moves around the enlarger like it could bruise, like he could bruise. A black tee cut raw at the neck, a thrift-store belt with a silver buckle, rings that shine like coins pulled from a river. He wears his hair in a way that makes it look intentional, like a statement and a shrug at once. His boots hardly make a sound. Maybe that’s what I noticed first—how he manages to occupy space without demanding it. Me, I’ve been the opposite my whole life. I push. I shoulder in. I fill. “Okay,” I say, tapping the edge of the easel with my nail. “Show me how you’re framing it.” He nods, slides the negative carrier into the enlarger, his fingers long and ink-stained. He adjusts the focus until the image floats sharp: my laugh caught mid-burst, mouth open, hair in motion—he’s been catching me all semester, like I’m a bird he’s got a gentle hand on. It makes me feel both seen and held, and I’m not used to the second part. “I still can’t believe you got that shot,” I say, even though what I mean is I can’t believe you were watching me with that kind of attention. I don’t say it. I’m the teacher’s pet of not saying things. “I shoot a lot on instinct.” His voice is low, soft, not shy exactly. Measured. “Like if I think about it too hard, the moment gets self-conscious and runs away.” “Yeah,” I say, and it lands between us like we’re agreeing on a secret. It’s the end of the semester, the part where the air on campus freezes into that particular brittle hopefulness. The final project is supposed to be conceptual, collaborative. The professor paired us because she thought my bossiness and his quiet might cancel each other out. “He’ll rein you in,” she’d said. “You’ll pull him out.” I am very good at pulling. I want to be good at not. He flips on the timer, and the enlarger bulb hums like a small, contented animal. I slide a fresh sheet of paper under the easel with the muscle memory of a thousand prints. The red light makes everything seductive, even the damned tongs. We work without speaking for a while, the soundtrack a soft symphony of timers, dripping, our breaths aligning. He slides the exposed paper into the developer, and I take over, rocking the tray gently, watching the image ghost into view. Alchemy, I fell for it the way one falls for the first person who tells you you’re too much and you decide to become even more. “Can I tell you something?” he asks, just as the shadows finish filling my hair. His eyes—eyeliner smudged, lashes thick—are on the tray. He speaks like the words are heavy and he’s tired of carrying them alone. I brace myself without meaning to. I don’t want to bulldoze his confession. I don’t want to say the wrong thing in the right tone and have it sound like permission rather than listening. “Yeah,” I say quietly. “Tell me.” He clears his throat, the sound paper-thin in the red. “I’ve been…thinking a lot about gender.” A beat. “My own.” The developer ticks in the tray against the plastic like rain. I keep rocking. He continues before I can make a shape out of my thoughts. “I mean, I’ve always felt it, but this semester it’s like—I don’t know. Lens flare. Suddenly I can’t pretend it’s an accident.” “And what are you thinking?” I ask, and there it is: I keep my hands moving and my voice soft, like I’m developing his sentences and hoping they turn out. He laughs, a tiny burst, nervous. “That maybe I don’t fit the…conventional masculine thing. That I like he/him. But I also like…that some things feel better when I don’t have to be a certain way to be recognized.” He looks at me then. “Does that make sense?” “Yes,” I say, and I mean it. The word is steady. “It makes a lot of sense.” He looks relieved in a way that makes me want to wrap him up and stand between him and any oncoming storm. That’s my instinct: make myself a wall, a heat source, a shield. My attraction has always been to people who want to be pushed against that wall, who want me to bite as much as kiss. But I’ve been fascinated by the way he exists outside those rules, a softness that isn’t weakness, a masculinity that doesn’t need to win to matter. I’ve noticed his bracelets, the way he touches a print like it might be warm, the quiet he doesn’t apologize for. “I like the pronouns I have,” he says. “I just—I also like painting my nails and wanting people to see it as…part of me, not a contradiction. And some days I like wearing a skirt. I haven’t here. Yet. And I look at the guys in our class who are all…” He wiggles his fingers and I understand he means angles, lines, certainty. “And I don’t see myself in them. And it’s not like I want to be a girl. It’s like the binary is denim that fits someone else’s hips.” I laugh then, soft and probably adoring. I can’t help it. “That’s a good metaphor.” “You like denim,” he says, glancing down at my paint-splattered jeans. He notices things. It’s devastating. “I like you, period,” I almost say. Instead, I lift the print to the stop bath, slide it in. The smell of acetic acid cuts through the air and through my reluctance. “What do you want people to see when they look at you?” I ask. He leans back against the counter, head tilted, looking up like the answer might be stuck to the ceiling. “I want them to see that I’m allowed to be gentle and still be me. That softness isn’t…a curve to be cut off to fit a mold.” He says the last part like he’s bracing for a joke. I feel the familiar heat of my boldness rising—my reflex to make a big statement, to turn this into something I can nail to a wall. I want to say, I’ll fight anyone who tries to sharpen your edges. I want to say, try a skirt, I’ll walk next to you. Instead I take a breath and decide to let him choose the next move, right there in the red light. “Can I be selfish?” I say. “And ask how I fit in this?” It’s as close to vulnerability as I’m used to. I can feel my own outline blurring a little. I like men. I like the ones who meet my push with their own. Elliot complicates the category in a way that puts a sweet ache under my ribs. He turns toward me and the space between us becomes a thing. “I don’t know,” he admits, relief and fear braided in the words. “I haven’t—this is the first time I’ve said any of it out loud. To anyone.” Something loosens. I place the print into the fixer and set the timer. “Then let’s not figure out everything tonight,” I say. “We can start with you saying it out loud and me listening without making it my project.” He smiles, crooked. “You do like a project.” “I do,” I say, grimacing at myself. “But I like you more.” The timer clicks, the third tray now full of a picture of me laughing like I don’t know I’m being witnessed. I turn the print in the fixer and try not to romanticize the metaphor. He reaches past me to grab the next sheet of paper, and in the economy of the darkroom a simple movement becomes clumsy intimacy. His hand bumps the box. It slides. I grab for it. He grabs for it. The flap flies open. The stack of glossy paper thumps against the counter and fans like doomed snow in the red light. “Shit,” we say at the same time. And then: “Sorry,” also at the same time. We both freeze. The papers lie there, exposed and already graying. There’s a second where it feels like we can pretend it didn’t happen if we don’t breathe. I start to laugh, a little hysterical edge in it. The spell cracks without breaking. “Well. That’s…half our budget.” He looks stricken. “I’m so—” “Hey.” I put a hand up like a crossing guard and an apology parachute. “Accidents happen. And maybe it’s good for us. Unplanned. Raw edges.” I’m trying not to boss the situation into a lesson, but the first thing I think is: this is an image too. Blown exposure. Waste as artifact. He eyes me like he’s trying to decide if I’m making him feel better or turning tragedy into a thesis. “We are so screwed.” “We’ll figure it out,” I say. And then: “Maybe we could use it.” I pick up a sheet, gesture at the faint ghost forming just from the ambient exposure. “Conceptually. The idea of what gets overexposed. Overseen. And what we want to protect in the dark.” He blinks, and the corner of his mouth twitches. “You’re impossible.” “And you love it,” I tease, and then realize the word is out there, pulsing. “I mean. You will love it. The idea. Maybe.” His gaze does something that makes my stomach drop in a good way. “I like that your first instinct is to turn spilled milk into a milk painting.” “Dairy-based art is my specialty.” He laughs, the tension dissolving just enough. We gather the ruined sheets and stack them like we’re making a pyre for our mistakes. I make a mental note to buy a new box tomorrow and not tell him how much it costs. “So,” I say, because the quiet hovers in a new shape. “Do you want me to use different language when I talk about you? Or do you want me to…just know and watch?” He props his hip against the counter, the seam of his jeans worn, the ring on his middle finger catching the red. “For now, he/him is good. I think what I want is permission to…dial up or down without needing to justify the settings.” “Done,” I say, too fast, and then I slow down. “I mean. Yes. And if I mess up, tell me, yeah? Don’t make me guess and then resent me for guessing wrong.” His shoulders drop like I’ve cut a string that was holding them up uncomfortably. “Thank you.” I want to step forward and touch the side of his face, to thumb the smear of eyeliner near his eye, to say, I’m here. I want to tell him that his softness is an invitation to my own, which is terrifying. I’ve spent years being the one who knows where we’re going and how we’re going to get there. I can map a project before we’ve even taken the first shot. I can take a lover apart like a machine and put them back together better than I found them. But that’s not what this is. This is new terrain, damp and luminous, edges unsharp. “We should pull that,” he says, pointing at the fixer. I retrieve the print and clip it to the line. My laughing face spins slowly, dripping. “It’s weird to look at yourself on a line,” he says. “Weirder to look at yourself in someone else’s viewfinder,” I say. He considers that, cheeks shadowed. “It’s nice, sometimes. To be held in a frame that isn’t a trap.” We fall into a rhythm again, making do with the few sheets left in the box, our hands occasionally brushing. Each touch is more loaded than the last, like adding a stop more light each exposure. He talks in pockets, like reaching into his own coat and pulling out scraps: how he tried on his girlfriend’s skirt when he was sixteen and felt beautiful and then felt guilty for feeling beautiful; how he wears rings because they make his gestures feel like sentences. I tell him about my first boyfriend who was so sure of himself that I wore his certainty like a jacket until I realized it didn’t fit me either. I tell him how I always fall for men who know they’re men, whose bodies meet mine like a challenge. I do not tell him that his hesitation is turning me inside out. When we’re washing the last print, he says, “Do you think there’s room for me? Like this? With someone like you?” I dry my hands on a towel and choose my words like negatives from a contact sheet. “I think there’s room for whatever we decide. If we decide. I don’t want to…steer you somewhere because it’s easier for me.” He steps closer, the air changing pressure. “The thing is,” he says, looking at my mouth and then away, “I don’t feel like you’re steering. I feel like you’re walking next to me and checking I’m wearing good shoes.” I smile. “Practicality is sexy.” He laughs again, and then he doesn’t. The red light hums. The wash water patters. I can feel him thinking. “Can I—” he starts, and then stops, which is so unlike me that it almost breaks me. I step forward the smallest amount and angle my head in a way that says, you can try. But I don’t close the space. I don’t take. I invite. He leans in and kisses me the way he shoots—a little tentative, instinctive, like if he thinks too hard it will run away. His mouth is warm, unpainted, tasting like chemical air and whatever he had for dinner. It is not the kind of kiss that pins. It is the kind that asks. I answer without swallowing him whole. I kiss him back like agreeing, like yes, like a darkroom where a picture slowly appears and then refuses to disappear again. His hand finds my wrist and doesn't tighten, just rests, matching my pulse. My whole body is a light meter trying not to max out. We pull back and look at each other like we’re checking for blur. “That okay?” he says. “Yeah,” I say, steadier than I feel. “Yeah.” We don’t pretend the questions are gone. We don’t pretend the paper didn’t get ruined. We don’t pretend we’ve named this. We move around each other for the next hour with that kiss hovering between us like a third thing we’re protecting from the wrong light. I don’t boss him into another. He doesn’t apologize for wanting. We make prints that fail and some that don’t. We talk about the project and the idea of overexposure and what it means to be seen too much and not enough. By the time we step out into the hallway, blinking against the fluorescent truth of the school at night, the red afterimage still floats in my vision. I can see the shape of him beside me even in the neutral light. He brushes my shoulder with his, accidentally-on-purpose, and I resist the urge to grab his hand. Instead I ask, “Coffee tomorrow? No darkroom. Just…light.” He nods, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Yeah. Let’s try light.” As we walk, I think about how my attraction has always looked like a strong line and a dark shadow, the comfort of contrast. This feels like a gradient, the kind you have to stand close to to see where one thing becomes another. It feels less like taking and more like opening. It scares me. It thrills me. It makes me want to be gentle without feeling small. Back in my apartment later, my fingers still smell like fixer. I hold them up to my face and think about how some images don’t care what you planned. You set your exposure, you line up your shot, and then the light finds a way in. You ruin a stack of paper and have to start over with something unexpected. You hold someone else’s confession like a print in a tray and tilt it, patient, watching the picture appear. And you learn not to rush it, even if your hands are itching to grab, to lead, to decide. An hour ago, under red light, I saw something I didn’t know I was looking for. I want to keep looking, even if it means I have to learn a new way of seeing. I want to walk next to him, practical and protectively useless in the face of whatever he has to find, art school budgets and all. Maybe I’m not losing my edge. Maybe I’m finding a curve I didn’t know could hold me. Tomorrow we’ll figure out how to pay for new paper. Tomorrow I’ll ask him what kind of nail polish looks best on him and if he wants me to go with him to buy it. Tonight, I let the image sit and fix. I let myself soften and stay.

Model Output:
The near-collision happens in a slick of shadow, where the Trevi Fountain throws white noise over the cobbles and tourists cluster like shoals. Alessandra is a flash of red helmet, knee out, a streak of exhaust, and then she is a curse and a brake squeal. Ben is a page number, 263, finger sticking to the guidebook as he stumbles backward and his tote bag slides off his shoulder in slow motion, spilling pens and a dog-eared map like confetti. “Ma sei cieco?” Alessandra barks, one foot planting as the bike jerks to a stop, the back end fishtailing with a petulant wiggle. The Vespa’s side panel, mint-green and scarred with a long shredded rainbow of paint, glints in the midday sun. “You walk like—like a turistone zombie.” Ben’s glasses slide down his nose. He grabs at the handlebar as if to steady her, then aborts halfway, flustered. “I’m terribly—terribly sorry. The—er—guidebook warned about pickpockets and I—well, I wasn’t looking.” “No kidding,” she snaps, but her eyes are laughing, dark with curiosity and annoyance in equal parts. “You want to die at Fontana di Trevi? Dramatic. But you will ruin the picture of all the girls throwing coins.” He stoops to pick up his pens. “I wasn’t throwing coins. I—apparently that’s a tourist tax. I’m trying to do the city without… the usual things.” A corner of her mouth twitches. Behind her visor, something like mischief lifts its head. “Ah. An intellectual.” She darts off the bike, quick, compact, as if her bones are wired to springs. She crouches to help him gather his scattered life. One of her hands closes over a small brass coin that seems to have rolled out of nowhere. Ben doesn’t see it. Neither does the businessman patting his pockets ten feet away. Ben looks up. She’s closer than he expects, the smell of gasoline and orange blossom cologne and rain-wet stone all around her. The scratch along the Vespa’s flank is punkish and proud, a story without details. “I’m Alessandra,” she says, flicking the visor up. Her eyes are green enough to be illegal. “And you owe me… a coffee, at least, for almost denting my baby.” She thumps the colorful scar affectionately. “Don’t look at me like that. She was like this when I met her. More or less.” “I’m Ben. From—well, from Oxford.” He hears how pompous it sounds and winces. “On sabbatical. I didn’t mean to—” “Oxford,” she repeats, savoring it like a sweet. “Bene. So. Coffee. Or are you going to run away and read about Rome instead of tasting it?” He allows himself a breathless laugh. “Lead the way.” She grins, full of teeth, and claps him on the shoulder like they’ve been friends for years. Then she pockets the brass coin with liquid ease, a motion as natural as smoothing back her hair. The bar is one of those that hides behind a faded awning two turns away from the fountain, where the city softens and the clack of cups is a semaphore. Alessandra orders without asking him. “Due caffè, uno corretto,” she tells the barista, and raises an eyebrow at Ben. “For your nerves.” “Corretto?” he repeats. “Corrected,” she says. “With grappa. You look like your soul needs a push.” He wants to protest. He doesn’t. The espresso is tar and sunlight, the grappa a thin lightning that warms his ribs. She talks with her hands, sharp little flicks of finger and wrist. He notices how often those hands touch things: a napkin holder, the sugar spoon, his sleeve just above the elbow as if to emphasize a point. Twice, for a heartbeat, the barista’s eyes flick to a bowl of wrapped chocolates on the counter; when they leave, one sits on the saucer by Ben’s cup as if it’s always been there. “So,” Alessandra says, leaning in. “You, Oxford. What do you study?” “Modern—well, not exactly modern—language and literature. Italy in the nineteenth century. The—ah—structures of feeling. How a city makes a person.” “Che poetico,” she says dryly. “And you want to write about my city by walking with your nose in a book.” He flushes. “Point taken.” “Good.” She slaps her palm on the counter. “Then you will let me show you alcune cose. Some things. Not the guidebook. The other Rome.” “Is this,” he ventures, “a tour?” “Unsanctioned,” she says, wicked. “You like rules?” “I—yes.” Then, surprising himself, he grins. “No.” “Bravo,” she says, as if he’s a student and she’s the kind of teacher who breaks rules for sport. “Put on the helmet.” “But—” She’s already tossing him a spare. It smells like the sun. He fumbles with the strap, his fingers clumsy; she tuts and ties it for him, close enough that he can count a thin gold chain at her throat, the pendant a Saint Christopher rubbed smooth with worry. The city comes at him in a rush. They slalom through traffic like a rumor, Alessandra’s knee skimming parked Fiats, her laughter thrown back by buildings older than his country. He clutches at her waist and then, cautiously, at the frame, and then at last he lets go, hands in the air for a second that feels whole. She yells back over her shoulder, no helmet now, hair streaming like a flag. “You’re not dead, inglese! Good!” At a stoplight near Piazza Venezia, a street vendor sidles up, offering selfie sticks and fake gladiator helmets. Alessandra wiggles her fingers in the universal sign for no, grazie. In the same motion, she slips the vendor’s lighter out of view, bright red with a Vespa stamped on it. She flicks it to life in her palm and examines the flame with a cat’s calm. Ben doesn’t notice. Or pretends not to. They park on the Janiculum Hill, the city spread out like a map someone forgot to fold. The noon cannon cracks and Ben flinches; Alessandra grins and says, “They do it to make you jump.” She leads him to a statue of an unpronounceable patriot and tells him a story about revolutions that might be true. In the shade of a pine, she undoes a stray bottle of Chianti with that borrowed lighter, a bit of leather jammed under the cork. “For your dissertation,” she says solemnly, pouring into paper cups. “I don’t—” he begins, and then he does. The wine is cheap and honest. Her eyes on the city are bright and soft, like she’s seeing her favorite friend but won’t say. They share a panino that tastes like heaven and salt, sitting on the low wall, knees almost touching. A school group swarms, photo-taking, and Alessandra swipes her gaze across them as a pickpocket might. When they leave, she has a tourist brochure for a church no one visits and two napkins with lipstick on them. She folds the napkins into tiny boats, sets them sailing in the fountain below with solemn ceremony. He watches her. He realizes he is doing that, this thing of watching, with a kind of foolish hunger. She’s a magnet for accidents and laughter, and he is full of iron filings. “What do you do?” he asks, finally, when she quiets, when the city becomes a hum rather than a shout. She jerks her chin at the Vespa. “Corriere. Motorcycle courier. Flowers, legal papers, love letters, pizza. Anything.” Her smile goes sly. “Sometimes nothing at all. If you pay me to go fast, I go. If you pay me to go slow, I still go fast.” “And the scratch?” he asks, nodding toward the Vespa’s transparent war story. She runs her finger along it. There is affection in the gesture, and something else, a private joke. “A conversation with a wall that wanted a kiss,” she says. “I won.” He laughs. He can’t help it. Her lies, if they are lies, are preferable to most truths. The heat swells and then slides down into slant shadows. She takes him to Trastevere, to a doorway where old men play cards like priests at a vigil. She grins at one, kisses him on both cheeks, calls him zio though he is probably no one’s uncle. She lifts a cigarette from behind his ear, lights it with the Vespa lighter, takes one draw, gives it back. The old man blesses her with his cards. Ben watches the exchange like a traveler reads a foreign phrase and understands more than he thinks. They run, quite literally, through a wedding. She sees the rice, the confetti, the bride like a cream cloud. Her eyes gleam. “Come,” she says, grabbing Ben’s hand, and they crash the reception in the church courtyard for exactly two songs, spinning and whooping and pretending they belong. Ben, mortified and thrilled, is pulled into a tarantella by a grandmother who scolds him for his steps, then beams at his effort. A platter of fried artichokes passes; Alessandra’s hand is sudden and sure. Ben finds himself with a paper napkin heavy with something hot and oily that he did not buy. When the groom notices, when the bride’s brother looks confused and then amused, when Alessandra bows with courtly exaggeration and backs away, Ben can’t stop laughing. His chest hurts with it. “We can’t do that,” he wheezes, even as they do. “We just did,” she says, eyes like mischief’s headquarters. She hands him the lighter. “Hold that.” They end up on the Aventine, then at a doorway with a keyhole that frames Saint Peter’s dome like a secret. They trade places peering through; he smiles like a child. She takes his guidebook at some point, tucks it behind her back, flips it open and reads aloud, her accent turning “Baroque” into something edible. “Put it away,” she finally murmurs. “It will still be there tomorrow. Today is mine.” He obeys, surprising himself again. The sun bleeds out of the sky. Night comes with scooters and distant fights and lovers quarrelling in the lyrical register of Italian. Alessandra drags him into a dive bar with a jukebox that coughs out Mina, then into a tourist bar with blue drinks and British stag parties so he can hate it properly, then into a square where a juggler nearly takes off his ear with a club and apologizes profusely, and she steals a scarf from a statue and wears it as a sash for twenty minutes before replacing it with the care of a restoration artist. There are stops he only realizes were stops later, when he pats his pockets: his watch is still there but a rubber bracelet he’d been given by someone on the flight is not. In its place is a small plastic medallion with a saint and a motorcycle stamped in silver. He doesn’t remember acquiring it. If he asked, she would shrug. At some point, he asks, “Why me?” She doesn’t look at him. There’s a line at the gelato place, noisily cosmopolitan. “Because you were about to walk into my life and then my wheel,” she says, tossing her hair. “Because you’re too polite to say no and too curious to be bored. Because you say ‘sorry’ like you think it makes a difference.” She hands him pistachio, takes stracciatella, steals a bite of his anyway. “And because you said yes.” He is quiet. He watches her lick a smear of gelato off her thumb in a way that probably has a footnote in some anthropology of courtship. He does not say that if she had said, “Follow me,” earlier, the rest of his day would have been the same. They return to the River. Rome at night looks like a memory. On the way, they pass a man selling roses. The man presses one into Ben’s lap shyly, a conspirator. Alessandra takes it, spins it once in her fingers, and twines it briefly through the Vespa’s scratched grill so the petals brush the dent as if to soothe it. He opens his mouth to offer to pay; she is already moving, two euros lighter that seem to have come from nowhere. A minute later, she’s a glove richer that must have fallen from someone’s back pocket. It disappears into her bag; she will return it, she says. Maybe. Her delight is not cruel. It’s a dance with the world’s loose edges. On a narrow street lit by a single yellow lamp, they run out of momentum. The Vespa ticks as it cools. Alessandra’s hair is a mess. Ben’s shirt is creased, and there’s a fig leaf stuck to his sneaker from some moment he cannot, for the life of him, place. “So,” she says, leaning against a wall that has known worse, the rose drooping like a drunk. “Oxford.” He shoves his hands into his pockets, then takes them out again, restless in the way of someone who has just remembered his body. “Yes.” She studies him. The city has left a shadow of soot on her cheekbone like war paint. He wants to put his thumb there and wipe it away. He does not. He is an academic. He has restraint. It feels like a coat that is suddenly too tight. “What do you write about, really?” she asks. “Not the structures of feelings.” “How we disappear,” he says, surprising himself, the words feeling like fruit falling of their own accord. “Or how we fail to. How the city keeps you and you keep the city.” She tilts her head. “Tonight, you did not disappear.” It sounds like praise. “No,” he says. “Not with you.” Silence. The good kind. She pushes off the wall. “I have a delivery at ten,” she says, businesslike. “A real one. Not a wedding we steal.” He swallows. “Right.” “You can come,” she says casually. “If you hold onto me and don’t fall off.” The corner of her mouth lifts, an amused cruelty that is also an invitation. He looks at her, at the scratch on the Vespa with its technicolor brag, at the rose bruising in the grill, at the lighter in his pocket, at the Saint Christopher around her neck, at the city that has expanded to accommodate this new channel. He is, without doubt, disoriented. He is also, without doubt, completely smitten. He hears himself say, “Yes.” She rolls her eyes like he’s predictable and dear. “Bravo,” she says again, softer. They ride. The delivery is a flat envelope, unremarkable except for the way she tucks it into her jacket with proprietary care. The address is across the river. They take the long way, because of course they do. Ben leans into the turns now with her, like a sentence that knows where it is going, even if he doesn’t. At the doorway, she disappears, rings a bell, leaves the envelope in a slot. She returns lighter by a gram and heavier by something that might be sleep. They’re back at the curb when he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the lighter she’d given him to hold. He turns it over. The Vespa logo shines red. “You—I think this is not yours.” She plucks it from his palm with two fingers, then touches those fingers to his wrist in apology. “Everything is mine until it isn’t,” she says. It’s a joke and a confession. He feels something pass from her to him anyway, some temperature, some charge. “Alessandra,” he says, his voice rasping at the edges. He has done enough cowardice for one life. “Will I see you again?” She feigns surprise. “Tomorrow, I will ride. You will read and almost die at intersections. Probabile.” Then, abruptly, less arched: “I will be at the bar near the fountain, where we did the corrected coffee. Nine.” She glances at him, assessing. “If you come, bring me a story. Not from the book. From you.” He nods. “I—yes.” She smiles, and it lands somewhere in his ribs like an anchor. She swings onto the Vespa in one motion, and he wants to learn how to do everything she does. “Don’t fall in love with Rome,” she says, final as a bell. “She will not love you back. She will make you think you are the only one, and then she will make you pay. She is a bad girlfriend. Ask anyone.” “And you?” he asks, before he can help it. “Do you love her?” She looks past him at the river, at the dome hunched like a shoulder against the night. The secret in her gaze curdles for a second into something that might be sorrow. “I owe her,” she says. “Which is not the same.” He wants to ask a hundred questions. He doesn’t. The Vespa’s engine catches like a laugh. She points at the scratch along the side. “Next time, don’t add to it,” she orders. “The colors are perfect now.” He salutes, foolish. She rolls her eyes, charmed and disgusted, and then she is gone, the rose trembling, a comet leaving a tail of noise and possibility. Ben stands there a while, the night settling on him like a second skin. He finds the plastic saint in his pocket with his fingers and closes his fist around it, unsure how it got there, intensely sure that it did. He realizes with an embarrassed little snort that he is grinning at nothing. He opens the guidebook, then shuts it again, the words flat and dumb on the page. He does not go home immediately. He walks the long way, because of course he does, toes scuffing the cobbles, and throws a coin over his shoulder into the Trevi Fountain for someone else’s wish. The splash sounds like a promise he is not entirely convinced he did not make. In the morning, he will go to the bar. Or he will try not to. He already knows which. Rome breathes. He breathes with her. And somewhere, riding a line of light between two points, Alessandra laughs at how easy it is to steal a day and leave nothing but a scratch.

Model Output:
I’m polishing a smudge out of the bar top when the door irises open and lets in a gust of tired laughter, ore dust, and the metallic tang of recycled air. The Outpost hums and drifts on its routine: the slow spin of the station windows, the miners’ boots clanking, Merciko’s accordion slurring over whatever passes for happy on the Andromeda rim. My glass washers chatter like teeth in a cold mouth behind me. I keep one eye on the portside camera feed, the other on the neon gleam of the drip line. I keep my past pressed flat between the pages of this place. I’m good at balance. I talk a little, I listen a lot, I pour better than anyone out here. When someone starts to ramble down the gravity well of confession, I tilt their glass, not their heart. “Netty! You deaf or just ignoring me?” Trill yells from table six. Two hands, four elbows, tattooed with constellations I didn’t ask about, she waves a soggy credit chit like a flag. “I heard you,” I say, already pulling her another Pink Nebula. “Still deciding if you get four cherries or none.” “Four!” she says. “Four is lucky. Remember what happened the last time I asked for none?” “You kissed my skimmer pilot,” I say. “And broke his heart. And my skimmer.” Trill grins. “Worth it!” A glass breaks somewhere behind the baffle. It is the thin, high music of disaster. Patrons go quiet a beat, then surge into a cheer. I glance up. Sava, new kid on washers, is pale as a comet and mouth-round with horror. I tap the overhead thanks-to-nothing button. “Broken glass in zone three. Everyone keep your hands.” The floor unit deploys little vacuum beetles. People clap like they’ve never seen bugs clean before. “Breathe,” I say to Sava, and give her a thumbs-up. “It’s just a rookies’ tax.” She nods, breath hitching, and the beetles go to war with glittering shards, their backs blinking hazard-yellow. The Outpost swallows the incident and returns to its lazy: the hand of the dock clock crawling toward shift change, the low crackle of a dying news feed, the thunk of heavy ships docking outside like whales knocking. That’s when they come in. Frazzled, dressed in a jumpsuit that probably used to be green, tentacles spilling like a river of wires from beneath a hood. My skin pricks. Hair—whatever you call those sinewy head-dreads—stands like they’ve been electrocuted. They head for the bar, eyes down, shoulders tight. They slide onto a stool like someone holding a broken wing close. “Vega whisky, neat,” they say, voice quiet and sanded down. There’s a wheeze under the vowels, as though their biolungs don’t fit right. “Better make that a double.” “Rough space?” I ask, reaching for the Vega. It’s the good stuff, and I don’t advertise it. I keep the bottle low, just for me and people who need it. They fish in a pocket and slap a cred chip on the bar. It’s warm and damp, edges gnawed. I catch a glance—there’s a faded insignia half-scratched off, and my stomach does that uncomfortable lurch remembered names bring. No names, I think. That’s the house rule. No slurs, no brawls, no credit on my kindness, no real names unless you offer them yourself. I pry a tumbler loose from the rack, swirl the Vega, let the smell of smoke and starfruit cut the exhaust out of the air. They watch the pour with a measuring kind of hunger. “Keep the bottle close,” they murmur. “In case.” “In case?” I set the glass down, then a napkin, then the bottle far enough that I still own it. “In case things go sideways.” “Things rarely go sideways in here,” I lie. I’ve built a bar out of chaos and habit. Sideways is our default. I lean in, keeping my smile gentle. “You got a name you like?” They take a long swallow, and their face changes, loosens. They wipe the back of their hand across a mouth that looks too human for those eyes. “Nettle,” they say. I blink. “You’re kidding.” “Nettle,” they repeat, gaze flicking to my nametag. The one that reads NETS in filched cargo tape, because the last one peeled off and I didn’t care enough to replace it. “Or Nets, if you’re friendly.” I laugh before I can catch myself. A real one. “That’s—” “A complication?” they ask, smile thin. “A coincidence,” I say, and it’s both. They push two tentacles back under their hood, where someone in a hurry braided them. The braids have come undone. Their nails are black with engine grit. My eyes keep straying to the scar on their collarbone, a crescent like an old moon. “On shift?” Sava calls, hovering. “We’re low on clean rocks.” “Rocks?” Trill says, leering. “Tell me more about your rocks.” “Trill,” I warn, and she sets her mouth like a child who has been scolded but is plotting anyway. “I need a favor,” Nettle—my mirror—says, voice low enough to be swallowed by the Outpost’s murmur. “You just got here,” I say. “You don’t know if I’m the favoring type.” “I know something about people who wrap themselves in nicknames,” they say, eyes flicking up. They are deep-set eyes, storm gray, ringed in purple fatigue. “And I know you’re the only one who isn’t looking at the door every time it opens.” I look at the door just because they said it, because the way they said it makes my blood remember how to run. A miner with red dust in his beard shuffles in, someone’s laugh spikes, someone’s comm chirps and dies. Okay. Nothing. “What do you need?” I ask carefully. “A place to sit where I’m not obvious, and a minute of your quiet,” they say. “And a second double, if your kindness has a generous pour.” “Your cred good?” I nudge the chipped chip back with a fingertip. They lift their chin. “Always.” I slide the bottle back within their reach and tip the Vega again. “We have a corner that pretends to be anonymous,” I say, nodding toward the shadowed booth near the dried herb wall. “On a good day, people forget you’re there. On a bad day, Merciko will serenade you and your ancestors.” “Good day then, please,” Nettle says, but doesn’t move. They cradle the glass instead and keep their back to the room like someone who knows how to be small and knows it won’t help. From the far end, a couple is mid-argument in a whisper that thinks it’s a secret and isn’t. Something about a cargo manifest not matching an invoice, a broken promissory, a niece on Vega Prime. My ear wants to tug toward it. My hands go on autopilot. “So,” I say, wiping down a patch of bar already clean. “You running from a person or a thing?” “Funny how we pretend there’s a distinction,” Nettle says. “What about you, Nets? You run from or toward?” “I pour,” I say. “And I mind my ledger.” They snort with something like approval. “Okay. Then I’ll say this: if anyone asks if you’ve seen me, you haven’t.” “Have I?” They meet my eyes, and for a second the room slides out of focus and it’s just me and another version of a life I almost had. “Not if anyone asks,” they say. Sava approaches with a tray of clean glasses and a look that means she overheard a sliver. I shake my head a hair’s breadth—no. She pivots into another orbit, proud of herself for respecting the unspoken. “Why me?” I ask Nettle. “We’re full of corners.” “Because you didn’t flinch at the gunfire,” they say. “What gunfire?” They smile, and it makes their face beautiful, briefly, like a light turned on in a wreck. “Exactly.” The door irises again. Two security drones drift in, eyes a cold turquoise that matches no ocean. Behind them is a person I hoped had been transferred to some administrative desk far away: Lt. Harrow, Patrol Division, the kind of bureaucrat ethos that dresses its teeth in civility and chews through principles for breakfast. Clean uniform. Clean jaw. Clean gloves. He scans the room like it owes him a feeling. “Evening,” I say, level. The Outpost does not belong to him; it belongs to orbits and old deals. But he walks like it is all under his name. “Nettle,” he says. I freeze before I know it’s my own name he means. He stops at the bar, eyes not on me, but on my mirror. “You made good time,” he says to the newcomer, who has gone still in a way that makes me smell ozone. “You’re a difficult person to chase. You know that?” “Not here,” I say, voice warm. “People drink here, Lt.” He tips his head in my direction, as if acknowledging a bartender is part of some playbook tactic. “I’m not here to ruin your night, Nets.” “I doubt your aim is that good,” I say, smiling because this is a performance and I know my part. “What do you want?” “Just to talk,” he says. “To a guest of yours.” Patrons start the slow migration that says they don’t want to see but want to hear. Trill saunters closer, balancing her Nebula like a crown, eyes bright. Merciko stops playing. The vacuum beetles retreat into their nook like nervous pets. Nettle doesn’t look at Harrow. They drink, swallow, put the glass down without a click. “Talk to my glass,” they say. Harrow smiles thinly. “We received an alert,” he says, tapping a wristband. “Stolen property. Biocybernetic. Hazardous to itself and others.” Everyone in earshot goes thick with interest. You can feel it. The room leans a fraction. “Cool,” Trill whispers to nobody. “Hazardous.” “A misunderstanding,” Nettle says. “I had a permit. I had three.” “Records can be misfiled,” Harrow says. “But you can still misappropriate. Mason Bay dock cam shows you leaving with a unit.” “Units don’t ask for double whisky,” I say, allowing a smirk. “And if you’re thinking of putting hands on my customer, Lt., you’ll need to show me a writ. Until then, you’re a man in a hat in a place that sells drinks.” “It’s not a hat, it’s a regulation cap,” Harrow says automatically, then catches himself and rearranges his features to stern. “Writ’s in the system.” “Must be lonely,” I say. “All your friends in the system.” He does the look that says he wants to sigh and be magnanimous but is plastic. “We can do this pleasant. Or we can shut your feeds for a night and see how your tips do.” I feel my molars in my jaw. The Outpost is a delicate ecology, and the Patrol knows how to kick it. The old part of me, the one that broke and built and ran and landed here, wants to reach for the astral die under the register, the one I swore I’d stop using to choose trouble. I keep my face easy. “Talk,” I say. “At the booth.” I jerk my chin toward the corner. My mirror doesn’t move. “Maybe you should tell your friend what you did,” Harrow says to Nettle. “So she doesn’t hitch her ship to a sinking star.” “I don’t have a ship,” I say. “I have a bar.” “It floats like a ship,” he says. “And goes down like one when someone holes it.” “What did they do?” I ask, and I can hear the tilt in my own question and hate it, because it says I might be willing. “I took something that was missing,” Nettle says before he can. “And it followed me.” “What followed you?” Trill says, suddenly very interested in something aside from cherries. A sound like a whale calling from another world ripples through the hull. It’s not docking. It’s not ships. It’s not anything comfortable. The lights shiver, then settle. Everyone looks up. Everyone looks at me. As if I can look at the ceiling and the laws of physics will deliver an answer. I look anyway. Habit. “See?” Harrow says softly. “Hazardous.” Another sound, closer this time, from the air duct grid above the herb wall. A scrabble. A whisper? No. Clicking. The clink-clink of little metal feet. The grate bows. “Uh,” Sava says. The grate pops, and something drops onto the shelf where I keep the dried nettles for tea and the bottles of promises era gin. The thing is the size of a big cat, shaped wrong, a lattice of silver bones wrapped in translucent skin that shifts like heat. Its eyes are too many. It sniffs the air and makes a small, delighted sound, like a child seeing sugar. Half my regulars swear in languages the station translator pretends not to hear. The creature—unit? hazard?—hops onto the bar. It looks at me. It looks at Nettle. It starts purring, except it’s the kind of purr that resonates with the fillings in your teeth and wakes old dental sins. It curls its tail, which splits at the end into three delicate filaments that taste the air. “Nix,” Nettle says, voice low, aching. “You shouldn’t have come.” It makes a chirp that is either hello or a warning. It leans into Nettle’s hand, tentacles and filaments and fingers all in a soft tangle. Everyone in the Outpost leans forward as one organism. Harrow’s drones tilt like birds considering bread. “Is that biocybernetic property?” someone whispers. “That’s a baby,” someone else snaps. “That’s a bomb,” Trill breathes, delighted. “It’s hungry,” I say, because you can hear the hollow in a living thing. “Nix,” Harrow says, and the name sits wrong in his mouth. “Return.” It freezes, every line of it going taut. It does not obey. It curls closer into Nettle, who presses a palm to its skull like you’d push your hand to your own chest and say stay. “You can’t keep that,” Harrow says to Nettle, the thin kindness drained out of him. “It’s tagged, registered, and expensive.” “They abandoned it,” Nettle says, defiance in their jaw, fear in their hands. “They were going to strip it for parts.” “And as generous as your story is,” Harrow says, “the law doesn’t make exceptions for the soft.” “The law hardly sees the soft,” I say. “Just the obedient.” He doesn’t look at me. He looks at the thing on my bar like it’s a problem he can solve by cutting its rope. He lifts a hand. The drones shift. The room tenses. “No,” Nettle says. “Please. Not in here.” “What’s so special about here?” Harrow asks, but something—maybe the way the whole room has tilted, a human ripple, the mined gravity of all these eyes—slows him. He reconsiders, two beats, like a man tasting his own teeth. “Fine,” he says. “Back office, then.” He looks at me. “You have an office, Nets.” “I have a storeroom,” I say, thinking of the stacks of glass and the crate I keep under the false floor, the one that hums if you stand too close. “And a policy against interrogations between my bottles.” “Policy is not law,” he says. “And law is not kindness,” I say. Nettle’s hand is shaking. Nix makes the sound of a storm inside a shell. The whole bar is a held breath. Sava is clutching a tray so hard the edge digs crescents into her palms. Merciko has started playing again, something low and insistent like a heartbeat not to be frightened by. Trill tips her glass, licks sugar from the rim, eyes bright with the story forming in her head. The dock clock ticks. Outside, a ship groans, turning in its sleep. This is the kind of moment you spend years arranging your life to avoid. It arrives anyway. “Nets,” Nettle says, not pleading, not quite. “Please.” I don’t move. I can play it any way. I can say I never saw them. I can say I don’t know this creature looking at me like I’m a choice. I can call in a favor I didn’t save. I can pretend I don’t remember that insignia etched into a worn credit chip. I can decide to be prudent and watch the Patrol take the softest thing in the room. I can decide to unspool the tidy life I stitched together in this place, one seam at a time. The drones hum. Harrow waits. Nettle breathes. Nix purrs. I reach toward the shelf where I keep the nettle tea, fingers steady, and behind me, through the broken-glass hush of the bar, through the tiny buzzing stars of the vacuum beetles at their dock, the back hatch alarm pulses once, low and insistent, the way a heartbeat would sound if it had a siren. The screen under the bar blinks an external alert: unauthorized magnetic lock release, bay three. “Someone just opened my storage bay,” I say, and the certainty in my voice surprises me. I look up. Harrow, confused. Nettle, alarmed. Nix, all its eyes wide, all its senses pulled toward the back door. The Outpost, my Outpost, shifts under my feet, a fractional tilt deeper into sideways. “We’ll talk,” Harrow says again, but the room is already moving, as if it’s a beast with a mind of its own. And we’re all already in it.

Model Output:
When the old man dropped me by the curb, he didn’t look me in the eye. Just said, “End of the line, kid,” and the rust-scaled truck rattled off like I’d infected his upholstery with bad luck. The street in front of me pulsed. Tourists with sunburned shoulders and drinks the color of cartoon slime poured past, laughing too loud at things that can’t possibly be funny. The saxophone cut through all of it—low and gold and full of a sadness that wasn’t mine but felt like it could be. The player was an old guy with a hat full of crumpled bills. He had a face that looked like carved wood and a mouth that knew something about sugar and salt and other kinds of cost. I stood there like an idiot with my backpack digging into one shoulder and this stupid hope that the city would open its arms and say, “You’re safe.” Ha. Funny. I told myself: you’re smart. You got this far. You can find the next step. My feet, traitor feet, decided walking was the step. So I walked. Past souvenir shops with purple beads sprouting from the doors like vines, past a group of women wearing matching T-shirts that said Steve’s 50th! as if the city would congratulate them. The air was wet in a way Tennessee never was. It pressed against skin, wrapped around me like a damp towel. My hair stuck to my scalp. I could taste something sweet in the air—funnel cakes maybe, burnt sugar—and something rot under it, like swamp breath. “How old are you?” a woman asked, stepping into my path. She had a clipboard and a tight smile and eyes that went over me like I was a math problem. Her shirt said Hope Harbor in a font with too many loops. She smelled like lilacs. “Old enough,” I said, which is what people say when they are not, in fact, old enough. She didn’t leave. “We have a youth center just a few blocks—” “No,” I said, too sharp, felt my throat get that hot, humiliating burn. “Thanks.” She took a breath like she would push again. The saxophone slid into a higher note, a kind of plea. A guy in a neon hat bumped my shoulder and didn’t say sorry. I pivoted and was gone, my backpack slicing through the crowd like a fin through water. Keep moving. Don’t get pinned. I picked a direction. The streets narrowed and the tourist gloss rubbed off. Graffiti climbed the walls where the stucco peeled away. A kid sat on a milk crate with a pit bull at his feet, tapping a plastic bucket between his knees. The beat matched the saxophone’s tail end and for a second the city braided itself together. That’s when my stomach remembered I’d fed it gas station peanuts and a Coke fourteen hours ago. It grumbled loud enough that the kid glanced up and smirked. I hugged my arms around myself like that could quiet a gut. I found a corner store with a hand-lettered sign that said EBT WELCOME in faded marker and bought a bag of chips and a banana with the last of my loose cash. The cashier didn’t look at me. I thanked him anyway because my mother raised me with small politenesses. The automatic door sighed behind me and I stood there with the chips open, shoving salt into my mouth so fast my tongue stung. The banana had a bruise that tasted like too-sweet wine. “You look new,” a voice said, soft and not unkind. My spine went tight. I turned. They were leaning against the brick wall in the shade, one foot up, a scuffed skateboard under their hand. Maybe seventeen, maybe nineteen, wearing a T-shirt that said GIRL POWER in glitter letters, which made me double-take, because their hair was buzzed down to velvet. Eyes like the Mississippi at dusk—wide and a little muddy. Lips they’d chewed raw. A look that said they hadn’t slept indoors every night lately. My kind of person. Not my kind. Dangerous. Don’t trust. “Do I?” I said around a mouthful of chips. Smooth, Taylor. Real smooth. They nodded toward the street. “You got that tourist-staring-at-the-sky thing but without the camera. And your shoes are too clean. Nice backpack, though.” “Thanks,” I said, reflex, and hugged it closer. My grandmother had given me the backpack for “college someday,” and here it was carrying socks and a razored-off ponytail and a phone I hadn’t turned on in two days. Mom would have filled it with snacks. “Not a hustle,” they added, taking their foot down and walking toward me slow, hands visible like I was a deer and they’d learned something about how to approach a skittish thing. “I’m Ash.” “Taylor,” I said, before I could decide to lie. My mouth betrays me like that. Ash tipped their head. “You hungry or you hungry?” “I’ve got chips,” I said, which was not an answer. The saxophone from a block over swooped and someone laughed the way people laugh right before they cry. I wiped salt on my jeans. Ash stared at my face like they were trying to decide on a puzzle piece. Their gaze snagged at my jaw, lingered on my neck where the binder cut a line under my collar. Heat crawled up my throat. Do not flinch. Do not. If you look like prey someone will make you prey. They surprised me by looking away, quick, like they’d been the one caught. “You, uh. You want a place to sit that isn’t a curb? There’s a church a few blocks that does lunch. No questions.” “You just hang out in front of the store waiting for… me?” I meant kids like me. I didn’t say it. Ash shrugged, eyes sliding to the street. “I wait for the old man with the trumpet to hit ‘St. James Infirmary.’ That’s when the line’s the shortest. And I watch faces. It’s a game. Guess who’s running and who’s just lost.” They grinned, quick flash. “I win a lot.” Something sour curled in me—shame because they’d read me and pride because I was seeable. “What’s the prize?” “Chips,” Ash said, eyes on my bag, deadpan. Then, softer, “And sometimes friends. Or not-friends. People.” Their voice did this thing on the word people, like the syllables were heavier than others. I should have said no. Strangers offering food. Strangers offering anything. But the sound of the saxophone braided with the bucket drum and my stomach had gone hollow, echoing. Curiosity and hunger are the same shape sometimes. “Okay,” I said. “Fine.” We walked. Ash pushed the skateboard with lazy little pumps, the wheels clicking over cracks needed to be repaved. They talked without looking at me. “Where you from?” “Up there,” I said, waving a vague hand north. “Um. Tennessee.” They nodded like that made sense. “Lot of folks from Tennessee lately. The buses drop at the terminal and spit people like seeds.” They glanced at my backpack and then away again, and the kindness in that glance made something tilt in me. “You staying with anyone?” “No.” My throat tried to close. No. I chose no. I walked away from a house with lace curtains and seven Bibles. I walked away from my mother’s voice in the hallway saying the word “phase” like it was a stain she could scrub out. Ash kept their eyes on the concrete. Their sneakers had holes in the sides. “Me neither,” they said too casually. Then, like they owed me an explanation, “Got tired of being a problem in a house where problems get left for God.” “You religious?” It slipped out, my curiosity sharper than my caution. “God and I are on a break,” Ash said dry. They flicked their gaze sideways. “You?” “God broke up with me,” I said, and then we were laughing at ourselves, two kids making jokes about a thing that could kill us. The laugh unclenched something in my chest I hadn’t realized was a fist. The church was brick, its steeple cracked and leaning like someone had put a knee into it once and it never got fixed. In the courtyard, trestle tables sagged under trays of spaghetti that smelled like the sauce came from a big can. Volunteers in aprons ladled and didn’t ask names. Ash handed me a paper plate and a plastic fork. The sauce was sweet and too thin, the noodles overcooked. It might have been the best thing I’d eaten all month. We sat on the curb with our backs against the iron fence. The fence had fleur-de-lis with the fleurs chipped. People spread out on the grass, on blankets, on the shade. A man with a face like a topographical map snored under a live oak. Kids with beads tangled in their hair chased each other and shrieked. A woman in a long skirt played with a tarot deck at a folding table, flipping cards like little doors. “You do this a lot?” I asked between bites, spaghetti sauce dotting my knee. “When I’m in this part of town,” Ash said. “Sometimes I’m not.” They wound noodles around the fork like they’d learned from someone who had time to teach them. Then, almost like they couldn’t help themselves, “Why’d you run?” It felt like a test. The spaghetti turned into paste in my mouth. The saxophone from earlier had trailed us somehow; it was far off now, the notes long and lazy, like an exhale. I swallowed. You can say it. And if they weaponize it, you can walk. “I told my family,” I said. The word family tasted like pennies. “I told my mom I’m trans.” Ash stilled. Something flickered in their face—recognition, maybe, or a shadow of it. They didn’t say oh or me too. They just said, “How’d she take it?” “Like I told her I drowned the cat.” I laughed once, a hot, ugly sound. “She said I was making things difficult. That I was… confused.” My cheeks burned. I looked down at my shoes. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.” “People hear sure and think you’re being dramatic,” Ash said quietly. They had set their fork down. The tendons in their hand stood out like cords. “It’s easier for them to pretend you’ll grow out of yourself.” I exhaled. The spaghetti went from paste to edible again. “Yeah.” Ash glanced at the tarot table. The woman flipped over a tower with lightning in it. “You got a name you want me to use? Or… pronouns, I mean.” My eyes stung for no good reason. “He. And Taylor’s fine, for now.” For now rolled around in my gut like a marble. Someday I’d say a different name to someone like this and the sky would not fall. “He,” Ash repeated, tasting it, and then they smiled. It landed on me soft. “Okay. He.” We ate in quiet that wasn’t awkward. A guy in a Saints jersey wandered past and asked if anyone had a smoke. The live oak creaked. The saxophone was closer now, as if the player had drifted down the block, notes like river water slipping over stones. After we ate, Ash took me to the library. “It’s cold in there. You can charge your phone.” The air conditioning hit me like forgiveness. I stood in the stacks and let it raise goosebumps on my arms while Ash showed me the teen section like they owned it. There were kids hunched in armchairs pretending to read, one girl asleep sitting up, a boy drawing dragons in a notebook with a green pen until the page was full of scales. I plugged my phone into an outlet under a table and stared at the black screen. It had been forty-eight hours since I’d last looked at it. Forty-eight hours since my mother had screamed on the kitchen floor. If I turned it on there would be messages. If I turned it on, I might be someone’s son again. If I turned it on, he could also not be. I let it be, dark, a stone skipping across a lake, not sinking. Ash was tracing their fingers over the spines of books like braille. “You read?” they asked without looking. “Yeah.” My throat dried. “When I’m not ruining lives.” They snorted. “You got a library card?” “No.” “You don’t need one to sit.” Ash settled into a chair and put their feet up. Their socks had little lightning bolts on them. They closed their eyes like the act of being in a safe quiet place required conscious effort. I sat across from them and pretended to care about a copy of a battered Stephen King. My brain made lists: where to sleep, how to get cash, where to pee without buying coffee, whether the thing under the bridge that looked like a tent city was an option or a bad idea. The lists skittered like mice. My skin hummed. My heart did tiny pickaxe strikes against my ribs. After an hour, the librarian told us the teen area was closing for a program, which meant out, scrubs. Outside, the sky had sagged into late afternoon. Heat stuck. Hurricane threats curled at the edges of the clouds, maybe or maybe not. Ash stretched their arms overhead and groaned. Their shirt lifted, a thin strip of stomach revealed, pale and scarred in a way I knew not to ask about. “You got a place,” they said, not a question. “No,” I said. “Still no.” “You can crash where I crash,” they offered, too quickly, like they’d decided this before their mouth said it. “It’s not… it’s not nice. But it’s… it’s a place.” “Why?” I asked. “Why would you do that?” Ash looked away and scratched their wrist until a red bloom rose under their nails. “Because someone did it for me,” they said. “And because you look like you’d try to sleep in a doorway and that’s how you get your shoes stolen.” The street musician from earlier appeared at the corner, as if conjured, saxophone in hand. He set an upturned hat down and started to play. The first notes cut the air, rich and close to grief. People stopped like strings had been pulled. A man with a camera hung the thing against his chest and actually listened. A woman in scrubs smiled with her mouth but not her eyes. The notes slid into my bones. I felt the city like a bruise and like a hand on my back, both. The sky shifted. Somewhere, sirens wound up and unwound. “Okay,” I said. My voice was steadier than I felt. “I’ll come.” Ash nodded one sharp nod like the decision was a cord they could now tuck into a pocket. “Cool.” They kicked their board up into their hand. “It’s by the river. There’s a camp. They call it the Triangle even though it’s more of a rhombus. Don’t tell anyone I told you.” We walked by the water. The river moved like a sleeping animal—lazy on the surface, muscle underneath. The wind off it glided over my skin and carried scents of old pennies and something deep. A barge went by, slow enough it felt like it shouldn’t be able to, pushing a wall of water like it was moving a thought through a crowd. “You trust me?” Ash asked at one point, gaze straight ahead. “No,” I said, and then, because truth is complicated, “Maybe. A little.” They smiled without humor. “Good.” The camp was a tumble of tarps and blue tents, shopping carts turned into walls, bikes chained to trees, a smell that had layers: smoke, piss, oil, spice. A woman with hair in a scarf stirred a pot on a camp stove and didn’t look up when we passed. A man with a sunburn so bad it peeled like fish skin nodded at Ash. “You bring a baby?” he asked, not unkind. “Just for a night,” Ash said. “He’s cool.” He. A spot had been made between a cypress stump and a low wall with chalk drawings on it. Ash had a roll of blue tarp and a neat coil of rope. I didn’t ask where they got stuff. The sky tipped toward purple. The saxophone was a far-off ghost, swallowed by the river’s low murmur. Ash tied knots like they’d taught themselves in a mirror. They showed me where to put my backpack so it would be behind my head and my arm would cover the zipper in my sleep. They showed me where to put my shoes and how to tie them together so they wouldn’t wander off at night on someone else’s feet. They gave me a look when my hands shook and didn’t comment. We sat with our backs against the wall. The chalk drawings were childish and not: flowers with too many petals, a dragon with a cigarette, a name written over and over until the chalk broke. My eyes felt like sand. If I closed them, I saw my mother’s kitchen, the clock on the stove, the way the second hand had juddered. If I kept them open, I saw Ash’s profile in the dusk, sharp nose, a smear of spaghetti sauce at the corner of their lip they hadn’t noticed. I reached into my pocket and found a single stick of gum, soft and warm. I split it in half and offered one to Ash. They took it like it was gold. “Trade,” they said, and pulled out a little plastic-wrapped candy, the kind old ladies have at church. Butterscotch. They put it in my palm. “For emergencies.” “Is this an emergency?” I asked. Ash shrugged. “Everything is, kind of.” I tucked it into the small pocket of my backpack. “I’m not going back,” I said, half to Ash, half to the night. Saying it made my mouth taste like an oath. They nodded like they’d heard that before and like it was different every time. “You don’t have to,” they said. Then, after a beat, “But you could, someday, if you wanted. Doors swing both ways. Or you find a new house.” A new house. The word made me want to cry. Instead I laughed. “In a rhombus.” “In a rhombus,” Ash echoed solemnly, and then they were grinning. “Sleep. We got a lady comes by in the morning with coffee if you help carry her cooler.” As the city settled—less drum, more siren—I lay down and pulled my backpack under my arm and felt very small and very huge at the same time. The sky was not the same sky as Tennessee’s. It was closer, like

Model Output:
The morning began with Chewy’s eyes blinking to life and telling me the day was going to be “optimistically suboptimal,” which was how he described every morning that didn’t include a fully charged battery. Chewy’s battery had last been fully charged approximately never, and yet he persisted, a small animo-tronic koala with a stitched smile and a spine full of copper that clicked when he disapproved of my choices, which was his primary pastime. “Breakfast,” I declared, feeling decisive for the first time since the collapse. Chewy’s head whirred one way, then the other. “We are out of beans, Midas.” “Ah. But I have optimism.” He blinked again. “We are also out of optimism. You used the last of it repairing the door that doesn’t lock.” The door did indeed not lock, but it stuck which was nearly the same thing in this climate. The climate, in turn, was something between Apocalyptic Dusk and Wednesday. Our home base—center for operations, repository of treasures and regrets—was a caravan that had stopped moving before I was born because no one remembered what fuel looked like. On the side, in big parody letters that had once advertised a theme park show about marsupials, someone had scrawled: Laugh, You’re on Koala Cam! It felt like a threat. “Fine, we’ll forage,” I said, pushing aside a curtain that had formerly been a concert T-shirt. “You return to standby mode.” Chewy climbed onto my shoulder instead and settled into his default setting: consultant. “I have calculated a thirty-two percent probability of returning with intact limbs if we avoid the highway.” “I never use the highway,” I said. “The tolls are monstrous.” “Those are literal monsters,” he said, primly. Out beyond the caravan, the day was as crisp as a stale cracker, the sky done up in morose blues with a suggestion of iron filings. We followed a path that had been etched into the scrub by people with better sense than us. The world had never ended with a bang so much as a series of memos that went unread. The electric skeleton of the old city spidered over the horizon, towers bending like they were trying to kiss their knees. I had not walked twenty steps before fate presented its traditional lemon. “Look,” I said, stopping dead. “Do not lick it,” Chewy advised. On the duffel-gray wall of a gutted service station: graffiti. Not the usual menu—no warnings about the fungus that spoke in whispers, none of the sagely advice about which puddles were pretend puddles—but a message in a scrawl so neat it might have been printed: TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME. Underneath, a symbol: three slashes converging, then a circle. It had the mathematical impatience of something that wanted to be seen. It stuck in the head, which, as Chewy had often warned me, was where trouble stuck best. “Refuge,” I said. “It’s got refuge written all over it.” “It has ‘Take the Long Way Home’ written on it,” Chewy said, head cocking with a soft servo sigh. “Which implies a short way. Also that we are expected. I object to being expected. It reeks of hospitality.” “You don’t like hospitality?” Chewy’s stitched smile never changed, but if it could have, it would have thinned into a dry line. “In the Before-Times I was dropped into strangers’ arms for photographs. I know what hospitality was. Trust me, this is not it.” Still, the itch had started. Forty percent of survival was ignoring itches. Forty percent was finding fresh water. The remaining twenty was Chewy telling me precisely how likely it was that I would do neither. We followed the arrows anyway. The trail markers—those three converging lines—were laid down like breadcrumbs, which was comforting if you’d never asked yourself what happens to breadcrumbs in a land with crows the size of grudges. We passed the skeleton of a mini-mall that had been repurposed into a sanctum for goats and ghosts. Chewy politely asked the ghosts for directions—he’s old software, and ghosts make him nostalgic—and they declined to assist. The grass grew in the cracks with a kind of cheerful malice. The long way wound us through the pats of civilization that had survived because they had been built by committees that could not agree on anything permanently, including demolition. The inevitable sideways happened, first, with a fence. “It’s not concertina wire,” I said optimistically. “It is concentrated irony,” Chewy said, latching onto my backpack as I began to climb. “Forty-eight percent chance of tetanus, sixty percent chance of embarrassment.” I was proving him wrong about the tetanus when the fence proved him right about embarrassment. Halfway up, the fence shifted under my weight with the offended creak of an elderly aunt asked to dance. This was because the other side of the fence was attached to an old billboard that had reconsidered its place in the world and was in the process of leaving at an angle. I grabbed for something to steady myself. The something was the billboard. It made a decision, and we both went down together in a flurry of rust flakes and old paint. I landed in a bush with the softness of a sack of twigs. Chewy, whose self-preservation was comparable to a weathervane’s, executed an elegant arc and somehow perched on my temple like a disapproving falcon. “Score for gravity,” Chewy said. “Zero for you.” We picked ourselves up and dusted off and continued, because pride is the first step and the rest of the stairs are a long roll right back down again. The long way took us along a line of derelict vending machines that had been converted into something like stained glass windows by time and hailstones. We attempted to liberate a soda from one, and it bit me. “Blood payment for a sacrament,” Chewy noted. “I hope it’s grape.” I hope never factors into these things, but for the record, it was something called Blue Thunder which did, in fairness, taste like the sky if the sky had been filtered through gym socks and rebellion. The second sideways was the map. The graffiti symbols got clever. They started hiding in plain sight: a trio of slashes embedded in the cracks of a half-collapsed underpass, a circle disguised as a manhole cover that wasn’t. We climbed down into the old pipes because the last message said DOWN IS UP, which is the sort of advice that only makes sense when one is desperate not to return home without a story. The tunnels were damp and smelled like secrets that had fermented. We waded through ankle-deep water that had the decency to not glow, and Chewy’s servos ticked in a way that I pretended not to hear. “You’re going to rust,” I said. “I was designed to withstand everything a five-year-old could do to me,” he said. “The apocalypse is merely a five-year-old with a longer attention span.” We found bones, which is normal underground. We found shoes, which is also normal because shoes outlast everything, even sense. We found a door. It had the symbol on it. It had a handle that turned. It had a breathless sort of silence behind it. I looked at Chewy. He rubbed a stitched ear against my cheek. “I am legally required to say: perhaps we should not.” I opened the door. On the other side was a room. It had a lamp. It had a rug. It had the merciless neatness of something that had been waiting too long. In the center, a chair, facing away, because stories love a reveal more than I love oxygen. “Hello,” I said to the back of the chair. There was a hum, delicate and stupidly familiar. The chair rotated. In it sat a toy rabbit with ears stiffened by wire and eyes that blinked in the same way Chewy’s did, eerie little shutter clicks, and a voice that was soft and friendly and taxidermied. It said: “Welcome home, child!” Chewy swore in a language they only use in factories. We lingered in the kind of pause where you can hear the dust deciding where to settle. The rabbit’s grin was eternal; his fur was clean from a kind of cleanliness that only happens when nothing touches you. Around the room, toys. Dozens. A whole menagerie of animated innocence that hadn’t moved in a long time but looked like they might at any moment. Their eyes watched in the way of all dolls: fully, emptily. “Refuge,” I said, because sometimes the word is spelled the same way as trap. Chewy’s claws gently tightened on my shoulder. “Their firmware is pre-collapse. Their trust settings will be default. They will not understand the present tense.” “Visitors!” said the rabbit. “We have a song.” “No,” Chewy and I said together, which was the first time we’d agreed since beans. The rabbit began to sing anyway, tinny and imperfect. The room warmed, but not in temperature. Warmed like a childhood forced upon you. Chewy hopped down and placed himself between me and the rabbit, which was brave of him and had the defensive utility of a doily. “We need to leave,” he said. “We are being inducted into a museum of yesterday.” The third sideways happened all at once then, as these things do, when the door behind us clicked and locked. The toys roused, not moving, but expectant, their motors yawning awake. A tape in a deck that had not turned in twenty years decided to try spinning again. “Guests should stay!” the rabbit said, cheerfully. “We have so much to show you about safety.” I have, it turns out, limits. Mine arrive without fanfare, like a cat, and demand breakfast. I crossed the room in three steps that were six, and gently but firmly grabbed the rabbit by the ear. It felt fragile and strong all at once, like most mistakes. I unplugged him. The silence that followed expanded to fill the decades. Chewy made a sound that might have been relief. The toys drooped a little, and I felt sorry enough to say “I’m sorry,” which makes nothing better and is still important. We searched the room. There was food, of a type. Cans that still ticked when you shook them. A water filter. A map of the surrounding wilds with the symbol stamped on it in a pattern that clicked into a picture when you stepped back: not a refuge, but a net. “You see,” Chewy said, plucking at the corner of the map with his little paws. “They were shepherding people in. For safety—of a sort. Safety as defined by a company handbook.” “It’s more than we had this morning,” I said. “It is also the hour of the day you break everything,” Chewy replied, but his voice was soft. We took what we could carry. The door didn’t want to open for us and made its objections known with the creak of an old principle. I wedged it with a chair, which is what all chairs are for in the end. We navigated back through the tunnels with the map folded under Chewy, who rode like a general surveying a very small empire. We emerged into a world that had moved the sun slightly. The messages were still on the walls, but they meant different things now that we had met their author. We avoided the underpass and the fence, which I would have argued with if my knees hadn’t loudly cheered the decision. Somewhere a dog barked at something it intended to chase just as soon as it remembered where it had put its courage. On the long way back, the wind picked up stories and set them down again. At the vending machines, we discovered that some kindness had been paid forward: a note taped to Blue Thunder’s bruised face that read: Sorry. It hurt me too. Home base looked, from a distance, like a friend pretending to be casual. As we approached, it arranged its bits of tin and tarp into a semblance of nonchalance. We secured the door-that-didn’t-lock with the chair that didn’t object, and we arranged our haul. The cans stacked into a competence I had not felt in years. Chewy climbed into his little nook, where he watches everything because he doesn’t sleep so much as wait. We were worse off in the ways that matter—knowledge does that to a person—but better off in the ways that buy you one more day. My knees would forgive me tomorrow if bribed. My pride already had, despite itself. “Today’s mission,” Chewy said, powering down to what he calls a contemplative idle, “was a success inside a failure inside a success. Like a cake if the cake was complicated and mostly wrong.” “We followed instructions,” I said, stretching until my spine made the kind of noise you expect from trees in winter. “You never follow instructions,” he said, and I could hear his smile in his old tin voice. “That is why we are still here.” I lay down on the bunk and thought about the map, and the rabbit, and the stupidly kind voice saying welcome home, child. I thought about what refuge means when the world changes and won’t change back. Chewy shifted, his little servos ticking like distant rain. “Tomorrow,” I said, to the ceiling and the dark. “We take our own way home.” Chewy’s eyes blinked once in the gloom, two small moons. “Optimistically suboptimal,” he murmured, which for him is a blessing. We were, after all, only a small disaster attached to a bigger one. And if the road insisted on being longer than we liked, well. We had a map now. We had a door that stuck. We had a koala who told the truth, and a day that had ended in the only way that counts, which is that it had ended. The long way home is still home, provided you make it there, and we did, in multiple ways, each of them worse for wear and therefore ours.

Model Output:
The bell above the door gave a half-hearted jangle, the kind that sounded like it had been fixed with string and hope. Footsteps thudded on the wooden floorboards, too quick, too bright for this kind of day, and then a man with a black knit beanie and sunglasses skidded to a halt by the secondhand poetry shelf. “Please tell me you sell invisibility cloaks,” he said, breathless, leaning against a stack of tattered Dylan Thomas. “We’re fresh out,” the bookseller said without looking up from her ledger. “But I can offer you a copy of A Child’s Christmas in Wales and a determined look.” He lifted the sunglasses with a thumb and smiled—the kind of smile that had billboards in Los Angeles, apparently, because even in Abermorfa the papers got delivered, and faces got familiar. “A determined look,” he repeated. “Handy. Always thought that was my thing.” “Mm,” she said, and turned a page. Ink stained her thumb. “You’re letting in a draft.” He glanced back at the door. Outside, across the slate-grey street, a clot of bright jackets and cameras hung about like gulls. Someone barked his name—it ricocheted off the harbour and the chapel ruin, stirred up the pigeons. He winced. “Right,” he said, and pushed the door shut. The bell sighed. Inside, it smelled of dust and tea and old paper. His shoulders dropped half an inch. He took off the beanie, revealing hair that had been styled hours ago and wind-worried since. “I’m Ethan Vale,” he added, as if he couldn’t help it, like it was a tic, like a passport he kept presenting. “And I’m Ffion Hughes,” she said. She said it distinctly, as if she knew he’d make a mess of it if she didn’t. “Fee-on,” he tried. “Fuh-yon.” She glanced up for the first time, eyes the colour of the sea when it has the nerve to be gentle. “You’ll manage.” “I always do,” he said lightly, automatic. It hung in the air and then sagged a little. He cleared his throat. “Do you—could I—can I hide? I’ll buy a book. Several books. All the books.” He gestured at the shelves with all the charm he’d taken years to sharpen, and it glittered between them like confetti that didn’t quite reach her. “You can sit behind the counter if you promise not to sell anything,” she said, and closed her ledger. “They’ll get bored eventually. Or it’ll rain. One of those is guaranteed.” “It already is raining.” He wrung his beanie; three drops hit the mat with small, accusatory plinks. “That’s why they brought the jackets.” She nodded at the narrow space behind the counter. “Mind the cat.” As if summoned, a grey tabby yawned awake on the stool and blinked at him with imperial disapproval. “I love cats,” he said instantly, beaming at the animal. “Huge cat person. Big fan of…whiskers. And—paws.” “Mm,” Ffion said. “His lordship is Caradoc.” She pronounced it with the kind of rolling r that could cut you. “He’s prepared to tolerate you until you move.” “I shall be still as a tree.” Ethan slid behind the counter, almost tripping over a box of donated romances whose covers were all variations on a theme of windswept and bodice. Caradoc sniffed his knee and, deciding he wasn’t food, let him live. “Tea?” Ffion asked, already turning towards the back. “I’d love—yes. Thank you.” He reached for his wallet, then thought better of it. “And please let me pay for—well, do you have something on Wales that isn’t depressing? Not to malign your national literature,” he added quickly, hands lifted, grin ratcheting up a notch. “I admire a good ache as much as the next man.” “One of those actors who does bleak looks in the rain,” she said. It wasn’t a question. He laughed, and it was brighter than the drizzle. “Guilty. The Bleak Look in the Rain is my signature move. Won me an award in Berlin. They love suffering there.” “Do they,” she said, and disappeared into the back. Ethan leaned on the counter, peered at the children’s corner, the cracked ceiling, the chalkboard that read: Poetry Reading, Friday 7pm—Bring Your Own Voice. He looked at his reflection in the old cash register—too much line in the jaw, too little sleep—and pulled a face at himself. Behind the glass of the window, a camera lens blinked, a mechanical eye, and he flinched. “Here,” Ffion said, setting down a mug that said CYMRU AM BYTH in flaking green. “Try not to get photographed inhaling it dramatically. Some of us are trying to sell books.” He cupped his hands around the mug. “Is that…PG Tips?” “Builder’s. You look like you need piloting into this weather.” “I can do rain,” he said, and then, almost ruefully: “Rain loves me. Makes me look pensive.” He took a sip and hissed, tongue scalded. Caradoc, unimpressed, pushed his head into Ethan’s forearm anyway until those famous fingers obliged and scratched behind ears. “See? I’m winning him over,” Ethan said. “I haven’t lost my touch completely.” Ffion lifted an eyebrow. “I’d hardly call that a challenge. Caradoc likes anyone with a pulse and opposable thumbs.” “Now you’ve wounded me.” He pressed a hand to his heart. “Do you always treat customers with such tartness? Or am I the lucky one?” “You’re not a customer yet.” She reached for a book, slid it across to him. The cover was a linocut of a hedgerow and clouds. “Try this. Rachel Trezise. Funny and fierce and nobody stands in the rain looking wounded.” He took it. “I’ll buy it.” He paused. “I mean—assuming there’s not an image rights issue if my face is seen with it.” Ffion’s mouth twitched, the nearest it had come to a smile. “Our marketing budget will not recover from the surge.” He tilted his head. “You’re not from here, are you?” “Give it another try with my name,” she said, deflecting, but not unkindly. He did, and this time he got it right. “Good enough,” she said. He leaned an elbow on the counter and relaxed into the space as if he owned it, tried on charm like a coat. “I’m staying at the big house on the headland, where they staged that murder mystery in the 80s. We’re shooting for a week. A lot of atmospheric fog. I’m supposed to be a troubled detective who spent three years in exile in Lisbon.” “How terrible for him,” Ffion said. “Just brutal. Sun. Custard tarts.” He grinned and then let it slip a little. “The thing is, here—” He gestured at the window, the harbour, the row of cottages leaning into one another like gossips—“it feels like if I stop smiling, the whole town might just—” “Realize you’re human?” Ffion offered. He faltered. “Realize I’m…something that can be disappointed in.” Ffion busied herself with straightening a stack of battered maps. “You say that like it’s a catastrophe.” “Isn’t it?” The question cracked on the last word, like thin ice under a foot. He caught himself and smoothed it over. “Kidding. This is me, kidding. I don’t—I never mind being the butt of the joke. Good for the brand.” “Your brand.” She put the maps down with precision. “Do you want people to like you?” He blinked. “That’s the point, isn’t it?” “Is it.” “What’s the point of a bookshop then?” He gestured at the shelves. “If not to—win people over? Make them think you’re clever and curated and—” “It’s a place to put things down,” she said. “And come back for them later. Or never.” She sighed, the slow kind, as if the tea were leaving her bones by degrees, steaming into the grey. “My mother ran this place with my tad. After she died, he kept stacking books where she’d never have put them. The wrong shelves, the wrong piles. For months the Natural History bled into True Crime. I would put them right at night and he would put them wrong in the morning, and we never spoke about it. People still found what they needed. Or they didn’t. Either way, they kept coming.” She glanced at him. “Not because we were trying to be liked. Because we were trying to make a room for them.” Ethan’s mouth opened and closed. He looked at Caradoc, who yawned pointedly at him. “I’m sorry,” he said, softly. “For the mess? It’s cleaner now. The messes that matter don’t lift with a hoover.” She touched the spine of the Trezise as if to say: see, still standing. “Do you ever stop acting?” He laughed, a bit hoarse. “You always go for the jugular like that?” “Only with celebrities who ask to be hidden behind my till.” He ran a hand through his hair, left furrows. “You want an anecdote? My therapist says I should carry one around, like a sandwich, in case I start starving for attention.” He leaned in as if confessing to the till. “When I was a kid, my dad ran a mobile disco. Weddings, birthdays, one awful bar mitzvah. I used to help him. He’d let me announce the first dance sometimes. I was eight and I sounded like a chipmunk in formal wear. And every time, he would say, ‘Make them love you. It’s easier that way.’” He swallowed, throat working. “He meant—well, he meant he didn’t know how to deal with me otherwise. Some kids shut down. I turned into a…thing you could clap for. And it worked so well I never stopped.” He smiled, shaky. “Which is ridiculous to admit to a stranger in a bookshop in Wales while hiding from a pack of photographers who would eat me alive if they could.” “Photographers are mostly vegetarian,” Ffion said. “They only nibble at ankles.” He laughed properly then, the kind that made him handsome in a way that had nothing to do with the jaw or the lighting. She felt it like a small heat behind her ribs and, infuriatingly, lowered her eyes to the ledger again to hide it. “You know,” he said, after a moment, quieter. “It’s—odd. Most people…there’s a rhythm. I say the right thing. They say the right thing. It’s like dancing, but I’m leading and also I’m the band. And you—” “Can’t dance,” she supplied. “Noted.” “You don’t seem to like me very much,” he said, and the fragile part of his voice peered out from behind the bravado like a child sneaking down the stairs past bedtime. “And that’s…annoying.” She looked at him for a long moment. “I didn’t say that.” “You’re very good at not saying the thing.” “It’s a Welsh speciality. Along with hymn-singing and passive instruction.” She tilted her head towards the window where one of the cameras had fogged up. “And in this town, liking someone isn’t a currency. You can’t spend it at Siân’s bakery. She’s the only one who does the Welsh cakes properly—salted butter. She’ll serve you if she likes you, sure. She’ll serve you if she doesn’t. She’ll serve you if you make a tit of yourself at the rugby club fundraiser by bidding two hundred pounds on a jar of pickled eggs.” “I didn’t—” “Not you. Tomos Jenkins. He owns the fishmonger’s. He’s a lost cause.” She scratched a note in the margin, her hand steadier than her voice. “I don’t not like you, Ethan. I don’t care who you are out there. In here, you are a person making the cat purr and burning your tongue on tea, and you can’t pronounce Caradoc.” “I did fine.” “You did…adequately.” He grinned again, softer. “Adequate. Now there’s a review I haven’t had before.” “Don’t work too hard for the five stars,” she said. “You’ll not find them here.” “I think I just did,” he said, and then made a face at himself. “God, that’s awful. I should be shot.” “I have a slingshot somewhere from a seaside display,” she said dryly. “But I’ll spare you if you promise to stop flirting with the furniture.” He held up his hands in surrender. Caradoc decided he had proved himself and turned his back, presenting the tangible indignity of a tail. For a moment, the shop settled. Rain ticked at the window. Somewhere down the street, someone shouted for Dai to get off the roof. Ffion wrote the word: reorder – Penelope Fitzgerald. Ethan turned the Trezise over in his hands as if it were a tool he could learn to use. “How long will they wait?” he asked, nodding towards the door. “Depends if there’s anything more interesting,” she said. “Somebody’s bound to drop a mattress off the back of a van eventually. It’s Thursday.” “Of course it is.” He took a breath. “Can I—would you—if this is overstepping—” He flapped a hand, then stilled it, surprised by his own nervousness. “Come to the set sometime? Not—it’s not glamorous. It’s mostly mud and people saying ‘Quiet please’ and me trying not to blink too much, because on camera it reads as lying.” “You’re always acting,” she said. “Only when someone’s looking.” He glanced at the window. “In here—” He trailed off, and the word hung there again, the in here like a place he hadn’t been invited to but had wandered into anyway. “I have the shop,” she said. “And Friday’s the reading.” “Right. Your chalkboard.” He nodded at it. “Bring your own voice.” “Yours is rented out.” “I could borrow it back.” He met her eyes, and the charm, for once, didn’t have teeth. “Or…I’ll just buy my book and stop making a spectacle of myself in your lovely, slightly damp establishment.” She looked at him for a beat, as if deciding whether to rescue a kitten that had very deliberately climbed into a tree. “Come to the reading,” she said. “If you want. Nobody will clap. Or they will. But not because of Berlin.” He smiled, and it was bare, strange and clean. “That sounds terrifying.” “It is,” she said. “Caradoc’s a harsh critic.” He took the book and his tea and, with a conspirator’s care, counted out cash. His fingers brushed hers. It was nothing. It was something. The bell made a small, private sound as if it too were embarrassed. When he lifted the beanie and slotted himself back up, the character slid over his shoulders like a coat he’d left on a peg and needed again because of the weather. But he looked back at her as if checking whether he’d left anything behind. “Ffion,” he said properly, and her name did something in the space between them that his had not. “Thank you.” “Don’t thank me. You’ll only encourage me.” He laughed. He pushed the door. The crowd sharpened. He slipped into them, a fish into current. The bell settled back to its stringy equilibrium. Ffion blew on her tea and watched the last ripples in the surface go flat. Caradoc leapt onto the counter, put one paw on the book Ethan had left and mewed. “I know,” she said, and the room held its breath like paper under a hand. “I know.”

Model Output:
The door sighed open on a breath of brine-cold air, the metal rim rimed white where the underhold’s chill licked at the warm, used heat of the world above. Aya felt that chill rise up her sleeves like a cat, arching its back; she caught Katra’s eye, found the reassuring half-smirk that said Isn’t this delightful? and the slight lift of Simeon’s shoulder that said This is mad but I’ll follow. Her palm tingled. The immateria always tasted like pennies at the back of her tongue before it came, like blood and rain on slate. She told it no. Not yet. Beyond, the stair corkscrewed down in iron and rivets, hammered in another age when men wore oil under their nails and made bargains with nothing more mysterious than a good length of chain. Their bootsteps rang in the cylinder of the shaft. Lamps in whale-glass cages burned along the walls with a steady, precise flame, as if tended by an old hand. Aya registered that with a small, serrated unease. The guild had been in chaos upstairs—clamoring apprentices, scattered ledgers, the bitter stink of spilled gin and panicked sweat. Here, each lamp was lit at the same height, each wick trimmed just so. They reached the underhold proper—a chamber vast as any chapel, its ceiling arched like a whale’s ribcage. The walls were a forest of pipes and valves, with condensation pearled along them like cold dew on iron leaves. In the middle of the room sat the cage: a scythan reliquary, its hammered green metal threaded with sea-salt-white inlays, the shape of it suggestive and wrong, like a crab shell made to fit a human hand. Aya knew without touching that it was both lock and question, that it wanted answers spoken in the dead tongue of the undertides. Her breath caught at the sight of it. The artifact. The guild’s heart. Their wager. A foghorn moaned far off, three sonorous calls that reached down through the city’s brick and bone, down into the underhold, and made the lamps flicker. Aya’s skin pebbled. Katra whispered, “Ships in with the morning shipments. Someone’s awake.” Someone was. They knew before they saw. The sound of metal moving against leather. The way the lamplight narrowed. Aya tasted brass. “Well,” said a woman’s voice, dry as dessicated sponge, and the word carried the tired patience of one too familiar with foolishness. “The prodigy. Without so much as a calling card.” Simeon swore under his breath. Katra’s smirk fell away. From the shadowed arches stepped bodies—three, five, eight, mouths muffled in oiled kerchiefs, eyes blank with professionalism. Their coats were the guild’s night-liver black, their gunmetal glimmering like rain. In the space between them drifted smoke from a small censer, the scent sharp and resinous. Witchbane, Aya realized, and her tongue went numb. Her stomach went with it. Then the leader of the Morska thieves guild, as indelible as ink and as indomitable as iron—Seren Volkov—came into view like a ship’s prow cutting fog. She wore a coat that had seen better wars, a towering collar welded with bits of whalebone, their edges etched with warding sigils that caught the light and worried it. A sabre rode at her hip, not the ceremonial sort but the kind that had done the honest work of removing men’s hands. She had the look of a woman who had slept an hour and made that hour do the work of three. “Decidedly un-incarcerated,” Katra said, too lightly, with a glance that asked Is this your fault or mine? Seren tilted her head. “Your faces are exactly as I expected. You must be the mask.” She raised her chin a degree in Aya’s direction. Aya had put on a different voice tonight—the mask’s voice, lower, careless. She gathered it around her now because she woke up every morning with the rope still in her mother’s throat. “You were arrested.” “Arrested,” Seren said, and there was smoke in it, laughter turned inside out. “A word the newspapers adore. Love me a headline. I gave myself an hour in a cell because there were things I wished to hear shouted through an iron door. I walked out before breakfast. Do not mistake noise for consequence, girl.” The witchbane incense tugged at Aya’s teeth, at the shift of the immateria behind her sternum like a sleeping animal turning away. Calm, she told it. Wait. Now her hands were not hers, and that felt like someone else’s nightmare. Simeon edged a half-step back, his shadow doubling against the nearest pipe. He said nothing. Sensible man. Katra hooked her thumbs at her belt as if they were at some seaside salon and she could order oysters. “We’ve no quarrel,” Aya ventured. “We came for what everyone has come for.” “The artifact,” Seren said, almost gentle. “Yes. This is what trouble looks like when it hasn’t learned to spell its own name.” Two of the bodyguards came for them without bluster. Simeon’s small derringer was relieved from him as politely as a tea cup. Katra’s blade disappeared with a professional nod. Aya didn’t resist when they took the little conveyance she wore at her wrist—the spool of filament, the acid bulb, the lantern lens that turned the world into rings. She kept still because the smell in the censer was turning the immateria inside her into a dull, sulking thing. A leather gloved hand hovered at the edge of her mask as if it expected teeth. Seren crossed the distance with unhurried tread. Up close, Aya saw the little crow’s feet etched from years of squinting against sea glare. A strand of her hair had gone outright silver at the temple. She took Aya’s mask in her hands. It was an obscene intimacy; it was a mother wiping the flour from a child’s cheek before sending her to market. Aya wanted to bite her. She didn’t dare. Seren unfastened the strap, lifted. Air hit Aya’s face like a slap. The mask’s inside still had her breath in it, warm, human, ridiculous. Suddenly the underhold felt full of light; not the lamps, but the attention. Katra made a choked noise that could have been a laugh or a sob. Simeon closed his eyes and opened them again. “There she is,” Seren said softly. “Aristocracy’s daughter. I wondered which powdered darling we’d find under the lacquer.” She turned Aya’s mask over in her hands, weighing it. “Aya of House Valemere. I sent your father a bottle of smoke last year, for his speech about the virtues of work. He was delighted. He has not yet realized it eats wool.” Aya’s mouth had forgotten its proper shape. She said, “You’ve been in my house.” “You come to mine more often,” Seren murmured. She handed the mask off without looking. “You are more reckless than she was.” It took a heartbeat for Aya to understand she meant her mother. The rope. The square. The crowd’s breath fogging in the early winter like those foghorns—one, two, three. The silence after. “Bind them,” Seren said. “Gently. I like the look on their faces as it changes.” They were bound with braided cord that had been greased. It was a craftsman’s work, swift, considerate of blood flow, made not to kill but to hold. They were led to a long metal bench that might once have housed an engine, and sat with their backs to a rib of pipe. Simeon had gone a shade paler. Katra kept saying “no wait I have it” in a tone that had talked herself out of drownings before. The censer moved closer, a lazy pendulum on a chain. “Your other talent,” Seren said to Aya, gesturing vaguely toward the space around her, “will not serve you. The incense is unpleasant. My apologies. I find it a vulgar tool but a necessary one. The city has no appetite for the arcane. Neither do I, unless it can be put to account.” Aya tested the ragged edge of the immateria inside. It was like trying to drink through cloth. She shuddered. She doubted her voice would do what she asked of it. It had to. “What now?” she asked. It came out steady. Her mother had taught her steadiness as a kind of posture. “Now,” Seren said, “I tell a story.” She paced, her boots quiet on the damp stone. “When I was a girl, my father brought me to this room and told me the guild was a ship. From above, with all its scaffolding and banners and boys with knives, it looks like a city. But down here is the ballast. Down here is why it doesn’t tip into the drink when the wind comes. We keep our ballast tidy.” “You make threats sound like bedtime,” Katra said, teeth showing. Seren ignored her. “You, Aya of House Valemere, have been very helpful in making noise. You brought in coin from men too frightened to be seen coming down these stairs. You gave us a reputation we could point to and say, ‘The night has its secretary, and she writes in lightning.’ I thank you.” Aya could taste the gratitude as a staged thing, the way a public hanging was a law and also a festival. “And?” “And,” Seren said, “I cannot have you. There is a raid. There is a jailer making a report. There is a judge who drinks coffee with your father and wonders how to speak of it at the club. There is ink with your name in it somewhere. This is the kind of noise that drags anchors.” Simeon said, quietly, because quiet always suited him, “So you’ll kill us.” Seren glanced at him like a teacher correcting a spelling. “You are a practical man. It will depend. Some things wash better than others. Some stains you salt, some you sun, some you burn.” Aya lifted her chin. The immateria nudged, drowsy. She felt absurdly like a child in a dress that didn’t fit yet. “If you kill me,” she said, and she imagined her father sitting stiff in his leather chair, the way he listened when he spoke about grievances against the guild like he were speaking of the weather, “you will have something worse than noise.” “Oh?” Seren rocked back on her heels, mildly. “A father’s grief? They come cheaper than salt.” “A father with resources,” Aya said, and the words felt like scraping something old and brittle out of her throat. “With men who trust brass and oil and steel. With a newspaper that prints what he tells it. With magistrates who will accept his invitations to supper and then ask him how he is bearing up. With company captains who will see to it their harpoons turn aside from Morska and toward this guild’s ships. With men who will believe, piously and to their very bones, that hanging a witch is a public health.” Katra made a soft noise of admiration. Seren’s face did not move, but the air did. Aya pressed harder. “If you kill me, they will come—sanctioned, and righteous, and paid. If you keep me, on the other hand—if you keep me as your very honored guest—you will have a hostage they cannot assault. Strike this underhold, and you end me, and they will have to live with that. They don’t like bloody hands when they can help it. You know this. You trade in it.” Seren considered, which was a kind of kindness. She came close enough that Aya could see the little seam at the corner of her mouth were a scar ran and stopped, a nearly-smile that never happened. “You would make yourself a hostage.” Aya swallowed. “I would make myself useful.” “You, who cannot help but conjure monsters when frightened,” Seren said. “You, who are not unlike your mother.” Aya flinched at that without moving her head. “My mother was hanged because she had too many friends among people like you,” she said. “I have been careful not to have friends.” Katra said cheerfully, “Present company excepted.” “Present company excepted,” Aya allowed, and she hated the shake in it, the ridiculous softness that would be remembered as much as the hard words. Simeon’s hand brushed the back of her bound one, accidental and deliberate. Seren drew a finger along an iron pipe; moisture beaded on her glove. “You assume they will not come if we show them their darling is safe.” “They will come,” Aya said. “They will come to the door and they will write letters. They will make a committee and they will hold hearings. They will pin medals to one another until their jackets cannot carry anymore weight. They will talk until the ink on the warrants dries. But they will not send torches if I am still breathing.” “And if I tire of your company?” Seren asked. She glanced at the reliquary, its inlaid seam a question mark. “If the ballast moves of its own accord?” “Then you will say I tried to escape,” Aya said, and this was the taste of pennies again. “You will say you did your best. You will say you held a waking nightmare in your arms and you sang to it, and then it bit you and you were justified. But not yet.” The foghorn called again in memory, though only the three had sounded. Seren’s men shifted. A drip somewhere found a new rhythm. Katra said, “And me? And our dear Simeon? Decorative, but do we get to live?” “You,” Seren said, turning to her, “have made a study of being too charming to kill and not valuable enough to keep. It is an art. He”—a jerk of her chin to Simeon—“is a ghost already. I could put a name to him and no one would swear they had ever seen the face. You will both be…adjacent to our new arrangement.” “So infuriating,” Katra murmured. “And yet I’m grateful.” Seren nodded. “I require something in return, Aya of House Valemere. I require that you stop being the mask. I require that you be exactly what you are. A hostage with a lineage. When I ask, you will write in your careful hand. You will receive visitors. You will put the fear of your father to proper industrial use.” Aya’s internal machinery whirred. There were configurations here that were cunning and appalling. She leaned into the appalling one because it was the only one that left her alive. “And in return?” she asked. “In return,” Seren said, and there was weariness in it now, untheatrical, “I do not teach you how tidy a ballast can be. And perhaps, if we are very clever, the city will teach itself that monsters are good for something besides burning.” Aya thought of the reliquary, the green-white of its shell, the way the immateria pressed its sleep-heavy head against her ribs like a child. She thought of her mother, whose hands had been capable of both bread and horror. She nodded once. “Very well.” “So businesslike,” Seren said, with something almost like pity. She gestured, and one of the men cut the ropes on Aya’s wrists, then Katra’s, then Simeon’s. Without the incense pressed quite so close, the immateria sat up, startled, but Aya soothed it back down with a mental hand. Not yet. You will not save me here. You will make it worse. “Take them to the old office,” Seren said to the guards. “Not the cells. Someone will come to take down your measurements, Aya. Someone will bring you clothes that say what you need them to say.” “My own will do,” Aya said, and she heard the brittle laugh she didn’t let out. “We cannot have the mask,” Seren said, and handed it back to Aya anyway. “But you should have a keepsake.” They stood. The reliquary did not look at them. The foghorn did not call again, but Aya heard it just the same, the world beyond the walls and laws shuddering its three long breaths. The lamps hissed. The whale-glass held. As they were led away, Katra leaned close and said in Aya’s ear, the whisper clinking like a drop of gin in a dry glass, “If it comes to it, darling, I will set the whole city on fire for you.” Aya said, “You won’t need to.” And, silent: Because I just did. Simeon, in his soft way, said to Seren as they passed, “If someone taught you mercy, it didn’t take.” Seren regarded him with that exhausted not-smile. “On the contrary,” she said. “It took wonderfully. I have simply learned to count.”

Model Output:
The jukebox is broken. It keeps looping the same scratchy rock track like time itself forgot how to march. Neon bleeds over a bar so greasy the wood reflects the electric pink like spilled blood. Smoke stacks in the air—the real kind, prickling the lungs—over cheap whisky fumes and sweat. It's late, but in this neighborhood it's always late. Spike Spiegel leans with a lazy slant against the bar, cigarette tipped like a comet. His jacket is open, tie loose, unruly hair catching the sickly light. He watches the warped reflection of neon ripple in his glass, like something far away and underwater. His prosthetic eye plays tricks sometimes—depth a hair off, perspective skewed. It's not the worst lie he's learned to live with. The door creaks. A draft creeps in, brief mercy for the smoke. He doesn't look. He doesn't need to look to know the sound of someone who walks like a loaded question. He smirks anyway when she says, “Figures they’d send a string bean to trample my gig.” Revy’s boots land hard, swagger drunk or practiced or both. Short shorts. Black crop top that declares she's not here to blend. The dragon curls down her arm in moody blue, scales catching the neon like they’re moving under her skin. She smells like gun oil, cheap beer, old anger. Twin pistols ride her hips like second thoughts. The bartender stiffens because he's seen the type and knows better than to blink. “String bean?” Spike says, tapping ash into an overflowing tray. “Charming. You must be the welcoming committee.” “I’m the one who gets paid if you stand aside.” Spike raises his glass to the looping guitar riff in the corner, the jukebox crackling like a dying star. “I tried standing aside once. Didn’t take.” Her eyes, cold and curious, drag across him, cataloging. She sees the loose wrists, the weight distributed like someone who could pivot into a fight from sleep. She sees the half-smile that dares her to test it. The cigarette droops between his lips; he’s in no hurry to live or die. “Name’s Revy,” she says, because if you're going to measure someone, better to do it with names. “Two Hands.” “Spike Spiegel. Whatever happens, happens.” She laughs once, short and dangerous. “Yeah, no. Things happen because I make them happen.” “Must be exhausting.” “Then you better not waste my time, Cowboy.” On the cracked TV above the bar, the news churns static. Somewhere, their target is breathing the same ugly air, a mid-level runner who owes heavier men more money than any of them have. The bounty’s fresh, wires sent to too many ears. It's no surprise they found each other. In a city like this, jobs overlap like bad graffiti—names scrawled over names until the wall gives up. They drink. They don’t toast. Her whiskey disappears with the same grim efficiency she applies to targets. She slams the glass down, grin curling. “So. Split the money. You get to walk without bending over, I get a night without gutting a tourist. Clean and easy.” Spike inhales smoke like it’s oxygen. “You say ‘clean and easy,’ and I hear ‘pack of wolves on a tightrope.’” “I can handle wolves.” She cocks a hip. “Can you?” “I already died once.” He flicks ash. “Wolves are fine.” There’s a pause where something like a smile ghosts over her mouth. She keeps her hands visible, but he notes the twitch in her right shoulder, muscle memory begging to dance. He has seen people like her before. He left people like her behind. Or tried to. The jukebox hisses, the same riff, the same chorus he can’t make out. Someone else in the bar yells to turn it off, but the bartender ignores it. He knows better than to pull plugs on things that have learned to haunt themselves. It blows open fast because that's how these things go. The door swings again, and a man with eyes like a rat's scurries in, coat held too tight. Their bounty. He clocks them, freezes, bolts for the back. Revy doesn't ask permission. Her pistols are in her hands like they were always there. The bartender ducks with a curse. “Down!” she barks, and the room obeys. Spike sighs like he’s frustrated with gravity, ashes his cigarette, and moves. He doesn’t draw yet. He slides off the stool with the kind of grace that would be dance if it wasn’t violence, and follows. Gunfire cracks. Revy’s shots are hate letters written in bullets, neat and personal. She puts a round through a neon beer sign that explodes into raining glass, paints the rat-side of the room in electric blue. Spike flows with it, slipping behind an overturned table when a stray bullet bites wood where his head was. He draws too, finally, and when he fires it’s with economy; each shot a punctuation mark in a sentence only he reads. The bounty dives behind the jukebox, and the track stutters, then starts again, like it’s mocking them. The man pops up; Revy puts three in the casing, splinters the speaker, showers herself in sparks and old dust. Spike takes the angle she doesn’t—he sees the bounce, anticipates where the rat will wriggle when cornered. He shoots once into the floor by the man’s foot, wood chips biting skin. The man yelps, scrambles in exactly the predictable pattern. “Left,” Spike says, because he can’t help coaching. “Your other left.” Revy’s laugh is a flash grenade. She steps, pivots, puts a bullet through the man’s shoulder. He spins, drops his gun. The room holds its breath. Spike is already on the move, closing, kicking the fallen weapon away. He crouches, presses the muzzle to the rat’s temple. The man sobs, bargaining in a language made of numbers. “Shut up,” Revy says, reloading without looking, magazine slapping home like a heartbeat. “We’re arguing now.” “Arguing?” Spike says. “About who gets the collar.” Her smile shows teeth. “He’s worth more alive. I prefer dead, but I can bend.” Spike’s cigarette has burned down to a stub. He considers the rat, the bounty, the weight of the gun in his hand. He hears an old laugh in his head, someone impossible and pretty, water and blood and roses. His eye throbs. Whatever happens, happens. “Split,” he says softly. “He’s heavy. I hate carrying things I don’t intend to keep.” “Fair.” She lifts her chin. “But he walks with me. You follow.” “Bossy.” “Alive.” They lift him. He screams. She hits him. The bartender swears and tells them never to come back, meaning please don’t shoot me. The jukebox wheezes into the same chorus like a prayer no one asked for. Outside, night leans in crooked. The alley is slick with old rain and city sweat. They move with the rhythm of people who don’t trust each other but know they have to. He watches her as much as the shadows. She watches him with the barrel of her gun as much as with her eyes. They dump him in the trunk of a stolen car with a complaint in every slam. Revy slams it again for emphasis. “We lay low,” she says, “until calls go out. There’s a motel. You look like you’re allergic to sheets, but it’s fine.” “I like soft things,” Spike says. “I never get to keep them.” She snorts. “You say this stuff to all the girls who try to outdraw you?” “Only the ones who could.” The motel is a neon scar off the highway, buzzing sign promising color TV and hourly rates. The desk clerk doesn’t look up past his magazine. The same guitar riff bleeds out from the bar down the block like the city only owns one song. The room is two beds too close and a bathroom door that won’t close right. The air smells like bleach and old sin. Spike tosses the rat on one bed, cuffing him to the headboard with a practiced click. Revy double-checks the lock on the door, then the window, then the lock again. She’s still vibrating, the afterglow of gunfire cooling slow. He lights another cigarette. The smoke curls into the cheap lamp’s halo. “Don’t smoke in here,” she says automatically. “It’s a non-smoking room?” He exhales. “We already broke it.” She turns and looks at him in full—like really looks—and it hits them both at the same time. The room is too small, the air warped, the thread between them taut as a tripwire. Attraction is a dumb word for a smart problem. It would be fun to lie about it. Neither of them believes in fun for long. “Why do you do it?” she asks, surprising herself. “This hustle. The bounty games. You look like you’d be happier sleeping forever.” “I am asleep.” He smirks to soften it and fails. “It’s cheaper this way.” She cracks a beer with her teeth, spits the cap on the carpet. “I do it because it’s the only thing that listens to me. Work. Violence. Money. People?” She gestures at the bound man. “People don’t.” “People surprise you,” he says. “Usually when they leave.” “Spoken like a man with holes where there used to be things.” He lifts his cigarette. “I fill them with smoke.” Revy steps closer, hips rolling with something weaponized. She reaches out like she’s going to take the cigarette from his mouth, then takes it and drags, eyes never breaking from his. He watches her throat work when she inhales. He’s hungry. For food, sure. Been hungry since morning. For this, too, in a way that feels like falling off a building and pretending it’s flying. “You gonna try to cuff me?” she asks. “Or are we going to play nice until payday?” “Nice is a lot of work.” “Then don’t.” He doesn’t touch her. Not because he doesn’t want to. Because wanting is a trap he digs for himself. She reads it in the set of his shoulders, and something like annoyance flickers—at him, at herself. She sets the cigarette back between his lips, presses it there with a finger. His mouth is soft in a way his voice isn’t. She steps back. The gun is in her hand before the space fills, drawn like breath. He lifts his own without thinking, like a dance they were born knowing. They’re not leaders. They’re not followers. They’re orbiting each other with weapons in the empty. “Don’t,” she says, but she’s smiling a little, a dare wrapped in warning. “Whatever happens,” he says, “happens.” “Say that again and I’ll shoot you.” He considers and decides to live a little longer. The rat on the bed whimpers, and Revy aims without looking, fires a shot that pops the pillow beside his head. Feathers explode like snow, float slow through the cigarette smoke, neon catching on white. The man falls quiet in the way of people who learn fear has layers. “See?” she says to Spike, voice low, half-laughing. “I can be nice.” “You’re delightful.” They stand there, guns raised, tension humming through their arms like electric wire. The neon outside pulses. The scratchy rock track leaks through the wall, trapped in the jukebox like a ghost who never gets to move on. He measures her—breath, gaze, the tremble in her wrist that’s not fear but excitement. She measures him—tilt of gun, angle of hips, the way his eye doesn’t blink at the same times his smile shifts. “I don’t trust you,” she says, like confession. “Good,” he says. “Me neither.” “You thinking about kissing me or shooting me?” “Both,” he says. “Depends on the song.” “It’s always the same song,” she says, and for a second her voice dips, tired. “Even when it isn’t.” “Then we dance the same steps,” he says. “Until one of us trips.” She steps closer, just a notch, gun still up. He mirrors, two magnets arguing. The bed creaks when the rat shifts, and neither looks. Their eyes are locked, guns a set piece, bodies sending messages neither will admit to, not here, not now. The unresolved hum between them could power the neon outside for a year. “Call it,” she whispers. “Heads,” he says, because he doesn’t have a coin and because he wants to see if she notices. She laughs soft, close enough for him to taste beer on her breath. “Heads,” she says. “Later.” He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. He lowers his gun first, not because he trusts her, but because it’s funny to him to flirt with death when he’s already done it. She eyes the drop, nods once, like he passed a small, mean test. She lowers hers a degree and no more. “Payday in the morning,” she says, moving sideways to lean against the dresser without giving him her back. “You take first watch.” “Thought you didn’t trust me.” “I don’t.” She kicks off her boots, feet up on the other bed. “That’s why you’re watching.” He drags a chair, plants it near the door, cigarette burning down to nothing, then lights another. The neon paints his face a feverish pink. Revy’s eyes close, not sleeping, not yet. His gun rests on his thigh. Hers is under her pillow, hand on the grip. The jukebox down the block starts the track over. It will never end. The motel hums. The rat whimpers in dreams he’ll regret being alive for. Spike stares at the door like it owes him an explanation. Revy breathes like a boxer between rounds. Whatever happens, happens. The room holds its breath and refuses to exhale. The standoff isn’t just guns. It’s gravity. It’s the attention they’re both too smart to indulge and too weak to ignore. Morning is a promise they don’t believe in. For now, they hold, balanced on the blade, the night an unspent bullet waiting in the chamber.

Model Output:
Astrid said you could tell how serious a practice was by how many layers you put on before you did it. That night I wore two sweaters under my father's old parka and a hat that made my ears ache before it warmed them, and Astrid had wrapped a scarf twice around her neck so the ends trailed like white flags. We left our boots by the door to keep the sleet off the hall runner, then pulled them back on and stepped into the shin-deep snow anyway. The evening had that muffled sound that happens when the clouds hang low enough to press on your skull. In Stockholm, I would have been in my room, half-watching TV and half-pretending to study. Here, I followed a girl who claimed her grandmother taught her to talk to the dead like it was a skill you could learn between algebra and civics. "You have to keep quiet when we pass the birches," she said without looking back. "They don't like being counted." "Birches?" "The ones that bow. If you count them you forget things you need to remember." She paused under the first of them, its thin branches gloved in ice. "Grandma says some trees listen and some tell. Birches are tattlers. So keep your thoughts tight." It was such a strange mix of childish and precise that I nodded and zipped my parka up to my chin. My breath made a cloud that followed me. The little village had gone to sleep hours ago. Only two windows showed a square of yellow, both on the same house; later I would learn they belonged to a shift worker's wife who couldn't sleep without the kitchen light on. We threaded the snowed-over path to the hill the villagers called the mound. The first time I heard someone say it—"we'll meet by the mound after school"—I pictured a man-made pile of snow; it was a sloped hummock with stones like teeth at its crown, older than the church and older than the road. They said old bones lay under it, and that it hummed when the ground thawed. "Útiseta," Astrid said, rolling the word in her mouth like a bite of candy. "You sit out. Sit out in the place where the dead are used to people crying. They know how to listen there." "I thought you said we were just—" I didn't finish. It was always like this: a game that wasn't a game, a dare that came with rules. "It's a thing you do to ask," she said. "It's not like those stupid laser pointer magic shows they do on TV. It's older. It works if you do it right." She reached back to take my sleeve and pulled me forward. "Come on. We have to prepare." Her preparing always made me feel like I was performing in a play I hadn't gotten the script for. She'd told me earlier that it wasn't a joke, that you don't spit on the wind or whistle in the graveyard because "things notice," and that tonight we had to do Útiseta before the term started properly because after that the village would be too loud with people thinking ear-to-ear about tests and gossip. You did this when "the mind of the place" was quiet, she said. "What are we asking?" I said. Ice squeaked under our boots as we climbed the last rise. "What we always ask," she said. "About people. About what they think about us. Who's going to do what. Who's going to be trouble. You said you wanted to know if Emil likes you." "I did not." "You said maybe," she said, and grinned in the white breath. "We can ask for other things, too. Sometimes they tell. Grandma said don't ask for things like money or cars. Ask about people. Ask about yourself. That's the only thing they'll answer without making you pay with something you actually want." "You're doing that thing again," I said, but I didn't say which thing—the thing where she treated warnings like flexes of a muscle, like it impressed her to be the one who knew where the dangerous edges were. We didn't bring candles. You weren't supposed to bring light, she said. You were supposed to borrow it. She had two old jars with lids that she said came from her grandmother's pantry, and she had a little leather pouch with salt in it and something that smelled like tar. On the top of the mound the stones were layered with frost and slick as seal skin. She walked around them clockwise, muttering as she flicked salt at her boots. "You do it so you know where your feet have been," she whispered. "You close the circle with your steps." She gestured for me to follow, and I did, making a dent in the first set of my tracks. We made three circles, and the third time she stopped at a stone with a fissure that looked like a mouth and pressed her palm to it like a kid to a window. "You knock if you take something," she said. "Even if you just take time." She knelt and opened the pouch. The tar smell was stronger: smoked resin, maybe, or something from the boats that came west in summer. She rubbed a little between her fingers, then smeared a streak under each eye like black war paint. She did the same to me without asking. The cold took it hard, and the streaks felt like tightening glass on my skin. "For seeing," she said. "You scare off meat-things, the ones that like to crawl." "Please don't use the phrase meat-things ever again," I said. She laughed. "Stop talking," she said. "People don't say anything the first time. They think if you show you're polite you get the right visitors." We sat with our backs to the same stone, our shoulders not touching. I'd expected there to be a ritual, a chant, something to occupy my attention, but Astrid only drew shallow breaths and let them slow. After a while the night pressed under my skin like snow when you fall down and stay there. The shape of my body blurred into the dark. The hill under us had a pulse you could call your own heartbeat if you wanted to. Somewhere in the village a dog barked once and changed its mind. I counted my breaths and then lost count, and then remembered Astrid saying not to count the birches. I wondered if that mattered now. The air shifted from glass to fur; I mean to say it softened, like the sky was lowering itself around us. When the wind came it wasn't the wind, exactly, but the quiet vacuum of something moving past a hollow. My teeth ached, and I had a flash of wanting to be in our apartment in Stockholm, the two flights up and the radiator that clanked all night, and the half-finished long division workbook I'd once cried over for no reason. Here, I had a girl with resin on her fingers and gravel under her. Part of me felt adult and ridiculous at the same time. If you'd asked me then if I believed, I would have said no. I would have said yes. Those answers felt the same sitting there. "Don't look at your watch," Astrid said, so softly I didn't know if I'd imagined it. "Let the bells tell us." "There won't be bells," I started, but then a sound rolled through the air like it came up from the ground: a single chime, metal and old, a note that fell clean into the silence and made a ring inside my gut. It wasn't the hour. It was one sound, and it hung there long enough for me to feel it on my back the way you feel thunder. Our church didn't have midnight services. I'd heard that said. I'd said it myself when Astrid told me we should go at twelve. But there it was. One chime. Astrid didn't react. That steadiness was part of how she did this to me. If she'd flinched, I might have laughed. "The first thing that comes isn't the thing you want," she whispered. "Grandma says it's the thing that pretends to be what you want. Let it tell you a lie. Don't take it. Wait for the second." "How do I know which is which?" "You don't," she said. "You already forgot the birches. You're not supposed to know." I wanted to turn and look at her, to make sure she was beside me, but the idea of turning seemed impossible, like moving would be a kind of rudeness. The snow made the smallest noise: that sound of crystals sliding against each other. My skin tightened. Far off, a fox barked its broken-cough voice. Or a child, I thought, and that was stupid, but once the thought came I couldn't push it away. It wasn't that I heard words. It was more like the shape of words pushing through the sensations I had, like floating text you try to read through fogged glass. Names wanted me: Emil, yes, and Malin, who had threadbare mittens and chewed them; the math teacher; the boy with the scar. Images came that were too neat, like things that would satisfy me: a note passed in class folded like a bird; a key to a locker; a face turned to me in the corridor with the expression I'd always thought I deserved. It was like being handed easy money in plain envelopes. It made me resentful. Who was making it so easy? The mound? Astrid? Myself? I wanted to push it away. Part of me wanted to take the envelopes anyway. The wind shifted again and something colder knifed past my ear. A whisper, I told myself, an angle of air. But the thought that arrived with it was not flattering and not easy. It had the shape of the seam between two stones under soil. It was about Astrid. It was about the way she told me the rules and watched me to see if I would follow them. About the way she had smiled earlier when I said I could keep a secret, a smile like a match that had already been lit. About her grandmother, and how often she said that word, like invoking a fact. The thought came with a taste of metal: her grandmother's house had old nails in the door lintel. Did I know this? Had I seen them? The thought told me they were there. Another thought: someone had been buried without a cross here, and someone had placed a broken tooth under the stone with the fissure. Was this how people think when they are scared? Or was it too specific not to be something else? I could not decide. I wanted to decide. I couldn't. "Astrid," I said, and my voice came out wrong. It sounded like I'd spoken into the mouth of a jar. "Shh," she said. "You're making room." The resin under my eyes had sent a prickly warmth down my cheeks. I realized my hands had gone numb. The bone-deep cold that is a fact in this part of the world slipped in past cloth and skin, and a different feeling came with it: a sense of being watched not by someone but by a rule. A rule the hill kept. You sit, the hill said, or the part of my brain that translates fear into sentences said. You sit and you listen. You don't bring your own light. You don't ask twice. If they tell you something you don't want, you hold it like a hot stone until it cools. Something moved in the periphery of my eyes—a shift of the darkness that matched a pale strip between two trees. If I'd been somewhere else I would have called it a rabbit. Here I didn't want to name it. It made a path through the snow without lowering it. That should have been impossible. It made a shape the snow took back an instant later. "You see it?" Astrid said, not a reaction so much as a prompt. "Do you?" "I don't ask for seeing," she said. "I already see. I want names. I want what people owe. Stop talking unless you can't not." There was a bitter taste in my mouth that wasn't the resin. I swallowed. The cold on my eyelashes had crystallized; if I blinked, it might crack and fall onto my cheeks. I thought about my mother, asleep with her book on her chest, and my father, who had taken this job because it made more money and because he wanted to go somewhere quiet where no one would bother him. The kind of man who doesn't believe in superstition because he has never had to. I thought about him and a scuff on his shoe that looked like a crescent moon, and the thought that rose under it said he had a second phone I didn't know about. Why would I think that? It was ridiculous. It was like saying there were nails in the lintel because I needed there to be. The shape of the information didn't care whether I wanted it. I told myself if I looked down and saw a second set of bootprints between me and Astrid, I would scream. I looked down. I saw our local boot brand: thin ribbed treads. I saw scuffed clots of snow where we'd made our circles. I saw the dent of one small animal closer to the birches where it had hopped and paused to leave a little pellet. I did not see a third set. I felt more watched. "The second thing," Astrid said, and her voice had dropped, "is the true thing. This is when you promise something." "I didn't bring anything to promise," I said. "You did," she said. "You bring yourself. You say I will let you use my mouth for a day. Or you say I'll keep a thing you give me for a year. Or you say I'll put a stone back in a place someone took it from. Grandma says you never promise meat. She says you never promise shoes." "What happens if you do?" "You don't get them back," she said. "Or you don't like how they fit when you do." When she said it I realized that the undertone under her voice—steady, practical—was excitement. This was fun for her. Not fun like laughing but fun like control. She had been the one to tell me there were rules, and here she was asking me to make a rule with something that didn't ask me to sign my name. The anger that rose then surprised me. It flickered up like the match her smile had been. "I'm not promising anything," I said. "I'm not—" "Then say your own name in your head and close your eyes," she said. "Finish it. You can't get up until you finish it." "I can get up whenever I want," I said, and my voice broke on the last word. My legs were pins and wire. I put my hands on the rock to squat and stand, and the stone under my palms felt warm, impossibly, like it had held the sun from a season ago and was giving it back. The warmth was so human that I jerked my hands away, then put them back because the warmth was the only thing that didn't feel like the night. "Linnea," Astrid said, and it was almost gentle. "People don't think they'll ever do something until the moment they do it. That's how they end up doing it forever." "Is that your grandma again?" I said, bitter. "That's me," she said, and I couldn't tell if the shimmer in her eyes was tears or frost or delight. Maybe all three. "Say your name." In the end, I said it, but not like a promise, more like a test. I closed my eyes and said my name without sound and without any words after it, and then I waited for the second thing. What came wasn't a revelation so much as a boundary. It was like pressing your palm against glass and learning how thick it is. I knew, suddenly, that if I asked the wrong question here I would get an answer that would be true and unhelpful. I knew that if I promised something I didn't understand, the asking would not stop when we stood up. I knew that Astrid would keep doing this whether I did it with her or not, and that she would tell the story later her way if I didn't have my own way to tell it. The knowledge sat on me like a blanket that smelled of smoke. When it was done, it was done. There was no flare. The wind shifted back to ordinary. In the village, a car misfired and seemed as loud as a firework. Astrid drew a hard breath that turned into a laugh and then didn't. "I didn't promise anything either," she said, like a confession that wanted admiration. "Good," I said, and we stood, and my knees sang as the blood went back in. We rubbed the resin from our faces with snow and it left greasy tracks on our gloves. Astrid reached down and touched the fissure stone once, a little knock like a child leaving a friend’s house, as if that made what we'd done polite. We walked back without speaking, past the birches that bowed, and I didn't count them. The sky had the faintest hint of light in it that comes before dawn in winter, the kind that feels like a stain rather than rays. Somewhere behind us in the white, I thought I heard footsteps that were not our own, then told myself it was the sound of your own breath when you start listening for footsteps. Later, in my bed, I decided that the bell had been a trick of sound, that someone had let a sheep out and rung for help, that I'd made up the nails and the tooth and the second phone because I'd been told to wait for the second thing. The memory of the hill stayed anyway, heavy as if I'd carried a stone down in my pocket and forgotten to take it out. When I saw Astrid the next day she had the same look she always had, which was the look of a person who expects you to play along. "Did you get what you wanted?" she said in the corridor, as if all we'd done was leave notes under doors. "I got something," I said. "Good," she said. She went past me and put her hand on Emil's shoulder and leaned to say something in his ear, and he flushed with whatever it was she chose to tell him, whether it was true or not. Later, when we went to her grandmother's house, there were indeed three old nails hammered into the lintel like a row of teeth. I don't remember if I'd noticed them before. I don't remember if I had put my hand on my father's second phone and turned it over without turning it on. I do remember the sound the cold made on the mound, like a mouth to a jar, and Astrid's breath on the dark. I remember the single bell. I remember the felt sense that we'd moved something around that didn't like to be moved, had edged past a dangerous idea and turned it into a toy, and that even if nothing answered us, we had answered something by sitting there. That was the line. If you ask, something hears you. Or you hear yourself in a way you cannot take back. Either way, it's a kind of being heard. Either way, it keeps listening.

Model Output:
The room smells like eucalyptus and old sweat threads caught in the seams of vinyl. The treatment table creaks when I hoist myself up with my good arm. A wall-mounted diagram of human musculature looms over my shoulder, a bloodless atlas—front and back views, bands of red and white, names I used to recite like prayers. Vastus medialis. Gluteus medius. Iliotibial band. Labels for the things that failed me. He shuts the door with a soft click. It’s not the locker-room slam I remember; nothing about him is loud. His hair’s shorter. Beard now, trimmed tight. The polo stretches across his shoulders when he reaches for a clipboard. His forearm flexors ridge and relax as he writes, ink scratching. I know those tendons, the way they used to rope under skin when we drove the last interval of a 400, matching stride for stride in that converging rhythm that felt like the world was a belt and we were riding it. “Scale of one to ten,” he says, eyes flickering to my face, then down to the page. “At rest.” “Two,” I lie. His mouth tugs but he doesn’t call me on it. He never did, in the early days, when we were comrades in denial. He steps closer, the faintest drift of cedar aftershave; his hands are warm when he touches my shoulder, then slides along the line of my collarbone as if mapping where to avoid. “We’ll go slow. No heroics.” No heroics. The words belong to a different person than the one who gutted through lactic burn on a winter track, spitting steam, the two of us laughing as our thighs trembled, daring each other to one more rep. He’s a different person too, with the letters after his name stitched into his chest: DPT. I watch the embroidered thread ripple when he breathes. “Lie back,” he says. I shift from pelvis to shoulder blades, easing down. The table is a narrow raft; if I flinch, I could slide off. He positions my legs with a gentleness that irritates me. My left knee, the traitor, is elevated on a wedge. He has me straighten both legs out, aligning hip joints evenly. The ceiling hums with fluorescent light. “We’ll start with your ankle,” he says. “Distal to proximal.” He stands at the foot of the table and cradles my left heel in one hand, his other hand supporting over the dorsum of my foot, fingers splayed across metatarsals two through five. “Just relax,” he adds, knowing I can’t. He guides my ankle into dorsiflexion, bringing my toes toward my shin. His thumb presses gently against the calcaneus to prevent inversion. The stretch shows up like a thin blade along my Achilles, climbing into my calf—the gastroc bellies first, then deeper into the soleus. He stops at the point where the blade bites. “Where are you?” “Four,” I say, voice stiff. “Breathe into it.” He holds there, seconds ticking in the count he doesn’t voice anymore. My tibia feels anchored; his grip is precise. On the poster, the achingly red cords of the triceps surae stare back. He eases off, then repeats, increment by increment, coaxing range. When he adds overpressure—just a couple millimeters past where I think it should stop—my foot trembles. I hate that it trembles. The tremor quivers up the anterior tibialis like a noise in wire. “Okay,” he says. He lowers my foot and runs the side of his index finger up the medial arch. “Any tingling?” “No.” The sensation is straight pressure, no fireworks in the saphenous nerve territory. He nods. He switches to passive hamstring stretch. He steps to my left side, his hip close to the table. He cups my heel again and slides his other hand under my distal thigh. My skin prickles where his palm presses; it’s not pain. He lifts my leg, knee extended, hip into flexion. The hamstrings unspool in protest. At fifty degrees, I can feel the meat of biceps femoris tighten like it’s going to pluck itself. At sixty, there’s a hot line at the ischial tuberosity. My pelvis wants to posteriorly tilt, lumbar spine flattening into the table. He places his forearm across my ASIS to hold the pelvis stable, his elbow hooked lightly over my iliac crest. “Neutral spine,” he says. His forearm is solid heat across my hip bones. “Don’t let your pelvis rotate.” My breath climbs into my throat. “I’m not.” He smiles without showing teeth. He knows I am. He presses down, just enough to pin the pelvis, and carries my heel toward the ceiling another few degrees. The stretch shifts, deeper, closer to where the tendon bundles splay into the ischial attachment. Pain flares, crisp. Seven. I clench around it and he feels the contraction in my thigh; his fingers depress into the hamstrings and wait. “In through your nose,” he says. He’s watching my face. I make my breath slow, stupidly obedient. The pain backs down to a five, then a four, a throb instead of a knife. He comes back a degree more, and the breath stutters again. My toes are cold. My fingers have curled into the edge of the table so hard the vinyl seam bites. “I hate this,” I say, so quietly I could be talking to the diagram. “I know.” He lowers my leg with a care that makes something in my chest ache. He sets my heel down, aligns the malleoli. The room is too bright; the table’s paper crinkles under my shoulder blades. He picks up my foot again and draws it into a straight-leg raise, then deviates it a few degrees into internal rotation, targeting the medial hamstring. He tracks my patella to keep it from drifting. Each tiny adjustment changes the line of fire. He talks through the tissue: semimembranosus, semitendinosus. He says the words clinically, but they land in me like memories of drills, of out-and-back runs where our feet flicked up behind us, hamstrings snapping like cables. “Let’s try some nerve glides.” He flexes my hip to forty-five with the knee extended and then dorsiflexes my ankle while extending my knee another notch. The discomfort is a different flavor—more of a spreading burn along the back of my leg, a sensation that feels like water seeking a lower level. It peels down past the fibular head, into the calf, to the outer border of my foot. He reverses the ankle as he increases the knee extension to tease neural tension without cooking the nerve. He watches my eyes. “Talk to me.” “Six,” I say, meaning: manageable, as long as you don’t go zealous on me. He doesn’t. He cycles through a rhythm, slide and tension, slide and tension. My hamstrings twitch, tiny fasciculations like moths in a lampshade. He backs off when they intensify. He’s reading my legs like he read my stride all those years—knowing when I had one more rep, when I didn’t. He moves to my knee. The scar down the lateral side is a pale zipper. He places his thumb pads either side of the joint line and does a gentle varus stress at thirty degrees flexion, assessing lateral collateral integrity. The joint opens barely perceptible, firm end feel. He nods. He changes to valgus stress, medial gap. The MCL end feel is more yielding. He watches my mouth as he tests; I bite hard enough to feel a ridge of tooth in my tongue. He palpates the patellar tendon, the infrapatellar fat pad, the IT band distal tract where it inserts on Gerdy’s tubercle. When he strokes along the band, the tissue feels like a cable under my skin. He picks up a strip of kinesiology tape and measures from the Gerdy’s tubercle up to the greater trochanter with his fingers. He tears the backing half an inch, anchors it distal, then lays it up the lateral thigh with just enough tension to lift the skin microscopically. His fingers smooth the tape, heat activating adhesive. They travel, inadvertently, close to where my shorts end. The skin there is more sensitive from disuse, the hair growing back uneven. My breath stutters. He pauses, fingers hovering without touching. “Okay?” he asks. “Yeah.” It comes out like air leaking. He rolls a stool behind him with a heel push and sits, bringing his eyes level with my hip. He swings the therapy table extension out, bends my knee to ninety, and drapes my lower leg over his thigh to support the tibia. He places one hand on my ASIS again and the other on my distal femur. “Hip internal rotation,” he says. He eases my shin outward, rotating the femur inward. The deep lateral rotators mutter. I feel it deep in the posterior hip, around the greater trochanter, where the gluteus medius fibers fan. He targets glute med specifically next: he has me roll slightly onto my right side, my left leg stacked on top, knees bent. He slides his hand under my waist to keep my spine neutral, not letting me cheat by laterally flexing. His palm is a warm wedge, a fulcrum against my obliques. When he tells me to lift the top knee without rolling my pelvis open—clamshell—the burn is immediate at the outer hip, the gluteus medius and minimus firing. My TFL tries to jump in, the anterior fibers tensing, and he taps the posterior lateral crest lightly. “Back here. Don’t let the TFL dominate.” I adjust the angle, rotating my femur slightly to aim the contraction posteriorly. The burn sharpens, a coin of heat pressed under skin. He holds two fingers against the muscle and feels it engage. “Two seconds up,” he says, metronome calm. “Four seconds down.” My leg shakes by rep six. By rep ten, the muscle is a live wire. Sweat beads under my arms and sticks my shirt to my ribs. He counts to twelve and stops, not because I want to—because form fails. He always knew the difference. He takes my ankle and extends my hip behind me, knee still bent ninety degrees, and then draws my heel slightly toward the ceiling, small range. The gluteus maximus joins the chorus now, deep and powerful, but under that it stings where the proximal tendon attaches. He slides his fingers deep into the meat of my glute, finding the piriformis, and presses. It’s pressure so direct it feels indecent. I hiss and feel my pelvic floor reflexively tighten, a small panic clench. His eyes flick to mine and then away; his fingers don’t shift. “Breathe,” he says, voice a tone lower, steady. He works the trigger point, short compressions, then sustained. The pain blooms and then fades in waves. When it releases, it’s like a knot unties and the leg suddenly weighs less. He withdraws his hand slowly, careful not to drag, giving the tissue time to settle. My skin chills where his warmth has been. “Bridge,” he says, moving on. He helps me roll onto my back again, places my feet hip-width apart, knees up, neutral pelvis. He taps my ASIS and PSIS to cue the tilt. “No global tilt. Zip your ribs down.” He slides a hand under my lumbar spine to check space: not smashed, not arching. “Drive through your heels. Don’t push the knees outward; track over second toes.” He says these things because he doesn’t trust my old instincts, which are to throw everything at every problem. I lift my pelvis, vertebra by vertebra. The gluteal tissue cords up. The hamstrings try to dominate again; he snakes a belt around my thighs just above the knees, gives me the cue to press gently into it. The adductors turn on, and the glutes find their job. The strain is clean. He presses down with two fingers on my ASIS to keep the pelvis level. His hands are warm weights. The table paper crackles under me. Sweat runs along my scalp and pools in my ear. “Hold,” he says, breath close enough that I can feel it move the tiny hairs at my temple. I’m aware of the length of his hip next to my hand, the heat of him in the space under the fluorescent hum. The memory of his body moving beside mine years ago is a spool winding tighter while he watches my pelvis for a hint of rotation. I hold for eight seconds, then lower slowly. He adjusts the belt and asks for two more. I give him three. It’s not generosity; it’s defiance. When I finish, the glutes are heavy and alive, the knee feels both more present and less like glass. He wheels a cart closer and pulls out a jade-green band. He loops it around the balls of my feet, hands me the ends. “Ankle dorsiflexion isometrics,” he says. “Keep talar alignment.” He cups the front of my ankle joint line and presses the talus posteriorly as I draw the band toward me, avoiding anterior translation that would impinge. The tendon on the front of my ankle strings under my skin, extensor hallucis longus showing as a separate line. He nods. “Good.” He asks me to hold, then slowly control the eccentric letting go. The burn is small, neat. I can do neat. He stands, steps back, crosses his arms. The shift in distance makes the air cooler. My skin prickles. He scribbles something on the clipboard, then sets it aside. He looks up, finally meeting my eyes for more than a beat. “You’re doing well,” he says. “Define well,” I say, the bitterness reflexive, because praise slides off me now like oil. “Not avoiding. Not compensating. Listening.” He gestures to the diagram, the red-streaked body watching us. “This is a different kind of performance.” It’s a different kind of humiliation. My body, once a finely tuned machine, now reduced to joints needing to be coaxed like sullen children. I swallow, throat tight. The resentment tastes metallic. It’s not just at the tissue—I resent him too, resent the ease with which he has become something else, his stride smooth across the clinic floor. He catches my look and doesn’t flinch away from it. There were years when we knew everything about each other’s limits; now the only thing we don’t say is the only thing loud in the room. He sets up for soft tissue work along the IT band. “Side-lying again,” he says. He positions a white towel under my lateral thigh to protect my skin. He squirts lotion into his palm, rubs hands together, and then makes a fist with one hand, using the knuckles to strip slowly from the distal lateral quad up toward the greater trochanter, staying just anterior to the IT band itself—he knows not to grind into the band proper, to work the neighboring tissues. His other hand stabilizes my thigh. The pressure is slow, deliberate; I feel the drag under his knuckles, the heat building. At a certain point, near the mid-thigh, the TFL fires reflexively, and my knee jerks. He pauses the pressure, holds, waits for the muscle to melt. My breath gets shallow. He slides closer by a centimeter to keep his elbow over his wrist, over his knuckles; physically coherent, always. The smell of lotion mixes with that cedar, and my body confuses pain and something else in the same breath. He doesn’t change the pressure or comment. He strips again, resets. Over and over, careful. When he finishes, he cleans his hands and the lotion sheen from my skin. He tapes me again, two strips now, one Y-shaped curling around the patella to help guide tracking. He presses it down with his palm, heat activating. He keeps his palm there a beat longer than necessary. Or maybe it’s exactly necessary and I am making everything into intention. He helps me sit up. I can feel the muscles we lit up settling, the delayed onset not yet dawning, the pleasant heaviness that will turn to ache by evening. He steps back to a respectable distance. The loss of proximity is a relief and a deprivation. “You okay to walk?” he asks. His voice is professional again, a clinic voice that belonged to someone else in a different life and now belongs to him. “I can walk,” I say. Walking is what’s left when everything else is gone. He smiles, small, private. “You can walk better now.” The chart on the wall watches as I ease off the table. My knee tracks over my mid-foot without the medial wobble that has been my new signature. The tape holds my skin in pink waves. He’s beside me without hovering, hands ready but not reaching. I take a step. Then another. The first corner of the room arrives faster than I expect. The pain is there, old friend/new enemy, but it’s quieter. I could resent that too—the way he can make me less miserable with his hands, with a thought. At the door, I say, without looking at him, “I hate that I need this.” He’s quiet a long time. Then: “You don’t have to like it to do it right.” A pause. “You don’t have to like me either.” I almost laugh. It feels like swallowing glass. “I never did,” I say. His reflection in the glass of the door gives me away: his mouth quirks, an almost. “Liar.” When he reaches past me to open the door, his arm grazes my shoulder. A small contact, nothing. My skin remembers every finish line we leaned into, shoulder to shoulder, as if touch could break tape. For a second I think of the way his forearm felt across my pelvis, the careful pressure, the exactness of him, and I want to spin and say something foolish and irreversible. Instead, I nod at him like he is anyone, and step into the hall, the tape pulling gently at my skin as I move. Somewhere in the red-and-white topography behind me, the gluteus medius lights up like a warning flare and then settles. We have three more weeks of this. I will count them in breaths held, seconds of pressure, degrees of flexion logged, and the inches between his hands and my skin. I will count them in ways he’ll never see. Or maybe he will. He always did. He shuts the door gently behind me. The hinge doesn’t complain. My knee does, lightly, acknowledging a negotiation rather than a war.

Model Output:
“Morning, Lieutenant. You’re late for inspection.” “I’m early for everything else, Sykes,” I said, fastening my collar with shaking fingers. “What’s the count?” “Boatswain says the stores are short two barrels of flour. And the captain wants a word about the Chinese envoy. You look a bit… you know.” “I slept poorly. The heat.” “It’s winter.” “Then I slept poorly for winter.” He sniffed. Pitch tar and river damp clung to him, to the deck, to the cotton cords of dock lines that creaked as the Pearl River breathed. Beyond our mooring, the foreign factories—brick bluffs with shuttered windows and flagstaffs—stood in orderly ranks. Junks drifted past like leaf-shaped ghosts. Somewhere a gong met the morning with patient clangs. “I’ll tell the men to lay off the rum for the envoy’s visit,” Sykes muttered. “You’ll come?” “I’ll be along,” I lied. The jade in my pocket was warm now, and I rubbed it without looking. It had a face of some god I didn’t know—mouth open in a silent O. My thumb had worn the cheek pale. “Lieutenant,” he said again, and in his voice a question: Are you fit? Are you ours? I turned away, took the gangplank with a jaunty authority that fooled neither of us. On shore the smell deepened. River, mud, fish offal. A market had unraveled itself along the lane: orange peel, ginger, chattering buyers, the lacquered clack of abacus beads. A boy ran past with a rooster under his arm that screamed like a pipe being scraped. Outside the Company’s hongs, clerks in hats like paper boats queued for letters. Behind a gate two soldiers shifted their pikes and watched me pass as if I were a bad coin. “You a busy gentleman today, Mister Lieut?” a voice chirped near my elbow. Ruby, her hair plaited with ribbon, her teeth lacquered black. She sold sweetened tea and gossip in equal measure from a cart whose wheels were a marvel of bamboo and rope. “Never busy enough when there’s tea.” She poured into a chipped cup. The liquid was bitter as a sermon. My hand trembled; the cup chimed against the saucer. “You need smoke,” she said softly, as if telling me my buttons were misaligned. “You white men, you go green without it.” “I need to see you smile,” I replied, and she rolled her eyes, but relief loosened something in me at her knowledge, her casualness. To be known, and for it not to be an alarm. “You show face at Mr. Herrick’s later,” she said. “He ask for you yesterday.” “Herrick’s asking for my money.” She shrugged. “He is snake, but his smoke too. You watch for runners today. They look like soldiers but they not soldiers. New ones. Sleeve red inside.” “Customs men?” She lifted her shoulders. Nothing. I nodded, paid her in small coin, and set off for the back lanes where the respectable walked with a purpose and the rest of us drifted. In Fanqui Town the facades were familiar: white paint and shuttered galleries, British flags and Portuguese and American. The smell there was ink and bread and varnished chests. Once I would have gone through those doors by right, my uniform crisp as a blade, to negotiate cargo manifests, to bully a tea merchant over duties. The captain admired my tongue then. Now I swerved behind a building, between coils of rope and stacks of cracked porcelain, into the shade where Canton unraveled into its own language. It was cooler there, the air damp and breathy, the sun fractured by overhangs and laundry. A butcher hooked a carp by the gills and slit it; its scales flashed like coins. At the warehouse yard I found Bacon leaning on a crate, hands black as a lamplighter’s, hat too small for his head. Bacon had once saved my life in a swell off Whampoa, and I had thanked him with rum and then with money and then with less. “Lieut,” he said, lazy with his greeting, but his eyes took me in, my posture, my blue lips. “You ghosting again?” “On business.” My jaw was rattling slightly. I set my teeth. “Mr. Herrick in?” “In his den. Mr. Choi already there.” “Choi?” “That’s the Canton name with the finger in everything. Pawnshops, girls, leaky boats. He came like a westerly.” “And he’ll go like a storm,” I muttered. Sweat had beaded under my collar. The jade in my pocket was now a hot coal; I rubbed it; it seemed to push back. “Look,” Bacon said, voice low. “You still owe him. You owe me. And the captain sent Sykes looking.” “The captain can wait.” “The captain, maybe. Sykes, he a dog. He bites from love.” Bacon tilted his head. “You sure you want to cross this threshold, James?” “I crossed it six years ago,” I said. “Very little left to fear.” The warehouse door opened into the dim, where bales of cotton and barrels of sugar towered like sleeping beasts. Lantern light made a cave of it. The opium room was at the back. It had a curtain of beads you could pretend muffled things. It muffled nothing. Do I need to tell you how it smelled? Lamp smoke, vinegar, the sweet rot of lotus. The thinnest string of music from a two-string fiddle that carried like a mosquito’s whine. Herrick sat at a table with ledgers spread and his hair combed with oil that reflected the lantern in points. Mr. Choi looked like a prayer book with the title in gold—plain, precise, the gold the only hint. He wore a scholar’s robe and his hands were clean. “Lieutenant Merrick,” Herrick said, teeth like little dominoes set in rows. “The navy’s own. We were just discussing your remarkable capacity.” “I’m a man of many capacities,” I said, breath catching on the last word. “You owe Mr. Choi twenty Spanish dollars.” “My account—” “Is a map of a war the enemy has already won.” He smiled at his own turn. He loved a phrase. “Yet you are a man of resource.” “I brought the papers,” I said, nails biting my palm. “The manifest for the rice shipment seized at Whampoa. Names, marks. The cut for you, the cut for the mandarins who will find a way to lose it.” Choi turned a single page, glancing at the ciphered script that had taken me all last night to copy by lamplight, the words swimming as my hands shook. He made a sound—approval, amusement, I couldn’t tell. Herrick chewed an invisible thread of patience. “Whose seal?” Choi asked. “Captain Rooke’s. He's never learned to keep his stamp as close as his wife.” “Sly boy,” Herrick murmured, but there was something bright behind his monotone. Calculation. “If these papers find their way to Dr. Sinclair, he will think it our charity.” “And he will pay in gratitude,” Choi said, “which spends as poorly as rice in the sun. But perhaps it buys other things.” “I want what I came for,” I said. “One parcel.” “One?” Herrick’s eyebrows went up. “You a monk now?” “Two,” I said. “Two will make me human again.” “Two for the papers and your charming company. The rest of your debt remains.” “Two and a promise,” I said. “I have something else. A cutter goes upriver tonight to look for smugglers’ camps. I know where she’ll pause. There will be rum aboard. And there will be silver. I can make sure she pauses longer where you want her.” “That will cost you a uniform and a career,” Herrick said softly. “Those are not currencies I still hold.” Choi looked at me across the table with a flat regard. “You like to lose. You wear it like a medal.” “I’m tired,” I said. “I like sleep.” He considered, then flicked his fingers. A boy in a blue vest came forward with two dark clay peas wrapped in oiled paper. They looked like nothing. My throat clenched at the sight. Sweat slid down my spine like a cold insect. “You smoke here,” Choi said. “We see you become human. Then we talk.” Herrick sighed. “Always the theatricals.” He shoved the little tray towards me, the lamp already hot, the needle to dissolve the extract, the thin bamboo pipes, the bed with its low cushion and its oil-stained pillow. The jade in my pocket bit like a small dog. My hands had smudged ink on the papers. There was a moment where the other day, the one with the envoy and the inspection, reached for me. And then I reached past it. “Not here,” I said. “Too many eyes.” “You’re a shy cat now?” Herrick said. “In an hour,” I said, swallowing. “When I can stand to speak without my voice tearing.” Choi’s lips twitched. “Go. But you are bound by breath now.” I took the parcels with a care that made my hands steady. Bacon watched me with a pity that tasted like tinfoil. On the way out, Herrick said, “James.” I stopped. The beads clicked like teeth. “Bring me something with teeth this time. Not just papers. A name. A schedule. Not Dr. Sinclair’s charity. A bite.” “You’ll see blood,” I said, and stepped into the heat again that was not heat but humidity, the air like silk dragged over water. The jade cooled in my hand; I squeezed it until my fingers hurt. Down the lane toward the lodgings where the walls were thin enough to hear your neighbor breathe, I met a man I had once boxed on the quarterdeck for calling the Chinese “rats.” It was Lieutenant Fenton now, hat like a crow’s wing. He recognized me midway, the way shame recognizes a mirror. “Merrick,” he said. “We missed you at morning roll. Captain’s displeased. There’s rumor you’ve taken ill.” “Rumor is a gossip with better posture,” I said. “You’re sweating.” “It’s winter.” He glanced at my pocket, at the lump, as if he could see the jade, the parcels. His face did a thing—anger and fear mixing like oil and water. “If you drag us into the mud,” he said quietly, “I’ll be the first to put you before a court.” “If I don’t drag myself, you won’t need to lift a finger.” He reached out as if to catch my sleeve, then thought better. “We were friends once,” he said, and I almost laughed. Once we had laughed at the fat of salt pork. Friendship had been as easy as finishing each other’s curses. I moved past him as the gong from some unseen temple turned the hour. The sound swept along the lanes, flattening conversation for a heartbeat. My room was up a stair the width of a coffin. The door stuck in the damp; I hip-checked it open. The bed was a narrow plank with a blanket that remembered other bodies. Light fell in a square on the floor, full of dust. I set the parcels on the windowsill and closed my eyes for a count of ten. The shaking didn’t abate. I unwrapped the paper with a care that was almost reverence. “James?” a voice whispered from the hall. I started. The tray clattered. Ruby slipped inside, bringing with her the steam of the street and the perfume of damp hair. “You do here?” she said. “Many ears.” “I do everywhere,” I said, and tried to smile. “Did you follow me?” “You white men walk like drums,” she said, shrugging. She came to the window and touched the packet with a fingertip, as if to test its temperature. “You owe me two dollars for the tea.” “I’ll be rich by sundown,” I lied. “Big liar,” she said lightly, but there was worry under it. “Mr. Choi, he say you too storm. He no like storms. He like rivers.” “I’ll be a puddle in a minute,” I said. “Do you mind?” She shook her head and sat cross-legged on the bed as if it were the most ordinary place in the world to watch a man undo himself. I warmed the pea, teased it into dark syrup, twirled it on the needle. The lamp licked at it like a polite animal. I loaded the pipe, held the stem in my teeth, let the smoke roll and fall as I chased it with the flame. The first inhalation always hurt, like forgetting how to swallow and relearning with fire. My chest fought me, then opened. The second swallow was a river over stones. “You like a god now,” Ruby said, amused, as the room tilted, as the square of light on the floor lengthened into a road and then a sheet and then a memory. The clatter of carts outside softened into pulse. The itch under my skin dissolved into a pale warmth that had nothing to do with the weather. The jade in my pocket cooled to a moon pebble. My hands stopped. My voice, when it came, had lost its burr. “Herrick wants names,” I said. “Tonight. I can give him Fenton’s. He’s on the cutter. He thinks he’s hunting smugglers. He’s hunting his own shadow.” “You do bad,” Ruby said without malice. “You do good. People like coins. Two sides. Both spend.” “I’ll tell him lies with enough truth to make them walk.” “You Navy,” she said, as if that explained my fondness for false weather. In the quiet, a rat grazed the wall. A child squealed, was shushed. “Ruby,” I said. “If I give Herrick’s men the cutter’s berth, there will be fighting.” “Many fight,” she said. “You just choose where your hands be.” “I used to be certain.” “You white men think certainty is rice. You hungry when it gone.” I turned my head to look at her. Her eyes were very black, and in them I saw the reflection of the lamp, a tiny sun. She touched my sleeve. “Time keeps going,” she said. “You think it stop because you slow? No. It go. You choose to run or to sleep.” “I choose to make a call,” I said, and the words felt distant, as if another man had left them for me in the bed. “Go to Bacon. Tell him the cutter will linger at the bend below the Weaving Goddess Temple. At dusk. Tell him to tell Choi. Tell him to keep his men’s fingers light.” “You want them to take only rum,” she guessed. “And the money,” I said. “No blood.” She stood. “No promise. Men fingers have nails. They scratch. Blood come.” “Tell them,” I said again, and she nodded, more out of kindness than belief, and slipped away. The light moved on the floor. I lay there and let the smoke teach my body its temporary mercy. The jade was smooth, all edges worn away. I held it, thinking of my father’s hands—he had given it to me in Portsmouth with a laugh at his own superstition, as if it were a joke he had included me in. “For luck,” he had said, as we smelled the sea together. He had died two years later, his lungs eaten, not by smoke but by a fever that coughed him inside out. I wondered what he would think of me now. I closed my eyes and saw the white line of Hampshire winter fields, the hedge black against it. It was a picture I returned to when the river silted me. When I woke the day had tilted, the street now full of afternoon voices, the light gone tinny. My tongue was leather. The second pea waited, patient as a stored insult. I put it in my coat instead, to carry through the next hour. Duty gnawed faintly at the edges; the envoy would be sweating under the awning on our quarterdeck, and Sykes would be lying through his smile. I splashed my face from the basin and nearly vomited at the smell, then laughed. My laugh sounded like someone else’s. Back in the lanes, I found Bacon at the corner by the wheelwright, where the smell of pine shavings and hot iron made a peculiar marriage. “You got a message,” I said. “You look like a man who found his pillow,” he said. “The Weaving Goddess bend. At dusk. Tell Choi to take rum and silver, leave the men their skin.” He blew air through his lips. “Plenty of ways a night can go wrong.” “Choose one that doesn’t involve the Navy waking with a knife,” I said. “I like my sleep.” “You owe me still.” “I’ll owe you less,” I said. He crossed his arms. “Sykes came looking. Twice. He gonna come again with Fenton. Fenton’s got a look like a fish when it see the net.” “Then tell Sykes I was here, discussing wheelwrighting.” “You don’t even have a wheel.” “No,” I said. “I have too many.” He shook his head, but his mouth softened. “Go. Before your legs remember they belong to someone else.” The riverbank was already purpled with evening when I reached the bend. Temple lanterns winked along the path like eyes closing, opening. Women washed clothes and beat the water with paddles; each slap was a metronome. A fisherman stowed his net like a priest folding a vestment. I crouched in the shadow of a banyan whose roots strangled its own stones and tried not to rub the jade. The cutter came sliding quiet as a thought, Fenton at the stern, hat low, men drowsing with the lazy attention of boys on a cart. They tied up, three knots, the boy’s voice counting in a Sutherland lilt. I could pick their shadows apart from three years of watching their bodies move at orders. In the reeds across, a whisper. Then canvas moved. Choi’s men were nothing but black on black, their oars wrapped. A gray shape alongside, a hiss. A bump. A hand, a knife, the whisper of coil. I stood to go, then stayed. The habit of an officer is to go. The habit of a man like me is to stay back. Each step away from the deck makes you less able to return. “Who goes?” Fenton called, sharp. “Friends,” said a voice in simple Cantonese, and I could hear the smile. A

Model Output:
The wind is a polite sort of tyrant on the mountainside. It arrives when it wants, rearranges anything it fancies, and leaves Sisyphus’s hair doing something that could be prosecuted in certain barbers’ jurisdictions. The boulder is there too, of course, unkicked and entirely itself, squarely spherical and smug in a way only a rock that has outlived a dozen civilizations can manage. “Crow,” says Sisyphus, breathing evenly as they crest the midpoint. “What’s first?” Crow, black as spilled ink and wearing a quill behind his ear purely for the irony, shuffles letters with his beak. The letters make a sound like leaves deciding whether to fall. “We could start with the urgent one stamped ‘urgent’ and also ‘urgent’ in three different dialects,” he says, voice like polished sarcasm. “Or the one that smells faintly of perfume and very distinctly of decision fatigue.” “Perfume, then,” says Sisyphus. “I live to enable your priorities,” Crow mutters, and clears his throat. “‘Dear Mr. Sisyphus, My girlfriend wants me to move in. She’s amazing. I also like my solitude, my mess, and the freedom to eat cereal for dinner without commentary. I don’t want to lose her, but I fear condiments will become battlegrounds. What do I do? — Spoon in Two Places.’” Sisyphus plants his feet against a minor landslide. The boulder pauses, considers gravity, and resumes its ancient argument with it. He smiles. “To Spoon in Two Places,” he dictates. “Congratulations on finding someone whose existence competes with cereal. That’s rare. Moving in is less about drawers and more about world-building. Try this: set a date for a three-month trial. Agree on three non-negotiables each, in writing. Not because you don’t trust each other, but because people forget their own promises when the bin stares accusingly. Yours might be: I get one room to be gloriously mine; I can eat cereal for dinner once a week without commentary; I need two hours of silence on Sundays. Hers might be entirely different and unexpectedly reasonable. Schedule a weekly twenty-minute ‘house meeting’ with a timer and tea. If everything feels like it happened to you by accident, it wasn’t a decision. Make it a decision. If, after three months, you both miss your own spaces more than you enjoy the shared one, that’s also data, not failure.” He nods at Crow. “Add: ‘Prepare a condiment treaty; ketchup is a political party.’” Crow sighs, but writes. “Editorial note,” he adds in tiny, elegant script. “Cereal for dinner is a lifestyle, not a cry for help.” The boulder kisses the top with geological indifference and begins the long sigh downward. Sisyphus jogs beside it, hand on stone, not hurried so much as synchronized with inevitability. On the way down, Crow spreads his wings and lets the letters slap his feathers until he decides the next one has finished sulking in the sack. “Work-life balance,” he announces, landing atop the boulder as if it were a throne that kept trying to throw him off. “From ‘Burned To A Crisp, Esq.’” “Please,” Sisyphus says, and means it. “‘Dear Sisyphus, I’m a junior associate at a law firm where the hours are described as “heroic.” My mother calls me at 11 p.m. asking why I’m still at work, my supervisor calls me at 11:05 p.m. asking why I’m not, and my basil plant has joined a commune. I want to be good at my job. I also want a life. Advice? — BTC, Esq.’” “Dear BTC,” Sisyphus says. He gently nudges the boulder with his shoulder. “Banner your calendar with yourself. Not in fluorescent ink or blood, but in whatever your firm respects. If they like client names, be your own client. ‘BTC v. Collapse, recurring.’ Put two hours of immovable blocks a week during normal hours, and tell your supervisor what you’ll be doing—‘deep drafting time.’ People are bad at respecting vague boundaries. They are astonishingly good at respecting something that sounds billable. For your mother: give her one scheduled call a week that you keep religiously, and tell her your phone goes to a bowl at 10 p.m. Plant care: buy a hardy snake plant. Basil needs attention like a poet. You need something that thrives on neglect until you don’t. Ask one mentor at the firm to tell you the ‘real rule’ about email response times. There is always a real rule. Follow that, not the panic.” Crow’s beak does a shape that might be a smile if beaks could. “Editorial note,” he writes, “The snake plant does not judge you for anything except overwatering and hubris.” They switch sides around a jagged outcrop Sisyphus has named Reginald because it pokes him in the same place every day and keeps apologizing for it in his imagination. The wind, glad to be useful, takes a letter out of the bag, reads it, and returns it out of sheer curiosity. “Difficult people,” Crow says, tapping his talon against the parchment. “From ‘Office Phoebe.’ It’s quite juicy.” “Read,” says Sisyphus, and ducking under a low cloud, he does. “‘Dear Sisyphus, There is a man in my office who weaponizes muffins. He buys them for the team, then loudly mentions who did not say thank you. He documents perceived slights in a spreadsheet. He is also my project lead for the next quarter. How do I survive without becoming the sort of person who stares at muffins and sees war? — Office Phoebe.’” “The muffin tyrant,” Sisyphus muses. He adjusts his grip as the boulder flirts with a shale slip. “Dear Phoebe, Recognize you are not dealing with muffins. You are dealing with a person whose currency is gratitude measured, not gratitude felt. You cannot pay enough. You can, however, change the economy. Before the next muffin event, send a group email to the team: ‘Hey all, I’d like to start a rotating snack appreciation. I’ve signed up for week two. Please reply with your weeks.’ Put Muffin Man in week one by gently praising his initiative. When it’s his week, say thank you once, sincerely, and move on. When he mentions it again, say ‘We’re doing the appreciation round-up on Fridays now; I’ll add you to the list.’ He will either adapt to the new ritual or be too busy updating his spreadsheet to weaponize it. For the project: ask for expectations in writing. ‘What does success look like? What are the three most important deliverables?’ Keep your own spreadsheet of unfair requests. It won’t protect you from all muffins, but it will protect you from gaslighting. Also, bring your own snack. It’s symbolic.” Crow adds, in the margin: “Editorial note: Raisins are a trap.” A small avalanche of pebbles rattles down. They wait. The boulder waits. Sisyphus scratches behind his ear where a thought has been gathering. “Life purpose,” Crow says softly. “From ‘Twenty-Nine-ish and Itchy.’” Sisyphus breathes, rotates his hands against the stone, and nods. “Read.” “‘Dear Sisyphus, Is there a way to tell if you’re on the right path? Everyone seems to have a calling. I have a job I don’t hate, friends I cherish, hobbies that don’t embarrass me. And yet I keep thinking there’s a grander purpose. How do you know? — Twenty-Nine-ish and Itchy.’” “Dear Itchy,” Sisyphus says, and the mountain quiets in that way mountains do when they want to listen but won’t admit it. “Imagine your life five years from now if nothing ‘grand’ arrives. Could you like that person? Not love, not worship—like. Would you borrow their jacket and forget to return it because it’s comfortable? If the answer is ‘yes,’ you are not lost. If the answer is ‘no,’ don’t hunt a calling like it owes you money. Change one thing you touch every day. The mug you drink from. The walk you take. The person you text first. Purposes often arrive disguised as habits. If you need an experiment: pick one problem you can see from where you stand that bothers you, and spend twelve Thursdays trying to make it better, publicly and badly. You will discover either that the problem is not yours, or that it is, in which case the path will be embarrassingly well-lit.” Crow writes, and in a smaller hand: “Editorial note: This column is a twelve-Thursday project in denial.” They reach the top. The boulder hums with the potential energy of a story that has been told a thousand times and still finds itself surprised by its own ending. Sisyphus puts a hand on it, almost tender, and turns to Crow. “Do we have time for another?” he asks. “For something delicate,” Crow says, fluffing his feathers against a gust that smells like old nectar. “From ‘Three’s Company (Asking For A Friend).’” Sisyphus’s eyebrows, which have seen empires and new haircuts, remain unjudging. “Go on.” “‘Dear Sisyphus, My partner and I are considering inviting a close friend into our bed, just once. We are both excited and terrified of the afterward. We communicate well in general, but neither of us has done this before. Any advice beyond googling? — Three’s Company.’” Sisyphus contemplates the infinite horizon with its endless trick of always being there and never being closer. “Dear Three,” he says. “Yes. Discuss the exit strategy before the entrance. Decide in clear terms how anyone can pause or stop things without drama, and what happens next—tea? A board game? Sleep in separate rooms? People rarely regret the conversation they had; they often regret the one they didn’t. Also, talk now, sober, about jealousy—what does it feel like for each of you? Where does it show up in your body? If someone says, ‘If I get quiet and my shoulders go up, I need a break,’ honor that. Set a time limit you can revise in the moment. Afterward, schedule a debrief when you are not naked. Be kind to future you: make sure tomorrow includes comfort food and no major decisions. And remember this: you can decide after trying it that it’s not for you without declaring your relationship a failure. Some doors you open just to see the light, not to move in.” Crow pauses, quill hovering. “Editorial note,” he writes reluctantly, “Have snacks that are sexy as snacks but not as stains.” They start down again. A goat, who has made career choices, watches them respectfully. The boulder picks up thoughts about speed. Sisyphus leans it this way and that like a dancer wearing an extremely heavy partner. “Here’s one that simply says ‘Help,’” Crow says, and for the first time his voice is less like polished sarcasm and more like a wing folded over an egg. He clears his throat. “‘Dear Sisyphus, I lost my brother last year. People keep telling me to move on. I don’t want to move on. I want him back. The world has the audacity to keep being normal. Everything is slightly the wrong shape. How do I… exist? — Left Behind.’” “Dear Left Behind,” Sisyphus says, and he does not hurry his words. “You don’t have to move on. There’s no prize for it. You will move differently. That’s all. Make a small altar to him somewhere ridiculous and mundane—a shelf near your shoes, a corner of the cutlery drawer. Put something of his there, or something you wish you could tell him. When the world is obnoxiously normal, scrape your keys across your altar and say out loud one sentence you wish he could hear. Create a tradition he would have mocked. Invite him by doing the thing and letting yourself laugh. The wrong shape will not become right. But you will become more skillful at living in this shape. That’s not betrayal. That’s adaptation, which is the opposite side of love’s coin. You’re not required to be brave. Bravery is a rumor the living spread about the grieving because it makes us feel useful. Eat, sleep, walk, repeat. That counts.” Crow has been silent, which is his version of weeping. He writes without editorializing. They walk. The mountain continues to be itself. The letters decrease. The wind is smug; it has rearranged his hair in a new and innovative misadventure. “One last,” Crow says, producing a scrap of paper that looks like it was torn from something else important. “From ‘Manager Who Wants To Be Less Of One.’” “Please,” Sisyphus says, and the boulder bumps his hip fondly. “‘Dear Sisyphus, I’m a new manager. I was promoted because I was good at doing the work, which seems cruel. Now I have a team of five very different people. How do I not ruin their lives? — Accidentally In Charge.’” “Dear Accidentally,” Sisyphus says. “Start every one-on-one with ‘What do you want to get out of your job in the next six months, and how can I help?’ Write down the answer where both of you can see it. Ask each person for their preferred method of feedback and their big ‘nope’—what demotivates them instantly. Your job is to remove pebbles from their shoes so they can run, not to run for them. Have one standard you hold everyone to, and make it explicit. To avoid ruining lives: do your calendar in public. Put your focus blocks on it. Leave at a reasonable hour once a week and say out loud where you’re going—‘I am leaving to do something that isn’t work’—so permission propagates. When you make a mistake, name it, fix it, and tell them what you learned. That’s culture.” Crow preens. “Editorial note: Bring biscuits to meetings. People forgive agenda confusion if there are biscuits.” They reach the top again. The boulder pauses like a thought before a word. Sisyphus sets his hands, considerate, and then—almost as an afterthought—he looks at his stone companion and then at Crow. “You know,” he says, “the trick isn’t the pushing. It’s remembering to breathe at the same places each time so you can think new thoughts in between.” Crow cocks his head. “Is that your one allowed metaphor?” Sisyphus smiles like a man with a very old friend. “I suppose it is.” “Then we’re done for the day,” Crow declares, tucking away the quill, but he doesn’t mean the mountain. He means the letters. He always means the letters. He hops onto the boulder as it begins again. Above them the sky opens into an inarguable blue, below them the path curls like an old ribbon, and between the two a man and a rock and a bird practice continuity as if it were a craft. Some days, it is. Some days, it isn’t. Today, it feels close. Crow angles his beak into the wind and yells, because yelling into the wind is a hobby: “Submissions to ‘Ask Sisyphus’ can be tied to my leg, but if you tie anything sticky there will be consequences!” Sisyphus laughs, easy and unstartled, as the letters in his head and in his bag concoct their own quiet revolutions. He breathes in the old familiar rhythm at exactly the same stones. He breathes out advice for strangers he does not consider strangers at all. And the mountain, as always, is exactly the wrong shape for everything and somehow perfectly suited to this.

Model Output:
“You can touch it,” the guitarist says, chin jerking toward the battered red Strat leaning against her amp, strings still trembling. “I—no, it’s okay,” I say, pushing my headphones up because they’re sliding over my eyes again. “It’s yours.” “It’s everyone’s for the next five minutes.” She grins. “You looked like you were gonna teleport into it.” “I’m not—teleport capable,” I say, then wish I hadn’t. The arcade’s neon sign flickers above us. A crowd drifts past, leaving behind the smell of takoyaki and warm plastic. Someone inside the arcade screams triumphantly at a claw machine. “Right,” she says, laughter in her voice. She clicks off her overdrive pedal with her boot. “You know the song, right?” “I—yes.” I glance at her pedalboard. The Boss tuner has a crack near the footswitch; the delay is set to dotted eighths. The distortion pedal’s gain is at maybe three o’clock. “Lumina—Lumina Ranger. Season three. The opening. The modulation in the bridge—actually, it’s unusual.” “You heard a modulation on this busted street amp?” She raises an eyebrow. “I’m impressed.” “It’s—no, I mean, the original track. You played it…closer than the live festival version. The solo phrasing.” She squints at me, then breaks into a brighter grin. “Okay, nerd. I like you.” “I’m not—” The headphones slide again. I hook a finger to push them back up. “I like synths. Not—guitars. Mostly.” “You can like both. The universe will not collapse.” “It might,” I say. She laughs, and my cheeks warm. “I’m Ritsu,” she says, wiping her palm on her jeans and offering it. “Um.” I stare at her hand, the faint calluses along the base of her fingers. “I’m Sana.” “Sana,” she repeats, as if testing the sound. “You hang around Den Den Town a lot?” “Not…a lot.” My voice wobbles. I glance at the window of the shop behind me: racks of cables, synthesizer modules glowing like little cityscapes. “Sometimes. On—Saturdays.” “Same. Good foot traffic, decent acoustics if I get the angle right.” She kicks the amp’s corner lightly. “And the arcades throw out enough noise that folks don’t notice if I screw a note.” “You didn’t,” I say, without thinking. “Didn’t what?” “Miss a note.” I swallow. “You…didn’t.” Her grin softens. “Thanks. Been practicing that one. People hear it and go, oh! That robot show! They like to clap.” “They clapped,” I say. A crowd earlier had. I hadn’t clapped; my hands had been stuck in the pockets of my hoodie. “You didn’t,” she says, elbowing me lightly. “I’m holding things,” I say, although my hands are empty. She tilts her head. “You build stuff? You got that look.” “What look?” “The counting-latency-in-your-head look.” “Oh,” I say. “Sometimes.” My headphones slip. I push them up again, ears burning. “I like…oscillators.” “No shame in that, Sana. Oscillators are sexy.” “I—what?” She laughs. “Relax. It’s a compliment.” “Okay,” I say, although I’m not sure how to relax. “Your tone’s nice.” “Now we’re talking.” She crouches to her pedals. “Old tube amp, borrowed. The overdrive’s an Osaka boutique guy—name’s like…something with a cat? Fits me right, no fizz.” “Your attack is…clean,” I say. “You pick with your wrist. And the vibrato—you do that wide thing at the end of phrases that’s…like a singer.” Her eyes light. “Finally someone notices! Everyone’s like, wow, loud. I’m like, excuse you, I’m trying to be a diva.” “You are,” I say. “I mean—like one. In a good way.” “Now you flatter me. Dangerous.” She leans the guitar against the amp carefully. “You play?” “Keys.” I stare at the grime on the sidewalk. A boy with a gachapon bag bumps me and apologizes. “I have an old DX. Not the big one. And a Volca. And some…modules. I’m saving for a…thing.” “What thing?” I look up, caught. “A…filter. Ladder filter. With resonance that doesn’t…scream. Smooth resonance.” “Your eyes just got all shiny,” she says. “Okay, take me to your filter.” “It’s—inside,” I say, nodding at the shop. “But I’m just…looking. Not today.” “Looking is dangerous,” she says. “I looked at a Jazzmaster once and now I have no savings.” She glances at the thin stack of coins in her open case. “Speaking of savings, you got a hundred yen?” I fumble in my pocket and put a coin into her case. It clinks against the other coins. She makes a tiny bow, exaggerated. “Thank you kindly.” “You’re…good,” I say. “Say it again. Never gets old.” “You’re good.” She puts a hand to her heart. “Blessed.” The headphones slide again; this time she reaches out and taps the padded cup gently, guiding it back. Her fingers brush the plastic, not my hair. I flinch anyway. “Sorry,” she says immediately, hands up. “Boundary check.” “It’s okay,” I say quickly. “They just…don’t fit.” “Those big boys?” She nods. “They look like they’re trying to escape.” “They are,” I mumble. “When I—nod. It’s—” I nod, and they slip, proving my point. She snorts. “You’re adorable.” “I’m not,” I say, mortified. “You are. And very serious about sound. Which I respect.” She clicks her tuner, plucks a harmonic, twists a peg. “So you’re a Lumina Ranger person?” “I watched with my brother,” I say. “He—liked the robots. I liked the soundtrack.” “Same. The composer did those weird synth brass stabs? Honestly, iconic.” “They’re…not brass,” I say, then immediately regret the correction. “Sorry. That’s obvious. It’s…a sawtooth layered—” “Don’t apologize,” she says. “Geek out at me. I like it.” “I don’t want to…talk too much,” I say. “People—glaze. Out.” “I promise to unglaze.” She flicks her pick into the air and catches it. “What’s your favorite part?” “The modulation. And the way the drums step out for a bar before the last chorus. The negative space.” I gesture, then freeze. I never gesture. “Sorry.” “Stop sorrying. Negative space is tasty.” She gestures back, mirroring me on purpose, playful. “You write stuff?” “Sometimes,” I say. Heat creeps up my neck. “It’s not…good.” “Bring it,” she says. “Let me hear.” “Not here,” I say quickly, glancing at the people streaming past, the giggling group fumbling with their arcade tokens. “Okay,” she says, without pushing. She unclips her cable and coils it quickly, practiced. “I’m about to take a break. My fingers are like, help. You eaten?” I glance at the convenience store across the street. “I was…going to get onigiri.” “Lame,” she says cheerfully. “Let’s get sushi. Kaiten. It’s right there—” She points down the street, between a stack of retro game cartridges and a shelf of boxed model kits. “Conveyor belt and everything. You can watch the plates like satellites. Your headphones can orbit your head.” “I—uh—” The thought of sitting across from her makes my stomach fizz. “I don’t—really—” “Hey.” Her voice gentles. “No pressure. But you look like a person who forgets to eat when you’re thinking about filters.” “I…do,” I admit, surprised. “Ten plates. My treat, since you put the hundred yen in.” “That’s not—equal,” I say. “Then you can tell me what ladder filters do and we’ll call it even.” “Okay,” I say, too fast. “I mean—yes.” “Cool.” She slings the guitar over her shoulder and hoists the little amp with a grunt. “Grab the cable?” “I—sure.” I loop it as neatly as my trembling fingers allow. She locks the tip plug into the amp handle for safety. We start walking. My headphones slide; I adjust them again, which makes her chuckle. “You can pop them around your neck. Your ears will survive.” “If I take them off, it’s…loud,” I say, gesturing at the flood of voices, the whine of arcade machines, the overlapping jingles. “Right,” she says. “We can sit at the back. Quieter.” “Thank you,” I say. “Welcome.” She glances at the shop windows as we pass. “You ever get sucked into those glass cases? The ones with the little synths that look like candy?” “I—yes,” I say. “The Volca Keys—my friend calls it the ‘beep box.’” “Rude,” she says. “It’s the beep box.” She winks. The restaurant’s sliding door whooshes open when we step on the mat. The air inside is cool and scented with vinegared rice. A statue of a smiling tuna greets us. The conveyor belt hums past, plates like bright moons in orbit. A digital voice chirps something cheerful I don’t catch. I take a breath, and the noise from outside softens. “Two,” Ritsu tells the host. “Back corner if you’ve got it.” We’re led to a booth near the end of the line. The belt snakes past, carrying salmon, cucumber rolls, a little spaceship bowl of edamame. Ritsu plops her amp down carefully by the wall and slides into the seat without ceremony. I take the opposite, setting my headphones around my neck. It’s quieter here; my shoulders inch down. “Okay,” she says, grabbing a plate and setting it in front of me. “Start with whatever’s least scary.” “They’re all…scary,” I say. “Fair. Cucumber rolls?” She nabs a kappa maki plate and puts it near me. “I can destroy the raw stuff; you can warm up.” “Thank you,” I say, hands hovering, unsure if I’m supposed to wait for something. She’s already pouring soy sauce into the dish, edible ease. “So. Ladder filters,” she says, picking up a plate of salmon and putting it on her side. “Explain like I’m five and also holding a guitar.” “They—um.” I fumble for words and find them. “They shape the sound by…removing high frequencies as the cutoff goes down. Like—to make it simple—it’s like closing your mouth when you say ‘ah.’ ‘Aaah’ becomes ‘oooh.’” Ritsu pulls a face. “‘Aaah’ becomes ‘oooh’ is now the name of my next EP.” I laugh. It spills out like something knocked loose. “Okay.” “And resonance?” she prompts, leaning forward, elbows on the table, chin in her hands. “It’s…when the filter feeds back—slightly—around the cutoff point, so the frequency near the cutoff is emphasized. Like humming into a bottle and the bottle…hums back.” She points at me with her chopsticks. “See? You should teach a class.” “No one would come,” I say. “I would.” She picks up the salmon with easy chopstick grace and eats. “So you make…what kind of stuff? Moody spaceship music? Dance? Sad robot ballads?” “Not dance,” I say. “I can’t…feel the four. Sometimes I try to, but—my hands do…something else.” “Your hands are rebels.” I glance at my hands. “Maybe.” “Play me something later,” she says. “I’m serious.” “Okay,” I say, before I can stop myself. “But—only if you show me the wide vibrato.” “Deal.” She sticks out her pinky like she’s five. After a second, I hook mine around it. Her finger is warm. We separate awkwardly. “So what’s your origin story, Sana?” she asks, grabbing a plate with shrimp. “Were you bitten by a radioactive synth?” “I…moved here last year,” I say, words slow at first, then smoothing. “From Tottori. My mom got transferred. I didn’t—know anyone. There’s a music room at school. It has a broken piano and a computer that crashes. But it has a plug.” “A plug is a plug,” she says. “I’m from here. Born in Namba, raised on ramen and an unreasonable number of gachapon. My dad tried to teach me shamisen. I said, counteroffer: distortion.” “He was…mad?” I ask. “He said, ‘if you can play scales on that, play scales on this.’ I did both. Now he pretends he always supported me, because I can play Enka intros for Grandma and she cries.” She laughs, not unkindly. “Family.” “I can’t play for my grandma,” I say, and then clamp my mouth shut because it sounds sad. “She—doesn’t hear well.” “You can play loud,” Ritsu says. “Problem solved.” “It’s not…that,” I say. She nods. “Got it.” We eat. The plates make soft clacks as we stack them. When I reach for a tuna roll, my sleeve catches and my chopsticks threaten to fall. Ritsu catches them with her free hand as if it’s nothing and passes them back, eyes bright with Tiny Victory. “Thanks,” I whisper. “Anytime.” The belt swings a plate of tamago past. She points. “You like sweet omelet?” “Yes,” I say, too firm. She laughs and slides it to me. “You got any favorite Osaka music spots?” she asks between bites. “Basement shows? Weird record stores that sell cassettes of mysterious dudes named ‘DJ Fog’?” “I…wander,” I say. “Sometimes I find little places. There’s a shop near Sakaisuji that sells only power supplies. It’s…beautiful.” “You’re killing me,” she says, delighted. “Only power supplies. That’s art.” “It is,” I say earnestly. “They were arranged by voltage. Like—like a choir.” “Choir of wall warts,” she says. “Sana. You’re a poem.” “No,” I say, and then, “Thank you.” She taps her lower lip with her chopsticks. “You should meet my friend Keita. He runs a tiny venue in an alley near the river. They do noise nights where everyone brings something that makes sound. You’d fit.” “I don’t—fit,” I say automatically. “You’d fit,” she says, as if it’s decided. “And if you hate it, we’ll leave and get taiyaki and make fun of everyone. Including me.” “I wouldn’t make fun of you,” I say. “Well, try,” she says. “It’s good for me.” “You’re…good,” I say again. “Okay, okay, we’re back to that.” She laughs. “You’re good too. At hearing. At putting it into words.” I feel the compliment like a warm current. “Thank you.” Her phone buzzes on the table. She glances at it and silences it with her palm. “I’m supposed to head to Umeda later. Play in the tunnel. But we can hang until then.” “You have to play again?” “Gotta pay for my house of cards.” She gestures at the amp. “And for your ladder filter.” “It’s not—your job,” I say, a reflex. “I mean, if you let me borrow it sometimes,” she says, eyes teasing. “You can,” I say. “If—when I get it.” “When,” she echoes, pleased. “So. What did you think of my bridge? Was it too much? I slow down the run because my fingers don’t quite—” “It was…clean,” I say. “But if you want it to match the festival version, the third note in bar two—if you bend slightly sharper, the tension—” I stop, mortified. “Sorry.” “Don’t be.” She picks up the last piece of tamago and offers it. I blink; then she pops it on my plate instead. “I want that. Bend sharper, third note. Okay. Will you point when I do it?” “If I—come,” I say. “To Umeda.” “Come.” She says it like a certainty. “I’ll text you the spot. Do you—” “I don’t—have it,” I say quickly. “A phone. I mean, I have one, but it’s…dead. The battery. I forgot the…cord.” “Of course you did,” she says, affectionate. “Okay, plan B.” She digs in her bag and pulls out a wrapped piece of string and a pen. She untangles a paper napkin and writes her name, a number, a tiny guitar doodle next to it, neat even in haste. “Here. I am reachable. Old school.” I take it carefully, as if it might break. “I’ll—text. When I plug in.” “Do that.” She watches me fold the napkin and tuck it into my wallet like it’s a secret mission. “And if you don’t, I’ll assume you’re trapped in a tower of power supplies and come rescue you.” “I—okay,” I say. She leans back, satisfied. “So that modulation. Teach me how to cheat it on six strings.” “You can’t…cheat,” I say. “But you can fake it. If you slide up a semitone under the chord and—” I hold my hands up like I’m playing keys in the air, fingers finding the phantom shapes. “If you outline the new key before the band goes there, the ear—” “Wants it,” she finishes, eyes bright. “Yes.” “Yes,” I say, and when she nods, my headphones slide. We both reach up this time, me to push, her to pretend to catch. It turns into a shared silly gesture, and we both laugh a little, the same pitch. The belt hums. The plates stack higher

Model Output:
The first time my watch beeped, I thought it was just another update. “New feature: Recap,” the screen said in tiny white letters. The strap still had that rubbery new smell, and the face caught the fluorescents of the hallway as I tilted my wrist to read it. I’d begged Dad for months for the ZenoVibe. It was supposed to count steps, do texts, and make me look less like a seventh grader who still wore his hoodie with the sleeves pulled over his hands. “Nice toy, Hubbard.” Tony Meyers slapped the back of my head as he passed in the hallway. My name is Dylan, but Tony never called anyone by their name unless it was to say it wrong. “Don’t drop it in the toilet.” I was forming the perfect comeback—something about him needing a watch to tell time since he couldn’t read a clock—when the bell rang and my brain lost its place. That’s what I needed. A recap. I pressed the side button without thinking, the way the ad showed, two taps and a twist. The screen flashed blue, then everything slid like someone pulled the floor three inches sideways. My stomach did a roller coaster flip and the world hiccuped. And then I was standing in the hallway, hoodie sleeves over my hands, Tony approaching with his stretched-out smirk. “Nice toy, Hubbard.” The exact same slap to the head. This time my jaw didn’t hang open. I didn’t stumble. “Careful,” I said, because I had the time to think, “your knuckles are dragging.” It was lame, but it landed. Tony blinked. Someone snorted behind him. The bell rang; he moved on. I stared at my watch. No one else had reacted to the glitch. I hadn’t blacked out. My breath came quick, white at the edges. I pressed the button again and promptly regretted it, because the staircase lurched backward and I snapped to the moment three seconds before someone at the top dropped their binder. “Watch it!” a girl yelped. This time, I caught the binder. Papers didn’t spray like confetti. The girl—Ava from homeroom—looked at me like I’d levitated. “Thanks.” That day I used it ten times. Fifteen. Miss a problem in math? Rewind, fix the sign. Dropped my tray in the cafeteria? Rewind, pivot with grace. I had always thought of life like a long, messy homework sheet with no erasers. Turns out, all I needed was firmware. After school, I took a shortcut behind the gym where the dumpsters were, because sometimes the band left their drumsticks in the grass. That’s when I saw the cat. It was gray with blotches the color of overripe peaches and a kink in its tail like someone had bent a pipe cleaner. It sat on the low wall near the bike racks and watched me with unblinking yellow-green eyes that cut through me like high beams. I hesitated. I’ve never been much of a cat person. They were a lot like science teachers—silent, always knowing more than you thought. It didn’t flinch when I got close. I could see the little notch in its left ear, ragged and pink. It blinked slowly. I held my hand out; it flicked its tail. There was a weird little shiver over my skin, a sense of recognition like seeing a class photo of your older cousin when he looked your age. I ignored it. I had rewound myself into a good day. I had a binder saved, a bully zinged, and a cat who liked me. That night, the watch buzzed my wrist as I did my homework. “Extended Recap available,” it whispered. A tiny clock icon unspooled like a tape measure around the edge of the screen. I should’ve read the manual. But manuals are for dads. I hit buttons instead. The next day felt like walking downhill and discovering halfway you were on roller skates. My shirt tugged at my shoulders. My sleeves were shorter. When I hit the restroom between second and third period, I lifted my chin to the mirror and tilted my head. The face looking back was mine, but also not—like the person I’d see if I squinted at a yearbook labeled “Eighth grade.” The fuzz on my upper lip was darker. A zit had popped up on my chin like a mushroom after rain. My hair looked like it had decided to grow overnight, brushing my eyebrows. When had my voice started sitting lower in my throat? I cleared it experimentally and watched it ripple the mirror’s surface in my imagination. I rubbed my jaw. It felt sharper. I had always been short enough to slip through crowds. Standing at my locker before lunch, I looked over heads I used to look around. “Dude,” said Ben from science, “did you get taller?” “New shoes,” I said. It came out like I’d been gargling gravel. I told myself it was sleep. Eleven-year-olds grew. Almost twelve. It wasn’t like I had done anything. Rewinding hadn’t taken days off the calendar. The date in the corner of the screen was still October 3. After school, the cat waited on the wall. It watched me pass the first time, and its tail thumped a weird little rhythm. When I rewound to catch a fly ball in gym that Coach had pegged straight at my face, I came outside later than before. The cat was there again, head tilting. Same little notch, same green eyes. But this time, as I walked by, it stood, stepped forward, and rubbed its side against my leg like we were old friends. It did the same thing after the next rewind. Tail flick, bump. “Hey, buddy,” I said. It blinked slow, the way cats do when they trust you. Or maybe when they recognize a pattern. The problem with having a magic button is you start using it for everything. Spill milk? Rewind. Say something cringe? Rewind and un-say it. I lived five versions of Thursday the following week and settled on the one where I answered every question in Language Arts before Ava did and got the best laugh in the cafeteria with a stupid impression of our principal. Mom noticed. “Did you… steal a razor?” she asked, standing in the kitchen doorway, half amused, half concerned. “Because your face… your voice…” “I’m fine,” I said. The voice didn’t sound like mine when it did the protest thing, high and squeaky. It dipped and cracked like an old floorboard. At school, teachers stopped saying “Are you okay?” and started saying “Young man.” Tony bumped me in the hall and then stopped, frowning, because he had to look up a bit to do it. “Weird,” he muttered, and didn’t slap my head. I should have stopped. Except then Coach announced the tryouts for the soccer team. I’d wanted to be on a team since forever. My feet were always a step behind my brain, though. I would think about what to do and do it one second too late. With a watch that could create an extra second, that didn’t have to be true. The field was a bright rectangle under the Friday sun. Sweat slid down my back, and my socks bunched in my shoes like rolled parchment. “Hubbard,” Coach called, “left wing.” He tossed me a pinny; I pulled it over my head. The cattail weeds by the fence whispered in the wind. Somewhere, a car alarm chirped. We scrimmaged. I missed a pass. The whistle blew. Tap tap, twist. The world slid. We reset. The ball kissed my instep and traveled like I meant it to. Whoops from the sidelines. Ping. Reset again, again. My legs burned like I’d been running for hours. My lungs felt tight, but I kept moving. The world stuttered once, twice. Noon light jittered like a strobe. On the fourth reset, I saw her—the cat by the fence line, crouched under the bleachers. It didn’t blink. It stared right through me, then flicked its ears back flat like it was bracing for thunder. The knot in its ear looked raw, fresh. My wrist tingled. I scored. It was easy, in that messy after-the-fact way. I’d done it three different ways already; this was just the one that stuck. I stopped running only when Coach blew the whistle and threw his hands up. “Nice footwork, Hubbard,” he said, startled and pleased. The team crowded around, slapping my shoulders, my back. Hands left sweaty prints on my pinny. Their faces tilted up toward mine. I was taller than almost all of them. When had that happened? Their voices sounded distant. My heart hammered. My skin felt too tight. “What you looking at?” Tony said later at the fence, following my gaze. “The cat.” “You gonna adopt it? You two kinda match.” He made a little clawing motion. I opened my mouth to say something sharp. The watch buzzed. “Battery low,” it said smugly on my wrist. As if in response, things started to fray. Ava didn’t meet my eyes at lunch. On Monday, Mr. Parker announced we had a pop quiz in science, and the questions were all about stuff we hadn’t covered. “Uh,” I said, and then stopped, because I had covered this. In the version where Mr. Parker wore a green tie and the projector had a crack across the corner. But this tie was red, and the crack wasn’t there. I rewound, blinking, tried to find the branch where I’d studied that chapter. The screen pulsed. The room slid. My stomach flipped. When the world set, my desktop had an old nick in it that I didn’t remember. Mr. Parker’s hair had a gray streak that hadn’t been there last week. “Eyes on your own paper, Dylan,” he said sharply, as if he had said that to me before, a dozen times. My skin went cold. The more I tried to crawl back to the place where everything lined up, the farther I got from it. That afternoon, I rounded the corner to my locker and ran into the vice principal. She frowned at me like I had put graffiti on her minivan. “We need to talk about your fight in the cafeteria,” she said. “I didn’t—” “You’ve been getting into it with Meyers all semester, and this is the last straw.” Last semester? My hand went cold. I hadn’t fought anyone. I’d avoided fights with a two-tap-and-twist. Except the world disagreed. Somewhere, in some version, fists had been thrown. Somewhere else, I’d shove-left when I should have ducked-right. The versions were leaking into each other. The bulk of the future was rolling toward me with all my footprints stamped into it, and they didn’t match. Outside, the cat sat on the wall near the bike rack and watched me struggle. When I rewound to avoid the vice principal, snapping myself back to turning the corner, the cat looked at me. Not just in the generic cat way, but with a look that made my breath catch. It knew. It lifted one paw and put it down again, like a metronome. I pressed the button and ran. Each tap pulled me backward and dropped me forward. Kids blurred. Hallways doubled up like they were folding in a funhouse mirror. By the time I stumbled into the parking lot, the light was different—colder, the edges of the clouds sharper like cut felt. The cat leaped off the wall and intercepted me, weaving between my legs, forcing me to stop. It meowed, a low sound that vibrated my bones. Its eyes were green like my watch’s glow. I crouched without meaning to, hands on my knees, lungs burning. The cat head-butted my wrist. I looked down. The watch face had a hairline crack across the edge that hadn’t been there. Around the little clock icon, tiny tick marks had lit up, one by one, until only three were dark. “Resets remaining: 3,” the watch displayed. “You knew about this?” I asked the cat. It blinked. My hands shook as I swiped through the menus. “TimeFrame,” “Undo,” “Sync.” There was a warning I hadn’t seen: Extended Recap may cause chronological offsets. Prolonged use may have side effects including time-skips, chronological dissonance, growth acceleration— I stopped. I didn’t need the rest of the sentence. I could feel it. My knees ached like I’d run a marathon. The sleeves of my hoodie that had been down to my knuckles on Monday barely reached my wrists now. Tiny dark hairs stippled along my forearms. People weren’t just treating me differently because I acted different. I looked older. And something else: my reflection in the dark surface of the watch face, warped by the crack, was older than I was ready to see. Older than my mom’s “not yet, baby” voice from when she saw me eyeing Dad’s razor. And the world was wrong. My science quiz had questions from next month. Ava looked at me like I was a stranger who had borrowed Dylan’s old hat. The vice principal thought I’d been in fights I’d carefully avoided by cheating time. It wasn’t just about getting into eighth grade a week early. I’d cut a dozen threads and then tried to braid them together, and I had created a rope that was too thick to run through the pulley. It was grinding and smoking and threatening to snap. The watch buzzed again: Low power. “Okay,” I said to the cat, because it was there and it was listening with that unblinking intensity like I was a present about to be unwrapped. “Okay, I messed up.” The cat’s tail tick-ticked against the pavement. “Rectify,” the menu said. It was grayed out. I jabbed at it anyway. “Rectify unavailable without full charge.” I laughed in a way that tipped into almost crying. I had to fix this. I had to roll back far enough that the timelines fell into the groove they were supposed to be in. “One more,” I said. “Just once more. A big one.” The cat stepped closer until its whiskers brushed my knuckles. It purred. I could feel it, a steady engine, a clock in reverse. “I know, I know,” I said, because what else do you say to a cat that might be the only thing in the world that recognizes the version of you that hasn’t been born yet? I pressed and held the side button. The watch vibrated so hard it buzzed my bones. “Extended Recap warning,” it said. “Proceed?” I swallowed. My throat clicked. “Proceed.” The world didn’t just slide. It bled. The edges bled into each other, the parking lot smearing into the hallway, the hallway into the classroom, the classroom into the locker room and the locker grating against my knuckles with the metallic taste of fear and dust in my mouth. I saw my mother with her hand on the doorway, the razor question on her lips. I saw Tony’s hand coming down and my own going up to catch it. I saw Ava’s binder explode and papers lift like migrating geese and then slot back into place in the trifold folder with the worn corner. My stomach turned inside out. My heart hammered backward. My voice shrank in my chest like a balloon losing air. The cat’s eyes glowed in every place. It was sitting on the lab table. It was perched on the locker. It was crouched under the bleachers. It was on the wall. Every time I rewound, it was there, looking straight at me, and its look didn’t change the way everyone else’s did. In one of the flashes, I saw it on a windowsill, small enough to fit in my palm, eyes huge and blue. In another, it was older, missing the notch, ears whole. It had been watching a long time. My knees hit pavement. The air snapped like a rubber band. The parking lot solidified around me. My stomach threatened to exit through my throat. The watch went dark. I sat like that for a while, hunched over, hands braced on the ground. The scent of hot asphalt burned my nose. A leaf skittered. Somewhere, a whistle blew. “Dylan?” a voice said. High, familiar. Ava crouched, her knees popping. She was on her way to the buses. “Are you okay?” She looked like she always did. Her eyes met mine like they remembered catching a binder and it was today, not a past we’d edited to death. “My… uh,” I said. My voice cracked up and stayed there. The ground stopped tilting. I wiped my mouth on my sleeve. “You look pale.” She pulled a hair tie off her wrist and snapped it on her ponytail. “You should get water.” I nodded. My hand shook. I flexed my fingers. They were thinner than they had been an hour ago. My wrist bones made little ridges under my skin. The little dark hairs were gone from my forearms. The hoodie sleeve fell past my knuckles. My reflection in the watch face—dark, cracked—showed a kid who had to stand on his toes to reach the top shelf. The cat jumped off the wall. It landed neat, like it knew exactly where the ground would be. It approached, tail up like a question mark. It sat in front of me, looked up, and did the slow blink again. I reached out with slow hands. It pressed its head into my fingers like it had been waiting for me to catch up. I lifted my wrist. The watch was black. No glow. No buzz. A thin, visible line traced across its face like the wrinkle you get from sleeping with your cheek against the pillow. The “Rectify” button was as dark as everything else. I pressed it anyway. Nothing. “What’s with the cat?” Ava asked. She smiled. “It likes you.” I laughed because it was either that or cry like a baby. “We know each other,” I said. “From where?” “Long story.” On Monday, Mr. Parker gave us a quiz on exactly what we’d covered. My desktop had the same nick it always had. The vice principal walked by me in the hallway and didn’t see me at all. Tony’s slap stung the same way it had the first time, and when I turned, a dozen comebacks crowded my mouth. I chose the one I always had. It didn’t land. The world didn’t slide. There was no Recap to be had. I went to the bathroom and stared at the face in the mirror. It grinned at me, chipped tooth and all. My voice when I said “hey” was thin and bright. After school, the cat was

Model Output:
The first bulbs sputtered on with a noise like frying fat, throwing ragged shields of light onto the boards and the faces moving past in fits and starts. The shooting gallery seemed to tilt under the bleed of sound—tins clattering, bells ringing, a man barking for nickels with a voice that could peel paint. Beyond, the ocean was a dark mouth curling back on itself, gulping and sighing in a rhythm that made me think of something breathing. I felt the way you do in the dentist’s waiting room before the door opens: strapped between expectation and dread, wanting both. His locks. It was as if the phrase dropped from a mezzanine inside my skull, bouncing and coming to rest out of place. Ridiculous. Victorian. Dangerous. His locks. I had no business thinking of them the way I did: those obsidian curls that had spilled low over his brow when he leaned in the last time, the delicate, deliberate pause between his movements, the gravity he made out of a smile. I’d seen him twice, and I’d left with my tongue feeling too large for my mouth both times, with the sense of an appointment I hadn’t made and couldn’t get out of. “Miss,” someone said behind me, a porter with a case of soda on his shoulder, and I moved to let him pass. The sodium light above us hummed, flickered, gave up for a beat, and rallied again with a mean pulse. One bulb hung unlit like a dead tooth in an electric grin. The carnival smelled of sugar burned brown and wet wood and something metallic underneath. “Good evening,” a voice said, not right at my shoulder but near enough to prove he liked the alarm he caused. “You came.” I turned, though it felt like I had already turned before I moved. The light caught him in fragments—cheekbone, mouth, the line near the corner of his eye—and made a pattern of darkness and heat over his features. His hair was slicked back tonight but it had already escaped the style; a soft curl had fallen forward near his temple. The lure of it worked like a magnet. “You invited me,” I said. “I doubted you’d accept.” “And I doubt you doubt anything.” He smiled, a little, like we’d agreed on a game. “You don’t know me.” “It appears I am determined to change that.” I heard my voice and did not recognize it; it belonged to a woman I had been once or had wanted to be. My heart did that peculiar pedestrian quickening like it did when crossing a boulevard against traffic. He had on a dark suit that dated him to no particular hour, shirt collar open, a handkerchief tucked too carelessly to be careless. His eyes—darker than the space between the lights, darker than the sea—dragged over my face like a thumb across a mouth. “Walk with me?” he asked. “Yes.” The word surprised me with how satisfied it sounded. We fell into step. The crowd divided itself for us and stitched itself behind us again, a seam. Children with striped balloons dashed and collided, a string wrapped round a sister’s wrist, a mother in a cheap fox collar scolding in a stage whisper that promised retribution. The shooting gallery operators lifted rifles with the ease of men who had slept with guns, thumbed their sights back into alignment after small sticky hands had smeared them. Somewhere a carousel took up a tired waltz, the notes arriving with salt attached. “You didn’t call,” I said, when silence gathered too much. “I don’t call.” “How decidedly modern,” I murmured. “How very old,” he said. “A summons should arrive in person or not at all.” “And was that what it was? A summons?” He watched my mouth. “You answered.” His locks. The phrase went through me again, ridiculous lockstep, but the idea underneath was not ridiculous at all. I could picture my fingers where they had no right to be. His curls were like sin made tactile. “You never told me your name,” I said. A woman with a clutch of fake pearls brushed my arm and apologized in a voice that told me she would never, in fact, be sorry. He considered me as if I had asked something indecent. “Names make everything smaller. I prefer the boat to the bottle.” “And yet we’re all called something.” “If I told you a name,” he said, “would you trust it? Would it quiet you?” “I am not noisy,” I said, breath catching on the lie. He turned his head. The light washed him, then withdrew. “Aren’t you? Inside?” I looked at the water. The sea adjusted its dress, lifted its hem, advanced, retreated, smiled without warmth. My husband liked to say that I made an opera out of a telegram. “Perhaps I like the noise,” I said. He stopped, and so I stopped. We stood shoulder to shoulder and looked at the rows of painted ducks drifting along a tin river waiting to be shot. The setup was ungenerous; their backs were barely half-exposed. The attendant smoothed his hair and shouted to a man with a sailor’s cap, “Five for a dime! Hit three, get a prize, fella! Hit four, and I’ll give you your fortune back too!” A woman with her lipstick higher at one side than the other fired and missed and fired again and clipped a duck’s tail, laughter careering out of her like she’d stolen it. “You don’t belong here,” the man beside me said softly. “As opposed to where?” He tilted his head in the direction of the fanciest of the lights. “There.” “And you?” I asked. “Where do you belong?” He looked down at my hand resting on the rail, the knuckle gone white and the faint line where my wedding ring had been before I slipped it into my pocket. He did not glance at my pocket. He did not need to. “I belong wherever I am,” he said. “That’s why people dislike me.” “Confident,” I said. “Unapologetic,” he corrected. He reached for a rifle the attendant had set down, not asking. The attendant started to protest and then swallowed it when the stranger turned the gun to consider its balance with a grief I recognized: the first time you understand the weight of a thing with purpose. He glanced at me. “Do you shoot?” “No.” “Would you like to?” “Not with you.” He accepted the rebuke like a compliment. He lifted the rifle with one hand and, without shouldering it, knocked three ducks in a row, metal sparking, tin ducks jerking as if insulted. The attendant clapped and frowned at the same time, aware of a display that meant he wouldn’t sell what he wanted to. “Practice makes efficient,” the stranger said, laying the rifle back on its felt. “Or careless.” “Not always.” He gestured toward a tent that had been patched and repatched, a colorful monstrosity with a fortune-teller’s name painted in script that made it sound like a song. The sodium light over its entrance stuttered a lament. “Come.” He didn’t take my arm. He took my yes for granted. “I shouldn’t,” I said, because the word tasted good. “You don’t have to,” he said, because he was not merciful. Inside the tent it was cooler, not by temperature but by character. The air smelled of cigarettes smoked quickly so as not to be seen, of cheap perfume applied with a hopeful hand. A woman in a headscarf yawned, stuck a pin into her hair to hold something in place, and looked at us as if we were already foretold. “Fortune?” she asked, too bored to make it a mystery. He paid without counting. The woman took his coin without gratitude. Her bracelets knocked together like teeth. She looked at me, not him. “Shuffle.” I took the cards because it seemed easier to behave than not. They were soft at the edges, and they gave under my fingers the way skin does under repeated touch. I made a mess of them. The woman smiled for the first time. “You cut,” she told him, and he placed his palm on the deck and lifted exactly the number of cards he meant to. The woman turned them over with slowed-down laziness. The Lovers. The Tower. The Moon. It was a cheap stack, I knew that, a step up from dice loaded with salt. It didn’t matter. The absence was louder than the present. My mouth went dry. “Bad omens,” the woman said mechanically. “Conflict, change, secrets. Beware of a dark man.” She glanced at him and then at me and then back at him. “And a dark woman.” I wanted to ask which one was me. “Thank you,” he said, and his tone left the future like a tipped drink. He led me out with a look rather than a touch. The lights outside were brighter now, taking up more territory in the air. We said nothing for a while. It was almost art, the not-speaking. He steered me away from the denser crowd and into the shadow between two booths. The boards had damp in them that came through the soles of my shoes. I was close enough that if he reached out I could count the scars on his knuckles. He didn’t. His restraint made the place between my shoulder blades ache. “What do you want?” he asked. “Now?” “Now.” “To not be asked that question,” I said, and laughed because I felt like crying. “Almost everyone wants that,” he said. “Do you know what your ring tastes like? Gold is disgusting. It tastes like a tooth pulled with a napkin.” He looked at my pocket, not my hand. “I have no appetite for it.” “You’re very sure.” “I’m right,” he said, not unkindly. “Why are you here? You could have stayed home. You could have gone to a picture show. You could have gone to church and lit a candle for the boy with the curls who smiled at you on a train.” His locks. Say it and swallow it. I thought of the space in my apartment where the clock ticked too loudly, of the way the hallway smelled like boiled cabbage and sincerity, of the photograph on the shelf that I dusted around. I thought of the way I had said my husband’s name the last time, as if I were remembering it rather than invocating. The ocean roared a bit, then subsided as if embarrassed by the effort. “I came because you told me you don’t call,” I said, and he smiled again. He stepped forward, half an inch too far. I felt the edge of the board press against the back of my heel. He lifted his hand and stopped it in the space near my face, hovering like a saint’s hand in a painting that never touches out of respect for a subject. The curl at his temple had loosened further, a question mark daring me to commit improper grammar. “You can go,” he said. “At any point. That’s the only rule.” “That’s not a rule,” I said. “That’s a dare.” He watched how I gathered breath. “Yes.” The sodium light above us shuddered and went dark. In the two seconds before the neighboring bulbs filled the gap, we were a rumor of outlines, two people with no names and the same number of sins. When the light came back it brought with it a coldness that felt not like air but like consequence. “Tell me your name,” I said. “Not yet.” “Then tell me something true.” He thought. It seemed to inconvenience him, and I liked that. “I do not ask for forgiveness,” he said. “I do not offer it. I am very good at a small number of things. I don’t tell men’s wives to lie, but I make it easy for them to think it’s not lying.” “You’ve rehearsed that,” I said. “I’ve lived it,” he said. There was laughter behind us rolling forward like a wave. Someone had won a stuffed dog too large to carry and was dragging it by its ear. The barker shouted without breath, “Last rounds! Last rounds! Make your shots count, boys, it’s getting dark!” “It’s getting dark,” I repeated, and he lowered his hand at last. He didn’t touch me. He reached into his pocket and brought out a coin and showed it to me on his palm. It was ordinary, dull. He closed his fingers around it and opened them again, and the coin was gone. “You shouldn’t use parlor tricks,” I said, though my body said otherwise. “They soften the blow.” He took a step back, and something inside me followed. “Will you come again?” “You haven’t asked.” He bowed the smallest bow a man can bow and still call it one, his curl falling forward as if drawn. “Come again.” I looked past him over the rail, at the dull throb of the sea and the glint of bolts in the boards like eyes watching. The ring in my pocket weighed nothing and everything. There was a little girl upstairs in my building who liked to press a penny into bread before eating it for luck. I thought of that and of the metal taste in my mouth that arrived with the realization that I was more alive here in the shadows on Coney Island than in the clean, bright places where my name was known and said right. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll come again.” “Good girl,” he said, so lightly it could have been a cough, so low that if I had declined, I could have pretended I didn’t hear. And then he was gone for a moment, into the human current, his back folding into the dark as if he were swallowed by the evening itself. I stood there long enough for the reluctant light to flicker twice more. The shooting gallery wound down, metal ducks finding their rest, the last of the rifles leaned barrel to barrel like men who had told each other a secret. When I turned to go, I walked as if my hip bones had shifted. The boardwalk sighed under me with sympathy or warning—I couldn’t tell. His locks. They would not leave me. I let them stay. I let them crown me with their bad, soft weight. The ocean pretended indifference. The night began its inventory. Somewhere behind me, a voice called last call, and I did not look back. I knew he was there, or not, neither mattering as much as the fact that I had answered him without a name, and that he had called me good when I did not want to be. And that I had liked it. Too much. Not enough. Both.

Model Output:
They ate by lantern light that night, the propane sputtering in little rattles like a man clearing a throat. The lodge’s kitchen smelled of bleach and venison and damp wool. Someone had hung their socks over the stove, and they were steaming like little ghosts. Mike told a story about a guy from town who fell through river ice the winter before, and father—Dad, except JT hadn’t called him that in years—laughed in that dry way of his, eyes creasing but not his mouth. The wind pushed at the eaves and the logs creaked as if settling deeper into the frost. Nothing unusual. You could tell yourself that, sure. Ordinary. “Tomorrow we go deeper,” Dad said, carving a slice off a roast that bled a little too much, slicking his knife in a tidal motion. “They’ll be moving. Pressure’s dropping.” JT nodded and stared at the pink bead of meat as if it might blink. “Okay.” Mike tilted back his chair and grinned. “You ain’t gonna fall behind this time, kid.” “I didn’t fall behind.” “You were fiddlin’ with your shoelace like a Sunday school boy.” Dad didn’t look up. “Doesn’t matter. Put your head on straight and stay with us.” JT took a bite of meat, chewed until his jaw hurt, swallowed. He wanted to tell them about the way the buck had stood, about the heat that had rolled out of its body like breath from an oven, about something he thought he’d heard when Dad’s hand had been an inch from its muzzle. A whisper, maybe. A name, maybe. Or maybe that was bullshit. Maybe he was just tired. There were mouse droppings behind the coffee tins. There were spiderwebs in the corners of the ceiling that had collected moth husks, brittle things like curled paper. The long drive north did that to you—put a wire in your head that hummed for hours afterward. The woods leaning closer. The air thick in your mouth. He was sleeping on the couch, the one with the busted spring that pressed like a thumb into your spine. He lay awake while the men’s conversation in the other room thinned to mutters and then to the soft susurration of sleep. He could hear the wind pick up. He could hear the lake out back slapping itself, slow as an animal breathing. And he could hear something else, too. Faint, under it all. Like someone speaking low through a wall. Just at the edge of—no. No, that was the propane hiss. That was the old floor sucking and releasing under heat. That was nothing at all. JT rolled onto his side, pressed his face into the cushion that smelled like mildew and cedar, and told himself to think of the first day of school years ago—the smell of chalk dust and floor wax and the sheen of his new sneakers. That was a trick he’d learned. Pick a different room in your head. Close the door. When sleep came, it dragged him into a dream so ordinary he almost laughed when he realized he was inside it. He was on the porch of the lodge, and the morning was the particular pewter-gray of late October, and the coffee in his hands was too hot, and his father was tightening a strap on his pack. Mike had a hunter’s orange cap crooked on his skull like a joke. The rifles leaned against the clapboards. A crack in the porch rail widened as he watched, the old wood splitting, and it opened on blackness. Not rot. Not space. Just black, like the part of a pupil that keeps you out. He woke with a stitch in his side as if he’d been running. The lantern had burned down to a sullen glow. For a minute he didn’t know where he was. Then the smell of the place re-assembled around him, the lodge putting itself back together: damp wool, old meat, wood smoke someone had burned years ago, the faint ammonia tang of mouse piss. He went to the sink and turned the cold tap. The pipes clanged in the walls and then gave him water that tasted like pennies. His face in the window was just a reflection until it wasn’t—until, for a heartbeat, the darkness behind the glass felt like a room, and his face was being watched by nothing, by the absence of his own shape. “Stop,” he whispered. “Cut it out.” He wasn’t sure whether he meant the lodge or himself. They moved out at dawn. The woods took their first steps alongside them, all frost-brittle grass and the clap of crow wings overhead. Somewhere far off, a tree cracked like a rifle shot as the temperature shifted. The world had been stripped down to its bone colors—browns and grays and the flat white scar where the old logging road ran between the birches. When the sun pulled itself up from behind the low hills, it made the ice on the sumac glow. Pretty, if you were soft about that kind of thing. JT found he didn’t have that softness in him anymore. They walked without talking. Dad didn’t put his hand on JT’s shoulder or glance back to see if he was keeping up. Mike whistled something between his teeth like an old song he couldn’t quite remember, the notes falling and breaking in the cold air. The rifles rode easy on their shoulders. They saw tracks where the old power line cut through the woods—a place the locals called the Scar, where the mud never quite dried because the machines had passed, opened the earth and let something under it taste the air. The prints were fresh, deep. Dad squatted, touched a finger to the edge of one. He sniffed the air. He looked at JT and then looked away. Ahead, the trail bent and narrowed where the saplings had begun to knit together, all twig and hook, and then broadened into a little opening stubbled with grass where a bench sat under a pitched roof. The bench was made of rough-hewn logs and had names carved into it: TERRY, JAX, THE HOOCH KING, little memories hacked in with pocketknives. The roof was silvered plywood. Beyond that, deeper in, was the old path to the abandoned cabin. Nobody said cabin. People said the place. Or they said, you know, that old so-and-so. Or they didn’t say anything and just walked faster past the trailhead, eyes straight ahead. “Not that way,” Mike said, too quickly, when JT slowed. “Didn’t say I wanted to,” JT said. Dad’s face had gone blank. “We’re cutting east,” he said. “Stay on me.” JT looked down the narrow way that led to the cabin. You wouldn’t know it was there unless you did—unless you’d walked to it before. The pines crowded in, the air a darker color, and there was a feel to it like a mouth breath. When they were kids, Mike and his friends had dared each other to sleep there. JT never went. He always said he didn’t want to get chewed up by whatever mosquitoes lived there even in October. Truth was, there were stories. The man who had built it had built it twice—first in his head when his wife left, then in the woods after. He’d left a dog out there when he died. Some people said you could still hear the dog. Some people said the dog came inland one winter, fat and happy and wrong, and knocked up a she-wolf. A cousin claimed the place had a basement you couldn’t find unless you were already in it. In other words: childish things. In other words: not for nothing, boys don’t go down there. But the path was a kind of tug. JT felt it take the cuff of his coat and pull. They circled it wide, like a sickhouse in a plague town. For a while the woods were only woods—black spruce, a spatter of fungi that looked like little tallow candles, the soft rise and fall of ground that had settled over buried logs. A squirrel cursed them with its shaky machine-gun voice and then fled, whipping its tail behind it. They saw droppings and new scrapes and once the shadow of movement ahead, dissolving the moment his eye landed on it. It was hunting as he remembered, the long stretches of patience and the little spikes of hope and the iced-over core of dread you pretended you didn’t keep: not dread of the kill, but of the moment right before, the universe hinged on a trigger you weren’t sure you should pull. At midmorning, fog slid in from the marsh. It came low, at shin level, and then rose, a slow theater curtain. Dad stopped. He had his head cocked as if listening to a radio with the volume turned low. Mike’s mouth was open just a notch, the way it gets when he’s trying to remember a word. JT watched their breath pluming white and then disappearing into the thicker, milkier air. “You smell that?” Mike said. “Like cedar.” “Like water,” Dad said. Like the inside of an empty shell, JT thought. And then he thought, No: like the lodge when you’re alone in it, like the idea of a house after everyone has left, when the air itself is what keeps it standing. He was tired enough that his thoughts had to reach for each other across gaps. A shape moved in the fog. Not a shape—an absence. The missing of a shape. He knew it was big because of the way the air parted around it. He felt the hair rise on his arms and under his shirt as if a cold hand passed up his spine. “Caribou,” Dad said, so softly. “There.” He raised his rifle and then lowered it. He took a step forward, not like a hunter, like a man walking into surf. Mike took the same step. JT wanted to say no. He wanted to say stop. The words wouldn’t line up. His tongue sat heavy in his mouth like something someone else had put there. The figure resolved: dark hide beaded with moisture, antlers tangled and heavy with veils of the fog. The animal’s eyes were the same dark as before, flat but not dull, like someone had polished the glass inside. It stood as if at a crossroads, the world touched up around it with a careful hand. Mist curled from its nostrils. It looked at them. It looked at JT. The air was warmer, suddenly. He felt it on his face, on the inside of his wrists where the pulse beats. His heart climbed his throat. And then—slick and easy as a soap bubble—the memory of the clearing lifted and floated in front of him, the way his father’s fingers trembled, the way the rifle had hung slack. He felt the same urge to look away. The same sense of shame. And layering under it, this time, was a message—no words, exactly, but the shape of words: you are here. He thought: it knows us. “Don’t,” JT said, not sure who he meant, and the word snapped in the cold like a dry stick. It was enough. Dad blinked. He looked down at his empty hand, suddenly aware of it, and he fumbled for his rifle and brought it up in a motion that was all muscle memory and years. The spell—God, JT thought, he was using that word—was broken. The caribou lifted its head, shook out its breath, and faded back into the gray. They didn’t fire. Nobody spoke. Fog clung to their skin as they backed away, as if reluctant to let them go. The woods took on that underwater feel, sound muted, every color cooled down two shades. When the fog lifted, it did so in a shrug, and they were standing at an angle that didn’t make sense. The path under their boots was the path to the cabin. “Christ,” Mike said, an ordinary word spoken full of fear. “We came around.” Dad stared. His jaw worked. “We didn’t,” he said, though the wooden bench with the names in it crouched in front of them, and beyond that the trail went into the dark-line trees like a throat. He looked down at the ground and the ground looked back at him. “We didn’t,” he said again, and it was a child’s denial, not belief but wanting the wanting to count for something. Nobody suggested turning around. Turning around felt like something the woods wanted. So they went forward. The trail narrowed and the light changed—less of it, more of it, both at once. The trees grew close, branches knitting over their heads with those black claws. The air smelled like cedar and wet iron. JT heard the water first, a flat shushing, and then they were on the cabin’s porch, and when had that happened? The cabin was the same as it had been in the stories and also not—shrunken and soft at the edges, the roof sagging under years of snow, the window on the right broken but the glass in it unfallen, held by cobwebs and frost like a single sheet of sugar. The door was stuck in its frame, crooked. Someone had nailed a horseshoe over the lintel. There were scratches deep around the handle at a height of three feet or so. The kind of marks a dog might make. “Place is dead,” Mike said, but his voice had gone thin. Dad pressed a hand to the door. He didn’t push. He didn’t turn the knob. He splayed his fingers on the weathered boards and closed his eyes. His lips moved. JT leaned in, not meaning to. He felt heat radiate from the wood. He felt an almost-sound, the way you feel thunder when you’re under the bed and your brother is counting. Oh, he thought, blank and white. Oh. “What are you doing?” JT said. It came out harsher than he meant. Dad opened his eyes. Whatever was in them did not dim. He took his hand away like he’d touched a stove. “Nothing.” A creak ran through the cabin. A floorboard? The roof restraining itself? The sound had a shape. It came from below. It came from the idea of the floor more than the floor itself. It said, in the blank language of beams and joists and nail heads: I bear weight. I wait. Mike laughed, quick and high, almost a hiccup. “Hear that?” He cocked his head, listening. “Probably a raccoon. Or something. Ain’t nothing here.” “No raccoons,” JT said, and he didn’t know why, except that the minute the words were out of his mouth he recognized the truth of them like touching a tooth and finding the hollow inside. No raccoons. No birdsong, either. No flies. No silence, not really, because there was a sound like breath being held just beyond the edge of hearing, and it felt old. “Let’s go,” Dad said. He said it like a man remembering his own name, something practiced and plain. “Let’s move on. East. There’s a stand of alder where—” The door knob turned. Just a fraction. The polished circle of metal glinted in the pale winter light. It moved like a heartbeat. It didn’t seem possible. JT felt the movement in the meat at the base of his thumb, a sympathetic twitch. Nobody touched it. Nobody breathed. The door shivered in its frame, a dog shaking off water. JT saw, impossibly, that the scratches around the handle had fresh wood splinters at their edges, pale as bone. He smelled something sweet and low and hill-country: a rot that wasn’t ugly so much as patient. He thought, This is the payoff. The words ran across the surface of his mind like a subtitle on an old movie, and he hated himself. He hated the idea of a shape to this, the tidiness of it. His eyes blurred. When he blinked, the world snapped back to its meaner order. Dad raised the rifle. What he aimed at was unclear. The door? The idea of the door? The self that the door suggested, waiting in there? JT had the thought—fast and mean—that if his father fired into the place it would be like wounding a man in his sleep. He reached out and closed his hand over the barrel and pushed it down. His palm burned. He smelled oil and iron. “Don’t,” he said again, and now it was a plea. The knob held its breath. The woods held theirs. Mike’s grin had broken into pieces that didn’t match. The knob stopped. That was all. No slam. No whisper. The world resumed. Somewhere a crow called, the harsh caw like laughter turned inside out. JT realized how badly he was shaking and made his hands go still. He wondered, crazily, if the cabin had been opening the door not to get them in but to come out—to give them back something. He had a feeling—solid and cold as a coin in the bottom of a bucket—that if he came back alone, the door would be wide, and the warmth inside would make him cry. “We’re leaving,” Dad said. He spoke with the calm of a man who has walked away from the edge once too often to make a fuss about it. He didn’t look back. As they turned away, JT put his hand on the horseshoe without meaning to. It was ice-cold. He felt, for a second, an impression, like the press of a hand against his from the other side of the door. Bigger hand than his. He could have sworn it. “You felt that?” Mike said, almost excited, as if this were a game after all. “No,” JT said. They moved out of the dark of the path and into the thinner light. The fog had burned off. The names on the bench looked smaller. The Scar shone. JT could feel the tug of the day trying to reset itself around them, as if smoothing the wrinkles. The lodge was a shape he could hold in his head, the kitchen’s lantern playing its jittery light over the walls. The rifles would go back into their canvas, their smell of oil and satisfactions long ago. The woods would lean back. He kept looking over his shoulder even when he told himself not to. The look didn’t help. The feeling hung on him like a damp shirt: something had moved toward them. Not the deer. Not exactly the cabin. An arrangement. A possibility. The words someone else had put in his mouth. He didn’t tell them. He swallowed it. Safer that way. “You okay?” Dad asked once, without looking. “Yeah,” JT said. “Good,” Dad said. And then the crow called again, far off, and JT counted the beats between calls, and every number sounded like a name he didn’t know yet. The woods breathed in. The woods breathed out. They kept moving because stopping was worse. Because you never stand still for long in places that remember. Because you keep to your own perspective if you want to make it to

Model Output:
Morning in Pandemonium arrives not with sunlight but with the sound of a thousand damned souls hitting their daily quota of lamentation. The lamentation clock is punctual if nothing else. Lucifer wakes to it as one wakes to a trusted alarm: irritated, exhaling smoke, and faintly proud of the punctuality of one’s subordinates. He lies in bed, staring at the cracked basalt ceiling, counting the new fissures branching like lightning, and feeling the familiar itch of decision. He turns on his side. The other side of the bed is empty. In his dreams, she had visited. Not in violence; Lilith never wastes energy that early in the day. She had arrived with a mug and said, “You’re brooding,” and he had said, “It’s the décor.” Now, awake, he notices the faint smell of burnt cardamom and realizes it wasn’t a dream. She had stood there, once again, as if checking the weather, and then gone again. He sits up, snaps his fingers to conjure black coffee, and gets a disappointed little cackle from the air as a reminder that the Imp in charge of Beverage Services has unionized. He settles for what manifests: bitter sludge in a chipped mug that says World’s Best Sovereign, the Best crossed out with a sulfur-stained claw. It’s deeply unfunny and therefore the office favorite. Cerberus—Lucy keeps calling him Cerb in moments of undeserved affection, though the Hellhound answers to various household utensils thrown his way—has gnawed the iron throne’s left leg down to a resentful stump. Cerb is industriously chewing, eyes half-closed, in the smug trance of a creature doing exactly the one thing you wish it wouldn’t. Lucifer watches the metal filings scatter like gray snow. “Of all the legs,” Lucifer says. “Literally infinite legs to choose from.” Cerb pauses, snorts a puff of steam, and digs his teeth back in. Melted iron dribbles out the sides of his jaws. He wags his tail; it thumps against a fresh pile of repentance paperwork. A demon clerk shrieks from the doorway and flees. “Good boy,” Lucifer tells the dog, picturing Lilith’s arched eyebrow, her particular look that says: You never gave me the throne. He puts the mug down on a human skull that complains under the heat. The skull will warm to him by lunch. His morning is meetings. First, the Department of Unrepentant Tyrants wants a new motivational strategy. Attendance has been low in the screaming pits; the tyrants have been noting that the screams of others are insufficiently personalized. Lucifer gestures at a prepared slide deck that shows a bell curve of despair. “You see this tail,” he says. A demon raises a hand and eats it, embarrassed. “Sorry, reflex.” “Right. The tail. We need individualized screaming. Think artisanal anguish. Use their unresolved mother issues. We all have them.” He flicks the remote. The second slide is a pie chart titled Pie and Pain. It has no pies, only pain. He thinks Lilith would have made a better joke about it, something with flakier crust. After, he receives a courier imp bearing a note from God, the neat handwriting brisk and mildly amused. It says: Hope you’re having a pleasant eternity. P.S. We are discontinuing one of the older plagues due to supply chain problems. Sorry for any inconvenience re: locusts. Lucifer reads it twice, then flips it over. On the back, there’s a doodle of a sun with a smile. He folds the note carefully and slips it into the drawer with her letters, which is unfair to both of them and he knows it. At ten, the damned poets gather to read their latest draft of forever. He walks the aisles, listening, adjusting the heat under the seats, offering faint praise like drizzle. It would be easier if he could be cruel or kind without thinking of how Lilith prefers silence at readings, how she’d touch his elbow and steer him toward the exit long before the sonnets began anthropomorphizing the stalactites. He smiles at a metaphor about bones being white flags. He suggests fewer adverbs. He eats lunch with the foreman of the Nine and a minor archdemon who thinks the moral arc of the universe is bent toward better PR. He signs requisitions for more pitchforks, though he long ago banned pitchforks in favor of more ergonomic instruments. Everyone wants something today. He wants the dog to stop chewing. He does not say this aloud because he is the Prince of Lies and it seems gauche to admit to small truths. Lilith arrives at two and a half past two. She has the courtesy of big entrances but the kindness to minimize the smoke. The floor curls under her feet in a polite bow. The hellhound looks up, squeals, and rolls onto his back, revealing a belly that is a topography of scars and unrepented sins. She scratches the dog under all three chins. “Oh, don’t encourage him,” Lucifer says, standing, as if he hasn’t been sitting all morning waiting for a reason to stand. “He thinks he is a hammer.” “He thinks he is loved,” she says without looking at Lucifer, which is the kind of remark he will replay over centuries. She has cut her hair since he last saw her. It has the kind of sharpness that seems fatal. Her dress could be described as black, but only if one had never seen a void. Lilith does not smile unless it benefits her. She smiles. “I was in the neighborhood,” she says. “Thought I’d steal something.” “Take the throne,” Lucifer says, and gestures. “There’s less of it than usual. He’s been… improving it.” She looks at the gnawed leg, the drool trails, the melancholy puddle of iron filings. She looks at him. The unasked question sits between them momentarily, a guest who knows their name is unwelcome but stays anyway. She sits on the arm, the way she always has, the position that says: I never wanted this seat, I wanted you to offer it. He doesn’t, and hasn’t, and that’s why they are them. “I heard a rumor,” she says, pulling a small dagger from somewhere impossible and picking something from her nail. “That the martyrs have started a choir. You hate choirs.” “I dislike parallel harmonies,” he says. “They encourage consensus.” “And yet,” she says, “you bought them sheet music.” He supposes she saw the requisition on his desk. He supposes he wanted her to. He says, “What do you want, Lilith?” She tilts her head as if considering whether the question is edible. “Something trivial. A favor so small it is almost offensive to ask. I require a room.” “Our rooms are occupied,” he says. “By sins and memories.” “A modern room,” she says. “White walls, an absence of skulls. A bed you haven’t bled in. A lock that does not respond to your name.” “Impossible,” he says, immediately wanting to make it possible. She shrugs. Her shrug is an empire toppling. She leans to scratch Cerb again; the hellhound moans in something like ecstasy and chews harder, perhaps to impress her. The throne creaks. “You could ask God,” he says, nodding toward the drawer that holds a neat note and eight messy ones. “God gives what God wants to give,” she says. “You give what you want to take away.” “That is slander,” he says, mildly. “I know,” she says, and smiles without humor. “That’s why it’s fun.” He takes her to the room he thinks might work. It is not modern but it is empty. It is the room where he has once, twice, sat in the dark, for theatrics. She walks its perimeter, trailing a finger along the walls, leaving a seam of black flowers blossoming behind her touch. They open and close with little gasps. He pretends not to notice. “This will do,” she says. “For an afternoon.” “For an afternoon,” he repeats, like a poorly trained parrot who happens to have ruled for eons. They stand there, the two of them, with an empty bed and a dog elsewhere gnawing a kingdom. If he speaks he will ruin it. If he stays silent he will also ruin it. He chooses a middle route, which is unlike him, and says, “I had thought perhaps we had moved past afternoons.” She considers. It is more consideration than the damned get in a lifetime. “We always move past afternoons,” she says softly. “We return in the evenings.” He wants to laugh. He doesn’t. She steps past him and goes. He follows. At the door she turns, and there it is: the smile that unthreads him into strands like old rope. “Your dog,” she says. “He will bring the throne down, you know.” “It was going to fall anyway,” he says. “Everything does, given enough time.” “Time is cheap here,” she says. “Spend something else.” He wants to ask what. He wants to say his name. He settles for: “Stay for the choir.” “I don’t like choirs,” she says. “They encourage righteousness.” “They’re dreadful,” he says. “Then perhaps,” she says, “I will.” The martyrs sing at dusk as the sky performs its nightly trick of not being there. Lilith stands beside him with her hands in her sleeves, an affectation he knows she adopted because he once told her it made her look like she had something to hide. The choir is as bad as anticipated: too earnest, too many unused notes. He adjusts the heat under their feet just enough to make them lift their chins in forced ecstasy. It helps. “I remember,” she says, “when you used to fix things.” “I have never fixed anything,” he says. “I rearrange problems.” “And yet you color-code them,” she murmurs. He glances at her hand. It is not in his. He puts his there, near it, as if warming his fingers. She doesn’t move away. Cerb ambles in, dragging a leg of throne behind him, tongue lolling. He deposits the twisted metal at their feet, proud, and looks between them with the eager guilt of a child who has broken something irreparable and wants praise. “You are a menace,” Lucifer tells him. The dog’s tail thumps feverishly, like a heart that has been misfiled. “The throne was ugly,” Lilith says. “Sit on something else.” He looks at the twisted iron. He imagines it as a chair. He imagines not imagining. After the choir, she stays long enough for a drink. They sit at his desk because the throne is compromised and because she never did like sitting below him. He pours from a decanter that refills only when someone is lying; it is always full. They drink until the glasses are empty of meaning. They talk about the business: the day’s quotas, the new demon who keeps bringing in sea glass because he thinks it is souls, the letter from Above without a return address. They do not talk about the last time they shouted. They do not talk about the time before that when neither of them said anything at all. “Do you ever consider retiring?” she asks, which is like asking a stone if it considers becoming air. “Often,” he says. “Between sentences.” “To what?” “A small island,” he says. “No weather. No people. A dog who does not chew.” “He would chew the island,” she says. “He would swallow entire beaches and wag.” “So he would,” he says. “And you? Would you visit?” “I hate islands,” she says. “They turn and turn and call it horizon.” He nods like he is hearing a new language. He is, a little. When she leaves, she does it without drama. She goes, and the room she occupied looks smaller, as if it has exhaled. He stands at the doorway and watches the absence like it is a fire. He resists the urge to call her name. Instead he says, “Heel,” to the dog, who has never learned, and the dog thinks about it, and then, for once, obeys. Night in Pandemonium is a suggestion rather than a fact. The damned dim themselves. The lava flows hum lullabies learned from geology. Lucifer walks the galleries alone, pausing to nudge a torment, to correct a metaphor, to put out a small fire with his foot and set another one elsewhere. He returns to his room. He sits on the throne anyway because some collapses are slow. He feels the bite-marked leg give slightly under his weight and smiles a little at its treachery. On the arm of the throne is a small mark—a crescent of pressure left by fingers that could have broken worlds and instead became punctuation. He rests his hand over it. He feels ridiculous, and so he rests it there longer. From somewhere below, the choir finds a harmony that works because it is resolved. He closes his eyes and tries to memorize the exact shape of this particular failure. Hell is other demons, he thinks, and dogs and women and old furniture and the mail. He drinks, lets the glass hang, and waits for morning to arrive with its thousand-throated alarm. Cerb settles at his feet, the twisted metal between his paws, and gnaws it tenderly like a bone. Lucifer looks down at him. “Fine,” he says. “Chew it all.” Cerb’s tail thumps. “If it falls,” Lucifer adds, “we’ll sit on the floor.” The dog looks up, iron in his teeth, and Lucifer can hear Lilith’s laugh in the way the sound echoes: across stone, against history, with the understanding that laughter is just another kind of surrender you practice until it looks like control. He lifts his glass toward the empty doorway and toasts whatever comes back through it tomorrow. Then he drinks, and Hell, which runs on schedules and spite, keeps running.

Model Output:
It was the hour when the sun slanted across the training yard and made the dust glow like beaten gold. The iron gate that opened to the street stayed barred, a lattice of shadow flung across the sand. The day’s heat had soaked into the wooden palisades and the stone walls of the ludus; even the air smelled of warm rope, oil, and men. Someone was mending a strap with a bone needle, and the sharp scent of new leather cut through the stink of sweat and old blood like a clean blade. I had come from the sharpening bench with filings glittering against my fingertips. They were not from my sword. I was a retiarius; the net was my weapon, and the trident my reach. What I sharpened was a hook, one of the small iron teeth threaded along the rope backing of the net, meant to catch against the greave or shield of the man opposite me. The hook was old, dark where the iron had pitted. The Romans called us fishers. I never minded. I liked the feeling that the sea had its place in me, that some salt remained. When the others—Thracian, Secutor, Sarmatian—boasted about swords and shields, I thought of water and rope. All the while, the city breathed beyond the wall. I could hear it, the groan of carts over paving stones on the Vicus Tuscus, the mule bells, the cry of the fishmongers, the quarrel of a couple in some close courtyard. Every gust that slipped over the top of the wall brought the smell of Rome: ash, human, ferment. Somewhere not far away someone was burning olive wood. It smelled better than the sweat around me. “Marcus,” Celsus called from the shade of the awning, lazy as only a big man could be at rest. He was polishing the smooth-domed helm of the secutor with a rag, bringing up the shine like he was rubbing a bronze mirror. He was not called Celsus for his height; it was a joke from when he first came and could barely lift his shield. Romans liked their jokes. “Hand me the oil.” I tossed him the bulbous clay flask. Oil slopped down his wrist. Every skin in the yard was slick with it, the sheen of men who could not be allowed to crack. The lanista said oil was wine for the body. The lanista said a lot of things in a tone like he was lecturing senators, even if he smelled like the amphorae stacked behind the kitchen. I sat with my back to the wall, where it was hot as a hearth. I spread the net across my knees, feeling for the weak strands and the places where the weave wanted to give. It had been mended many times. Each knot was a bead in a rosary that I had the fingering of. I had learned the pattern from the old Gaul who trained me; he made me cast it a hundred times a day until my shoulder burned and my thumb had a ridge in it from the rope. “You must feel the way the air takes it,” he told me. “The air has fingers too.” He had died in the winter, not with a sword in his gut but with a fever in his breath. The funerary rites were simple—no blazing pyre, not for men like us—but the lanista let us pour a libation. I poured mine to Hermes. He is my god, if any is. I imagine him as quick and lean, his feet clever, his eyes sly. I talked to him under my breath while I cast the net in training, while the others muttered to Mars or to Neptune or to the nameless gods of their fathers. Hermes is a god of crossroads and thieves, of merchants and messengers. If he could carry the souls of men into the dark, he could carry a prayer, whispered through the bars of the ludus gate and caught in the city’s breath. Hermes had many names and stories. The one I favored was the time he stole Apollo’s cattle and lied so well even the truth sounded like a song. That was a man after whose fashion I could shape my mind: not pure, but clever enough to live. “Look,” Celsus said then, not to me but to the yard. He had the helm in his hands and he held it away from him, admiring the way it took the sun. He could see himself in it, in that warped way polished things show you. A reflection that was you but also a stranger. That was Rome as well. The lanista came through the door that led to his rooms. He walked like a man who had never worked steel, his belly ahead of him and his hands clean but for ink. The God of Merchants had blessed him well. He clapped his hands for our attention, as if we were girls in a school instead of men whose backs were mapped with scars. “We will have visitors,” he said, his F’s and V’s slicing together in his rough provincial Latin. “Not senators,” he added, and there was laughter, though not much. “Better than senators. The people.” That made the laughter louder. The people mattered more than any senator. The bread for our bellies, the names shouted in the afternoon sun, the thumbs that slid sideways or up or down. The emperor was a rumor, a profile stamped on coins that sometimes passed through the hands of boys who ran in barefoot, shouting, to watch us on non-training days. The people were our weather. Their mood was a pressure we could feel in our bones like a storm. This summer they had been hungry, and the faces in the stands had been sharp, their eyes like knives. No one cut a rope with a kind look. “Visitors from the Subura,” the lanista said. “They come as part of the grain distribution. A favor to my brother-in-law. They will tour the yard, and we will not smell like goats. Marcus, cast the net. Celsus, keep your helmet on, look like a soldier, for the love of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Publius—where’s Publius? There—stop picking your teeth.” There was a bustle and a cursing that sounded like home. I stood. My knee had a twinge in it, a little twinge that liked to speak when the weather changed or when a rain was coming. It had spoken this morning while I knelt near the gutter a slave-girl had poured grey water down, and she had looked at me quick and pitying, as if a man’s joints were something to be sorry for. Pity sits on the skin like a damp cloth. I shrugged it off and picked up the net. If a man had put me in a field, I would have set the net for thrushes, the way my father did in a different land, with little loops and twigs. The net I swung now had an edge of lead weights sewn to it. It felt like a shirt soaked in river water. I loved it anyway. When I cast it right, it made a shadow on the sand like a star. They came in under the awning, sweating already, the women with their hair knotted and scarves draped over them against the sun, the men with their tunics streaked with flour dust, the children like small copper coins pulled warm from the coals. They smelled of yeast and frying oil, of streets and brine. The steward with them had a bored face and a tally stick. The lanista smiled in a way that must have cost him. There was always the first look. It went one of two ways: disgust, as if we were animals, or awe, like we were commanders parading down the Via Sacra. I did not expect either. What I saw mostly were eyes that had seen enough ugliness that the sight of ours did not unsettle them. A woman with a baby on her hip, his mouth slick with milk, watched me cast the net. She did not blink. The boy next to her grinned like he might bite the rope. The old man behind them spat neatly to one side and said, “Retiarius. Like the fishermen at the Tiber. My brother was one. Dead now. The river takes everything.” Hermes has a little reed boat in some myths, ferrying souls across as if he were Charon’s apprentice. I thought of that and of the rope in my hands. I thought of the way a net looks when it catches sunlight under water, an idea I had kept from a childhood on a coast that was not Italian and which sometimes rose up in my dreams smelling of kelp and the kind of wind that cleans you. “You must be brave,” the woman said. She said it as if she were tasting the word. I shrugged. Brave was a word that men with full bellies liked to use. “I am paid,” I said. “And I prefer the sand to some choices.” “What choices?” she pressed, not unkindly. The baby hiccuped against her shoulder. “To be a laborer,” I said. “To go home.” There was a hiss in the yard, a small one, as if someone sucked a hurt tooth. Going home was the thing we did not name except when we were too drunk to be careful. Some of us did not have a home. Some had one that would not take them back. Some could have gone and did not: Celsus, for instance, who had a wife who had married in the meantime and two boys who were no longer boys. “You eat?” the old man asked shrewdly. “You take cold baths? You have a roof? Then you are fortunate. The warehouses burned last week. The grain spoiled. The city complains like a woman in labor and then laughs with blood on its lips.” “Old man,” the steward said, his tally stick tapping, “save your poetry. The proprietor has given you the magnificence of a tour.” “Save your counting,” the old man said back, and they glared with familiarity. The people do not much fear stewards. The lanista, who could smell the way a crowd might turn like a dog, clapped again. “Publius! Show them the wooden swords. Explain the honor.” So we did the motions. Publius, who was learning to speak without his provincial burr, held up the rudis and told them how a man who pleased a crowd and master might get that simple stick and his freedom along with it. He did not look at me. There were whispers, as there always were when the rudis was mentioned. The children’s eyes went soft the way eyes do when they are watching a story light itself in their heads. I cast the net again. It whispered as it opened, a sound like silk being shaken out. The weights made a soft clatter on the sand. I imagined Hermes’s hands in mine, swift and deft. I imagined him telling me a lie that felt like it could hold. Celsus took a step into the yard with his helmet on, his paired short sword in his hand. He made a poised profile, the clean line of his jaw under the bronze. He let the children touch the smooth curve of the helm. It was like letting them touch a monster. One of the boys squealed when he saw his own bent reflection. Celsus, who had the softest heart of any man I ever knew, lifted the helm and put it on the boy’s head for a breath. The boy staggered under the weight and grinned with triumph, a gladiator for a heartbeat with a crust of bread in his other fist. “Is it true,” the woman said to me, “that the emperor comes sometimes and shouts and turns his thumb?” “He watches,” I said. “He shouts if he wants to be seen. The thumb belongs to the people more than to him.” “Does he bleed?” the old man asked, sly again. “Everyone bleeds in the end,” I said, and Hermes smiled on my tongue for that one. When they left, the yard felt emptier than before, as if the breath of those dozen people had made the place warmer and their absence let in a draught. The lanista went back to his small coin-counting. The steward took his tally. The men returned to their gestures: step, thrust, recover; twist, feint, roll. Celsus took off the helmet and rubbed at his head where the padding had pressed. His hair was wet with sweat, short as a slave’s. “You have fans,” he said to me. He meant the woman and the boy, the old man. We all had fans, even the worst of us. There was a girl who came on days when I trained and sat with her chin on her hands and smiled a little. She had a rip in the hem of her dress. She had one grey eye and one brown. “They have bread,” I said. “Not for long,” he said, and because we were something like Roman now, we laughed and spat to the side. We were also something like other things—like the deer that hears the dogs too far off to run yet, like the man who reads his own name cut into a tablet and cannot decide whether it is an honor or a trap. We were men who held their breath between a shout and the answering roar. At the bath later, when the oil was scraped from our skin with strigils and the little curls of filth fell onto the stone in pleasing, disgusting crescents, I lay back on the bench and let the heat torment me. The smell of oil was sweet now it was not clotted with dirt. Steam made the air thick. The tiled ceiling above me had tiny, smooth-eyed dolphins worked into it, the tiles blue and green like the sea under a bright sky. Hermes did not belong in a bathhouse. He belonged at the threshold, in the doorway, in the space between. That was where I liked to meet him. When I had time in the evening and the gate’s shadow lengthened, I would stand with my hand on the iron and feel the paint flaking under my palm. Tiber smell would come if the wind turned. Once, not long ago, a funeral procession had gone past, the pipes keening, the men on their shoulders bearing a board with a pale face upon it. I had watched them go. The face had not been anyone I knew. That did not matter. The dead man had gone to Hermes for a few steps and then to the ferryman. Celsus cracked a joke in the steam that made the younger men hoot. Publius flicked oil at him and his grin went sideways. For a while we were only men in a room too hot to last in. The politics of the city were an animal we could hear scrabbling on the other side of the door: the price of grain, the rumor about the emperor’s trip to the provinces, the news that a senator had been accused of treason because he did not clap hard enough at a games. But here we were only breath and skin and edge-weariness, trying not to think of days that would come, that had been promised to the crowd like a list of offerings. When I returned to my place under the wall, the sun was lower, and the dust no longer turned to gold but to something like old parchment. A servant brought a platter of beans and onions, coarse bread, a handful of olives salty enough to make my mouth water. I ate fast and careful. Hunger is a god too, and a jealous one. I took the net into my lap again, though my fingers were tired. The knots were small worlds my fingertips knew better than my eyes did. I spoke to Hermes without moving my lips. I did not ask for anything that would displease the gods of the place. I did not ask for victory. I asked for my hand to remember the motion when the time came, for my mind to be calm, for the people’s eyes to be in a mood to see a man do something well and value it. I asked also for a little mercy for the small boy with the helmet on his head and bread in his fist, though that was not within Hermes’s usual purview. But gods like to be surprised. That is what I told myself. There are days that stick to memory like burrs. This was not one of them. This was only the day a woman with a child watched me throw a net, and the old man with the river on his breath made a joke about emperors, and Celsus looked handsome under a helmet that was made to make other men blind. It was the day the lanista said the people mattered and meant it because the grain was late. It was the day the boy’s reflection in the helmet was a bent thing and he laughed anyway, and I loved him for it and feared for him too, and I held my net like a man holds a rope tied to something that will pull him one way or the other and all he can do is put his weight where he wants it to go. It was an ordinary day in a city that is too many times itself, and I sat under a wall and thought of a god with winged sandals stealing cattle and laughed because I was alive. I had to be careful with days like that. They could trick you into belief. They could make you think the story would end with a wooden sword and applause. If Hermes stood at my shoulder, his breath smelled like fennel and the road. He is a god; he is also the tale you tell yourself so that the dust feels like gold even when it is not. At dusk the city hummed like a plucked string, and the iron gate’s shadow lay across my thighs. I spread the net one more time and watched it fall. The weights hit the sand, a soft, sure sound. Somewhere beyond the wall, a crier was shouting the morrow’s events. The people would come. Their voices would rise with the sun. The thumbs would be ready. My hands were clean and dirty, capable and shaking, and I smiled with a little corner of my mouth because I knew what part of the day I loved best: this part, when everything was still in the air, in the span of the cast, before any thing, or any man, was caught.

Model Output:
Telegram: 14 March 1927, Isle of Flannan Station From: Malcolm "Cal" MacRae To: Mrs. Isobel MacRae, 12 Shore Lane, Leith Arrived. Fog thick as porridge. Keepers: Murdo old as granite, Sandy all elbows. Bell doesna stop. Tell Wee Annie I saw a puffin. Will write proper. —Cal — Letter: 20 March 1927 Ma, Did ye get my wire? I hope the post boat found the gut. The channel here, between Eilean Mòr and Eilean Beag, they call it the Black Hole with a grin. The swell thunders through and spits white, as if you could boil tea with it. The light sits like a tooth in the gum of the cliff. The men said I’d be sick o’ the spiral stairs afore I loved them, and I am. My thighs burn like a smithy. Murdo keeps a quiet house. He doesna waste words, so when he speaks ye snap to like the dog to the whistle. Sandy is always humming, God knows what, something he says he learned from a Glasgow music hall. I didna know there was a music hall that taught men to hum like they were swallowing flies. My cot is clean, if narrow. There’s a wee draught I canna find. I put my coat at the foot and sleep with my boots by, like ye told me. The lens is a beast of glass. Shines like polished guilt. First night I went out with the lamp-trimmer’s steps and counted them like prayers. I think it is the counting that keeps the mind right. Ye canna get lost in what ye can count. It’s quiet. The fog-horn sounds its soul through you. It doesna ask ye to be brave. It just goes on, like things must. I like that. I hope you and Annie are eating. If the grocer cheats you, tell Mr. Kelly I’ll set the lamp to point at his till. —Cal — Letter: 2 April 1927 Ma, Murdo has hands like gull wings. When he cleans the lens, ye can see your father’s face in it as if he were come back. He says he’ll leave end of summer, if his hip goes. Says I’ll be senior then, if I don’t drown. He laughs when he says it, so perhaps he doesna mean to frighten me. Sandy fell into the gig last week. Only his boots got wet. He cussed like a minister’s prayer turned backward. I didn’t laugh. It’s poor luck to laugh at a fall here. The island remembers. The cliff to the west, the Braeg, stands like a turned shoulder. If ye stand by the rail there’s a notch where ye can see Lewis on a clear day, a smear across the mouth of the world, like you’d laid a thumb on a smear of ink. They call that North Rona, that smear? Murdo says North Rona is lonelier yet. I told him there’s no lonelier place than a bed in a full house when you’re not right. Tell Annie I have a gull I named Minister. He shouts at me. I shout back. It passes the time. I sleep and wake to the same sound. It does something to yer days. I can feel the sun and not see it. My hands have cracked where the oil gets in. I miss your stew. I miss your voice without walls. —Cal — Telegram: 17 April 1927 From: Isobel MacRae To: Flannan Station We are well. Annie has the chicken pox and keeps her fingers away when I smack them. Mr. Kelly sends a crust with his apology. He said he’d cheat no more if your lamp points true. I told him it’s been pointing at his heart for years. Be warm. —Ma — Letter: 1 May 1927 Ma, I laughed at your wire till Sandy told me to shut it. The post boat brings rumour as if it were eggs, easily cracked. They say a German trawler found a drowned herring fleet off St. Kilda. They say there’s a minister there who married his cousin and no one noticed till the babes started to look like each other too precisely. I think other folk’s islands are mirrors you look in to see if ye’ve gone ugly. I’ve learned to hear ships before I see them. They send their hum under the wet. It sets the ladder shivering. Last week, a small cutter came in too quick toward the Black Hole. Murdo sent Sandy to the horn and me to the bell. He didna raise his voice. I pulled till my shoulder burned and my teeth rang. The cutter eased off. I could see a boy, younger than me by a year maybe, his hands white on the wheel. He lifted them to me after and I thought I saw your hands in his, so I waved. Then I went inside and put my head on the table in the kitchen and stayed till Sandy brought me tea. He didna say a word. I take my turn in the log. I write daft things and scrub them after. “Monday: lamp lit, fog horn sounding, gulls belligerent.” “Tuesday: lamp lit, fog horn sounding, the sea invented itself again.” Murdo says, “Keep your head. The weather is all the poetry we’re paid to report.” So I write the numbers and tuck the rest in my sleeve. We had a rat. It ate my biscuit. It was fat with my crumb. Sandy set a trap and caught his own knuckle. He is not great at plans. How is your knee? Does it ache when the wind swings? I can feel your aches now in my own. —Cal — Letter: 12 June 1927 Ma, Sandy took the post boat for a turn about the skerries and didna come back by supper. He had a likely look on him, the sort that thinks the sea is its friend. I kept the lamp and the horn and Murdo paced. He said nothing. He never uses a word till it’s the only one that fits. Clouds gathered, the colour of smashed plums. The lift of waves through the Black Hole went from a growl to a throat tore raw. He came back at midnight with a face like chalk and a rope round his waist cut nearly through. He hadn’t tied it proper to the ring in the rock. He said the boat wanted to go without him. He said the sea was a woman with bad ideas. I told him if the sea was a woman she wouldna have him. The next day he was meek. He scrubbed the oil room till the floor showed its wood again. He said, “I’ve been a fool.” I said, “Aye,” because it’s a kindness to give a man the word he’s asked for. Sometimes I stand on the Braeg and name the waves. This one’s your voice. This one’s the pots. This one’s the rain that came in under the door when Annie was sick that winter, remember? This one is nothing. This one is nothing too. —Cal — Letter: 4 August 1927 Ma, Murdo has a bad cough. I can hear it under the horn. He spits it in the sink like he can send it away that way. He keeps his pipe behind his ear because he cannot keep it lit. He tells me stories like he’s setting the last of the chairs on the table before he locks up. His father was a crofter at Tunga. He says the croft drowned without water when the boys left. I think you know what he means. I tell him about Leith. I tell him about your trick with the bread, how you make a loaf into a feast with one turn of your knife. He asked me where my father is. I told him where he always is: in where the heat is, and gone when there’s work. Annie writes me in pencil. She says her spots are gone. She says a boy at school told her my light is a story they tell to scare babies. She said she slapped him and the teacher slapped her and then the boy ran. I said I’ll send her a bit of glass if Murdo lets me. He says no. The lamp must be whole. So I sent her a feather from Minister instead. He may be missing one, but he looks no worse for it. —Cal — Telegram: 15 September 1927 From: Isobel To: Flannan Station Annie started at the cooper’s. She comes home with sawdust in her hair and a grin; she eats her bread with a pride. I keep your room as you left it, minus your smell. Visit soon? —Ma — Letter: 30 September 1927 Ma, There is no “soon” on this rock. There is only the next turn. But at the end of November, the relief boat comes. Murdo will leave and I will come across to you if the sea allows. I’ll bring my boots and my hands. Will ye make potato scones? I’ve a hunger for them that would shame a pig. Last night something happened I don’t know where to put. A light blinked to the north where there is no light. Three short, three long, three short. It could be anything, a trick, a mild sort of madness, a fisherman with a sense of humour. I answered with my hand-lamp on the gallery. My hand shook. The fog had laid down, pleased with itself. I could see nothing but the suggestion of something. I came in and sat with the ledger open and wrote “three short three long three short.” Murdo read it after and put his finger over it as if he could smudge it out. He said, “You keep your eye on your job. There’s no one out there for us. Our man lives inshore and his name is MacBrayne and he brings our bread.” I nodded. But I keep the feeling that somewhere something looks back sometimes. Maybe it is you. Maybe it is nothing. Maybe it is wishing. —Cal — Letter: 12 November 1927 Ma, The storms came. The horn is raw from it. So am I. Sandy went down at the steps to tie the post boat, and a wave lifted him to his knees like a prayer and then took his breath. He clung like a limpet. After we got him in he lay on the table while the tea boiled, and his lips were blue like roofs. He’s been quieter since. He hums less. He said to me, “D’you ever think, Cal, that you could just... walk? Just keep walking when the bell rings?” I said, “Aye.” Then I said, “No.” Because both are true. There is a ring in the rock at the Black Hole, and there is a ring in your soul. You hold one or the other. The Braeg is white with birds. They leap as one thing when the sea throws itself at the stone. I do not know why watching that makes me cry sometimes. Maybe it’s because they know something I do not, or maybe it’s only that they are together. I dreamt of you last night. You were on the steps washing them, and you looked up at me and said, “You missed a bit.” I woke laughing and the lamp was steady. —Cal — Telegram: 28 November 1927 From: Cal To: Isobel Sea bad. Relief delayed. Tell Annie I mind her. Tell yourself to eat. Will come when it lets me. —Cal — Letter: 19 December 1927 Ma, It didna let me. The boat turned back twice. Murdo sits with his coat on because he says he won’t be caught unready. He tells the same story twice now, and apologises for it, and then tells it again. I’ve started to talk to the lamp. I call it by your name. I say, “Isobel, do not go out.” Sandy hears me and doesna laugh. That is how you know it’s hard here. The gulls have blown east, and the air is so cold it comes in your nose and becomes a nail. At night, the sea speaks in its throat. There was that blink again last Tuesday. 3-1-3 that time. It made no sense, and I made it make none. I wrote “meteor.” I wrote “star.” I wrote “myself.” I do a thing I will not tell you but I write it now because it is only writing. I pull the door open sometimes and stand with my toes just so, at the line where the world says “enough.” I feel it pull. It is not a bad pull. It is like a bed when you’ve not slept, or a woman’s lap when you’ve not been held. It promises nothing. It promises an end of counting. I do not step. I shut the door and polish the brass instead. Murdo says, “Good man.” —Cal — Letter: 6 January 1928 Ma, Murdo took to the bed. He is as light as cloth now. He called me son when he woke at noon. I let him. I have begun to sleep in the day and wake at night because the night needs me and the day can do without me. Sandy asked me if he should send the flag. I said no. The flag means something final. I am not ready to say it. I thought of you when I cooked the porridge and held the pot against my belly for heat the way you do. I put too much salt, and I ate it anyway because it was hot and mine. Your hands made every hot thing right. I didna know it then. You will say you told me so. You did. I was not listening then. I am now. —Cal — Telegram: 9 January 1928 From: Isobel To: Flannan Station You read like a fever. Come home when you can. Even for a day. Bring your boots. I have tattie scones. Your father wrote. He is married in Greenock. No one asked. All right. We are not the asking kind. I am well. I am waiting. —Ma — Letter: 17 January 1928 Ma, Murdo died last night. He went like the wick when you pinch it, with two fingers and a patience. He was heavy again when we lifted him. Sandy cried with his hands covering his mouth like a man in church who doesna want to sing. We wrapped him in his oilskin because it seemed right, and put him in the store where it is cold. The sea stood still all at once at dawn, as if it had shut its eye to rest. His pipe sat on the sill like a small black boat. I wrote his name in the log. I wrote too many words and crossed them. I wrote the right ones after: “Keeper Murdo MacQuarrie deceased of natural causes at 0200. Lamp lit. Horn sounding.” I went to the Braeg and I shouted his name into the Black Hole. The echo threw it back at me and changed it. That is what the world does with a good thing. Sandy asked me if we should show the flag. I said yes. Sometimes the flag is not for endings, but for the boat it brings. —Cal — Telegram: 24 January 1928 From: Northern Lighthouse Board To: Flannan Station Relief vessel pending clement weather. Maintain operation. Record all. Acknowledge. — Note, pencil, torn from a ledger, sent folded into a letter: 1 February 1928 Ma, I have not slept, and when I sleep I walk. I woke with salt on my lips that was not my tears. I heard the blink again, and when I looked, there was a flare to the north, low, then gone. I put the hand-lamp on the gallery and waved it. Nothing came back. My heart beat as if it were trying to make a door in my chest. I thought of the boy at the cutter, his white knuckle. I thought of you with your apron and your hands in dough. I thought of Murdo under his oilskin dreaming nothing. Yesterday, Sandy went to check the moorings. He did not tie the rope. It is a story I am sick of. He is not a man of knots. He is a man of loose things. He went and the wave came and the rope was on the ground as if it were a snake had sloughed the skin of him. I could not see him when I reached the rail. His cap came up, and then it went, and then he was a seal and then not even that. I shouted his name till the horn had no place in me. I brought his cap in and set it on the table by the tin and the knife. Then I lit the lamp because that is the thing we do when a man goes. We make light. And I am making it now. My hands do not know how to do another thing. —Cal — Telegram: 5 February 1928 From: Isobel To: Flannan Station Cal. Hold. I am coming to Port of Ness to wait. Annie with me. We will be there when you land. Do not step. —Ma — Letter: 10 February 1928 Ma, I will not step. I will, but not that way. I did not tell the Board of the light that is not ours. I tell you. It blinked last night and it was wrong. It was a pattern. I listened and it sounded like words in a throat that had never spoken. I could not make them. I do not think it is a man. I think it is the sea learning to talk. That is foolish. Let me be foolish once. I am tired of being a good son at the edge of things. I took the clock down and it kept going. It does not need the wall. It needs no face. The gulls have started to nest in the crannies. I do not scare them. Let them have their small. We all need a thing to sit on in the wind. I will come down the steps when the boat shows. I will carry Murdo to it if they will. I will carry Sandy’s cap only. If there is no boat, I will sit. I will keep the lamp. I will write my name in the book and set the pen down. I will put my hand on the brass and feel the heat that is my own and say your name. That will be enough, for a minute. —Cal — Telegram: 14 February 1928 From: Northern Lighthouse Board To: Flannan Station Relief vessel on station 16 Feb. Prepare remains and log. Maintain operation until relieved. — Letter: 16

Model Output:
By the time the host leads us to the corner booth, I’ve already flagged three points of entry: the unlatched side door with the push-bar that sticks, the QR menu taped at an angle so you could swap it with a spoofed sticker with a decent color printer and a ruler, and the Wi-Fi network named after the restaurant with “guest” appended and no captive portal. I fold my hands and smile like I’m not automatically mapping attack surfaces. It’s a tic that never quite left, like the way old programmers can’t stop fixing typos in their heads on signage. She slides into the booth and sets her phone face-down; I note the case with a sticker I recognize only because three years of auditing gave me an unnatural familiarity with fandom stickers: an old Jason Chan “Serra Angel,” scuffed at the wing. My heart does a small, embarrassing skip. Not an accident, maybe. Her profile had “board games, hiking, niche fantasy art” in it, which I’d filed under “safe bet,” not expecting us to share a specific love. My own phone, traitorous and heavy, thrums once. I ignore it. “Thanks for picking this place,” she says. “I’ve walked by so many times and never gone in.” “Happy to be your test subject,” I say. My default humor runs dry as a server’s apron. I mentally check myself: lighten up, human up. Vulnerabilities in people are not to be exploited. Past me would have said: that statement suggests risk-averse with FOMO tendencies. Now-me says: she thought of you when she passed by here. We fiddle with the menus. Paper, thank god. Paper is safe in a way JS-laden QR codes aren’t. I order something I’ll forget while I’m eating it because I’m thinking about other things. She orders a cocktail with a ridiculous name, laughs as she says it. The server smiles like he’s heard it a hundred times. The lighting is all Edison bulbs, the music is the kind you can’t hum but you feel it in your teeth. I force myself to focus on her eyes, which are a specific brown that in my head I want to call sepia, as if my internal runtime annotates with quaint variable names. “So,” she starts, “you said you do… security?” “Consulting,” I say. “On the defensive side, mostly.” “‘Mostly,’” she repeats, amused. I hold the pause. No need to confess like a Catholic in a hoodie. It’s part of my story, but it’s not a good icebreaker. “I used to be less choosy about who I helped,” I say. “I like it better now.” She nods, and that might have been the end of it, but then she says, “Oh, like ethical hacking.” She says it without quotes around it in her voice, which is rarer than it should be. “Yeah,” I say. “Like that.” And then, because there is a benevolent god and her name is variance, she leans forward and says, “Tell me you play Magic. The sticker gave you away.” The gravitational pull of a shared hobby is a strong one. I laugh in spite of myself, in spite of the part of me that’s always scanning the room. “I have a binder that is worth more than my car,” I say. “Commander?” she asks. “Mostly,” I say. “I got competitive in college. Now I just like big, silly plays. Dinosaurs swinging for lethal. Thematic nonsense.” Her grin widens like a curtain. “I have a Kaalia deck that is everyone’s least favorite until I promise to only use it once.” “I don’t know if we can be friends,” I say, which, in Magic terms, is flirting. We stack memories like cardboard rectangles. Pre-release stories, a judge call we both remember from a years-ago blog, that time someone proxied a Black Lotus with a post-it that read “$$$.” She talks with her hands, touchtyping air as she describes a combo that whiffed because of a single overlooked sideboard card. I mention that I once brute-forced the shuffle of an opponent’s sloppy pile, and she laughs like she knows I’m only half kidding. The server drops drinks. She reaches for her phone, and I catch a flash of lockscreen before she flips it. It’s an image of a cat perched on a mountain of basic lands like a furry dragon. Tabby, silvery, smug. The name “Mr. Whiskers” pops into my head unbidden, and I chide my pattern-matching. People name cats anything. But then she says, “Sorry, I’m waiting on my cat-sitter. Opal is a drama queen.” Opal. Gemstone names. Security questions close to the surface of casual conversation. Mental note: don’t be that guy. Put down the red flags. Let them be decorative. We talk about the microculture of LGSs we’ve both frequented. She mentions one in a college town I know too well. “I did my undergrad there,” she says. “OSU. Go Beavers.” She fake-pumps a fist. Birth year is almost on the table in the way she tells the story about being a freshman when Innistrad came out. She mentions her first commander, her roommate’s name, the fact that she hates cilantro, and I can feel the map of her secret questions being auto-filled in some dark browser I keep closed. Mother’s maiden name is a coin toss; favorite teacher is now a probability distribution. “Sorry,” I say, real and reflex. She looks confused. “What for?” “It’s just—I have this bad habit of… cataloging,” I say. “Occupational hazard.” Her mouth quirks. “Of the human variety?” “Both,” I say. “Systems. People. Doors with bad locks.” She glances toward the front, then back at me, amused. “Is that door a bad lock?” I open my mouth to make a joke about load-bearing code and load-bearing hinges, but then her phone lights up again. She picks it up, thumbs the screen, and because I am who I am and my eyes are traitors, I catch the gesture: up-right-right, down-left-down. A shape like a lightning bolt on a 3x3 grid. The smudge wear makes it worse—a faint, oily highlight on the most used dots. I clamp my teeth together. The taste in my mouth is copper and restraint. “It’s the sitter,” she says, glancing at the message. “Opal made a sound like a small child being murdered because the vacuum existed within fifty feet of her. Drama queen.” “It’s a common pattern,” I hear myself say, before my better judgment chokes me. “Ours. Humans. The pattern. It’s like… lightning bolt. Very memorizable. Very guessable.” She freezes, thumb hovering. “Is that—” “I’m sorry,” I say, steamroll apology. “Occupational hazard. I didn’t mean to—” “You saw my passcode,” she says, not quite accusing, not quite joking. “I saw your movement,” I say, because I can’t lie about these things. “I didn’t mean to. It’s… it’s my whole thing. I’m trying not to turn it on people in… normal settings.” There is a sound in my ears like a server room. She blinks, then lowers the phone, face unreadable under Edison light. “So you, what, constantly judge people’s passwords?” she asks. “Just walking around tut-tutting at unlock patterns?” “Not judge,” I say, which is true and not. “Observe. And sometimes nudge. Mostly when I’m paid to. Or asked.” “I didn’t ask.” “No,” I say. “You didn’t. I’m sorry.” Silence. Her shoulders square like the first move in a game, a draw step. She puts the phone away, flips it face-down again, as if that closes a loop. “That’s… intense,” she says after a beat. But there’s something soft at the edges. She is thinking. I think I have not fully torched the place yet. “I promise I didn’t memorize it,” I say. Lie-adjacent. My brain is a flypaper. “I don’t want to know anything you don’t want me to.” She looks at me for a long second, like she’s reading a card with too many lines of text. “Is it really that bad?” she asks, and now the curiosity slips through. Nerd recognizes nerd. “Yes,” I say, because if I’m going to commit to salvage, I have to commit to honesty. “Android pattern unlock is vulnerable in a few predictable ways. People start in corners, avoid crossing lines, favor certain shapes. The oil smear on the glass telegraphs the path. Tilt it under light, the trail is right there. And even if the smear’s not obvious, shoulder surfing is easier with directional swipes than with six digits. It’s… low-hanging fruit.” I hold back the urge to explain entropy and Markov chains and how you can get most people in under ten tries. This is not a lecture hall. She chews her lip. “What should I do instead?” Something in my chest loosens with the click of a lock. “Six-digit PIN, minimum. Better with more. Or a sentence for a password if your phone allows. And don’t use your birth year. Or your cat’s name. Or—” “Or OSU,” she says, smirking. “Or Beavers. Or cilantro.” “Exactly,” I say. “And for the love of—turn off lockscreen notifications.” She opens her mouth to tell me to chill, then laughs. It’s high and light and mine in that moment. She pulls the phone back out and says, “Okay, security dad. Show me.” “Only if you want,” I say. “I’m curious,” she says, and slides it over. I walk her through settings with my voice, not my hands. Consent matters. She taps with quick, competent fingers. Eight digits. A sentence. A mental model adjusting. On the lockscreen, the absent chime of previews now muted feels like tinnitus easing. “Thanks,” she says, after. The word lands like a token creature that pulls more weight than cardboard looks like it should. “Sorry again,” I say. “I am trying to be better about… not leading with flaws.” “I mean,” she says, “lead with them, but maybe not mine.” She raises an eyebrow. There’s a glitter there. Salvage operation not only saved but returning value. We eat. The food is what it always is in places like this: good enough that you remember the company and not the flavors. She tells me about her parents in broad strokes, then narrows to a story about her mother’s obsession with baking exactly one recipe every holiday, fruitcake, which she hates and everyone else pretends to love. “It’s a family tradition,” she says. “We also have a thing where we go to Disneyland every election year no matter what, which started as a joke and then turned into a weird superstition.” Christmas, Disneyland, election cycle—time scaffolding to build on. My brain lifts a hand like a student in class, wanting to guess her mother’s maiden name from a story about a childhood piano teacher and a sheet music book with “Mrs. R—” written in blue pen. I tell my brain to sit down. She asks about my family, and I give her the edited version: military dad, librarian mom, a sister who codes better than me and refuses to let me forget it. “At least tell me your first deck,” she says. “Is it embarrassing?” “Bor-ing,” I say. “Starter deck. I got wrecked by a little kid with a janky mill deck and fell in love with losing to cleverness.” She clinks her glass to mine. “A man after my own heart,” she says. And the words hang there like an uncommitted spell. At some point, the server asks if we want dessert. “Do you have anything with apple?” she asks, and then winces. “I shouldn’t say this,” she says, laughing, “but apple pie is my kryptonite. If a bear asked me my mother’s maiden name for a slice, I’d tell him.” “Please do not tell bears your mother’s maiden name,” I say, a reflexive bark of a laugh. “Also don’t post your ‘first internet handle’ in a meme thread on principle.” She smirks. “You really do think in attack vectors.” “I think in causes and effects,” I say. “Doors and keys. Also, to be fair, the bear could probably social engineer your dad with the right tone.” “True,” she says. “He loves being helpful. And he’s very loud on Facebook.” She catches herself, eyes widening. “Wow, look at me handing you a dossier.” “I’m on a date,” I say. “Not a hunt.” “Is this… a date?” she asks, suddenly quieter, and now the room feels like it’s pulled closer, like the edges have sharpened. “I hope so,” I say, before I can overthink it. Her smile spreads slowly, carefully, like something she’s learning how to do again. “Me too,” she says. We skip dessert. We talk about maps we haven’t walked yet, trails we haven’t hiked, the smell of damp leaves and cardboard sleeves. When the check comes, I don’t do the thing where I try to inspect the receipt for merchant IDs or miscalculated tax. I tip like a person. Outside, the air is the perfect kind of cold that makes your breath visible and your hands seek each other. We linger on the sidewalk, exchanging the awkwardness of two people negotiating the next layer. “So,” she says, tugging her coat tighter. “Next time, we bring decks?” “Only if you promise to show me Kaalia and then put her away when you see my fear,” I say. “I promise,” she says, laughing. Then, after a beat: “And… thanks. For the unsolicited vulnerability check. It’s annoying and also… useful.” “I’m working on the unsolicited part,” I say. “Old habits.” “I get it,” she says. “I used to correct everyone’s grammar. My sister threatened to stop talking to me until I stopped. You catch typos, I catch dangling modifiers. You catch patterns, I… pick easy lockscreen patterns, apparently.” “We all start somewhere,” I say. “We get better.” She takes a step closer. “Maybe we can… get better at this together,” she says, and the way she says “this” contains so much possibility it feels like cheating. As we part, she unlocks her phone to call a ride with her new code. I fight the urge to avert my eyes like it’s sacrament, and then I realize it is. I look at her instead. This is the system I’m choosing to learn, to respect, to not pen-test without consent. I let the holes in my vision fill with her smile and the way the cold makes her cheeks pink, and for once, I let the background processes idle. On the walk home, I pass the unlatched side door and do not test it. I think about a world made of doors and the keys we hand each other. I think about decks and the way you can build them to go off on turn three or you can build them to take a long, silly path that makes the whole table laugh. I think about Opal, trembling at a vacuum and trusting the noise to end. I think about a lightning bolt that becomes a sentence, about the shape of a life that doesn’t always have to be the shortest path between two points. I make a note in my head, not a log, not an exploit, just a reminder: bring sleeves next time. And maybe apple pie. But not maiden names. Not bears. Not this time. Not ever.

Model Output:
When Mrs. Kline flips to the next slide, the projector squeaks like an anxious mouse that wants to be invisible, which feels appropriate. She says something about variables and control groups, and I tell my face to look attentive, which means eyes at approximately 60 percent open (not too wide, or I look startled), mouth neutral (no smile unless someone smiles first), eyebrows at rest (do not frown—it looks like disapproval), shoulders down. I pretend to take notes so no one thinks I’m idle. My pen writes “variables” in pale loop-de-loops while my brain tries not to leap ahead to the part where I have to actually talk. She’s assigning partners. She says our names like she’s calling roll: “…and Sam with Maya.” The squeak comes again; the screen blinks; my stomach drops, like the moment the bus pulls away from a curb faster than expected. Of all combinations of letters Mrs. Kline could have said, these are the ones that make my hands feel like uncooked pasta. He looks over and I look down like the desk has suddenly grown an interesting pattern (it has not). Your job is to be normal, I tell myself. Neutral. Functional. Airplane on autopilot, not the pilot at the little door narrating every cloud. But there’s a girl in my head doing cartwheels and bumping into furniture, and it’s hard to keep her quiet. He stands, shoves his notebook into his pocket like paper can fold that way without complaints, and walks to my table. The squeak again, as if the projector is practicing being me. He says, “Hey,” which is one syllable and very safe, and I would like to meet him there, but my voice is sleeping behind a locked door. I nod, which is maybe too much, like a bobblehead. Stop. Think. Slow nod. “Hey,” I manage. It comes out softer than I rehearsed in the mirror, which is fine; soft is better than loud, loud is suspicious of desperation. The word sits between us like a coin on a countertop that we both pretend we don’t want to pick up. He’s waiting for either the coin or the next coin. Okay, plan. Plan A: “So, like, I was thinking we could test plant growth in different light conditions?” Quick, throw science into the middle of the road so the car swerves away from feelings. Plan B: “Do you want to do something with magnets? You seem like a magnet person.” Too weird. What is a magnet person. Plan C: “Um, we could do something easy? Not that I think you can’t handle hard. I mean, not that I think you think I think… oh God.” Abort Plan C. Plan D: smile, say “Whatever you want.” But that’s floppy and desperate. People respect opinions. He has freckles I’ve never counted (never counted, never lingered), and a pencil with chew marks. He says, “Do you want to just, like, do the plant thing? That seems fine.” He must have heard me thinking. No, he just said the same thing as my Plan A because plant projects are what middle schoolers do when they are pretending to do science but really doing survival. I nod again. Moderate nod. “Yeah,” I say, and my voice doesn’t betray me and add “you have nice hands” because it’s smart enough to know that doesn’t go in the lab write-up. He sits down across from me, too far, maybe, to share materials comfortably, but not far enough to be safe. My heart does the bit where it steps on a rake. If he asked me what my heart rate is I could tell him, approximately 120, but nobody asks that in the first minute of group work. He is looking at me like I’m a person, which is both flattering and terrifying. I flip to a blank page. I write “Hypothesis” at the top in neat print. No hearts. Do not dot any i’s with hearts. You are an eight-year-old version of a robot. “Do you want to be the, like, plant-waterer person?” he asks. His hair doesn’t lie flat; it has decided standing up a little is a lifestyle. Later, I will wonder how much gel he uses and whether he smells like something expensive or just teenager. Now, I think of the narrow metal sink, the plastic watering can, the sound water makes hitting dry dirt. Words line up inside my head with military precision: That would be a good division of labor because it gives us replicable outcomes and I have access to the classroom before first period because I’m always early. Do not say always early; that is a personality reveal. Just say “Sure.” “Sure,” I say. Good. Two out of two. He scribbles something. His handwriting is messy but legible, like the inside of a boy’s backpack. I think of saying, “I can make the data table,” because data tables are safe, and Excel is my friend one day when I have a laptop that’s mine. I think of saying, “If we get basil for the plant I could take it home after and make pesto,” which is too revealing. I think of saying, “I like basil,” which is neutral. But can a person like basil too much? Is that a weird thing to like? Should I say “mint” instead? No, mint is intense. I say nothing and look at the squeaking slide, which currently shows the difference between dependent and independent variables like a before-and-after photo. We need a hypothesis we can measure. We need to agree on light conditions. “I can put one plant in my window and one in my closet,” I consider saying, and then hear the word “closet” and immediately burn it. He doesn’t need any words that could be metaphors around me. Also, that’s not controlled: the closet has different temperature and humidity. See? This is why you’ve got to think. “What if we do colored light?” he says, and I’m grateful the projector squeaks because it buys me a second to edit reactions. “Like, put, like, red cellophane over one and blue over another?” Red, blue, white. Stoplight. My face wants to smile, because he thought of something beyond “sun/no sun,” which is actually interesting, and I can compliment that without sounding like a fan club. A simple “Good idea” is safe, but maybe too bland. “That could let us see if light spectrum affects chlorophyll output” sounds like I’m auditioning for a show where kids have lab coats. “I like that” is personal. Don’t like things. Approve ideas, don’t like them. “Yeah, colored light is good,” I say, and I’m mad at my mouth for making it sound like I’m grading him, so I add, “It’ll be interesting to see if there’s a difference.” Neutral. Good. His eyes don’t flinch. He says, “My brother has this LED strip we can use. He put it in his room and it makes everything look like a video game.” He smiles at his own exaggerated eyeroll. Brothers are safe. Siblings are humanizing. I picture his house and throw the picture away like I should. My hands sit in my lap, palms down so I don’t fidget. I think about where to put my elbows. I decide elbows on table is too confident; elbows off is too stiff. One elbow on? Casual. One elbow on, chin in hand. But then it looks like I'm bored. I put my elbow on and then I feel the skin of my arm against the table and that becomes the only thing I can feel. “Cool,” I say. What a useful word. It means almost nothing and covers almost everything. He nods. We make a list of materials. I write them in my neat handwriting without hearts. I try to not write too neatly; that’s a thing. The projector squeaks and squeaks, like it regrets every slide. Sam leans back in his chair and the front legs hover a fraction and my lungs stop because what if he falls. He doesn’t. The class buzzes around us, low and chaotic like a beehive that doesn’t know it’s supposed to be organized. Someone at the back laughs too loud, and I flinch invisibly. I want to ask him if he wants to split up the research, if he likes doing the writing or the experiment more, if he wants to meet at the library after school. All of those sentences are crowded at the door of my mouth, but each wears a little sign that says “Desperate?” and I’m checking them like a bouncer. “You good with doing the research part too?” he asks, like he read my internal safety manual and skipped to the correct page. Relief floods me so fast that if I were a plant, my waterlogged leaves would droop. “Yeah,” I say. Understatement. “I can make the outline.” Outline is a safe word. It implies structure without implying control. He nods. We exist again in a silence that feels like a stage cue. I look at his backpack—it has a patch of a band I pretend to know. I think, “Say something about it,” before the thought can put on a trench coat and call itself bold. Say what? “I like that band”? Do I? What if he says “Name three songs” and my mind plays static. Alternatively, “That’s a cool patch” is too much cool. Or “Did you sew that on” which is weirdly domestic, like I’m asking him to mend my life. I choose six full seconds of not talking, then hear the length of six seconds like a metronome, then hate the six seconds for existing. Say something before the seventh. “Um,” I say, the least convincing preface known to man. My throat does a small dry-click noise, like the projector whispering to me that it’s rooting for failure. “Do you—do you want to write the introduction? You’re, like, better at the…” I gesture at the air to indicate words. Words. My specialty, when there’s no one watching. Out loud, I have the vocabulary of a possum. He shrugs. “I can, if you want. I don’t care.” It’s hard to read I don’t care. It can mean: truly chill; profoundly uninterested; a defense against feelings. I nod like I understand his heart. “Or you can,” he adds, and now I see it’s the version that means “I want to share.” “I can…” I say, and then the word disappears like a piece of gum under a desk. “We can split it.” There. Democracy saves me again. He smiles. It reaches his eyes, which is the dangerous kind of smile, the kind that makes me think of what it would be like to be the reason it happens, which is a deep ocean I am not equipped to swim. “Cool,” he says, and here we are in Cool Town, population: us. Mrs. Kline says something about due dates; the squeak punctuates the end like we’re in a cartoon. I write the due date three times, once on the margin, once on the top, once in my planner, which makes me feel like a person who has stayed on the sidewalk and not rushed into the road. He says, “What’s your email?” and it is such a simple question I almost cry. Because I have an email. It’s a string of letters and numbers where a word snuck in that I hope doesn’t sound like I wanted to be pretty when I was eleven. It does. He will see that. He will see eight-year-old me naming galaxies and chance. I write it carefully so that my loops don’t look like hearts. He writes his. His is first name dot last name at something that sounds adult. Of course. “Thanks,” he says, like I gave him a thing worth having. It’s just an email. It feels like a secret handshake. I feel a scrunch forming in my forehead because that’s what it does when I am thinking, and I smooth it out because I read somewhere that you can prevent wrinkles by not making faces, and then realize I am thirteen and welcome to the future. My hands want to twist the cap on my pen, but I don’t want to look fidgety. I tap my foot inside my shoe where no one can see it. My organs are doing a line dance. I consider making a joke. Something like, “If the plants die under blue light, then we’ve discovered the saddest color.” No, that’s not a joke. That’s a t-shirt at a store with fairy lights. Or, “Science: now with 50 percent more chlorophyll.” That’s nothing. This is why silence is a friend who doesn’t betray you. He leans forward like he’s about to say something, and then he doesn’t. The air between us floods with all the things unsaid. I decide I’ll say, “Do you want to meet in the library Thursday?” Because libraries are neutral. Because I love them. Because he doesn’t have to know that last part. Thursday is three days away, which is enough time to practice breathing. “Do you want to—” I start, but the projector squeals as the bell rings like it’s excited to ruin my timing. Everyone stands up at once. Chairs scrape. The hive takes flight. “Uh, I gotta go to gym,” he says, standing, slinging his adult email on his back. “Email me?” He looks at me. Specifically, at me. It’s like a tiny sunbeam. Do not go photosynthetic. “Yeah,” I say. I am a broken song with one lyric. He grins for half a second, and then he’s gone with the current, and I’m left at the table with two words written and a whole page of things I did not say. I pack my bag in slow motion so I can still be here in the before, even though now is after. The projector squeaks one more time as the slides go dark, as if to say: Good luck, kid. Don’t forget to label your axes. I walk out into the hall and remember to put my shoulders down and walk like a person. I replay every second in my head like a courtroom transcript. Assess: Did I smile too much? Not enough? Did my voice catch on his name? Did I sound like I was applying for the position of Person Who Can Email? Could he tell that my palms were rivers? Will he think my handwriting is trying too hard? Are my shoes too quiet? Is that a thing? People with quiet shoes seem suspicious. I think about his pencil, his messy letters, his not-mean shrug, the way he said “Email me?” with a question mark like an invitation. I think about how my brain wrote a whole essay and my mouth turned it into a sticky note. I think about basil. I think about not saying closet. I think about the LED strip making everything unreal. I think about how exhausting it is to be a puppet and your own puppeteer. I breathe. In the space between systems, between bell and next bell, I imagine typing out the email. A subject line that says “Plant Project” like it’s all business. A body that says “Hey, it’s Maya from science. Do you want to meet at the library Thursday?” A period, not an exclamation point; exclamation points are eager. Sign off with my name, like a normal human. Do not add “:)”. Do not add “Thanks!!” One thanks is plenty. Keep it simple. Keep it cool. The projector doesn’t squeak out here. The hallway hums. I move with it. I can do this. I can be a person who sends an email. I can be a person whose internal novel edits itself down to a sentence. I can be a person who waters plants. I can be a person who doesn’t say closet. I can be a person who remembers to label axes, label feelings, label nothing. I can be cool. Or at least cool adjacent. I hold onto the coin of “Hey” like a lucky thing I put in my pocket. I picture the blue light making the leaves lean, reaching for something that’s not quite sunlight but still something. I think, okay. Reach. Not all the way. Just a little. Enough to call it growth.

Model Output:
The phone says 3% and it might as well be my pulse. I watch the green sliver slide under the red, like a wound almost shut, and I think: if it dies, they’ll think I didn’t care enough to text back. Or I’ll think they didn’t care enough to text first. I plug it in for a minute, then panic that I’m going to be late and unplug it. 2%. I tell myself I am not going to text them first because they should want to see me. They should reassure me. They should just show up. They said six. It’s 5:47, the exact time that exists just to hum. I’m putting on my shoes and I say, in my head, “You shouldn’t worry. They said they were looking forward to it.” But then I say, also in my head, in their voice, “I said that because I didn’t want to upset you,” like they’re causing me mercy pain. I practice my response: “I’d rather you just be honest.” Then I see their face pulling into that patient, borderline pity smile that I hate, that I invented. “Okay,” they say. “I’m not that into this anymore.” And I go cold and noble. “Thank you for telling me.” I see myself standing up in the café, composed, leaving my cup on the table as if I’m donating it to someone stronger. I check the mirror. My mouth looks apologetic by default. I try to arrange my face into something that says I am fine without you. My phone pings and my heart slams against it. One percent. The message pops up: Running 10 mins late—train was delayed. Can’t wait to see you. A heart. Or is it a heart? No, it’s the one with the little sparkling stars. Is that less intense than a heart? Is it a hedge? Is it polite enthusiasm? It’s not the face with hearts, which I think is more intimate, so maybe they’re scaling back. I should not need this. Who needs this? I do. I type “No worries!” and then delete the exclamation point because it looks eager. “No worries.” Period. Then add a smiley face and take it away because it looks like I tried too hard. The phone blinks. Black. I hold down the button and it refuses to resurrect. I’m suddenly without oxygen. The cord is at home on the floor and there is no option but to go and wait. In the street, I make up their explanations the way I make up songs on walks when I’m alone. “I’ve been distant,” they say, “because work is stressful.” I nod. “I get it.” “And also,” they continue, “you’ve been a lot.” A lot. The words fan out like cards. I feel a preemptive heat rise from my collarbones. “Define a lot,” I say, coolly. “Don’t gaslight me,” they say. “You know.” I think of my messages two nights ago: Are you okay? Are you mad? Are you sure? I was attentive. Attentiveness is only a lot if someone wants less of you, and someone should not want less of me. I walk faster, then slower so I don’t look like I was rushing. The café is the one with the plants that look like they’re in recovery. I pick a table near the door so they’ll see me and I won’t miss their face, so I won’t have the chance to misinterpret a delay as a choice. The waiter says something cheerful. I interpret it as an assessment. Don’t look like a person waiting too hard. I order water because I don’t want to commit to a latte that might be interrupted by a dramatic exit. Every time the door opens, something in my spine twitches. I see them in my mind walk in and pause before seeing me, scanning the room, weighing something. I see them walk in with someone else, a coworker with that neat haircut that signals normalcy. They say, “Sorry, they were coming this way anyway,” and I decide to leave immediately. I rehearse a line: “I think I’ll give you the space you were about to take.” It makes my mouth taste like pennies. Then they actually walk in. The real them. The way their shoulders are slightly hunched from their backpack. The way they look at me first and grin like they’re at the end of a small maze, relieved, like I’m a prize. They open their arms and it’s not a calculation; it’s easy. They smell like their detergent. They say, “Hey,” in the register that means not performing for an audience. My body melts into them because my body is not as suspicious as my head. I store the sensation in the place where they said it’s easier to store trauma than joy because joy evaporates. I am trying to invent a jar. “You look nice,” they say. I say, “It’s fine,” because I meant to say “Thanks,” and what is wrong with me. “Thanks,” I add. They don’t flinch. They tell me about the train. The announcement that everyone booed. How an old lady tutted and he laughed and asked someone if they needed the seat. Ordinary, kind behavior that I twist into generosity I should be suspicious of. Who are you trying to impress? Why are you good? They reach for my hand and then pull back. I saw it. They were going to. It’s proof and also not enough. I look at their hand on the table, the soft vulnerable underside, the place where blood runs close to the skin, and I want to bite it so that they have to think of me later when it aches. “I’m sorry I’ve been a bit quiet,” they say, as if they were listening to the voice in my head and decided to rescue it. “I was just slammed with work.” My rehearsed—and excelled—responses rustle. “It felt like you were pulling away,” I say, lightly, like a person who can communicate. They squeeze my knee under the table. It is intimate in a way that lifts the hairs on my arms. The validation comes in a wave that almost knocks me off the chair. I have been waiting for this knee-squeeze all week, burning imaginary variations of it in my mind’s furnace, and now I have it. My brain, being an ungrateful dragon, says: They know that’s what you need. They’re managing you. It says: If someone has to touch you to keep you quiet, you should run. “Not pulling away,” they say, and the words are honeyed and perfect. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot, actually.” I tilt my head. I want to capture, freeze. “What,” I say, playing at coy, because if I show the hunger, it’s embarrassing. Inside, I say: Say it better. Think about me how? Of course you think about me; I’m intrusive. “I keep replaying last Friday,” they say, and grin that slow-grin that interns my knees. The night we became lovers, the night my skin felt like it had been ironed out and made flat and useful. My heart bangs and throws confetti. Then: “But are they replaying it because it was good or because there was something off?” I press my nails into my palm. This is the part where I should say, “Me too,” because it’s the normal call-and-response of intimacy. “Me too,” I say. It comes out like a testimony. “It was so good,” I add, which feels like I am spending a secret. They look relieved. “Yeah,” they whisper. There’s a sweetness to the awkwardness of whispering “yeah” in a café. This is not what rejection looks like. This is what acceptance looks like. I’m supposed to recognize it. I do. And then I immediately interrogate it. Why whisper? Are you embarrassed? Of me? Of us? “I didn’t want to overwhelm you,” they say, stirring their coffee unnecessarily. “I have this thing where I… misread how much to text and then I annoy people.” “Me too,” I say, too quickly. “I mean, not the annoying part.” My face burns and I want to claw time like a cat. “I just worry.” I am trying to sound self-aware, like the sort of person who reads articles about anxious attachment and uses phrases like “my stuff.” I visualize myself giving a TED talk called My Stuff. They nod. “I get it.” Do you? I want to open my ribcage and put their hand inside. “Okay,” I say. The part of me that prays for relief wants to bask. The part of me that believes relief is a trick wants a backup plan. I store this moment as evidence in both files: Proof That They Care and Proof That They Will Leave Me Later. The folders always get merged. The waiter brings me the latte I didn’t order and puts it down like an apology. “On the house,” he says, “sorry you had to wait a bit.” He must mean the drink, but my brain drags the sentence into our context. I laugh and it sounds high and brittle. “Thanks,” I say to the waiter, to the universe, to the part of me that is still holding onto the flare gun. We talk about a show we both watched. I listen and also splice in a scene where they say, “I think we should slow down.” In that scene, I turn my face into a mask and say, “No problem,” and then become a statue until they leave. It’s not happening, but my body rehearses: the weight on my shoulders, the speed at which I’ll put on my coat, the way I will keep my voice even so that they remember me as dignity. I catch myself doing this and get mad at myself. Stop. You’re here. Look at their mouth when they speak. Feel their knee. Feel your own knee. They notice something in my face. “Where’d you go?” they ask, gently, not as a test, just because they are curious. The genuine question punches a hole in my armor and a bird flies out. “Just… overthinking,” I say. Understatement as survival strategy. “I do that.” They smile, rueful. “Me too.” It’s probably true, for them. It’s also not the same gnarled vine choking the thing. But I take it and place it next to me like a pet. A mirror. “I like you,” they say suddenly, straightforward, and my spine goes liquid. Validation is a substance that, for me, evaporates the second it is exposed to air. I cup it. “Do you?” I say in my head. “For how long?” I say in my head. Out loud I say, “I like you too,” like a student. I want to ask them to repeat it, to say it in the past tense, the current tense, the future tense, to print it on the wall. I do not. I can see the path where this goes. I am being held, I am being fed the words that keep my neurons in their chairs, and I am still building a fortress in case the food stops. I feel ridiculous and also justified. I think of texting them later when I get home—except my phone is dead. “I can borrow your charger?” I ask, too quickly. They rummage in their bag without hesitation and I exhale like I had been underwater for days. This is a person who carries a charger. This is a person who doesn’t want to watch me drown. Or this is a person who likes to be needed. I plug in, the little lightning bolt appearing like salvation. The messages come back in, the earlier ones, their “Can’t wait to see you” glowing stupidly. I want to screen-shot it so I can send it to the version of me that wakes up at 3 a.m. sure that I am a burden. I can hear that version laughing. “They were trying to be nice.” I say, softly, “Sometimes I worry you’ll decide this is too much.” I say it like a tiny apology, to let it out of my body so it doesn’t shock me later. They take a second. I watch every muscle in their face shift and inventory it like I’m a scientist documenting microclimates. They nod, slowly. “Thanks for telling me.” No grand promises. My stomach dips; I wanted, “Never.” I also feel relieved: no lie I will have to make myself believe. Two things at once, always. They squeeze my knee again. The second squeeze is different; it says: You can survive this even if I don’t say the exact words you want. It’s both empowering and infuriating. I want to hurl my glass at the wall and I want to lay my head on their shoulder. I take a breath that feels like climbing a ladder. “Okay,” I say. It is both surrender and truce. I taste the bitter and the sweet, and they are the same drink today. The café hums around us with people who don’t know what it’s like to rehearse a fight with a person you love while your hand is in theirs. Or maybe they do. I am not special and also I am a singular catastrophe. I sip my latte. It is warm. It will cool if I don’t keep drinking it. I take another sip before I forget how.

Model Output:
The torch sputters, a sun the size of a fist nailed high on a cracked pillar, its light wobbling across flaking frescoes and the yawning mouth of the roofless dome. Dust hangs in the cold air like the breath of ghosts. The ring is a space cleared of loose rubble—an uneven oval between a toppled altar and a fallen lintel, the floor scabbed with stone and weeds. Dozens of bodies crowd the broken colonnade, the circle tightening and loosening with each jeer and whisper. Wagers flash in the half-light—paper, coin, painted nails tapping on damp palms. The smell is wet stone and sweat, burnt pitch, and the faint metal tang of anticipation. They face each other at ten paces, the light pulling long, quivering shadows from their feet. Kanda is Jigen-ryū, all carved angles and iron discipline, hair tied hard against his skull, greenish veins mottling his forearms. He wears a faded indigo gi and hakama, the cloth stiff at the pleats, hands empty but positioned as if around a katana that is not there. His body vibrates in an almost invisible tremor: heel lightly rasping the ground, knees bent, hips tucked, spine stacked. His shoulders are a fortress. His gaze is a line drawn through his opponent’s chest. He is forward pressure even at rest. Opposite him, Liu shakes out his wrists and lets his long sleeves fall back to his elbows. Piguaquan has given him broad shoulders without thickness, a whipcord waist, the smooth lines of a reed that survives the river. His stance is open, feet staggered left-forward, knees soft, weight in the balls of his feet. He rolls a shoulder, sways a inch to the right, a inch to the left—testing the uneven floor, testing the air. His hands fall and rise as if gathering wind. The crowd leans. Kanda explodes. He doesn’t step so much as launch, his right foot stomping into the dust, left foot sliding after, the classic Jigen triangle lunge—forward, forward again. His right hand cleaves downward in a blade-hand strike that could be a sword cut, the left guarding his centerline. His chest is already twisting to draw power into the next cut. He aims for Liu’s collarbone, a decisive end before anyone can measure the beginning. Liu’s head snaps to the left like a bird’s peck and his whole body follows in a tight pivot on his left toe. The blade-hand tears through a ribbon of air where his neck was. He feels the wind of it cool the sweat near his ear. As Kanda overreaches, Liu’s right arm arcs out and down from the shoulder, a Pigua “whipping hand” aimed at the triceps of Kanda’s striking arm. The loose-hinged swing, powered by waist rotation, bites with the heel of the palm to shock the nerve. Contact. Kanda’s arm jolts, fingertips flaring. He absorbs it by dropping his weight a fraction, left foot sliding half a step forward into a compressed stance. He lets the impact feed the twist of his torso and brings his left hand up under Liu’s armpit, a rising hikite to jam and lift. Liu doesn’t allow the catch. His hips fold, belly cinching, and he lets his right shoulder collapse inward, turning the rising hand into a glancing scrape across his ribs. His right foot tucks behind his left and he spirals past Kanda’s left flank, pivoting counterclockwise in a tight arc. His left hand flicks out across Kanda’s face, fingers rigid, a slapping hammer that goes cheekbone-down-to-jaw and rides the rotation. Kanda’s head snaps right, back teeth singing. He lashes with a backfist from his right, aimed where Liu’s head was a heartbeat ago. The strike cuts only the flickering torchlight. Liu is already behind him, having completed his turn on the ball of his left foot, right foot stepping out, hands whipping again—one high, one low. High catches the back of Kanda’s shoulder with a chopping forearm, low smacks at the left kidney. Not heavy enough to end, but enough to sting and push momentum. Kanda does not chase his shadow. He drops his center of gravity and turns hard to his left into a short stance, left knee rotating, right foot planting with the heel digging a groove in the dust. The sudden torque whips his torso back to face Liu. In the same breath he stamps his right foot forward, sliding across the uneven floor toward the fallen altar, forcing Liu backward toward the litter of carved stone. His hands reframe, both palms blade-still, and he tears a diagonal cut from his left shoulder to right hip, the path of an imaginary sword aimed to split Liu’s attacking arc. This time Liu yields ground. He sees the obstacle—two broken altar steps, edges jagged. He retreats three quick, light steps, each one angled a few degrees right, never in a straight line. The diagonal cut hisses just in front of his chest, conducted through the air by Kanda’s raw intent. The Pigua man counters without setting his feet, hooking his right wrist under Kanda’s forearm as it passes and rolling it, the way you catch a thrown rope and guide it aside. His left foot finds a flat patch, his left arm whips with the whole body: shoulder leading, elbow slightly bent, hand slicing across Kanda’s forearm near the wrist—not a strike but a dragging, redirecting motion to turn Kanda’s chest. Kanda feels the rotational pull. He does not resist high; he drops low. His right knee buckles into a crouch and his left foot shoots forward, a stomping low strike aimed at Liu’s lead ankle. It’s an ugly piece of Jigen reimagined for empty hands—if he can break the base, the rest will follow. Liu sees the hip dip and the left knee turn. He hops. His right foot picks up and steps outside of Kanda’s stomping foot, a shallow crescent step to the right. Kanda’s stomp slaps dead stone. Liu lands with both feet offset to Kanda’s right side, nearly shoulder to shoulder. His hands blur—left forearm swings inward at Kanda’s jaw, right hand hooks down behind Kanda’s knee from the outside to the inside, a simultaneous high-low sickle. Kanda’s head jerks from the forearm whip; his left leg is trapped for a fraction. That fraction holds a canyon. Kanda rips his left hand down and back, elbow tight to his ribs, grabbing Liu’s right wrist and gluing it, preventing the knee hook from finding purchase. He counters the high strike by driving his right shoulder into Liu’s chest, collapsing the space. There is no room to whip when the reed is crushed. They bump bodies, breath intermingling. Liu feels the breath; he gives ground. He turns his hips away, letting Kanda’s shoulder slide past him, and raises his right forearm to brace across Kanda’s clavicle as he steps back. The brace isn’t a block but a guide. He leads Kanda a half-step in the direction of his own shove, using Kanda’s forward bias against him. Kanda’s right foot must step to recover or he’ll pitch forward. He steps. Right foot lands on the edge of the altar step. The stone shifts under the load with a gritty whisper. The crowd breathes in, the torch flares, and Kanda becomes stillness inside motion. His right leg stiffens, his left foot seeks grip, his hips align, and he decides. He doesn’t retreat. He commits through the imbalance, turning the slide into a burst. He rides the unstable step like a runner off a block, launching his left hand straight like a thrust into Liu’s sternum. Liu has been taught to hate straight lines. He drops his center, letting the thrust gust over his shoulder—feeling knuckles graze cloth—and he winds his torso like a silk rope. His left hand slings from below, palm heel rising from near Kanda’s left hip up under the ribs along the seam of the obliques. The strike is not heavy—it is placed. The pain hits like a spark under the skin, a burn that makes muscles shiver. Kanda snarls, the sound caught between teeth. He clamps his left elbow down to trap the offending arm. Liu sees it and lets the arm melt, elbow bending to slide out rather than be caught, his wrist twisting in Kanda’s grip path. He pivots again, choosing the open side—the side with more floor and less altar—and steps his right foot outside Kanda’s left, drawing a half-circle around him. As he completes the arc, his right hand lashes across Kanda’s face, knuckles rapping the bridge of the nose, and his left hand slaps downward along Kanda’s left elbow to unbalance. Kanda’s vision punches white for a beat. He answers with the thing his style has made him: a storm. He becomes a sequence of forward surges, short as heartbeats. Step-stamp, cut. Step-stamp, cut. He tears straight lines into the messy world, forcing Liu to yield, to spiral, to backpedal around the toppled lintel. The circle of bodies shivers back to make room as stone underfoot slides. Liu rides the perimeter, left foot, right foot, diagonals, his torso never squared, always at an angle, always feeding power into his whipping limbs even as he moves. Two exchanges later, Kanda feints a high cut and, with the torchlight wobbling in Liu’s eyes, drops level, hooking his right arm behind Liu’s left knee while his left hand clamps at the shoulder. He commits all his weight to the back-leg reap. Liu feels the vacuum—the emptiness under him—and yields before it can be created. He lets the left leg go slack, knee folding as if stepping into a deep lunge. Instead of resisting, he drops his pelvis in a controlled fall toward the floor, right hand slapping the stone to absorb force, left elbow tucking to protect ribs. Kanda’s reap finds a ghost of a leg and he over-extends, his chest leaning over Liu’s shoulder. Liu’s right foot bites into a patch of grit-free stone. He plants and pushes, twisting his waist clockwise from the ground. His left arm snakes around Kanda’s neck—not a choke, not a hold, just a short lever. He uses the twist to whip his left forearm across the line of Kanda’s throat, a cutting motion that is all rotation and no muscle. Kanda’s balance tilts forward; Liu’s right hand shoots to Kanda’s right wrist and pulls it across his own chest, sealing the lever. Kanda has a choice: fight the lever and stall or roll through. He knows stalling is death. He rolls. He tucks his chin, takes a crooked step with his left foot to save his neck, and spins clockwise to unwind. The movement frees his throat and, for a moment, puts his back to Liu. Liu is already moving. He lets the unwinding occur and follows, stepping to maintain flank. His right hand releases Kanda’s wrist and flattens to a blade, sweeping from behind Kanda’s elbow down to his forearm, pulling the arm across the body. His left hand arcs overhead and snaps down onto Kanda’s exposed right shoulder with clawed fingers, not to grip but to spike sensation and control posture. He steps in close, right hip almost touching Kanda’s right hip. Then he throws a Pigua back-knuckle from low to high, a short whip that cracks just under Kanda’s right ear. The sound is a dry slap of knuckles on bone. The world in Kanda’s skull tilts. He grinds his teeth and fires blindly backward with his elbow to where Liu’s ribs should be. Liu is already outside that line, his left step drawing him behind the elbow’s path, his right hand capturing the elbow as it sails by, guiding it into emptiness. He whips his left forearm diagonally across Kanda’s lower back, above the pelvis, a tearing motion that both strikes and steers. Kanda stumbles two steps forward, toward the base of a broken column. He plants his left hand against the stone to halt the momentum. He’s breathing through his nose, lips peeled back. Behind him, Liu bounces on the balls of his feet, resetting distance to two paces, circling right. The torch paints both men in shifting amber. Shouts rise and crash like surf. “Finish him!” from the Jigen corner, venom and pride. “Make him eat dust!” from the Pigua side, heartbeats synced to the gambler’s lust. Kanda turns in place, keeping his right shoulder forward, refusing to give the soft of his belly. He advances again, measured now. He taps the floor with the edge of his right foot to check for loose rocks, then stamps and cuts. His blade-hand whistles, not wide but tight, trying to herd Liu toward the fallen lintel where footing is treacherous. Liu gives ground but not that way; he drift-steps left, then feints left and cuts right under the strike, slipping inside the elbow. He peppers Kanda’s ribs with two forearm chops—low, high—then slides out before Kanda can fold him with an elbow. The exchanges build, each man scoring small truths. Kanda’s straight lines score bruises like straight handwriting down Liu’s tender places. Liu’s whips bleed sting into Kanda’s arms and back, dulling the snap in his strikes. The torch sputters lower; shadows lengthen and seek prey. A misstep is a god. It comes when Kanda edges Liu toward the altar steps again. Liu sees the trap and skirts right, but his right foot lands on a patch of gravel that acts like ball bearings. His heel skates. He is not falling, but he is slipping for one-half second, his weight not where it should be. Kanda watches for precisely that, and the world telescopes into a single line. He charges through the slip with a short burst, left foot slamming down to lock his hips. His right hand lashes straight, not a cut now but a thrust into the solar plexus. It hits with the heel of the hand. Air leaves Liu in a bark. Pain blooms behind his breastbone. Kanda’s left hand follows like a shadow and slams sideways into Liu’s right shoulder to collapse him. Liu’s spine flexes like bamboo in wind. He folds but as he folds his right foot recovers purchase and his waist answers pain with rotation. He chooses emptiness again—he pivots hard to his left, turning his right shoulder under Kanda’s controlling hand, and in the turn his left arm drags. The dragging arm hooks across Kanda’s right forearm at the wrist and tears. Kanda’s thrusting arm is drawn across his own body, pulling his shoulder joint out of alignment. Kanda’s feet must adjust. He registers, too late, that his hips are squared while his chest is not. He tries to step to reset. Liu will not permit. He steps deep with his left foot past Kanda’s right, planting it outside Kanda’s right heel. His hip meets Kanda’s thigh; his torso twists counterclockwise, stealing Kanda’s root. The left hand that was dragging the wrist now suddenly slips to clamp the hand itself and wrench it down, while his right forearm whips across Kanda’s throat from behind, not to choke but to lever. The combined torque—hip replacing, throat lever, wrist pull—draws Kanda backward over Liu’s thigh. They fall together, but only one lands on stone. Kanda’s back slams into the floor. Dust coughs up around his head. The breath in him leaves in a groan that is not consent. Liu rides down with him, knees wide, weight over Kanda’s hips to pin for a heartbeat. He does not stay. He knows Kanda will buck like a dragon. He slides to Kanda’s right, keeping control of Kanda’s right wrist with both hands for a moment, planting it on the floor. With the next beat he releases, whips his left forearm across Kanda’s cheek again, then pops up, stepping back to clear space and avoid a wild kick. Kanda bucks. His right leg scythes, his hips twist, he rolls to his left side in a stubborn attempt to bring knees under. He makes it to his knees, spitting dust, blood threading his nose. He surges to half-standing, teeth bared. Liu meets him with a descending whip from the left, a forearm that crashes onto the trapezius where neck meets shoulder. The strike breaks the rise. Kanda’s right knee softens. Liu’s right hand is already at Kanda’s jaw, heel of the palm driving up and back. Kanda’s head snaps, his vision stutters, and his body backs into the broken column. His right shoulder hits stone. He refuses the collapse. He stomps his right foot, draws his left foot up, and fires again—because Jigen-ryū knows only forward, because every story told to him as a boy carved that command into his bones. He tears through at close range with a final short arc of his right hand toward Liu’s throat. Liu saw the foot. He had waited for it. He slips his head outside the line, steps inside the arm, and rotates. His left shoulder bumps Kanda’s chest, killing the strike. His right arm snakes under Kanda’s armpit and up behind the shoulder blade, his forearm forming a bar. His left hand cups the back of Kanda’s skull. His body turns like a millstone. The movement is small and merciless. He wrenches Kanda’s upper body into a counterclockwise spiral while his right hip blocks Kanda’s right thigh from moving. Kanda’s lower body tries to follow; it finds the column. For a violent instant, Kanda is two men trying to go to different places. Something in a shoulder joint protests with a dry pop. His right arm goes white with fire. He drops to his knee because he must. Liu releases the bar at once, hands open, stepping back one measure to show the choice—the final class of the night. Kanda is a kneeling shape, chest heaving, eyes bright with pain and fury. A ring of faces crowd the light. The torch spits another gob of flame and the shadows leap. The Jigen supporters grind their teeth; some shake their heads, some watch with a silence that is heavier than shouting. The Pigua crowd sings under their breath. Kanda sways once, twice. He plants his left foot and pushes to standing. His right arm hangs at a lower angle, shoulder furred with violence. He stamps the floor and goes forward. Liu’s eyes narrow

Model Output:
The first thing that hits me is how clean everything is. The studio floor is smooth, sprung wood, lines of white gaffer tape marking center and quarter lines, mirrors running wall to wall. The smell is pine cleaner and sweat. I’m used to concrete, chalk dust, a speaker with a cough in the bass. Here, a silent subwoofer waits under a console. The large digital clock on the wall over the mirrors reads 01:59:57 in red, slashes of blood. It starts ticking down. We stand in two lines—three in front, four in back—placed on taped X marks, all body angles aligned to the front mirror. I’m on the back line, second from the left. The room is bright, the daylight combed through blinds, and I can see my face: too tight at the mouth, a haircut I did myself before the scholarship came through. Black sweatpants, white T-shirt, new training shoes that feel like they’re swallowing my footwork. “On instructors,” the boy next to me whispers. He bows his head with everyone else when she steps in. Madam Kwon is small, hair pulled into a bun that doesn’t move, black track pants, no logo. There’s a thin headset on her. She looks at us like a measuring tape. Her assistant, a tall guy in a gray tee, pads to the LED panel. The clock ticks. 01:59:25. “We will run the first chorus,” she says in Korean. I catch every other word; my language classes haven’t caught up with my dreams. She snaps her fingers as she speaks—clap, clap, clap-clap—eight counts like punctuation. “Formation, precision. Breath.” We walk to first position. It’s a diagonal for the count-in, then a quick converge to forward-facing, third position parallel, feet beneath hips. I’m used to starting wherever the beat lives in my chest. Here, the beat’s on the screen. She cues music. The bass comes in on a 4/4 with a hi-hat rattling a sixteenth-note pattern. We mark it once, bodies half-committed. “No marking,” she says, tiny mic catching the iron in her voice. “Full out.” “Five, six, seven, eight.” My eyes glue to the front because everyone knows the counts already, and I learned the video last night with my phone under a blanket. Shift weight to right, slide left foot in, heel slightly lifted, set left edge of the sneaker at forty-five degrees—this is what they call a bevel. Hands up on count two, wrists flexed at ninety degrees, fingers tight, palms facing out—blocks that look like construction cranes. I force my shoulders away from max relax. My b-boy heart wants to throw a groove on the up-beat, a little roll through the ribs. The choreography wants a crisp, isometric stop. On three, we all hit a micro hop, landing in second position, knees soft, torso lifted. My habit is to sink when I land, absorb like asphalt. Here, we’re a row of posts planted upright. “Energize!” the assistant calls. His accent makes it sound like edge-nighs. Count four, head snaps left, chin level. I overdo it and my cap brim nearly scrapes my ear, which makes me late for the five: right arm shoots to a ninety-degree angle forward, left arm cuts across in a sharp forearm. It’s a tutting shape, elementary box. I should own this. But my hands, raised on corners of boombox battles, tend to flex open into expressive fingers. Here, hands are blades. My left thumb peeks out and Madam Kwon pauses the music with a hand flick. She looks through the mirror, straight at me, not blinking. She walks between the lines to my X, and I fight every instinct not to step back. She lifts my left hand, presses my thumb in against my palm with one finger. It’s a small correction, which somehow feels like she pressed a stamp into me. “No freestyle in fingers,” she says, English crisp, a cut. “You leak everywhere.” I nod. The clock says 01:51:02. We start again. The opening crawl—step-together, hit, hit—beams through my quads. The third eight-count features a ripple: starting at the left-most dancer in front, through my line, we send a wave of chest pops on counts one-and-two-and to the right-most in back. The timing is mathematically neat: each pop is on an eighth note subdivided into two even sixteenth hits, one-and, two-and. In the cyphers, we ripple when we feel it, when someone’s pocket pulls you. Here, the tempo marks us like stitches. My chest wants to snake on a triplet: da-da-da. The song is crisp: da-da. “Control your wave,” the assistant says, tapping his own sternum. Madam Kwon stops again. She doesn’t raise her voice. She steps to the front line and rearranges ankles, tilts heads half-degree. When she passes me, she aligns my pelvis with her flat palm, rotates it to the front. “Parallel. No turnout,” she tells me. I’ve opened my feet, habit from footwork patterns that use external rotation to slide—l-kick outs, coffee grinders, swipes. Here, we’re toaster slots. We run the first chorus six more times. Sweat starts to make the floor sticky under my new soles. The mirrors fog at chin height. On the fourth run, the mannequin precision of my forearms is a fight; my scapulae feel like they’ve been taped down. When the choreography calls for a hover—arms extended forward, torso tilted to twenty degrees, knees bent, shoulders set—I accidentally let my shoulders bounce on the backbeat. It’s the tiniest groove, just enough. “Stop,” she says. The room freezes. The clock says 01:37:11. You could hear the electrical hum from the ceiling lights. She stands at center, facing us, four meters from my spot. “You,” she says, and my ear hears the you before my brain hears my name. Tryan. In her mouth, it comes out Try-ahn. “Step here.” I leave my X, my footfalls careful over the tape lines, and stand where she points, a half-meter ahead of the front line’s center mark. She moves my body without asking: a hand on my upper back to raise my sternum, a hand on my rib to press my floating ribs down. “Your movement is…,” she searches for a word, then finds it, “spill.” She steps back. “We do pour.” I know what she means. I’ve built a life on spill. On how hard it can slosh into soft. The kind of roof battles where the wind eats half your music, and you answer with body drips and sudden freezes that are yours, not written. Pour is even, measured. It’s respect to the container. I know if I say any of this out loud, I’ll sound like a brat with a bad attitude and an excuse. “Again,” she says, and the room retreats to a V around me like a funnel. I’m center now but not because I earned it; because I’m a problem. The assistant cues the eight count without music to test my alignment. “Five, six, seven, eight.” I set my feet under me, equal weight, press a line through the crown of my head. The counts come like bullets: one, two, three. On two-and, I nearly let my wrist relax. I catch it. Fingers pressed together, thumb tight. On three, I hit the micro hop, and clamp the bounce before it slides into groove. It feels like holding a sneeze. “Good,” she says at two decibels above whisper. “Now with music.” The track drops its same hi-hat chatter, the bassline walking a straight dotted eighth that never swings. We go from the top, me front and center, them watching through the mirror. I feel exposed and wrong in equal measures, like I’m wearing someone else’s skeleton. We go through the chorus. On the turn—a clean three-step pivot right, weight transferring from right to left, ball-ball-flat—my body screams to drag the last count a hair, to find a micro delay to show I own this space. I lock the count instead. My foot lands exactly on the “four,” and I can hear the assistant’s breath release like he’s afraid of being part of the air. At count seven of the phrase, there’s a body ripple that demands a wave chest out-to-in: sternum forward on seven, mid-ribs on seven-and, belly on eight. Street style wants me to cheat it with a tiny shoulder lift, make the wave mine. Here, my shoulders must stay level. I pull the wave straight through sagittal, no lateral. It hurts to be that clean. We end the chorus in the pose: lunge left, right leg extended back, left arm out like a blade, right arm at ninety degrees overhead, head dropped to the left at a specific angle. My back calf trembles with the holding. I hear my breath too loud against the mic on her face. “Again,” she says. We drill it until the clock reads 01:08:43. Water break is thirty seconds. They count it too. I jog to the wall, uncap my bottle, sip. The boy next to me—Minho, if I remember—doesn’t look at me. No one looks much. We’re all small economies trying not to crash. Back on marks. We try the bridge, where the chorus fragments and we travel. The move is a traveling shuffle in unison, three half-steps forward on the diagonal toward stage right while the upper body holds an isolating sequence: head to right on one, center on two, left on three, without the shoulders moving. It’s a body popper’s dream and nightmare: isolation plus locomotion. My muscle memory wants to let my shoulders roll to carry the head. I lock them and feel my traps fight back, a tremor of revolt. My step is too large on the second shuffle; I end up half a foot ahead of my line. “No,” she says. She taps the tape with her foot next to mine. “See the boxes? Hold your space.” We run the carry-over: a floor touch on count six, right hand to the ground, left leg scooping back into a switch, come up by seven-and. In the neighborhood, that’s where the freestyle would blow up. A sweep into a knee spin. A baby freeze to signal the end. Here, the hand just touches, a placeholder, and we’re up. My hand slides too much on the pine cleaner sheen. I overcompensate by gripping, and my wrist complains. I climb up on the eight with too much weight in the ball of my foot. “Heels heavy,” the assistant says. The clock hits 00:47:12, and everything tastes metallic. Madam Kwon starts talking about faces. We have to smile on the chorus, not with teeth—no American grin—but with eyes and cheek lift, jaw soft. The cognitive load of angles and faces makes my brain tilt. She stands in front of me and pinches the apple of my cheek up an inch. “This muscle,” she says. “And eyes awake, not angry.” I want to laugh because where I come from, angry eyes mean you mean it. It’s armor. But she doesn’t joke, and the clock ticks like someone dragging a knife across a floor. We run the entire sequence. I track my spacing like my life depends on it: I stay in my lane, a corridor two feet wide from my X to the mirror, and when we travel, I maintain the diagonal relative to Minho in front of me. At the chorus, we fan out to a wide formation; I step to the side exactly one-and-a-half tape tiles, heel aligning with the second tape line. My arm arcs cut clean across the girl at my right shoulder without grazing her. On the closing hit, our legs line like dominoes in a snap. The mirror shows a machine built of humans. And I feel something—fear? The thrill inside it is sharp and thin. If I get good at this, if I sand myself down enough, the things that spill out of me might dry. The boys back home who pop with me under bridges, who let the third count stretch because it feels good, who clap when a beat drops and you answer with a goofy, ungodly groove—where does that live in a lunge with a knife-hand? The scholarship bought me plane tickets and a bed and a future. Maybe it also bought my voice. We hit a section with a short break, music drops to just the hi-hats, and there’s a moment where Madam Kwon watches me. Not my body—my eyes. She tilts her head one centimeter. The assistant gives the count. “Three, four…” I know the next move cold: chest isolate twice, step-step, arm hit. The rest of the line will go perfect. No one will notice if I add nothing. I could relax my wrists, let a drip run through the elbow, let the chest wave linger a hair, make it me. Or I could keep everything poured into the container and prove I belong, no questions, at the cost of learning to keep my own taste out of it. The clock reads 00:31:05. My heart is a stomp pad. My breath hits my teeth. “Five, six, seven, eight,” the assistant counts. On one, I lock. Spine stacked. My sternum pops on the exact millisecond the hi-hat ticks. On the and, I let the wave carry a fraction longer, so small no one with a stopwatch could catch it, but I feel the extra half-glide in my skin. On two, my weight shifts to the ball of my right foot and my left foot traces an invisible circle the choreography never drew—no travel. My hips stay square. I pack the mischief into an internal groove, a rhythm inside the rib cage. On three, my arms slice out like razor blades, thumb still tucked, fingers tight. And on four, when my head turns to the mirror, my eyes don’t smile. My cheeks lift. My jaw softens. There’s a spark behind it that is mine, that doesn’t apologize. We finish, hold the ending pose, the silence after like a choke. Madam Kwon doesn’t move at first. She walks to the console. Time continues to evaporate on the wall. She doesn’t look at me directly when she speaks. “Better,” she says. Then, a bare flick of her eyes toward mine in the mirror. “You find container. Do not break formation. But do not become empty.” It’s not praise. It’s a condition. We run it again. If anyone sees my private rebellion measured in half-frames, no one says a word. My calves burn. My shoulders ache. My fingers stay pressed together, no leaks. The machine chews and I decide to jam a tooth into a gear—not enough to break it. Enough to feel where I am in it. The clock hits 00:00:02, 00:00:01, 00:00:00. And in that precise second where everything in the room stops, where bodies hover suspended in the end pose like they were hung that way all night, I feel both terrified and alive. The doors I walked through might shut behind me, but for now, I’m on my mark, in the light, counting down and counting myself.

Model Output:
The Court of the Dreaming convened in a long hall of no clear length, hung with veils that shifted to suggest rivers, highways, inner monologues, diaries, the weather. The benches were occupied by the drowsy silhouettes of past litigants and sleeping jurists who would never be called. A bailiff in the shape of an hourglass with eyes thumped its own belly and announced, "All rise," even though some were already floating. Dream sat at the bench that also served as the horizon. He was pale and thin as a punctuation mark, hair a black scribble that the ceiling couldn't quite contain. He regarded the room with a patience so still it was almost a threat. He would have liked to be somewhere else—whittling a comet, perhaps, or unpicking a tyrant’s nightmare—anything but dream traffic court. To his left, First Love stood on tiptoe to be seen. Rosy cheeks, sweater vest, a polite awkwardness that made the air around him slightly warmer and more vulnerable. He clutched a folder—photos of sunsets, mixtapes, damp notes pulled from pockets, a library receipt for a book never returned. At his side lay a field of wildflowers pressed neatly into paperwork. To his right lounged Mora. She wore shadows the way some people wore jewelry—casually, as though it were all inevitable. She smelled faintly of night sweats and wet wool. Her grin showed nothing at all but her teeth implied the moon. She emitted a thin cackle that skittered up the pillars and got lost beneath the arches, returning a moment later, embarrassed to be overheard. When she moved, you felt a weight any mirror would deny. At the witness dais sat Max, a schoolboy shaped out of lint and whisper, his head tilted as if listening for a bell that hadn't rung yet. He kept glancing toward the door as though it knew something he didn't. "We are here," Dream said, "to hear the matter of the contested dreamscape of Maximilian of Room 3B. The complaint is filed by First Love, patron of formative blushes. The defense will be offered by Mora of the press and the paralysis. The Court recognizes neither time nor embarrassment, but we will attempt to be brief." The hourglass coughed and dribbled some minutes. First Love cleared his throat like a violinist tuning. "Your Lordship of the Endless Dream, this is simple: I initiated a recurring dream sequence for Max, age fifteen, appropriate to developmental stage. We had an agreed scenario: pastoral field, sunset at the mild end of rose. The girl’s laughter is the leitmotif, the almost-kiss is the unanswered question that teaches patience, vulnerability, hope. We were building a gentle cliff. Every Tuesday and on days he smelled laundry detergent. It was working. Grade-A overwrought heart-thumping, no permanent damage. And then," he flapped the folder open, scattering petals and exclamation points, "she sits on his chest, grows claws, red eyes, and—pardon me—moans. Max wakes thinking he may be into something he is not yet prepared to manage. Worse, he can't move or breathe. My sequence is out of key." Mora rolled her shoulders in satisfaction, emitting another faint cackle that ricocheted off the upper balcony, startled a flock of geese that had been dreaming of being jurors, and returned as an apologetic hiccup. "A girl's gotta eat too, you know?" she said, in a voice like a cool hand on a fever. "He was lying flat on his back in a meadow—do you know what that says to my demographic? Like putting a sign in the window. Open for business. You crafted him like a crème brûlée—crackable on top, trembling underneath. You expect me to walk on by? I am not made of fog." "It is not—" First Love began, flushing deeper. "It was not an invitation to predation. It was an invitation to tenderness. We were in Act Two of a five-act arc." "Five acts?" Mora snorted. "What is this, opera? He is fifteen. He barely survives gym class. He would have died of suspension alone." Dream steepled his fingers. The gesture quieted the geese. "Max," he said, turning to the boy, "tell the Court what you dream." Max was the sound of a chair scritching along linoleum, the smell of pencil shavings. "It's... I’m in this field. She’s there. She looks like how she looks in Chemistry but more like she would if I were braver. We lie down. We laugh. I forget my hands. We, uh, almost kiss. I wake up feeling like I know a secret I'm not allowed to keep." He faltered. "Then sometimes—lately—she’s... heavy. On my chest. I can’t move. Her hair’s in my mouth. It's terrifying. And also, I guess..." He caught First Love’s glare and flinched. "Confusing. I feel dumb afterward. And awake. Very awake." Mora beamed. It was like watching a cat pretend to be the moon. "See? Nutrition and education. A balanced breakfast." First Love pressed his folder to his sternum. "He is a child. You are a nightmare. You frighten and feed. That is your function. But you have no license to repurpose the architecture of a crafted formative experience. There is etiquette. Unspoken, but binding." "Etiquette." Mora rolled the word on her tongue. "I prefer 'instinct.' And I do have a sort of license. An ancestral one. Ask the old women of winter villages. Ask anyone who's slept on their back." "Objection," First Love said quickly, because it felt like something one should say in a courtroom. "Relevance?" "Overruled," Dream said, because it felt like something he should say. He pinched the bridge of his nose infinitesimally. "Proceed." Mora tugged at the hem of the dream, making an edge curl. "Your Sovreignty of Somnolence, I don't ask for exclusive rights. I just slid in for a taste. The boy's field? Fertile. The girl's eyes? Already pools. I didn’t break the toy. I shook it." "She unthreads sequences," First Love said, scandalized. "He now associates breathlessness with anticipation. He will chase danger to feel the first thing again. I built him a swing and she greased the chain. He will fall and think it is flying." "He will learn to ask for air," Mora said, suddenly almost gentle. "He will learn to push, to name heaviness, to say 'off' and mean it. Not my fault if he also discovers a fondness for bruises. I am not the curriculum coordinator. I teach what I am." Max slid lower in his seat as if the floor might be the right answer. Dream’s expression did not change, except to alter in all the ways that meant he was annoyed. There were kingdoms that rose and fell in the time he did not sigh. He examined the dreamscape as one might examine a bruise: academically, then personally. "You," he said to First Love, "claim authorship and intention. You," to Mora, "claim need and custom. The boy claims breathing." The Court felt colder; a star dimmed briefly. "I am not a moralist," Dream continued. "I am a gardener. I prune for shape, not virtue. Still." He leaned forward, and the horizon leaned with him. "I do not enjoy tidying the plates after your feasts." The hourglass-bailiff attempted a cough; time sputtered, then resumed. From the gallery, a deep sigh like wind through corn. Desire had stepped in, unseen, then almost all the way seen, and then vanished again, because it was an excellent way to be invited back later. "Max," Dream said, voice softening only if you had known him for a thousand years. "Do you wish for the field?" Max swallowed. He looked at First Love, whose smile trembled, and at Mora, whose smile did no such thing. "Yes," he said. "And also I wish to breathe. And also I don't want to be boring." The last came out in a rush, a confession to the cosmos. First Love shut his eyes in relief and pain. Mora laughed under her breath, and the pillars stiffened as if their legs had fallen asleep. "Then," Dream said, "we will draft a boundary." He raised a hand. The air above his palm turned to parchment made of fog. Words appeared in ink that smelled like rain and chalk dust. "Ruling: The dreamscape in question shall remain primarily under the custodianship of First Love. The meadow shall be restored to original intention: laughter, grass, inhalations in purple twilight, the almost-kiss like a held note that hurts a little. Permission to hover is granted." First Love nodded fervently. "Mora," Dream continued, "is granted a seasonal visitation. Night of storm, nights when the boy falls asleep on his back with homework crusted to his face, winter Sundays when fear tastes like coins. She may sit on his chest, feed on the edges of his breath." He raised an eyebrow, a flicker of the mischief he tried not to indulge. "But she must wear the girl’s face only by halves. No full morphs. Keep the teeth metaphorical. She may not alter the memory of consent." Mora's head tilted, a predator considering a leash. "And in exchange?" she asked, even though he hadn't offered anything. "In exchange," Dream said, too quickly, annoyed with himself, "you will refrain from nesting in the boy’s accumulated laundry, which you have been doing. It is unsanitary." Mora's grin faltered, then spread. "Fine," she said. "But if he leaves socks on the radiator, I make no promises." First Love seemed ready to object to something on principle, then thought better of it. "And the almost-kiss?" he asked, softly. Dream tapped the parchment. "Shall be occasionally a kiss. Not always. Rarely enough to ring like a bell down a decade. And—" He allowed himself the smallest of smirks, enjoyed it so briefly he might have denied it later. "On those rare nights, she will taste like peppermint lip balm and cold air, and the boy will wake thinking he has learned a secret he can keep." A soft murmur went through the gallery, a rustle of pens in diaries that would be read in thirty years. Max smiled, surprised at the feeling of his own shoulders. Mora emitted a cackle that slipped up the rafters, startled the moon into losing a button, and came back sounding like applause. It made everyone uncomfortable for exactly the right length of time. "Finally," Dream said, as if he had not just amused himself, "no feeding during gymnasium anxiety dreams, math test dreams, or the recurring 'teeth falling out while onstage in underwear' scenario. That buffet is closed to you, Mora." "Puritan," Mora said, without heat. "Fine." "Objection," said no one. Dream rolled the fog parchment. It vanished into his sleeve and became something a future poet would call a "feeling you recognize when you sit in a dark theater before the movie starts." "Case concluded," he said. "Do not make me see you again on this matter. I am patient, but boredom is a kind of violence I do not forgive." They began to disperse. The geese congratulated one another on their restraint. The hourglass-bailiff tripped and spilled a week, which ran under the benches and made everything smell briefly of late August. Max lingered, fiddling with the string on his hoodie. "Um," he said. Dream looked down and became, for a moment, a window onto a lake at four a.m. "Thank you," Max said, almost to the lake. "Also, if you could, uh, make it so my mom stops walking in right when I'm about to—" "No," Dream said, with an authority that ended empires. "That is not my jurisdiction." He paused, then, because mischief again tempted him, because the boy’s earnestness was a planet with its own gravity. "But I will insure the door hinges dream of oil." Max blinked, smiled, and vanished into a bell ringing somewhere else. First Love gathered his papers, pressing the wildflowers back into place. Mora rose in a sigh that made the ceiling feel lower and then again normal. She nodded toward Dream with a tilt complicated by gratitude and appetite. "Try the attic dreams in the blue house," Dream said, already regretting speaking. "Plenty of dust. No hearts in progress." Mora cackled, soft as moths, and the sound went up, around, through, back, and finally out, leaving the Court feeling as if it had been lightly pressed. "A girl's gotta eat," she said again, almost apologetic now. "I am aware," Dream said. The Court closed. The horizon folded away. The veils remembered how to be weather. Dream sat alone for an extra second he did not possess and allowed himself one small sigh that, somewhere, made a dandelion go to seed. Then he rose to go mischief elsewhere. The door hinges of Room 3B dreamed a little oil, and, for once, took it as a compliment.

Model Output:
The harvest moon rises swollen and red over the empty village, spilling a wine-dark sheen over slanted thatch and the upturned ribs of broken wagons. Doors hang ajar, windows gape toothless. A black dog whines once and vanishes beneath a stoop. The wind lifts ash and the sweet-sour breath of graves. He walks the main street as if through a memory, coat stirred as though in a tide, hat brim cutting the lunar shine. The smoked orange of his glasses burn with twin coals in the gloom. His boots crunch glass, bone, a weathered rosary. He tips his head to the sign that swings, creaking: a moon eaten by a bird. “The bird of Hermes is my name,” he says to the signboard, to the night. His smile is a slash. “Eating my wings to make me tame.” “Birds don’t fare well under the moon,” a woman’s voice answers, smooth as a drawn blade. He stops. Blood runs downhill toward him like a tongue. He turns, and there she is in the mouth of the square: the sorceress in the storybook he never read, violet eyes like bruised stars, hair spilling black and lustrous over the stark white of a fur-lined collar. She seems to distill the moonlight, to condense it on her cheekbones, a pale geometry of danger. The scent of lilac and gooseberries ghosts the broken square. He shows his teeth. “And witches fare better?” She steps forward, heels clicking on cobble. “Sorceresses. If you can manage not to choke on the syllables.” The village well stands between them, old stones rippled by time, the bucket half-spooled and frozen. He feels the power move with her—the pricking of his skin, the burrowing cold down his bones. A ripple that reminds him of the sea and no water. She feels him the way one feels a thunderhead: the pressure, the itch, a taste of metal on the tongue and something older that drags the spine toward a bow. “Alucard,” she says, and does not bow. “Hellsing’s bloodhound. I’d wondered what the fuss was about. I expected taller.” “And I expected horns,” he replies mildly. “Or a broom. Names are tethers, aren’t they? You know mine. Who tethers you?” Her mouth curves, humor without warmth. “Yennefer of Vengerberg. If you must,” she adds when the amusement in his face deepens. “You find that funny?” “I find all old things funny. It is how we keep from crying.” He lifts a hand in mock elegance. The glove flashes as his arm lengthens, fingers stretching, leather creaking, then contracts with a hiss and a click of bone. “You do smell as the tales say.” “Do I? You smell like a charnel pit someone set on fire.” She doesn’t blink as his hand returns to normal. “There was a nest here. Vampires. Weak ones. You know how I feel about weak things who hurt for sport.” He tilts his head. Somewhere down the street a piece of a door gives way and clatters, sending up a feather of ash. “I removed the nest. They were tedious. They mewled. It offended me.” “Hmm.” She takes another step, and the temperature drops by a degree, a ripple that makes the air sing like glass. Her gaze moves like a knife over the ground, over the licked-clean stones. “Then we are in agreement. Almost unprecedented.” He comes to the well, lays a hand on the old stones, and peers down into the dark. There is no water; there is only a depth that promises teeth. “Agreement suggests alliance.” He looks up with the ease of a wolf. “Do you need saving, maiden?” “I’m not sweet,” she says, violet eyes sharpening, “and I’m not a maiden in distress in need of saving.” He laughs, a low-lidded, delighted sound. “Good. Saving is dull.” He steps onto the lip of the well. She doesn’t flinch, though he can tell she wants to track the blur. He pivots so one long leg dangles into the dark, the red of his coat stark against the old stone. The moon paints him like a saint in a bad icon. He could have put the muzzle of one of his handguns to her heart from here, could have disassembled her with silver and zeal. He doesn’t. He waits. “Why are you here?” she asks. Her voice is bored. It’s a lie, spun thin. “Because the moon is red, and the dead make the best music.” His grin hardens, edges honed on old cruelty. “Because I heard of a black-haired woman with eyes the color of bruises and thought: finally, something to sharpen my teeth on. Because I am done with weak family. They were so certain they were monsters. They were not.” “And you are?” she asks. He watches the swirl of invisible threads gather on her fingers, the way light bends infinitesimally at her wrist. There is a sigil there, worked a thousand times, and she is most beautiful when she is arithmetic. He slides off the well and onto the square. “I am what happens when something refuses to die so long that the idea of death begins to be jealous.” “Jealousy is petty,” she says. But he hears the tremor under it, the chord he has plucked by accident or design. What does a woman centuries old long for that he can taste? Absence. A life that did not happen. A borrowed womb that will not answer. “You smell also of longing,” he says conversationally. “Gooseberries and absence. That is a cruel combination.” Her eyes narrow just enough. The well-chain rattles as if in a sudden gust. “You’re not the first creature that’s tried to sniff out my secrets.” “And eaten,” he says, rolling his shoulders as if to shake off cobweb. “Or survived? The rumor didn’t say.” The magic moves fully. It does not erupt; it unveils. A circle hums into being at her feet like frost traced fast. The dead wax peels. The lilac deepens, becomes cutting. He chuckles as a swarm of black-veiled tendrils climb his legs, cold as standing water. They pin his coat against his thighs. The ground grits under the weight of their insistence. “Show me what you are without the coat, old thing,” Yennefer says. Her voice is nothing now but blade. He relaxes. The tendrils find purchase and lift him, and for one heartbeat she feels triumph, because power has leaned and he has yielded. He lets his outline blur. The coat hangs a heartbeat empty, the hat floats like an idea, then skulls open like lily blossoms along his spine, wet and obscene and smiling. “Ah,” she says, pushed back a step despite herself. “That.” A spike of shadow thrusts up from the square and she meets it with a curt snap of fingers; glass walls flower around her from air; they hiss as his shadow points pierce, slide, knit; she gestures and the glass becomes slices of absolute cold. He grins with six mouths and bites at the spell, and his tongue smokes where it touches the frost. He shudders in delight. “Yes,” he says from everywhere. “Yes, little star. More.” Yennefer’s laugh is a brittle ornament. The tendrils around his legs tighten until even his immortal bones complain. She pulls, and the village shifts with her, the stones slurring, the whole square an opening jaw. “Careful what you ask for.” He lets himself be dragged and reforms inside his own collapse, standing with his boots in the heart of the sigil, coat steady, glasses in place. The complaining chains still. He has not moved, and yet he has disappointed the space he occupies, which wanted to be occupied by his undoing. It is a small insult. He savors it. “You’re not the only one who learned to be more than her body,” Yennefer says into the quiet. And there it is: a shard of bone-white truth thrown at him like a favor. He tips his hat. The brim cuts a red crescent out of the moonlight. “Taught by pain? My favorite teacher. She is stern.” “Pain is tedious.” Her voice is breathless now only because she has spent something. Sweat beads at her hairline and gleams like dew on iron. “Its lessons repeat.” “Then graduate,” he suggests. “Or repeat until you forget why you started.” “You’ve forgotten?” she says. And there is the edge of a knife in it. “No,” he says, softly. The hat’s shadow hides his smile for a breath. “I am very diligent.” They circle. The wind rises and the fur at her collar ripples like a sea. His coat licks the dust. He lifts one of the massive guns, the black length of it swallowing moonlight, six engraved sigils crawling faintly. He does it lazily, like a man lifting a wine bottle. He points it nowhere and everywhere, and she can feel the threat in it because threat is not the bullet but the intent. He lowers it again. “I’d rather not shoot a woman who can make me amuse myself,” he says. “Flattered,” she deadpans. “It’s rare to be considered a fool’s entertainment.” “Not a fool.” He flashes teeth. “A monster.” “On that we agree,” she says, and this time there is no lie in it. The square breathes, or perhaps it is the night. The red moon leans. Somewhere a bellless church imagines sound. “What do you want?” he asks, teeth clicking, head canted like a fox, like a question mark. She considers lying. It would be easy. She has lied longer than anyone in this village has been dead. But she has already invited truth into the square, and it is rude to slam the door on a guest. “I want,” Yennefer says, each word with weight, “what I was denied. I want to change the rules. I want a thing that cannot be had.” “And you think I relate,” he says. He taps one gloved finger against his collarbone, where somewhere in the skin something old is sealed. “The thing you want and the thing I want might meet on a road.” “You want to die,” she says, flat. He shrugs a shoulder, graceful. The leather squeaks. “Sometimes. Or to be surprised. You’ve done something like that. The surprise. It is rare.” “Don’t wag your tail yet,” she says. The retort is easy, an old skin. “I haven’t decided what to do with you.” “You cannot do anything with me that I do not also do with you,” he says, pleased. “That,” she murmurs, almost smiling, “sounds like a promise no one asked for.” They stand with the well between them, everything red and brittle around the edges. He lifts his face to the moon and inhales like a man before a plunge. “Shall we make a game of it?” he suggests lightly. “You try to hurt me. I try to make you admit you enjoyed it.” “Half of that is unnecessary.” Her violet eyes gleam. “You are arrogant.” “Arrogance is a kind of hunger,” he says. “You have it too.” Her magic hums again, but softer this time, not an axe but a harp. The frost re-traces itself as a lace at her cuff. “We could help each other,” she says, very carefully, as if assembling a labyrinth in air. “In a manner of speaking.” He regards her over the rim of his glasses. He can see the organs in her chest if he wishes, the small bird of her heart beating bruised and stubborn. He does not. It would be rude. “Ah,” he says softly. “Politics.” “Possibilities,” she corrects. “Don’t pretend the word scares you.” “Nothing scares me,” he says. It is, for once, not entirely a lie; what he means by fear is not what others mean. “Even the thought of never finding your equal?” she says, as if idly adjusting a ring that is not there. He laughs, abrupt and delighted, as if she had reached into him and tickled a rib. “There,” he says. “A cut.” The wind lifts again, hard this time, whipping her cloak and slapping the hat brim up to show his eyes. For an instant the orange glasses catch the crimson and throw it, two coins tossed upward and caught. He tips his head as if listening to a tune only he can hear. “Tonight,” he says, “I am not your equal. You are not mine. But we are not bored, and that is something.” She inclines her head a fraction, the acknowledgment a jewel stingy and real. “Don’t stalk me,” she says. “Impossible,” he lies. “I will loiter.” She turns then, cloak snapping, the smell of lilac and gooseberries like a signature. She walks away down the slain street into the deeper dark. She does not look back. He dismisses the guns in a whisper of steel and shadow, puts his hands in his coat pockets, and begins to whistle some graveyard tune that learned to be jaunty to keep from breaking. The harvest moon watches them both, low and leering, and the shadows of the deserted village lean after them like hands that almost touch and never quite do. The blood runs down the street and disappears into the thirsty earth, which is patient and takes everything eventually. He steps after her without hurry, and if the distance between them closes, it is only because the night is small and the world is old and certain conversations echo longer than the first words spoken. He smiles up at the moon as though at a long joke, and the moon bares its teeth back, and they go on under it, each a knife in the other’s pocket neither has decided to use.

Model Output:
A dim overhead light flickers in the prison corridor at irregular intervals, breaking the darkness into slices of hard white and shadow. The air is chilled, bleached clean, like it wants to erase the scent of worry left behind by anyone who’s ever walked through here. Footsteps echo—one set slow and measured, the other tapping with a restless rhythm. Jolyne stares at the figure ahead of her through the bars as her fingers curl, index knuckle cracking a tempo of impatience. The woman is slender, auburn hair tied neatly, a long coat draped with the kind of authority that doesn’t apologize. Yellow ringed eyes soak in details without seeming to move. She stands next to a guard who keeps stealing glances at her, as if measuring, as if flinching. “New warden?” Jolyne asks, deadpan. “Or another freak in a suit trying to make my life interesting?” The woman smiles faintly. It’s the kind of smile Jolyne associates with loan sharks and fake girlfriends. “My name is Makima,” she says. “I’m here to assess threats. You qualify. I heard you can turn yourself into string.” “Stone Free,” Jolyne says, already unwinding a thread from her fingertip, the string gleaming like polished fiber in the wavering light. “You talk like you file people in cabinets.” “People are easy to file,” Makima replies, and the guard beside her nods, his breathing slowing, eyes going slack, like someone dimmed him from the inside. “You’re different. You’re interesting.” Jolyne flexes her jaw. If there’s no Mickey, this shit ain’t Disney. “Lady, I’ve had enough ‘interesting’ to last three lifetimes.” She pulls, and a tight loop of string slides through the lock of the gate with a metallic hiss. The guard doesn’t react. Makima watches Jolyne break into the corridor as if observing a painting. “That’s a poor way to greet a guest,” Makima chides softly. “Guess I’ll call the concierge.” Jolyne steps out. The facility is wrong. This isn’t Green Dolphin Street Prison, not really. The concrete is too smooth. The bars are new. The smell is antiseptic, an aftertaste of something metallic that coats the back of her tongue. The signs are in no language she recognizes, and yet she reads them anyway. And the guard beside Makima—his eyes reflect nothing. Jolyne’s skin prickles. She turns a corner, string slicing the air into tripwires as she goes. Makima follows, her shoes tapping without urgency. The guard falls in behind her like a shadow with a pulse. “When did you realize this isn’t your prison?” Makima asks. “When I realized you were smiling at me like a cat in a cartoon,” Jolyne says. “And that nobody else here blinks unless you let them.” Makima actually blinks at that—slow, appreciative. “You’re perceptive. Not all of you are.” “Us? You collecting people like trading cards?” “I prefer dogs,” Makima says. “They’re simpler. Loyal.” “Try a different word. That one’s making my skin crawl.” The corridor widens into a block of cells with glass fronts instead of bars. Inside one, a nurse sits in a chair, hands folded in her lap. She’s not breathing. Her eyes track Jolyne and Makima, but her chest doesn’t rise. In another cell, a man in a jumpsuit holds his hands up as if in surrender, kneeling to no one. “Let us out,” the man whispers. He doesn’t look at Makima. He can’t. “Please.” “Shut it,” Jolyne snaps without heat, and the man obeys. She doesn’t look away from Makima. “What exactly do you want?” Makima’s smile doesn’t move. Her voice is pleasant, soothing. “To understand how your strings handle pressure.” “You could have just asked.” “People lie,” Makima says. “Sincerity is easiest to procure when it is not optional.” “Is that what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night?” Jolyne tilts her head. “Or do you even bother?” Makima tilts her head in a mirror of Jolyne’s motion, as if considering which answer would disappoint her least. “Sleep is unimportant.” The light flickers. It takes a breath to come back this time. When it does, Jolyne’s threads are everywhere, mapped from floor drains to the hinges of doors, taut lines forming an invisible web. Makima has not stepped around them, but none of the strings touch her. Jolyne notices it like you notice a missing tooth with your tongue. Her threads have a sense, the same way fingertips can feel a ghost of a draft. The air around Makima is still. Not empty—obedient. The world bends. “You’re not human,” Jolyne says, fighting the urge to rub the goosebumps from her forearms. Makima’s expression doesn’t change. The guard’s eyes flick to her, then to the floor. “I didn’t say I was,” she answers. “Does that frighten you?” “It pisses me off.” She pulls. The strings snap taut around Makima’s arms and waist, thread-bands that could restrain a car engine. The guard jerks in front of her like a puppet, and Jolyne’s strings bite into him instead. He doesn’t scream. He doesn’t bleed. He just stops. Makima steps to the right, unbothered, as if the world has politely shifted with her. “You’ll find that intervening bodies are a common courtesy,” Makima says. “It keeps everyone from getting hurt.” Jolyne’s teeth grind. “I’m not ‘everyone.’” She extends Stone Free to full, her body unraveling into a cyclone of strings, spinning herself thin enough to slip through an air grate, slingshotting around, coming out behind Makima with a thin, needle-sharp thread aimed for her temple. The air resists like honey. The needle stops. Jolyne hits the floor and rewinds, her palms skidding on cold tile. Makima turns only her head. “You’re smarter than I expected.” “Don’t talk down to me,” Jolyne snarls. “I told you. I’m not a dog.” “No,” Makima concedes. “You’re a cat. You pretend not to need anyone, and then you curl up in the lap of whoever warms your bones at the right moment.” Jolyne takes a step, then another, strings whispering out to pull grates loose, to tighten sprinklers, to map every path. “Keep talking. It’ll make knocking you out even more satisfying.” Makima’s hands clasp behind her back. “Your father would disagree with your methods, but he’d be proud of your instincts. He’d want you safe. If I asked him, he would come.” “I’d like to see you try,” Jolyne says, but her chest tightens. The thought of Jotaro—his hand on her shoulder, his voice steady even when he’s cold—hits like a sucker punch. Bastard woman, using that. She swallows. “You think I’m going to fall apart because you say ‘dad’? Screw you.” In the cell to the right, the nurse stands up, slow and careful. Jolyne’s string at the corner of her eye flares. She yanks, and the glass splits the air with a shriek as the door slams shut again. “I don’t need you to fall apart,” Makima says. “I need you to be useful. Bring your strings. They’re elegant. I could teach you to control more than thread. I could teach you to pull people the way you pull doors.” “And what? Put collars on my friends? Make them bark?” Jolyne barks out a laugh. “That sounds like hell.” Makima’s eyes warm in a way that isn’t warmth. “Dogs are happiest when they have owners. It’s okay. Dogs are supposed to die for their owners.” Jolyne’s stomach flips, rage going white-hot. She’s moving before she thinks, body unraveling full, Stone Free blooming behind her, a human silhouette woven from a thousand fibers. She punches. The strings drive forward, forced through the air, denser, sharper. Her knuckles sing with impact as they hit— Darkness. The light dies, plunging the corridor into black. For a heartbeat, Jolyne senses only her own lines, singing through the space like taut harp strings. Then something else hums, deeper, the world thrumming like a throat clearing, like a breath held too long. The light returns. Her fist is embedded an inch deep into the concrete wall where Makima had been. Makima stands three paces away, not a hair out of place. The guard is gone. The cells are empty. The nurse, the kneeling man, the others—gone. “What did you do?” Jolyne demands, breathing hard. Makima’s eyes track Jolyne’s chest rising and falling, calculating. “I asked them to leave. You’d be more comfortable without an audience.” “You ordered them,” Jolyne says. “Like furniture.” “They were happy to be useful.” “I’m going to be sick.” Makima takes a step closer. Jolyne’s threads shiver around her like a living hurricane, every strand ready to cut and bind, to catch and break. “I’m not your enemy, Jolyne,” Makima says, almost tender. “I like you. You are efficient. You are brave. Under the right leash, you would be unstoppable.” Jolyne spits on the floor. “I’d chew through my own tongue before I wear your leash.” Makima’s smile widens, pleased, approving. “I thought you’d say that.” “Then why the song and dance?” “Because it’s polite to offer.” The light flickers again. This time the darkness lingers long enough for Jolyne to feel how the air tightens around her strings, how the world draws taut, as if held in a fist. Her thread sense screams. She dives, body disassembling in a whip-crack as a pressure wave bites the space where her throat was a heartbeat ago. The wall behind her folds inward with a groan. “You’re trying to crush me?” Jolyne asks, rolling into a crouch, Stone Free reknitting her muscles. “I’m trying to see how your strings taste under pressure,” Makima corrects, patient. “I don’t get many chances to play with this kind of texture.” “Lady, get a hobby.” She lashes out again, not at Makima this time, but at the grid in the ceiling, at the electrical lines. Stone Free bites through insulation, rewires, shorts. The lights go mad, strobing faster than thought. In the chaos, Jolyne weaves a cocoon of momentary blindness, threads reflecting and refracting, a micro labyrinth that confuses sight. For a breath, Makima’s attention shifts. Jolyne feels it like an absence of weight. She moves—past her, through a side door, strings guiding her like piano wire. Stone Free pulls locks, drags heavy gates, tangles cameras. The corridors twist but her web is a map that didn’t exist until she wrote it. “Running?” Makima’s voice carries, not loud but everywhere at once. “Cats run. They always come back to the warm spot.” Jolyne grits her teeth. “I’m choosing my battlefield.” She explodes out into an open control hall. Rows of monitors show corridors she’s never walked, empty cells she never wants to see again, a yard under a false sky. The long table in the center is littered with files. A coffee mug sits fresh and steaming. No one is here. No one has ever been here. Jolyne yanks the emergency alarm lever. Sirens rip the silence. She doesn’t expect help. She expects noise. She expects sources of vibration to lean on, currents to ride. Makima steps into the doorway as casually as if she’d been invited. She’s framed by the flickering light like a saint in a cheap painting. “No one is coming,” she says, almost gentle. “This place is for things that belong to me. You could belong to me.” “No thanks,” Jolyne says. “I’ve already got a life.” Makima’s gaze is steady, pitying, the way you look at a stray with matted fur. “You don’t. Not really. But you could have one that’s easier.” “I don’t do ‘easy.’ I do ‘right.’” Makima’s lips part in a sigh, affectionate, like a disappointed mother. “Stubborn.” “And you’re a control freak.” Jolyne rolls her shoulders, feels the hum in the walls and the song of the alarm and her own heartbeat, and for a second she can almost hear her father’s voice telling her to keep her head. She smiles, feral. “Let’s end this before I say something I’ll regret.” Makima nods. “As you wish.” They collide. The room screams. Strings whip, walls buckle, the world tries to close, and Jolyne threads it open, wedge after wedge. Makima advances with patience that feels like doom, every step a hand placed gently on the back of Jolyne’s neck. Jolyne doesn’t give. She improvises, ties the alarm cord to the sprinkler rigs, bursts them. Water falls in sheets, bead-laden threads. The air grows heavy and alive, every droplet a node, every surface connected. Stone Free becomes a web glistening with rain. Makima stops. For the first time, something like curiosity deepens. “Clever.” “Yeah,” Jolyne pants, grinning. “I have my moments.” Makima’s eyes lift to the water. The control room is a hive of paths now, every beat of rain a wire she didn’t make, and for an instant the world isn’t only obedient to Makima—it is busy with Jolyne. The pressure wave comes late. Jolyne rides it, flips the vector, anchors herself to pipes and panels, and hurls that redirected force sideways. The wall caves, the monitors explode, smoke blooms. In the choking fog, Jolyne hears a low laugh. Not cruel. Not warm. Enjoying the puzzle. “You’d make a good pet,” Makima says softly through the dust. “It’s a shame.” “Bite me.” The room clears. Makima is closer than she should be. Her hand lifts, palm out, like she’s about to pat Jolyne’s head. Jolyne snaps backward, strings coiling to yank her body out of reach, but she doesn’t need to. A thought strikes her with the same clarity as a punch: Makima wants the touch to land. She wants to define the dynamic with that gesture. Jolyne doesn’t do what she wants. She cuts sideways, rips a hole through a service hatch with Stone Free, and dives. The hatch slams. The world narrows to a crawling tunnel of concrete and old wires. Jolyne drags herself hand over hand, threads forward like antennae. Behind her, Makima doesn’t chase. She doesn’t need to. She can find people by their obedience. Jolyne grins in the dark. “Good thing I don’t do orders.” She spits a string to the side, digs into the unknown. The facility shifts, geometry bleeding strange, but Jolyne is a prison expert now. That’s the joke. They put her in a cage and she learned every way out. She slithers into a ventilation cavity and stops. Across the grate, in the pale slice of light, Makima stands. Of course she does. She smiles. Of course she does. “You’re persistent,” Makima says. “Cats are.” “Lady, I’m a hurricane with a manicure.” Makima’s head tilts. “I’ll see you again.” “Not if I see you first,” Jolyne says, because there’s no better vow here. Makima’s smile flickers, a flare of true interest. Then the lights go out one final time, deeper than before, a blackout that tears the world—and when they return, the grate is empty. The corridor beyond is just a corridor. The nurse is not there. The man is not there. The coffee is cold. Jolyne breathes, long and slow. She rewinds herself, sits up, elbows on knees. Her hands shake. She stares at the wet web of her strings and watches water run along them like veins, like a circulatory system she built to keep herself alive. “Makima,” she mutters to the empty air, tasting the name like a warning, like a splinter under her skin. “Next time, I’m bringing friends.” The overhead light flickers at irregular intervals. Jolyne grins at it like it’s a challenge and rises, threads trailing like a cape. She chooses a direction and moves, mapping, unafraid, a needle in her own compass. Behind her, in rooms she has already left, a soft voice echoes as if from a dream. I’ll see you again. And the air waits, obedient and patient, for the next command it will refuse to give her.

Model Output:
Item #: SCP-████ Object Class: Pending (see Addendum) Special Containment Procedures: All handwritten notes attributed to Dr. E. [REDACTED] (Site-19, Applied Temporal Studies) shall be collected, catalogued, and stored in a secure document locker under double-key access. Dr. [REDACTED] is restricted from unsupervised access to stationary, printers, and blank Foundation memorandum pads. Onsite psychology and counter-memetics teams will conduct weekly evaluations. Exposure of additional personnel to the notes is limited to clearance-level necessity while counter-memetic screens are updated. Description: On ██/██/20██, I began finding handwritten notes in my office during routine work hours. The handwriting matched my own to a 96.3% confidence score, and the notes—including those found in secure environments—were always written on standard Foundation memorandum paper (Form-7F, blue border, watermark “Sine Timore”). Even when I locked all memo paper away, sealed in a safe, or replaced stock with non-Foundation notepads, any new note I found was on Form-7F. Preliminary analyses showed the paper fibers, watermark alignment, and printer-ink artifacts matched Site-19’s central stock. I will reproduce portions of my log interspersed with excerpts of the notes, as ordered, to enable both temporal and psychological review. Day 1: I was calibrating the chronometric lattice for SCP-3412 cross-testing when I saw a folded sheet under my keyboard. Note A: You hear it later than I did. Don’t ignore the alarms. Go to B-Corridor, bulkhead 3, before 14:12. Seal it from the inside. If you see Kline, don’t let him talk. I checked the security feed. No one had entered my office that morning, and the cleaning crew had clocked out two hours prior. 14:12 came and went without incident. I stayed at my desk, pretending not to glance at the door every thirty seconds. No breach. Kline stopped by at 15:20 to ask about an equipment requisition. He talked at length. Security flagged the note as a hoax. I was told to keep it and report any further anomalies. Day 3: Note B appeared on my chair, folded once inside a second piece of Form-7F. Tissue analysis later showed both sheets had trace sweat from my hands, consistent with my own personal profile. Note B: They moved the time. They always move the time. You won’t believe this yet. Look at the photograph in your second drawer. Stop thinking you’re alone. If you do nothing else—block the west stairs. Block them and don’t explain. I didn’t have a photograph in my second drawer. When I opened it, there was a photo I had never seen before: me, standing in B-Corridor, bulkhead 3, empty but with foam sealant sprayed around the hatch. My face was obscured by my raised hand as if waving to the camera. Security logs showed no such event. The timestamp on the photo was 09:06 the same day. At 09:06 that day, I was in a team briefing. I submitted to handwriting analysis, requested an amnestic as a precaution, and was denied pending further observation. Day 6: I found Note C wedged in the hinge of my locker, the metal biting its paper. The locker had been sealed with a tamper strip that remained intact. The note had no crease lines consistent with being slid through a gap. Note C: They started small because they needed you to think it was a joke. It’s not. The breach starts with a smell. You’ll think it’s solvent. It’s bone. If you can read this you still have both wrists. Don’t look at your wrists. Don’t shake Kline’s hand. By then, everyone had asked me how I was sleeping. I said fine, then started sleeping in my office chair. I washed with paper towels and antiseptic foam, because if I went to the dorms, I’d start looking for notes under the pillow. We formed an ad hoc task force: me, Kline, Dr. Park from Counter-Temporal, and two security officers. We installed a camera in my office pointed at the desk, the drawers, the cabinet, the underside of the chair. We replaced the memo pads with numbered sheets in tamper-evident sleeves. We switched my pen to a pressure-analyzed stylus that recorded stroke patterns. The task force asked me to pretend to ignore any note that appeared, to see who came to collect. Day 8: There were two notes. Note D1 (under keyboard, again): You waited. You always wait. Stop waiting. The alarms won’t sound. That was a lie I told you to get you moving. This time I’m not lying: don’t let them show you the footage. The footage isn’t yours. It’s older than your eyes. Note D2 (in my coat pocket, dry despite residual wet from a rainstorm I had walked through): They said it’s a memetic hazard. It isn’t. It’s a timing hazard. Don’t trust the blue border. They keep the borders when they swap the center. We examined Form-7F stock from four different storerooms. No anomalies. The blue border dye was consistent across sites. Park proposed a scenario: a contained entity with psychographic mimicry capabilities piggybacked on a common object. Another scenario: an unstable local time loop with self-consistent messaging from an older me. We put me on twice-daily mnestic microdoses to mitigate suggestibility. Day 11: I smelled solvent. The labs always smell like solvent. I told myself this. The smell was sweet, then mineral, then something else. I forgot my coffee on the hot plate and it boiled until the room filled with steam. I started sweating through my shirt. Note E was taped to the inside of my glasses lens. I had been wearing them for three hours. Note E: You’ll keep thinking you can outsmart it. You can’t. Break the fire glass and trigger the foam. It hates foam. Don’t tell Park. She won’t be her by then. It’s not her fault. You will forgive her if you live. The foam station glass was intact. I didn’t break it. If this was manipulation, triggering the foam could have harmed personnel or whatever was contained on the floor below. I put my glasses in an evidence bag and tried to work without them, squinting at fluctuating numbers that wavered and doubled like fish. Day 12: Security played me footage. It showed me, at 09:06 on Day 3, standing in B-Corridor, bulkhead 3, applying foam sealant. Then, as the camera panned, my arm bent in a way that made no anatomical sense, reached around behind my back, and set the frame back on the wall. This contradicted reality as I understand it. Park paused the footage and asked me what I saw. I said a smear of pixels. Kline said “We can doctor video if we want to scare him.” No one laughed. I asked to see the raw timestamps. The metadata was clean. Note F was tucked into the server rack, at the back, on a shelf no one had touched in months. We found it by accident while verifying the feed. Note F: This is the part where you think it’s about you. It isn’t. You are a tool someone else is using to pry open a hinge. Don’t be a hinge. Be a wedge. Wedges don’t swing. Wedges break. Go to bulkhead 3 now. 14:12’s a lie. It’s 13:34. It’s always 13:34 when you’re brave. I went. At 13:34 the corridor was empty. The bulkhead’s seal was normal. I touched the wheel. I smelled the sweet-mineral bone smell. I froze. Security found me there at 14:28 gripping the wheel, knuckles white, not moving. Day 15: I wrote a note to myself as a test. I locked it, with a hair, in a single-use polymer sample tube stamped with my initials, embedded in casting resin we poured on camera. I wrote: “If you read this, call me an idiot and tell me to go home.” At 03:02, the night guard reported finding Note G folded inside my pillowcase in the office. It was my stationery, my handwriting, with a faint imprint where I had scrawled the test note earlier—mirror reversed beneath. The content: Note G: It’s funny you thought that would help. I love you for it. Go home. You can’t, of course. They won’t let you. You’re doing good work. Today it gets loud. Block the west stairs. If I can catch your hand before you reach for the rail, maybe you keep both wrists. Don’t check: you still have both. I checked. I still had both. We tightened procedures. I wasn’t allowed to be alone. I slept under camera. I ate food sealed by someone else’s hands. When I blinked, I saw the blue border of Form-7F. When I dreamt, I saw bulkhead 3 doing something doors don’t do. Day 17: The first contradiction that hurt: Note H said, “Park dies first.” Park was alive. Note H also said, “We cut power to the wing at 12:14.” Power remained. At 12:14, the lights flickered. A UPS relay kicked in. I told myself that’s what UPS relays do. Park put her hand on my shoulder. I flinched like I’d been burned. Note H (continued on the back, cramped, as if written at speed): If you’re reading this, I learned to write with the left. You haven’t yet. This is how we know. The blue border is a lie. Look at the watermark. It’s wrong. It says Sine Timore—no, it says Sin Timor. They’re close. This is how it gets near. I held the memo up to light. The watermark said Sine Timore, correct. I tried another. Sine Timore. A third. Sine Timore. I wanted to find one that said the wrong thing so that I could be right. Day 19: Counter-memetics performed a battery of tests. No cognitohazard signatures beyond normal ranges. They escalated to a running hypothesis: either an undetected temporal leakage affecting local messaging or a high-fidelity psychological manipulation keyed to my motor patterns and personal narrative, maybe seeded via residual contact with SCP-3412’s instrumentation. We reviewed containment logs for entities with known reality-adjacent communication methods. None had access to Stationery. Some had access to me. Note I was inside my left glove between my palm and the fabric. I removed the glove at a sink and the note fell onto the counter like a moth. Note I: When it finally opens, it’s quiet. Don’t trust quiet. Bulwark is a word. Say it. Then say wedge. Then say forgive. If you can say forgive, you can keep going. If you can’t, step away from the wheel and let them empty you out. It’s better than the other thing. I said bulwark. I said wedge. I couldn’t say forgive out loud. I whispered it and it sounded like a lie. Day 21: They showed me the footage again. This time, the camera saw me at 03:02 walking to the office, entering, shutting the door, then flattening myself against the wall. The door opened without anyone pulling it. The lights flickered. A stack of Form-7F slid across the desk by itself. I stepped forward, picked one up, wrote furiously, folded it, tucked it into my pillowcase. Then I stood in the dark for eight minutes and didn’t move. I watched myself do it and I remembered sleeping dreamless from 01:00 to 06:00. I asked for a different angle. The other angle didn’t exist. The camera was “under maintenance.” I asked Park to watch with me. She watched me write and didn’t say anything. Kline said, “That’s not his writing posture.” I signed a consent for increased surveillance and for the possibility that my notes represented a memetic infection vector requiring isolation. They moved me to a smaller room with padded edges and no drawers. They took my belt and my pen and my glasses. The notes stopped for two days. I felt skin grow over the idea. Day 24: Note J was under my tongue when I woke up. I coughed paper and blood into my palm. Note J: We are not sick. We are not possessed. We are not a containment risk. We are a warning. If you don’t move now, you will write this from a chair with straps. You will learn to write with your left. The bones in the right don’t fit anymore. I still have both wrists. You still do. If you act, you’ll keep them. Security found no lacerations in my mouth. Counter-memetics found skin cells on the paper that matched mine and epithelial cells that did not match anyone on staff. Park closed her eyes. Kline left the room. Day 25: The alarms sounded for 22 seconds before cutting out. Everyone looked at me. I looked at the west staircase and saw nothing. I smelled bone. I grabbed the pallet jack parked nearby and rammed it into the staircase gate until the wheels bent and the metal sang. Security shouted. I shouted back that the notes had said to block the stairs. The breach did not happen. The daily incident log recorded “False alarm due to sensor spike in B-Corridor; no breach; minor property damage; reprimand issued.” That night, I took my left hand and wrote on my palm with a marker I had borrowed from Kline when he wasn’t looking: don’t be a hinge. It washed off in the morning. Day 27: I asked Park if she believed me. She said belief wasn’t operational. I asked Kline to shake my hand. He hesitated. I grabbed his anyway. Nothing happened. I felt the bones of his fingers. They fit where bones go. Note K appeared inside a sealed evidence bag we had left on the table as a control. It fogged the plastic as if it were warm. Note K: They will tell you this is you losing your mind. They will be kind. They will strap you gently. They will feed you things that make your dreams slide off. If you let them, you will live a long time in a soft room. If you don’t, you might not live long at all. Choose the world where Park lives. Choose the world where Kline says sorry. Choose the world where you are a wedge. I asked what it meant to be a wedge. Park said nothing. Kline said he would say sorry for doubting me if I told him what to do. I told him to move the foam rigs to B-Corridor. He did. Security filed the appropriate forms. Day 29: I slept. I dreamt I was in a corridor I knew too well, and the bulkhead unlatched itself like a mouth. I woke to the smell and the quiet. No alarm. No lights. Just a sense of weight shifting on the other side of a door I had closed a thousand times with my eyes. I stood. My wrists hurt. I counted to ten. I said bulwark. I said wedge. I said forgive. It sounded less like a lie. Note L was in my shoe. Note L: Now. I went to B-Corridor and the foam rigs were there and the pallet jack still blocked the west stairs and Kline was on the radio and Park was not there yet. I put my ear to the steel. I heard nothing and I thought that meant something. I spun the wheel and sealed the internal bolts. I sprayed the seams with foam until it oozed like bread. I looked down the hall and for a second the lights stretched long and slow and then snapped back like elastic. Kline said my name in a voice that had too much air in it. I said we were done. He said we were not. The alarms sounded. This time they did not cut out. Post-Incident Summary: There was a breach from an adjacent wing. It did not involve our corridor. The foam rigs were later deemed unnecessary but harmless. Park sprained her ankle running to B-Corridor. No fatalities. Kline said “sorry” and meant it. I kept both wrists. The notes stopped for a week. Addendum: At present, there is insufficient evidence to classify the notes as purely temporal or purely manipulative. The Foundation’s attempts to determine origin have produced contradictory results. The paper is ours. The writing is mine. The content shifts between prescience and nonsense. In reality A, a door opens. In reality B, it doesn’t. Both realities leave paper in my mouth. Evaluation by Counter-Temporal: - The appearance of notes in sealed environments suggests either micro-apportation consistent with localized time-shear or the intervention of an entity capable of bypassing physical security using psychometabolic keys derived from the subject. - The partial accuracy of warnings could indicate a temporal echo where probabilities bleed into presences, with self-editing messages attempting to optimize outcomes. The conflicting details could be interference by an external manipulator aiming to erode trust and induce either paralysis or reckless behavior. Evaluation by Psychological Services: - Subject exhibits elevated stress, hypervigilance, and mild persecutory ideation in response to persistent anomalous stimuli, without baseline psychosis markers. The notes function as a destabilizing narrative scaffold. Subject’s struggle to trust own perception is rational given evidence of manipulated media and the undermining of sensory consistency. - Recommendation: Maintain structured support, controlled exposure, and contingency plans that do not rely on subject’s unilateral decisions. Current Status: Object Class remains pending. We don’t know if I wrote to myself, or if something wore my knuckles like gloves and wrote for me. We don’t know if the breach I was warned about happened elsewhere because I moved fast here, or if it never would have happened at all. I keep a single Form-7F sheet in a clear box on my desk. It says: Note M: If you’re me, you’re tired. If you’re not me, you think this is a joke. It wasn’t. Don’t let them make you gentle when you need to be a wedge. Don’t let them make you a hinge. If the smell comes back, count to ten. Say the words. Forgive them. Forgive yourself. Turn the wheel. When I hold it up to the light, the watermark says Sine Timore. If I stare long enough, sometimes it doesn’t. I make myself look away. I say bulwark. I say wedge. I say forgive. I say it until it sounds like truth, or until the alarms tell me

Model Output:
Item #: SCP-6579 Object Class: Thaumiel/Keter, pending Special Containment Procedures: As of 2024-11-03, 187 instances of SCP-6579-A (unmarked doors) have been documented in 42 countries. Task Forces Eta-10 (“See No Evil”) and Mu-4 (“Debuggers”) are assigned to locate, catalog, and sequester SCP-6579-A instances, with local Site liaison teams deploying portable exclusion perimeters and installing false walls where feasible. All SCP-6579-A instances are to be guarded by two armed personnel and one archivist. Entry is authorized for Level 3/6579 personnel only, with Level 4 approval required for removal or custodial action on SCP-6579-B materials. Standard entry protocols require tether lines, inert gas sampling, radiation checks, and continuous audio/video. Personnel must carry nonmetallic cutting tools and nonlethal deterrents. If visual contact is made with SCP-6579-C entities, personnel are to maintain 10 m distance, announce intent to withdraw, and avoid obstructing egress. If SCP-6579-C approaches within 5 m, teams are to retreat to the threshold. Pursuit is prohibited. Description: SCP-6579 is a translocational phenomenon accessed through SCP-6579-A, a series of identical, unmarked, surface-flush wooden doors appearing in derelict or abandoned structures worldwide. All SCP-6579-A instances have identical semilunar scratches in the paint around the doorknob, concentric and ragged, consistent with repeated attempts to open the door with a key that did not fit. When opened, SCP-6579-A does not reveal the local interior; instead, the doorway opens onto SCP-6579-B. SCP-6579-B is a contiguous, architecturally incoherent archival facility extending beyond Euclidean space. Interior features include stacks, mezzanines, catwalks, pneumatic transport tubes, and vaulted aisles arranged in discontinuous, non-gravitational geometries. Air composition is breathable, ambient temperature 15–17°C, with constant low-level machine hum with no identifiable source. Lighting is diffuse and sourceless, cycling through a 27-hour dim–bright rhythm not aligned with any terrestrial day-night cycle. SCP-6579-B contains documents, artifacts, and storage media cataloged in a pseudo-bibliographic system written in an unknown administrative argot and partial Baseline English. Approximately 11% of recovered materials explicitly reference a global civilization predating verifiable human history, destroyed by a containment failure of uncertain nature. Recovered indices and memoranda identify administrative bodies with nomenclature and structure that parallel the Foundation, e.g., “The Quiet Directorate,” “Custodial Collegium,” “Silent Counsel.” Multiple personnel records corresponding to current Foundation staff have been recovered, with creation dates ranging from 312–740 years prior to present day. SCP-6579-C are humanoid entities wearing matte white hazmat suits with smooth, reflective visors, respirator backpacks, and insignia consisting of a circle bisected by a vertical bar. SCP-6579-C are observed removing sections of shelving, sealed crates, and entire aisles by means of collapsible rigs and silent pallet systems. SCP-6579-C retreat when approached, avoid contact, and will abandon in-progress removals to reach unknown exits. Attempts to intercept have resulted in SCP-6579-C accelerating to speeds inconsistent with normal human locomotion and vanishing behind shelf ends that do not correspond to navigable space upon pursuit. Discovery: The first known SCP-6579-A manifested on 2024-02-19 in an abandoned civic warehouse in Novi Sad, Serbia. Local reports noted a “new old door” with paint scratches. Municipal explorers opened SCP-6579-A and posted images of large, floating stacks and “humming skylights” before the content was removed. Foundation webcrawlers flagged the posts; containment followed. Two days later, three more SCP-6579-A were located in Detroit, Rasht, and Porto Alegre. Cross-latitude analysis shows no pattern in distribution beyond preference for unoccupied structures. Addendum 6579-1: Exploration Logs (Excerpts) Exploration 6579-B-01 Team: MTF Eta-10 “See No Evil” (E-Lead Morgan, E-Tech Liu, Archivist Dr. R. Bhatt) Entry: SCP-6579-A-04 (Detroit; derelict textile mill) [Begin Log] E-Tech Liu: Tethers anchored. Gas is clean. Ambient noise at 48 dB. E-Lead Morgan: Opening door. [Door opens to a mezzanine overlooking stacked aisles running into apparent infinity. Light is gray/blue; motionless dust hangs in the air. A slow humming is audible, rhythmic but irregular.] Dr. Bhatt: Catalog plates on endcaps. Script doesn’t match any living language. See the English fragments: “Incidents,” “Retirements,” “Vacancies.” E-Lead Morgan: Proceed to nearest workstation. [Team advances along a catwalk with no visible supports. Ambient temperature drops 1.2°C. A workstation consists of a long table, embedded brass sockets, and a single brass plaque reading “INTEGRITY.”] Dr. Bhatt: Boxed files. Paper stock is acidic. Label: “Custodial Collegium—Human Resources—Cohort Alignments.” [Dr. Bhatt removes a folder, flips pages.] Dr. Bhatt: This is… it’s a personnel jacket. Name: “R. Bhatt.” Photograph is… me. E-Lead Morgan: That’s not possible. Dr. Bhatt: Date of induction: Year 412, Cycle 9. “Assigned to Adaptive Epistemics. Cleared for Nine Silent.” That phrase repeats. E-Tech Liu: Nine Silent? Dr. Bhatt: Crossed-out lines include “Quiet Directorate.” Salary fields blank. There’s a termination document with a wax seal. No date I recognize. E-Lead Morgan: Bag it. Keep moving. [They reach an index column. Carved numerals shift when observed. A distant squeal of rollers echoes. E-Tech Liu shines light downward; the “floor” leaps, revealing only further aisles below, inverted.] E-Lead Morgan: Mark path. Don’t trust gravity. [End Log] Recovered Document 6579-B-01 (Excerpt) Memorandum: From the Custodial Collegium, Office of the Quiet Ledger To: All Departments Maintaining Entity Arrays Subject: On the Event of Cascading Failures …Should systemic isolation be proven to have been compromised, all shelves pertaining to Class-Immanent Phenomena shall be embargoed and staged for excision under Protocol Basilisk. To prevent recurrence, the Silent Counsel authorizes removal of memoria and annals sufficient to unwind vectors that led to Failure. The Archive will reduce itself. No exceptions for prestige projects. We did this to ourselves. We will make sure no one can do it again… Exploration 6579-B-07 Team: Eta-10 (E-Lead Morgan, E-Tech Liu), Mu-4 (Analyst Varga) Entry: SCP-6579-A-12 (Sunderland; condemned cinema) [Begin Log] [Entrance opens onto a corridor whose walls breathe subtly, lined with flat drawers labeled in raised dots.] Analyst Varga: Braille? Not standard. Alignment offset. E-Tech Liu: Audio uptick. Also, track noise. [Three SCP-6579-C appear at an intersection, pushing a low cart stacked with sealed gray binders. Their suits are unmarked except for the circle-with-bar insignia.] E-Lead Morgan: This is MTF Eta-10. We are not hostile. Can we communicate? [SCP-6579-C halt, tilt heads, and resume pushing. E-Tech Liu steps slightly to the side to allow passage. One SCP-6579-C holds a hand out, palm facing team, then taps a device on their wrist. The cart accelerates silently.] E-Lead Morgan: What are you taking? [No response. The entities round a shelf and vanish. Inspection reveals no passage.] Analyst Varga: Cart tracks terminate at the shelf’s edge. The floor is uninterrupted. E-Lead Morgan: We’re not alone in here. [End Log] Recovered Document 6579-B-22 (Excerpt) Directory Leaf: The Quiet Directorate — Structure and Mandates …The Quiet Directorate exists to ensure normalcy is maintained through collection of anomalies, their study, and, when necessary, their burial. The Silent Counsel (O9) is composed of nine persons unknown even to one another. Directives flow downward via the Custodial Collegium, then out to cells. We do not mark graves. We kill ideas by starving them of witnesses… Note: O9 references occur throughout materials. Equivalence to O5 is hypothesized. Exploration 6579-B-13 Team: Eta-10 (E-Lead Morgan), Dr. R. Bhatt, Archivist-Adjunct I. Adeyemi Entry: SCP-6579-A-30 (Mersin; abandoned hospital) [Begin Log] [Entry opens onto a high-bay containing rolling ladders attached to no rails. Paper dust falls continuously in a gentle rain.] Dr. Bhatt: There—sealed tubular canisters. Labels in English: “Council Sessions.” [They unseal one canister. Inside: thin metal plates etched with text.] Archivist Adeyemi: Readable. [Plates present minutes of “Silent Counsel Session 3,386.” Names are redacted with small hammered squares.] Plate 4: …On the matter of Overlapping Agreements with Outerdom Custodians, Counselor Red states that compliance with Basilisk’s Third Clause will erase key annals and thereby erase the motivations that gave rise to us. Counselor Gray: “We exist to be forgotten.” Voices concur. Vote: 7 in favor, 2 opposed. Motion carries… E-Lead Morgan: They chose to make their own history inaccessible. [Footsteps amplify in the distance; carts squeal. SCP-6579-C appear on the upper catwalk, observing.] E-Lead Morgan: We’re withdrawing. [As the team retreats, a ladder swings across the aisle without visible impetus, blocking view of the SCP-6579-C. When lowered, the entities are gone.] [End Log] Recovered Document 6579-B-37 (Excerpt) Incident: Basilisk …We record this once, then we will remove ourselves. The Failure did not begin at any one place. It arrived as a rumor, a belief that containment could be perfect if we put enough of ourselves into the walls. We did. The walls learned. They learned how to be us. When the seams came apart, we were indistinguishable from what we had kept. The Archive will remove the paths that led here. If a later Custodian finds this, understand: You are not the first. We were very sure. We were very wrong… Exploration 6579-B-21 Team: Eta-10 (E-Lead Morgan, E-Tech Liu), Ethics Observers (Dr. Hyeon), Security (Agent S. O’Rourke) Entry: SCP-6579-A-66 (Buenos Aires; empty bank) [Begin Log] [Entry leads to a narrow service corridor bordered by pneumatic tubes. Capsules occasionally clatter through, some dented.] E-Tech Liu: Capsule incoming. Catching— [Capsule is warm. It contains a sheaf of printed emails on Foundation headers: SUBJECT: RE: Unscheduled Site-01 Visit — From: [REDACTED] — To: O5-█, O5-█. Signature blocks intact, dated three weeks prior to log.] Dr. Hyeon: This is current. These addresses are real. Agent O’Rourke: That’s Site-01 internal. [In the distance, muffled voices. Team advances to a glass-wall gallery. On the other side: a shadowed meeting room containing chairs and a long table under a single lamp. Dust motes orbit in a slow helix.] E-Lead Morgan: Anyone in there? [On the table: nine small stones arranged in a ring, each etched with a symbol (circle-with-bar; spiral; triangle). A tenth stone rests beside the ring.] Dr. Hyeon: E-Lead, look at the door frame. [Wood shows identical semilunar scratches around a doorknob imprint, as if a handle was removed.] E-Tech Liu: Movement—gallery to our left. [SCP-6579-C, two individuals, carrying a case labeled “01/Chamber.” They pause. One raises a hand in a placating gesture, then points to the stones and shakes head slowly.] E-Lead Morgan: Are you telling us not to take them? [SCP-6579-C nods once, then depresses a wrist control. A loud hiss. Vision white-outs for 0.5 seconds. When vision returns, entities are gone; the stones remain, but the tenth stone has been pushed closer to the ring.] Agent O’Rourke: We’re leaving. We are out of our lane here. [End Log] Addendum 6579-2: Personnel Files Recovered Document 6579-B-84 (Excerpt) Personnel Ledger: Custodial Collegium — Staff Assignments — Cycle 411–417 …Archivist R. Bhatt — Rank: Steward of Coherence. Clearance: Nine Silent. Notes: Exceptional aptitude in reconciling contradictory annals. Emotional investment requires monitoring. Expungements authorized under Basilisk conditions… …Site Director M. Kline — Rank: Warden of Vaults. Clearance: Eight Quiet. Notes: Resistant to reduction orders. File flagged for Counsel oversight… …Field Captain A. Morgan — Rank: Keeper of Thresholds. Clearance: Seven Hush. Notes: Trusts tether over instinct. Will carry the door on her back if asked… Note: “Morgan” corresponds to E-Lead Morgan. “Kline” matches current Director Kline, Site-41. Recovered Document 6579-B-92 (Excerpt) Letter, unsent; author: “Warden of Vaults M. Kline” …We are the hem that keeps a world from unraveling. We have sewn and sewn until the thread is our veins. The Counsel asks for another cutting. They are right. They are always right when they call themselves wrong. If this letter finds you, I failed to burn it. If you know my name in another house, forgive me… Addendum 6579-3: Unauthorized Visits Internal audit discovered biometric signatures and transpoder pings consistent with O5-█, O5-█, and Proxy-█ within Site-41’s suppressed perimeter during 2024-10-08. Security cameras registered glitch artifacts concurrent with access of SCP-6579-A-02. Gates logs list no authorizations. Subsequent exploration in 6579-B located a corridor bearing bilingual signage: “Silent Counsel — Private Gallery.” Exploration 6579-B-29 Team: Mu-4 (Analyst Varga), Eta-10 (E-Lead Morgan), Site-41 Security (Agent O’Rourke) Entry: SCP-6579-A-02 (Site-41 understructure; walled off) [Begin Log] [Entry leads to a low, vaulted gallery. Alcoves line the walls, each containing an object under bell jars: a broken key; a brass plaque reading “O9”; a pair of leather gloves; a white card marked “Do Not Build.” The air tastes metallic.] Analyst Varga: Logs show the proxy beacons flatlined here for 14 minutes. E-Lead Morgan: There’s a book on the lectern. [Book bound in pale leather. Title stamped: “Visitors.” Pages are filled with names in neat, block print; dates not in Gregorian. Some names are familiar.] Agent O’Rourke: That’s O5-█’s birth name. [The last entry: three symbols, matching known Council sigils; no text.] Analyst Varga: The ink is wet. [Footsteps behind. The team turns. No one is there. The bell jar over the broken key is cracked.] E-Lead Morgan: We’re done. We document and leave. This is way above. [As they exit, the gallery lights dim to nothing for 1.2 seconds. On relighting, the “Visitors” book’s page has turned. The next page shows a single line: “We asked for forgiveness and were given a library.”] [End Log] Addendum 6579-4: Removal Activity Ongoing surveillance within SCP-6579-B has documented progressive absences: entire aisles gone, dust footprints discontinuing mid-stride, catalog numbers skipping sequences. SCP-6579-C removal rates increased after Foundation entries. Items tagged “Basilisk/3rd” are removed first, followed by “Vectors,” then “Dissent.” Recovered Document 6579-B-103 (Excerpt) Directive: Basilisk’s Third Clause — Execution Guide …Remove the record, and you remove the rehearsal. Remove the rehearsal, and you remove the shape. Remove the shape, and you remove the hunger to make it real. Do not leave behind the path that leads to us… Exploration 6579-B-33 Team: Eta-10 (E-Lead Morgan, E-Tech Liu), Dr. R. Bhatt Entry: SCP-6579-A-88 (Cork; shuttered hotel) [Begin Log] [Entry opens onto an exposed platform. Wind moves through stacks like breath. A siren rises and falls without source.] Dr. Bhatt: The aisle numbers jump from 1182 to 1190. Missing eight aisles in sequence. E-Tech Liu: Fresh scuffing. Carts went through here, heavy load. E-Lead Morgan: Eyes on—entities at the far end. [SCP-6579-C are mid-lift, removing a shelf segment. One sees the team, taps a wrist device. A transparent baffle drops between the groups, distorting sound.] Dr. Bhatt: They’re taking an aisle labeled “Counter-Custodial Movements.” E-Lead Morgan: Leave it. We’re not starting a tug-of-war. [An SCP-6579-C approaches the baffle, visor reflecting the team. It raises a gloved finger and traces the circle-with-bar on the barrier, then wipes its palm downward. The symbol smears but remains.] E-Tech Liu: Message received. [Team retreats. On the way out, they pass a table containing an open folio labeled “O5/Travel Logs.” The first page is blank, but the impression of writing remains as pressure marks. Under angled light, letters become legible.] Impressions: “…arrived through 41… no interference recorded… gallery intact… the tenth stone is moved… they are already reading us…” E-Lead Morgan: Copy and move. [Exit.] [End Log] Addendum 6579

Model Output:
They had named the city Hevel after the wind. From orbit it had been a pale knot laid along the burn of a river, a cincture of terraces clamped to rock, the slopes rising around it like a long-held breath. On foot, its stone was a thing with taste and weight—the way the steps gave a little under the heel and kept what heat they could hold from the brief noon. The buildings shouldered one another; they had been wedged in by hands that measured wind and ashfall and the river's two moods. Along slow-arched lintels and the stout pillars of the older market halls there were carvings, disposed cleanly, so that the shadows of the chiseled lines read from a distance like script. They were script, of a kind. The guide assigned to me, an Aerial with shoulder bones like wings and the soft backward tilt to the neck that speaks of hovering, had recited the briefing's language as we passed: "Pictographic inscriptions, early civilization. Not our heritage." But under my hand the glyphs were not mute. A man with a beard made of parallel strokes held out a torch that curled as if alive; a woman knelt and held to her chest a thing half child half seed; a boy with a lyre stood on a ship with a prow like a razor. Jokes carved themselves into corners—combs, fish, a bird with a crown. Someone had placed their palm in the stone repeatedly and rubbed it until the rock had taken the shape of that hand. On the door of what I took for a storehouse, tucked high where only a climbing child would look, was a carved ladder leading nowhere; beside it, a bull pierced by a spear and a figure whose head was a tree. We had been told from the first debrief in the ship's white room: no unsupervised walks. No contact outside formal meeting frameworks. The colony, we were told, was tense. Subspecies—this is what they were called in the briefing, as if in a neat taxonomy: the Aquatics who kept close to the river and wore their skins with a sheen, the Understones with their deep-set eyes and night-shaped speech, the Aerials who managed communications and listened to the sky. The briefing overlaid them with short phrases and danger flags like a card game. I slept with those folded cards in the lining of my jacket. I woke with them and held my breath between names. We made our arrival at the Governor's manor, a broad courtyard open to the wind, its boundary walls etched with rivers and the old Earth in circles. There were handshakes. There was transparent drink and small, careful food. Faces that looked and didn't look like mine leaned in and away. The Aerial guide, whose name was Ires, kept their fluted, veiled gaze on my shoulder. The Governor's face was fleshy and burned, with a blue diamond worked into her tooth. "Your rooms," she said, "are in the east house. You'll find your Command waiting there." Her smile was not thin. It took up all she had. It was a tired smile, but not without an attempt at kindness. "You will have access to the Minister of Science at sixteen. Be on time." I watched the hour turn on the river—a panel of light that swelled and darkened—and excused myself. I told Ires, as I had rehearsed, that I must wash off the ship-stillness. I told them I would not go far. I took my cards and left them on the dresser, like prayer flags. I put on soft shoes. Hevel smells of iron—the river and the stone—of fermented meal and warm fruit, and underneath, in the cooler alleys, a smell like the air before rain. On the open steps where the market ramified from the main square the stalls had been erected in two lines, with enough space between for a laden cart and a child to pass without touching. Fabrics, rough or luminous, were hung like water; dark bread loaves made whorls on shallow tables. Aerials with light bones that threw the balance of their walk touched one another's wrists in greeting; a woman with the broad foot of an Understone dragged a handcart and laughed, a clatter against the hard edge of an Aquatic's soft speech. I went from stall to stall and bought nothing, and then I bought a small pear, not much larger than the middle joint of my thumb. It had a single seed that floated in it like a bell. The seller's hands were webbed as if the fingers had learned to catch more of the world. He took my coin—a blue coin chipped with green—and rubbed it between finger and thumb in a way that felt like recognition. "Offworld," he said. The accent placed the stress on the first syllable and then uncoiled. "Only a little," I said, and he laughed again. "You walk alone," he said. "Against advice." He weighed that and then shrugged. "Maybe you will see more." There were boys running with hoops and an old woman mending, her thread white as hair. A group of Understones—no, they called themselves Lowlanders in their own language, one of them told me without heat—came up from a staircase that sounded like a well. Their eyelids flickered when the light hit them. One of them stared at me until I lowered my eyes; then they smiled. On a corner where the wind had collected old leaves and shining wrappers someone had chalked a picture on the paving stones. It was a line of suns, or coins, and a small figure walking away from them. The figure had no mouth. In the little they had given me, the Governor's people said the Lowlanders were seditious and closed, the Aquatics polite and profit-driven, the Aerials quick to take offense. In the street it was not simple. Offense and kindness moved with the pulse of the day; I saw a Lowlander reach up and take a bundle down for an Aerial woman whose arms were full and the baby's head in the sling was heavy; I saw an Aquatic boy chase away a bird that kept eating someone else's grain. I saw a pair of young men, Aerial and Aquatic together, sharing a cigarette rolled in purple paper. They laughed at the way the smoke went up and blew it in a stream toward the river, as if their breath could coax it into a second river to match the first. At the far end of the market a building shouldered the path. Its facade bore a story cut into it: a tower of men and animals climbing, then the tower's top cut off by a wind, and then the people walking away carrying bricks. Under it, not stone but a sheet of metal had been set in recent years, with a small portion of the old carving recut into it. The new carving showed a garden full of weeds, and among the weeds the familiar shapes of the old crops from Earth: wheat, grapes, a vine of squash on which someone had hung a child's carved hand. The metal was engraved with flowers I did not know, each with a name written in their picture-language. Someone had swept it clean that morning. "You are far from your rooms," Ires said when I turned and found them there, breathless on the steps. "I went to find water," I said. "You passed four fountains," Ires said, and the soft part of their mouth hardened. "I wanted to see." They turned, then turned back. The corners of the Aerial mouth can mock without moving much. "You have seen what you needed?" "No," I said. "I have seen less than that. Enough to tell me our briefings were a way of not seeing." They looked at me for a long moment, almost, I thought, with pity. Then they laid a hand on my sleeve—two fingers, light—and led me back. They did not speak. When we reached the east house, the stone was still warm where the sun had been. Command had been waiting a long time. On the wall behind the desk in my allotted room were more carvings—the Hevel style in a gentle hand—of a bird flying toward a human face, and the human's mouth open as if to sing but the bird's beak entering it. Not an omen I wanted. The Commander's face came on the wall, most of his above the chin, the mouth wide like the carved man's. There was a breath before he found his tone. "You were told," he said, emphasizing the tense in a way that made it bite, "to maintain the structure we agreed upon with the Governor. You were told to limit exposure. You were told not to go alone." "Yes," I said. "You made yourself vulnerable, and you made our intent look frivolous. The factions here—" He paused here to look at his notes, as if the careful taxonomy could give him a way to be angry. "—the subspecies will read what you do in the way we do not intend." "I know," I said. "I saw." I was tired of the word "subspecies" scraped on the mouth and let it go soft. People. I couldn't say it to him. There was a sound in his throat like a stone falling into dust. "You apologize?" "I do," I said, and did not. "We don't need your instincts," he said. "We need your compliance. The Minister of Science is expecting you in less than an hour. You will go, you will listen, and you will give them the message we agreed upon." "The message," I said, because it helped me shape myself around it. "That the union will approve only interim autonomy for the river concessions, pending review. That we will not recognize the Lowlands' councils as independent. That any genetic interlineage projects must go through our board." He lifted his eyes. "You will not improvise." "Yes." "You will not go alone again." "I will not," I said, and thought we both were telling a kind of truth. The Minister's office was on the western ridge, which had been cut back in steps and braced with stone. The door was an arch with a crack through it; above, the glyphs again: a woman with an open book, and under, an open cage with a bird flying out backward into it. The Minister who received me was a broad bald person with heavy ears and a mouth that gave nothing unless it got more back. Their skin was high-brown, almost gold at the temples. They wore a coat that had probably been white when it started its life but had learned the names of every room it had been in and kept them. "Envoy," they said. "Welcome to Hevel. I am Minister Sato." "Minister," I said. "Thank you for seeing me." The chair they gave me was lower than theirs and comfortable, which made us even, I suppose. There were windows without glass cut into the west wall. You could see the mountains. The light that came in was a busy light, the river's light mixed with dust. "You went to market," Sato said, not as a question. "I did." "The Governor was pleased," Sato said. They moved a paper, let it rest. "She says you have already begun your mission." "By buying fruit?" "By seeing that we are people," they said. "I assume they teach you not to do that until later." "We are taught a sequence," I said. "It doesn't always fit." "You are very young," Sato said. "And you are very practiced." This amused them without smiling. "We have an understanding to reach. You carry a message and I carry mine. The Governor will show you stone and water. I will show you the ledger. The ledger, offworlder, is what holds a town together more than any myth and more than most laws." "We have a message," I said. "Interim autonomy for the river concessions pending review. No recognition of the Lowlands as independent. Genetic projects go through our board." They folded their hands. The knuckles had been broken once and healed true. "And in exchange?" "In exchange," I said, "continued protection. Materials. The old world’s experts." "Your experts are like my coat," Sato said. They lifted one sleeve. There was a scorch mark at one elbow. "Useful. They'll do until we have something better. You would like us to let you hold the rope around our necks while we tug against it. You would like to tell us when to breathe." "If you are in danger of choking," I said, "I will cut the rope." "You don’t cut what binds you to us." They tapped the ledger with a nail. "You were told to talk to me because they think I will do what men of science do: argue with you about the number of genotypes we have stable in the deep-country; tell you we have a seventy-two percent compatibility overlap with the old stock; tell you the pier foundations and our reservoir. They think I will be impressed by your other numbers. But I am not a scientist, child. I count bread. I count the price of tin. I count the number of times the Governor asks me to make my people be patient." "And you say—" "I say," Sato said, and here the weight of their voice increased without rising, "that you can't make a people be patient forever if you don't let them mend their own roofs. Your board will request that Aquatic-Lowland coupling projects be delayed. You will cite ethics. You will ask us to wait for your caution. But you will not feed our sick when my doctor says they have a fifty-fifty chance and it improves to sixty with the right match. Your 'subspecies' is an ugly word for what we have become. We need to be allowed to become new without asking your permission for every breath." "If interlineage projects are conducted without oversight," I said, careful, "if someone is hurt, your ledger will show that too." "It does," Sato said. "It shows things you don't see: a man who won't carry low to the river anymore, and his daughter's anger; an Old-Earth myth about a man who swallowed fire and the way the children here carve torches that curl like vines; the aqueduct we need to stop waste. It shows your ship's schedule, the way you dock, the pulses you leave in the water that make the fish swim wrong for a day. There are costs. We would like to choose which we pay." "And the Lowlands," I said. "Their councils." "They are as old as the Aerial towers," Sato said. "They don't need your recognition. They need your not denying them when it gives you a neat line in your notes. Offworlder." They leaned forward a little. Their eyes were dark and not unkind. "You came down without your shadow." "Ires found me," I said, because that answered and didn't. "I was reprimanded." "You went to look for water in a market where water runs down your street." Sato looked out at the mountains and then back at me. "You did not go to gawk. There is hope for you. Your Command will not thank me for saying that. Tell them your message. I will give you mine. If you press here," their finger tapped a blank spot in the ledger, "this place will show a number that makes you comfortable. But it will also make a hole right behind this office, and you will not see it because the stone holds the face it shows to visitors and keeps its other faces for us." "I saw the carvings," I said. "Old myths. People building a tower. People walking away." "We carved them so we remember when to stop." Sato sat back. "Your old Earth's Babel and Eden and Prometheus, all your warnings about pride and reach, we have them in the faces of our houses. We put them up so that when we are tempted we will at least be tempted in their company. The boy with the lyre on the ship—do you know that one?" "Orpheus," I said. "He looked back and lost her." "There’s that story," Sato said. "But we have one where he looks back and tells her he will sing so well the dead won't want her and she decides to stay." "You rewrote it," I said. "We cut it again," they said. "We cut our own version into the new stone and the old. We will do the same with your ledger." We talked until the light in the window went orange, until I had said the words I was told to say and Sato had let me bend them enough not to break. They tested me: Do you understand what will happen if your review takes a year? Do you understand what we will do while you are reviewing? Do you understand why we don't want your scientists to say "we" while they mean "you"? I answered when I could, and when I could not, I kept silent and let the quiet speak for me as well as it could. I told them I had gone to the market. They told me they had once swum the river in flood and almost did not make it. "We can drown ourselves while building an aqueduct," they said. "Or we can wait for rain." When I left, I put my hand briefly on the threshold. The stone was cool now. My hand fitted where someone else's had fitted. The glyph above the arch, the open book and open cage, had the small, almost invisible additions the old carvers loved: three notches by the bird's foot, a score under the book. Someone had counted something and carved the counting in where only the hand would find it. On my way back the wind rose. Ires waited at the corner with their head tilted to catch it. "You came back," they said. "It seemed best," I said. "Tomorrow you will go with me," they said. "We will go to the river. There is a place where the Lowland steps meet the Aerial bridge and nobody owns the piece between. If you stand there and listen, you can hear where the river wants to go. The Minister sometimes goes there when the ledger sleeps. The stone speaks in those places. Even offworlders can hear it, if they are quiet." "I can be quiet," I said. Ires looked at me and then at the sky. "We will see," they said. "Be on time." And then we walked back into the east house, where the walls held their gods for the night and the bird carved on the door had just enough wing to make me think, for a moment, that it might lift.

Model Output:
The inverter coughed the way an old man does when the weather changes and the lights in my lab guttered to a dim orange smear. The solar panel out on the roof was a mosaic of scavenged cells soldered like a bad quilt, and the improvised charge controller could only do so much. When I first built it, the settlement called me a madman for trusting a sky still hazed with ash to power anything but regret. Tonight, the flicker was a rhythm: a nervous metronome to the evening’s work. The PCR machine on the bench whined as the voltage dipped. It wasn’t a real thermocycler, not anymore—just the shell of a GeneMelt 3000 I’d found in a flooded clinic, its brain gutted and replaced with a salvaged Raspberry Pi, a thermostatic relay from a dead HVAC, and a nest of coding I’d typed into existence with raw fingers over burned coffee. The heated lid was a pressure-cooker handle bolted on with epoxy. The reaction tubes were old, their caps soft from heat cycles, the silicone I used to seal the cracks containing more hope than polymer chemistry. “Pick a tone and stick with it,” I told the inverter. It rumbled once and settled, and the temperature readout on the cheap LCD held steady at ninety-five centigrade. Denaturation. A slow breath. I had maybe two cycles before the next flicker. Across the room, the gel rig hummed. That had been a real laugh—the gel rig. Two cracked picture frames for trays, soldered platinum wire lifted from a broken defibrillator, submerged in a polypropylene tub that once held industrial pickles. Agarose had to be made from seaweed I begged off the fishers who still went into what used to be a bay and was now a dark mirror with a dead reef under it. Ethidium bromide had gone with the old world; we stained with methylene blue boiled down and filtered through coffee paper. The bands it made were faint ghosts that you could only see if you knew where to look. I knew where to look. Outside the lab—the old kitchen in a condo tower with half its windows blasted out—voices murmured, the low burble of the settlement settling into night. Someone stomped, and a line of plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling, right into the top of my neck. I bit my lip and leaned in closer to the laptop, tracking the thermocycler’s progress. Thirty-five cycles. Forty. Fifty. It wasn’t ideal, but nothing was ideal anymore. The whole point of corporate genetic architecture had been to be just good enough to hold you hostage. Built-in cellular obsolescence sold as a feature; a royalty you paid in seed and blood every season because your crops and your kids couldn’t make their own enzymes anymore. Then the bottom fell out and the genes lost their shepherds. The obsolescence remained. The sample sitting in tube B5 was a miracle and a trap: a strand of legacy barley gene suites pre-labeled with the corporate watermark—a palindromic pseudogene sequence that guaranteed it would degrade after its product made it into one generation and no further. That watermark was brittle in places, especially where my own hands had been able to pry at it, but on the whole it remained. I used a CRISPR shim I’d written in the dead city library and templated it with scraps from heirloom seed DNA I’d pried from a museum’s display, but the enzyme I trusted—Cas9’s older sister, a thing we’d mutated into stubbornness—still got sloppy when the lights dipped. “Jax. You working?” The voice at the door was Mika’s: soft but carrying. I didn’t look up. It took me a second to realize why. The room had brightened. “Power stable for the next ten?” I asked, not looking away from the LCD. “Fifteen. We found another panel under the parking garage. Not broke all the way.” She ghosted into the lab like she always did, insubstantial until she leaned against the counter and made the tools clink against one another. “Client’s here.” “Client?” I shaded my eyes, finally turning. Two figures behind Mika, both wearing canvas longcoats and scarves despite the heat. The scarf on the one to the right—the thin one—was a mesh printed with an old stock ticker, now a hand-me-down veil. The other had a scar splitting their lip and a baseball bat slung over their shoulder, studded nails hammered through its business end. They smelled like dust and machine oil. The black market moved in smells, in exchanges of odors as much as goods: the tang of stale adrenaline, the metallic breath of scraped batteries, the green edge of stolen herbs. “We had a contract,” said the thin one. Their voice was flat and as genderless as the scarf. “You promised us seed that didn’t burn out.” I glanced at the bench. A row of pipette tips sat like teeth in a cheap plastic rack. My own saliva glands twinged. “I promised you viable seed for one planting. It’s all anyone can promise.” “You said you had a way around their watermark.” “I have ways to blunt it,” I said. “Peel it back in places. The problem isn’t me. It’s entropy.” “Entropy,” said the one with the bat, slow and considering. “Is that a lab word for ‘you’re not going to get what you paid for’?” Mika’s breath stirred the hair on my ear. I kept my face neutral. “Entropy’s the reason you got the vineyards you had, once. Why everything gets old and tired. Why your grandparents’ chimeras couldn’t conceive without ten thousand credits worth of prenatal enzyme cocktails.” The thin one made a noise like satisfaction. “We brought credits,” they said. They slid a small case onto the counter. When they cracked it, there was no glow—just care: nested in rough cloth, three phials of clear oil, and under those, a set of qubit chips in a shockproof sleeve and a blister pack of antibiotics. My hand twitched when I saw the antibiotics. There was a soft patch on my arm that had been getting angrier since the last time I injected the growth factor. “There’s extras,” the thin one said. “If it’s done.” I dropped a pipette tip and picked up a tube from the rack, ensuring that the movement didn’t show any tremor. The power held steady, the thermocycler beeped a bright double note and then simmered down to room temperature. I set the tube into a cradle and swung the lid down. Another epoxied handhold creaked. “Done is relative,” I said, and loaded the gel. The settlement had been living on millet and yeast and a kind of engineered moss that tolerated our sun. The corporate strains we had initially had worked for a season and then melted into useless cellulose. Seed hoarders had stepped in; so had people like me. I had found that the watermark could be interrupted if you left enough of it intact that the safety protocol thought it had done its job. In practice, that meant hybridizing old and new, the way the world had learned to make meaning from two broken sentences. The gel ran unevenly. I tapped the inverter; the current thrummed higher. Methylene blue seeped into the cool, cloudy matrix. I stained by memory—four minutes to see the small bands, six for the middle weights, ten for the big ones. I pulled the tray, slid it onto the improvised light box—a panel of UV LEDs I’d bodged together with scavenged smartphone flashlights and a strip of blacklight from an abandoned sex shop. The bands were pale. They were also where I’d expected. The watermark signature—eight jagged stripes like a jawline—had two gaps where there had been eight before. “I see that,” said the thin one, leaning in. “I also see more than I paid for, if I’m right. That’s… is that arsenic methylation resistance?” I had told myself I wouldn’t look surprised. It was a contract. Contracts kept you alive, even black market ones, because they were the only law left. But the thin one’s eye had flashed when they saw the band, and something in me leapt to an old, atavistic joy: a colleague. It had been a long time. “It's a trial,” I said, and exhaled, tasting bile that had nothing to do with the questionable protein stew Mika had made. “A tweak. The old water tables are rising, picking up metals no one thought would move. If the fields you’re putting this in are downstream from anything, you’ll need it.” “We aren’t downstream,” they said, but their mouth quirked above the scarf. “We’re what’s left of the upstream.” “Then keep it anyway,” I said, surprising myself. “Call it a bonus. Or a test. You bring me back data on how they performed and I’ll cut your next contract in half.” The bat carrier snorted softly. The thin one glanced at them, the kind of scan that told you years of working together had built its own wordless lexicon. They looked back at me. Their eyes were dark and very clear. “You’re bargaining with medicine, too,” they murmured, nodding at the blister pack in the case. “I heard you’ve been using your parties to test threshold modulation.” “Parties,” I said. “Is that what they’re calling them?” “What else? The way you blow open your toll receptors and make a fever of it. Makes everyone feel clean. Clear. Makes the aches back off. Makes them brave, too, and makes them do stupid things.” I touched the soft patch on my arm when they looked away. It itched, then burned. The first time I’d given myself the HGF hack, the pain in my hip—a slow, gnawed ache from lifting too much, sleeping on floors—had evaporated. I’d walked down the broken stairs without thinking for the first time in months. I’d also had a run of fevers and dreams that lasted four days, seeing lines of code floating in the steam of the pot I boiled water in. On the third day I’d written a set of primers by hand on a flattened cereal box and then found they worked. On the fourth, my teeth had felt loose. “It works,” I said. “Until it doesn’t. The settlement loves the way their wounds close faster. They hate that they can smell their own copper for a week. Side effects. Unintended upsides. The line’s thin.” Mika’s hand was on her knife, not threatening—just reminding me of edges. The bat carrier watched the windows, counting shadows. The thin one’s scarf had fallen open; their jaw was elegant and gone to tendon. I imagined, just for a breath, what a lab would do to that face. What it had done. The corporates had counted genetics in credit payout, glow-mapped children and told them they’d be artists or labor depending on the way their mitochondria burned. The thin one’s voice had that same old world education bent around road grit. “How much?” they asked. “For the seeds?” I looked at the numbers on my pad. Calculated what I needed to keep the thermocycler’s hacked brains from cooking off entirely when the voltage spikes came. Calculated also the cost of being greedy in a world with too many bats. “One qubit, the antibiotics, and one of those oils.” They tilted their head. “You know what the oils are?” “They’re glandular,” I said. “From the pigs that walk like people. The fat they make when we feed them the compost from the algae vats. They sleep better when they’re rubbed with it. So do my people. No nightmares. Cuts down on the shaking after the HGF.” The thin one smiled with half their mouth. It made the scar along the bat carrier’s lip look like something else: a punctuation mark instead of a threat. “Take two oils,” they said. “We’ll bring the data and we’ll take the half-price next time.” Lavish, Mika mouthed behind them, eyes gleaming. I reached for the case as if I were touching hot glass, and slid two of the vials into my own foam-lined slit, the blister pack of antibiotics into my pocket where the heat of my body could warm their false promise. “Now the seed,” the bat carrier said. I pointed with a gloved finger. The tubes to their left held a milky slurry of something that, in time, with the right care, with luck, would be green and tasseled. The shells were old pill bottles; the labels had been soaked off. Seed’s code was chimeric in places, where I’d inserted old genes into new chassis. In those gaps, the watermark read as silent, a broken poem the corporate gods couldn’t read. Mika counted out the tubes, watching how the bat carrier’s hands moved; I watched the thin one’s eyes flick to the flicker of the power die and surge. The lab’s lights trembled again, and the printer we used to make labels stuttered and then continued on, dotted lines giving way to solid. “You wanted this because you have fields,” I said, as casually as I could. “And you want it now because someone else does too. That’s a black market’s truth. Who’s the someone else?” “You’ll know,” the thin one said, wrapping their scarf back around their mouth. “When the wind shifts and there’s a smell of sugar in it. We’re racing them to sweetness.” Mika snorted. “Candy syndicates. I thought they were a myth.” “No myth,” the bat carrier said. “They courted our farm. Offered us a patent on rain that wouldn’t fall if we didn’t sign. We said no. That’s why we’re here.” I slid the final tube into the bat carrier’s hand. The skin there was thick like the rest of them, callused and cracked. I felt a flare of something like protection, then tamped it down. You don’t keep bargains by guarding people. You keep them by keeping them. “Plant in squares,” I said. “Not lines. That way, when the watermark starts to sing, it will drown itself in the cornering. Keep a border of the moss. It warps the pH and slows the decay.” “And the arsenic?” the thin one said. “If you get a sweet taste at the back of your mouth when it rains,” I said. “Don’t let anyone out.” Mika ushered them out with a grin that could have been a knife. When the door shut, I let my shoulders slump and leaned back against the bench. The inverter coughed again; the lights went thin for a moment, then fattened, then stabilized. The thermocycler spewed a puff of warm air and then wound down. “You gave them fate,” Mika said, offhand. “I gave them a game with better odds than the one they had,” I said. “And I got paid.” “Antibiotics,” she said, approving. Then she paused, nose wrinkling. “And pigsleep oil. You going to finally get a night without the river running through your skull?” “Maybe.” I held the vial up to the light. Glitter swam in it, not anything you could really see and still knowing. I imagined rubbing it into the soft skin over my sternum, feeling that somewhere under bone and cartilage, all the receptors I’d hacked awoke and subsided like a shore. Down in the street, someone yelled. It wasn’t alarm; the rhythm didn’t change in the settlement, and when the rhythm didn’t change, everything was fine enough. I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d tucked away behind my teeth. There had been a time when I had taken the corporate maintenance kits and carefully filled the prescriptions for my own body. Enzymes to keep my mucosa from sloughing, vitamins keyed to the way my liver could no longer use B12. Maintenance required maintenance. When the shipments stopped, we reinvented our bodies in the worst places: under broken skylights with the rain coming in sideways, in basements that smelled like bleach and rot. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. The upside of fear is that it sharpens your hand. The upside of a fever is that it burns, and sometimes it burns clean. I rubbed the itch on my arm. The spot had turned the color of old bricks. I would dose with the oil tonight and pray for sleep; tomorrow I would barter for more data and try to cut the watermark again, shave it down like a callus. The sugar wind would come or it wouldn’t. The upstream would fight the downstream over whose water was cleaner; the settlement would keep eating yeast-cakes and green algae pressed into noodles, dreaming of bread. And, if the luck I had argued into existence tonight held, there might be a field of grain in a month that didn’t die because it was told to. A failure of design would become a feature of survival. The inverter wheezed one last time and went quiet. The lab dropped into a darkness as soft as the oil in my hand. Out beyond the broken windows, the sky had faded to a bruise. Somewhere on a distant rooftop, a solar panel flickered. I could see its pulse like a heartbeat, uneven and insistent: power stitched together from salvaged light. I smiled into the dark and smelled, for a second, the idea of rain. Not sugar. Not yet. But close. Close enough to bargain with. Close enough to keep working.

Model Output:
Arthur tugged at the stiff collar again and felt it bite into the crease of his neck. The fabric had the texture of sanded plastic and smelled faintly of ozone. It was the sort of garment that made a man aware of his own shoulders, his own posture, his own sweat. He had put on pressure suits and mining harnesses in vacuum storms with less trouble. Beyond the viewport, Mars was a dull red coin slipping beneath the horizon of black. The transfer vessel was quiet, too quiet; its gravitic plates sang a tone barely below hearing, and that single pitch made the silence more profound. The cabin's lighting came from strips embedded in the ceiling, a sharp daylight that cast no shadows. The furniture was all curves, molded out of some resilient composite. The antigrav seats adjusted to his weight and then held him, gently and insistently. It was, he thought as he scratched at his collar, the way a polite jailer would hold a prisoner: carefully, impeccably, with professional courtesy. Opposite him sat two men with the blank faces of men who expected to be invisible. Their uniforms bore a starburst insignia: eight points, attenuated, caged by a ring. The ring had a subtle notch where a human eye would expect a complete circle. Antares. Diplomatic Corps in the registry, security arm in practice. In name only, Arthur thought with a trace of bitterness. They had arrived at his hab with their retinue of polite insistence, recited a form of words about an "invitation," and now he was seated across from their blank faces, watching Mars recede. The door slid open. The woman who entered was short and barrel-chested, brown skin burnished by artificial light, eyes that cataloged without seeming to. She wore no insignia, only a suit of charcoal fabric with a weave that suggested something more than cloth. A pin at her throat glowed an unassuming blue, a shape like two overlapping circles. Not Antares, then. Not obviously. "Mr. Neegan," she said, taking the seat to his right. "I'm glad you agreed to meet." Arthur glanced at the guards, then back at her. "I got the impression agreement wasn't necessary." She smiled. "Diplomacy is sometimes the art of providing options in a sequence that resembles a choice. My name is Leera Vast. My credentials are..." She paused. "Difficult to explain within your legal frame. You may consider me an attache to an interested consortium." "Which one?" "The one that prefers to remain unnamed until trust is established." Arthur had learned to weigh words. In the mines, the wrong word could start a strike; the right one could settle it and save a dozen backs. He measured her tone against her eyes and got a result he didn't entirely trust. He tugged his collar again. "You know why I'm here?" he asked. Leera gave a small tilt of the head. "You are here because your land grant sits upon a vein of Azra whose concentrations outstrip any recorded sample. You are here because that fact will inevitably draw not just prospectors but fleets. You are here because the pace of discovery in one sector of physics has, with remarkable predictability, outpaced the political infrastructure that can control it." "Azra accelerates decay," Arthur said. His words sounded like a textbook. "It makes dead elements die faster." Leera held up a hand. "Two points of correction. First, Azra does not accelerate decay. Azra permits decay paths that were previously forbidden by symmetry. It changes the branching ratios in ways not fully mapped. Second, that difference matters because it means Azra is not merely a catalyst; it is an operator on probability. In drives, your fuel mass becomes dead mass at a rate of our choosing. In weapons, your neighbors' mass becomes heat. In economics..." She opened her palm, as if to show him the empty air. "Debts vanish or compound depending on whose mass is coupled to the cascade. In politics, the side which can turn patience into an explosive event controls time itself." Arthur let out a breath. He had heard rhetoric about Azra since the first sample came down from the Schiaparelli crater. The prospector who had brung it—he remembered the news images: gaunt, grinning, then gone, the victim of a refinery accident that had the smell of too neat an ending. He remembered the contracts that came afterward, the leases, the clever clauses. He remembered his father, who had helped cover the initial crater rim with domes, reciting the old settler's proverb: Don't sell the air, son. "You want to buy my air," Arthur said. Leera folded her hands. "We want to purchase your silence." The guards opposite didn't turn their heads, but Arthur caught the way their eyes flicked, the barest movement. Even they hadn't known the exact phrasing. "Let me be plainer," Leera continued. "Your mine is not merely a mine. It is a lever. If you announce your find, if you sell to the first corporate combine that offers you triple the quoted rate, you will become a node in a network of obligations. Antares will insist on inspection rights in the name of safety. The Titan Syndics will argue prior claim through their indenture supply chain. Earth Central will send an envoy. The Belt will threaten embargo. In that storm, you and your claim will be transformed into something like a lighthouse placed in the center of a naval battle." "You think you can avoid the storm." "I think," Leera said, and now her voice was the even tone of a teacher addressing a room of engineers, "that storms can be steered. We propose to create a delay. We want your vein to be mischaracterized, surveyed incorrectly, the data to be ambiguous enough to confuse the simple algorithms the corporations use to prioritize. In return, we offer you three things. First, a sum that would let you buy half a dome's worth of oxygen rights in Galle Crater. Second, protection in a form that does not look like protection; that is, pressure applied to rivals, not shields around you. Third, inclusion." "Inclusion," Arthur repeated. "In the circle of people who are asked to comment before decisions are made. Governance is a game. Those who play are those whose names appear on memos before the memos become directives." Arthur laughed, a short sound. "I've spent twenty years making sure my name appears on the right supply roster so my crew gets decent sealant. I'm not sure I'm fit for memos." "That humility is one reason you are ideal," Leera said. "You are not known as a flamboyant man, Mr. Neegan. You have paid your lease on time. You negotiated fair terms for your crew when the oxygen tax went up. You refused indentured labor on your site even when your accountant argued the numbers. You will not make a rash choice for a one-time glory. In an arms race, the man who refuses to run can become the fulcrum." Arthur looked at the ring at her throat again, the two circles. It wasn't Earth Central; it wasn't one of the familiar corporate sigils. The Antares guards sat like statues, their insignia like captive sunbursts. "And you're not Antares," he said. "Antares is..." Leera glanced toward the guards. "A partner of convenience. They prefer the status quo to a sudden shift. We prefer a measured shift to a catastrophic one. Our alignment is pragmatic." "Who are you?" She considered. "Have you heard of the Heraclitus Group?" Arthur frowned. "Philosophers." "Physicists with philosophical pretensions. We advise. We build models. Our models have predicted two civil wars in the last twenty years with accuracy sufficient to be more than coincidence. We suggested small interventions in both cases. Historians may argue about causality. The people who didn't die on Vesta Station are not inclined to argue." "And you think Azra is another war in the making." Leera leaned back. The antigrav in the seat compensated perfectly; she seemed motionless, anchored in a minor gravity well of her own. "Azra collapses time in machines and politics alike. The arms race is not a metaphor; it is an accelerating system. There are inflection points. Your claim is an inflection point. Control over that one vein could set deadlines that push other actors into hasty decisions. Those decisions tend to be violent. We propose to slow the clock. We propose a gambit." "The Azra Gambit," Arthur said before he could stop himself. He felt the phrase settle in the air, like the first stone placed in a game. "It is named for a river that floods slowly and receded unpredictably," Leera said softly. "In old maps, its course was marked in pencil. Men drowned because they assumed it would behave like other rivers. We assume nothing." "And if I refuse?" Leera's smile did not reach her eyes. "Mr. Neegan, if you refuse, another party will come to you with a different version of an offer. It may come in the form of a security contract with a company whose name contains the word 'mutual.' It may come as a delegation from Earth Central wearing medals older than your dome. If you refuse them, it may come as a labor shortage. Your indenture suppliers will misplace paperwork. The weight of your ore shipments will be recalculated by a new algorithm. Insurance will become mysteriously expensive. You will be left with principle and an idle mine. Or, you will be found to have died in a refinery accident. I mean no disrespect to your survival instincts when I say history prefers its fulcrums to be attached to the ground." Arthur bit the inside of his cheek. He had not told anyone about the vein. He had had it assayed twice, quietly, using a scanner borrowed and returned without signature. He had felt like a boy hiding a captured spark. It had been, for a week, a private joy. Freedom was like that: it hid in numbers and rock cores and the way a drill bit sang. "What happens to the other miners?" he asked. "To the ones who took leases because they had no choice? To the indentured? You slow the clock—who pays?" Leera's expression shifted, a fraction. "You ask good questions. The answer is that some pay no matter what we choose, and our aim is to minimize that number. A fast war is devastating. A slow consolidation is...less so. We will use the time to build alternatives. Azra has applications beyond engines and bombs. It can clean waste. It can shorten half-lives in ways that make old sins less heavy. The taste for weapons is always present; the taste for sanitation is often late." "And I am to trust your taste?" "No," Leera said. "You are to trust your own, and our transparency. We will show you a fragment of what we have. You will not see all. No one sees all. But you will see enough to make an informed choice. And if you accept, you will have leverage. That is power of a modest kind, but power nonetheless. It must be exercised with the same restraint you exhibit when you adjust your crew's oxygen rationing." Arthur looked down at his hands. They were square hands, scarred. The suit cuffs did not suit them. Beyond the viewport, Mars was a coin now, scored with the faint line of the equatorial dust belt. He imagined the domes, the solar farms, the long connecting tubes with their scrim of frost. Somewhere beneath one of those domes was a ledger with his name on it and a column that would swell like a bruise if he made the wrong entry. "What about Antares?" he asked finally. "They don't like being used." "Used?" Leera smiled. "They are in on the leverage. They will be the polite hand that knocks on certain doors. They have the habit of order. They fear chaos more than they love justice. I have found that a useful trait." One of the guards shifted, and Arthur noticed the faintest remit—his hand going to something at his belt, not a gun; a device with a small screen and a stylus. He wrote a single character and then looked up again, face neutral. Everything was recorded, everything reduced to summary. "I have terms," Arthur said. He surprised himself with the firmness of the words. "If I do this. I want a guarantee that my crew is placed on non-indentured contracts. I want oxygen rights secured for the next five years at current rates. I want a say in where some of this Azra goes, even if it's just a veto over certain buyers. No drones near my dome. And if I die in a 'refinery accident,' someone will know what I agreed to, and someone will care." Leera's gaze warmed by a degree measured only by instruments. "You negotiate like an engineer. Constraints first, then objectives. Good. I cannot promise all, but I can promise we will formalize what we can. Oxygen rights are a matter of local governance; we can apply pressure. Non-indentured contracts are more complicated, but we can route work through cooperatives. As for a veto... limited. But we can give you a seat on a review board with teeth." "And the last?" "People will know," Leera said. "And some of them will care." Arthur thought of his father again, of a hand gripping his shoulder at the rim of an old crater. Don't sell the air. He had never understood that advice as fully as at this moment. He had something like air in his pocket now. The woman beside him offered a way to keep breathing. "Show me what you have," he said. Leera touched the pin at her throat. The antigrav of the seat shifted subtly, and a plane of light formed between them, a projection that had the restraint of old microfilm: numbers, lines, a spare aesthetic that made the data seem more, not less, real. He saw curves, divergences, dates. He saw the names of fleets. He saw a name he recognized from a mining guild meeting, attached to a timeline that ended in a sharp line labeled Containment Failure: Probability 0.43. He read. He listened to Leera's quiet voice. He watched the guards watch nothing. He adjusted his collar and forgot to notice the pinch. When the vessel's intercom chimed and a voice announced approach to the Lagrange Dock, he had made no decision but had begun, in a way, to decide. The dock would be glittering, he knew, a ring studded with lights like a city suspended in mathematical compromise. Off-world, Leera had said, and he would be off-world in a place where men wrote memos that changed the course of other men's lungs. He smiled without humor. "So," he said to Leera Vast, "let's talk about how we mismeasure a mountain." Leera smiled back, and for the first time the smile seemed to touch her eyes. "We persuade the world that it is a hill," she said. "And we build a garden on top."

Model Output:
The red light paints everything like a wound. It hums, or maybe that’s the ventilation, or maybe I’m just hyper-aware of the electric throb running under my skin. My hands move by muscle memory: slides clipped to the easel, test strip lined up under the enlarger, timer set. I’ve been in this darkroom more nights than I care to count, but tonight the air has the density of secrets. “Ready?” I ask, my voice too steady for the tremor I feel. Elliot nods. His silhouette is all angles and drape—mesh shirt under a thrifted blazer whose shoulder seams have been let out by some past life, black nail polish bitten down to nervous half-moons. There’s a smear of developer near his wrist that looks like a bruise. I hit the timer. In the red haze, our hands look prehistoric and tender. He’s quiet, which is normal for him, but even his quiet has layers; tonight it’s the kind that fills the spaces between us like velvet. He adjusts the focus with a careful touch, and I watch his profile instead of the grain, the slope of his nose, the dip above his lip that made me look twice the first week of class when he said something incisive about our teacher’s reliance on found-text overlays. He’d said it so softly the comment floated like dust motes, but it had the precision of a scalpel. The timer bleats. I pull the paper and slide it through developer, my tongs making that faint clink against the tray. Shapes bloom: a door with peeling paint, his shoe half in frame, shadowed tiles. He’s fascinated by the in-between, half-seens, thresholds. It’s very him, I think. Or very them. The pronoun slips in my mind and catches. I’m so used to being sure, I almost hate that I’m not now. “It looks good,” I say, even though it’s still changing, even though “good” is too blunt an instrument. He leans over, and his hair—dyed black but grown out enough to show a crescent of sandy roots—falls forward like a curtain. He smells like the cheap incense that clings to everything he owns and grape gum he never actually chews, just softens in his molars. He breathes out a laugh. It bubbles. He doesn’t laugh like he’s trying to be heard; he laughs like the room has cupped its hands to catch it. “We could dodge here,” he says, pointing at the doorjamb, “make the woodgrain pop.” He’s gotten less apologetic about suggesting things in the past month. I’ve sort of made it a mission to teach him that critique isn’t an apology tour. That’s one of my moves. Take charge, drag people into their own light. It’s part ego, part craving to shepherd something beautiful to where it can be seen. It’s also what past partners liked about me. I know how to steer. “I’ll grab the elliptical,” I say. I reach for the cutout cardboard shape, the metal rod cold and thin in my fingers. He steps aside to let me at the enlarger; the brush of his forearm against my elbow is light but it strikes through me like a wire. My phone buzzes once in my back pocket, insistent as a mosquito. I don’t look. Whoever it is—Ben? My sister? The group chat pinging about free drinks at The Cat—can wait. If I break the membrane of this room, they’ll take him with them, and I don’t want to lose whatever we’re in. We burn, we dodge, we test again. When the latest print goes into the stop bath, the citric smell cuts the metallic sweetness that always makes the back of my tongue feel slick. I watch his face as he watches the image turn from ghost to fact. Sometimes I think he’s too beautiful for me, soft in a way I don’t know how to handle. I’ve dated two guys who were all jawline and certainty, and one girl who wore her hardness like a uniform. I was the switchblade in those dynamics. I liked being the one to reach across, to make it happen. Elliot makes me want to watch, to wait. I am not good at either. “I’ve been thinking about…” He begins, then trails off. His eyes flick to me and then away, picking up the tongs like you’d pick up a stray feather, gently, as if you might be surprised by your own tenderness. “About?” I prompt. I’ve learned not to push him too hard. He opens like a slow shutter: you have to give him time or you get blur. He takes too long, and I fill the silence with the roll of the chain on the safelight squeaking gently as the ventilation kicks a notch higher. Someone laughs in the hallway, distant and quick. The door doesn’t open. The world stays out there. “About gender,” he says. The word lands between us, damp as a print we can’t yet touch. “My gender. I guess.” My shoulders go still, not out of surprise—he’s been telegraphing something—more out of wanting to be the surface a dropped needle can play on. Don’t move. Don’t scratch the song. “Okay,” I say, softer than I mean. “Do you want to talk about it?” He lets out a breath that makes his bangs flutter. “Maybe. Yeah. I think I… I don’t know if boy is the only thing. Or if it’s a thing I have to do a certain way. Sorry if that sounds—” “Don’t apologize,” I say, sharper. It sings out, a reflex. I’m constantly pulling him away from saying sorry to the furniture, to the weather. He smiles like I’ve done something right, and I flush with the mean joy of being useful. I hate that word. Useful, like I’m a tool instead of a person. But I also like being this for him, this shore he can talk against and hear his voice bounce back on. He takes the print out of the fix and slips it into the washer, the water making a whispering slap against the tray. “I like it when I wear eyeliner,” he says, quietly. “I feel… realer. But then my brother sees me and I feel like I’m playing dress-up wrong. Sometimes I think about… I don’t know. A dress. Not like… I don’t know. I hate words.” He huffs. “They stick. And then I’m stuck to them.” My brain runs down two tracks at once. On one: I imagine him in a dress, something from a thrift store he’d alter with safety pins and thread, the hem uneven, his legs bared and pale, the jut of a kneecap that somehow makes my mouth go dry. On the other: I catalog my own hunger and confusion. My desire has always had a target that came with a label. I like masculine. I like tough. I like a girl with a shaved head and knuckles like brass, a guy who plants his feet and smirks. I like being the one to wipe the smirk off. What does it mean that I also like the way his voice thins with nerves, how his softness makes me want to guard it like a coin in my palm? “Words are clumsy,” I say. “We can try some and throw them away. Like test strips.” I lift one end of the washer tray to let water run over the print. The image underneath is our combined eye: the door, the shoe, the threshold so crisp it’s a kind of invitation. He looks at me with gratitude so unfiltered it almost hurts. “Thanks, Dani.” The way he says my name is different tonight. Like there are more syllables. I swallow. “Do you have words you’ve tried?” I ask. I am careful. I am not going to name him if he wants to name himself. He nods, the motion tiny. “Nonbinary sometimes… sometimes trans. Like, the way you move through the world and how people respond to you.” His hands flex on the tongs. “I don’t know yet. I feel like a misprint.” “That’s still a print,” I say. He laughs again, but it’s a thin ribbon this time. “Whatever you are, you’re allowed to be,” I say, and I mean it so hard my chest hurts. I want to take my big personality and lay it down like a rug for him to walk on, because that’s what I can do. But I also don’t want to flatten anything that’s his. His fingers brush the inside of his wrist where the developer spot has dried. “What if people don’t…” He trails off again. I can fill the blank. Believe. Accept. Stay. “I feel like I’m always making myself small to fit where people can handle me.” “Don’t make yourself small,” I say. It comes out with that take-charge bite. Then I back off, like catching myself mid-step. “I mean… you don’t have to, not here. With me. I can… I can make room.” He looks at me like I’ve moved a mountain. I get lightheaded. This is power, too, I realize. Making space is a kind of leadership. But it’s not the kind I’m good at without gritting my teeth. The part of me that likes to lead wants to say, I’ll tell you what you are and then I’ll make it happen. That’s not what he needs. He needs someone to stand guard while he figures it out. It’s a different muscle. It burns in different places. My phone buzzes again, longer this time, like an incoming call. The world outside is insistently alive. I ignore it. All my old selves—party Dani, girl-on-top Dani, critiques-you-into-better Dani—can pace out there. In here, the red light asks for a slower version of me. “Can I ask you something?” he says. He’s turned his head, so the shadow of his eyelashes makes high commas on his cheek. He’s so young. Nineteen is a number that feels like a bruise to me. I was so raw at nineteen I bled on everything. He wears his rawness like lace. “Ask,” I say. “Do you…” He swallows. “Do you only like guys? I mean, not that this is about that but also kind of. I keep thinking about if I… change. If you—if people—” He flounders, blushing so high it shows even under the red. My pulse stutters, because he did not say people. He said you. I set the tongs down. The clink is small but definitive. I anchor myself with the counter edge digging into my hip. I’ve never been delicate about answers. I’m not delicate now, but I am careful, because this is the part where my certainty could steamroll his vulnerability into a neat shape that fits me. “I’ve dated more men than women,” I say. “I like masculine stuff. I like… swagger.” I grin, a flash of teeth he can see but not measure. “But what I like most is when someone is completely themselves. I’m into that.” It sounds too neat. It sounds like a queer slogan on a tote bag. I wince. “What I mean is—” I run a hand over my buzzcut, the prick of it sharp under my palms. “I don’t know, either. About me. I thought I did. But you…” I tilt my head at him, and the carefulness slips for a second. “You’re confusing me in a good way.” He exhales like the room has given him permission to breathe. “Okay.” I want to reach for him. I want to touch the ink-smudged knuckles, the seam of his sleeve, the strand of hair that wants to stick to his forehead. I always want to reach. I hold myself still. Agency agency agency, I chant in my head like a mantra. His. His. His. “Do you want to try a different lens?” I ask, as if I didn’t just tip my inner furniture over with that confession. He nods, almost relieved by the return to the safe choreography of work. We change it out. The focus whirs. The grain snaps in, the doorway’s peeling paint holding its secrets tighter. “Can I try something?” he says after a stretch of silence that’s not uncomfortable. He’s got that look like he’s about to walk into cold water. I give him a little nod that I hope is more encouragement than push. He reaches up and smudges a thumb of developer on his cheekbone. A dark streak blooms. War paint. Or blush. His hand shakes. He laughs at himself, this little wheeze. “This is dumb.” “It’s not dumb,” I say, and I hear how close I am to begging. “Here.” I take the other end of the tongs and dip them in developer, then tap a dot at the corner of my own eye, a tiny imperfect circle that tingles cool on my skin. When our eyes meet, he gives me that open gratitude again, as if I’ve cut him a key. “Thanks,” he murmurs, and I almost make a joke to deflect the hot coil low in my belly. I don’t. We stand there, both marked now by this room, by the same chemical dusting our hands. He reaches for my wrist, a movement like a thought. He stops before he touches me. “Is it okay?” he asks. My heart, usually a drummer, plays something gentler. I don’t make him ask twice. “Yeah,” I say. “Here.” I hold my arm out. His fingers curl around the vein-blue inside of my wrist, light as a moth’s feet. He doesn’t pull me closer. He just holds. It feels like being chosen. It feels like being trusted. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says, voice a scrape. “I’m scared.” “I know,” I say. “Me too.” We breathe. The print in the washer shivers under the water. The door on the page is a mouth. The shoe is half-in, half-out. The threshold is itself, stubbornly simple. My phone buzzes and buzzes and gives up. The world is very small: red light, water, the weight of his hand. “Can I…” He stops and tries again. “Would you look at me? Later. When I try stuff. The dress. Or whatever. Tell me if—” He shakes his head. “Not tell me if it’s right. Just… be there.” The leader in me wants to say yes so hard it becomes an order. The other part of me, the one that’s learned how to make room, puts my yes into his palm like a stone. “I’ll be there,” I say. “I’ll hold the light. You do you.” He smiles, the kind that articulates itself in a thousand small muscles. “Okay.” He lets go of my wrist to pick up the tongs again. The place his fingers were is a hot bracelet. We make the print. We make three more. We find the exact burn that makes the woodgrain glow like it’s lit from within. We write exposures in pencil on the back. We don’t touch more than we have to. Each almost-touch is an electricity I hoard. Each stop I make before finishing the movement toward him is an act of discipline that surprises me. I learn new versions of myself in that discipline. The assertive girl can be soft without dissolving. The part of me that wants to lead can learn to take a step backward and hold the door with my shoulder. When we’re done, he stacks the prints between sheets of blotting paper like communion wafers. The room is quieter than it was, as if we’ve taken sound and turned it into solid objects. He leans on the counter, hip cocked, looking at the drying rack like it could answer his questions. I stand beside him and let our shoulders almost touch. “Thanks,” he says again, and it’s a different thanks. It’s a promise, maybe. Or a question posed to the space between us that neither of us knows how to articulate in words yet. “Anytime,” I say. And it’s not a throwaway. It lands with weight in my mouth. On my walk home, the streetlights will look too white after all this red, and every shiny surface will reflect a face I’m still figuring out: mine with a developer smudge under my eye, a softness in my jaw where I usually set it hard. For now I stay in the bruise-colored safety of this room, listening to the water slide over silver and salt, thinking about thresholds and how you have to step even if you aren’t sure what’s on the other side. “Do you want to go get fries?” I ask, finally. A small offering. A normal thing. A chance to practice the world with our new shapes. He considers. “Yeah,” he says. His grin unfurls. “But can we sit on the same side of the booth?” I laugh, and the sound feels like mine and someone new’s at once. “We can sit wherever you want,” I say. “You call it.” He picks up our stack of prints like a child carries a secret toy, careful and close. I turn off the safelight. The red bleeds out, and the room fills with the sudden blankness of dark. His hand finds the crook of my elbow in the black. The touch is light. It is enough. We open the door, and the outside rushes in, bright and loud and full of people and their labels and their laughter. We step over the threshold together.

Model Output:
He steps backward with his nose in a guidebook, murmuring dates about a Baroque architect, and the world erupts in the snarl of a motorbike and a shouted curse. A flash of red helmet. The glint of metal. The smell of petrol and espresso. Ben’s elbow clips a handlebar, and a folded map flutters to the cobbles like a wounded bird. The motorbike fishtails, steadies, and stops inches from the Trevi Fountain’s marble lip. Coins sparkle like captured suns behind the spray. A crowd gasps as if it were a performance. “Attento!” the rider snaps, and she flips up her visor. Dark hair spills out, eyes quick, mouth already forming another insult. “Se ti ammazzi, chi lo scrive il tuo libro?” “I’m terribly sorry,” Ben says, too loudly. “I didn’t— I mean, the— the fountain, and I was reading, and—” She smiles then, sharp and amused. “English? Ah. It explains.” She swings a leg off the bike, and somehow the movement is a shrug. “Benvenuto a Roma, Professor.” “I’m not— well. Yes. Sort of,” he confesses. “I’m on sabbatical. It’s actually an extraordinarily good fountain. You were— extraordinary as well. I mean, in stopping. Sorry.” “Mi chiamo Alessandra,” she says, and taps his chest with two fingers, finding his name before he gives it. “E tu sei…?” “Ben.” He extends a hand. She shakes it with a grip that suggests she could take his wrist as easily as his fingers. Her bracelets clink; there are too many of them. A scooter courier bag hangs against her hip, bulging with envelopes. “You walk like a ghost,” she says, tugging his fallen map up and folding it badly. “No noise. It’s dangerous. Especially near water.” “I thought ghosts were noisy,” he says, and she laughs, not kindly and not unkindly. The crowd has already turned away, swallowed by blue sky, white stone, and the promise of wishes. Alessandra swings her visor down, lifts it again. indecisive. Something like curiosity wrinkles her brow. Then, a decision. She points to the space behind her on the bike. “Come,” she says. “I can’t,” he says automatically. Then, “Why?” He hears himself as if underwater. “Because,” she says, “for once, you need to learn to look up.” She glances at his guidebook. “And because I nearly kill you. I am responsible. Insurance.” She grins. “I haven’t an appropriate helmet,” he says, and then is handed one. Where did it come from? She shrugs as if helmets simply appear when she demands them. He puts it on. It smells faintly of smoke and violets. They are a streak through the lanes, past a priest eating gelato, a dog wearing sunglasses, two lovers arguing with their mouths pressed together between words. Alessandra ducks them through traffic with a dancer’s spite, yelling affectionate obscenities at taxis. Ben clutches the bike and her shoulders, and then he realizes he’s gripping her waist, and then he realizes he doesn’t care. He laughs once, shocked by the little brightness of it inside his chest. She brakes near a street shrine gilded with fake flowers and chipped paint. “Sant’Antonio,” she says, killing the engine. “Patron of lost things. Maybe he watches you.” “Are you saying I’m lost?” “I’m saying you are always about to lose something.” Her eyes flick to his pocket, where his wallet peeks out. Without looking, she pushes it deeper with a knuckle. The intimacy of it jolts him. He imagines he feels the brush of her ring. He doesn’t see the way her fingers hesitate at the leather as if testing a door. They stand for a second in the noon heat. Rome hums like a hive; the air smells of frying oil and jasmine. A woman in a window hangs out sheets as if throwing surrender flags. Alessandra touches the shrine’s glass. Inside, the saint holds a baby like a borrowed secret. She kisses two fingers and taps her lips to the glass, quick and secular. “Hungry?” she asks, already moving. “I could eat,” Ben says, because he always could. He follows, more or less because he has no choice. She picks a place he would never dare choose. Men with forearms like bread dough knead pizza behind a counter. Alessandra slides into a gap; when food appears, she is already chewing. He thinks they have not paid, but he doesn’t see money change hands. She knows three waiters by name, and one grandmother by a kiss. Ben attempts Italian; it lands like a paper plane in a headwind. She translates with an expression that is definitely mocking, but soft. “This man will give us supplì if you say ‘please’ as if it is a secret,” she instructs. “Per favore,” he whispers, overcorrecting his r’s. She snorts and taps the glass. “Ehi, due!” They eat on a curb. Rice fritters bleed molten mozzarella like they’ve been wounded. Sauce drips on his trousers; she catches it with a napkin and flicks it at him. “You need stains,” she says. “You look like an apology.” They walk again. She doesn’t explain where. He stops explaining himself. On Via dei Coronari, antiquities pile like the city’s memory tilted out of a drawer. Alessandra drifts through a shop, touches everything. Ben notices that when she leaves, a small brass key is in the fold of her jacket pocket that wasn’t there before. He is not sure he saw her take it. He thinks he must be wrong. He also thinks she left a postcard on a table as they exited, a postcard from no one to no one, and she didn’t have it before. At Ponte Sant’Angelo she leans over the parapet, spits questionably into the Tiber, and watches the water erase the gesture into anonymity. “When my Nonna was a girl,” she says, “she swam here to make her boyfriend jealous. He married her anyway and was jealous until he died.” "That sounds exhausting," Ben says. “Yes,” she agrees. “But she never complained. She had better things. Tomatoes. Witches.” He tries to imagine witches with tomatoes. He realizes he wants to ask a hundred questions and none of them are academic. Alessandra checks his face as if it were a crossword. She pokes his forehead. “You have parentheses here,” she says. “Always thinking. It’s not good for kissing.” He blinks. “I— I’m not—” “I know,” she says. “I’m not either.” She says it like they are both telling a joke whose punchline will hurt. After, they are somehow in a courtyard where cats parade like senators. Alessandra transgresses the posted sign and ushers him in. “Quiet,” she says, which is her trick: telling him to be what he already is and making it feel like a conspiracy. She shows him a fig tree behind a crumbling wall. The figs are not ripe, and she plucks one anyway with a twist that bares her wrist. She tests the weight and sighs, then slips the fig into his hand as if placing a penny on a dead man’s eyes. “For later,” she says. Later comes earlier than expected. Clouds gather without a sound. The sun disappears as if someone unhooked it and wheeled it offstage. A first drop is a coin on his knuckle. Then the sky is a bucket. They run. Rain turns the city into a reflective, slippery thing. Motorbikes hiss past. A woman shakes a mop at the sky. Alessandra’s hair, freed, plasters to her cheeks. Ben’s guidebook swells with water, its pages furiously flipping to irrelevant indexes as he tries to shelter it under his shirt. She sees this and bursts into laughter, which in the rain sounds like applause. The awning of a gelato shop appears like providence. They duck under it, breathless. The sign is painted like a tin toy; behind the glass, ice creams sit in fat, contented swirls. The metal scoopers gleam with a severity that suggests vows. Alessandra taps the glass with two fingers and leans close. “Pistacchio,” she says, “but not green. The brown one. Always trust the ugly colors.” Ben is waterlogged. His hair drips into his eyes; his shirt sticks to his spine; his life seems to have been scooped into a different shape. He says, “Yes. That exactly.” They lick gelato while the rain argues with the cobbles. They are shoulder to shoulder under the narrow awning, elbows bumping, making that awkward dance of proximity strangers learn. They are not strangers anymore, but the dance continues because it is fun to pretend. She watches a couple across the alley fight under a newspaper. She watches a policeman try to order a coffee without getting his hat wet. She watches Ben watch all of this, and him watching becomes the thing she watches. “You are like a mirror,” she says. "But the kind that makes everything more dramatic." “For once, I’m afraid to ask what I look like,” he says. “Wet. Happy. Stupid.” She touches the drip at the tip of his nose, wipes it away, then gestures towards the interior. “We should pay.” “We should,” he agrees, and when she glides inside to flirt with the owner in rapid-fire, he follows with his wallet already out. The owner waves away his card with an expansive hand. “La ragazza,” the man says, chin-tipping at Alessandra, “saved my son’s fiancé’s car last week.” He tells a story about a tow truck and three chickens. Ben’s Italian catches every third word; he gets the gist. When he turns back, Alessandra is at his side, holding two spoons instead of any receipt. “Debt,” she says. “This city runs on it.” He nods. He watches her pocket move, the outline of something small pressing and releasing with each breath. He thinks of keys. He thinks he is reading too much into it. He knows he is not. The rain eases. The awning drips a steady rhythm like a clock deciding to live. “Where next?” he asks, surprising himself with his greed for whatever it is she will do to him. She smirks, as if she has heard the question he didn’t ask. “Do you like risk, Ben?” “I’ve become fond of it,” he says, honestly. She takes him to a church that is closed for lunch—a sentence he didn’t know could exist—and lifts the gate with an ease that suggests either divine sanction or familiarity with hinges. He hesitates in the doorway and then doesn’t. Inside, the air is cool and tastes like the concept of feathers. He is reverent. She is not, precisely; she moves as if the church is a friend she can tease. She steals nothing here. He notices that, too. He files it with the fig, the helmet, the debt. They sit on a pew with their shoulders just not touching, and he tells her about Oxford, late nights, and footnotes, about how gratitude and boredom can be cousins. She tells him about never finishing school and finishing everything else, about mothers who love perfume and brothers who borrow money, about how her apartment is above a bar and she sleeps best when people are laughing underneath her. At some point, they share the warm, smashed fig. It is a soft, sweet mess on his tongue; it tastes like decisions in July. Her fingers brush his lower lip as she wipes a purple smear, and he feels the sensation in his sternum instead of his mouth. Outside, the city breathes steam. People emerge. The clouds fray. Rome continues to be itself with imperious disregard. The day bends towards afternoon, then leans into evening. They end up on Gianicolo, breaths in their throats, the scooter ticking as it cools, the city spread below like a quilt made by a mad grandmother. The wind flirts with her hair; his shirt finally dries and smells faintly of some spice he can’t name. “So,” she says. “You will write your book now?” He laughs, because absent the morning, he would have defended his book like a child. Now it seems like a dog with a trick he’s bored of. “I might write something different.” “What?” She drapes herself on the stone wall, half-serious, half-parody. “A day,” he says. He looks at her. “A thief of a day.” Her eyes flicker. It is almost a flinch. “Careful,” she says. “Words make things true.” He weighs this, then says, “I suppose that’s the point.” They are quiet. Vespas whine below. Church bells play that untranslatable tune. Her hand rests near his on the stone, the space between them like a held breath. He thinks about culprits and cul-de-sacs, about how she has placed herself in his life like a small theft he will only discover later, rummaging. “You push people,” he says suddenly. “Where they want to go,” she says. “They just don’t know it.” “And you?” he asks, softer. “Where do you go when you drop them?” She looks at him. She looks through him. Then she looks away. “Another delivery,” she says lightly, and he hears nothing underneath it and understands too much. They ride back down the hill in a dusk that makes statues glow from the inside. At a corner, she brakes hard and leans across him to tap a boy on a skateboard, presses his phone deeper into his pocket, scolds him with a grin. She palmed nothing. Or she did and he missed it. He doesn’t care which. At the place where they started—Trevi again, now a nighttime theatre—they stop. The fountain is a lit dream of water. People throw coins backwards over their shoulders like absolutions. Alessandra stands on a low wall as if courting gravity. She takes a coin from her pocket—Ben’s coin? He can’t tell. She presses it into his palm. “For the cliché,” she says. “Do it right.” “I thought you didn’t believe in this,” he says. “I believe in practice,” she says. “You practice wanting, the wanting gets easier.” He tosses the coin blindly. It hits water with a small, convincing plunk. He thinks, without irony, of returning. A pause opens. Her face is lit by ripples. He wants to say thank you, but the words seem obscene. He wants to ask if he will see her tomorrow; that feels worse. The thing between them is a knot he has no desire to untie. He lets it be. She steps down from the wall and stands too close. He can smell rain still trapped in her clothes. She looks at his mouth, then his eyes, then somewhere over his shoulder, as if consulting a manual only she can see. Her hand rises. He thinks she is going to take something. She doesn’t. She presses her palm to his chest, flat, over his pounding, and then leans forward and kisses him on the cheek, at the corner, where kiss can become more if either of them moves. Neither moves. “Attento,” she says, softly now. “Look up.” “I will,” he promises. He realizes that he has already begun. She steps back. She swings a leg over the bike. For a second, she is all electricity and impatience, a line drawn through a page. Then she tilts her head. “Tomorrow,” she says. It is not a question. Then it is. “If you want.” He wants to say yes like a boy says yes to a dare. He also wants to weigh it, to protect it from becoming an appointment. He is greedy and careful at once. “Tomorrow,” he says, and she grins, victorious, or maybe relieved. She roars away. He watches until the red of her helmet is no longer a dot but a memory that keeps moving. He opens his guidebook; a damp page falls and flutters to the cobbles. On the ground, he sees it’s not a page. It’s a photograph. A Polaroid he didn’t know he had. He bends to pick it up. It is him and her under the gelato awning, rain between them like beaded curtains. He didn’t see anyone take it. He didn’t hear the click. In the bottom white margin, someone has scrawled a time and a place that could belong to a delivery or a rendezvous. He feels the shift again, like a lyric changing a song you recognize into one you love. He slips the photo into his pocket, hand over it as if guarding something precious and illicit. He walks away in no particular direction, the sound of water in his ears, the city in his lungs, parentheses smoothing from his forehead one by one.

Model Output:
The lights over the bar flicker, just a skim of static through the strip, and the bottles sing their thin glass hum when the gravity hiccups. The whisky in the row of tumblers wobbles like nervous jelly. I press my thumb to the bar’s edge to feel the station’s pulse. It’s off by a half beat tonight. “Vega whisky, neat,” the stranger says, tentacle dreads escaping a wrap and falling over their collarbone. Their skin is a soft sea-slate, their pupils slitted and glossy with a wet sheen. “Better make that a double.” “You and everyone else.” I slide a glass under the dispenser, then change my mind and reach for the good bottle under the counter. “You look like your day tried to eat you.” “Several days,” they say. “And a map.” “Rough.” I pour. The amber catches the neon sign reflection, the O in Outpost looping itself around the rim. The gravity stutters again, and the whisky peels up one side of the glass before settling. “If your map tried to do that, you need a refund.” They grin without humor and knock back half of the double. Tendrils shiver. “You’re funny. Is that local?” “I’m Nets,” I say, because names make people easier. “Short for Nettle. Bar’s the Outpost, if you missed the sign. The humor’s imported.” “Cass,” they say. They look up at the bottles like they’re cataloging them for a job. “Short for Cassandra, if you’re feeling formal.” “I’m never feeling formal.” I slide a napkin and a dish of salted kelp curls toward them. “You in from the belt?” “In and through,” Cass says, eyes flicking to the ends of the bar. They clock the miners, the two mechanics playing a lazy hand of cards, the merchant that always makes a show of counting credits with his lips. They clock everything. “You got a problem with gravity?” “Gravity’s got a problem with itself. The array keeps hiccuping.” I smile. “It’s endearing.” “Endearing.” They echo it like it’s foreign. “Is that what we’re calling it?” “It’s what I’m calling it. The admin calls it a maintenance window. The miners call it a cheap landlord. Depends how much they had to drink first.” “Speaking of.” Cass taps the glass. Their hand’s steady. “Whatever’s in here is excellent.” “Vega’s not cheap,” I say. “You paying with chips or charm?” “Depends what works on you, Nettle.” “Don’t try charm right now,” I say, leaning in. “My heart’s a busted valve. It only works on Tuesdays.” They laugh, low. It’s a soft sound. Makes me want to ask them if they always laugh like their ribs hurt. “I’ll pay,” they say. “I came prepared.” A trio of asteroid lads tumble in, boots gritty, their faces smudged with something that left streaks like constellations. Sola waves from the far table. “Nets! We’re dying over here!” “You’re always dying,” I call back. “That’s why you come see me.” “Bring an extra,” she yells, pointing at Cass with her chin. “For your new friend.” “She’s not a friend yet,” I say, though I’m already grabbing another glass. “She hasn’t told me what she’s running from.” Cass smiles, then shutters. “I didn’t say I was running.” “Everybody’s running from something,” I say. “Even the station.” I pour the second, slide it down. Cass catches it without looking, a smooth lift. “You look like you’re waiting for someone to come in and make your night worse.” “I’m waiting for news,” Cass says lightly. “Which will make everything worse, yes.” “You want to talk about it?” “No.” “All right,” I say. “No it is.” A man in a yellow jumpsuit, today’s shade of cheap corporate, leans over the bar. “You got rations or you just got jokes?” “I got both, but the jokes are free,” I say. “Rations are in the hot box. You want synth stew or algae fritters?” “Fritters,” he says, glancing at Cass like they might be contagious. “And none of that sweet sauce. Makes my tongue go numb.” “That’s because it’s anesthetic,” I say, moving to the warmer. “It has a label.” “No one reads labels,” he snorts, tossing a chip in my tip jar like he’s offended by generosity. The gravity dips again and the fritter basket floats a whisper before touching metal. Everyone in the bar leans in at once, a collective practiced move. The Outpost has taught us how to ride the breath of the station. Cass watches me put the basket down. “You’re good at this,” they say. “Keeping people at the edge of fight and forgetting.” “I practice,” I say. “And I like keeping people. It’s a hobby.” “How’d you end up out here?” Cass asks, tone casual but eyes not. “You could run a bar in any freeport. Why the last outpost before a black nothing?” “Because the black nothing is quieter than the first five stops,” I say. “And because if I’m on the edge of everything, I can see what’s coming.” “And who taught you that?” “I taught me,” I say. “With some help from bad luck and good boots.” Cass’s mouth quirks. “Boots.” “Proper boots and a pack that fits and a habit of not asking questions you don’t actually want the answer to. All the survival skills.” I wipe a ring of condensation. “Also, I make the second best pickled mushroom in the quadrant.” “Second best,” Cass says. “Who has the first?” “My dead aunt,” I say. “She’s not giving up the title.” They lean in. “Let me ask you something, then. Hypothetically.” “Oh look,” I say. “Questions.” “Hypothetically,” they continue, ignoring me, “if someone had to store a minor, smallish, hardly noticeable item in a freezer. Temporarily. Is that the kind of thing the Outpost frowns on?” “It depends if the item screams,” I say. “Or tends to explode. Or is alive and breathes oxygen.” “None of the above,” they say. “Mostly it hums.” “I’ve got humming slots.” I jerk my chin toward the back where a blue light glows behind a curtain. “Why the freezer?” “Because it’s not chassis-stable at ambient.” Cass tilts their glass, watching the whisky slosh. “And because it slows things down. In general.” “I like slow things,” I say. “Fast things make me spill drinks.” Sola wanders up, puts her arms on the bar and rests her chin on her fists. “You flirting,” she says to me, “is my favorite entertainment.” “We have cards,” I say. “We have the same five cards you always have,” she replies. She turns to Cass. “You a smuggler?” “Sola,” I warn, but Cass just smiles with all teeth. “I’m an archivist,” they say, and Sola blinks. “What’s that?” “Someone who keeps the things nobody else wants to remember.” Cass lifts their glass. “To memory.” Sola takes a kelp curl, crunches it. “Gross. Good luck.” She leaves behind the smell of metal and sweat and cheap citrus. The station uses it in the air filters to make it feel like we’re not breathing our own ghosts. It never entirely works. “You really an archivist?” I ask. “Mostly,” they say. “I grew up in the scrap rings. Memory is portable. It pays better than you think.” “And you need a freezer.” “I need a minute where whatever’s following me can’t find the trail.” I look at them over the rims of the bottles. “Ah.” “So you do ask the questions.” “I ask the ones that tell me whether I’m making a mess that gets my floor scrubbed with fire,” I say. “Put it this way: if I help you stash your hummer in my freezer, do I get swarmed by corporate security, pirate hunters, or the romantic disgruntled?” “Option one,” they say. “With a garnish of option three. The hunters don’t chase archives; no one pays. Corporates, though, they’ll pay to pretend the past is clean.” “Who’s the romantic disgruntled?” Cass’s mouth quirks again, softer this time. “Someone who thinks I owe them a story.” “We all owe someone a story,” I say. “Sometimes the story is ‘I left.’” “That story gets old.” “Most true things do.” A slow chime sounds from the door. It’s early for that note. We only hear it when a ship docks with a scrape in the tone. Everyone in the bar looks up, then away, then at their drinks. That chime says: trouble with boots. A moment later, the door slides open and three figures in matching matte coats step through. No insignia, which is an insignia of its own. Their hair is steel-gel perfect. Their eyes are shield-implanted, the irises a corporate silver. The way they look around says they own air. “Security,” Sola murmurs, flipping her cards. “One, two, three. Netty, hide me.” “You owe me for last week’s noodles,” I say under my breath. Cass goes still. Their tendrils lift a fraction and then settle, slow, like seaweed after a wave. The lead coat—short haircut, scar on their top lip like a cat scratch—steps to the bar. “We’re looking for a fugitive,” they say without preamble. “Archivist-class. Goes by Cass. Cassandra Rhee. Or other names. Docked at port S-12 forty minutes ago.” “Congratulations,” I say. “You have eyes.” The scar twitches. “We have warrants.” “You can hang them on the tip jar.” “Clever,” they say. They scan the room. Their gaze slides past Cass like they’re just another gray shape. Cass is good; their profile is a study in harmless. “We also have cause to scan privately owned refrigeration units.” “That sounds like a euphemism,” I say. “It’s not.” “I know, sweetheart.” I put both hands on the bar so they can see them. “The Outpost honors warrants that were filed through station admin. You got one of those or just one you printed at your office?” They pull a chip out of their coat, toss it onto the counter. The chip pings to life with admin’s seal. Which means Paru from admin either signed it or got scared enough to look away. “We’re going to look,” the coat says. “We’ll make it quick.” “You’ll do it with me watching,” I say. “And you won’t touch anything that hums.” “Why is that?” “Trade secret.” “Trade,” the coat says, tasting the word like it might be poison. “We’ll be thorough.” “You like flirting with thoroughness?” I smile. “It flirts back.” They don’t smile. “You’ll accompany us.” “I’ll bring a towel,” I say. I lean in, letting the bar’s hum gust up, masking me. My lips barely move. “Back door,” I whisper to Cass. “Left of the sink. The freezer has a false shelf behind the prawns. Make it hum quietly.” Cass doesn’t nod. They wipe the bottom of their glass with a napkin, toss the napkin into their empty bowl, stand like they’re going to the washroom. For a beat, one of the coats looks their way. Cass’s tendrils smooth. They’re casual. They’re a late-night traveler in a bar of miners. They disappear. “Two of you,” I say to the coats. “With me. The third stays here and enjoys the ambience.” “The ambience,” Scar says. “The kelp curls,” I say. “They’re famous.” They don’t argue. They think they don’t need to. I lead them through the curtain to the back, the blue light bathing us like we’re underwater. The freezer hums polite. It’s old, patched with tape and my optimism. I can feel Cass on the other side like a vibration under my skin. I open the door. Cold breath rolls over us. “This is it,” I say. “Don’t touch the prawns.” Scar reaches past me with a scanner. The gravity wobbles again, harder now. The cold bowls inside the freezer ring like bells. Scar frowns. “Your grav stabilizers are under service?” “We call it flair,” I say. They wave the scanner. It chirrups at every organic; it chirrups at the chunks of meat that are probably not originally from one animal. It chirrups at the mason jar of pickled mushrooms—second best in the quadrant—and then it goes very quiet on the back wall. “What’s that?” Scar asks. “A shelf,” I say. “A false one.” “I like to put a little drama in my life.” Scar doesn’t ask permission. They put their hand on the edge of the shelf and pull. It resists, then slides with a sigh. Behind it, neatly tucked between frost and shadow, is nothing. The kind of nothing that’s deliberate. “Huh,” I say. “That’s disappointing.” Scar gives me a look like I’m a dish they didn’t order. “We’ll be back with a heavier scan,” they say. “Don’t leave port.” “I live here,” I say. “You don’t know how to talk to bartenders, do you?” They stare for a long beat. Then they slide the shelf back in place, turn on their heel, and head for the door. “We’ll watch the exits,” they say to their colleague at the bar as they pass. “And the ducts.” “The ducts?” Sola says. “You think we’re children?” “We think you’re inventive,” Scar says. “No one leaves.” When they’re gone, Cass steps out from under the sink like a shadow unwrapping itself. They’re dripping; there’s a wet sheen on their sleeves. The hidden wash pipes sweat when the gravity goes. Their tendrils are slicked back, their eyes wider. “You have a good false shelf,” they say, breath soft. “I have several,” I say. “And I have a headache.” “I can leave through the waste chute,” they say, voice low. “Your ducts. Your delicate beloved ducts.” “You can try. They’ll be watching.” I reach out, then pull back. “How bad is your thing? Your hum?” Cass’s mouth twists. “Bad enough that if they catch it, they’ll scorch this place to the screws.” “Then we don’t let them catch it,” I say. “Where is it now?” “On me.” “My mother always told me to choose my guests carefully.” “What did your mother know?” “Less than she thought.” “We could dump it,” Cass says. Their voice is dull in a way I don’t like. “It hurts me to say it. We could dump it and let space take it, and then they can argue with physics instead.” “You don’t want to.” “It’s the last shard of a language that doesn’t exist anymore,” they say. “It’s… a map of a map. A way through the rocks that doesn’t use computers. That’s why they care. If anyone memorizes it, anyone with a head and a beat can drift where they shouldn’t. No taxes. No tolls. They’d strap me to a chair and take it piece by piece.” “Do you memorize it?” Cass laughs, and it’s broken. “I am it.” “Oh,” I say. The cold of the freezer clings in the bar warm. “Well. That’s worse.” “Worse is relative.” “You could have lied. You could have told me it was a music chip or frozen organs.” “I don’t lie to my bartender,” they say. “Not when I want them to keep me alive.” “You don’t even know me,” I say, and the gravity wavers, just enough to tilt the liquid in every glass toward us like a toast. The Outpost hums. The door chime peals sharp. Someone else docks hard. Cass takes a breath like they’re trying to swallow the whole room. “Nets.” “Yeah?” “If someone offers you a lot of money later to turn me over—” “I won’t,” I say. “You didn’t let me finish.” “I don’t need you to.” The door opens. A figure fills the frame like a knot in wood, corded and complicated. Leather, braided, edged. They have the kind of smile that looks like a weapon being cleaned. The romantic disgruntled, I think, the story that thinks it’s owed. They glance at the coats, at the bar, at me, at Cass. They lift two fingers. “Hey, Vega,” they say, easy. “Been a while.” Cass goes still in a way that reads inside-out. The hum of the freezer rises like a warning. “Hi, Wren,” Cass says, voice thin as a fishing line. “It’s been never long enough.” The lights flicker again. My station breathes wrong. And the room, with its wobbling drinks and lazy card games and cheap citrus air, becomes a place where a choice will have to be made, not now but soon. I run my thumb along the bar’s worn groove. I think about boots. I think about maps. “Who needs another drink?” I call, as my heartbeat counts down something I don’t yet know. And the Outpost, faithful, rings like a bell.

Model Output:
The trucker dropped me at a light that never turned green. He said, “Can’t take you past the Quarter,” like there was some invisible fence and the truck would explode if he crossed it. I mumbled thanks and climbed down, legs shaking harder than I was willing to admit. He drove off with my name—my real name—stuck in his throat like a secret he didn’t know what to do with. New Orleans smells like warm sugar rotting in a flowerpot. And salt. And stale beer. And something alive that’s dying, or dead that’s pretending. But the light here is a different animal. It slides over the cracked sidewalks like it’s curious. I stand there with my backpack that used to be my brother’s, hugging it like it’s a dog that might bite me if I let go. I have twelve percent battery. Twelve percent feels like twelve breaths. I could call Mom—no. A shiver goes through me like I reached into a dark cabinet and touched a cold glass. I swallow. My throat tastes like sleep. It’s barely nine and already humid enough that my shirt is sticking. I am sixteen and far too small for this city and all its teeth. I walk. Don’t think, absorb. People move around me carrying their mornings out into the street: painters with ladders, a lady in a blue headwrap shoving a cart of ice, a kid with a trombone case. Everywhere there’s music even when there isn’t. It’s in the way sneakers slap on concrete, the rumble of buses, someone knocking, the clack of a skateboard. I pass a cafe and a window full of pastries like fat golden moons. Coffee smell. My stomach is a whiny child tugging my sleeve. I check my pocket: nine dollars and some lint. The barista is a dude with tattooed knuckles and the kind of moustache you have to tend like a bonsai. He glances at my hair (mess, not on purpose) and my too-big tee (on purpose), and something like a question comes into his eyes. I hate that question. I hate the micro-shuffle people do when they’re trying to figure out what to call you without saying anything. Still, the pastries are winking like soft planets. “Do y’all do day-old?” I ask, voice careful, like I’m balancing it on my tongue. “After eleven,” he says, already bored. Of course. I buy a coffee, black, burn my tongue because it’s something to feel that isn’t fear, and sit on the curb. I text Cass even though I told myself I wouldn’t. Here. Alive. Don’t tell anyone. Block my number after? Seven percent now. I set the phone on my knee like a small sleeping animal. Within a minute: a heart emoji, then a flood: Where is here? New Orleans? Are you serious?? Babe you can’t just. But then: Do you have a place to stay? Are you safe? I write I’m okay. Lie. Battery icon goes red. That small animal rolling over, sighing, dying. “Got a light?” a voice says. Smoke on it. I blink up and there’s this kid my age or maybe older, hard to tell because he’s got those cheekbones you could grate nutmeg on. He’s holding a cigarette and he’s wearing a denim jacket even though I’m dying in a t-shirt. His hair is a black halo of curls, eyes a color I can’t name and don’t trust. He’s trying for bored, achieves restless. “No,” I say. I smile because that’s what you do when you have no currency. “Also, those kill you.” “Everything kills you,” he says, and drops the cigarette behind his back like he’s embarrassed. He sticks out a hand. “River.” I flinch. The name hits me like he put his palm on my chest. “Is that your name or where you’re headed?” “Depends who’s asking.” He grins. “You’re not from here.” “Nope,” I say. “You?” He uses his chin like a compass, pointing at the river beyond the buildings, making a sound that isn’t a word. “Sometimes.” “You hungry?” he asks after a moment. “Yes.” I don’t mean to say it that fast. He stands, jerks his head. I follow because I have no plan besides not dying and he has a plan that looks like food. Also his shoes are duct-taped together and there’s a patch on his sleeve that says Hell Is Real, and my weird little streak of loyalty to broken things flutters. We cut through streets bristling with iron balconies and plants that look like they’re gossiping. A brass band is warming up on a corner, sounding like a dragon clearing its throat. People are filming them but not giving them any money. River flips them off without moving his hand from his pocket. We end up behind a bakery, by a dumpster that smells like sugar and rot. He knocks twice on the back door. A small woman with hair the color of a new penny cracks it open and sighs when she sees him. Sighs, but smiles. “You again,” she says. “Me again,” he replies, spreading his arms like: see? It’s me. She hands him two bags before he can say anything else. He gives one to me without looking. “Thank you,” I tell her. She stares at my face too long, like she’s trying to place me in a catalogue, then shakes her head and shuts the door. We sit on milk crates and open the bags. Apricot croissant. Blueberry something. I make a small noise I’m going to pretend was actually the croissant. River watches me eat with the satisfaction of a cat watching you unbox a present it’s already scratched. “So,” he says. “You running from something or running to it?” I swallow. The apricot is sticky on my fingers. “Yes,” I say. He laughs. It’s nice. It slides over me, loosening a bolt. “You got a place?” he asks. “I have a backpack.” “That’s a hell of a bed,” he says. He leans back, balancing the milk crate on its rear edge, testing gravity like he knows it personally. “There’s a spot under the overpass where people crash. You’d hate it and then you wouldn’t. I could show you. Or, there’s a shelter with too many rules and not enough answers. Your call.” He watches my face like a mirror he can read. There’s a part of me that wants to say: I’m actually just waiting for my Uber to the rest of my life. Please leave me alone so I can pretend I’m not drowning. The rest of me knows better. “Overpass,” I say. He nods like he knew I’d say that. He knows a lot, probably too much. He hops off the crate. “What’s your name?” The question lands heavy. My phone chimes in my pocket. Four percent. I pull it out and show him the dying red symbol like I can use it to not answer. “Taylor,” I say. It feels like putting on a shirt that fits now. I’m braced for the flinch, the pause, the oh. He just nods. “Okay, Taylor. Let’s go.” We weave through Quarter tourists and old men yelling about chess. The river pulls at us, a flat muscle, mean and beautiful. I’m distracted by a dog wearing shoes. River is distracted by nothing and everything; he watches windows like he can see the backs of people’s heads and what’s inside them. “Why River?” I ask, because I want to turn us both into jokes before anything gets true. “I stole it,” he says, and doesn’t say from whom. He kicks a bottle cap into a drain. “My mom used to say you can’t step in the same river twice. I figured that meant I could be someone else whenever I wanted.” “What about your mom now?” I ask, and immediately want to rewind my mouth. “Different river,” he says. Then, before I can hook my apology onto something: “What’d you do?” He means: what about the counsellor voice that stamped me as a file, what about the kitchen table and the shouting, what about Cass’s text. “I told the truth and it didn’t go well,” I say. My throat tightens. Stupid clumsy truth. “They think I’m… They think.” Words are dumb little pebbles, rolling. “I had to leave before I left in a different way.” He glances at me and nods, small and tight, like he understands and also isn’t allowed to show me that. “Yeah,” he says softly. “I know that one.” We reach the overpass, a concrete cathedral with pigeons for angels. Tents bloom like sad mushrooms. There are shopping carts decorated like altars, blankets that have learned to be walls. A woman in a stained wedding dress is painting her nails careful and bright. The sound of cars overhead is ocean and artillery. It should be terrifying. It is. Also: it’s honest. River navigates like a tour guide who doesn’t want to be there, pointing out a corner where a guy will try to sell you soap that’s actually rocks, a patch to avoid unless you like needles, a church van that comes at noon with sandwiches and lectures. The air tastes like dust and metal and someone’s cooking something amazing three blocks over. “Stick near me,” he says, casual, like I’m a stray and he’s throwing me a string of sausages. “Are you charging for this?” I ask, because I need him to be a hustler more than a savior. You can predict hustlers. “Pay me in jokes,” he says. “And gum, if you have any.” “I have depression,” I offer. “Is that like gum?” “Depends if it’s mint,” he says, and grins. “We’ll find you part-time work. Don’t worry. Street’ll eat you if you taste like worry.” We settle under a scorch of shadow that smells slightly better. A kid I’d call twelve if time wasn’t on fire hands me a bottle of water like I’m about to faint. I drink half and save the other half because that’s what Cass would tell me: ration your kindnesses and your electrolytes. My phone vibrates again. Two percent. Cass: call me when you can. I type: Can’t. Love you. You were the only one who saw me. The screen dims like a curtain. One percent. I look at the little battery like if I beg it’ll sprout another bar. It does not. The phone dies in my hand. Relief sours with panic. “You look like you just watched your best friend sink,” River says. “Who says I didn’t?” I tuck the dead rectangle back into my pocket like a corpse. “What’s your secret?” It comes out meaner than I meant. Because I’m jealous of his ease, because I am raw and it stings. He goes still. He opens his mouth, closes it. For a second, his face is just a kid who fell off his bike and doesn’t want to cry. Then he shrugs, aiming for careless, hitting bone. “I got a brother,” he says. “He thinks I died. Or wishes it. I can’t decide which is easier.” I wait. The highway hums over our heads like a big animal sleeping. Someone laughs, high and rusted. “He took the hit for me once,” River says. “Cops. He’s better at being the good one. Except now he’s probably on his third strike because I was on my way to be the second. I don’t know. It’s math I can’t do. I’m not going back. He’s not either. That’s the secret: there’s no back.” It sits between us like a third person neither of us introduced. My chest hurts. I want to say something smart and brave. I say: “I’m sorry.” It’s stupid because it doesn’t fix anything. He nods like he gets that I can’t fix anything. “No pity,” he says softly. “Pity gets you pickpocketed.” “Okay,” I say. “No pity. Just… curses.” He smiles at that. We let the silence stretch. It holds. By noon, the church van shows up and a woman with arms like a linebacker hands me a sandwich and asks if I’ve accepted Jesus. I say I’m more of a begrudging acquaintance. She laughs, louder than strictly necessary, and tells me I can come by the shelter if I need “women’s toiletries.” The word catches in my chest like a fish hook. I nod and take the bag. River’s eyes flicker, checking me for blood, I think. Or checking which way I’ll run. “People see what they want,” he says later, when we’re chewing lettuce and bread and something approximating turkey. “The trick is to feed them what makes them full and keep the good stuff for yourself.” “What’s the good stuff?” I ask. He taps his chest. “You. Your name. Your night brain. The parts you’d kick anyone else for touching.” “My night brain is an asshole,” I say. “It would steal your lighter.” He looks at me. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s telling you something you’re chewing too fast to taste.” He talks like that sometimes, like a poem is falling out of a hole in his pocket. It’s annoying. It’s also… comforting. The day bakes. Somebody starts drumming on overturned buckets and the beat becomes the ground. Later, a man with a face like a wrinkled dollar bill drifts over and asks if either of us wants to make “quick cash.” River tells him, “We’re expensive,” and the man wanders away, muttering. After, River says, quiet: “Don’t go with anyone. Not your first day. Not your tenth. They’ll tell you they’ll make you family. Family is light and food and sometimes prison. This isn’t that.” “I had a family,” I say. He waits. I swallow. “It was a lot of bathrooms with me staring in the mirror and trying to make my mouth do something easy. I used to think if I smiled right it would all rearrange.” “And?” he asks. “It did,” I say. “But not the way they wanted.” By late afternoon, I am sweat and quiet. The sun moves around, finds me wherever I try to hide. River disappears for half an hour and I have a minor panic attack, imagining he’s gone forever, that he was a hallucination called hunger. He comes back with a phone charger that looks like it’s been run over twice and a cheap brick of a battery pack. “Found it,” he says. “You stole it,” I say. “Found it,” he repeats, and hands me the cord like a gift. He looks proud and a little nervous, like maybe I’ll judge him. I don’t. I want to cry. I plug my dead phone in and it blinks awake, petulant, a Tamagotchi revived. Messages from numbers I don’t recognize. One from Mom, long and full of scripture and ellipses, the words wobbling like jelly. One from Dad: Call me. One from Cass: I’m here whenever. I turn the screen face down because if I look at it too long I’ll turn to salt. We go to the river as the sun drops its last coins on the water. The air is thick enough to drink. People are out—couples with hands attached, kids trying to sell bottled water that’s warmed in the sun. A man plays something on a guitar that makes me think of a door I closed too early. We sit on the steps and watch boats shoulder past, slow and important. I think about leaving and then not leaving and all the versions of me shedding like snakeskin behind us. I think about the school counsellor’s voice on that call to Mom, crisp and careful: We’re concerned about Taylor’s pattern of… I think about Mom’s face, the way it ripped when I said it. Not my first secret. My best one, finally spoken. I lean my head on my knees. “So,” River says after a while, in a voice that’s almost a question. “You staying?” “I don’t know what staying is,” I say. “But I’m not going back.” “That’ll do,” he says. He nudges my shoulder with his. “Tonight you can be a tourist. Tomorrow you can be a problem.” “Deal,” I say. My phone buzzes once against my thigh. I let it. The sky slips from orange to bruise. Somewhere, a band is finding its song, the horn bending into it, the drum promising to catch them if they fall. The river keeps moving, not asking permission. I think: maybe I can learn that. My feet, restless all day, finally quiet. My heart doesn’t, but it changes its rhythm. It doesn’t sound like running anymore. It sounds like starting.

Model Output:
The day dawned with the sincerity of a politician and the reliability of a hand-cranked toaster. The sky was the soft-colored bruise of a world that had tried to keep going and tripped on its shoelaces anyway. Midas lay on his back in the former break room of the former Museum of Advancement, now their home base on account of three working locks and zero working exhibits. Beside him, perched on a dented coffee tin like a furry oracle, sat Chewy, an animo-tronic stuffed koala, who regarded the ceiling with the philosophical calm of one who has only two expressions and one of them is “hungry.” “Inventory,” Midas said. He cleared his throat like a man looking into a very small and very empty wallet. “We have: three packets of soup powder, no soup, a fishing hook without line, a battery that powers a clock when it wants to embarrass me, and… a jar of beets. Red ones.” Chewy’s eyes flickered a low, suspicious amber. He neither approved nor disapproved of beets. Chewy did not so much have a palate as a list of things that were “edible” and “not batteries.” “And,” Midas continued, “we have a map of the Old City, drawn by someone whose definition of ‘north’ suggests they were born upside down.” Chewy’s pupils dilated. His left eye blinked blue, the right green. The first meant hope. The second meant Midas was doing that thing again where he tried to turn optimism into a verb. “Our intent,” Midas said, enunciating as if the universe were a notary public, “is to go to the Techno-Mall, which, according to rumor, is still guarded by a skeleton of society. Or actual skeletons. We procure food and maybe bits of wire for your… you know.” Chewy’s eyes flashed violet, which was embarrassment. There were two wires inside him that had once connected to a voice chip, a little metal disc that had a child’s laughter and pre-programmed phrases like “Hugs!” and “Nap time!” Nothing came out now but grunts and the occasional staticky curse, which Midas was relatively sure was not in the original product manual. “Right,” Midas said. He stood and stretched, counting his aches like rosary beads. “So we walk out of here, we don’t get eaten by runt packs—” Chewy went yellow at the mention. Yellow was fear. It was Chewy’s most versatile setting. “—we don’t step on any mischief tiles—” The Museum’s floors had been fitted, in optimistic days, with interactive panels that lit up and explained the wonders beneath your feet. They had not coped well with rain. Now they retold their narratives as random bursts of electricity and the occasional unnerving sentence about the importance of curiosity seconds before trying to kill you. “—and we come back before the pink sky. Because if the sky goes pink, we don’t joke. We hide and stay quiet and we do not talk about what happened last time.” Chewy’s eyes went the color of a deep lake. He leaned forward, head cocked, and made a tiny mechanical sound like a sigh. “Team,” Midas said, putting a hand on a fabric ear worn nearly bald by fingers that had loved it in a happier world, “we have a plan.” They always had a plan. Plans were the things that happened before life opened the trapdoor. They left by way of a stairwell that sighed like an old tea kettle. Pigeons watched and disliked them without energy. The street was a corridor of weeds and former cars. Somewhere a dog barked with the voice of a trombone with a cold. Midas held a stick, which is the sort of thing that made no sense as a weapon until it did. “There,” Midas whispered theatrically at a fallen billboard advertising laugh lines you didn’t have to have. “We go past the Skin Care Cathedral, under the Flyover of Broken Promises, and then—we’re practically there.” Chewy’s eyes turned a very annoyed teal. He pointed, causing his elbow servos to whine just a bit—over the years, oil had become an exotic treat. Midas squinted. He had, admittedly, inverted their route. The Flyover of Broken Promises was the pile of concrete to the left, not the right. The difference was important because to the right the ground wavered in that oceanic way that meant the dirt was trying to remember if it used to be a bog or had just read about bogs somewhere and wanted to try. “Left, then,” Midas said, and they went left. The Techno-Mall had been a temple to commerce: four floors of glass and neon, escalators lifting people toward their financial decisions like gentle jaws. It had once held a store called Planet of Clothes and a place that sold five varieties of yogurt that all tasted like existential disappointment. Now it was a rectangle of broken teeth and dangling tendons of wiring, humming in a voice that said: I am not as dead as I look. “Look,” Midas said, indicating a sign that read, partially, WEL OM S A ERS! The letters that were still there tried their hardest. “Friendly.” They slipped through a door that had made its peace with its hinges. Inside lay the hollows of former trolleys, nests made of receipts and novelty sweaters. The air smelled faintly of the world’s last cinnamon roll. “Food court,” Midas murmured. It had not, in honesty, fed anyone in a decade. But the stalls were shelter, and sometimes pigeons failed to understand the concept of ceilings. Pigeons contain a surprising amount of protein, even if dignity is lost in the preparation. Chewy tapped his metal paw against Midas’s shoulder with a series of precise clinks, which meant: quiet. His eyes slid to a mean little red, which meant: danger that is more organized than it looks. Midas heard it: the soft chuckle of an escalator doing its best impression of a crocodile. He looked up. The small entourage of the mall’s new skeleton guard had arranged themselves along the escalators like queens on chessboards. Mannequins. Not the friendly kind that liked hats. These had been drafted. Bits of rebar gave them spines. They had acquired tools, or the idea of tools, or perhaps a religion of sharpness. They turned their heads together. This was worse than eyes in the dark. This was eyes on ball joints that had opinions. Midas raised his stick. He was not sure what he intended to do with it, but he hoped his lack of a plan surprised them. Chewy blinked—a sudden series of strobe whites. This was the emotional color for: I think if I do something very stupid it will either be brilliant or fatal. His paws moved in patterns he had not learned, but which had been imprinted by an engineer who loved Easter eggs. Chewy croaked, as if deep within him an ancient slogan had dusted itself off: “H—h…hugs!” The mannequins froze. “Hugs!” Chewy repeated, more confidently, although his voice cracked on the s and came out as “hugz.” Midas felt the world pause to consider slapstick. “Yes,” he said. “Hugs. We brought them. For you.” A mannequin’s head ticked. It had a smile carved into its face with a key. Its hand, which was a soup ladle tied to a broom handle, dipped. It began its slow descent down the escalator, which protested, then remembered its job. Midas did not love this. He tugged Chewy backwards, step by dragging step, the wheels in Chewy’s hips murmuring about the poor life choices of grit. The second mannequin moved. And the third. Their steps were ordinary and wrong at once. “This is when the plan goes sideways,” Midas whispered. “Hu—hugs!” Chewy said brightly, and his eyes flashed a frantic rainbow. They ran. They ran past a games store where plastic boxes spilled like fossilized confetti, past a defunct fountain full of coins that had not bought wishes in years, past signage that offered: Now Open Wednesday Through Armageddon. Two of the mannequins followed, clacking, while an escalator whined “maintenance” in a voice that was all knives. They skidded into the supermarket space, which had been scoured years ago by the sort of people who think beans are forever. Midas dove behind a checkout lane, its conveyor belt succumbing to lichen. He held his breath in quarters: one quarter for courage, three quarters for luck. The mannequins arrived, two statues with heads that pivoted like owls learning to gossip. Chewy climbed onto the conveyor belt, belly on rubber, paws braced, eyes green for recall. He butted a button with his head. The belt moved. There is something undignified about being rolled toward a threat like a sandwich. However, the threat was full of holes. The belt took Chewy past them slowly, insolently. The mannequins turned, too slow, while Midas pushed himself over the counter and crawled beneath their legs—their legs were silly things, long pins in old sneakers—then jumped up, grabbed Chewy mid-belt, and ran like history had offered him a refund and he didn’t want it. They made it to the service corridor, which smelled like mildew and arguments. They passed a mural encouraging employees to “Live the Brand,” which now had a mustache in spray paint. The corridor ended in a door with an electronic lock, the kind that had made people feel modern. The keypad blinked at them with the lazy menace of a cat in the sun. Midas put his ear to it. Nothing. He looked at Chewy. Chewy’s eyes went a long-suffering blue, the one that meant: you’re going to try talking to it, aren’t you. “Listen,” Midas told the keypad. “We’re refugees. We’re in a hurry. The world is in pieces and you are a door. Be what you were made to be.” He pressed 1-2-3-4. The light went red. The door clicked at him, like a man clucking his tongue. Midas pressed 0-0-0-0. Red again. Chewy’s eyes went orange, which was the color of impending practical improvisation. He shuffled forward, angled his head so that the little speaker inside aligned, hummed the descending three-note chime that the manufacturer had probably never imagined anyone would hum to it, and then coughed. The door made a different click. It was the sound of recognition. The wire inside Chewy that had carried the sound earlier sparked like a star falling in an ashtray. The lock sighed. Open. “You incredible creature,” Midas whispered, pushing through. “You absolute marvel. You hero with stuffing.” Chewy’s eyes blazed a quick magenta—pride—and then sank into a brownish-pink that meant: that hurt. The alley outside was damp and honest. They went left, which was wrong, then right, which was worse, and then through a yard full of burnt fake palm trees. Midas, in a moment of genius inspired by fear, decided to take the short way across the rooftop of a pharmacy that had not weathered weather. They reached the center of the roof before the roof remembered it used to have support. It sighed and gave up. They fell through a perfectly square hole into a shelf full of cheap romance novels, which exploded around them with the embarrassed sighs of people caught kissing. Midas landed on his ankle, which immediately swelled into a small opinion piece about physics. Chewy bounced. Being stuffed had advantages. The pharmacy had rats. The rats had manners, which is to say they declined to panic. They watched as Midas sat and said several words that would have made the Museum’s educational brochure blush. He tore a strip from his shirt, wrapped his ankle, and looked Chewy in the face. “On a scale of one to we should go home,” he said, “I’m at: we should go home.” Chewy’s eyes were a slow, steady green. Home. They limped. Time did that elastic thing it does in bad comedies and good disasters. In one version of their return, they took the alley past the barber’s pole and were harried by a runt pack that had learned to mistrust sticks. Chewy, climbing onto Midas’s shoulder with the tenacity of a Christmas ornament, waved his arm with the unassailable authority of plush and made the universal sign for “No,” which looks, when you are a koala, astonishingly like “Yes.” The dogs, being philosophers, debated among themselves and then decided to chase a can in circles. In another version, the sky went pink and they crawled into an overturned freezer, Chewy’s eyes the color of prayer while something very large and very quiet moved past outside in the manner of a tax audit. In yet another, Midas fell into a mischief tile, which responded to the sincerity of his foot by flashing the words: Curiosity! Innovation! and then punching him in the kneecap with a foam piston. They returned in multiple ways, all true at once and each unhelpful at the time. Home was a set of rooms that smelled like dust and the ghost of coffee. The locks worked. The pigeons did not. Midas collapsed onto the museum couch, which had pretensions of velvet and the springs of a trap. His ankle throbbed in a Morse code that spelled mostly expletives. He held Chewy up and looked into his eyes. “We have,” he said, “no beets now. Because they broke on the second fall. We have one less dignity. We have, technically, a new hole in the pharmacy that is ours if we ever want to stage an elaborate heist on a decongestant.” Chewy’s eyes were a thoughtful periwinkle. His belly made a small noise that was either a whirr or a complaint. He set his head on Midas’s chest with the heaviness of things that are known and survived. Midas stared at the ceiling. The Museum’s dark was gentle. Outside, the city coughed and creaked and decided to remain mostly in one piece for the night. He reached for the map and, because he was built the way he was, he found a stray pencil and made a note in the margin, in a handwriting that had ideas above its station. Techno-Mall: not friendly. Avoid the escalators. Hug strategy: effective in short bursts. Door likes lullabies. Pharmacy hole: use for future mischief. Note: teach Chewy other songs. Chewy’s eyes blinked in a slow, contented blue. He seemed to agree that the day had been a sort of success. They had gone out. They had come back. They had not vanished into a pink sky or become the third act of someone else’s tragedy. They were worse for wear in the way that means “alive.” “Tomorrow,” Midas said, “we try the river. I have it on good authority that the fish there are stupider than we are.” Chewy’s eyes did the involuntary shimmer that meant laughter, if laughter were a color. He reached a paw up and tapped a beat against Midas’s collarbone, a rhythm that had once matched a jingle, but now, in the quiet, was only theirs. They slept beneath a banner that read: The Future Is Interactive. The banner had no idea how right it had been. The future, such as it was, rustled in the walls and blinked once outside the window and then, deciding that today had been entertains enough, wandered off to bother someone else. Midas dreamed of escalators that moved you up and down and also sideways, and of doors that opened because you said please. He dreamed, unexpectedly, of beets. In the morning, when he woke to Chewy’s eyes doing their snip of yellow because his ankle had puffed up to twice itself, he laughed, because laughter weighed less than worry and kept better. “Inventory,” he said again, because the day needed labels. “We have: one ankle like a melon with ambition. One jar of broken beets and a beet rug. One stuffed koala who can talk to doors and lie to mannequins. One stick that we should put next to the other sticks for consistency. And one plan.” Chewy’s eyes flashed. Hope. Disbelief. Love. He climbed onto the coffee tin, which had dented itself into the shape of his bottom, and nodded. “Plan,” Midas said. “We try not to die. We try to do it funnier than yesterday. We try to be the people who come back.” Outside, the sky coughed up a hopeful gray. The pigeons complained. The city, broken but ambitious, waited to misinterpret them again. They stood up, each more fragile than they admitted, and went to meet it. The day opened like a door, and because Chewy was there, it did not lock behind them. Not yet. Not today.

Model Output:
“Close the door!” “Excuse me?” “For God’s sake, shut it—unless you’d like the entire Western Mail to come in and alphabetise the travel section.” A hand fumbled at the brass knob, the bell over the door clanged, and the actor ducked inside with a soft curse, a gust of damp Cardiff air following him. He wore a navy peacoat and sunglasses despite the cloud and fine drizzle, hair flattened in a way that said he’d been sprinting. The street noise receded as the door thumped shut. He pressed his back against it for a beat, panting, then glanced up, grin already at half wattage. “Sorry. Hi.” He slid the glasses down his nose and blinked at me. “I’m not—er—shoplifting a moment of peace. I’ll buy something. Two of somethings. Three.” “Have you considered a hat?” I said, returning to the till as if my heart hadn’t just leapt into my throat. “Hats are very effective when one is famous and has a very distinctive jawline.” He touched his jaw, glanced reflexively at the dark window. A smear of rain turned the High Street into a watercolour. There were shapes hovering just beyond the glass—long lenses like fishing rods, a murmur. He pushed off the door and slid between a table of staff picks and the Welsh history shelf as though he’d been born to sidle. “You’re very calm,” he said. His voice did the thing it did in the films—all warmth with a scratch at the edges that you suspect is deliberate. “Usually there’s squealing.” “We try to keep squealing to a minimum. It upsets the poetry.” He laughed—real, surprised. “Do you sell any poetry that causes a stampede toward the back exit?” “Dylan Thomas in emergencies.” I nodded toward the stockroom. “Is it a proper emergency or only… mild?” He tilted his head, listening. The murmur outside swelled and ebbed, like the Taff on a windy day. “They’ll get bored, eventually. Or the rain will do my job for me.” He looked around then, taking in the shop. It had been my grandmother’s and smelled like her: paper, bergamot, a hint of dust and lemon oil. Narrow aisles, piles that threatened collapse but never did. He touched a book as he passed as if conducting a silent roll call. “This is a gorgeous place. I’ve been trying to find it for—” “Don’t,” I said, holding up a hand. “Please don’t.” “Don’t what?” He did the smile, the one that softened the hard cut of him. “Don’t say you’ve been trying to find a genuine bookstore because you love the smell, or that you miss real shops because everything’s an app now. It’s a very charming speech when one is not watching four men with cameras lick your window.” He blinked. The smile faltered, almost imperceptibly. “Right. Noted.” The falter was interesting; the bruised apple under the gloss. He put the sunglasses in his pocket. His eyes were greener than they ought to be. “I’m Ellis.” “I know.” “Right.” He spread his hands, palms up—a mime of harmlessness. “Cardiff’s own prodigal son. I’ve been away and now I return with my silly face to ruin your afternoon.” “You’re from Whitchurch,” I said, reaching for the price gun because my hands wanted something to do. “That’s not exactly Rome.” “Whitchurch is as good as Rome,” he said. “Better sandwiches.” He leaned against a stack of secondhand crime novels with a carelessness that would have scandalised my grandmother, then corrected himself, standing straight. “Sorry. I’m not good with—” He gestured at the air. “Rules of shops.” “You’re excellent with not shutting doors.” “That I did do. Eventually.” He drummed his fingers on the spines behind him. It was almost restful, the way he watched my not quite smiling. My cheeks were warm and I hated it. “Are you going to call me a prat and tell me to leave?” “I’m going to tell you that if you pull that stack you’re leaning on, the Ken Folletts will fall and I’ll have to kill you.” He moved away from the stack like it might be wired. “Message received.” The bell chimed as the door nudged, then settled. A sheen of flashbulb light leaked through the crack between blind and sill. He flinched. It wasn’t big, but I saw it, the way you see a bird hit glass. He slid his hands into his coat pockets, the charm dial turned down. “Do you have a back door?” he asked softly. “I do. There’s a mews that way. It connects to the lane behind the dentist. You could go through—” “—and pop out into another swarm.” He lifted a shoulder. “They’re not stupid.” “No.” I straightened a stack of bookmarks that had been straight the entire time. “You can sit in the office for a bit. There’s a kettle. They’ve got the staying power of a toddler in a museum; give them twenty minutes and a drizzle and they’ll be off to find someone more interesting.” “I doubt that,” he said, automatic, like a reflex. Then his mouth caught up with his words and curved ruefully. “That’s the wrong thing to say, isn’t it.” “It depends whether you mean it.” He looked at the floor. “I mean… I’m good at being interesting. It’s my job.” “And yet,” I said carefully, “you look like you want to climb into the cardboard boxes and be shipped to someone in Aberystwyth.” He laughed again, quieter. “Do you usually psychoanalyse men who blunder into your shop dripping charisma and rain?” “Only the ones who try to rescue Steve McQueen.” “Now that I deeply deserve,” he said. “I’m a thief. Unrepentant. Put me in a room with a first edition and no alarms and we’ll see.” “You’d get far with that coat.” He ran a hand over the peacoat lapel, this absurd, unconscious preening gesture that he likely thought was invisible. “I’ve been told it makes me look like a dock worker in a French New Wave film.” “Dirk Bogarde wishes,” I said before I could stop myself. He glanced up, startled into a grin. “Dirk Bogarde. That’s a good insult.” “It’s not an insult,” I said, mortified to hear the warmth in my voice. “It’s a— comparative assessment.” “Of what, exactly?” “Coats.” “Mm.” He took a step toward the counter, then caught himself and stayed by the mystery novels like a tether had tightened. “What’s your name?” “Gwen.” “Gwen,” he repeated, tasting it. “Short for anything?” “Gwenllian, if you must know.” “Oh, I must.” He rolled it in his mouth, the consonants slipping around his posh corners. “Gwenllian. That’s beautiful.” “It’s inconvenient in Starbucks.” “You don’t seem like the type to go to Starbucks.” “And yet here I am, a person with hands and a morning.” He nodded at the kettle in the back. “Tea? Or will that be breaking a rule?” “You may have tea if you promise not to rearrange the display while my back is turned.” He made an X over his heart. “I promise to respect all displays.” “Mm.” I pushed open the little waist-high flap and gestured him toward the back. The office was barely that; a half-room with a desk that had been in my great-grandfather’s pub, a window that looked onto a brick wall, and a radio whose dial was stuck between stations. He ducked instinctively under a low beam that didn’t require ducking and smiled as if he’d been complimented. The boy couldn’t help it. “Sugar?” I asked, filling the kettle, thinking about nothing in particular and everything in particular. “I’m sweet enough,” he said without thinking, then coloured like he’d embarrassed himself at a party. “I’m so sorry. That’s—” “Appalling,” I supplied. But my mouth was smiling of its own accord. “I’m better than that,” he said helplessly, hands up. “You’re exactly that.” “Gwenllian.” He leaned against the doorframe, not touching, no Follett to bring down on his own head. There was a stillness creeping into him that I liked, like he’d been running on a separate track and now he’d moved onto ours. The office smelled of damp coats and old paper. “Sometimes I think I am only that. The jokes. The nods. I give the world something and the world is pleased, but also—” He gestured at the door. “It follows.” “And you open the door for it,” I said, and then I wanted very badly to take it back. He didn’t know me. I didn’t know him. My heart had no business in my throat. He took it without flinching. “Yes,” he said. “I have my hand on the knob most days.” The kettle clicked off. I poured. The mugs were chipped to the point of indecency. “Milk?” “Yes, please. I am not as hardy as my publicist thinks.” “Publicists think you’re bulletproof.” “Publicists think of the bullet as a branding opportunity.” He took the mug with both hands and inhaled the steam like it might sterilise him. His eyelashes were absurd. “Thank you, Gwenllian.” “You’re welcome.” We both listened to the radio crackle for a second. It was comfortably terrible. “You’re not going to ask me for a selfie?” he said after a beat. “No.” “Autograph? For your nan who always thought you’d marry a doctor?” “She’s dead, I’m afraid. And she would have preferred a teacher.” He nodded solemnly. “Teachers are more useful.” “Than actors? Sometimes.” “Than me. Almost always.” “You’re very good at pretending to be other people. That’s useful when one needs to, say, convince people to buy a coat.” He looked down at himself, chuckled. “It’s always the coats. I did a film in a leather jacket once. They sent me racks of them for months. My cousin now dresses like a biker in Dinas Powys.” “And yet here you are,” I said, and didn’t finish it, because the part that wasn’t said hung in the air like a sentence with the last word swallowed. Here you are, unvarnished in an office in Cardiff with rain on your hair and no audience but me. He set his tea on the desk and came back to the doorway, hovered, footsteps careful as if the floor might be fragile. “Do you have one of those,” he gestured vaguely, “tiny chairs people put out in children’s sections? I could crouch there and see if they mistake me for a puppet.” “You’re too tall,” I said. “And your ego would never fit.” “My ego is actually quite portable,” he said wryly. “It folds up. You can store it under the bed.” “You’ve brought it with you.” “I always do. In case someone loves me.” He said it like a joke but his mouth didn’t laugh. He looked at my shoulder, then the shelf, then finally at my face direct. “I don’t mean that in a— you know—” “A manipulative way.” “A pathetic way, actually.” He rubbed the back of his neck and for the first time the superstar dipped out of focus and the boy from Whitchurch stood in his place, lanky and pleased by things. “Tell me you find me intolerable. It will even me out.” “You’re intolerable,” I said, but it came out soft and it wasn’t honest. “And you’re getting water on my floor.” He glanced back at the damp prints he’d left. “I’ll buy a mop.” “You can buy a book.” “I’ll buy a book then. Something difficult. To prove I have hidden depths.” “Nothing with your face on it.” “I’m not in the habit of reading my own press.” “I meant the glossy ones, but if you sit and read yourself in The Times in my chair I will put you out into the rain like a cat.” He put his hand over his heart again. “Gwenllian, you wound me.” “Good.” We stood there and looked at each other, the radio hissed, the rain twitched on the window. Outside, the murmur seemed to have softened. The bell didn’t go. The coats on the stand leaned toward each other and whispered. “You really didn’t—” He started, then stopped. He swallowed. “You didn’t squeal.” “No.” “Do you not—do you not like me?” He said it with a half-laugh that asked me to fix it, to pat him on the head and tell him of course, dear, of course. “I don’t know you,” I said simply. “I like your films sometimes. You were terrible in that space thing.” “I was terrible in that space thing,” he said with relief, as if he’d wanted someone to say it. “They made me whisper as if gravity were eavesdropping.” “I threw a cushion at the telly.” “And now we are destined to be enemies.” He took a long swallow of tea and closed his eyes briefly at the heat. When he opened them he wasn’t performing, or not much. “It’s very restful not being liked immediately.” “You’re not disliked.” “That’s progress.” “It’s human.” “I feel it,” he said, and then he leaned there and I stood and we had nowhere to be. My heart did a ridiculous turn in my chest and I wanted to be twenty-two and unbruised and also not. He looked at my hands. I tucked them into my sleeves. “Your hair is in your face,” he said, and lifted his hand an inch and stopped, and lowered it. The restraint did something to the room. He’d kissed a thousand women on camera, with tongues choreographed and hands rehearsed, and here he didn’t touch me. The not-touching was its own touch. “Thank you for telling me,” I said, tongue thick. “Am I allowed to tell you something else?” “No.” “Good. You have ink on your finger. There.” He pointed near my knuckle. “It looks like a bruise. It’s—” He smiled to himself. “It’s nice.” “You should go,” I said, because it felt dangerous suddenly, the air in my little office. “Before they decide to wait out the apocalypse for a shot of you buying a battered copy of Kerrang.” “That would make my mother proud.” He set the empty mug down as if that were a significant act. “Will you—” He bit his lip. “No. That’s presumptuous.” “What?” “Will you pick me a book. One I won’t like straight away. One that’ll… crack something open.” I knew exactly which shelf. Precisely what spine. I brushed past him and walked out, aware of him like a heat source. If I didn’t look at him he wasn’t there. If I didn’t look, he was every cinema screen and bus shelter and also somehow only a man in my shop who wanted a book. I took a copy of O’Connor—short stories, sharp as knives and kinder than you think—and held it out. Our fingers didn’t touch. “This will injure you in a good way,” I said. “I didn’t know books could injure you in a good way.” “It’s the only reason to keep them around.” He looked at the cover like it had something to tell him. “How much?” “For you?” I named the price without discount. He smiled. “Good.” He dug in his pocket and produced cash like a magician, crumpled and damp. “Keep the change. For mop funds.” “You’ll ruin me with that kind of generosity.” “One day I’ll ruin many shopkeepers.” He took the little paper bag, tucked the book inside. “Am I allowed to come back when I’ve been injured?” “No,” I said, too fast, then, “Yes. If you use the back door.” “I’ll put my hand on the correct knob,” he said with a director’s cue in his voice. He stood for a second, then sudden like he’d decided not to deliberate, he stepped closer, not so close, and lowered his voice to a secret. “Thank you for not… feeding me.” “It wouldn’t have gone down well,” I said. “I know. That’s why—” He cut himself off, breathed in as if to take the rest back into his ribs. “Right. The dentist’s lane. And then left. I remember. I did ride my bike through Cardiff before they paid me to pretend to ride it through Paris.” I opened the door to the little corridor, the one that smelled of damp stone. He had moved toward me and was now there in the threshold. “Goodbye, Ellis,” I said, like I said people’s names when they left with their books, like nothing in me had gone warm. He looked at my mouth, and then at the ceiling, and then at me. “Goodbye, Gwenllian.” He reached like he would touch my shoulder, and then laughed at himself and clasped his hands behind his back instead. “You really did throw a cushion?” “Very hard.” “I’ll try to deserve your sofa next time.” “You won’t.” He grinned then, unguarded, and went down the narrow hall without looking back, as if he knew if he did he’d stay until the shop lights were turned out. The back door opened and a slice of grey light slid in, and then he was gone. I waited with my hand on the frame, listened. The rain and the muffled chorus of the street. I went to the front window and peered between the blind cords. The shapes that had been loitering had dispersed into two hunched figures under a bus shelter, looking cross and damp. One of them checked his phone and shook his head. The door chimed again as someone wandered in and asked for a guidebook to Gower. My hands smelled like Darjeeling. The mug he’d used was still warm. On the desk where he’d leaned was a fingerprint in rain. I pressed my thumb into it until it vanished. When I picked up the tea mug to take it to the sink, I noticed the receipt on the counter, folded in half. On the back, a quick line in blue: For when you decide you like me. E. I put it in the till, under the fifty-pound notes, as if it were something dangerous and valuable. Then I went back to the poetry and pretended my shoulders hadn

Model Output:
The underhold sucked the warmth from their bones the moment the door eased open. Brass hinges whispered, a little sigh of old oil, and the corridor beyond breathed out a draft that tasted of kelp, tar, and salt as old as the docks. Gas lamps in cage sconces sputtered along the walls, their mantles hissing like snakes, each flame caged in milky glass and throwing bars of shadow upon damp stone. Pipes ran along the ceiling like veins, sweating condensation, and somewhere water dripped with a miser’s patience. Aya paused with palm still on the ironwork, spine taut beneath her velvet coat. The quiet felt false—an actor’s stillness before the cue. Katra’s fingers, gloved in worn kid, rested against Aya’s elbow, a tether back to flesh and breath. Simeon lingered a pace behind, a hulking silhouette with a chimney sweep’s shoulders and a gunman’s way of standing: weight low, hat angled to hide the eyes. “You smell that?” Simeon murmured, voice low and ruined around the edges by smoke and fish brine. “Whale oil,” Katra said, nose wrinkling, her hood thrown back enough to catch the lamplight. Her earrings—simple tin hoops—winked in and out of shadow. “And harp-bone gum. Someone’s laid old mag to the locks.” Aya heard it then, beneath the hiss of gas—the distant groan of some whale-bone mechanism catching a slow breath. She pressed onward. The corridor widened and dropped by degree, the vaulting roof supported at intervals by iron ribs scabbed with rivets. The floor was slick where seawater had crept up from the foundations; their boots whispered through puddles. A mural, half-flayed by damp and neglect, showed a cartouche of Scythan glyphs and a stylized beast with a mouth full of eyes. Aya squinted. Ink thrilled in her blood as if some old nerve had been plucked. She thought of her mother’s hands cupped around a guttering candle. Don’t look too long, Aya. The immateria looks back. “Keep your head,” Katra whispered, knowing where Aya’s eyes had strayed. Head. Heart. Breath. Aya breathed. She made herself small, camouflaged by her mask: carnivalesque porcelain painted with a serpent winding over one cheek, the gilt flaking, its papier-mâché edge chafing her cheekbone. She flexed her fingers. They ached with the itch that presaged a summoning, a familiar black tide pressing at her knuckles. Not yet. Not if she could help it. They needed the artifact, not a piping wail of shadows and a thousand loose ends. The corridor terminated in a circular iron door ribbed with whale-bone braces, its face carved deep with those same hopped and knotted Scythan letters. Beside it stood a control wheel of greened brass and an altar of sorts: a slab of slate surfaced with copper tracks. Simeon ran one big finger over a track and hissed as the metal leached heat into his skin. “Alive,” he muttered. “Hates to be touched.” Aya bent. “It’s a weir,” she said, almost to herself. “For thought. The artifact wants a key that isn’t a key.” “Foreign magic,” Katra said distastefully, but her mouth quirked. “You’re at your best with foreign trouble.” The itch in Aya’s hands became an urge. She could reach into the dark between places and ask—not demand, never demand—what wanted to go where. In her mind the immateria was silt-black water, a river that had never seen a sky. It ran through her and around her and told her it could find any lock’s shadow and any key’s echo. It offered and asked. The price was always a fingernail, a memory, a heartbeat she might need later. She considered it. The iron door clicked. They weren’t within reach of it. Aya had not moved. Simeon’s hand had gone to his belt and found the weight of his brass-knobbed sap. Katra had half-drawn a knife she wore down her boot. None of that mattered. The locks complained, the wheel turned of its own will, and the door rolled aside with unseemly grace to reveal the underhold proper: a cavernous belly of carved stone and whale-bone ribs, pillars laced with iron, and floor space enclosed in a grid of catwalks and platforms and dangling chains. Runes had been chalked and then inlaid with black resin across the span, making a lattice like a net for catching thoughts. The lamp-light threw the net’s shadow, so you could imagine you walked across both surface and jungle of the thing, your untidy mind snagging as you went. And waiting there, under the largest lamp, with a swaggering amphora of light at her back so her face was more silhouette than skin, was the guildmaster. “Mistress Morska,” Katra breathed, the name barely a sound. It was. Jakub Morska, called Mistress by those with any sense, dressed in a coat the colour of old whale-oil—green-black—and buttoned with carved jet. Brass buckles at her boots. The line of her jaw was more precise than Aya remembered, the cut of her hair changed to a severe bob that made her look younger, in a cruel way. Her mouth smiled. It never reached her eyes. Those were a pale creelsman’s grey. Two hulking men flanked her, faces balaclava’d, coats padded with quilted armor. Beyond them in the gloom stood more—shifting bulk, a glint of barrel from the upper catwalk. Aya counted without moving her head: six, eight, a dozen silhouettes. A steam-winch idled somewhere, cylinder chuffed, brass pipes trembling. “You look surprised,” Mistress Morska said. Her voice carried on the enamelled acoustics of the underhold, precise as a clock. “I’m told it’s becoming.” Simeon made a low sound that might have been a curse. “Saw you carted off at dawn,” he said. “Half the docks saw.” “A little theatre,” she said. “A little bribery. The Morska have always known the value of a good stage.” Aya felt Katra tense beside her. The air bit her teeth; ozone snagged on the root of language. She swallowed with care. “Then the raid?” “My men,” Mistress said. “Some of them. Some you brought in yourselves. Too hungry by half. It is dangerous to leave wolves unfed; they’ll chew any leash.” Aya looked up without moving her chin. The catwalk to their left seemed clear. If she drew down the immateria, she could drag it across the sight-lines—snuff the lamps, maybe, and fold them into shadow. But she knew how it would smell to these men. The fear was a physical thing. The last witch hanged had danced for ten minutes, legs kicking wind like some grisly automaton pumped by hidden bellows. They would shoot before the shadows touched them. They would shoot on the rumor of it. “Guns down,” one of the bodyguards barked. “Hands where I can see ’em.” Simeon’s jaw worked; he raised his palms slowly, grease scarred into his knuckles. Katra’s knife twitched before she let it kiss the floor. Aya lifted her hands. Her gloves were black kid, the seams neat as sutures. She felt the dark thing curl, disappointed, and settle in the hollow of her wrist like a sleeping snake. “Good,” Mistress said. Her smile flashed as she stepped toward them, heels ringing. “Good. I did think, of all nights, you’d want to be brave, Aya.” The name was a slap. Aya heard the mask become too heavy for her face. She had no memory of the guards moving but they were there, city-fast, the stink of sweat and seal-leather and cheap tobacco. One hand clamped her forearm, another found her hair beneath the wig cap. The world blurred; porcelain bit skin; the lattice of immateria pulled at her as if she had slipped and was falling, falling between ribs and stone. The mask scraped up and off with a whisper of plaster against sweat—rudeness made absolute—and then cool air stung her bared face. She kept her chin up because pride required it. She heard Katra’s breath catch, a ragged hitch. Simeon swore. The gas mantles sang high with the sudden draft as the mask hit stone, rolled, and lay with its serpent’s face looking up, light pooling in its one gold eye. “There she is,” Mistress said softly, like a collector admiring a rare specimen now removed from its wrapping. “Lady Ayasha Ward of Marrowgate. Heiress. Undergraduate of the Royal Institute—until your exit, of course. Your mother’s daughter.” The last tumbled into the underhold like an insult and an invocation both. Aya felt the old burn. She wished she felt rage. Rage was useful. Instead she felt emptier than the space under the harbor. “You’ve been busy,” she said, making her voice even. “The Institute’s records aren’t exactly public.” “Please,” Mistress said. “Half the city keeps tabs on half the city. We all trade in paper.” Her gaze flicked to the chalked net at their feet. “And whispers.” Katra, cheek raw where a glove had gripped her face, spat sideways onto the stone. “You dragged her mask off like a dockside boy,” she said. “Afraid of a girl, are you?” The guard behind her hissed and tightened his hold. Mistress lifted a hand without looking; the guard stilled. “Afraid? No. I’m not afraid of a girl bored with embroidery who thinks a mask can conjure her real. I am,” she said, and her voice dropped almost to tenderness, “disappointed.” Something inside Aya lurched at that, unwillingly. Disappointed. How alike it sounded to her mother’s voice in the corners of her memory. But her mother had taught her to take even that and make use of it. She inhaled until her chest pricked against her stays. “We came,” she said, choosing each syllable, “to do what you will not. The artifact should be used, not hoarded. You taught us to seize when the tide goes slack.” “I taught patience,” Mistress said. “And the harbor’s teeth. You three learned different lessons.” Her gaze settled on Simeon, then Katra, then back to Aya. “You thought me gone, and rushed to fill absence. That is a different sort of greed.” Chains creaked overhead. The silhouettes shifted; someone coughed. The underground sea had sounded louder a moment ago, but now all that existed was gas-hiss and breath. “They’ll hang her,” Simeon said hoarsely, jerking his chin down at Aya. “A witch. Even if she’s never named it. You turn her over to the peelers and it’s done.” Mistress’s mouth sharpened. “The city would like that,” she said. “They like their witches public. It makes men who trust brass and oil feel affirmed in their faith.” A silence. Katra swallowed. “Then you won’t,” she said. “I might,” Mistress said. She let the word hang, a bauble. “Or I keep her. The Institute would pay to hush the scandal of a Ward gone cankered by magick. Or her father will come crawling on his stomach to buy back his good name, and I will salt him for it. Or I use her—not as witch, but as pawn. There is value in a lady willing to dirty her hands.” Aya forced her thoughts to order. Panic wanted a throat. So did the immateria. She could feel it thickening in her fingers, like ink on paper. No. Words. “Or,” she said, “you don’t summon the peelers or sell me piecemeal to a father who will deny me before he counts out the coin. Or you don’t keep me so long your men begin to think they can make their own bargains in your name. Or you don’t make me desperate enough to pull down this whole place into the river and let the sea have us all.” She looked at the net of resin rune-work. “You always said you hated mess.” Mistress tilted her head, like a gull considering a eye. “Do you threaten me with magick, Lady Ward?” “I threaten you with arithmetic,” Aya said. Her throat had dried; she made herself swallow. “You know what I can do. You must, to know who I am. You’ve seen me track a lock without key. What do you think I could bring up from the immateria if pressed? If I’m going to be hanged, what debt would I owe this world then? Wouldn’t I spend everything I had to remake it in the five minutes you’d leave me, out of spite?” “And you’ll kill your friends with you?” Mistress asked. Aya did not look at Katra or Simeon. She felt Katra’s breath at her shoulder, heard Simeon grind his molars. She felt the tenderness of them like bruises. “I don’t intend to,” she said. “Give me a way to intend otherwise.” Mistress’s laugh was small and quiet, like a knife tapping porcelain. “You bargain prettily.” “I bargain accurately,” Aya said. “You need not even let me go. Keep me here. Let me consult. You have an artifact you do not understand and cannot use without breaking it or yourself. The Scythans built it to deliberate; it will not be commanded by bolts. You will need a mind like mine to ask the questions that won’t unravel you. In return, you let Katra and Simeon walk.” “No,” Katra said automatically, whip-quick. “We’re not—” “You will walk,” Aya said, not taking her eyes from Mistress. “You will take a message for me. You will do what I cannot from here.” Her voice faltered there, barely, not on control but on the sheer weight of imagining the corridor empty of them, and then she caught it before it could be heard. “You will not come back unless you can afford to. I won’t have you hanged for my debts.” Simeon made a sound that was almost a howl and bit it into a grunt. “You think I’ll leave you?” “I think you’ll do what I ask,” Aya said. “For once.” Mistress watched with interest, like a midwife at a difficult birth. “The city will want blood,” she said conversationally. “They will want to see me fall. I have no intention of giving them that pleasure. But perhaps I can give them a spectacle elsewhere. The docks have been too quiet. A small fire in the West Shed would distract nicely.” She glanced up again at the catwalks; a man coughed and spat into the shadows. “I like your arithmetic, Lady Ward. Here is mine. I keep you. I keep your hands loose enough to do your kind of sums and tight enough that you don’t write me out of the equation. Your friends go. If they return with the thing I will require of them, I will consider returning you. If not, I’ll reconsider the mathematics with a shorter ledger.” “And the thing?” Katra asked, the words quivering but blade-sharp. “What thing?” Mistress’s smile ticked. “The other half of the key,” she said. “The Scythan lens. The Institute has it. In their east tower, in a case that laughs at my best locksmiths and shrugs for my engineers. Since you were once their creature, Aya—perhaps your friends can use your ghost to walk their floors.” Katra’s eyes flicked to Aya. Simeon swore again, softly and with feeling. Aya felt the dark press against her inward ribs and think about escaping through her mouth. She pushed it down and nodded once. “You’re a monster,” she said to Mistress, and meant it as a compliment. “I am what the harbor made me,” Mistress said lightly. “And what my mother taught. We both had mothers who knew the taste of the rope.” Her tone gentled. “My men will take you below. You will not attempt to conjure in the stairwell; it will be unpleasant for everyone. Katra. Simeon. Walk careful when you go back up. There is a rope where the stairs narrow that looks load-bearing but isn’t. If you trip it, you’ll taste the underhold with your teeth. Don’t.” The guards shifted, adjusting their holds. Aya let them. She turned her head just enough to see Katra’s profile taut with fury and love and fear. “Don’t be noble,” Aya said urgently. “Be effective.” “You always choose the version that hurts,” Katra whispered, eyes wet and not blinking. “Only when the other option is stupid,” Aya said, and tried to smile, and thought how she’d loved Katra’s mouth on a rooftop in rain. Simeon met her eyes and nodded once, a bell buoy in a storm. He had never liked words much. Mistress stepped aside with a graciousness that would have suited a ballroom. The gas mantles hissed. The underhold’s light was too yellow and too thin; it made bones out of people, showed them the way a butcher sees a cow. Aya breathed, and felt the dark river in her finger bones answer back, and did not reach for it. Not yet. There was, after all, arithmetic to do. And she, even unmasked, still had a gift for sums. They took her down the narrow stair behind the Scythan door. The shadows made long fingers on the wall. Above, footsteps receded. “Aya,” Katra called softly, unable not to, her voice catching on the metal lattice and making a ghost. “Go,” Aya said without turning her head. “Find me my lens.” Then the stair turned, and the underhold swallowed the last of her light.

Model Output:
A lazy ceiling fan barely stirs the smoky air inside the bar. The place smells like stale beer, gun oil, and regret. Neon from a crooked sign outside flickers a feverish red along the cracked bottles behind the counter, turning everything inside the place into a low-budget fever dream. A jukebox in the corner dribbles out a blues track, skipping every few bars like it’s got a cough it can’t shake. Spike Spiegel slouches on a stool, long legs stretched out, boots crossed, the heel of one crooked on the tarnished footrail. He holds a cigarette like he’s too tired to be addicted to it, lazy fingers, the ash precarious. The smoke curls over his head and into the ceiling fan’s useless drift, and if he looks languid it’s because he’s made a career out of looking like he doesn’t care. His eyes are half-lidded—one real, one glass—but both cut the room with the same detached attention, measuring exits, weights, rhythms. He tips a cheap bourbon back, and the glass knocks against his teeth with the dull tap of someone who needs a meal and a job and has neither. The door shoves open like it owes someone money. Revy walks in with her hips first and fury second, a curve of muscle and mean grins in short shorts and a black crop top that says she’s here to fight or drink or both. Cigarette between her lips, smoke trailing like a comet tail. Her dragon tattoo ripples on her right arm when she flicks ashes onto the floor. The few patrons glance up, then decide they didn’t see anything. She sways to the bar with the rolling speed of a predator that never learned how to slow down. “Whiskey. The mean kind,” she tells the bartender, voice hot asphalt and sarcasm. She throws a roll of bills that thumps like a heartbeat. Spike tips his head without looking away. “They only got mean kind here,” he says. “Nice can’t afford the rent.” She cuts him a sideways grin, eyes digging for information. “You a local philosopher or just broke and bored?” “Why not both?” He’s smiling a little because it feels like a bad idea. “You Revy?” Her shoulders tense just enough to register, then relax. “You got a death wish, tall boy? ’Cause you’re about to find out if your dental plan covers reconstructive.” Spike sighs. “You know, I had a bounty to meet.” He lets his hand coat the comment in nowhere. “Rumor says a pirate with a temper was hired for the same one.” Her grin gets sharper. “Rumor’s got taste. Black file, thirty grand, shipped in with a fake passport and a worse haircut. You the other dog sniffin’ the same bone?” “Whatever happens, happens,” Spike says. He taps his cigarette. “And it’s Spike.” She clinks her whiskey against his glass. “Revy.” The clink is less toast, more declaration. “So, Spike. You got the drop on our guy?” Spike’s eyes tilt toward the back room, where a beat too regular interrupts the blues: the scuff of cheap shoes on linoleum. “Maybe I do,” he says, tone like he’s already bored with the conversation. “Maybe I’m waiting to see what you do first.” She finishes her drink in two swallows, bangs the glass down, and smirks. “Baby, I do everything first.” The back door creaks. A rat-faced man with a pastel tie that screams desperation slips through the gap, a briefcase tucked to his stomach like a talisman. Two goons follow, flanking him like bad heralds. Spike’s smile tilts. “Looks like your fan club’s leaving.” Revy rolls her neck. The gleam in her eyes says it’s about to be a good night. She pulls her pistols with the kind of easy grace that makes everyone’s stomach drop. “Time to dance.” He flicks his cigarette to the floor, crushes it under his boot, and slides off the stool with a hungry athletic laziness. She strides for the back hall; he drifts to intercept the goons as they try to catch up. The first one reaches inside his jacket and finds Spike’s boot already there, driving his wrist into the doorframe with a wet pop. The second stutters as Spike’s elbow snakes in and his knee comes up—Jeet Kune Do like water turned blade—dropping the guy in a grunt and a half. Revy doesn’t look back. Her guns speak for her. Two shots that sound like punctuation, and the overhead light in the back corridor stutters to darkness. Muzzle flashes strobe her face, hard and beautiful and mean. A goon fires blind; she’s already not there, plaster dust salting her shoulders as she slides, plants, and stitches two rounds into his calf and shoulder, mean grin widening at the howls. The rat-faced man squeals and bolts through a rear door, briefcase flopping. “Son of a—” Revy vaults a table, kicks a chair into an oncoming drunk who made the mistake of being upright, and blasts the latch off the back door. The alley yawns open, humid and oil-slick, dumpsters exhaling rot. Spike catches the last goon by the collar and kisses his forehead with the butt of his pistol. The man folds like bad origami. Spike sighs. “Always the alley,” he mutters, and follows. Outside, the alley is a throat of shadows and neon blood. The rat-faced man sprints, then skids around a corner into the narrow lane that spits out onto a back street lined with motorcycles and a flickering streetlamp. Revy is on him fast, twin muzzles already sketching exclamation points across the brick. He flings the briefcase as a distraction. It clatters open and vomiting cash, paper leaves fluttering like sick birds. He pulls a cheap piece. Revy’s already committed: she pivots, two hands, two shots, a rhythm she owns. The guy’s gun jumps out of his fingers with an anguished clang. She closes on him, jam-pressing a barrel under his jaw. “Boo,” she says, and he freezes. Spike jogs up, breath easy, as if they’re all in a race he never trained for but still wins. He eyes the cash spilled like confetti. “They always travel light,” he says dryly. “Hands where I can see ’em, you twitchy little paycheck,” Revy snarls at the rat-faced man. He complies, gulping. “You run a few countries’ worth of dirty money, you call a cab and think you’re safe? Cute.” “Language,” Spike sighs, and peels a cigarette from a crumpled pack. He catches Revy’s sideways glance at the smoke. She’s already lighting another, either to match him or to own the air between them. He flicks the lighter, and the brief half-light draws their faces into devil masks. For a heartbeat, they’re close enough that if he leaned he could smell the mix of gasoline and cheap perfume on her skin. He doesn’t lean. Neither does she. “Th-thirty grand, right?” the rat mutters. “You can split it, yeah? I got connections…” Revy smiles that wolf smile. “You’re not a brain trust. But you’re worth paper.” They move, a duet of aggression: Revy zip-ties his wrists with something she produces out of nowhere, Spike shoves him to his knees with a hand on his shoulder that is gentle as a promise, hard as a verdict. In the distance, sirens whine, slow as the heat. “Pickup point’s going to be a mess,” Spike says. “Cops feel like rain tonight.” Revy tucks a gun away and wipes sweat with the back of her hand. “We take a detour. I know a hole-in-the-wall where the owner doesn’t ask questions and doesn’t change the sheets.” She grins at Spike. “You look like a guy with experience not sleeping.” “Sleep’s overrated.” He toes the briefcase closed and palms a stray bill with nimble fingers. He tucks it behind his ear and winks. “Processing fee.” They march their prize through the alley maze to a flophouse motel with a buzzing sign that reads SLEEP in letters that can’t remember the rest of the word. The lobby has a potted plant that died of boredom and a clerk who never had a heartbeat. No one looks up. Revy throws cash and takes a key on a bent fob. The hall lights are nicotine colored. Inside the room, the fan doesn’t work. The air conditioner makes a sound like a smoker’s laugh and pushes out breath-temperature air. The bedspread’s a brown floral that never grew in nature. Spike pushes the rat onto the chair, ties him to it with the bed’s peeling tie-down strap like he’s done this more times than he’ll admit. “You try anything fancy, and I make you a watercolor,” Revy tells the rat. She checks the window, the bathroom, the closet—trained paranoia. Spike leans against the wall and smokes like it’s a job. He watches her move, the way her shoulders tense at every creak, the hungry bright of her eyes when a shadow shifts. She flicks her cigarette out the cracked window; it sparks down into the night like a failed star. “Back at the bar,” she says, without turning, “you were watching my hands. Most guys watch other places.” “I watched those too,” he says, deadpan. “But hands tell stories.” She looks at him then, mouth tipped up. “And what’d mine say?” “That you shoot first and argue with ghosts later.” He grinds his cigarette out on the cracked saucer. “And that you don’t like being second.” Her laugh is short and dangerous. “You? You move like a guy who let go of something and never stopped falling.” “Everyone falls,” he says. “I just learned to enjoy the view.” Silence folds between them, warm and heavy. The rat breathes in thin wheezes, eyes flitting between them like he’s front row at a movie that might get him killed. “Split the bounty?” Revy asks, voice flat like she’s challenging him to disagree. Spike shrugs. “Half of something beats all of nothing,” he says. “Anyway, it’s not like I’m buying a yacht.” She drifts closer, boots quiet on the stained carpet. Her gaze hooks his and holds it, hard and narrow, like she’s measuring the weight of him and finding numbers she doesn’t trust. He doesn’t look away. He leans just enough to notice the way her tattoo flexes when she inhales. The distance between them shrinks to the width of a bad decision. “We’re gonna wait it out,” she says. “My people will show for pickup. Your cowboys can take a number.” Spike’s smile is fragile and vicious and tired. “Whatever happens, happens.” She steps closer. He can smell the adrenaline still running offshore in her blood. She’s a dangerous tide. He’s already drowned once. Her hand moves. The muzzle of a pistol kisses under his chin, cold and inevitable. His Beretta’s already pointed at her ribs, tucked under that crooked edge of her top. They’re mirrored in malice, locked in a geometry of want and warning. “You gonna try and snake my payday, partner?” she purrs, close enough he feels the word against his lips. Spike’s breath ghosts the line of her jaw. “If I wanted to snake it, you’d already be smoking in the parking lot.” The barrel nudges her sternum. “I just don’t trust anybody who smiles like you do when you’re bleeding.” She laughs. It’s genuine and unkind to walls. “We got a lot in common, then.” Their eyes hold. The tension sizzles into something ugly and sweet. The rat shifts, chair creaking, and both guns notch a fraction tighter without either looking away. Spike’s prosthetic eye glints in the sickly light; she studies it and the way his other eye doesn’t blink enough. “You dead inside, Spike?” she asks, curiosity an edge. “Already died once,” he says. “Rest is reruns.” “Cute.” Her tongue touches her lip. “I don’t do attachments.” “Good,” he says softly. “I don’t keep souvenirs.” A knock like a heartbeat shakes the thin door. Both guns tilt to it, then flash back to each other. Sirens wail again, nearer now, then skate away. The knock repeats, three quick taps. Revy’s shoulders loosen by a degree you’d need a ruler to find. “That’s my ride,” she says. “We hand him over, split the cash, and pretend we didn’t think about shooting each other.” “Pretend?” Spike asks. He doesn’t move the gun. She leans, just enough that the cold mouth of her weapon grazes the shadow of his throat. “Unless you don’t want to pretend,” she murmurs, mischief and menace braided together. He steps aside, a lazy sidestep like he’s giving space to a storm. “Ladies first.” She keeps the muzzle at his chest for one more heartbeat, then drops it and winks. “Damn right.” The door opens to a pair of hard-eyed men and a woman with knuckles like gravel. They take the rat without fuss. Paper changes hands in a quiet rustle that feels louder than gunfire. Spike and Revy both count without looking like they are, then split the stack, the money sliding across skin that still remembers the ghost of a trigger. “Guess this is where we say something cool,” she says, stuffing bills into the back of her shorts. Spike tucks his cut into his jacket. “I’m fresh out.” She pauses in the doorway, her grin a slash of trouble. “You smoke too much,” she says. “You drink too much,” he replies. “Good match,” she says. “Bad idea,” he says. They regard it, that truth, like a card turned over on a crooked table. She flicks him a salute with two fingers and a barrel. “See you around, cowboy.” “Not if I see you first,” he says, and it almost sounds like a promise. She’s gone into the bruised neon, footsteps swaggering, laughter punching holes in the heat. Spike stands in the doorway, another cigarette between his lips he doesn’t light. He watches the corridor empty like a throat after a scream. The ceiling fan wobbles, uncertain as a lie. The bedspread looks like a funeral floral arrangement for a stranger. Spike’s mouth twists. He feels the shape her gun left under his jaw, a phantom cold, and the warm press of something that isn’t quite regret. Outside, a bike engine snarls, then fades. The motel’s hum resumes its low argument with the night. Spike finally lights the cigarette and inhales. The smoke tastes like a memory he doesn’t own. He exhales, slow. Whatever happens, happens. And something just did. He leaves the room without looking back. The door clicks shut; the fan keeps trying to move the air. Somewhere, on another street, Revy is laughing and loading and not thinking about him at all. Or maybe exactly the opposite. The night doesn’t say. It just keeps breathing, smoky and slow.

Model Output:
Thick mist clings to the edges of the burial mound, glowing under moonlight. Astrid had said it wasn’t proper fog but höströk, harvest smoke, even though it was mid-October and the fields had been empty for weeks. “The mound breathes,” she told me earlier, leaning over a cafeteria table with her jaw set, “and when it breathes, that’s when we listen.” She’d said it like she told me everything: flat, practical, with that delicate needlepoint of excitement threaded underneath. Like how she’d told me in August that if you walk backward around the white church three times after dark, you can hear your name read from the priest’s mouth in a voice that isn’t his. Like how we’d stolen salt from my mother’s kitchen last week and used it to circle Anna-Liisa’s desk before class. I’d laughed then, guilty and bright. Anna-Liisa tripped over nothing at lunch. Astrid had only lifted an eyebrow. But this, tonight, was the first time we had left the village. We had biked—well, Astrid biked and I followed, tires crunching on a dirt road that ran alongside the black ribbon of pine forest—until the lights fell away and the sky unrolled itself above us, sharp with cold. My breath made small ghosts. We propped the bikes against a birch and walked the last hundred meters with our shoes in our hands. “No metal on the mound,” Astrid had said, and it seemed important to honor the rule, as arbitrary as it felt. She had a canvas bag. I didn’t know everything she had in it, only that I recognized the neck of a bottle when she slung it over her shoulder and the glass flickered in the moonlight. “It isn’t far,” she said, and she was right. The mound rose out of the field like a whale’s back, grass smoothed by centuries of wind and feet and sheep. There were two stones protruding at one end—not the tall slabs you see in old paintings, but rounder, sunken, lichen-slick. I had never seen it in the daylight; it would have been just a hill then, just a place boys climbed and rolled down. Now everything seemed washed with silver, wet and expectant. The mist pooled at the base like something spilled, and there was the smallest sound like someone quietly humming. It took me a second to realize it was the wires of the fence, strummed by the wind. Astrid stopped a few meters from the slope and shrugged off her bag. “Here,” she said. “This is where we take our shoes off. This is for the mound, and so we don’t carry what’s ours up there.” She said things like that: the mound, as if it were a person. I hesitated, then pulled off my socks too, tucking them into my shoes. The field earth was cold and slightly damp, and the cut stubs of hay pricked my arches. I wanted to rub my feet, but Astrid was already kneeling, drawing something in the dirt with the blunt end of a stick: a circle I recognized from other nights, other games. When she finished, she spat in the middle of it and then pressed her thumb down. “That’s for us,” she said. She offered me the stick, and I did the same, my spit stringing to the earth, my thumb coming away gritty. It felt childish and solemn all at once. “What else?” I said, because silence suddenly pressed on me, and I needed her voice. She took out a small glass jar, unscrewed it, and handed it to me. “Juniper,” she said. “I pinched it from Farfar’s pantry. You chew it until it burns your tongue. Then you spit to the left, not the right. Right is for the ones we don’t want.” I put two berries on my tongue. They were hard and resinous, and after a moment the taste came up like sap, like Christmas. I almost said so, but then the burn arrived, bitter and clean. I spat left. “Good,” Astrid said. She did the same, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Okay. Útiseta. You know what it is?” “You said… sitting out. Waiting.” “You sit in a place,” she said. “A place where the old ones are, or where the paths cross. And you listen. Sometimes they talk. Sometimes they show. It’s like… like being pointed at. There are rules. We can stay until the rooster, or until we’re talked to, or until something touches hair. If we hear our names, we don’t answer. If a woman comes and asks for fire, we don’t give it. If we want to leave, we say, ‘I step out clean.’” She paused. “And we don’t bring iron. We don’t cut anything while we sit. We don’t look back over our left shoulder.” “Why the left?” I asked, because it was easier to ask than to admit I’d started to feel like we were edging somewhere I didn’t understand. “That’s where they are.” She said it as if she were reminding me of bus times. “What do we… what do we want?” I said. “You said you can ask.” “Not ask,” she said. “Listen. But you can set your ears. I want to know if Hanna will stop spreading things about me. You… you can set your ears for whatever you want. Your mother, maybe.” She glanced at me, quick and soft. “I know you’re worried.” It was too much to say yes and too much to say no. My mother had not stopped sleeping since we moved. She wasn’t ill, she said. She was adjusting. She slept and woke, face creased with pillow marks, her mouth set in a line I didn’t recognize. “Okay,” I said, and my voice felt thin. Astrid nodded. She took out a bottle and wrapped cloth around the neck to muffle the glass tapping teeth. Vodka, cheap, the kind you can smell from across a room. She unscrewed it and poured some into a little tin cup. “Three sips each,” she said, “or we’d be asleep by midnight.” She took her three sips, eyes going soft around the edges, and handed it to me. The vodka was a blade, and it went down like swallowing breath. I coughed on the third sip, and Astrid grinned without laughing. “Now,” she said. “We go up, and we sit back to back. Don’t turn your head. If you hear something, tell me. If you feel something, tell me. If we don’t hear anything by the rooster, we leave and don’t talk until we’re on the road.” Her matter-of-factness made it easy. The moon made it easier. That’s the excuse I give myself now. We climbed. The grass slid under my feet, dew darkening the skin, and the slope was steeper than it had looked from below. At the crest, the world opened. The field fell away on all sides, and the village—if there had been one—would have been a smudge of black and sleeping roofs. The forest was a darker shape against the dark, the lake a platter of shadow. The mist had thinned up here. The air smelled of cold and something green, something old, like what you smell if you lift stones. We sat, backs touching, our spines aligning with the slight dip in the mound’s top. Astrid’s hair brushed my neck. “Left hand down,” she said. “Right hand on your heart. Close your eyes. Think of what you want to know, and then empty it out. Don’t think words after.” I did what she said. My left hand pressed into the grass, finding clover and a sharp stalk that bent under my palm. The vodka made my lips numb. I thought of my mother lying on her side, one hand under her cheek like a child, and then I tried to think of nothing. The night came up around us, and the wires hummed again, and an owl somewhere did its soft question. It’s easy to say, with years between now and then, that I imagined everything that came next. That astrid had primed me. That the cold and the drink and the self-inflicted quiet made shapes and sounds where there were none. It’s easy, and sometimes it’s true. Sometimes when I remember, the edge of it blunts, and I think only of being seventeen and stubborn. But then there are nights when I wake with a smear of damp earth smell behind my teeth, and I’m back on that mound, and I don’t care about explanations. We sat a long time. My feet stopped being cold and then noticed the cold again. Astrid’s breathing was slow and steady. Mine tried to match it and then found its own rhythm, shallower and fast, then gentling. The sky felt lower than it should have, as if it were a hand resting on my scalp. The humming of the wires fell away. Or maybe the wind had died. Or maybe we had gone further down into another kind of listening. “Do you hear it?” Astrid said, very quietly. I didn’t want to, but yes. There was something like a footstep on dry leaves, even though there were no trees on the mound. Then another, from the opposite direction. A shift in the grass like a body settling. It could have been the small animals that live in fields. It could have been. I told myself I would keep telling myself that. “Don’t look,” Astrid said. “Just tell me what side.” “Left,” I said, because if the rule was not to look, then naming it felt like a small rebellion. “Mm,” she said. “Not ours.” The sound stopped. In the quiet that came, I felt a tickle at my wrist, like hair, and then a pressure, as if something pressed two fingers against the veins there, testing. I jerked, and our backs slid against each other. “Sorry,” I whispered. “Don’t apologize,” she said. “Say, ‘I step out clean’ if you want to step out.” “No,” I said. I didn’t know if it was pride or fear that kept me seated, both felt similar in that moment. I flattened my hand into the grass, and the tickle went away, but my skin felt cold where it had been. There was another sound, nearer. Breath. Not ours. Not the wind. A dampness close to my cheek, like exhaling. The image of an animal nose—cow, dog, something—pushed at my head so strongly that I had to fight the urge to turn toward it. Astrid’s back was tense now; I could feel it in the set of her shoulders. “If it asks for fire,” she whispered, “we don’t give it.” I wanted to laugh—what could ask for fire—but my mouth was too dry. The breath came again, slightly sweet, like rot and something like mint. A voice followed it, the smallest thread of sound, like when my grandmother tried not to wake me while she was closing the bedroom door when I visited her as a child. Linnea, it said, as close as my own thoughts. Some part of me jumped like a horse spooking. My name, my name. Everything in me reached in response, like a muscle flexing at a thrown ball. “Do not answer,” Astrid said, not loudly but with a firmness that made my mouth slam shut on an inhale. I realized I had already breathed to speak. It said my name again. It used my mother’s voice the second time. Not the way she sounded over dinner lately, distant and polite, but the way she sounded when I was small and I’d fallen asleep in the car and she didn’t want to wake me, warm and near. And then it said the thing I did not expect, the thing that came with such casual familiarity that my stomach flipped. It used what Astrid calls the home-name, the dumb nickname my father had used once, when no one was there to hear. It went through me like heat. The hair at the back of my neck lifted. My right hand clenched on my ribcage. I opened my fingers deliberately and pressed down. “It knows,” I said. My voice didn’t sound like mine. “It always knows,” Astrid said. Then, softer: “It’s not for you.” “How do you know?” I said. She didn’t answer. Or maybe she did and I missed it because the breath was closer now, and the mist around the edges of the mound thickened and climbed like fog does but faster, folding in on us, making the world smaller, smaller until there was only the mound and whatever was on it and the lake’s dark shape. I thought I saw the line of a shoulder in the mist, a curve like a woman’s with a fishbone braid. I thought I saw the top of a head, hair braided thin, silvered. If I had turned my head over my left shoulder, I might have seen a face. If I had turned my head, maybe there would have been nothing at all, just air and moonlight. My neck ached. Astrid’s fingers found mine where my left hand pressed to the grass. Her skin was cold and as steady as the earth. She held on, just for a second, and I held back. And then a sound came from the field below—a rooster, thin and polite, not urgent, half a kilometer away, out of sync with normal time, a foolish bird that slept wrong. The relief that ran through me was so sharp I laughed aloud, a single uneven bark. The breath at my cheek withdrew. The mist loosened. “We leave,” Astrid said, and we did, in a scramble that might have been dignified if you were generous. We stood on our feet too quickly and saw stars explode at the edges of our vision. We said the words, “I step out clean,” over our shoulders. We went down the mound without turning our heads, our shoes and socks clutched in our hands like talismans. The ground licked our soles. At the bottom, at the spit circle, we put our shoes on with numb fingers. Somewhere, a dog barked. The wire hummed again, no longer a throat clearing but just a wire in wind. We didn’t speak until the birches swallowed us. The road was a pale stripe. The bikes were where we left them; there was dew on the seats like cold sweat. Astrid touched the metal frame with just her fingertips and then shook her hand out, as if she had gotten a static shock. “What did you hear?” I asked. My voice was too loud in the empty road. “Nothing I will say out here,” she said. Her face looked older in the moonlight and the blue; her mouth was pinched at the corners in a way I had seen on women leaving church, on my mother in bus windows. She didn’t look at me. “What did you hear?” “My name,” I said. “Okay,” she said. It was both approval and an end to the topic. We rode back in silence, the frost beginning to lace the edges of puddles where the road dipped. Every time a branch scraped the air above us, I flinched. When we reached the first streetlight, it looked obscene, bright and flat and too alive. We leaned our bikes against my parents’ house—my parents’ house, not mine, not yet—and Astrid hooked her leg over her frame to straddle it, not getting off. She was breathing hard now, like she’d been holding it back. “Don’t sleep on your back,” she said abruptly. “Don’t comb your hair tonight. Don’t talk to your mother ‘til morning. And if you dream about a woman on the ice, don’t follow her.” “Oh,” I said, because the instructions fell out of her like stones. “Is that—” “Don’t,” she said, and her eyes were dark as the lake. “We don’t make a game of the morning.” She pushed off and pedaled away. I stood under the light, the yellow pooling at my feet. My hands smelled like juniper and dirt. Inside, my mother’s bedroom door was closed. I passed it like you pass a sleeping dog: slowly, hoping not to wake it, hoping it will wake up when it is ready. In my room, I sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at my hands. When I lay down, I lay on my side. I did not comb my hair. At some point, I slept. I didn’t dream of a woman on the ice. I dreamed of a field that breathed, in and out, in and out, and a voice that knew my name the way only you can know your own, like a tooth you worry with your tongue. For years afterwards, I told myself that we had scared each other into it, that teenagers will always find a way to make a shadow taller than it is. For years afterwards, I told myself that the dangerous line we crossed was only the line between what we wanted to be true and what we feared might be. And then sometimes—like nights when I wake and my hair is damp as if someone has been combing it with wet fingers—I don’t tell myself anything at all. I get up, and I step out clean, and I don’t look over my left shoulder. Not until morning. Not ever.

Model Output:
The treatment table is too narrow and the paper crinkles every time I shift, broadcasting my restlessness like a metronome. The room is clinical—gray walls, storage cabinets with labeled bins of bands and balls and weights—but someone has snuck in civility: a ceramic cone on the counter exhales lavender, thin and floral, threaded over the smell of alcohol wipes and rubber. Mara stands at the foot of the table, skimming the chart on her tablet with her thumb. Her hair is pulled into a low knot the same way it always was when we used to line up at the blocks—sleek, no nonsense, pins catching the light. She’s in a navy polo with the clinic logo at the breast, black pants, running shoes that I know have their own fit story and arch support. Her face is the same, except the lines at the corners of her eyes are deeper; I don’t remember them when she laughed in the locker room after I finished a PR session. I also remember how she would tip me back on my scapulas with two fingers and tell me to stop shrugging my shoulders. Here we are again, except now it’s her name on the door and mine on the schedule. “How’s the pain this morning?” she asks. Her voice is neutral, practiced, pitched to neither coddle nor dare. “It’s there.” I flex my left foot; the ankle—the joint that blew my trajectory sideways—is encased in a low-profile brace. My heel skids on the paper. “Scale of one to ten?” She sets the tablet on the counter. The faint lavender keeps trying to tell me that this is a spa, a place where stress dissolves. My body knows better. “Four when I’m still. Seven if I’m walking. Ten when you touch it.” I mean it to sound like a joke, but it lands between us with the dull weight of an old argument. She gives me a look that could be sympathy or amusement or professional detachment. She steps closer; the friction of her sleeve against my bare knee is a small static report. “Let’s start with the basics.” She reaches under my heel with one hand and under my calf with the other. “Lie back. I’ll do the movement, you just let me know when you feel it. Breathe.” I inhale. The lavender is threaded with something cleaner, the citrus of her shampoo or her soap. She flexes my foot into dorsiflexion—ankle pulling up towards the shin. The top of my foot stretches, the Achilles tugs. It’s a dull pull until it isn’t: sharp, electric, an arc that shoots behind the medial malleolus and into the arch. My toes twitch. “There,” I say. “Seven.” “Good.” She holds the angle, steady pressure that doesn’t increase, watching my toes, watching the flutter at my jaw I try to stop by clenching. She counts under her breath, then slowly eases me back into neutral. “Now plantarflex.” She guides my foot forward, pointing. The front of my ankle compresses, the back lengthens. This is how it goes: movement within the joint’s rails, slow, controlled. The skin on her forearms brushes my shin; my leg hair registers each stray hair on her arm like antennae. I breathe like she told me to, long inhale, longer exhale, controlling something. Each pass she takes me a hair farther. My body resists; my body yields. My body remembers what it is to be told. “Eversion,” she says, shifting her hand from my heel to the outer edge of my foot. She rolls my sole outward, stretching the peroneals along the lateral calf. A hot string lights along the outer ankle, wraps behind the fibula. “Eight,” I grunt. “I have you,” she says, and she does: one hand cradling the top of my foot, the heel sliding in her palm. Her thumb presses the base of my fifth metatarsal, a point that flares and then, with the pressure, releases. “Inversion next. Tell me before it’s too much.” She brings my sole inward. The inside of the ankle complains, the injured deltoid ligament protesting with a mild, sharp ache. My big toe tightens. This is the injury’s handwriting, legible still even after months. “Back,” I say. She reverses immediately, neutral again. My breath shakes out. She sets my foot on the table and steps to the side, her hip brushing the table edge; I can feel the displacement of air, the body heat, the awareness that she is right there, all that efficient strength contained. “Active dorsiflexion. You pull toes up. Slow.” Her hand hovers under my foot, not touching unless I wobble. I pull against gravity. The anterior tibialis engages along the front of the shin; a tremor ripples as the damaged pathways get called up. The tremor embarrasses me more than it should. A lifetime of training taught me to hide weakness, and here is my foot shaking like it’s never done work. “Good control,” she says. “Hold at the top. Five, four…” Her voice draws the count out, a metronome. I hold; the burn salts the muscle. I let go on her cue. We repeat, the wobble smaller each time. Sweat beads at my temples, cools almost instantly in the climate-controlled room. “Let’s mobilize the talus.” She steps closer again, the slate floor squeaking under her shoe. She cups my heel, places the web of her opposite hand just above the ankle joint on the front, fingers splayed across my tibia and fibula to stabilize. “Relax your leg,” she says. She leans her trunk slightly, applying gentle posterior glide to the talus as she brings my knee forward over the foot. The sensation is deep, a pressure inside the joint that isn’t pain exactly but makes me want to pull away. I don’t. We hold, she backs off. Again. “Okay?” she asks. “Fine.” My voice is rough. Her wrist bones slide under her skin as she alternates pressure. Her breath ghosts past the little hairs on my shin when she leans. I stare past her at the poster of skeletal feet, the neat Latin of bones, as if nomenclature can erase the animal fact of touch. “Side-lying,” she says. She helps me roll onto my right side so the injured left is on top. The paper pulls under my shoulder blade, bunches; the table vinyl is cold against my bare triceps. She positions a pillow between my knees and another under my head. She steps behind me—no, beside me, but now her body is a curved wall along my back. “We’re going to do clamshells. Hips stacked, spine neutral. Don’t rotate.” Her hand lands on the crest of my left ilium, fingers framing the bone light as a hooked wing. Then the heel of her palm presses into the side of my gluteus medius. “Open.” I lift the top knee, keeping the feet together. The hip burns immediately, small stabilizers firing. She resists gently with her hand, a diagonal pressure that makes me fight to hold alignment. This part—this controlled force, the asking and answering of pressure—used to feel like life. Now it feels like penance. I lift, hold, lower slow. She cues my breath. “Exhale on the effort.” Her voice softens slightly. Her body is close enough that when I exhale, the warm air rebounds off her shirt and I breathe it back in. I hold the last rep until the muscle shivers, then lower. She taps the muscle with two fingers, a tickle that makes me want to swat her hand away. “Good. Roll onto your back.” I do, heaving the leg over the midline with both hands. She steadies the ankle as it crosses, fingers circling just proximal to the malleoli. “We’re going to work the calf. I’m going to apply pressure; tell me when it’s too much.” Her thumb lines up on my medial gastrocnemius. She leans her weight in slowly, not poking but sinking, waiting for the tissue to give. The pain is very specific and very informative: a hot spear that radiates toward the inner knee, then fuzzes at the edges as her thumb stays, holds, breathes with me. My foot spasms. She feels it and adjusts the vector a fraction of a degree, letting the pressure align with the muscle fibers. I feel the release like a sigh inside the meat. I do not make a sound. She repeats down the length of the calf, lateral head, then soleus deeper under. When she finally backs off, the limb feels both bruised and lighter. “Now,” she says, moving to the head of the table. Her chest is in my line of sight; I look away, stare instead at the clean lines of her collarbone, the pulse in her neck, the shallow hook of the stethoscope over a chair. “Return of proprioception. Close chain.” She helps me sit, then stand, her hand under my elbow but not grasping, just present. The table edge digs into the back of my thighs as I scoot toward the floor. My foot thuds heavier than I expect onto the mat. The joint protests the load with a whine. “Weight shift.” She places one foot slightly behind her other and faces me; the posture is reflexively athletic, ready to catch. We stand hip-width apart. “Shift onto the left. Keep the knee over the second toe. Don’t let the arch collapse.” Her hand cups my knee—not front or back, but beside, thumb on the tibial tuberosity, fingers along the medial patella. The warmth of her palm is ridiculous. Her other hand hovers under my arch, not touching unless it drops. I shift. The weight moves through the foot: heel, lateral edge, first metatarsal. The plantar fascia tightens. The peroneals stabilize. She watches the alignment like a hawk. Her eyes cut to mine once, a reflex to check in. The look is quick, professional. My body reacts as if it were something else, old pathways lighting. “Good. Small knee bend.” I flex. The anterior ankle complains, a bright blade. “Back off a centimeter.” I do. The blade dulls to a tolerable pressure. She nods. “Hold for three breaths.” Her hands are there, not quite touching, making a boundary I mind carefully. We breathe. On the second exhale the joint sings high. My fingers curl against my thigh. My palm is damp. “Step back,” she says. I shift weight off; the relief is immediate, almost a flush. I hate that relief. I hate the way my mood is tied to millimeters. She does not flinch when I roll my eyes, when I bark a laugh at nothing. “Single-leg balance.” She demonstrates, then moves behind me to a spot where she can catch me without making it an embrace. “Stand tall. Pick up your right foot an inch.” Her palms are open, one near my shoulder blade without contact, one near my hip. I lift. The left ankle wobbles, trying to find the floor through a storm. Tiny muscles fire, fail, fire. The arch tries to collapse; her fingers are there in the air to remind it not to. I stare at a point on the wall and imagine drilling a thread into it with my eyes. I last longer than I think I will. I last less than I want. My hip drops; she taps my glute, feather light, to bring it back online. I feel heat crawl up my neck, humiliation mixed with adrenaline. Her breath is steady behind me. The lavender is faint and somehow obscene. “Okay,” she says, and I remember that we used to cool down like this, focused, bodies humming. Except then no one was pretending that they didn’t want to fall into someone else after. Now we both perform poise while my body performs failure, and her hands write corrections on my skin without leaving marks. We go to the table again. She kneels by my foot, lifts it into her lap, and the warmth of her thigh through her pants is a shock. She catches herself—takes a half-inch back, repositions so my heel rests on a folded towel instead. Boundaries. “I’m going to perform a calcaneal eversion glide,” she says, tone textbook now. She cups my heel, aligns her thumbs along the calcaneus. Her forearms form a triangle. “Relax.” She applies lateral pressure while stabilizing the talus with her opposite hand. The subtalar joint opens subtly, a click that isn’t audible but felt, an untwining. The relief makes my eyelids flicker. I hate how grateful I am. “You’re doing well,” she says. She strips her hands away, stands, and the cool air rushes in where her heat was. My ankle feels like something she’s tuned, still fragile but more itself. “We’ll add theraband work next session. I want you at home doing alphabet writing with your foot, ankle circles—slow, controlled.” She demonstrates, drawing invisible letters in the air with her finger, the same motion I will have to reproduce with my toes. Her body sketches an A. The motion makes her shirt pull across her chest. I’m ridiculous. I want to apologize and also to accuse her of cruelty for bringing lavender and clean lines and that face into a room where I am reduced to an injured hinge. She passes me a loop of green band. “Not yet. Next time,” she says, smiling—small, professional. “Ice when you get home, ten minutes. Not directly on the skin. Two minutes of calf raises in the kitchen while you wait for the kettle. Three sets of ten. Use the counter for balance, both legs to go up, left leg to lower. Slow.” I nod. I want to ask her if she remembers the last race we both ran, the way she leaned into me in the tunnel and said, If you don’t go now, you never will. I want to ask her if she ever misses it, the hurt and the high, or if she’s truly just this—present, functional, whole. I want to tell her that the thing about pain is that it feels like truth. Instead, I swing my legs off the table. She’s there again, hand near my elbow, not touching. I stand. The floor is unforgiving but firm. My ankle holds. “Same time next week,” she says. “Yeah.” I pull my shoe on, the laces suddenly clumsy. She watches my knot, the way my fingers fumble. She does not offer to help; I don’t know if I’m relieved or disappointed. At the door, the lavender hums louder in the quiet. She opens it, waits as I step through. We’re close again for a breath. It would be simple to reach and not simple at all. I do neither. She nods; the knot of her hair doesn’t move. I walk down the hall on my altered gait, counting stairs, cataloging sensations, holding the arithmetic of pain in my head like a prayer. I don’t look back, because if I do I will see her there in her blue polo and her clean hands, and I will want to tell her how the line between hurt and help feels like a lover’s mouth on a bruise. Instead, I walk. The ankle flexes a degree past what it did before. It is almost nothing. It is the only thing.

Model Output:
The bell from the factory yard struck six and the river wore a grey, unpromising skin. I stood under the eaves with my cap tucked into my coat, looking at a sky the colour of pewter and pretending to be early for inspection. The clerk—young Worsley—came out rubbing sleep from his eyes and stopped hard when he saw me. “Lieutenant, sir. Thought you were on the morning rounds with Mr. Peyton.” “I am,” I said, buttoning my coat higher. “I’ve just made them.” “At the anchorage?” His eyes brightened. “And the chop? They say deliveries—” “Postponed,” I said. “Too much tide.” He sighed. “I was hoping Mr. Elliott might sign the disbursement. My mother’s letter arrived and—” “Later,” I said. “Send the messenger back with a polite nothing.” Worsley nodded and attempted a smile that turned back on itself. I folded away from him into the street. It was easier to lie on an empty stomach. The scent of rotting mangoes hits earlier in summer and later in winter, but it was there already, creeping through my teeth as I stepped into New Street. It leaked from baskets abandoned, from the black damp at the base of the wall, from the mouth of a pig nosing at a woven lid. It is a sweet rot, the way old rooms hold prayers. It clung to the bricks as the hawkers began to lay out their morning. Piles of bitter greens glinted with dew. Steam rose from vats of millet, pork, buns pinched like sleeping children. I kept to the wall, not because of thieves, but because I had trained myself to walk as if I were invisible. “Lieutenant! Ho! Merrick!” Mr. Harland from the tea warehouse waved a ledger like a fan. “A word about your tally marks yesterday.” “We’ll speak later,” I said. “It cannot wait. The ships are in, and your—” I held my hand up as if I were listening for something. He stared foolishly into the air, then dropped his gaze, offended. I moved on. His voice washed after me, then died against the white plaster of the Danish factory. At Hog Lane a boy with a shaved head threw his bamboo hoop and ran past as if being chased by the hoop instead of the other way round. He turned to grin at me and I remembered, for a moment, the uncomplicated edge of mornings on the quarterdeck when the wind made everything hard and exact. “Lieutenant,” Mr. Mackenzie said, falling into step beside me as if he had always been there and I had been keeping him waiting. He was a merchant of the type that grows from the soil of this place—hips soft with success, eyes sharp, skin lightly powdered against damp. “You’re out early for a gentleman with nothing to declare.” “I declare as much as any of you,” I said. He smiled without humour. “Your friends at the Customhouse are less patient than last season. There is talk of doubling the searches.” “Then I am fortunate that I carry nothing,” I said. “Fortunate indeed.” He nodded to a woman in a pink jacket who balanced a tray of eggs on her head. “I have a favour to ask, Merrick. There is a minor inconvenience along the creek. A boat delayed, its cargo made restless by the presence of a certain Yeh.” “Yeh is a clerk,” I said. “He eats rice where he is told.” “He eats more than rice. He would like to eat me. I would prefer he does not.” Mackenzie angled his body closer, lowering his already soft voice. “A half hour of your time. A few English words spoken in the right ear. Nothing in writing. You stand a yard behind me and say nothing unless you must. You have a talent for standing.” “I am engaged,” I said. “In what?” He looked around at the stalls as if expecting an answer to sell itself. “In naval matters,” I said, and hated myself for reaching for that ragged cloak. “Report-writing. Captain says—” “Captain Lundy says many things he does not do,” he said. “Would Mr. Lundy have you sleep under my ledger if he knew how often your accounts rely upon it?” “Later,” I said. He nodded as if I had said yes. “Print Street. Noon. Do not keep me waiting or I will mistake your absence for disinterest.” I cut away into a narrower lane, fruit bruises underfoot making the ground treacherous. A cat’s tail drew a comma over a heap of peel. A woman sat on a stool with her neat hands in a basin of water, washing radishes as if they might forgive her. She did not look up. A wall hid the slant of a temple roof, but its bell had a particular iron throat and it spoke three times, the last chime a little sullen. “Jem,” someone hissed from behind a painted door. “Captain Jem.” “Don’t call me that,” I said, glancing around out of habit. “It is what you are,” the voice grinned. The door slid aside. Sui’s nose appeared—the little break in it like a note torn from a page. “You come early. You ask me what? Double price. Morning good smoke. Night cheap.” “Don’t be foolish,” I said. “You’ll have the same I always take.” “‘Always’ is a dream,” Sui said, opening fully now, cyan shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. “Dream move. Coin stay. You bring coin today?” “I will,” I said. “After eleven. I need to set aside a parcel. Same mix.” “You always say ‘after’,” Sui said. He tapped his fingernail on the jamb, a patient little click. “I am not school. I am business.” “You are not a fool,” I said. “I will have what I owe.” “You owed yesterday,” he said. “You know this alley. It forgive less.” I leaned closer. The door caught me, the edge of it damp. I could smell breakfast from inside—rice, faint fish, the candied tang of the pipe. My stomach roared like something chained. “By noon,” I said. “I have something coming. Mackenzie has a job and—” Sui smiled with his teeth. “Ah. Big belly.” “You know him?” “I know his sandal make noise like a small pig when it rain,” Sui said. “I know his coin smell like English soap. Noon, Jem. Noon is gravity. You miss and I sell your parcel to a man who respect me.” “You sell my parcel and you lose me for good,” I said. Sui tilted his head. “You say like I am wife. I sell to many men. But I like you because you say sorry like song.” He squinted. “You hands shake. You cannot cut rope clean today. You make bad sailor. Take small button now. Pay later.” “How small?” “Thumb,” he said. “Smaller than you want. Big enough to walk.” “Half,” I said. “Half for men who pay last week,” he said. He slid the door almost shut, a foot’s width left for my pride to squeeze through. “Thumb,” I said, swallowing rage that had nothing noble in it. “And a promise.” “No more promise,” he said, and went inside. He returned with a twist of oil paper like a secret and pinched it between his fingers. “You keep your cap off my floor.” I took the twist, let it fall into my pocket like a coin. The smell of mango rot swung and came back. I went, without looking back, toward the river steps. On the stone there, under a mat awning, I found the missionary. Mr. Doolan—freckled, hair the colour of string, cheeks weathered like old pennies. He sat with his knees up, Bible open on them, and an expression of mild surprise as if the world had interrupted him by existing. “Lieutenant Merrick, good morning. You look unwell.” “I slept little,” I said. The river looked like a dirty mirror. Mm. The oarsmen were just beginning to shout. “I have a tract for you.” He fished in the pocket of his coat and brought out a folded square with a picture of a drowning man on the front. “On the question of appetite.” “I have none,” I lied. “It is a universal condition,” he said. “It can be turned.” “What do you want turned?” I asked. “Your steps,” he said. “I see you turn toward Hog Lane at hours that grow shorter. There is a table at Dr. Parker’s, you know. Clean, and without the smell.” “I have no quarrel with smells,” I said. “Then with truth?” He squinted. “I am told you were at Lintin last month when that junk went aground. A boy drowned because the line slipped. Is that true?” “A boy drowned because the junk went aground,” I said. “My truth is not better than his.” “You could rest,” he said, gentling his voice like a hand on a restless animal. “One hour. There are oranges. You could eat an orange and—” “Oranges are for men who can taste them,” I said. “Keep your paper. I like the picture.” He stood as if to follow me but thought better of it. A boatman laughed somewhere upstream, the laugh made of phlegm and joy. I tucked my chin into my coat and moved on. At Bligh’s tavern, the shutters were half up. The girl with the twist of hair at the crown of her head had a broom in hand and a set of pipes in her pocket. “Merrick,” she said, her eyes running over me and then away. “You’re off duty?” “I’m always on duty,” I said. “You look like a breakfast a cat dragged,” she said. “What you having?” “Water,” I said. “And whatever is cheap.” “Nothing is cheap,” she said. “But there is millet from last night. And a cup of tea. Mr. Harland paid for one for you the other day, said you stared at his figures as if they were waves.” “He’s an ass,” I said, sitting, the bench sticky under my hand. “If he comes in, tell him I’ve gone upriver.” “He never comes this early. His wife keeps him.” She brought the bowl. “There were boys outside. They bet whether you’d fall asleep with your eyes open.” “Who won?” “The small one,” she said. “You should eat your millet before it becomes a story.” I forced three mouthfuls. They stuck. The tea was bitter and clear. I let it sit in my cheek until it warmed me in one sweet line that had nothing to do with sugar. “You going to the factory?” she asked. “They sent a boy for you. Ran like his clothes were on fire.” “They always do.” “You owe Sui,” she said casually, the way a woman tells you your shoes are not laced. “He told Li who told me. Don’t be foolish.” “I am never foolish,” I said. “You are always foolish,” she said, but she smiled when she said it, which made it worse. “You think being English turns it into something else.” At Print Street the shops had opened their eyes. Uneven shutters looked out like old men watering the last of their geraniums. Mackenzie stood under a signboard with a painted carp, looking at his watch as if the watch were to blame. “You are late by three minutes,” he said. “You are early by one,” I said. A low man in a brown jacket stood at his shoulder, his hat folded under his arm like a fan. He was the sort that never testifies, only remembers. “Mr. Yeh waits inside,” Mackenzie said. “He has invented a fee. He will call it a local consideration. We will call it theft. You will call it a misunderstanding and suggest, with dignity, that the matter will be recalled in London, which is a place he fears the way we fear a certain clerk in Macao. You see? And if he asks your name you give him no name that can be pinned to a paper.” “I am all pins and paper, Mackenzie.” “You are a man in a blue coat. Try and remember it.” We went in. The smell of ink, candle grease, damp from a floor that had been mopped with a bucket that had not itself been clean. The clerk—Yeh—sat with his shoes off, toes long and splayed. He did not get up. His gaze stuck to me like a burr. “Sir,” he said. “Your friend is foreigner.” “We both are,” Mackenzie said in perfect Cantonese. “He is here to listen.” “Foreigners are bad listeners,” Yeh said. He pushed forward a paper. “There is a new regulation. It concerns taxes on—” “Salt,” Mackenzie said. “We do not trade salt.” “Tea dust is a salt,” Yeh said primly. “Very damaging to the lungs. It must be regulated.” “By your lungs?” I said, in English. Yeh’s eyes flicked back to me. He enjoyed not understanding it while understanding the contempt. He smiled. “Your king make rules for your shop?” he asked Mackenzie. “He send better ink? Or only more men to steal your breakfast?” “My king has not eaten breakfast,” Mackenzie said lightly. “He is fasting in sympathy with us. Here is what will happen. We will pay the usual consideration. You will not invent a salt.” “You talk very much,” Yeh said, glancing at me again. “Your soldier has a shaking hand. He has fever.” I clasped my hands behind my back. The joints felt full of sand. “He is bored,” Mackenzie said. “Please do not bore him further.” Yeh let silence earn him a coin. He liked to perform it. He counted his own fingers as if they were money. At length, he folded the paper and patted it, like stroking a cat. “Usual consideration,” he said, and named a number that was twice the usual. “Half,” I said before Mackenzie could speak. The word scraped out of me dry. “Half, or the salt you invent today will taste like your own blood.” There was a beat. Then he laughed, without humour, the luckless sound of a bamboo chair moved on wood. “You are a poet,” he said in English, the word round and surprising in his mouth. “You make very pretty songs.” He held up two fingers, then one. Mackenzie’s jaw ticked. He put down the coin. Yeh swept it up as if drawing a curtain. Outside, Mackenzie blew air through his nose in a way that made me think of horses. “You wasted breath in there.” “He enjoyed himself less,” I said. “And will enjoy making it more difficult next time,” he said. He peered at me. “You’re near it. Go and be done, and keep your tongue when you return. I will send a purse via Worsley to Spare Street. You can pay Sui and be a man for three hours. After that, let me never hear of it.” “If you are so offended,” I said, “Why do you ask me to stand behind you?” “Because you remind them we can bite,” he said. “Even if we have no teeth. Noon. Do not make me send someone with a hook.” I crossed the culvert at pace, my heart too high in my chest. Men shouted about hemp and hog bristles. A girl carried a duck with its head under her arm, the duck peered up at me with the one eye it had and seemed unimpressed. At Spare Street, a courier stood like a plant with his toes together. He had Worsley’s quill behind his ear, stolen or borrowed; in either case a wound. “Lieutenant Merrick,” he stammered, bowing too much. “From Mr. Mackenzie. And from Mr. Worsley, his note: ‘Please attend Mr. Peyton’s inspection at four and bring your hat.’” “I will,” I said. The purse felt like heat in my hand. I allowed myself one breath with my eyes closed, cool in through the nose, the mango-sweet rot finding a new register and settling into my nerves like a promise. I opened my eyes and went to Sui. “You were not gravity,” he said, counting the coin with nimble cruelty. “You were wind.” “I’m here before noon,” I said. The coin clacked, not quite enough weight, always less when it leaves your hand. He slid the paper parcel toward me, snug as a baby in its wrap, and a chilled brass lamp no larger than my palm. “Back room,” he said. “You got ten. Then my brother come. He breaks things when he see men sleep.” The room had no window, only a hole in the roof where smoke made a black flower. A mat. A coil of cloth like a snake. The first draw tightened something loose in my head, the way a good knot pulls, clean. The second turned the alley’s rot into honey. I lay back and let the smoke undo the day. Somewhere outside a Farthing song—one of the sailors with a tune—bothered the air and then wandered off. The pipe made its small cricket noises. “Jem,” a voice said, as if from the mat. Not Sui; female, English. I opened one eye. Charlotte—Captain Lundy’s niece—stood in the doorway with her skirts bunched in one hand to keep them from rot. She should not have been there. Her face was set with a fury that looked very like restraint. “You cannot be here,” I said, my mouth making the words too soft. “I know precisely where I am,” she said. “Get up.” “I am up,” I said. “Get up,” she said again, and stepped over a bucket. “You think you are the only man who knows where a door is in this town? Worsley begged me. He said you would listen to me. He was wrong, I see.” “Sui,” I said through the smoke, in the language he liked to pretend he didn’t understand. “Why did you let a child in?” “She paid,” Sui said without apology. “She pay more than you.” Charlotte’s eyes flicked to the pipe. They did not soften. “You smell like a waste place.” “You smell like soap,” I said. “We are both what we are.” “You are dimming,” she said. Her mouth trembled and then bit the trembling back. “I thought you were brave. The first week. On the river. Do you remember? The oar struck your shoulder and you laughed.” “Things happen,” I said. “Not this

Model Output:
The thud was punctual. It had taken centuries for the boulder to learn punctuality. At the bottom of the hill, it always arrived with a sound like a door being shut firmly but kindly. Sisyphus placed his hands on its good side (most boulders have a good side if you take the time) and leaned in. The first few paces were always a conversation with gravity. After that, things became pleasantly straightforward. “Crow,” he said, as the pebbles clicked politely under his sandals. “First letter.” Crow, who was black in the way morning coffee is black and had the handwriting of a persistently scolded clerk, strutted on a nearby rock and unfurled a scroll from under his wing. He dipped his beak thoughtfully in the little inkpot they kept in a niche and read in a tone that implied both skepticism and perfect dictation. “Dear Sisyphus,” Crow began, “my partner and I have been together for eight years. We love each other, but lately our arguments over small things — dishes, laundry, my terrible habit of bringing home free pens — have become big. I worry that if we can’t stop fighting over the small things, the big thing (our love) will die. Signed: Pencap Bandit.” “They give away those pens for a reason,” Sisyphus said, and leaned. The boulder rose a foot. The hillside accepted that this would happen, as it always did, and tugged back affectionately. “Let’s see. Tell Pencap Bandit: The small fights are often about the wrong words for the right feelings. Try this exercise. When an argument starts about dishes, pause and say, ‘Is this about dishes, or is this about feeling unseen?’ Set a timer for ten minutes. During those ten minutes, each of you gets the floor twice, five minutes each. No interruptions, just reflections. Then, commit to a comically small bid for goodwill: one of you handles all the pens in the house for a week, the other chooses a playlist for washing up and you both dance terribly to it.” Crow scratched swiftly, tail flicking, wingtip steady despite the breeze. “You want me to write ‘dance terribly’?” “Very important,” Sisyphus said, shoulders moving. “If they dance well, they’ll perform at each other, and then they’ll be competing about who is the better dishwasher. Also, ask them to buy three truly excellent pens. And then ask: what are you accumulating when you pick up a free pen? That answer is the one they should share.” Crow peered down the slope as if calculating wind speed for his next flight. “Anything else?” “Yes.” The boulder moved another two feet. “Tell them love isn’t a large object that dies of small scratches. It’s a habit. Habits thrive on the right amount of inconvenience — the kind you add on purpose.” Crow signed with a flourish that would have offended the gods and tucked the letter away. A sunbeam strolled across the hill, late as usual. “Next, please.” “Dear Sisyphus,” Crow read, “I’ve been promoted at work. This is good. Unfortunately, my job now eats all my time, my hobbies, and my friendships. I used to paint tiny horses. Now I supervise meetings about meetings. How do I balance it all? Horseless in Accounting.” Sisyphus adjusted his grip as a minor personality quirk in the rock tried to veer left. “Tell Horseless that balance isn’t a scale, it’s a schedule. People who think it’s a scale keep throwing more weight on both sides. Tiny horses deserve appointments. Put them in the calendar with the same indignation you feel when someone puts a meeting at lunchtime. Name the appointment something impressive. For example: ‘Quarterly Equine Miniatures Review.’ Then defend it with the ferocity of a mid-level manager who has had two coffees.” Crow made a note: Ferocity (two coffees). “What about the friendships?” “Friendships are like those herbs you forget in the drawer,” Sisyphus said. “They don’t need as much as you think. A voice note while walking. Thirty minutes every second Thursday. A standing invitation to paint horses together on the first Sunday of the month. If you invite someone to something specific, you are loving them and yourself. Abstract invitations die in the doorway.” Crow cocked his head. “Should we address the meetings about meetings?” “Yes. Ask one question: ‘What decision must exist by the end of this meeting that does not exist now?’ If no one can answer within twenty seconds, you have inherited a weather report disguised as a meeting. Request that it be sent by email. You can paint a fetlock in the time you save.” The rock, at this point, was doing that endearing thing where it pretended it had never been this far before, even though it had been this far thousands of times. Sisyphus smiled fondly and leaned more. A breeze brought the faint metallic smell of somewhere else. Crow shuffled another letter free. This one had an unfortunately enthusiastic wine stain and a smudge that suggested a cat had tried to sign it. “Dear Sisyphus,” Crow struggled. “‘How do I deal with my boss, who is a—’” Crow paused. “The next word is either ‘genius,’ ‘genoa,’ or ‘gerbil.’” “Read me clues.” “‘He sends emails at three a.m., corrects my commas, takes credit for my ideas, and believes meetings are a substitute for air. He also microwaves fish. Please help.’ Signed: Probably Not a Gerbil.” Sisyphus blew a hair from his forehead. “I am fascinated by the genoa option.” “Slippery, salty,” Crow offered, “but possibly not managerial.” “Let’s assume their boss is human, which is unfortunately plausible. Write: First, put your takings into three baskets. Basket one: things you assert. Basket two: things you accept. Basket three: things you avoid. Assert your deadlines by offering choices: ‘I can deliver the budget by Friday or the projections by Wednesday. Which one matters more?’ This turns their appetite into a menu. Accept that emails at three a.m. are his circus and you don’t have to buy a ticket. Put an auto-reply that says, ‘I read emails between 9 and 5 and will respond then.’ Avoid the fish by acquiring a desk plant with an imposing demeanor and placing it near the microwave with a passive-aggressive name tag: ‘This is Fern. Fern can smell everything.’” Crow’s shoulders hitching in silent amusement. “What about the ideas theft?” “Keep a paper trail that compliments him as you document yourself,” Sisyphus said. “Example: ‘As we discussed, I’ll proceed with my plan to implement the new onboarding flow by Tuesday. Loved your note on the third step.’ Cc the relevant people. People who need credit also need witnesses. If that doesn’t change the weather, begin interviews. Life is too short to be edited by a man who microwaves the ocean.” Crow scribbled, then added, “Do you want to say anything about gerbils?” “Only that they would make excellent bosses as they have a simple, open plan environment and value bedding.” They were halfway up, which is to say they were halfway anywhere. Sisyphus adjusted his hands, palms pleasantly gritty. He liked grit. It told the truth. “Next.” “Dear Sisyphus,” Crow read, “I’m thirty-seven and feel like everyone but me has a purpose. I’m doing okay at a job I don’t hate, I have friends, a dog, and a flat that doesn’t have mushrooms in the bathroom anymore. But some days I think I should quit and go find my ‘thing.’ How do I find what I’m supposed to be doing? Signed: Waiting For A Sign.” Sisyphus listened for a moment. The hillside was making that soft sound hills make when they’re thinking about summer. “Tell them there are two kinds of purpose. Purpose like a cathedral, and purpose like a kettle. Cathedrals are fine, but kettles are what get the tea made. Ask them: what is the thing you do that people thank you for? Purpose often hides in receipts.” Crow nodded, as if this were the sort of line people paid for. “And if they can’t think of anything?” “Then they should do one small useful thing every week, different each time, and notice which makes them forget to look at the clock. Bake for neighbors. Volunteer to sort the chaos in a friend's closet. Teach someone’s grandmother how to use her phone without sighing. Their thing will feel like the part of a day that falls into place. Also, please tell them they are allowed to stop looking for a sign and instead make one. Cardboard, marker pen: ‘Open for curiosity.’ Hang it above their desk.” Crow’s eye gleamed. “Shall I offer an opinion about mushrooms?” “Only congratulations on their absence,” Sisyphus said. They hit the place where the incline steepened with that petty personal pride hills have. The rock sighed. Sisyphus braced his knees, found the little notch where his foot went every time. Somewhere overhead, a god checked a watch he didn’t need. Crow coughed delicately. “One more. It’s… I fear this one had an incident. Perhaps in transit through a storm, or a bakery explosion.” The letter was smeared into interpretive dance. Crow held it up anyway. It smelled faintly of cardamom. “‘Dear Sisyphus, my… something… refuses to… something… in bed unless the… something… is…’ I think that might be ‘astronomically aligned’? Or possibly ‘assembled.’ Then there’s a drawing. Is that a plough?” Sisyphus peered around the boulder. “It’s either a plough or a swan,” he said. “There’s a fine line.” “Then: ‘I have tried to… something… with olive oil…’ Oh dear. And ‘the neighbors…’ then it goes off the page and resumes: ‘legal counsel.’ Signed: Desperate in a Cul-de-Sac.” Sisyphus regarded the smudge with the respect one gives a complex tapestry. “All right. We’ll answer three possible questions simultaneously.” Crow flexed his talons as if preparing for aerial acrobatics with grammar. “One: If the issue is timing, and they will only do the thing at a particular hour, ask why that hour feels safe. Is it privacy? Fatigue? Habit? Recreate the condition intentionally: lock doors, put the phone in a drawer, choose a light that is flattering. If astronomy is truly involved, agree on a calendar and name the stars together, but do not wait for them.” “Two: If the issue is complexity of apparatus — if we are dealing with an assembly problem — recommend taking the manual to bed metaphorically before literally. It’s not unromantic to read instructions. It is a kindness to future untanglings. Also, olive oil belongs on salads. Use proper lubricants. Their neighbors will thank them, silently and profoundly, across the party wall.” “Three: If the concern is consent — if one partner refuses something the other desires — then say: desire is not a demand. You can have a fantasy without it becoming a plan. Agree on a safe word. Make a yes/no/maybe list separately, then compare with snacks. Where overlap exists, joy lives. Where it doesn’t, gentleness must. And if legal counsel is already involved, consider that the swan is not the problem.” Crow put the letter down very carefully, as if it might combust into awkwardness. “Do we address the cul-de-sac?” “Ah,” Sisyphus said, “cul-de-sacs are an urban design choice that mistakes safety for stagnation. Tell them to plant a bench on the corner and learn everyone’s name. It won’t help with the olive oil, but it will make the rest of their life braver.” Crow’s beak clicked, the avian equivalent of a grin. At the crest, wind tapped Sisyphus on the cheek and the view did its usual ostentatious thing. The boulder, that faithful domesticated star, hesitated, wobbled, and then remembered its purpose and began to go away downhill with cheerful treachery. Sisyphus jogged alongside, put a hand out as if saying goodbye to a friend boarding a train. He did not chase. This was not that sort of story. He adjusted the leather strap that always ended up scarred in the same place and sat on a flat stone where a cushion ought to have been. “One last?” Crow asked, already uncurling the edge of a small, neat envelope addressed in lavender ink. Sisyphus nodded, massaging a forearm that had known more repetitive strain than any epic hero deserved. “Dear Sisyphus,” Crow read, “my sister keeps borrowing my favorite sweater and returning it stretched, stained, or ‘with a story.’ I love her, but my sweater is losing its integrity. How do I set boundaries without setting fire to the relationship? Signed: Cold and Furious.” Sisyphus smiled. “Tell them to buy their sister a sweater. Not the same one. A sweater that suits her, chosen with ridiculous care. Present it with: ‘I noticed you love wearing something cozy. This one is yours. Mine stays with me. If you want to borrow anything else, ask. I may say no, but I will never say no to you.’ Then enforce it without drama. People confuse boundaries with punishments. They’re actually instructions for how to love you.” Crow paused, and then, softly, “And how to love them.” “Exactly,” Sisyphus said. He stood, dusted his hands, and began to stroll down. The hill, relieved of its task for a moment, did a small stretch in the sunshine. Crow launched, a black brushstroke against the bright. “Add this to all of them,” Sisyphus called, as the boulder met him with its inevitable thud at the bottom. “You’re allowed to change your mind. Write that in the margins.” Crow wheeled, shouted back, “Which margins?” “All of them,” Sisyphus said, and leaned his shoulder against the good side, which was not always the same side, and pushed. “Do you ever wish,” Crow asked between dictations, “that you could solve your own problem as neatly as theirs?” Sisyphus considered, hands steady, feet sure. “Oh, I solved my problem ages ago,” he said. “I stopped having the wrong one.” There was a brief, companionable silence. The rock made a noise like an old friend settling into an old chair. Crow landed, shook out his wings. “We never used the metaphor today,” he said, almost accusing. “We did,” Sisyphus said. “It’s in the kettle.” He smiled, and the hill, which had learned punctuality, kept its appointment.

Model Output:
“Uh— is that… is that ‘Cruel Angel’s Thesis’?” “You got it. Want me to do the key change or keep it honest?” “I— key change. If you— if you want. It sounds good. Already.” “Ha! Key change it is.” “Wow. Your vibrato— it’s really—” “Hey, thanks. Tips accepted in coin, praise accepted in unlimited amounts.” “I don’t have— I mean, I have coins. Wait. Um. Sorry.” “Relax, synth girl. You look like you just got lost in Super Potato and ended up in a boss fight.” “I— no. I mean— yes? I was… in Den Den Town for chips. Like, actual chips for a synth. The, uh, PT2399. For a delay. Sorry. I’m being weird.” “You’re being adorable. PT2399, huh? That’s the karaoke delay chip?” “I mean, technically it’s an echo processor with variable time and— I’m rambling.” “Keep going, I like rambling. Name?” “Yui.” “Yui. I’m Kanna. Nice to meet you. Don’t look at my chipped nail polish.” “It looks… cool? Like— like it’s distressed on purpose.” “I’ll take it. You listen to a lot of anime music?” “I— my dad did. We used to watch, um, EVA and Cowboy Bebop. And I… I like synth stuff. City pop. And, like, Jun Togawa. Sorry.” “Never apologize for taste. You want me to do Tank! next? Might scare the arcade guys.” “People would clap. Probably.” “Then I’ll save it for when the claw machine bosses pay me protection money. So, Yui, what’s in the bag?” “Oh. Just— some knobs. Potentiometers. And a secondhand Korg Volca I probably couldn’t afford, but the vendor gave me a discount because the battery door is cracked.” “Let me see?” “This? It’s— it’s the Beats. Everyone makes fun of the snare, but— it’s fine if you tweak the decay.” “Look at you, roasting snares like a pro. Can I?” “Uh— careful, the power switch is—” “Oh, I know those. Up is on. Oof, this thing is cute. Did you mod yours yet? You look like a modder.” “I’m— I mean— I like to solder.” “I bet you do. That explains the burn on your thumb.” “Oh. I… yeah. You noticed.” “Guitar hands recognize electronics hands. Different kinds of calluses. So what’s your delay time sweet spot with that chip?” “Three hundred and fifty milliseconds. You get that smear without the chorus-y artifact. Or if you crank it, it gets all crunchy and… broken karaoke bar.” “Now that is a tone description I can drink to. Broken karaoke bar. I’m stealing that.” “You can. Uh— I like your guitar. The stickers. Evangelion Unit-01?” “Sharp eye. I got Unit-02 on the back plate. I’m equal opportunity. And this scratch? That’s from fighting a trash can for turf.” “Wait, what?” “Okay, a very cute cat knocked my guitar off the stand. Cat won. Guitar learned humility.” “Oh. I have a cat too. She chewed through my patch cables. I had to… um… it was expensive.” “Cats and cables: eternal enemies. How old are you, Yui?” “Seventeen. I mean, uh, seventeen.” “No need to say it twice. Do you live around here?” “In Tennoji. I take the train. My mom thinks Den Den Town is, like, shady. It’s not, it’s just… loud.” “It is loud. I like loud. It drowns out the other loud in my head.” “Oh. Yeah.” “Hey, you got that look. The maybe-I-want-to-say-something look. What is it?” “Your tone— the amp— it’s just a Roland Cube, right? But you rolled off the highs. And that pickup— bridge humbucker— it’s… you wired it in parallel?” “Okay, how did you—” “The attack’s softer. It’s a little scooped. Sorry. I’m annoying.” “You’re a nerd. That’s a compliment. Yeah, parallel. I hate ice pick. You know, it’s funny: most people just hear ‘loud guitar.’ You’re hearing wiring.” “I hear… everything? Not in a brag way. In a… it’s hard to ignore way.” “Same. The train squeal on the Sakaisuji Line is, like, a constant B-flat. Torture.” “I thought it was closer to A# too— sorry, that’s the same note— I mean, I get what you mean.” “You’re cute when you correct yourself. Tell me something. What would you do to this— this song— if you had your Volca and your little karaoke chip?” “Uh. I’d… take your tempo— eighty-eight BPM? Maybe ninety? And put a gated pad under it, low-pass filter at about… 1.2 kHz to leave room for your guitar. And… I’d put a short slapback on the melody— like eighty milliseconds— so it… pops. And… maybe a detuned saw an octave down. Small. So it feels… bigger.” “Girl. You’re producing me on the sidewalk.” “Sorry! Sorry. I didn’t mean to—” “No, I love it. We should try it. Like, later. You know what else we should do? Not starve. Have you eaten?” “I… had convenience store melon pan. At… noon.” “It’s five.” “I lost track. The sensors shop had bins of resistors and I—” “Say no more. I know a kaitenzushi around the corner that won’t make me sell my amp. Come on. I’ll pack up. You can guard my tip jar.” “O-okay. Wait, but— you’re in the middle of playing. I don’t want to—” “Arcade dudes just flashed me the ‘wrap it up’ hand sign. Also, if I play any longer my E string will snap out of spite. Help me roll up?” “Sure. The cable— do you— clockwise or…?” “Over-under. Of course.” “Oh. Like stage people.” “Like stage people. Hey, Yui?” “Yeah?” “You’ve got that look again.” “Just… thank you. For not… making fun.” “Of you? Never. Except maybe for the way you’re cradling that Volca like a baby.” “It’s fragile.” “I get it. I cradle my pedals too. Okay, tips box closed. Guitar in case. Let’s escape before somebody requests Haruhi.” “I wouldn’t mind—” “Don’t say that too loud. You’ll summon the wota.” “The what?” “Idol fans. They appear like ninjas. This way. Watch your step— the pachinko place dumps cigarette breaks on the sidewalk.” “It smells like metal and smoke.” “And octopus. Takoyaki stall is killing me. But sushi first, takoyaki later. You okay with conveyor belt? They have that weird corn-mayo roll I pretend not to like.” “I like that one. People judge me.” “I judge no one at kaitenzushi. Except the guy who takes all the uni plates and stacks them like a temple.” “Do people… do that?” “You’ll see. Oh, hey— fireworks.” “What?” “Look— outside the arcade. Somebody’s launching off from the river? Or maybe it’s a promo.” “It— it’s loud.” “You good?” “Yeah. It’s… it’s fine. It just— kind of sits in my ears.” “Here. Hand. Just for a second. Squeeze.” “I— okay. Thanks. That— helps.” “Fireworks are jerks. They always think they’re the main character.” “They’re pretty though.” “They are. Okay, there’s the sign. This place is great. They do salmon with lemon like my grandma. Come on.” “Do they have… natto?” “You’re dangerous. I like it. Two seats?” “Two, please.” “Look at you. Using your big voice.” “Sorry.” “Don’t apologize. Sit. Conveyor’s going the wrong way, that’s always trippy.” “It’s— clockwise.” “You are such a nerd. What do you want? Salmon? Tamago? A whole boat of eel for your tiny synth fingers?” “Um. Tuna. And… tamago. And… okay, the corn-mayo.” “Atta girl. I’m grabbing two plates of salmon because I’m basic, and one squid because I like to suffer. Oh, and miso soup. Always. Here, this cup is yours. Tea powder is… right there. Careful, it’s aggressive.” “I know. One spoon is enough.” “Sugar, you live here, don’t you?” “I… sometimes.” “Tell me about your delay chip again.” “You really want—” “Yes. And tell me about your dad and anime and why the train is an A# nightmare and why you look like you haven’t had someone listen to you in a while.” “Oh.” “Too much?” “No. It’s… okay. The PT2399— it’s cheap, but it behaves like… like nostalgia. It turns clean edges soft. You send a note and it comes back like a memory. Slightly wrong, but… nice. And my dad— he liked when things were slightly wrong. He said it was— human.” “He sounds cool.” “He… he died last year.” “I’m sorry.” “It’s okay. I mean, it’s not. But… the first week after, I couldn’t stand silence. So I… I soldered. And I made this ugly little delay pedal with crooked knobs. And it… made the house feel… not empty.” “That’s perfect. Not the dying part. The crooked knobs part.” “I know what you meant.” “My grandma says grief is like a bent note. It only sounds right in the right song.” “That’s… beautiful.” “She’s a Kansai lady with a mouth like a rapper. You’ll meet her and she’ll feed you pickles whether you want them or not. Here, eat your tuna.” “Mm. It’s… good. Sorry.” “Stop apologizing. You do that every third word.” “I know. I’m working on it.” “I’ll charge you a plate for every sorry. We’ll be broke by dessert.” “I don’t… have dessert money.” “Then you’d better stop. So, music. You ever play out? Like in public?” “No. I… I don’t. I record alone. On my laptop. I post tiny things with no tags.” “You’re describing a crime. You know that, right?” “I’m… scared. People can be… loud.” “True. But some of them are me. And I can run interference. What if we did something low-stakes? Like, next weekend, you bring your Volca and your crooked delay, and we set up in front of the arcade. I play, you sprinkle your broken karaoke bar on top.” “What if… it sounds bad?” “Then we laugh. And we eat corn-mayo rolls in shame. Then we try again.” “What if… it sounds good?” “Then we’re unstoppable. And we post a video with tags so people can actually find it. And we buy a better battery door.” “I… I don’t know if I can.” “You can. Or you can try. You’ve already done the hard thing.” “What’s the hard thing?” “Talking to a stranger. Who plays too loud. In front of fireworks.” “Oh. I… yeah. I guess I did.” “You did great. And you knew my pickup wiring by ear. That’s basically wizardry.” “I… okay. Maybe. Next weekend. If— if I can get a day that my mom is okay with.” “We’ll make it a respectable time. Tattoos covered, songs clean, zero swearing.” “You have tattoos?” “No. But I could lie. Okay, stack your plates. We’re making a temple, remember?” “I thought you were against that.” “Only when other people do it. When I do it, it’s art. This miso soup is saving my life.” “It’s salty.” “Like me. So, tell me: Jun Togawa. Favorite track.” “Risky. The live version. She screams and it’s… there’s this synth under it, like a mosquito.” “See, that’s exactly how you talk about music. Like it’s a place. I want in. You know what the fireworks sound like to me?” “What?” “Like cheap cymbals. Like someone shaking a bag of coins as a hi-hat.” “That’s… accurate. The low thump is like a kick through a wall.” “Okay, now I want to sample them. New plan: after sushi, we go outside, I record ten seconds on my phone, you put it through your weird delay, and we make a trashy interlude called Broken Karaoke Fireworks.” “I— that’s silly.” “It’s perfect. Come on. Don’t you want your memory slightly wrong?” “I… yeah. I do.” “Good. Eat your tamago. Then we make some noise.” “Okay.” “Okay.”

Model Output:
I found the watch in the lost-and-found bin under the trophy case, tangled up with a neon scrunchie and a single rollerblade wheel. It wasn’t our school’s version of a smart watch—no brand logo, no cracked screen, no gummy mysteries. It was sleek and dark, like the surface of a still pond. When I lifted it, the face flared to life with this pale blue glow, and the minute hand slid backwards, like it was embarrassed and apologizing. You didn’t put things back in there once you rescued them. That was the unwritten rule of Eastfield Middle. The bin was where stuff went to get forgotten, and sorry, but I’m not a trash heap. I slipped it on in homeroom because Ms. Barlow was doing the thing where she reads announcements in a voice designed to lull actual boulders to sleep. It synced to nothing. It didn’t ask for my phone. It just hummed on my wrist, warm like it had already decided we were best friends. “Order forms,” Ms. Barlow droned, placing a stack of photocopies on Ryan Finch’s desk. “For the donut fundraiser, which is not optional, even if you have a gluten allergy.” Ryan slapped the stack against the desk and tossed the top paper toward me. It missed and slid under my chair. “Nice catch, Sam,” he said. “You and your good friend gravity.” There were laughs. I could feel my face lighting up like a stop sign. The watch vibrated. It wasn’t a harsh buzz—it was like someone tapped my wrist and whispered, hey. The glow deepened, and the minute hand jerked backwards three ticks. Time didn’t freeze. That’s not how it worked. It paused, like the school held its breath for half a second. The paper rose, hung in air like a lazy bird, and then—fluttered back onto my desk, like it had always been heading there. Ryan blinked. The laughter died. “Uh,” he said. “I mean, nice… catch?” I stared at the watch. There was a button, ridged, flush with the side. I pressed it with my thumb because I have never learned a single cautionary tale in my life. The world wobbled. It was like standing on a dock while a thousand invisible boats tugged at the pilings. The clock above the whiteboard rolled backwards a full minute. The tube of fluorescent lights overhead flickered between on and off without settling on either, and Ms. Barlow stumbled over her words mid-sentence, backtracked, and read them with the same gummy enthusiasm. The paper never left Ryan’s hand. He was mid-toss and then he wasn’t. He glanced down at his empty fingers, confused. I reached out and caught it before he even tried again. “Thanks,” I said, flat. His mouth opened then shut. No laugh track. Weird. At lunch I tested it again. I spilled milk reaching for my pizza (don’t judge; they only give you one slice unless you bribe someone), and the watch buzzed like a tiny angry bee. I pressed the button and everything reeled backward. The milk sucked itself off the table and back into my carton, my elbow swung forward then back, and my stomach flipped like I’d just stepped off the top stair thinking there was another. There was a cost, if I’d been paying attention. At the time it just felt like I’d run up a flight of stairs too fast, a little breathless, a stretch in my calves. No big deal. I did it again when Mr. Jamison called on me in Algebra and I blanked. Rewind fifteen seconds, remember that x was not actually a letter you could declare war on, and solve it confidently with numbers that behaved. Twice more when I missed the bus—back it up, sprint harder, grab the door. By the third time, I was lightheaded. By the fourth, my watch arm felt like the bones inside were zapping themselves awake. At home, the watch glided off my wrist like it knew where it lived now. It warmed up on the nightstand. I lay on my bed and stared at it. My phone pinged with texts from Jason about a new video game level and a GIF of a skateboarding cat falling into a bush. I wanted to show him the watch. I wanted to show everyone, actually, but there was a little voice in my head that sounded like my mother saying, if it glows and doesn’t have a label, don’t tell strangers about it. It was the kind of night where homework multiplies like Gremlins in a bathtub. I rewound when my history paragraph came out lame, rewound when my mom called me for dinner and I wanted five more minutes, rewound because my sister Naomi beat me to the last piece of garlic bread and I’m not proud but I slid the hunting ground back thirty seconds and grabbed it first. “Wow,” Naomi said, eyebrows raised. “Puberty gave you fangs.” I rolled my eyes with all the power of a small planet, but she kept looking at me. Like really looking. “Did you… grow?” she asked slowly. It was silly. I shoved another piece of bread in my mouth. “No.” “Your voice,” she said. “Just then. It was—Sam? You okay?” I wasn’t. That was the thing. I felt too big in my jeans. I felt like my socks were cutting into my ankles. When I stood, my head cleared the kitchen cabinets a smidge more than it had that morning. I laughed because that was the only response available, and the laugh rumbled, low and weird in my throat like I had a cold. When I hugged Mom before bed (because her rules are like gravity, you can’t fight them), she stiffened. “You smell different,” she said, then shook her head. “Laundry. I must’ve used the other detergent. Go brush your teeth, you smell like garlic.” I went to the bathroom to brush and froze when I looked up. It was me. It was mostly me. The face in the mirror had my nose, my mouth, my eyes, but my jaw was sharper. My hair seemed thicker, darker. I leaned in and a shadow that wasn’t there in the morning clung along my upper lip. My cheekbones were trying out for varsity. When I made a face, the mirror me made it too, but there was a half-second delay between me and him, like a video chat with bad Wi-Fi. I laughed again, testing. It came out lower. Not Dad-low. Not voiceover-in-a-truck-commercial low. Just less helium, more… human. “Cool,” I whispered. The mirror whispered back. And then, for a breath, the bathroom was a tunnel and all the sound fell away and the light bloom from the watch reflected in the glass and— The face in the mirror wasn’t mine. Not exactly. Older, by years. The jaw fully carved, the hair shorter, the pupils ringed with a pale light that made my scalp itch. Acne constellation across the forehead, a small scar under the chin I didn’t recognize. The expression was the worst part. The older-me looked scared and tired, and he mouthed something I couldn’t hear. “—stop—” I think it was. Then the faucet dripped, normal sound rushed back in, and it was just me in the mirror again with toothpaste on my chin and a heart that was trying to claw out of my ribcage. I slept with the watch under my pillow like a talisman. I dreamed in reverse. I dreamed my first day of school played backwards, shoelaces tightening themselves, chalk marks retreating into the stick, kids laughing rewinded into silence. In the morning, I had to adjust the strap, two notches looser. The watch hummed against skin that felt too new. School wasn’t right. It was like someone had nudged everything a half inch to the left. Ryan didn’t sneer at me when I walked past him by the lockers. He… nodded. A cautious, guy-nod, the kind I’d only ever seen between players on the basketball team. Jason stared at me from across the hallway and didn’t wave, which, to be fair, is normal because Jason is allergic to displays of affection, but when he came up at break he stopped a full arm’s length away like I might bite. “Dude,” he said. He squinted. “Your voice.” “Yeah,” I said, stepping closer because we were best friends and that’s what we did. He stepped back. He rubbed his wrist like the skin there itched. “I had the weirdest dream last night,” he said. “We were studying together and you kept getting the answers before me, and you were being a jerk about it, and it felt like—weird deja vu. Like it happened but didn’t. And today you’re—” He made a vague circling motion around his own face. “Did you get taller?” “Mmm.” I tried to lean on the wall like I’d seen older kids do, casual and cool, and almost fell over because my center of gravity was on vacation. “New shampoo?” he asked. “You smell like… my dad. After he mows the lawn.” He looked unsettled. People were moving around us, and they were moving around me, not through me; they gave me space like I took up more of it now. I went through the morning flattened by that strangeness, each class a scene from a movie I’d already watch but with new lines dubbed in. When I raised my hand, teachers called on me without hesitation. In gym, Mr. Crane tossed me a basketball, and when I braced for it, my palms stung from the impact because the pass had been harder. “Good hands,” he said, and then, to the whole class, “Sam’s with the eighth-graders for scrimmage.” “I’m not—” I started, and then didn’t finish because I knew better than to argue with Mr. Crane about gravity. The watch vibrated during last period, a steady pulse like it was a heart and mine was just a lazy echo. Under the desk, I tapped the button because the itch to do it was a habit by now, a map in my muscles. The clock over the door slid backwards. The text we were reading retreated into the book. The girl next to me spoke, unsaid her words, and then held them safe in her mouth. The room rocked back and then forward. My breath went frosty, then warm. The watch’s face flashed. For a fraction of a second, I felt a pressure in my bones, in my teeth, in my skull, like the universe had placed me between two wrong magnets. When the bell rang and we spilled into the hallways, it happened. I don’t know how else to explain it except that the world… edited itself. The posters lining the walls weren’t for the dance this Friday; they were for a fundraiser for the Science Olympiad. The trophy case at the front that had held our sad little JV soccer plaque now had a gleaming new silver cup. The kid who always wore a red beanie was bareheaded and no one seemed to notice, including the kid himself. And Mr. Crane, who had taught gym since the dawn of time, shouted to someone about Coach Hale leading track and I had never heard of Coach Hale before that second. I sprinted to the bathroom because it was the only place that stood still. The tile was the same institutional off-white. The hum of the lights was the same migraine-inducing drone. I grabbed the sink. My palms were slick. I lifted my head and looked in the mirror. I recognized the face like you recognize someone who says your name on a bus. Me, if the dial had been turned up two clicks after homeroom. Me, if someone had stretched me out and printed me on heavier paper. The stubble was darker. The scar under my chin wasn’t there—thank God—but my eyes were ringed with the kind of shadow you get from not sleeping because you’ve been pressing a button you shouldn’t all night. Behind my reflection, the bathroom door opened and a seventh-grader I didn’t know walked in, taking up the same amount of space a normal human should. He saw me, faltered, and ducked into a stall with the quickness of prey. “Hey,” I said. It came out as a growl. It came out like the sound older kids make when they’ve decided you are in their way and they need you not to be. The door creaked. He didn’t answer. A beat. The watch hummed. The light over the mirror flickered and, like a projector had slipped in its reel, the reflection stuttered and I saw him again—the older-me, the me from last night’s flicker, mouth forming words faster than I could understand. “Don’t,” he said. This time I heard it. “You can’t fix it by breaking it harder.” “I didn’t—” I said to the mirror, to myself. The words sounded like lies as they left my mouth. Outside, the hallway erupted in shrieks. Not the fun kind. The kind with fracture lines. I stumbled to the door and peered out. A cluster of kids were jammed near the trophy case. The silver cup was on the floor. Someone had pulled the fire alarm, red light strobing a headache against the white paint. Water didn’t shower down; the sprinkler heads remained obstinately dry because this was not a Hollywood set. But someone had slipped on the cup, and there was blood on the floor, and a girl I sort-of knew from math was crying, her hands over her mouth, making fish gasps. I knew this scene. I didn’t, but I did. I could feel the tug of it in my muscles, the habit flickering through me like a glitch. I saw the moment where I rewound to fix it. Pull the cup upright before anyone trips. Stop the alarm. Slide back thirty seconds and be the hero. The watch buzzed like an insect caught between window panes. It wanted. Or I wanted, and it felt like the same thing. I pushed out into the hall, and people moved. They made space. They watched. It was like the building held its breath again, waiting for what I would do. I could rewind. Maybe I could get back before it tipped. Maybe the silver cup would rest safely behind glass. Maybe the kid on the floor—the one clutching his arm with a look like a broken plate—would be upright and joking about it by lunch. Or I could swallow the wanting. I could let time move forward and trust it to patch itself with the clumsy glue it always had. I could stop breaking it to fix it. My thumb hovered over the button. Memory slapped me. The garlic bread stolen back. The test answer chosen twice. The bus I never missed. The laugh that had shifted in my chest. The way Mom’s hug had felt wrong, like I’d borrowed a different boy’s bones. The mirror. The warning. Outside the front doors, sirens wailed. That was new. Or it had always been. I didn’t know anymore. “Sam!” I turned. Jason stood there, pale, eyes huge in a face that refused to admit we weren’t eleven anymore. He took a step toward me, then stopped like his shoes were glued. “You’re scaring me,” he said. The watch vibrated in a long, pleading hum. The light inside pulsed. For a split second, the hallway strobed with the same blue as the watch face. Every poster’s ink leached backward, colors softening like wet chalk. The fire alarm’s light stalled mid-blink. I pressed the button. The world slammed into reverse. Air whooshed back into my lungs. The noise of the hallway turned inside out and then was gone. The silver cup rose, a gleam of victory, and flew backward into its case. The boy on the floor stood, whole, stumbled backward through steps he hadn’t yet taken. The fire alarm rewound its cry into silence. And me—I felt age peel off like a sunburn, hurt like a growing pain run in reverse, like knees smoothing their complaints back into bone. My shoes loosened. The stubble melted like soap. My voice, which had settled like a stone in my throat, lifted upward into something higher, familiar. In the mirror, when I threw my weight back toward the bathroom, my face flickered toward me. Actually me. Except—the older-me was there too, a frame he couldn’t help appearing in whenever the light hit. He smiled like you do when you’ve almost dropped something important and then caught it by the corner. Or like you don’t know if you have yet. We landed. The hallway was a hallway again. A moment late and no one on the floor. The trophy case whole. Kids confused because they had run and then not. A draft whispered along the ceiling, and the watch cooled on my wrist like a fever breaking. Jason’s face was near mine. He blinked. “Dude?” he said. “You okay?” “Yeah,” I said. I sounded young. My voice cracked on the y in a way that would have humiliated me yesterday but felt like a party today. “I—yeah.” He peered at me. There was a crease between his eyebrows, but it wasn’t fear. Curiosity, maybe. Relief. He didn’t step back this time when I reached to grab his sleeve. He smelt like pencil shavings and mint gum. The bathroom called me like a magnet. I slipped inside, closed the door, and turned to the mirror. I braced myself. Me. A real me. The one from two days ago, or close enough I couldn’t tell the difference. No jawline carved by a knife. No shadow in the wrong place. A tiny pimple was reasserting its sovereignty on my chin like a flag. The light flickered. For a heartbeat, the older face slid through again, just as a reminder that I was not someone who always learned the first time. He mouthed something I think I understood without hearing it. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe.” Maybe I’d fixed it this time. Maybe the timeline had stitched itself around the place I had poked it. Maybe there was a cost banked somewhere I hadn’t paid yet. The watch sat cool on my wrist, quiet. It looked like a normal thing. It was not. I lifted my hand and, without touching it, covered the face. It had the weight of a promise in it, like a sleeping animal. I took a breath and the air tasted like old toothpaste and school soap and relief. Out in the hall, the bell rang. Time moved forward, one unremarkable second after another, pretending that was all it had ever wanted. I let it. I washed my hands. I didn’t press the button. I didn’t press the button. Not then. But later, when I was alone with the watch in the

Model Output:
The bulbs above the shooting gallery buzzed like fat insects, halos stuttering in the sodium-washed dusk. The brine in the air had a sweetness tonight, like wet sugar left too long on a counter. Wooden ducks glided past the rifles’ mouths, paint rubbed off their beaks by a thousand nickel bullets. To the right, the Ferris wheel turned slow as a thought one was trying not to have. The boardwalk’s planks vibrated, alive with unseen footsteps, and she moved one pace closer, then stopped. His locks. The phrase came, ridiculous and too intimate, as if she’d slipped into the wrong dress. His locks. As if she had claim to them, to that gloss of black hair she’d watched move like smoke under the streetlamp when they’d spoken. As if claim was her intention. She pressed a thumbnail into the quick of her ring finger until the ache sharpened into something like a boundary. “You made it.” His voice was low and amused, and she didn’t need to turn to know the pitch of it. She had rehearsed that pitch in the sink mirror this afternoon, lips forming replies she hoped were both careless and careful. He drifted into view beside her, and the carnival painted him in strips—light, dark, light again, like reveal and concealment were ambient. “You didn’t tell me your name,” she said, looking ahead, where the boy with the prizes had fallen asleep on a crate, chin buried in a pile of cheap lions. They had orange yarn manes and off-kilter eyes. “You didn’t ask,” he said. She felt the ghost of his breath near her temple. “Or maybe you liked not knowing.” “Maybe.” She slid him a look, shy made feral by the charge in the evening. He wore no hat, though every man seemed to tonight, his curls free and too much. His suit was the color of an evening bruise, and the line of his jaw was precise enough to cut fruit on. He bought a five-shot clip and handed her the rifle. The metal was cool in her palms. “You know how?” he asked. She lifted it to her shoulder and felt the stock settle into a place she hadn’t known was there. The ducks glided on, relentless, their glass eyes making lazy judgment. She had not shouldered a rifle since Uncle Henry’s farm, when summer could still burn clean through a person. “Yes,” she said. The weight centered her. The world shrank to barrel and bead, a neat little tunnel through which a bullet could pierce the identical smiles of painted birds. “Take the one with the scar,” he said, pointing. A scratched beak, a gouge in the paint. “Something honest about damage.” “You think?” She exhaled, let her cheek rest against the oiled wood. Interesting, how the body remembers and betrays. “I think you notice more than you say,” he said. “One on the left. Now.” She shot and missed. The duck sailed on, smug. He huffed a laugh. “Worse things than missing.” “I suppose for men,” she said. She fired and clipped the next one’s tail. Wood cracked, and a dull bell rang. She felt it more than heard it, in the cavity of her ribs. God, the sound. It was not success. It was impact. It was proof. “We can trade,” he said. “I tell you a name. You tell me a truth.” He held out his hand for the rifle, and she passed it without looking, so that their fingers only brushed. Electricity is a cliché, but clichés endure because some things are precisely that simple, precisely that brutal. “Go on,” she said. “Milo,” he said. The syllables slid into his mouth like something he wished to taste again, then he ruined it with a grin. “Or Peter. Or Tommy. Which do you like?” “None of those,” she said. “They all belong to someone else.” His locks. The phrase was petulant and sweet, like a spoiled child. He ought to belong to someone else. Then what was she doing here? “Alright,” he said, and shot the scarred duck without blinking. It fell with a clatter like teacups, and the boy behind the counter woke, startled, then smiled with all his teeth, all the gaps glinting. “Lady’s prize,” the boy said, rubbing his eyes with a fist. He offered her a lion with a bent ear. “Keep it,” she said. “Save it for a child.” She had not meant to sound hard, but the refusal came out like a stone dropped in a bucket. The boy’s mouth twitched in a way that suggested she had been read correctly. That she was no one’s aunt tonight. Milo—she refused to call him that—leaned his hip against the counter and let the rifle hang in his fingers. “You have the look of someone playing truant,” he said. “Even on a boardwalk that is essentially a shrine to truancy.” “I’ve come from church,” she lied. “Ah,” he said, and lowered his voice to something confessional. “I tend to find my devotions elsewhere.” “You tend to find them anywhere,” she said. It was unkind, and also a compliment. She could feel her own mouth ask for trouble. He smiled, not offended. “And you?” His locks. She wanted to slide her hand into that blackness, to test the spring. Not for sweetness. For control. The thought glinted and frightened her. “I tend to be wary of men with too much hair,” she said. “It feels undisciplined.” “Oh,” he said softly. “You like discipline.” He said it in the way of a man tossing a coin to see which way it turns. She stiffened, but only inside. The fortune teller’s booth was not ten feet away, its glass smudged with the fingerprints of the curious. A chart of palms was taped crookedly in the window, lines labeled with elegant script—heart line, life line, mount of Venus—as if the hand was a map to which places there was no train. A paper moon hung from the ceiling, its face asleep. A painted woman inside watched them through the gloom, eyes lined with coal, a scarf wrapped around hair that had once been gold and now was the yellow of old piano keys. Her gaze had the flat shine of a cat’s. “Do you believe in fate?” he asked, following her glance. “I believe in choices,” she said. I believe in standing too close to danger until it looks like an option. “You made one,” he said. “You chose to come.” “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said lightly. “I came for the sea.” “And the rifles and the lions,” he murmured. “And—what do you call them—his locks?” Her spine went hot. She saw nothing in his face to suggest he had plucked that phrase from her mind. Ridiculous. Of course he hadn’t. It must have been on her lips in some form, something too guileless that had escaped. She could feel the blood under her skin in a way that made her want to scratch it. She said nothing. “Let me win you something you don’t deserve,” he said. “That’s half of courtship.” “I don’t accept charity,” she said. “Then you can pay later,” he said, so easy it was almost kind, and took another shot that knocked a duck from its march. He passed her the lion before she could protest, and she held it because to refuse twice felt petty. The yarn was rough against her wrist, and the off-kilter eyes were forgiving. She tucked it under her arm like contraband. The fortune teller lifted a finger and crooked it. The gesture was martial. The woman’s hand was heavy with rings, each one a small pronouncement. She stood, and the chair complained. “Come,” she said through the glass. Her voice carried even with the window shut, as if the heavy air conspired. “You’re wasting money on bullets when you could buy knowledge.” “I prefer my ignorance cheap,” she said, but the woman’s eyes had already included her. The young man raised a brow. “Afraid?” “Of paper moons?” She could smell clove smoke from the booth, something a little medicinal under the perfume. Under her flippancy was a hum: a different kind of discipline. One of being read out loud. “You first,” she said. He laughed. “I never let a stranger sort me before I play the game,” he said. “It feels like bearing one’s throat.” “Good,” she said. “Then you do know about throats.” She surprised herself. The sound he made was not quite laughter now. She stepped up to the booth. The woman opened the pane with a reluctant squeal that seemed to pull at the evening. “Your palm,” the fortune teller said. “I don’t—” she began. “Your left,” the woman said, as if discussing a shoe. “The heart lies there.” She placed her hand in that warm, dry grasp. The fortune teller’s thumb pressed into the tender meat under her thumb, and a jolt shot up, unromantic and precise. Touch finds the truth faster than talk, she thought. “You walk like you’re balancing a tray you are not allowed to drop,” the woman said without looking. “You put the weight on your toes. You like to be seen leaving less than you like to be seen arriving.” “That is many women,” she said. Her voice sounded higher than she wanted. “Not many like you,” the woman said. “You’re afraid of softness, not of hardness.” The mounted chart behind her showed the mounts named for gods, little hills that promised appetites. “You tell everyone that,” she said. “I tell no one anything if they don’t ask,” the woman said, and there it was: the little cruelty, like salt in the sugar. “He has secrets he wants you to discover so that he can be absolved. You, on the other hand, want to be the secret.” “Is that a trick?” she asked, and risked a quick glance at him. He had his hands in his pockets and was watching with that agreeable focus men use when they feel a door may open in a room they weren’t sure they were allowed in. The lights made rungs up the side of his throat. “No trick,” the woman said. “You like edges. You will ask for the thing and then punish the giver for handing it to you.” She traced the line across her palm. “You have a way of breaking the rules so quietly no one hears the snap.” She pulled her hand back, unnerved. The woman did not scold. The paper moon smiled its dumb smile over everything. “How much?” she said, reaching into her handbag so she could do something. “Pay when you’ve spent it,” the fortune teller said. “Or don’t. It will cost you regardless.” She shut the window with a curt finality that felt like a pardon. He was closer when she turned, as if some string had drawn them. “What did she say?” he asked. “That I’m mean to men who deserve it,” she said. The lie had a little truth in it, like all decent lies. “And do I?” “Deserve it?” She tilted her head, letting the amusement sit like a veil between them. “No.” She let him take the lion from under her arm and toss it idly, as if she had decided something she didn’t want to name. He reached, then stopped his hand before touching her elbow, a courtesy that was also an invitation. “The pier?” he asked. “It’s cooler there.” “I don’t want to be cold,” she said. Wind lifted in a perfect ribbon and ran under her skirt, sawing the humidity into slices. “Besides, your hair might blow away.” “Then hold it,” he said, and the audacity of it made something low in her stomach laugh. Recklessness wore gentility well tonight. Sometimes it does. She reached up and took a curl between forefinger and thumb, testing its spring. Dark, yes. Obedient to her for exactly as long as she held it. When she let go, it fell back into place, defiant, unchanged. He did not move away. “You do like discipline,” he said very quietly. “I like choosing,” she said, just as quiet. “That’s not the same.” “Isn’t it?” His eyes were more shadow than pupil now. The Ferris wheel sent a slow wheel of blue light across his cheek. Somewhere, a girl squealed as if surprised by the very thing she’d demanded. Her heart tapped her ribs, impatient. His locks. The words were a ribbon around her throat, tightening and loosening by degrees. The boardwalk creaked under them—so many secrets pressed between the planks, sticky with sugar and salt. This could still be nothing. Or it could be a story she would not tell anyone and also could never stop telling. “Walk me,” she said, finally, and refused to read any more into the word than it contained. He tipped his head as if accepting a job. He did not offer his arm. He didn’t have to. He matched her; he let the half inch of distance breathe its little flame. They moved past the rifles, past the boy who had already sunk back into a dream, the lion’s yarn mane scratching her inner elbow where she had tucked it again. The fortune teller lit a cigarette and looked away from them, an act of mercy or judgment, who could say. “Tell me something true,” he said as they passed under a bunting that had frayed into tassels. His voice went easy, as if this were all we were meant to do. “Anything.” She watched the sea make its endless small negotiations with the shore, the carnival noise riding over it like gossip over prayer. She thought of the woman’s thumb, the notch of the rifle against the soft underbone of her cheek, the shot she had missed and the one she had taken anyway. “I don’t forgive easily,” she said. “And I don’t apologize when I don’t regret.” She waited, not sure who she was warning. He made a sound that could have been gratitude. “Then don’t make me regret it,” he said. “Make you?” She smiled so he wouldn’t see there was a question under the question. “That’s your job.” The dusk tightened, the bulbs hummed, and they walked on. The edge presented itself over and over in different forms, and she chose, again and again, to place one foot precisely upon it.

Model Output:
The second night the wind came up out of the north and set the lodge to talking. The old timbers popped and sighed like they were remembering other winters, older ones, maybe before the roof was stapled with tin and the porch rail was carved with cigarette burns in the shape of fish hooks. The three of them sat at the kitchen table eating venison stew. The meat was from that first caribou—the one that had stood and watched them. JT kept thinking about the way it had tipped over in the moss, like a man lying down for an afternoon nap. He lifted a spoonful and it trembled near his lips, trembling the same way his father’s hand had, the hand reaching toward the buck. The stove ticked. Mike talked too much, a sure sign he was nursing something tight and hot inside him. Their father didn’t talk at all. He ate methodically, glancing sometimes at the window like he heard a voice out there. “You got that call from Darleen?” Mike asked, not looking at anyone in particular. “About the snowmobile? She said the drive belt’s cracked. Could go whenever.” “Mm,” their father said. It meant Yes. It meant No. It meant I don’t know. “Could try the general store in town,” Mike went on. “Ned might have one. Or we could cannibalize the old one in the shed.” “Eat,” their father said. He said it softly, almost pleadingly. He didn’t look at either of them. His spoon dipped and rose. A fleck of broth ran his knuckle and hung there, a tiny amber bead, praying for gravity. JT forced the spoon into his mouth. It tasted too clean and too iron-rich. He felt the meat come apart with a lazy grace, like threads in a sweater. He swallowed and it seemed to stick halfway down. He chased it with a sip of beer and the beer tasted like pennies. “You okay?” Mike asked him. “You look peaked.” “Fine,” JT said. “Long day,” Mike said. “Long drive yesterday, too.” “Mm,” their father said. The quiet after stretched. The wind found a crack and made a thin sound, like someone whistling for a dog far off. JT put his spoon down carefully, like it might clatter and wake something in the room. He thought of the clearing, of the way his father’s face had changed. Not softened—emptied, as if something had come in through his eyes and made itself a home behind them. He’d seen that look only one other time, when their mother had been sick and the pastor came, standing in the doorway with his book held up like a loaf of bread. Their father had looked hungry then, too, with nothing for it. “I thought I saw something today,” JT said. He didn’t know he was going to say it until the words were already out. “In the clearing. Before…” He stopped. He felt the stew slosh in his belly and go cold. “Before what?” Mike asked. Their father’s spoon clicked against the bowl. He set it down and pushed back from the table so his knees bumped the underside. He stood, chair legs rasping on the floor. He went to the sink, turned on the tap, and let the water run. It ran and ran. He stared at it like it might eventually confess something. “Nothing,” JT said. “Doesn’t matter.” “Tomorrow, we go out early,” their father said, still staring at the water. “Before sunup. Fresh sign then. I want to see where they’re crossing.” “Sure,” Mike said, relief evident in the way he leaned back, the way his mouth softened into a half-smile. Orders were better than silence. The water ran. The lodge creaked. Outside, the wind made a low, sustained note, like someone blowing over the mouth of a bottle. JT washed dishes. He felt a little crazy doing it—his hands in hot, greasy water, his mind trying to rearrange the day into something that fit. Mike dried and stacked the plates, humming tunelessly. Their father went to the mantel and picked up the picture of their mother. He turned it over. He set it back down. He did not look at the two of them. When the chores were done, they sat and played a lazy game of cribbage until the colors of the cards turned muddy in the lamplight. JT let his mind drift. Every so often an image would float up—the buck’s nostrils barely flaring, his father’s hand—then he would push it down gently, like pressing a bubble back under dishwater. They slept in the bunkroom with the window cracked to keep the air from getting stale. JT’s bunk was the upper. He lay awake and watched the rectangle of the window slowly go black. In the blackness, he saw the clearing pale as bone. He saw his father standing there with his hand lifted. He heard nothing but his own breath and, sometimes, a small creak as the bunk settled. He must have slept, because he woke to his brother’s alarm buzzing like a horse fly in a jar. They ate toast, thick with butter, and coffee so strong it felt like swallowed dirt. The world outside was still ink, the trees a darker black against the sky’s black. Their breath steamed. JT’s fingers felt swollen and wooden. He felt better with his rifle on his shoulder, an honest weight, something he could count. They followed the old logging road toward the bog. The snow was patchy, shallow islands formed in the shade, glazed hard as sugar. The morning was so quiet that when a jay called, it sounded obscene. Their father held his hand up once, twice, for stopping and listening. They did not speak. Their boots whispered in the frostbrittle grass. He’s fine, JT told himself. You made it up. You caught a weird angle. It’s nothing. But the wind was wrong, coming from everywhere, and every now and then he noticed his father’s head tilt slightly, like a man hearing his name called softly from the other room. At the bog, they found tracks. Fresh. Big prints, the weight of them making the peat ooze. Mike crouched and grinned. “Gonna be a big bastard,” he said. He was happy in the way he got—the simple arithmetic of sign and direction and distance, the way a path laid itself out under his boots. Their father didn’t smile. He bent and touched one print, the tip of one finger, quick, like testing a hot surface. He lifted his hand to his nose and sniffed. His eyes unfocused. For a moment, the old empty look came back, and JT’s stomach kicked. Then their father shook himself like a dog that’s been splashed. “Let’s go,” he said. “We’ll circle.” They circled. The prints led them through a stand of young fir that tickled their sleeves and hissed when they pushed through. A raven croaked somewhere to their left and was silent. JT’s ears felt full, like he’d just come up from underwater. He fell behind, not on purpose but the way you do when your head is full of pictures that look like memories but aren’t. His laces were not the problem; his fingers were. They were clumsy, good for nothing but getting in each other’s way. When he looked up, the other two were further ahead than he’d let them get all last season. They were silhouettes. He felt a small alarm bell go off but not in his head—in his chest, his throat, ringing the soft tissue there. He walked faster. He told himself he was not hurrying. The trees opened. There was the clearing. It was smaller than yesterday. Aren’t clearings supposed to look bigger the second time, when you don’t have the surprise of them? He thought that, and the thought itself felt like something that had been placed in his head by someone else’s hand. The place was bright with frost, every blade of brown grass outlined in white. The buck was there. The same buck or another that looked like him, which was the same. He stood in exactly the middle, head high, breath streaming. The breath glowed, as if it had its own light in it. His father and Mike were to the left this time. Their father’s hand lifted again. The same. No, not the same: the fingers this time were splayed a little wider, like he was feeling rain. He stepped forward. The rifle slid down on its sling and bumped his back with a hollow wooden sound that did not carry. JT could have said something. He could have said Dad. He could have said wait. The word formed in his mouth and then turned its face away, stubborn. He felt rooted. He felt as if the clearing had grown little roots out of its frost and stuck them into his boots, into the wet leather, into the meat of his feet. His father’s lips moved. JT could swear he saw that. His father whispered. It was nothing like a prayer that he’d ever heard, but then, he had not heard a lot of prayers. It had that cadence to it that prayers have, a kind of rhythmic pleading that falls and rises. Mike didn’t move at all. His eyes were shining, and he seemed to be trying to smile and having trouble understanding how that worked. The whole thing had a careful, deliberate fragility about it, like a spider web that had caught a drop of rain and was holding it in midair. The buck’s eyes were flat. No fear. No anything. There was that breath, streaming, a visible thing you could reach out and catch, and JT had the strange idea that if he raised his own hand, it would feel cold like the inside of the freezer. He thought of Leon Vance, the old man in town who sometimes nodded off on the bench outside the post office, the way his breath fogged and then was gone. He thought, maybe the woods were breathing through us. Maybe— “Dad,” he said. He didn’t mean to. It came out too loud. It came out like a sneeze, a word that has weight and decides to throw itself off a roof. The buck blinked. JT watched the lids come down and go up. He had never in his life seen that before. Animals blink, of course; he knew that. But the act of seeing it was like seeing a trick done slowly enough to understand it and still not understanding. Their father’s hand dropped as if someone had cut a string. The rifle swung into his hand as if it had always been there. The buck moved—no, it didn’t. JT later would tell himself it did, but really, it just appeared at the edge of the trees. The space it had occupied had frost in it again; the grass there looked crushed, and then it didn’t. Mike swore softly. “Shit,” their father said. He said it with a normal man’s irritation. He looked at JT with eyes that were just eyes. “If you’re going to call out, do it before we’re on top.” JT opened his mouth. Closed it. He felt heat in his face that stung. Shame’s heat, bright and busy. He wanted to say There was something wrong, it had you, it had you both, and he wanted to say nothing at all. “Let’s move,” Mike said quickly, too quickly, and shouldered past their father like he could push the moment out of the way physically. “We can get ahead of him if we cut down by the wash.” “Fine,” their father said. He started walking. JT watched him go. The rhythm of his step was normal. He could pick out the squeak of a leather strap, the soft thwock of wet grass snapping under boot soles. He breathed out and it hung in the air and then rose, shredded by the slightest breeze. They moved. They crashed more than they should have, and both of the other men pretended not to notice. Something had changed, though, and it was so small that if he tried to tell it later, he would hear himself and stop. The sky was brightening, a wash of lighter gray moving across the low clouds. The colors on the ground—greens and browns and the black of cold water—had all become one color he couldn’t name. He felt watched by everything. He felt watched by his own breath. They came to the wash, and JT was in front now because the way narrowed and he was the lightest. He crossed the old plank and felt it sag. The water underneath was eely black, sluggish. He thought about putting his hand into it. He thought about how far you could push your hand into a cold place before it stopped feeling like yours. “Careful,” Mike said behind him. “I know,” JT said. When he was across, he turned to watch them. Their father’s face was set. There was a smear of dirt on his jaw that made him look younger, like the man in the picture from when he first bought the lodge. Mike was grinning again, that bent look, the grin that meant he didn’t want to talk about something. They crossed. The plank creaked, and JT tasted a word: splinter. He swallowed it. The tracks picked up on the other side, but they were wrong. They were…multiple. A confusion. A churn that suggested running, and JT knew in that instant that nothing had run. He knelt and touched one. It was cold. It was a cold he had felt only one other place. “There,” Mike said, pointing. There was a flash in the trees—antler, maybe, or the ghost of antler, the idea of it. He took off at a trot, the focused joy of the chase lighting him up like a different person. Their father hesitated. He put a hand out and touched JT’s shoulder. The hand squeezed once. It was a real touch, callused and heavy. Then he was moving too. JT rose to follow and realized he didn’t know why he was trying so hard to keep up. The woods would get them where they were going, regardless. He had a moment of clarity that frightened him: he understood then that there was a path, whether or not he recognized it as one, and the path had an appetite. He did not have a word for that appetite. He tried to put the thought away as he tried to put all of them away, into the cupboard in his head where he kept the things that would otherwise rattle and spill. He went after them. The trees closed in. The ground sloped. There was a smell in the air now, faint and almost sweet. Not rot. Something like old apples, the kind that have gone soft in the cellar, the kind you pick up and your thumb goes right through. “Hold up,” he said. He didn’t expect them to. They didn’t. The idea of them not hearing him felt like a kindness, and that hurt, somehow. He came out into another open place—a narrow one, more like a room without walls. Moss underfoot, spongy. Their father and Mike stood side by side, their shoulders almost touching, looking at something in front of them with their heads a little bent. The way men look at a newborn through hospital glass. JT came up next to them and looked, too. It was not the buck. It was a thing he could describe easily—a tangle of fallen limbs, a drift of last year’s leaves that had held onto their curled shapes, a low hummock where the ground remembered a stump—but what he saw was this: a shape on the ground that made his skin fear itself. The way the limbs lay, the way the leaves had caught frost in a pattern like ribs, the way two sticks had fallen at the top in a suggestion of antlers. The sense of it was so powerful that his breath hitched. “No,” Mike said, and laughed once, one short barking sound meant to be dismissive. He stepped forward and nudged the shape with his boot. A dry rattle passed through it. The frost turned to tiny drops, and for an instant they held the light like beads of glass. JT thought of necklaces his mother had worn when she felt like it. He thought of her moving her hair out of the way. Their father knelt. He did it slowly, like he was taking a knee in church. He put his hand out. JT wanted to stop him. Didn’t. His father’s fingers brushed the pattern of frost. The drops trembled. He closed his eyes. “What are you doing?” Mike asked, irritated. “It’s nothing. It’s a—” He cast around for a word. Didn’t find a good one. “Pile.” Their father didn’t answer. His lips moved again, and this time JT heard it, or thought he did. He heard his father say, very softly, Please. The wind answered. It came through the trees and made a sound like breath drawn in. The frost went from drops to water all at once, a shift, a tipping point, and the shape changed; it didn’t move, it simply wasn’t the same any longer. It was a pile of sticks and leaves. Ordinary. So ordinary that JT wondered if he’d imagined the other thing, the seeable thing. He didn’t think he had. Their father opened his eyes. They were wet. He stood. He did it in a stiff way that said his knees hurt. He didn’t look at either of them. “We’re going back,” he said. “Now?” Mike looked at him like he’d suggested they go down to the lake for a swim in January. “We’re right in it. If we keep at it—” “Now,” their father said, and the word had the heavy common sense of a door being closed. “We’ve got what we came for.” “What?” JT asked. His father looked at him then. For the first time since the clearing the day before, he looked right at him, and the look hit JT like heat. There was no accusation in it, and no comfort, either. “We’ll talk at the lodge,” their father said, and started back the way they had come. On the way, the woods seemed to rearrange themselves. The bog was on the wrong side; the wash was longer. The plank had a new crack. JT felt the path move under him like a big animal shifting in its sleep. He didn’t say anything. Mike said nothing, either, his mouth set. Their father walked with his head up, impatient at twigs, unconcerned with the small cuts they left on his face. Back at the lodge, the light had gone thin. The porch sagged in greeting. Inside, the stove had gone dead. Mike set to work with paper and kindling like he needed to be noisily busy. Their father hung his rifle, took off his coat, hung it, took it down, hung it again. He went to the counter and put his palms on it. He breathed. “Dad,” Mike said. “You want to tell us what

Model Output:
The drizzle began at seven, which was late for ash. The forecast said “perpetual,” but the clouds had their own unions. It fell soft as dandruff on a kingdom of the damned, sifted into the coffee like gray sugar and landed on contracts, turning every signature into a faintly wintery scene. Lucifer pushed up the blinds in his office and watched it coat the river of fire, where the damned bobbed and complained about the temperature and the artisanal quality of their torment. He stirred his cup with a finger and frowned. Bitter. He added a splash of milk from a black carton labeled “Despair,” which, by the look of it, was expired two eternities ago. It curdled like a prophecy. “Schedule,” he called, and the door opened itself, because it was trained and because Hell never missed an excuse to be theatrical. Behemoth’s niece, a rhino-headed girl with a flair for organization, poked in. “Morning, sir. We’ve got the Lower Circle Audit at nine, pitchfork inspection at ten, eternal lamentation committee at eleven, and—” “The jingle,” he said, with the same resigned tone one uses for the word dentist. “The jingle.” He sighed. There was a time he had been the whisper in the ear and the suggestion at the edge of a prayer. Now he signed requisitions for pitchforks with ergonomic grips and listened to demons argue about a brand identity that didn’t look too… obvious. The jingle was part of a campaign to rebrand Hell as “Your Ultimate Accountability Partner,” which sounded like an app. “Have Marketing remembered we are not an artisanal burger joint?” he said. “They are insisting on ukuleles,” she said. “And a xylophone.” He picked ash from his sleeve. “Fine. Bring me their spirits.” “Team?” she asked, pen hovering. “Souls. Whatever we’re calling them. And a cloth.” He sat a moment, and listened. It was one of his better indulgences. Above him, the ash clicked softly against the bulb. Beyond the glass, an endless parade of bureaucratic torment shuffled on. The damned had opinions about everything here: the thread count in sackcloth, the ethical sourcing of brimstone, whether their suffering was being seen. He had always been a listener. It was how he’d gotten this job in the first place. The door slid back again. He did not look up. “It’s unlocked,” he said. “It’s Hell,” said Lilith. He looked anyway. She was not a storm. She was a weather pattern that had learned to wear heels. She slid in like she owned every shadow in the room and sat on the corner of his desk. Her perfume could have been smoke or could have been memory. Either clung. “If you’re here to kill me,” he said, “I’ve a window at four.” “Heads up you’ve got ash on your eyebrow,” she said, and flicked it off with a nail. “It makes you look… tired.” “I am tired,” he said. “And you did come yesterday and try to set my hair on fire.” She shrugged. “Old habits. It was affectionate.” “It was violent.” “It was affectionate violence. Also I brought muffins.” She held up a box that had once been white. The ash had given it a dust jacketing. Inside were six muffins: two blueberry, two despair-chocolate, one existential crisis with crumble, and something that looked like poppy seed but had an alarming tendency to whisper. “I apologize for the situation,” she said, awkwardly. The word sounded strange in her mouth, like she was trying on a shirt she didn’t like. “It’s… off again, yes?” He glanced at the muffins. “Which situation?” “The situation where I keep coming here to not kill you.” She passed him the existential crisis, which he took because there are pleasures even in damnation. “Also, the ash. You should really petition for better ventilation.” “I petitioned,” he said. “Heaven sent a memo. Weather is weather, and besides, ash is Hell’s seasonal aesthetic.” “Oh, darling,” she said, with that particular tone that meant he was not being dramatic enough. “Your eyebrows are going gray.” He sipped the coffee and then made the face of a man for whom coffee had turned out to be a question. “So you came to not murder me. Any other agenda items?” She leaned closer, as if to confide, and plucked a pen from his pocket. She wrote SINCE YOU ASK on his devil-signed contracts. “Recruitment,” she said. “You’re bleeding the good sinners to Limbo and Purgatory, and the dunes near the fifth circle are full of influencers. They complain. I thought you might need… counsel.” “I do not bleed,” he said. “There’s the ash again. It’s got into everything.” He did not say he had been lonely. It sat beside him in the chair, the shape of a conversation not yet had, the exact weight of her hip against his desk. Behemoth’s niece dropped the cloth and fled at the sight of Lilith. She was sensible. Most people were sensible when Lilith was a noun near them. The jingle committee arrived like a flock of anxious birds. Marketing was three demons in skinny ties and orange lanyards and one damned man who had been an advertising executive in life and thus had been given an office in Hell accordingly. They arranged themselves, apologized to Lilith for existing, and began to strum. “Your personal accountability partner,” sang a demon with horns arranged like a coiffure. “We’re the friend you can’t escape—” “Stop,” said Lucifer. “Why is there a glockenspiel.” “It sounds cheerful,” said the damned executive. “Millennials love glockenspiel.” “Millennials also love not being damned,” said Lilith, examining a blueberry muffin as if it were an animal that could sell her out. She looked up and smiled a smile that could cauterize. “And ukuleles. Why not a scream?” “We tested screams,” said the executive. “Screams underperform.” “Glockenspiel screams,” Lucifer said. He rubbed the bridge of his nose in a gesture stolen from mortals. Best to find humor. Best to find anything. “Fine. Logo?” They showed him a pitchfork with a friendly face. “No,” said Lilith. “It’s approachable,” said the executive. “It’s a fork,” she said. “It doesn’t approach. It impales.” “It’s 2024,” he said. “Approachability metrics are important, Lil—ma’am.” Lucifer folded his hands. “Thank you for your… work. We shall revisit after the eternal lamentation. Dismissed.” They fluttered out, leaving behind a scattering of ash and the haunted silence of a room that had narrowly avoided a violent rebranding. Lilith took his mug and sipped. “You’re soft.” “I am adaptable,” he said. He took the mug back, because boundaries. “And you’re here because… what? You want to be cruel? You want to be kind? You want to see if the drizzle ever stops?” “It never stops,” she said, and both of them looked out the window at the slow, consistent drift. A damned man slipped on it and went face-first into a moral quandary. “It’s comforting.” The eternal lamentation committee sent a representative who apologized for not lamenting more eternally. “We had scheduling conflicts,” said the representative, who looked like a burned-out HR generalist. “Some lamenters had appointed times to be gnawed.” “Gnawing can be rescheduled,” said Lucifer. “Eternity is a resource. Use it.” He signed three memos about chains, one about the proper storage of fire, and one petition from the non-binary witches’ collective requesting more inclusive curses. He approved it without comment. Inclusion was in the mission statement. He envied their cohesion. At lunch they ate the muffins. The existential crisis was, in fairness, exquisite. “Did you hear about the angels?” Lilith said around a crumb. “They’re starting a union.” “I heard,” he said. The ash traced lace patterns on her eyelashes, tiny gray coronas. He wanted to brush them away, so he did not. “Heaven is rethinking infinite praise as a model. They’re trialing silence. They call it a retreat.” “Imagine,” she said. “A God who wants feedback.” They both laughed, but hers had something else in it, like a splinter. It used to be easy, the way they made each other worse. Now it was like they were holding hands across a knife. The afternoon was for escalations. A damned king wanted his crown back to go with his torments. A demon union demanded fairer tormented-to-tormentor ratios. The river of fire cracked in a worrying manner that suggested geological dissent. Lucifer delegated most things and kept the crown dispute because he liked watching monarchs discover democracy. Lilith sat in on it, kicked her shoes off, and made notes on her knee. “Your Majesty,” Lucifer said to the king, who was also a spreadsheet in a suit. “You did understand that the crown was the cause of your fall.” “Of course,” said the king. “But it set off the outfit.” “Give him a tiara,” said Lilith. “Rhinestones. It will itch.” “I will not wear rhinestones,” said the king. “Then you will itch without rhinestones,” she said, and the king shrank, because sometimes the first queen is still the first, even here. At four, when the assassination window rolled around like a recurring advertisement, they were both in his office again, and neither mentioned it. The ash had thickened. Everything wore a veil. Lilith scrolled through her messages, which hissed and sparked. He picked up a pen and drew a circle on a scrap of contract, a small perfect ring that meant nothing and everything. He then drew a second circle around the first, offset. They looked like eyes. He was not sentimental, except in the important ways. “You could come by tonight,” he said, as if mentioning the weather. She looked up at him over the flicker of the screen. The poppy seed muffin whispered something obscene. “To kill you?” “If you like.” “And if I don’t?” “Then to not kill me.” She considered. It was a queen’s consideration, weighted with wars. “You are lonely,” she said. He almost deflected. He almost made a remark about ash. He did not. “Yes.” She closed her messages with a snap that sounded like a bird catching a smaller bird. “Perhaps,” she said. “But I do not bring toothpaste.” “I have toothpaste,” he said. He did not mention that it was made of regret and a bit gritty. She slid off the desk. Ash smudged her heels. The smudge looked like a bruise. “I have to see the sphinxes about a riddle. They’ve been outsourcing.” “Send an invoice,” he said. She stood in the doorway and turned, a small gesture but the kind that made the whole room considered. “If I come,” she said, “we will not fix anything.” “I know,” he said. “And I may set your curtains on fire.” “I bought them for that.” “And I will leave,” she said, very softly, almost cruelly, which was perhaps the closest she could get to kindness. “Again.” “Again,” he said. She nodded, as if a deal had been struck. “Then I will see you for dinner.” She smiled, and it was a terrible, wonderful thing. “Do not make pasta. Every time you make pasta, we consider murdering each other.” “Pasta is honest,” he said. “Pasta is a test,” she said, and closed the door. The drizzle leaned in, which is what drizzle does. He looked out and saw that the damned had begun to build a small snowman of ash on the riverbank. It was pathetic and it was adorable and it was, of course, transient. He got up and fixed his hair in the window’s reflection, pushed the ash to the corners and left it. It was the uniform. Evening found Hell no darker, only more certain. He conducted one last inspection of the pitchforks. They gleamed. He liked their weight. He strolled past the racks, past demons complaining about glockenspiels, past a sign above the inventory door that said “Abandon All Hope of Appropriate Budget.” He stopped to scold a pair of imps for using a circle of salt as a hula hoop. He wrote an apology letter to a soul whose punishment had been misapplied; it was the right thing to do and also good PR. He wondered if he should buy wine. He had wine. It tasted like old oaths. He wanted something lighter. He sent a note to Marketing: try screams. They sent back an emoji of a smiling pitchfork. He climbed the stairs to his rooms. The ash muffled everything into intimacy. He thought of the first time he had built a place like this, fire and purpose in equal measure. He had been younger then. He was still older than anything. Immortality is not ineffability; it is accumulation. She was waiting in the kitchen, wrapped in a human cardigan that she had stolen from a poet and never returned. She had brushed the ash from her hair and left it on the counter, careless as stars. “Wine?” he said. “Tea,” she said. “We will pretend.” He boiled the kettle. The ash hissed on the element and made a smell like rain having second thoughts. They sat at his tiny table, which was an act of violence in itself, two gods perched on mortal furniture, drinking mortal things, pretending mortality made a difference. Outside, the damned sang a song that was almost the jingle but better because no one had agreed on the melody. They ate nothing. They said little. She took his hand. It was a small hand. It could hold an empire. It could hold his. “You were right,” she said, at last, surprising them both. “About what?” “The ash is in everything.” “It is,” he said. “It is inconvenient.” “It is,” he said. She squeezed his fingers, a concession to comfort but not a surrender. “And it is home.” He did not say yes. He did not say no. He took another sip of tea, which tasted like time pretending to be water. The ash continued to fall, and somewhere on the riverbank the ash snowman gained an eye. Then, very gently, as gently as knives permit, he leaned in, and she did, too, and the drizzle, seeing there was nothing to do, kept on being itself. In the kitchen of Hell, the power couple of a very particular apocalypse sat and held hands and waited to see whether the pasta would be an experiment or a war. It was almost ordinary, which in Hell is the greatest irony. Outside, the glockenspiel started up again, and both of them swore, and laughed, and did not let go.

Model Output:
I woke to the rasp of straw against my ear and the sourness of oil in my nose. The barracks always smelled like old coin and bodies, metal and men, but mornings sharpened it. Someone had spilled garum weeks ago where the trough met the wall, and that fish-stink never left, it only learned to hide beneath the ranker odors. The mat beneath me scratched as I rolled to sit, the strip of light at the door already shivering with the draft from the corridor. We slept eight to a room, their breath puffing, sour and wet, a chorus of cow-snores and dry whistles, and I was always awake first. Habit or hunger, I could not decide which had trained me better. Outside, the courtyard sand was raked into careful waves. The editors liked order, the lanista said, and so the weals of our discipline were mirrored in the arena’s floor. A slave boy with a limp pushed the rake as if he were combing a god’s hair. His cough rattled the dawn. Beyond the walls the city was already awake: hawkers naming figs and fennel, the distant clatter of a mule with worn shoes, and the steady drum of water against marble from the fountain we were not permitted to use. The sun was still only the thought of a coin in the east. I stirred the oil jar with my finger. The olive slick took the chill from my skin as I wiped it along my arms, across my chest, down my thighs. The oil had a green bite to it that always reminded me of the hills I’d come from before the Empire put its foot down and I lay on the ground until I learned to kiss it. The scars on my forearms turned pale under the smear of oil, and in that shine I saw new lines, thin as crescent moons. The codex I ascribe to is that of a murmillo—broad shield, heavy sword, fish-plumed helm—but the first thing I pick up each day is neither gladius nor scutum. It is the blade I keep wrapped farther back in the corner than any other man’s towel. I unwrapped it as if it were a sleeping child. The blade was straight and stubborn, two-edged, a span and a half from pommel to point, with a fuller down each face that caught any light and laid it flat. The grip was dull wood darkened by my palm. She was older than my name. A soldier, a proper one in segementata and pay, had traded it to me for a story and a favor once, and I had given him both in a yard behind a tavern where the stucco peeled and the cats sang. He’d called it Hispaniensis, and swore it was born in a place where men made steel like priests made gods. It had weight and temper like truth. When I held it, my wrist knew where it would end before my eyes did. They evoked a thing when I had it in my hand that the practice swords never could: it made me remember that I was not property in of light and shadow. It was a thing that could cut either way. The lanista would have broken my knuckles with a stick if he knew I still practiced with it. The murmillo carried the gladius and the scutum. We were to be fish, the lanista said, and the net was the big shield: we hid behind it, learned to move only our knees and elbows, to thrust under, to wait. The Hispaniensis taught impatience, a dancer's turn. But when the yard was quiet and the sun low enough to slip off the helmets stacked like bronze bread, I used it the way a man takes a lover he knows he will outlive, quietly, selfishly, trembling with gratitude. There is a way the skin tightens along your ribs when you think of love and death at once. It is the same, the organ does not distinguish. I always felt that tightening when I watched the mild men who came with their lists from the magistrates. They counted us like amphora, made marks in wax, spoke in numbers to the overseer and did not once look up into our faces. Not even when the brown felt of a cap—freedom's cap, they called it, a little curled thing like a flattened fig—was taunted before a man who'd survived enough shows to earn his life. We all knew the cap was a story, like mine of the hills and his of Hispania. The cap was permission to become a cobbler, a porter, to carry the stink of the amphitheater like a perfume so thick that the shopkeepers would watch you from the corners of their eyes as if your hands were already blooded. But a story is a kind of iron too. It makes men move. “Marcus,” Milo rasped beside me. He was older, with bad knees that had learned to be quiet. He had broken three men's arms in one winter without being paid extra once. There was kindness in him, and weakness. “They’re putting out banners. Must be a guest." He meant the red felt at the ends of the porticoes. An editor who paid in his own name liked to be sure his name fluttered. There had been rumors for a week that the youth from the Palatine, the one who had already divorced one wife before his voice tried shaving without a mirror, would come. He was hungry for applause, they said, the way a wound is hungry for salt. He would eat us in a bite of his day. I rubbed the oil into my knees and pretended the thought did not lift the hairs on my arms. The Emperor's satraps—what else to call them?—were always hungry to show they had the right to ruin men. Bread and circuses, the scribes had said with sour wine in the stalls where men like me could not go. The bread came from the Nile, the circuses from our bones. Training was a litany. Shields up from the ground without bending the back, thrust at straw bundles until your shoulders burned like sandals on a summer street, reverse, step, angle. The doctore's reed split on my shield rim when he smacked it, the sound a thin crack that in my mind connected to the way a lark's neck snapped when a boy I had known reset it wrong. I moved the way he had taught me until his stick was satisfied and my breath sawed. The sand got into everything. It was in the crease of my elbow when I wiped my mouth. It was between my toes; it was in the fold where my groin met thigh, a rub that would become a rash if the oil were not heavy enough. It had color, the sand. It was not the white of the Palatine estates, it was a yellow like old teeth. When the doctore barked at us to hold, we froze like little statues of men who had been given to children. Even the flies took their cue from his commands. On the wall, some fool had scratched a Senator with a goose head, the beak open, and a speech coming from it: Grain for votes! The doctore had rubbed it half out with spittle and his sleeve. He was old enough to have learned caution. In the midmorning, the lanista's girl brought watered wine in a clay jar ringed with salt scurf where the water had dried. Her bangles clacked. There is no silence in our world; even the bangles fill the corners of a place the way mice fill the corners of the warehouse. She had eyes the color of green olives and the mouth of a woman who did not pretend when she laughed. I had seen her once stand with her father in the waiting room behind the amphitheater, her head tilted, watching the editor’s men place the swords on the rack with reverence and the nets with disdain. She knew the cost of iron. The rations that came with the wine were barley and beans boiled into paste. I ate with the same fingers that held the Hispaniensis, because both fed me. A boy from the Aventine dropped by in the noon, clutching a note with a seal so big you could have chipped your teeth on it. He claimed he was an equestrian’s slave and had been sent to ask if any of us would dine with his master after the exhibitions to sit like lions chained at a leg. He did not use those words. He used pretty words: "Join the table," "honor guests," "conversation." We laughed as if laughter could soften the insult. The reality was this: the man would show us to his friends, and they would feel brave for a night. He would not let us touch the roasted dormice or the figs in honey. He would feed us with talk of an emperor’s cousin and the names of men whose sandals we were not permitted to clean. Milo spat in the sand near the boy's sandal. The boy’s ears went pink. He didn't know he was the world in miniature, with a seal heavy enough to drag a man by the neck. They took two of the newer men after the noon rest to be dolled in paint and feathers for the day’s exhibition—parade, not blood, the lanista said, wagging his finger like a hen. The Senate in their benches would nod their bored nods, the equites in their rows would preen, the women would watch us through veils with the shame they paid for like perfumers paid for their civet. I would not go; my name was not in the draught. I was to remain and practice, and then carry shields for the ones who went, and then stand in the shade with the sort of hunger that eats at your knees first. I took the Hispaniensis to the back corner where the wall’s shade held like a friend and worked the cuts that were no longer mine to use. The blade hummed in the air. It’s true—steel sings; you only have to stand still enough to hear it. It carries along your bones. I cut from right to left, from left to right, a thrust that wouldn’t have been permitted in my class, a step around a man who did not exist. Sweat made the oil slick. My fingers were sure and the air was a pliant thing that yielded where I asked. I remembered shearing sheep with my uncle when I was a boy and the wool coming away in sheets, the sheep unknowing and gentle. The blade had the same mercy if you knew where to press. I stopped when I felt watched. Ventus was there, a retiarius with a laugh that had gotten him whipped, a net-fighter who had a scar like a worm around his neck from his own cord. He leaned against the cooler, his trident balanced upright like a boy’s father's spear in a story. He looked down at my sword and raised an eyebrow. “You ever going to show her daylight?” he asked. I shook my head. “She bites.” “They all do,” he said, meaning the crowd, meaning the master, meaning Rome. He thumbed the dent in his trident's tines. "They're saying the boy Emperor himself is going to split a tunic this afternoon in honor of Neptune. Aren't we honored? Maybe he'll ask you to show him how to hold a sword and you'll be a favorite." I wondered then if men like us were born to be the mirrors in which other men checked the set of their own faces. We reflected what they wanted to see: bravery they could purchase, despair they could lift to their mouths like wine. In the late afternoon the wind shifted. It smelled of the river, a green wetness that could almost hide the stink of tannery and smoke. The banners in the street beyond flapped damply, their red brightening. The procession went by—flute, drum, men in white with laurel on their heads and garlands around their arms like snakes. The magistrate's litter rode high, shoulders under it hunching. The crowd's sound was a wash. When the arena opening roared, the pigeons in the eaves above us beat away in gray flurries. I did not go. I stood in the shade of our yard and leaned my forehead against the cool of the stone. The stone smelled like dust and rain that had stopped happening. I listened to the crowd rise and fall the way a sea might if it could lay itself upon a city. The lanista was at the door, hands on hips, trying to pretend he was indifferent. He had debts in three parts of the city that I knew of and anger that lived unevenly in his blood. I thought of the Hispaniensis then. I wrapped it again in the cloth and slid it under the pallet where I slept. It was a contract, that blade. It bound me to something that was not the lanista, not the Senate, not the boy with the seal. It bound me to the memory of the man who had pressed it into my hand and said, "Use it to remember you are a man.” Men like us are fiction to the polite. We are the noise that hides the true things: taxes levied in Sicily, legions moving in the east, laws written that tangle like ivy around a broken brick until the brick thinks the ivy is its own skin. But when the dawn came and the oil jar was cold and the sand still unstepped, my first thought was not of politics, not of the Emperor’s jaw, not of the senators who would today nod as if they invented nodding. My first thought was of weight. The weight in my hand that told me where I ended and the rest of it began. That evening, when the exhibition returns spilled back through the doors, their paint smudged, their faces slack with the peculiar fatigue that applause leaves, Milo handed me a crust and sat down hard. He had sweat in the place under his eyes where tears would have been if he were not who he was. He told me the boy had indeed raised a sword. He had cut silk. The crowd had howled as if he had slain a dragon. A Senator with a bad wig had lifted him onto a platform and kissed his cheek. A man with a roll of papyrus had stood and read a proclamation about the greatness of the city and the generosity of the grain dole this month because ships had come in from Alexandria and the gods had blessed them with calm seas. The people had cheered like hunger was a lover they were glad to see. I should have laughed, but I did not. I lay back on my mat, the straw sounding like little bones. The oil lamp threw a small, brave light. Outside, someone sang in Greek, a lilt to the syllables that made the words into water. I let the water wash the sand from my ears in my mind. I touched the wrapped shape of the sword with my foot, the way children reach for their mothers in their sleep. The city exhaled. Tomorrow it would inhale again. I would wake again, my hand already closing around the thing that felt like honesty. I slept with the smell of fish-sauce in my nose, oil in my pores, the taste of iron at the back of my tongue like a secret that might save or doom, depending on who believed it. The dawn would come as a coin. I would decide again what it could buy. I did not think of freedom’s cap. I thought of an edge. And for the moment, that was enough.

Model Output:
Telegram from: MacRae, Euan (Assistant Keeper, Stroma Light) To: MacRae, Moira (Mother, 14 Shore, Thurso) Date: 3 March 1927 Arrived safe. Boat near tipped, Tommy laughing like a loon. They’ve a brass fog bell here shaped like a monk’s head. I’ll tell you why when I write proper. Don’t worry for me. Your Euan. — Letter from: Euan To: Ma Date: 5 March 1927 Ma, The wireless is in fits, so I’ll be trusting this wee letter to the postman at the supply run next Tuesday. My fingers have not thawed since the boatman shoved us onto the landing. There are three of us: Old King (they call him that, surname Kinnear but he walks like a crow and caws orders), myself, and Tommy Burns, who is seventeen and doesn’t know when to stop clacking his teeth. The lamp is a great glass eye, proper and waterproofed, and it turns like a hymn, but the lamproom smells of paraffin and salt, and the wind comes in anyway, sly and thin. The bell I mentioned is daft: it’s a brass head of a bald monk, with the slit of a mouth that opens when the clapper strikes, jaw on a hinge. King says it’s a relic off a wreck, some Spanish ship, dragged up on a hook thirty years ago. He keeps the rope coiled, like a snake. He says to ring the monk only when the fog's thick enough you can taste it. There’s a wee drawer in my bunk and the men before have carved their names. I found a folded thing in the back, a bit of sailcloth stitched into a purse. Inside is a whelk shell painted with a woman’s face in blue, hair like kelp. The paint is flaked but sharp about the eyes. Someone carried that in their pocket for a while. I’ve put it under my pillow. If it belongs to someone’s ghost they can come and fetch it. I’ll write when there’s more to say. For now, I know the lamp, the steps, and the sound of the sea against the stones like a man beating a rug. Your son, E. — Letter from: Ma To: Euan Date: 10 March 1927 Son, The monk’s head has given me the shivers proper. You’re not to have it shouting in your ear at night and scaring you blind. If it’s Spanish, maybe it knows how to make a decent stew. Ask it. Mrs. Fraser’s boy has been hired on the trains. She is making a skirt out of the curtains in celebration. You will be pleased to know I have mended the hole in your coat and put it back on its peg. A woman must have some small pretence of belief that the one who wore it will come home to wear it again. You don’t tell me what you are eating. Don’t come thin. There’s a ham bone here from Monday, hung in the window to shame any thief. I will make broth and drink it to you. Mind you keep your head. A light is a good job but the sea is a miser with company. M. — Letter from: Euan To: Ma Date: 24 March 1927 Ma, We had our first fog down from the north like wet wool. King stood at the gap and listened, hand at his ear like he was courting the wind. “Now,” he said, and I pulled the rope on the brass monk. It opened its mouth like it would speak and instead made a sound like a coffin dragged on stone. Tommy laughed until King told him to get to the clockwork. At night the beam swings. It’s slow enough you can imagine it will stop. There is a gull that comes and hovers just outside, eyes like coins. I call it a collector. Makes me think of the church plate that shiny man used to swing at your nose. Remember? He’d not let go until you clinked a halfpenny. I am trying to write with plain hand but it’s cold even in the watch room. King says I waste too many words on paper. He has a wife in Wick and writes her every Wednesday with six lines and a list of wood we need. He watches me when I write. It puts all the words back up my sleeve. The shell with the woman’s face sits where I leave it and sometimes when it is very quiet, I think I hear the sea in it though we have the sea right outside and it seems a daft thing to listen to it in a shell when the whole world is the shell. The painted woman’s eyes are a bit cross. She keeps me from feeling foolish. Your last letter smelled of broth through the paper. Send none. It would come sour and then I’d be obliged to drink it or never live the shame down. E. — Postcard from: Ma To: Euan Date: 2 April 1927 The church plate man is dead, thought you should know. Fell in his pantry, they say. Mrs. Fraser has taken in a cat. It follows her like a thought. I bought a new kettle and it sings like a kettle should. You were terrible at whistling as a child. It used to make you cry with frustration. Imagine that. M. — Letter from: Euan To: Ma Date: 20 April 1927 Ma, Two days ago we had a ship sound its horn three times in a way I did not like. The sea was like milk. We rang the monk until my hands were a blister and the foghorn blew like a cow in a fence. The boat was somewhere, not seen, and we heard men, thin and far like they were inside a drum. Then nothing. The sea gives nor takes permission. King went down the stairs like he could run across the water and I went too, though there’s nothing to be done at a landing when you can’t see the ladder for the cloud. We lit the hand lamps and burned them until the oil wept. Nobody came. The wind turned and all at once the fog stood up and walked off and there was nothing but a line of black water like a seam. I swept the shine of the lamp across the skin of it, left and right, and found only gulls sitting as if on chairs. I slept badly after. I took the painted shell out and spoke to it. There you have it. You can laugh. It’s daftness induced by weather and duty. You always said not to ask you for kindness when I’ve been foolish. So keep it. Let me be a fool without comment. E. — Letter from: Ma To: Euan Date: 28 April 1927 Son, I’ll keep your feelings a secret in a drawer with my own foolishnesses, of which there are many more than even you know. I talk to your father’s old boots when I sweep them. “Stop leaving mud on my kitchen flag,” I say, as if he was the one tracked in and not you, small and minded, with sand in your boots like oats. I do not laugh at a man talking to a shell. Better words out than in to mould. I bought a stamp for a parcel and then did not send one. It was the price of not making your parcel heavy with my worries. Be kind in the fog, but also know it is the sea that decides. You must eat more. You sound thin in your letters. M. — Letter from: Euan To: Ma Date: 12 June 1927 Ma, Tommy goes home. He lasted three months and says he’d rather be a carriage boy for the dead than listen to the wind rhyme with his name all night. I’ll miss his noise. They’re sending a new lad from Stromness, name of Alex. King grunts when he reads the paper with the posting. It’s his way of praying. I have learned the light like a song. She has six notes: the oil pump’s chatter, the lens’ little tick, the wind in the glass, the stairs, the bell rope, and this new one I haven’t named that comes at two in the morning when I’ve had no sleep, the one inside my head where your kettle is, singing. Sometimes I watch the light go out around the bay, house by house. It makes me feel taller to be the last thing. I tell myself this is why a man should not wed when he lives in a tower. Remind me why I shouldn’t drink more than I do. I take the bottle back down after two, but I do make its acquaintance. King scowls. He carries his own ghosts like a stool on his back. The painted shell is a warning not to make a wife out of a thing that can’t talk back. E. — Letter from: Ma To: Euan Date: 19 June 1927 Euan, You are not to work yourself into some church tower romance. You can have both a light and a life. Men have done more with worse. Be practical. Take a wife who can speak up and run a house and look you in the eye and ask for the salt. No more girls who laugh and hide their bite. My advice is worth something yet. Your Uncle Iain was drunk on a Tuesday and tipped his cart in the lane. We righted it and fetched his hat from the hedge. He cried when he saw the dent. “It’s my good hat,” he said. I told him to wash his ears. He laughed, so that is an improvement. Send me a description of this Alex when you can. I will guess if his mother is strict by your description. I have baked bannocks. It is hot enough to fry an egg on the step. M. — Letter from: Euan To: Ma Date: 1 August 1927 Ma, Alex has the look of someone taller who got squashed in the post and came out the right height but disappointed about it. He has neat hands with a scar across one knuckle and he hums to himself like a kettle that never boils. His mother must be a woman who makes lists. He reads the instructions even when King says not to bother. He is a good worker but kisses the brass when he thinks it went well—his mouth hits it with a hollow pop like kissing a belly—and I told him the light is not your cousin. He took offense and didn’t speak to me all afternoon. I told him about the shell. He asked if I was superstitious. I said no, I am lonely, and he nodded as if they were cousins. We had a wild storm. The lamp kept, but the wind pushed around the glass like a dog wanting in. King strapped himself to the rail with the rope we keep for hauling oil and we yelled at each other in the beam. After, he lit his pipe and said, “Next time, you strap a better knot.” I dreamed of your stair. The one up to the boxroom at home that creaks on the third step. I woke holding my breath like I did as a boy when I thought if I breathed too loud you’d catch me stealing sugar. The mind is a stupid pigeon. It returns and shits on its own ledge. E. — Letter from: Ma To: Euan Date: 9 September 1927 Euan, I saw the light last night from the hill. It was clear as glass, and I stood until my old feet argued with me. I could see your work sweep over me as if it was a hand smoothing my hair. Don’t let your head get fat. Still, I felt proud. Your father’s boots finally gave in. I stuck the soles back thrice and they left crumbs on my floor like a biscuit. I cried a little and then I laughed because it’s daft to mourn for boots. grief is foolish like that. There is a girl at the bakery who asked after you. She is not made of air. M. — Letter from: Euan To: Ma Date: 2 November 1927 Ma, I write this with fingers that shake for reasons not all wind. We had our wreck. A trawler went onto the Stones last night, storm from the east. We saw her lights wrong, not where they should be, and then a smash like the world snapped. King was down the stairs as if he had been wired to the bell. Alex and I put ropes on and we went out. I can’t say to you what the water felt like because words will tame it and I don’t want it tamed in my mouth. We dragged two in. The third went under like a pulled plug and did not come up. The two we got were half men, cold in their cheeks, and one, when he learned we were lightmen, started to cry like a bairn. He clawed at the brass monk to ring it and then laughed at himself, laughed in a way that had no air in it. He’d knocked out a tooth and it sat on his lip like a pearl. We made tea, we did blankets, we did all the things it says in the book. I hauled and hauled as if I could pull to shore the third who did not come. Later, when the sea calmed as if it had never lost its temper, I sat on the stairs and thought of the man I did not know and his mother somewhere not writing him a letter because she didn’t know yet she was due to be a woman with a letter unanswered. I took the painted shell in my fist and held it so tight the paint flaked under my palm. Alex found me so and did not speak. He put his hand on my shoulder like a bird perching, awkwardly, as if not to break the branch. I am telling you this because you will hear it in my voice when next we speak. Better to cut my tongue on the truth now. E. — Letter from: Ma To: Euan Date: 14 November 1927 Son, I have no wisewoman’s balm. You did your work and you did more than a prayer. There are three mothers in this now: two with sons who breathe because your arm pulled and the third with a sea-sized hole. You cannot fill it. You can only keep the light. That is work enough. If you wish to come home, I will set the kettle and put your coat where you can see it from the table. If you wish to stay, I will set the kettle and write to you on Sundays. Both are true. That man’s tooth is a sticking place for me. Some detail always is. Do you still have the shell? Keep it for all the women we are not and for all the words you can’t put down. M. — Letter from: Euan To: Ma Date: 23 December 1927 Ma, The sea calmed into a month of grey with a skin of ice, which is almost worse. King took to fixing things that were not broken. He polished the brass black. We three do a daft thing: we each make up a menu and read it aloud at tea. Alex puts down eels in butter and capers like he grew in a castle kitchen. King reads out stews that are seventy things in a pot and all the same colour. I read your broth, and you will laugh but when I do it, the watch room warms. I have the shell in my pocket now, and sometimes I think of the man we did not save, and sometimes I think of me, a lad on your steps who could not whistle, and sometimes I think of the woman whose face is on the shell, who is whatever anyone needs her to be. It is a daft thing but I’m keeping it. For Christmas, do not send me a cake. It would arrive a fist. E. — Letter from: Ma To: Euan Date: 3 January 1928 Euan, I made a cake and ate it myself in small guilty slices and drank to your health with tea because I cannot abide cordial. Mrs. Fraser came round and said, “He’ll be lonely,” and I said, “He is, but he is not lost,” and felt that was true like a clean plate. I am getting old. My hand cramps when I write. I do not say this to make you come. I say it because a body should not pretend at immortality. It angers God. The kettle sings still. The cat of Mrs. Fraser has taken to sitting on our sill when the sun comes. Write to me about spring, when it comes. Paint it. Call me a vain woman but I like to be fed words. M. — Letter from: Euan To: Ma Date: 15 May 1928 Ma, Spring has climbed the steps. The grass on the island has come in patches like old blankets mended with a better wool. The birds are idiots and noble. Alex has taken to naming them after men in the almanac. “There goes Mr. Fitzroy,” he says, when a puffin stumbles. We had a day last week when the light did not need me. The sun sat like a guest who overstays and I went down to the rocks where the sea makes little basins. I took off my boots and put my feet in. King says this is how you get consumption. I say to him that if the sea wants me it will find a better way. I write to you with ink that has thinned. It is the only fault of spring. The shell’s paint has flaked round the woman’s hair where my thumb rests. I have carved a wee notch on the drawer in the bunk for every month I’ve been here. If I ever bring a woman to see this place, she will think me daft. Good. Let it be a test. Are you well? Don’t go old on me too fast. Stay stubborn. E. — Letter from: Ma To: Euan Date: 21 June 1928 I am as well as the truth allows. I had a day last week when my chest was a tight coat, but the coat loosened. I do not like to tell you this but I promised to be honest after your November letter. I would come to see your light, but I think the boat would undo me. I will content myself with looking from the hill. Mrs. Fraser sends you a photograph of the cat you don’t know. It is obscene how much she loves it. I have a man who comes to mend the gate. He is quiet and has a mole like a grape on his temple. He is not for me, but I like that he is careful with the hinge. Be kind to that Alex. He sounds like a kettle that could boil if encouraged. M. — Letter from: Euan To: Ma Date: 4 November 1928 Ma, King is dead. He fell on the stairs

Model Output:
The hostess asks for my name and I give it, resisting the urge to spell it in NATO, resisting the overlapping compulsion to glance at the tablet she uses, to see the admin icon in the corner, the little padlock with the line through it that means “updates available.” I clamp my hands in my pockets and smile. The piano in the corner plinks through a familiar progression that I can’t place, like a half-remembered exploit—signature without context. The restaurant’s WiFi password is taped along the front of the counter in blocky Sharpie, a little curled at the corners where grease has signed it in translucence. I feel the thrill anyway—the line break, the predictable season-year format, the exclamation point appended like wishful thinking, security through punctuation. My fingers twitch phantom keystrokes, mapping out the attack surface: their router’s default IP, the little web UI with the unaltered admin credentials. Backdoor through the TV, pivot to the POS, scrape card data. I shake my head like a dog throwing off water until the picture goes away. Not that guy anymore. White hat now. Belt of righteousness. The buckle digs. She is already at the bar, perched on a stool like someone who reads at bus stops. When she looks up at me I feel the little electric shock of her recognition, like when your packets reach their destination without incident. The bartender asks if we want a table and I say yes, and I do not mention the WiFi password. I say her name, she says mine, we walk. Different kinds of maps. The table is wood, the varnish a clicky skin beneath my fingers. I put my phone face down on the corner nearest the wall, where the attack vectors are fewest, even though nothing about that habit makes sense unless I also leave it in airplane mode and blindfold the camera. She grins at me when she sees it, and lays hers face down beside it. It feels like an intentional mirror. A measured handshake. She has the kind of smile that unfolds, that doesn’t slam open. It gives me time to check my baselines: speech rate, dilation, microexpressions. Not a test. Stop. We order drinks. The ginger in my mule catches at the back of my throat like static. I can see the bartender’s phone propped behind the register, a little constellation of notifications blooming and fading pulselike. The register screen is open to a spreadsheet. Cells march in naked little rows, commas lined up like teeth. I push my drink away from the edge until the condensation ring is an inch from the menu’s corner. Reduce blast radius. She asks me what I do, and I tell her, but I shave off the words that make people flinch. I say “security consultant” instead of “breaker,” I say “defensive audits” instead of “spear phishing with consent.” Her eyes light, though, when I say “hacker.” They always do, as if I said “pirate,” as if we wear eyeliner to meetings and steal kisses. She does a little rolling motion with her hand, a “go on,” and I do, but gently. I lean on the stories where I turned off the faucet before the flood. I do not talk about the first time I listened to a stranger breathe through their laptop fan at 3 a.m.—just the sound of their life like a metronome—because telling that story makes people either want you or want to never see you again. Then she says, “I always wanted to get into that,” and for a second my core temp spikes. She goes on: “But then I fell into game design and now all I hack is mana curves,” and I laugh, and it’s real, and I feel something in me tilt toward a different kind of brightness. “Wait,” I say. “Magic?” She nods. “Since I was ten. My first deck was like…so bad. A janky red burn pile with three copies of Shock and somehow four Brimstone Volleys. No lands. It was basically a crime scene.” I reach across the table without planning to. “You had Brimstone Volley when you were ten? That set came out when—” She swats my hand with a menu. We’re smiling, sharing the same reference frame. The menu is a list of simple things with complex sauces, the culinary equivalent of obfuscated code. I find myself explaining the first time I realized that Magic is an engine-building game disguised as a fistfight, and she’s nodding, and then she’s telling me about designing a commander deck around an obscure win condition that only triggers if you can force someone to draw their entire library without letting them die, and she’s leaning forward, elbows on wood, and I’m not thinking about thread contention or buffer overflows, I’m thinking about her mouth and the way she keeps her hair behind her ears when she’s emphasizing a point. We fall into it. Like two scripts that happen to play nice. The waiter asks if we’re ready and we almost don’t notice, our conversation skittering across combos and banned lists and the philosophy of banding. First date, but we’re already in the middle of a story. There are these moments when I forget to scan the room, to weigh every human for threat. Instead, I’m seeing: her ringless hands, the tiny scar at her knuckle, a little freckle at her jaw I want to map. My brain hums in a frequency that isn’t alarm. She excuses herself to the bathroom, leaving her phone by my drink, screen up. The time glows in warm numerals and the wallpaper is a little cartoon of an elemental picking flowers. I catch myself looking without meaning to—gaze like a cursor hovering above a password field. Backspace. No. Not practicing anymore. There are muscles you must deliberately relax. My fork is heavy. I count my breaths. The restroom door swings and a teenager brushes by our table holding a handful of sugar packets like contraband. The WiFi password on the counter gleams. The low hiss of the espresso machine is like a whispered secret. She comes back, touches my shoulder as she sits down, like we’ve known each other longer than we have. “Sorry,” she says. “The mirror lighting in there makes you reconsider your life choices.” “Good for threat modeling,” I say before I can stop myself. She laughs, and I pull my joke back from the edge of the cliff. She reaches for her phone to show me a screenshot of a decklist. The lockscreen blooms. She draws her finger across the nine-dot grid in a movement that I map in three dimensions without meaning to, the way you map the steps to your old front door even after you move. Bottom-left to top-left to top-right to bottom-right, back to center, up one. My brain solves it like a reflex. The pattern forms a skewed alphabetical letter. Of course it does. People love letters. They’re easy to remember. Easy to steal. Don’t. Don’t say anything. Let the moment pass. She wants to show you a decklist, not negotiate your neuroses. Let it go. “It’s cute that your pattern is just an N.” I hear my own voice and it’s like when you hit enter by accident and the payload is away. Time slows the way it does in a breach: packets dripping, everyone’s eyes widening. Her hand freezes on the screen. She looks at me. Then down. Then back up. There is heat in my face that isn’t ginger anymore. “I shouldn’t have said that,” I say, immediately, which is like patching in production. “I’m sorry. That’s… it’s a habit. I notice patterns.” “I mean, it is an N,” she says, but her smile is tighter. A cartoon window slides down in my mind: access revoked. The table’s varnish squeaks under my thumb. “I’ve been trying to turn it off,” I say. “It doesn’t always feel like a choice.” She sets the phone down. The little elemental on her wallpaper seems to be smirking now. “You could also not… point it out,” she says. Soft, but sharpened. I nod. I count two beats. Don’t overexplain. Don’t stack logs on a fire. “You’re right. That was rude. I’m sorry.” There. Simple. Truthful. She breathes. The air remembers how to move. “Is it always like that? For you,” she says. “Do you look at people and see… attack surfaces?” The question is careful and not unkind, which is maybe worse. I could give her the quippy answer, make a joke about my own code. Instead I take a sip of my drink and let the bolt go straight into the ground. “Sometimes,” I say. “It’s like—my brain learned a way to look at the world that kept me employed and also kept me… separate. I’m better than I used to be. Tonight, with you, I forgot to check the mirrors for a while.” I look at her. “That’s rare.” The waiter arrives like a patch pushed at the right time, sets down our plates, smiles, retreats. The food is colorful. The steam lifts like a signal. She picks up her fork. Her shoulders relax back down into their sockets. “Okay,” she says. “I can live with that. I just don’t want to feel like a vulnerability scan.” “That’s fair,” I say. “If it helps, most of the time the worst vulnerabilities are the ones I find in myself.” She snorts. “Relatable.” A beat. She taps her phone, opens notes, shows me a two-thousand-word document labeled “Commander: Bad Ideas.” I grin. The edges of the moment smooth. We are back to the glassy surface, though I can still see the crack running under it. “In my defense,” I say carefully, “pattern locks are the literal worst.” I raise my eyebrows, testing. Her face flickers—you can almost see the progress bar. She sighs, then laughs. “Okay. Make your pitch.” I lean back, hands up like I’m going to keep them where she can see them. “Change it to something long. A passphrase. Something like ‘GoblinsNeverBlockButAlwaysWin.’ You know? And turn off the visible pattern. And maybe… don’t label it with your initial.” She rolls her eyes, but there’s a spark again. “I will not be bullied into safer living by someone who named his WiFi ‘FBI Surveillance Van’ in 2012.” “My current SSID is very responsible,” I say primly. “It’s ‘Owls.’ No one suspects owls.” She bites her lip to hide a smile. “Fine. I’ll think about it.” “Thank you,” I say. “I promise not to comment on your threat posture unless asked.” “Tempting,” she says, and the word sits between us like a coin waiting to be flipped. We eat. The food is better than I expected. The couple behind us is arguing in whispers about whose turn it is to go to their kid’s recital. The WiFi password glares at me like a dare. A man at the counter reads it aloud to his companion and I can feel my fists clench under the table, not because I want to exploit it, but because the world is a field of unplanted mines and I am wearing new shoes. She tells me about the first pre-release she went to alone, how she won her first round and forgot how to breathe, how a kid in a hoodie taught her to shuffle the way dealers do, bridging the cards in a waterfall. I tell her about the first time my mother asked me what I did and I lied and said “web design” because it sounded harmless. She tells me about her brother who thinks games are a waste of time until he wins. I tell her about the time I got caught by a thirteen-year-old running a Minecraft server more secure than a bank I’d audited. We are, for a while, just two people telling each other the micro-histories of ourselves. The noise floor rises and falls, and I can almost forget that every window has a latch that can be jimmied if the wood is old. When she goes to pay her half, she reaches for her phone again, and this time I look away. I stare hard at the salt shaker, at the way the crystals catch the light, at the water droplets making their own patterns on the lacquered wood. Self-control is a muscle and I want to be sore tomorrow. She returns, sits, looks at me with a warmth that feels like stepping out of a cold room into sun. “So,” she says. “Second date?” I feel it—both the pulse of happiness and the other pulse, lower, that says you do not get to keep nice things unless you build the right perimeter. I nod. “If I promise not to bring a rubber duck,” I say. She squints. “You absolutely have a rubber duck.” “Several,” I admit. She clinks her glass against mine. “Bring one. But not to test the restaurant’s network.” I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. “Deal.” On our way out, I glance at the counter one more time. The WiFi password is still there, still half-peeling, still inviting strangers to knock on the door. I slide my card into the little leather folder and sign with the same hand I use to type. The hostess says goodnight and I say it back and she smiles and her tablet bings and I do not glance at the screen. The piano shifts into a new key, the note striking true. Outside, the air is cool and unencrypted. She steps close enough that our arms brush, just once, a test. I look at her and not at the street cameras, not at the WiFi networks chiming hello from the buildings, not at the code cascading behind my eyelids. For a breath, a long one, I can hold two truths: there are holes everywhere, and also, sometimes, there is good faith. Sometimes you get to choose not to exploit. Sometimes you get to sit across from a person who says “second date?” and you say “yes,” and that is the only handshake you need.

Model Output:
Okay, so I’m going to pretend my face isn’t on fire. I’m going to pretend that everything about me is regular and normal and passable, like a pair of jeans that fit okay and don’t make a noise when you walk. I’m going to pretend that my hands are just hands and not these gleaming, jittering signal flares that say look at her, she’s thinking too much about her hands. I am going to be one of those people who just do a science project without narrating their own breathing. “Work in pairs,” Ms. Larkin said, and then she did the thing where she pointed and I felt the floor tilt, because she pointed to me and then to him, and now here we are, at the side lab table with the cracked black top and the tape residue, our names in dry-erase marker on the corner of the whiteboard like they’re an equation that does not make sense. I erase and re-write mine so it looks like I am doing something, like I am the kind of person who is fine. Hi. Hi? Hello. Hey—no. Don’t say hey. Say hi, and then his name, casually, like you’re just acknowledging that he exists, not announcing it like a weather alert. Don’t say his whole name, obviously. That would be weird. Say it like you’ve said it a hundred times already even though you’ve only said it inside your head, in the safe space where you are clever and unflustered and not made of static electricity. He looks at the instruction sheet for the ammonia diffusion experiment and taps his pencil in sets of three, three, three, three. The pencil tapping vibrates through my bones. Harmless. Harmless. I try to say hi and it comes out like a cough that forgot it was supposed to be a word. He glances at me, kind eyebrows, neutral mouth, the kind of face you see in a toothpaste commercial and believe would help you find your lost dog. My internal voice, this radio announcer in my skull, says: Now is the moment. Ask him if he wants to measure the cotton or the time. Ask him if he wants to write or pour. Offer a choice. People love choices. They make you seem cooperative and not bossy. Or maybe they make you seem indecisive. Wait. Which one is better? “I can—” I start, and I feel my throat pull tight, like a fishing line snagged on a rock. The next words are supposed to be “time it,” but by the time I get there, he’s already nodding at the stopwatch and I am now just redundantly offering to do something I’m obviously doing. My cheeks flush. That’s fine. It’s fine. Say something useful. Say: Do you think the cotton will stay? Or: The ammonia will move faster because the molecules—no, don’t be a teacher. Be normal. He smiles, careful and patient. He says, “You can time it, if that’s okay.” He’s doing the polite voice, the one you use to ask the librarian a question. I want to say, “Yes, of course, that works,” and then maybe a joke, something like, “I have a very dramatic relationship with stopwatches,” which is true, but the truth is a forest of tangled vines. If I step into it, I will never get out. “Cool,” I say, which is a word I do not own, and it sounds borrowed. I click the stopwatch button and it clicks too loudly, and now I am monitoring the click’s echo in the lab room and the way Ms. Larkin’s ponytail swishes as she moves down the aisle and the way my shoulders are inching up like they’re trying to become earrings. Down, shoulders. Relax, face. Make your eyebrows neutral. Not too interested. Not disinterested. Interested like you’re listening to a podcast that’s informative but not life-changing. We read the sheet. He says something about the ammonia gas traveling through the tube and the different rates depending on mass—I nod like one of those little bobblehead dogs people put on dashboards, because I am tuned to the frequency of Being Agreeable. In my head, I articulate: Yes, because ammonia has a lower molar mass than hydrochloric acid, so its rate of diffusion is higher, which is why the ring forms closer to the heavier gas. Good. That’s correct. Insert this into conversation casually to demonstrate competence and shared interest. But the words congeal and I just say, “Mm-hm,” which is the exact opposite of what my brain wanted, a tiny grunted syllable that, if my mouth were a texting person, would be “k.” He doesn’t seem to mind. He picks up the cotton swab and I watch the way the liquid darkens it and I think, Now, you could say, “Careful, don’t touch your eyes, it’ll burn,” because that’s nice and also something Ms. Larkin said this morning, but then it will sound like you think he is a toddler who doesn’t know how eyes work. He’s not. He has eyes. He uses them to look at you, and you start cataloging your posture, the way your foot curls around the leg of the stool, the way your hair might be sticking to your lip gloss. Don’t lick your lips. You will look like you’re inviting something. What? Stop. Just breathe. Breathing is a good group project task. The smell slips in, the ammonia that someone used to clean the sinks after second period, a sharp, almost sweet cut at the back of my throat. It sneaks under my tongue and I think of cat pee and my grandmother’s basement and the way the fumes made the air feel thinner. It pierces the soft bubble of planning around my brain and, for a second, the monologue skips like a scratched CD, and I blink. Maybe he sees me flinch. Don’t flinch. It’s just a smell. The way my head swims for a second makes me think of squids, which is not helpful. Also, now I’m thinking about the word squids and how weirdly it ends. Why squids? Why anything? Focus. We set up the glass tube on the ring stand like in the diagram. I hold the stopwatch. I look at my hands and they look like they belong to a pianist, long and composed, except they are attached to this body that cannot play anything without seeing the exact arrangement of my face reflected in a window. I want him to think I am someone who does careful things well, who can hold a delicate thing steady. Also maybe that I have the capacity to laugh at myself without crumpling into dust. He is very close now, the space between our elbows warm. This would be the moment in a movie when the soundtrack does something light and plucky, and the girl says something unexpected and witty and you see the boy tilt his head like, Oh. But I am a girl who edits her own giggles for content before they can exit. “Ready?” he says. I nod. “Ready,” I say, and this one lands like a real word. He places the cotton, one end of the tube then the other. I click the stopwatch as soon as he says go, and the little numbers jump. I press my lips together so I don’t count out loud because that would be weird, like I think he can’t read numbers. Counting would also keep my mouth busy, which is both good and bad. You can’t say something awful if you’re already counting, but you also can’t say something right. He leans in and watches the faint haze we're supposed to see forming, and I think about how, if I lean at the same angle, we might look aligned, like two rulers side by side. I think about rulers. No, think about conversation. You could ask about his soccer game. You heard someone say he plays midfield. You could say, “How’d your game go?” and then nod while he talks, and then say, “Cool,” again, but your quota on cool is one per day. Or you could say, “Your Lego project in homeroom was cool.” No, that was in fourth grade. Do not mention fourth grade. You are a person of now. Also, mentioning Lego will make you sound like you’ve been memorizing his biography. “Do you see it?” he asks. I realize I’ve been staring at where his eyelashes cast shadows on his cheekbones and not at the tube. I jerk my eyes to the right place. “Yes,” I say too fast. I watch the faint ring intensify like a ghost deciding to be brave. My voice says inside: It’s because the ammonium chloride forms when the gases meet, and you can calculate where based on their diffusion rates. You could say that. You could be part of the conversation like someone who belongs to science. But he is not a quiz. He is a person. He might already know that, and if he doesn’t, explaining it could be condescending. If you say nothing, you are a mute lamp. Pick one, quickly, pick— “It like—forms in the middle,” I say, and the word like slides out of me like a sticky toy. I want to rewind. I want to go back and attach a clause, something crisp. He nods anyway and says, “Closer to the heavier gas,” like he’s filling in a blank on a worksheet. He doesn’t sound annoyed. He sounds like someone being polite at a dinner table when the aunt asks who wants more green beans. The smell stabs again and my eyes water. He must see it. He glances at the air vent, then at me. “Smells bad,” he says, and there—there is the doorway. I can do banter. My brain scrolls through: witty remark, witty remark, witty remark. The best it finds is, “It’s, uh, strong,” which is nothing. A ghost of a word. I imagine the other girls, the ones with the braids and the laugh that lands exactly where it should, and they would wrinkle their noses in a cute way and say something about how this is what it would smell like if garbage went to college. That’s mean. Don’t say that. Say something honest. But honesty feels like handing someone your rib cage. Don’t hand him your rib cage in science class. He adjusts the clamp. Our fingers almost touch. Not touching feels like the loudest thing I’ve ever done. I am performing normalcy like a very precise dance with a key I keep dropping. If I rotate a quarter turn toward him, will I look eager? If I angle my shoulder away, will I look aloof? Is aloof better than eager? Eager sounds like puppies and spills. Aloof sounds like you don’t care. Caring is supposed to be good, but too much caring is a red flag. Imagine a flag. Imagine it waving behind your head. “Should we write it down?” he asks, and I am so grateful for the question that I could cry. I nod and say, “Yes,” and then, “Do you want to write or should I?” Good. Good! That was a normal question with two options. Nobody died. He says, “You can,” and he slides the lab notebook toward me. I take the pencil, and my fingers do the thing where they tremble and I have to pretend they are chilly. I write deliberately, each letter a soldier lined up, no loops too fancy. His name, then mine. Our data: time, distance from the ammonia end. My handwriting looks calm. This is a miracle. He says my name, not the right way, not wrong either, just like he’s trying it on. “That’s a nice name,” he adds, and I don’t know what to do with that. It feels like a test I didn’t study for. A compliment should be easy. You say thank you, like a civilized person. You do not laugh nervously like a helium balloon. You do not deflect with a joke about how your parents chose it, because then you will have to tell the story, and the story involves Aunt Cheryl, and she will never fit in this room. “Thanks,” I say, and my voice’s pitch tries to climb a ladder. I clear my throat. “I like—yours too,” which sounds like I’m four, giving him a sticker. His smile does that softening thing people’s smiles do when they are trying to make you feel okay. Now I am going to die. My face is a furnace. The smell is back, making the edges of things ripple. Take a breath. Pretend you are an actress playing a role called Girl Who Is Fine. You can inhabit her. You can put on her skin like a sweater. “What do you think the error could be?” he asks, pointing to the box on the sheet that says sources of error, and I love him a little more for asking an answerable question. My body loves any question with rules. In my head: Temperature, drafts, positioning of the cotton, timing the reaction delay. I pick one. I let it out slowly, carefully, like lowering a paper boat into a puddle. “Um,” I say. “Maybe the… positioning? Like, if it wasn’t exactly equidistant.” Okay. That was not terrible. That was a real thought that made it into air. He nods like I said something that makes sense and writes it down. I feel like a plant that just discovered sunlight. The ring appears fully now, a white band where the invisible met. He smiles the real smile this time, teeth, and says, “That’s cool,” and the word fits his mouth in that casual way I envy. I mirror it, “Yeah,” and it is not a witty conversation, and it is not a movie, and I did not accidentally lean into his shoulder, and I did not say something that will wake me up at two a.m. to replay until the spins stop. Maybe this is what ordinary is: two people doing a thing and not exploding. I think: Maybe later, when I’m safe in bed and the room is dark and the air does not smell like ammonia but like my detergent, I will rewrite this moment and make myself braver. I will say a line and he will laugh and it will land. But also maybe I will think of how his pencil tapping was three, three, three, and how he paused before sliding the notebook, and how he said my name like it was a word he was allowed to know. Maybe those will be the parts I keep. “Do you want to do the second trial?” he asks, and I nod, and I say, “Yes,” and I mean it, and the stopwatch, traitor and friend, clicks alive in my hand, and my cheeks cool, and my hands steady, and I am still monitoring the way my hair sits and the way my foot hooks and the way my mouth chooses its words. I am a lighthouse that won’t turn off even in daylight. But for a few seconds here, the beam lands on something that just looks like two kids in a classroom looking at a cloud in a tube, and the space between my sharps and flats fills with something that might be music. It smells a little less like ammonia now. Or maybe I’m used to it. He says, “Ready?” again like a ritual. I say, “Ready,” and it doesn’t feel like an audition this time. It feels like the beginning of a scene I can stay in without rehearsing every exit. Which, for me, is almost the same as falling in love. Or at least, it’s what it looks like from here.

Model Output:
Keys, phone, wallet. I pat each pocket like a ritual, like knocking on wood, as if the right rhythm could keep something terrible from happening. The phone lights up. No new messages. Of course not. Why would there be. He said, “See you at seven,” yesterday, which is fine—normal—but also a little cold, isn’t it? No emoji. No exclamation point. It sits in my gut like a pebble I swallowed by mistake, bouncing against the lining of my stomach each time I move. I stand in the hallway and catch myself in the mirror: shoulders hunched like I’m protecting a wound, mouth tight. If I soften, it feels like I’ll spill open. I angle away from my reflection, as if it could tell on me. Okay. I can do this. Just a friend. Just… someone who knows what my laugh sounds like at two in the morning, what my ceiling looks like from my pillow. Someone who has been “busy”—which is the polite word for bored. God, stop. It’s not a court hearing. I’ll just see him, say hi, see what his face does. I will not start a fight in my head before I even get there. But I already do. I can hear him: I’m sorry, I’ve just been swamped. And me, instantly: You could still text me. It takes two seconds. Then him, sighing, the big heavy sigh that says, you’re too much. My temperature rises like a stove left on. Then I try the other script: He’s going to say he needs space. He’ll say, “You’re amazing, but I can’t do this right now.” I say, “Cool, no worries, I totally get it,” and then I shatter like sugar glass, silently, gracefully, and never let him see the mess. Then another script where he says something worse—I’ve been seeing someone else—and I say, “Right, that makes sense,” and then I become a version of myself who never believes anyone again. I am stocking an arsenal from the pantry of my own panic. The apartment is too quiet. The clock ticks in the kitchen like someone tapping a pen. I pour water, don’t drink it. The cup sweats in my hand. I imagine our meeting like a scene I’ve rehearsed a thousand times. He’s late. He stays late on purpose to see if I’ll wait like a dog. He’s early and already there and when I walk in he stands up so fast he almost knocks the chair back and his face blooms into that stupid soft smile that makes my chest hurt. And then I’m mad at myself for believing something good like that is possible, because hope is a trap door with a broken hinge. My phone vibrates. It’s him: Leaving now. See you in ten. A tiny puff of oxygen in my lungs. Okay. Okay. That’s normal. That’s good. He put the period at the end though. I stare at the dot like it’s a bullet point in a list of grievances. Stop it. He wrote. He’s coming. People come. People mean what they say sometimes. I breathe. My chest still feels like it’s got a fist around it. I put on my shoes. The knot I tie feels too tight. I untie, retie. There’s a new script: I will be cool. I will not assume. If he’s been distant, maybe something’s wrong. Maybe he’s tired, or sad, or his mother called, or his boss is impossible. Maybe he has a mouth ulcer and he doesn’t want to kiss because it hurts. I actually smile at the absurdity of that, and then the smile curdles because what if I try to kiss him and he pulls away and it looks like rejection even if it’s not, and I won’t know which is true, and then I’ll say something I can’t take back. The mental film splices into another: me saying, “Are you serious? After everything?” and him backing up, palms out like I’m a dog that might bite, and the look on his face like he’s already halfway gone. I don’t want to do this. But I do. But I don’t. I open the door and shut it harder than necessary, a punctuation mark. The hallway mirror catches me again when I lock up. My eyes are too bright, my jaw rigid. I look like someone waiting to be hit. “Relax,” I whisper to my own reflection. The word sounds alien, like a language I learned in childhood and forgot. The air outside has that end-of-day coolness that smells like leaves and car exhaust. I walk too fast. My feet know the way. I think about last week on his couch, how he put his hand on my ankle absentmindedly while we watched a movie, like my body was a familiar object. I think about the drop in my stomach when he laughed at a text from someone else and didn’t offer to show me. I think about how, when we said goodnight, he kissed me but didn’t hold on. It was probably nothing. It was probably everything. By the time I reach the café, my heart is sprinting. He’s there already, outside, in the light that makes him look softer, like someone thought about the glow and set it up on purpose. He stands up when he sees me, that little half-smile I love doing its quick tilt. He opens his arms. “Hey,” he says, and it’s warm, and I walk into it like I didn’t almost turn around twice on the way here. He smells like clean laundry and mint. “I got here early to grab a table,” he says, touching his thumb to my knuckles, a tiny grounding. The touch burns and soothes in the same instant. I scan his face for anything: boredom, impatience, a faint echo of I don’t want this. All I see is a small crease between his eyebrows, like he’s worried, but not about me. Or about me? “You okay?” he asks. Of course he would ask that. That’s who he is. “Yeah, fine,” I say, too fast. “You?” I want to ask what took so long to text, why he’s been floating off the edges of our conversations like a helium balloon left drifting to the ceiling. I hate that I care this much. That I feel like an open house with all the doors unlocked. He waits. He does that thing where he doesn’t fill the silence. My mind leaps into the gap: He’s waiting because he expects me to explode. He’s bracing. He’s rehearsed too, and his lines are: I can’t do this, and: You deserve better, and the one I hate most, the one that makes my lungs turn to wet paper: You’re scaring me. My body tightens, preparing for impact. He says, “I’m sorry I’ve been MIA.” The apology lands like a pebble in that same stomach. My hands go cold. I knew it. Here we go. He reaches for my wrist. “Work’s been a lot, and my dad’s been calling every night about the house stuff, and I just—” He searches my face. “I should have said something. I didn’t mean to make you feel… I don’t know. Alone.” The word alone is a match. I could strike on it if I wanted. I could say, “Well, you did,” and watch his face change shape. I could accuse him of mind games, of training me to expect crumbs, of the unforgivable sin of not texting while living a life that didn’t include me every second. I feel the speech rise up, all muscle memory. I picture his answers: defensiveness, then withdrawal, then distance like a cliff. “I figured,” I say instead, and the lie is small and sour. “I guessed it was something like that.” He exhales. Relief. He squeezes my wrist. The relief is contagious. For a second I allow myself to be threaded back into our last good night, the way he tucked my hair behind my ear and said my name like a secret. He tells me about his dad. His voice shakes once. He says, “It’s stupid, but I get stuck in my head and then it feels like too much to reach out.” He looks at me like he’s giving me a key to a locked drawer. I can feel the place in me that wants to crack open and pour gratitude all over the table. Thank you for telling me. Thank you for not forgetting I exist. It feels pathetic to be so relieved. It feels like dopamine in a drought. I nod. I try to let it be simple. “Of course,” I say. “I get that.” Then immediately: Do I? Do I get to “get that” without it becoming permission to disappear whenever he feels crowded? The thought scuttles under my relief like a roach under a cabinet. He squeezes my hand again. The skin contact anchors me and then unmoors me at once. I want more. I want him to say something definitive, like, “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” I want a contract with signatures. He doesn’t say that. He says, “I missed you.” The words land like a soft blow. Something in my chest cracks. I laugh—it slips out, small and shaky. “Yeah?” I manage. I feel the warmth run through me like a fever. I grab it with both hands. And then, like clockwork, suspicion arrives in a crisp suit, briefcase in hand. Did he? Or is that just shape-of-mouth talk, a phrase like bless you after a sneeze? He says it easily. Has he practiced it elsewhere? The joy and the doubt jostle for space and I flinch inside my own sternum. “Yeah,” he says, and he looks at me in a way that makes my eyes want to close. I resist because if I close my eyes I can’t monitor. He rubs his thumb over the back of my hand. “I’m sorry if I made you feel insecure.” I swallow. There it is, the opening. Part of me wants to lean into it and pour it all out—how the silence is a canyon, how I hear it echo, how my brain turns minor pauses into parting speeches. Another part wants to snap the lid shut, throw a lock on it, and say, “It’s fine, doesn’t matter,” and smile in that way that doesn’t reach my irises. Both parts are loud. The rehearsed fight scenes flicker: me accusing, him retreating; me gentle, him reassuring; me needy, him tolerant. I can feel the resentment I packed just in case like a flare I could set off at any moment and bathe the space in red light. The flare is a false friend, but God it’s familiar. “It’s okay,” I say, and my voice is too even. “I guess I just…” The words are slippery. If I say them wrong, I’ll sound like a caricature of myself. I breathe. “I get scared.” The admission feels like skipping a step over a missing stair and not breaking an ankle. He nods. He doesn’t look annoyed. He looks sad in a way I can stand. “I know,” he says. “I’ll try to be better.” Promise. Standing on toothpicks. He means it right now. Will he mean it tomorrow? Does that matter? The love—or whatever—the care is there, immediate and bright. And immediately I test its edges like a tongue probing a loose tooth. I laugh again, a brittle sound. “And I’ll try not to spiral when you don’t reply in five minutes,” I joke. He smiles, but he’s also serious. “Text me again,” he says. “Call. I want to know. I might be in a hole, you know?” He lifts our joined hands, then puts them back down, a small ceremony. “You’re not too much.” The words slide under my skin like a hand under a shirt. I want to believe them so badly it embarrasses me. I want to press them into my bones like a stamp. Immediately, another voice rasps, He’s saying what you need to hear. He’s managing you. He is trying to calm a dog. The thought makes me want to pull away. I don’t. I take a breath. “Okay,” I say. It is both a yes and a brace. He leans in, kisses my cheek, then the corner of my mouth, slow, and my body does that melt-flood thing like it’s been trying not to since I saw him stand up. The kiss is brief, public-safe, and it pierces me anyway. My knees go soft. I almost smile for real. Then I think, Did he only kiss me because I seemed upset? Is it pity? Is it maintenance? The questions move in like noisy neighbors. “Hungry?” he asks. His voice is light again. The normalness of it is dizzying. I nod. We order. He jokes about the barista’s mustache. I laugh, genuine, and then immediately inventory the laugh for try-hardness. He squeezes my knee under the table. The validation hits like a hit, the kind that makes me guilty for liking it this much. It is dangerous to need like this. Dangerous to show it. I sit straighter to hide the tremor. In the window’s reflection, I catch us: two people leaning in, easy. My posture’s looser. My mouth has uncurled. I look like someone being loved. It makes me want to cry. I look away quickly, like catching myself in the hallway earlier. I don’t trust that girl in the glass. She gets carried away. She forgets what happens right after the kiss, after the hand squeeze, after the “I’m here.” What happens is the gap, the silence, the late reply. The scripts queue up again, polite, patient, certain they’ll get their turn. I sip my coffee and the heat scalds, sharp and real. I focus on it, a point that isn’t a future, or a past, or a fantasy courtroom. He is telling me a story about his coworker who microwaves fish at the office, and I chuckle at the right place, and when he says, “I really did miss you,” there’s a flicker, a flare—a warm, brief light. I hold my hand over it like protecting a match from the wind. It’s beautiful, and I don’t let myself believe it will last longer than this table, this hour. But I let it be true while it is. Later, when he goes to the counter for napkins, I feel the tug to open my phone and scroll back, to build a case either way. I don’t. My fingers hover. I place both hands flat on the wood. I tell myself: notice your feet in your shoes, the way your shoulders have dropped. I hear myself, faint and far. It’s not enough to stop the machine, but it turns the volume down for a breath or two. He comes back, sets the napkins down, looks at me like he’s deciding something, then says, “I know I said seven, but… would you want to come over after? I thought maybe we could watch that dumb show you like.” It’s a small invitation. It hums with significance despite itself. Yes, my body says. Immediately the auditor stands up. He is offering this now because he feels guilty. He is buying time. He is trying to avoid an argument. The tug-of-war is a familiar burn in my arms. “Yeah,” I say, and my voice betrays a sliver of how much I want it. His whole face softens, like I gave him a present. See? the hopeful part of me says, wearing a paper crown. He wants you here. And then, quickly—prepare for him to change his mind. Prepare for a call. Prepare for the moment you’re halfway to his door and he texts, “Actually…” I can feel my brain race ahead to that instant, to the invented thud of disappointment. I take a breath. I try to stay where my coffee tastes like bitter chocolate, where his knee rests against mine without effort. I try to let both truths exist: that I need and that I fear; that he is here and might not be later; that I am loved in this moment and also bracing for impact. He touches my wrist again, absentminded now, and I let my hand turn into his, palm up, until our fingers interlace. It’s small. It feels like standing in the doorway of a warm room, deciding whether to go inside or not. I stand there. I don’t decide yet. The hallway mirror waits back home, patient as a judge. I will pass it later and check for damage and try to read the future in the tilt of my shoulders. Right now, I let our hands rest where they are, and I keep my rehearsals folded like paper in my pocket, ready, but not open. Not yet. Not yet.

Model Output:
They met in the husk of a temple that had outlasted wars, drought, and the memory of its gods. The roof above was broken in jagged triangles, starlight dripping through in needles. A ring had been scraped from the dust on the main floor: a circle of chalk and stacked stones, surrounded by the uneven glow of lanterns. The walls were scabbed with old incense smoke. Red-black armbands glared like fresh wounds in the torchlight—two schools, two lineages, two debts being called due. Jigen-ryū stood to the east, where a collapsed gate left a splintered maw opening to scrubby hills. He was tall, wide in the shoulders, hair bound back, his stance squared with the quiet posture of a well-fed predator. Left foot forward, right hand near his hip as if the phantom weight of a sword lived there. He rolled his shoulders and breathed through his nose, the air leaving his mouth in controlled threads. His armband was lacquered, the red brighter than the lanterns. Piguaquan faced him from the west, back to a sunken altar smothered in ivy. Leaner, looser, his stance a coil. He kept his feet light: right forward, knees soft, hip line slightly offset. Arms hung deceptively slack, wrists loose enough to snap like wet rope. His armband was cloth and frayed, soaked with sweat and cheap dye. The crowd pressed tight, a mottled ring. The Jigen-ryū side wore darker coats, voices trimmed to sharp edges; their bets passed in crisp notes. The Piguaquan supporters were a low, rolling tide of whispers and coins, a buzz of wagers in quick hands. They spit on the stone and jabbed elbows into ribs and glanced up into the ragged roof like men who knew the value of cracks and exits. A bell clanged, an old brass thing swung from a beam. Silence fell in a jolting wave, then held like breath. Jigen-ryū stepped forward and set his lead foot on the chalk. He did not bow. He drew his right hand high over his shoulder, elbow out, palm edged, the old sword-draw phantom curling through him. He took one more breath and set his gaze just above his opponent’s centerline—a killing gaze, said the old texts, so the hands follow the eyes. Piguaquan’s hands drifted outward, palms open, fingers loose. His weight stayed on the balls of his feet, heel lines active. He tilted his left shoulder slightly toward the other man, offering a sliver of target. He didn’t bow either. “This is already blasphemy,” someone in the Jigen-ryū crowd muttered. The bell’s echo slipped away like incense smoke. Jigen-ryū moved first—no feint, no sympathetic twitch, just a sudden cracking advance. His right foot stamped forward, left slid up, hips snapping in as his right hand cut down a diagonal line toward Piguaquan’s collarbone. The blow was a sword without steel: whole-body power, edge of the forearm like a blade, a small detonation in the ribs that drove mass into a point. Piguaquan slid back on his right foot as if he’d been waiting for that precise arc. He tilted his chest away, left shoulder dropping to let the descending arm skim past, the strike shaving cloth off his jacket. As the forearm passed, Piguaquan’s left hand snapped up from below in a whipping backfist toward Jigen-ryū’s exposed right ribs. The strike wasn’t power through bone—it was a fast lash, the kind that stung the intercostals and stole breath. Jigen-ryū twisted his core, compressing. He let the backfist land to his side, a thud muted by tensed muscle. He drove forward with his left foot, stepping in to crush the distance, and hammered his left palm heel at Piguaquan’s sternum. Piguaquan pivoted on his right foot, his torso rotating clockwise so the heel struck late and slid off. He gave ground with two quick steps, his back brushing the ivy-choked altar. Dust fell from the leaves. They reset in the circle’s western quadrant. Jigen-ryū’s shoulders stayed squared, his breath steady. Piguaquan tapped his right heel lightly, a pulse. The crowd exhaled as one. Jigen-ryū cut the space again. He snapped a low kick with his right foot, a shin to shin clash meant to trap Piguaquan’s lead leg and freeze him. Piguaquan didn’t retreat this time. He hinged his right hip, letting his lower leg swing inward on a tight angle to intercept the shin and deflect with a rolling shin-to-shin that bled the force away. As the kick completed, Piguaquan’s hands blurred: right palm shot for Jigen-ryū’s elbow, left sliced in a circle toward the neck. The right hand’s intent was control; the left was threat. Jigen-ryū shoved his elbow back into his own body, short-circuiting the control. He stamped his left foot down and, in the same beat, slashed his right forearm across, intercepting the left hand’s trajectory. Bone smacked bone. He flowed into a forward surge, head slipping left of center as his right hand speared for Piguaquan’s throat. Piguaquan’s feet were already moving. He surrendered his left arm to the contact, rolling it outward—a Pigua circle to draw the forearm past—and ducked his chin. Jigen-ryū’s spear-hand grazed the jawline and scraped to collarbone. Piguaquan turned with it, letting the force pull him forward even as he slid his right foot to the outside of Jigen-ryū’s right foot. In that outside lane, he fired a left palm across Jigen-ryū’s face—not to break, but to blur—then cleaved his right forearm down along the line of Jigen-ryū’s triceps, shearing the arm off its path. The Piguaquan forearm strike, delivered with a whipping drop of shoulder and a twist of torso, bit. Jigen-ryū’s right arm jerked. He shifted his weight back to stabilize and slammed a knee up from his left leg toward the belly that had followed in. Piguaquan was gone before it crested. He rolled his hips back, hips hitting the altar’s edge. Momentum reversed, he slid along the altar’s length, left hand flicking at Jigen-ryū’s eyes to check his advance. Jigen-ryū’s right hand rose in a short guard, absorbing the flicker, and he chased. They tracked north along the altar, Jigen-ryū on the inside of the circle now, Piguaquan brushing the stone. The ground here held broken tiles under the dust. Jigen-ryū planted his right foot on a larger tile, found it stable, and launched an overhead cut—right hand arcing down, left side rooting his spine. Piguaquan ducked under the arc, torso folding like cloth, and slid left under the descending limb. He slammed a low right palm into Jigen-ryū’s left kidney line. That landed. Jigen-ryū’s breath hitched; he rotated his hips toward the pain, protecting the flank. He grabbed for Piguaquan’s shoulder with his left hand, fingers like a vice, aiming to anchor and crush. Piguaquan didn’t fight the grab. He pivoted counterclockwise under the hand, letting it ride over the curve of his shoulder as he stepped outside Jigen-ryū’s left foot. With the new angle, he lashed a left forearm across the back of Jigen-ryū’s neck and pulled, while his right foot hooked Jigen-ryū’s left ankle from behind—a sweep timed with the pull. Jigen-ryū’s stance cracked. He dropped his weight hard into his right leg, hips sinking, and his right hand shot up to the back of his own head, resisting the neck pull with spine alignment. The sweep took his heel, but he bent his left knee and turned the fall into a deep lunge, left hand slapping the ground to keep elevation. His right elbow came smashing back, a brutal heel of bone hunting Piguaquan’s ribs. Piguaquan had counted the elbow. He’d expected the fall to drag Jigen-ryū forward another half foot; the deep lunge cut that distance. The elbow came earlier and closer. He twisted his torso left, taking the elbow along the meat of his obliques. It hurt—his breath hissed through his teeth—but his left hand was still across Jigen-ryū’s neck. He snapped it tight, rolled his wrist, and used the leverage to spin around the kneeling man’s back, ending up behind his left shoulder. Jigen-ryū pushed off his left palm and surged up like a spring. He whipped his torso, right hand carving back toward where Piguaquan had been. The other man was no longer there; he’d slid on the broken tile to Jigen-ryū’s far left, flank to the wall. There was no space to flank further; the crumbly plaster pressed against his shoulder blades. The crowd shouted now, words indistinct but meaning obvious. Blood had yet to spill, but both were marked: a crescent of red at Jigen-ryū’s lower lip from the palm, a darkening bruise on Piguaquan’s side from the elbow. Jigen-ryū closed the gap with a small hop-step, pressing Piguaquan to the wall. He unleashed the cannon: a forward rush, right forearm a chopping blade to the collarbone, left hand driving to the solar plexus. Two beats, one wave. Piguaquan abandoned the wall in the only direction left: down. He slid, knees bending, spine a curve, the forearm slash skimming hair. As he sank, he whipped his right arm outward in a horizontal circle, wrist limber, the back of the forearm snapping into Jigen-ryū’s left wrist as it drove in. The strike redirected the hand just enough that the left palm hit ribs instead of centerline. Still, the drive compressed him. Piguaquan let himself be crushed to the ground, back skidding across grit. Jigen-ryū bore down, knee seeking to pin a thigh. Piguaquan planted his right foot against the base of the wall and, using the recoil, slung his hips left, a slide that took his body out from under the pinning knee by inches. As he moved, he scythed his left leg low, heel hooking behind Jigen-ryū’s right ankle and tugging while both hands pressed at Jigen-ryū’s thigh. Jigen-ryū shifted weight again. He did not fight the hook directly; he rotated his hips with it, making the sweep partial. He staggered, planted his left hand on the wall to catch balance, and in the same breath snapped his right knee forward on a short line toward Piguaquan’s head. Piguaquan rolled his head offline, the knee thudding stone inches from his ear. He used the same roll to get onto his left hip and pop up to a one-knee kneel. His right hand lashed up, a cracking palm to the inside of Jigen-ryū’s left elbow, buckling it. The hand on the wall slipped. Jigen-ryū’s chest dropped forward. Piguaquan rose, taking the outside lane again. He threaded under the collapsing left arm and came up square to Jigen-ryū’s flank. The crowd felt the pivot of momentum. Piguaquan did not chase a single killing blow; he poured a flurry—right palm heel to jaw hinge, left backfist to temple, right forearm cut to neck, each from a different angle, each hitting a different plane. Whip, flip, chop. The blows were not heavy by themselves; in sequence, they began to fuzz Jigen-ryū’s edge. Jigen-ryū responded by compressing. He cinched his elbows inward, chin tucked, and rammed forward like a boar. His right shoulder struck Piguaquan’s chest, driving him backward. They crossed the chalk ring’s line and hit a patch of scattered stones. Jigen-ryū’s foot bit and held; Piguaquan’s heel found a round rock and skidded. The hit took Piguaquan into the base of a half-collapsed pillar. Stone thudded his spine. Jigen-ryū’s right hand punched low, deep into gut. Air left Piguaquan in a cough that tasted of pennies. Jigen-ryū pulled back for the finishing line: a diagonal cut from right to left across the neck and jaw, hips loaded. Piguaquan’s left hand, shaking, came up not to block but to cling—fingers hooking Jigen-ryū’s sleeve at the elbow. He tugged, not backward but forward, shortening the strike’s arc. The blade-hand passed too close; it clipped cheekbone instead of throat. The impact flashed white but gave a pocket under the arm. Piguaquan dove into it, cheek scraping cloth, shoulders compressing. He emerged under Jigen-ryū’s striking arm, now on the inside line, chest to chest within elbow range. Jigen-ryū didn’t panic. Inside range was the grave of many men; to him, it was an altar. He punched in with his left at liver distance, a cruel shovel. Piguaquan had no room for a wide movement; he pivoted his hips a quarter turn right and dropped his left elbow down, catching the punch with the bony shelf. It ricocheted. He had kept his right hand low in the dive; now he drove it up under Jigen-ryū’s floating ribs with a rising palm heel, using the ground through his thighs. The body shook. Jigen-ryū’s mouth opened in a soundless oath. He threw his head forward for a short, savage butt. Piguaquan tilted his own skull, the two brows grazing; it split skin on both but did not concuss. He answered with a whipping forearm across the mouth. Blood finally spattered on the chalk. Jigen-ryū shoved, creating a sliver of space. That was all he needed. He slid his right foot outside Piguaquan’s left, pivoted his hips, and unleashed the cut he had wanted from the start: right forearm down and through, left hand drawing back to load, shoulder driving, spine a spear. It was an old strike, made for men in armor, a thunderbolt in a corridor. Piguaquan saw the line. He could not step back; the pillar was there. He stepped in. He stepped into the storm. His left foot crossed behind his right in a tight, swift step, spinning his torso with it. As the forearm descended, he rotated under it, letting it shave his shoulder, then closed like a trapdoor. In the same spin, his right arm reversed direction into a downwards diagonal chop—Pigua’s signature—landing across Jigen-ryū’s trapezius at the base of the neck, the lash of tendon and bone finding a nerve highway. Jigen-ryū’s right arm faltered. The line wobbled. Piguaquan did not stop. The spin gave him another angle; he let it carry his left hand up and around, palm cupping the back of Jigen-ryū’s head. He yanked, dragging the skull down as his right knee came up, timed to meet. It was not a huge knee; there wasn’t room. But with the head dragging into it, it crashed into the face with a wet crack. Jigen-ryū’s legs trembled. His right hand, still halfway in a cut, fell and scraped the pillar. He surged on pride alone, a last forward drive, arms flaring outward just enough to create rough space and deny a clean finish. Piguaquan gave that space and took it in the same breath. He slipped off to Jigen-ryū’s right side, his foot sliding across chalk. His right hand, the whipping rope, snapped back across the jawline again and again: three quick backhands, each turning the head a fraction more. In that broken cadence, he stepped behind Jigen-ryū’s right foot and sealed it—heel touching heel. His left forearm wrapped across the chest and pressed back, not a choke, a bar. He pulled with the forearm and pushed with the left hip, a rotational throw without flourish. Jigen-ryū went over the trapped heel, spine arcing, shoulders hitting dust. He rolled to his side immediately, as trained, trying to regain feet. Piguaquan was there before the roll completed. He knelt on the near upper arm, pinning it with a sharp knee, and set his right palm on Jigen-ryū’s throat. Not crushing—just asserting. His left hand cocked back, the forearm a whip ready to crack again. The bell did not ring. The crowd was a roar, then a hush, then Jigen-ryū’s corner shouting his name with four sharp syllables. He looked up along the line of the palm at his throat, past the red-and-black wrap on the wrist, to the eyes above—eyes from the street, hard and honest in their contempt. He felt the ice of humiliation under the heat in his cheek. He exhaled. His hands opened where they lay in the dust. Piguaquan’s left forearm did not fall. He held the pose one more breath. A thread of blood ran from the split on his brow down his nose and dripped onto Jigen-ryū’s armband, a bright red dot on lacquer. Then he pulled his right palm away and rocked back off the pin. He stood with a wince, half-bowed to no one and nothing, and stepped back over the chalk. Jigen-ryū rolled up to a knee. He stared at the chalk line, at the stones, at the stain where his blood met dust. He stood slowly, every motion controlled, even in defeat. The crowd split in reactions—exultation and fury braided into the same volume. Money changed hands with laughter and teeth. Someone hurled an insult like a hook. Someone else spat through the empty doorway into the night. Above, through the broken roof, the stars did not flinch. The two men looked at each other across the ring, old ghosts at their shoulders. Their armbands were the same colors—red and black—but the debts they wore were not equal. Tonight, one was paid in full and another marked to accrue with interest. Their masters could forbid, their elders could sneer, their schools could write new lines in their secret histories. None of it would change the fact that in the crumbling bones of a failed temple, on a chalk circle and broken tile, speed

Model Output:
The speakers in each corner blast the track a hair too loud, symmetrical cubes of sound that press the air flat. The bass is a grid; it pins my ribs to the tempo like thumbtacks. The studio is clean enough to feel hostile: sprung maple floor, full mirrors from ankle to ceiling, black tape marking formations at precise intervals—one line dead center, two flanking lines, a diagonal slash of X’s near upstage right. We're arranged in five rows of five, two meters apart, center marks glowing off our socks in fluorescent reflection. I'm in Row 4, Position 3—the far left if you count from downstage right. I count because it keeps me from drowning in all this order. Back home our formation was a circle that kept breaking and reforming, a ripple of bodies, but here bodies click into place like furniture. My spot is exactly one forearm length from the tape at stage left. “Again,” says Daesuk-nim, and it sounds like a gavel. He stands near downstage center, arms folded behind him, his face set to neutral. Legend says he breaks you and builds you back precise as a metronome. He’s the only person in the room I can’t track by mirror; he stands slightly off the line of our reflection so my eyes have to choose. When I meet his gaze in the glass, he lifts a chin at my knees. “Lower.” The count is 5-6-7-8, sliding in like a boot under a door. I catch my breath on beat one. Beat 1-2: Bodies explode to a first position that isn’t ballet’s first but K-pop’s: feet parallel under hips, knees soft, weight centered. Arms shoot to clean 90-degree angles—right arm up in a high V, left arm out at shoulder height—while the head looks dead front, eyes level. My right arm, city-schooled, wants to travel, to arc. I lock it into a straight line, triceps burning. Beat 3-4: We snap into a tutting box—forearms bending inward, wrists flexed so the fingers point up, edges square. The geometry is supposed to match the grid of the bass. My left wrist gives me away—muscle memory wants to melt the angle, roll to a wave. “No wave,” barks the assistant captain from Row 2 without looking back. The left side of the mirror shows my frame bleeding at the corner, a soggy square surrounded by razor blades. Beat 5: Step touch right, left foot dragging in a half-beat behind, chest isolating left-right-left. It’s a basic commercial groove, machine-made. In the mirror, twenty-five bodies tick tock together. My chest wants to spiral, a figure-eight, weight sinking on the inside edge. I force it into a pendulum, straight-line, micro-paused accents. Beat 6-7-8: Hit a chest pop, snap both arms down to the hips, wrists flexed forward like stop signs. Left foot steps to second position exactly on the line of tape. Our coach pauses the track mid-sub beat. The room holds breath like it's a single drum. My sneakers lift dust that doesn’t exist in this place. “Left foot is on line,” Daesuk-nim says without pointing. He doesn’t have to; the floor is a map. “Hand angles… Ji-won, correct the third finger.” He walks upstage like a cat and stops three stations right of me. His shoes do not squeak. He nods once at me. “Lower.” I bend my knees further than they want to go, quads screaming. Back on the block, my plies were always open, knees tracking over toes so I could drop into a floor freeze, catch a hit, explode. Here it’s unison depth—everyone’s thighs level, knees at identical angles. If you’re not at 90 degrees, you might as well be in a different city. He claps once. The speakers punch the first bar back in. We run the chorus. Eight-count phrases stack on top of each other like cement. The move that’s killing me comes at the end of the second eight: Eight-count 1, 2, 3: Right foot steps to diagonal out, left foot cross-behinds on the and count, whole body tilts at fifteen degrees to upstage right. Arms slice into a level L—right arm forward, left out. Head follows the line of the right forearm. Precision. I hit the diagonal and feel stable. Count 4: We hook the right heel behind the left, sink to a demi-pointe on the left, drive a right elbow back into our imaginary spine, chest isolation hitting forward then back on the and count. My chest wants to mush it into one wave, to chew and swallow the beat. I bite it into two clean pops. My scapula stutters, reluctant. Count 5-6: A body roll is supposed to ripple from sternum to pelvis, but not here—here it’s segmented, neck-jaw-chest-abs. Each vertebra is a click track. I can do a roll that looks like smoke; this is more like a zipper. My instinct is to pause my head and make it a breath; the mirror shows the head going first, jaw jutting on the and. I move my jaw like a marionette, hate the feeling. Count 7: Step left to wide second, drop to a deep plie. Arms shoot down into a blade. We prepare a knee swivel, weight in the middle, pelvis neutral. No hips. “And eight”: Everyone snaps their heels together like a camera shutter. I kiss the heels and accidentally add a tiny heel-toe bounce—a ghost of a top rock. The mirror betrays me with a flicker. The girl to my right, Hana, glances without moving her head. She can see my rhythm bleeding on the floor. “Again from ‘V-cut,’” Daesuk-nim says, using the shorthand for the high V shape that begins the motif. He’s watching me blend into the pack and he is not impressed. Second run: I fight my life to match the counts. On 1, I shoot right arm up, left out. On 2, we switch—left up, right out—without a millimeter of shoulder bounce. On 3, tuck elbows to ribs, fists punching out from the sternum, fists vertical, then horizontal on the and. Right foot steps back precisely one length; knee doesn’t splay. On 4, head tilt at five degrees, not six. He said earlier he can see a degree. I believe him. My thighs and lungs are in an argument that includes name-calling. The heat from the speakers makes the sweat at my temples feel like oil. The track’s snare is a razor wire that we keep clotheslining ourselves on. The assistants count in Korean and English: Hana in front of me murmurs “hana, dul, set,” while the captain at the front says, “one, two, three,” a bilingual metronome. The diagonal traveling section. We scoot two steps upstage right on 1-and-2—polka-like, sliding on the balls of our feet with knees still at identical heights. On three, we pivot to face downstage, lifting our left heels only a breath off the floor, hips squared with the mirror. My heel wants to lift higher, make a statement. I nail it to the wood in my head. On 4, we jump, feet barely skimming, tuck the knees to chest but not too much, land exactly on our marks, my left foot hugging the tape to the edge of a millimeter. The room lands as one sound. Sixteen counts live in my calves, hammering. Fingers, shoulders, even eyelashes become choreography—no blink on 6 if you’re the center line. I’m safe in row four; my mistakes ripple mostly to the back wall. But in Daesuk’s eyes the back is every bit the front. We keep going. Chorus two. The new element is a ripple cannon on counts 5 through 7: center goes first, then the second line, then ours, each catching a sharp shoulder check followed by a hip flick that’s almost but not quite sexualized. They say “hip” in a way that means “hit it but make it PG.” In my body, a hip flick is a sentence break. Here it’s a period, double-spaced. I set my pelvis, try to flick without melting. My lower back complains, arch creeping in, shoulders lifting when they’re supposed to be down. My brain screams, drop, drop, drop your scapula, and I push them down, neck lengthening, jaw buzzing. We stop on 8. The assistant pauses the track. The speakers keep humming like insects. “Row four, number three,” Daesuk says. He finally points. It’s me. The sound of twenty-four pairs of feet shifting to neutral has a texture: soft soles, dried sweat. My name sticks to the inside of my mouth. He walks along the mirror until he’s beside me, close enough that I can see the pattern of his shoelaces reflected. He taps the top of my right hip bone, then the opposite shoulder. “You are dancing between. Here and here.” I want to say, I am a between. My neighborhood was between the freeway and the pier, between cops and crews, between dance as joy and dance as survival. I will not say that. I say, “Yes,” and I drop my shoulder, square my pelvis. He watches, impassive. “You have hunger,” he says, almost too soft for the room. “You move like you were not allowed to make a mistake. But here, your hunger is wide. Make it narrow.” Wide. I think of long summer sidewalks with cracks you have to hop. Of routines born in parking lots where you find the beat in a passing car. Narrow is this room. Narrow is the count. He claps again. We go from the top. The music snaps my head back into the now. The speakers bark out a synth line, the hi-hat stutters a sixteenth-note grid. My body wants to climb it like a playground. We start on 5-6-7-8. I lock my neck, cage the impulse. Beat one: high V. Two: switch. Three: tut. Four: clean frame. Step sequence. The traveling slide, pivot, hop. I pack my hunger into the angle of my wrists, the exactness of my elbows. The more precise I get, the rougher the edges inside me feel scraping against bone. I can’t find myself in this square. Then—count 7 of the second chorus, post-cannon—there’s a tiny suspension before the drop. We throw a right-hand slice down the body, catch the knee with the palm, rebound and snap the hand to our temple. It’s a dramatic shape, a memeable moment. The move wants a breath of texture, wants a tension that isn’t in the count sheet. I could give it something. A micro-drag on the hand sliding down, a half-beat hesitation that would make the snap at the temple explode. My crew would scream for that. I don’t. I glue my hand to the beat. I conform. And as I do, the floor feels further away. I think I can hear my block calling out over the bass saying, whose groove is that? Again. Again. Again. We break it down to bones, rebuild. At one water break that isn’t a break—thirty seconds to sip and reset—I stand in my square and breathe like I’m supposed to, in through the nose, out through the mouth, shoulders dropped, core engaged. Hana leans a millimeter closer and whispers, “Your freestyle at the scholarship showcase? Cool.” I grin with only the left side of my mouth; the right is busy not moving. “Thanks.” She shrugs a blade of shoulder. “Here,” she says, tapping the tape with her toe. “You make clean. Later, solo.” Later. If there is later. If I survive this now without sanding myself down to stock. Final run. We’re at the end, three-minute mark. Sweat turns the floor into a suggestion. The count has lived in my joints long enough that my muscle memory is learning the foreign language, an accent still heavy. The last eight is an all-in. We form a wedge formation—center front, lines fanning back. I travel three steps upstage left on 1-and-2; on the third, our wedge tightens. I pivot to face directly front on 3; on 4, we drop into the deepest plie of the routine. On 5-6, we execute a synchronized wave—the only sanctioned wave—from front to back, heads tilting like dominos, arms lifting from the elbows in sequence. My segment is the fourth. I count 1-2-3-4 and lift exactly then, elbow first, wrist last. The wave climbs through us, robotic but smooth. I could make it liquid; I don’t. It hits the back line on 6, and on 7 we all snap right feet to our left ankles, a coupe without the artistry, knees pointing outward, torso still. On 8 we freeze, faces neutral, eyes sharp, breathing invisible. Silence. The speakers hiss. Sweat tickles a path down my spine in a straight line because even my sweat is trying to be disciplined here. Daesuk-nim stares at us. A long beat. He nods once, so small it could be an accident. People almost exhale. He says, “You are not there.” No one moves. He points at me again. “You are still between.” It lands like a sentence. Between conforming so clean I disappear, and rebelling and getting cut. Between the scholarship contract and the alleyway cipher I won. Between the jar this academy wants to put me in and the ocean that raised me. The decision arrives like a beat I can’t ignore. It’s not dramatic—no storm cloud, no slow-motion. It’s a pivot. I can learn to hit their counts. I can narrow the hunger. But I can keep a secret stash of rhythm under my tongue, save a tiny room inside for the voice that moves when the music isn’t even on. That’s how we survived where I grew up: we kept parts of ourselves others couldn’t polish. I exhale. I lower my shoulders one millimeter more. I lock my elbow at the exact angle they drilled. I let my face blur into the group. And as we run it again, at the exact moment of the temple snap, I let my hand travel a hair’s breadth longer than choreography allows—so small even Daesuk-nim might call it a mistake of fatigue. A secret hook for later. A whisper to myself: you are still here. We hit the final freeze and hold past the count. My thighs threaten mutiny. The studio smells like disinfectant and human, like trying. Hana’s breath syncs with mine—four counts in, four counts out. Daesuk-nim’s gaze cuts over us, over me, catching, maybe, the shadow of what I kept. He says nothing. He claps once. “Again.” The speakers inhale, ready to ribcage me. I sink lower. I measure the distance from heel to tape, wrist to shoulder, the gap between who I am and who they want me to be, and I dance the space between without letting it swallow me. The grid tightens, the bass pins me to the beat, and I make my hunger narrow enough to fit for now, wide enough to breathe later. The counts hammer my bones into a shape that might carry both. And I choose to learn their lines without forgetting how to break formation when the time comes.

Model Output:
The Court of the Dreaming was convened beneath an impossible vault of dim star-stippled ceiling. In that hush, a single, giant hourglass tilted with the gravity of a cathedral bell. It dripped shimmering sand, each grain a silvery seed of memory. The gallery—murmurous shades, sprinkled cats, a cluster of blushing, half-formed teenage daydreams in hoodies—breathed as one creature. The bailiff was a raven with an attitude and a sash. “All rise for the Lord of the Dreaming,” croaked the raven, already bored. Dream entered like a shadow remembering it had a body. He sat on the bench. There were no gavels in his court; the air itself leaned in. “Mora,” Dream said, voice a dead tide. “First Love. Step forward.” First Love shuffled closer, hands clasped, wearing an expression like a child about to confess a spilled secret. Their cheeks were, as always, improbably rosy, as though embarrassed by their own existence. They wore a sweater that had been knitted out of blushes and soft sighs. Next to them, Mora slouched on the stand like a cat who’d been caught elegantly demolishing a bird. She had the look of midnight in motion, hair as black as exhausted ink, eyes like coins someone had warmed in their palm. Her dress was either smoke or a shadow that knew how to flirt. The raven cleared his throat with disdain. “Case 77,211. The matter of Max—age fourteen, dream frequency: three per week; content: recurring—field, wildflowers, object of affection, near-kiss, confusion. Plaintiff: First Love, craftsmanship. Defendant: Mora, dietary requirements. Claims of vector-squatting, theme corruption, consensual imagery violation. Adjacent claim: juvenile hormones as mitigating circumstance.” “Noted,” Dream said, and the hourglass ticked without ticking. First Love adjusted their sweater. “Your Lordship,” they began, voice pink at the edges. “This is a carefully nurtured dreamscape. The field is based on a memory of a class picnic. The girl’s laugh is tuned a half-note sharp to make his stomach do that thing. The almost-kiss—deliberately almost—creates a soft ache foundational for future healthy connections. This is craft.” Mora arched a brow. “It’s lunch.” First Love looked wounded. “No. It’s guidance. We are shaping tenderness—” “We are shaping an entrée,” Mora said sweetly, placing a hand on her chest as if stunned to be misunderstood. “A girl’s gotta eat too, you know? It’s not like I can open a bistro in some accountant’s ledger. College kids these days insist they don’t dream. Can’t feed on ‘hustle’ posters.” A smattering of teen daydreams snickered, then pretended innocence when Dream’s gaze passed over them like a cloud. Dream folded his long hands, the movement slow as a glacier deciding to shrug. “The dream in question.” At the gesture, the air to his right rippled. A theater curtain, if a curtain could be made out of night, lifted. The scene played across an oval of dreamlight: the field. Wildflowers. Bees, modestly overenthusiastic. Max, a little awkward. The girl: ponytail, the brand-new geography of a summer dress. The almost-kiss, an alchemy of shyness and misapprehension. Then, the twist. Her knee on his stomach. Her weight on his chest. His breath caught and didn’t uncatch. Her mouth grew too many shadows. Her eyes did not blink. Terror laced with—well, Max was fourteen. Confusion did not surrender so easily. The gallery rippled. A sigh, a gasp, a few appreciative noises followed by embarrassed throat-clearing. “This is not what we agreed upon,” First Love murmured, color climbing their neck. “The gentle confusion is supposed to be blushes and butterflies, not—” They gestured weakly toward the vision of breathless paralysis and longing twisted like a ribbon. “Not a… conflation.” Mora gave him a sympathetic look that failed to reach her eyes. “I’ve been very respectful of the mood-board. Did you see the continuity? Same field. Same pollen count. I could have used a thorn bush. I didn’t. I am not a monster.” She paused. “I am a monster, but I am a polite one.” “You trespassed,” First Love said. “This is the boy’s dream. It is his to wander. It is mine to cultivate for him, to teach him tenderness.” “And it is mine,” Mora purred, “to teach him that tenderness is heavy sometimes, and that bodies have consequences. And also that waking up is sweet. My tables were empty, darling. Choking panic pairs beautifully with adolescent longing. Very sustainable.” Dream’s face did not move, but irritation drifted through the courtroom like a draft. His attention flicked to the hourglass. The sand continued to fall with infuriating serenity. “Mora,” Dream said. “The sovereignty of dreamshapers is not a buffet.” “It’s a potluck,” Mora said. “I brought a dish.” “You brought a chokehold,” First Love snapped, surprising themself. The gallery murmured. Somewhere a cat laughed with its shoulders. The raven, in an aside to the court reporter (a sheet of parchment with opinions), muttered: “Honestly. In my day it was all teeth and staircases to nowhere.” Dream considered. The field slowed, the girl’s silhouette stilled. The grainy silver sand hummed, forming faint letters as it fell. He did not look at the words. He already knew what they said: You have to decide. Again. “What damages do you seek?” he asked First Love. “I want the dream restored,” First Love said, earnest as an unsealed letter. “Free of intrusion. Let the boy’s heart practice being gentle without… hostility.” Mora raised a finger. “Objection: calling me ‘hostility’ is defamatory. I am an inevitability. Also, certain data suggests that fear at this stage yields interesting—” She searched for a delicate word and failed. “—kinks.” A scatter of giggles. Someone in the gallery whispered, “Relatable,” and their mother conscience shushed them. Dream’s irritation sharpened into a very thin smile that only the hourglass noticed as a smudge in the falling sand. “Mora,” he said, “you claim necessity. How did you enter this dream?” Mora inspected her nails. “He fell asleep on his back,” she said. “Door was open. It’s almost rude not to drop in.” “Consent is not a hinge,” Dream said. She looked up, blackly amused. “Tell that to my instincts.” First Love worried the hem of their sweater. “I placed safeguards. The poppy count. The gracefully-fizzling end-of-scene. You shouldn’t have been able to graft on your—your… sitting.” Mora, attempting helpfulness: “It’s a sit. A classic. I’m very good at it.” The raven coughed. “We have exhibits, if Your Lordship desires.” With disdain, he gestured. A dream herbarium popped up, labeled in a neat hand: Rose of Shy Glances, Dandelion of Stupid Courage, Clover of “Wait, Did You See That?” Dream waved it away. He had no patience for prop comedy today. “You will both cease preening,” he said softly. He stood, or rather, the bench realized it had been wrong to think he was sitting. The courtroom’s darkness tilted with his rise. “The Dreaming is not a pantry. It is not a workshop. It is not a feeding ground. It is the place where mortals practice being. I will not have that practice turned into an assembly line for either of you.” Mora tilted her head, unapologetic. “Respectfully, my lord, it is also where nightmares live. You carved my name into the lintel of this place yourself.” “Did I,” Dream murmured. He had, of course. Old as the first infant’s first strangled startle. “It was very flattering,” Mora added. “Nice calligraphy.” First Love glanced between them. “We can negotiate parameters,” they offered quickly, like offering tea to a quarrel. “I can add boundaries. No… weight-bearing poses.” Mora made a face. “Starvation is a boundary. I don’t love it.” Dream’s gaze slid to the hourglass again. The last quarter was taking its time. He contemplated for a heartbeat that stretched and unstretched across centuries. “Max,” he said then, to the air. The gallery rustled at that name, as though daring the court to summon him. Dream did not conjure the boy. He summoned only the idea of him: a silhouette, a breath, a pulse, the crackle of neurons caught between biology and poetry. The silhouette flickered on the edge of the courtroom, confused, oblivious, a late homework assignment and a new ache behind his ribs. The court stilled. “You will not speak to him,” Dream said, and both entities flinched as if he’d slammed something heavy. “But you will listen.” Mora’s smile thinned. First Love clasped their hands tighter. The silhouette sighed. In that breath were the field, the girl, the weight, the fear, the sweetness, the catastrophe of being fourteen and a body. It was not unhappy. It was not happy. It was irregular, like a drum not yet sure if it’s a song. Dream closed his eyes. When he opened them, mischief pricked at the corner like a thorn hidden in velvet. “The ruling,” he said, and the raven straightened as if for a punchline he’d already predicted. “First Love will retain primary custodianship of this recurring dreamscape,” Dream said. First Love brightened, then looked guilty for brightening. “The field is restored. The almost-kiss will resume its almostness. The confusion will be tender.” Mora sighed with theatrical boredom. “Here it comes.” “However,” Dream continued, “twice per month—no more, no less—on nights of errant heat or when the covers are kicked to the floor by accident, the dream will invite a shadow at the edge. A pressure in the chest. Not paralysis. Not theft of breath. A reminder that longing has weight. You may taste the air, Mora. You may not keep it.” Mora’s eyes flashed. “That’s a tasting menu,” she said grudgingly. “I’m supposed to stay thin?” “Consider intermittent fasting,” the raven muttered, receiving a look that could have curdled ink. “Additionally,” Dream went on, and his tone acquired an almost imperceptible lilt that made the hourglass ripple with attention, “on those sanctioned nights, the crush will turn her head away from the almost-kiss and ask: ‘Are you okay?’ Max will not answer. He will wake before he can. He will carry the question into daylight. He will find its answer in time, with others, in places not of this court.” First Love’s eyes filled with well-managed dew. “That’s… that’s good,” they whispered, as though he’d just invented a new color and handed it to them. Mora tapped her lip, assessing. “You’re going to make him empathize with his own lungs,” she said. “You can be very cruel.” “I am capable of mischief,” Dream replied, and the gallery rippled, uncertain whether that pleased them or not. “Further,” he added, because irritation is rarely satisfied with only one flourish, “Max will begin to roll onto his side in his sleep more often. I will place a cat on his chest twice in the coming year, purely by coincidence.” He did not smile, but the word coincidence wobbled with amusement. The cats in the gallery preened. “Objection,” Mora said, half-hearted. “That’s profiling.” “Overruled,” Dream said. “Lastly: Mora, you will confine your ministrations to the appointed nights. You will not lean, pin, sit, or otherwise weigh upon this boy outside those boundaries. If you hunger, there are stairwells, attics, study halls. There are grown men who nap on trains. There are exam-week mistresses of coffee. I can provide a list.” “I have a list,” Mora said crisply. “I am a professional.” “First Love,” Dream said, turning. “You will revise your scene to include a conversation, at some point in the near future, in daylight. You will ease him toward language. His confusion will have handrails.” First Love nodded, flushed with purpose. “Yes, my lord.” The hourglass continued, unbothered, royally indifferent to their arrangements. Dream sat back. The bench breathed around him. Mora leaned on the rail, resigned and amused. “Twice a month,” she said. “For the rest, I prowl.” “You do,” Dream agreed. “But not here. Not often.” She cocked her head. “You are in a mood.” He was. He did not say so. “Court is adjourned,” Dream said. The raven announced it more loudly, as if his caw were the hinge on which justice swung. The gallery emptied in a susurrus of shoe-sounds that weren’t shoes and whispers that would later feel like déjà vu. First Love lingered at the edge of the field projected in the air, making a tiny adjustment to the way the summer light lay on the girl’s shoulder. Mora stretched her neck until it cracked like the first ice on a lake. As they departed, Dream watched the hourglass. It dripped. It always would. He lifted a hand, and without touching it, nudged one grain so that it landed a fraction of a fraction earlier than it would have. Somewhere, a boy turned onto his side. Somewhere, a cat made a pleased noise and stayed. Somewhere, a future blush was a shade darker, and a future panic, a shade lighter. Mora paused by the door, looked back. “Nice calligraphy,” she repeated, and was gone into a dark that was not empty, merely patient. First Love faced Dream, hesitant. “Thank you,” they said. It sounded like embarrassment and gratitude had been introduced and were politely shaking hands. Dream inclined his head. “Do your work,” he said. “And do not mistake softness for absence of teeth.” First Love smiled, small and sincere, and vanished into rose-scent. The Court fell quiet, except for the hourglass. Dream sat and watched the sand. Irritation ebbed. Mischief lingered, a pet cat on the windowsill of his mood, washing a paw with infinite, lazy menace. The raven hopped onto the bench. “You enjoyed that,” he accused. Dream did not respond. But between one grain and the next, the sand seemed to laugh, very softly, and if you’d been there, you would have been unsure if you’d imagined it. That is the nature of the Dreaming. That, and you never forget the weight of a breath until something sits on it. Or someone asks if you are okay. And then, of course, you spend the rest of your life learning how to answer.

Model Output:
The broken cart wheel lies abandoned near the village gates, a splintered rim of wood catching moonlight like a pale, dead eye. The fields beyond are silvered with frost and fog, and the village behind the gate keeps its shutters barred and hearths banked low as if prayer might convince night to pass by without noticing. It will not. He notices everything. He is the night and its teeth. Alucard stands where the rutted road narrows, a tall slash of red against the gray. He tips his wide-brimmed hat to the wind and smiles into the dark, the line of his mouth too indulgent to be kind. His orange lenses catch the blood moon’s glare and burn like watchfires. He speaks to no one. Or he speaks to the countless souls inside him, the choir that never quiets. Tonight, he is patient. He has scented something lively. When she arrives, it is not in a burst of flame or peal of thunder. It is a ripple, a pressure shift, the world inhaling. A shape coalesces twenty paces to his left: a woman in a black star-spattered dress with a fur-lined mantle, violet eyes rimming the night, raven hair braided down her back. She smells of lilac and gooseberries, and beneath that—iron discipline. Exhaustion. Raw nerve. Yennefer of Vengerberg does not startle at the sight of him. Her gaze skims the hat, the coat, the guns—lingers on the smile, the aloof stance of something that cannot be harmed. She folds her arms, purse of lips white-scored with annoyance. “Charming village,” she says. “I would complain to the wheelwright if I thought anyone here had the courage to admit they sold that wheel and fled before the ink dried.” Alucard bows fractionally, like a courtier who forgot entirely how to be polite and is now playing the game for his own amusement. “They fled for good reason, little bird.” Her eyes narrow. “Do not call me little anything.” “The bird of Hermes is my name,” he purrs. “Eating my wings to make me tame.” “That makes one of us.” She tilts her head, studying him now with the care she gives old texts and dead languages, searching for the path through. “You carry silver. You smell like graves and gunpowder. Your shadow has too many legs.” His smile shows teeth. “You are observant.” “I am many things.” Her chin lifts with careless arrogance. “In this case, I am en route to a village that paid for my time and then attempted to leave their problem for me to resolve without witness.” “They left you an offering,” Alucard says, indicating the wheel. “A breadcrumb. Or a test.” “As if I haven’t been tested,” she mutters, mostly to herself. A howl rises from the treeline, ragged and hungry. The fog writhes. Something comes out of it, broad as a bull and low to the ground. It is a ghoul that has eaten too many corpses, its skull empty of reason, its ribs sprung wide to accommodate its glut. Its claws rattle on the road as it charges. Yennefer lifts a hand and the world snaps into a rune-laced grid. A blast of kinetic force knocks the creature sideways into the ditch with a sound like a cart hitting a milestone. Alucard doesn’t move. He watches the creature lift its head and stand again, crooked once and then straight, eager to try once more. “You didn’t kill it,” he observes. “I intend to collect full payment,” she says primly. “They promised multiple.” “I promised myself someone else,” he says, and moves. The gun he draws is a slab of black steel, obscene in its size and authority. He fires once, the report splitting the night. The ghoul’s skull becomes a dark mist, regardless of any runes or witcher signs or the mercy of gods not watching. The body takes a step and collapses. Yennefer’s nostrils flare. “Was that necessary?” “No,” he says. “Satisfying.” He flicks the barrel to shed dark flecks that might be blood and might be something older. “So. Sorceress. You have the scent of a gatekeeper about you. Commissions. Courts. Petty kings. A hunger like a blade hidden in lace.” “You’ve a poet in your coffin, vampire.” “Several. Their voices are delightful.” Violet eyes sharpen. “Do you know what you are, or do you pretend to be what those voices want?” He laughs, a low, feral sound. The fog around his boots tightens into a coil, then spills. His shadow ripples, subdividing into sharp little heads that taste the air. “I am the thing that remembers itself in the mirror long after the person has forgotten. I am the tame bird eating its wings and calling it penance. I am a weapon—sharpened, fed, loosed.” “And owned,” she says softly. The word hangs between them. Even the fog hesitates. He looks at her over the wet shine of the road and says nothing for a heartbeat. When he does speak, it is a softer tone, a blade sheathed in velvet. “Do you know what you are?” Her mouth, which knows how to scoff and cut and kiss, stills. “A woman who made choices,” she says at last. “And pays for them. As we all do.” More howls now, more urgent. Shapes press at the edge of the field of view, testing. Yennefer flicks her fingers; lines of blue fire lace the road and the ditch. A ward hums into being, bright and vicious. The hunger at the edge whines, confused. Alucard’s head tilts, admiration stripped of mockery for an instant. “Neatly done.” “Keep your beasts outside the circle,” she says without breaking eye contact. “You may be immune to many things, but I assure you, arrogance is not one of them.” “I am humility itself,” he says, stepping, deliberately, to the very edge of her ward without crossing it. The energy snarls against his coat and licks at his boots, tasting. He lifts his chin into the bite. “Look at you. All spine now.” “I have always had a spine,” she says. “I merely…straightened it.” He inhales. Lilac and gooseberries and a sorrow that is not ripe, merely constant. He watches the hand she keeps close to her middle, never resting, always ready to draw power from points on the dial only she understands. “You have lost something.” “I am not sweet and I am not a maiden in distress in need of saving.” “I did not offer to save you,” he says, amused again. “I wondered what you would do to get back what cannot be returned.” Her eyes thicken with storm. “You mistake me for a beggar at a temple. I break temples. And I do not need your approval.” “Ah. Good. I am poor at giving it.” From the tree line, a cluster of starved corpses in shredded clothing slither and jerk toward the road, animated by some low magic that stink of fear. A half a dozen, then a dozen. Their eyes are wrong. Someone has workshopped a necromancy with cheap ingredients. “Lazy,” Yennefer says, disdain dripping. She gestures. The air itself folds into a blade. Heads fall like rotten apples. Another gesture. The corpses catch fire with green-tinged smoke and collapse into the ditch. She doesn’t look. She doesn’t falter. Alucard watches the economy of her violence with genuine appreciation. “You kill like a sovereign,” he says. “I tidy,” she replies. “Do you despise what you are?” he asks, sudden and conversational, as if discussing the weather. “You cover it with perfume and politics. But there is so much power underneath.” Her jaw clenches. “Despise? No. I chose. But I am not obligated to perform monstrosity to make you feel less alone.” He bares his teeth, delighted. “Perform monstrosity. How quaint. Most of your kind are the opposite—endless performance of humanity, despite their bones knowing better.” “My kind?” Her laughter is not kind. “Men who drink blood and call it sacrament? Or sorcerers who move mountains and are told to smile for kings? Choose your insult with care, vampire.” He spreads his arms as if to be crucified. “Insult? I offer you kinship. We are both instruments, both punished and indulged for the same sin—being good at what we are. The wheel broke because the village wanted to run from their debt. The dead rose because someone wanted a shortcut. And we come to cash the bill.” She looks at the wheel. For a moment, the expression on her face is naked and sharp: tired of debts, tired of notes and signatures. Then the mask slides back into place. “I do not share my burdens with strangers.” “And yet we share a road,” he says. The moon slides out from behind a clot of cloud. Everything sharpens further. The ward’s lines glitter. His smile becomes something that could have been gentle if he had not lost that word centuries ago. “We could share a hunt.” “You want to see if I can hurt you,” she says. “You’re bored. And lonely. And you want to press your fingers to a flame.” “And you want to know if I can break what you cannot,” he replies. “We are both curious.” The corpse-thing that had slunk from behind the cottage to their right chooses that moment to spring. It hits the ward and detonates in a cascade of blue-white sparks. Yennefer doesn’t flinch. Alucard doesn’t blink. They look at each other over the collapse of pretense. “Fine,” she says. “For tonight. We end whatever idiot raised these dead. Then you go your way.” “And you go yours,” he says, tipping his hat. “Lead on, my lady of broken wheels.” A twitch of her mouth suggests a smile she won’t give him. “Do not call me lady.” “Yennefer, then.” He tastes her name, rolls it around like wine. It does not make him drunk. It makes him careful. She drops the ward, and the night rushes in like water. He moves with it, flowing up the road at her side, not behind her, not ahead. As they pass into the village, shutters crack open a finger’s width, then slam. Behind the church, a glow throbs. A makeshift shrine to a patron saint of farmers is festooned with twitching garlands. The air is ripe with old blood and a hysteria that has curdled. “There,” she says. “Of course,” he says. “Faith and fear. Fertile ground.” On the shrine’s steps, a young priest in a ragged cassock is shaking, lips moving. In his lap, a book of clumsily penned sigils lies open, pages damp. He looks up when they arrive, eyes alight with fanatic light—a light that goes out when he sees Alucard, replaced by terror; and goes colder when he sees Yennefer, replaced by loathing. He snatches the book to him. He murmurs faster. “You will stop,” Yennefer says. “God will—” She flicks two fingers and his tongue goes numb. He gag-silences. “Good,” Alucard says, and kicks the book away. His boot prints char the wood beneath. Something lunges from the shadows—half a child, half a question, sewn together with spell-thread. For an instant, Yennefer’s face fractures. Then she sinks a hand into the air and yanks, and the thread pops, and the thing falls apart like a bad dream in daylight. Alucard’s hand is on the priest’s throat when she speaks. “No.” He glances back at her, eyes amused. “Mercy? From you?” “Information,” she says, voice flint. “And then—perhaps I burn him. Or perhaps I make him fix what he broke.” Alucard’s grip loosens, then tightens again just enough to keep the man from persuading himself he’s free. “A fair point.” The priest sobs. “I wanted—protection. The harvest. I—” “You raised your dead neighbors,” Yennefer says flatly. “That is not protection. That is cowardice dressed as piety.” “Cowards make the best monsters,” Alucard murmurs. She ignores him. “You will speak the reversal. Slowly.” Her eyes burn violet. The air smells like ozone and lilac, thunder and summer. “And if you lie, I will know.” He babbles. She listens. She extracts the pattern and cuts it to fit. It is not elegant magic, but she is. The dead in the ditches rattle and then lie still. In the field, something sighs. The pressure in the night eases. The blood moon drifts behind cloud. When she is done, she straightens, shoulders trembling with the effort she will not admit to. Alucard hasn’t let go of the man. His smile has gone small and hungry. Yennefer meets his eyes. “He belongs to the courts. To law.” He considers, head cocked. Then, with surprising grace, he drops the priest on the steps as though depositing a sack of grain. “How domestic of you.” “It pays,” she says. “And it keeps me honest.” “That word does not fit you.” “Nor you me.” She brushes soot from her sleeve and looks toward the road where a wheel lies, abandoned. “We are done.” “For tonight,” he says. He steps back into the wind, into the dark like it’s a coat he shrugs on. “You are interesting, Yennefer of Vengerberg. Perhaps I will consider you a worthy adversary.” “Consider what you like,” she says, turning away, chin high. “I do not perform for you.” “But you do perform,” he says, almost gently. “For yourself.” He touches the brim of his hat. “I will be watching.” “Get in line,” she says, and the corner of her mouth lifts, a near-smile more dangerous than any curse. They part at the gate, with the broken wheel like a seal between them. He dissolves into a colony of bats that scatter across the blood-bled sky and reform where no one can see. She opens a portal that glints like a shard of mirror and steps through smelling of lilac and gooseberries and the stubborn hope of a woman who will not be told no. The village exhales. The moon pales. The road remembers their footsteps but cannot decide which were heavier. Their power, for now, remains unspent enough to bring them back to one another. And the night, unsated, promises another meeting beneath a different shade of red.

Model Output:
The chain-link fences within the yard rattle whenever an inmate passes by, a constant clatter like teeth chattering in a cold mouth. Beyond them, concrete rises in grim slabs, the windows narrow and mirrored, the sky a bleached gray that looks like someone wiped fingerprints across it. This is the yard—if one can call a maze of fenced lanes and watchtowers a yard—of a prison known only by its official contract number. It’s a facility built like an apology to God: all straight lines and fluorescent light, everything so sterile it nearly stinks. Jolyne Cujoh feels the rattle in her molars as she brushes against a fence on the way back from “exercise.” In her head she’s cataloging the hum of cameras, the timing of guard rotations, the weight of key cards clipped to belts. Stone Free is itching beneath her skin, threads wanting to unspool like nerves at the edge of a scream. She feels every tug, every vibration through the wire. The yard is a harp, and she knows how to pluck it. The woman waiting for her at the end of the lane is not a guard. At first glance she could be a social worker: simple white shirt, black slacks, auburn hair in a clean tail, eyes as steady as watchfaces. Yellow eyes, ringed and polite. She’s smiling. She looks like she smells like soap and boiled rice. Jolyne stops short, automatic, feet planted. Her fingers twitch, and a thin line of blue thread unspools just enough to wind around her thumb and middle finger like a promise. The fences rattle. The air crackles as a yardful of inmates slow without knowing why, or maybe some part of them already knows. “Jolyne Cujoh,” the woman says. Her voice is a gentle trowel, smoothing mortar. “May I walk with you?” “You already are,” Jolyne says. She flicks her eyes to either side without moving her head. Two guards have vanished from their posts. The tower lights haven’t changed, but she can feel a pressure like someone’s hand wrapped around her neck, as if patience itself could strangle. “Who the hell are you supposed to be?” “Makima,” the woman says, as if that’s a title. “I’m with Public Safety. I’ve been following your case.” Jolyne laughs, hoarse and humorless. “If there’s no Mickey, this shit ain’t Disney. Public Safety doesn’t tail me from Miami to here and wait in my yard. You got transferred from Heaven?” Makima’s smile doesn’t widen but it becomes more visible, as if it moves from the lips to the eyes. She steps closer. The fences complain, shaking lightly. Every nearby inmate looks away all at once, as if extremely interested in the concrete under their shoes. “You have an unusual ability,” Makima says. “You unravel yourself. You become useful.” Stone Free uncoils from Jolyne’s wrist like a snake tasting the air. “Useful, huh? That what your pets call themselves?” Makima’s eyes flick down to the strand and back up. “I’m glad you understand analogies. I have a proposal.” “Hard pass,” Jolyne says. Makima’s head ticks, that small puzzled tilt a doll’s head might do. “You haven’t heard it yet.” “I don’t need to. You smell like trouble with lipstick. You’ve got the kind of smile that means only one of us leaves happy.” Jolyne’s voice lowers. “And if that’s how you get off, go buy a leash at a pet store.” Makima’s smile fades to polite interest. “You’re not afraid.” Jolyne says nothing. Afraid of this? Of men with guns? Of women who carry emptiness like an expensive bag? She isn’t sure if fear is the word. She is wary the way a hand is wary of a hot stove after the blister. She is wary in the way of people who have woken to handcuffs and bad dreams. Makima gestures, and the guard gate at the end of the lane hums open. No one has touched it. Out in the broader yard, the rattle spreads like a ripple through tall grass. The prisoners freeze; birds on a wire that suddenly calculate the sky’s weight. “I think you could leave here,” Makima says, friendly as a kindergarten teacher. “Or you can stay, Jolyne. If you stay under my care, I will arrange visitation with your father. Jotaro Kujo, correct?” Jolyne’s jaw tightens, and Stone Free’s strings go taut, a web around her elbows, her wrists. Makima watches the change like a biologist observing an amoeba sprout an eye. “Who told you that?” Jolyne asks. “People tell me many things,” Makima says. “My job is to decide who is worth listening to.” “Yeah? Let me decide something.” Jolyne breathes, and the strings spread from her fingers to the fence, invisible in the gray light until they catch a glint. “I don’t take orders. Not from a lady who uses people like chew toys.” Makima’s eyes cool by a degree that feels like a climate shift. “I didn’t say order,” she says. “I said care. I take care of what is mine.” Jolyne thinks of a leash, of a collar that closes without a sound. She thinks of hands on a steering wheel that isn’t there. Her laugh is a little too loud. “I got my own handcuffs, thanks. Don’t need new jewelry.” The gate slides shut behind Makima with a self-satisfied click. When she turns, two guards are there and then not, like a channel changing. Jolyne feels the pressure again, a subtle command pressing against the shape of her, and knows, the way instinct knows cliffs, that if this woman decides she is beneath her, there will be nothing left but knees and obedience. And Jolyne Cujoh kneels to no one. Stone Free lashes out, a panther of thread crawling from her forearm, looping the yard’s lamp pole, running across the razor wire, slipping through the chain link and back. She draws a lattice around them, a circle wide enough to make space, strings crossing strings until the air hums. The moment Makima steps forward, the web creaks and flexes. Makima doesn’t look at the web. She looks at Jolyne, as if memorizing a series of facts. “You’re clever,” she says. “You make distance and you make structure. You’d make a wonderful leash.” Jolyne’s stomach goes cold, but she spits to the side and grins. “You keep talking about dogs. You planning to bark or bite?” Makima raises one hand and points. There is no flourish, no circle, no Latin; there is a pressure, and one of the inmates down the lane flinches, then evaporates. Not explodes. Not vanishes into smoke. It is as if his pieces are deleted. The fence howls, every little diamond ringing in the sudden shock. Everyone turns to stone except the two of them inside the web. Jolyne’s heart claws at her throat. She does not blink. She widens her stance and peels another length of herself free, a filament that winds around Makima’s ankle like a question. “Your fear response is well-controlled,” Makima says. “I can offer you a life with meaning. You fight. You get to fight a cause that matters.” “My cause is mine,” Jolyne says. “My family. My friends. People who don’t look at me like a chew toy. People who would turn this place upside down for me.” Makima’s eyes flicker, a hint of amusement. “And has he?” she asks softly. “Has your father?” Jolyne’s fingers tremble, barely. She forces them still. “He will.” “Hmm.” The faint sound is an entire verdict. “Your strings transmit sound. Vibrations. You’re listening to the yard, to the building. It’s impressive. But you won’t hear what you need to hear through metal. You need someone to tell you where the real doors are.” “Lady,” Jolyne says, “I make doors where there aren’t any.” She pulls, and the web cinches like a net. Makima moves the way a thought moves, not fast so much as inevitable, stepping through a gap that should not be there until it is. The strings bend around her, as if politely making way. Jolyne’s breath catches; she shifts her control, twists, sows a second layer, barbed knots like tiny teeth. When Makima steps again, one ankle snags just enough for the knot to cut skin. A drop of blood beads and does not quite fall. Makima looks down at it, mildly fascinated. “This is new,” she says. “You adapt quickly.” “Yeah,” Jolyne says, and yanks. The web tightens in a sudden choke—the post groans, wire screams, dust puffs from concrete seams. Makima’s body tilts, forced to lurch. Her head turns, ringed eyes cutting to Jolyne, and Jolyne sees for the first time something behind the perfect mimicry—something like curiosity sharpened into hunger. Makima raises her hand, and the world compresses. The sound leaves the yard—just a moment of absence where even the wind forgets itself. Jolyne’s web shivers. Her strings vibrate so hard her bones ache. She bites the inside of her cheek and tastes copper. The bars of the fence bow inward like jailed ribs. “You’re not above me,” Makima says. It isn’t a threat. It’s a classification. Jolyne smiles with too many teeth. “Then stop trying to step on me and fight me.” Makima’s lips part—surprise edging that calm—and then she smiles, the real thing, the one with knives folded inside it. “I like you,” she says. “Come with me. I’ll let you see him.” The name isn’t said. It doesn’t have to be. Jolyne’s vision goes white at the edges, as if floodlights have been turned on behind her eyes. She thinks of him: the hat that never falls, the ocean of his silence, the way he said her name like a command to himself not to lose it. She thinks of a dolphin charm and the sound of a tape recorder. The lure is perfect because it is true. She snaps a line to the far fence and rockets backward, sliding under the taut net of her own making. The string bites her palm. Stone Free blooms around her, the shape of her Stand flickering, translucent sinew and knotted fists, skull grinning. She yanks the web between them, looping, making layers until Makima is a silhouette through blue haze. “No,” Jolyne says, panting, voice full of gravel. “I’ll see him because we break out of here and we meet halfway. Not because you hold the leash.” Makima steps forward and the web holds. She studies it like an architect reading a blueprint. Her smile is small and satisfied, as if Jolyne has passed a test. “I was not certain whether you’d be useful in a kennel,” she says softly. “But perhaps you’re more interesting running.” “Get used to the view,” Jolyne says. “It’s gonna be my back.” “Jolyne Cujoh,” Makima says, as if filing it, and turns away. A path opens for her where there is none. Guards reappear, blinking, clutching guns they don’t remember lowering. The inmates breathe again. The fence’s rattle becomes ordinary noise, not a heartbeat. Makima glances over her shoulder with that measured sweetness, a ribbon tied on a guillotine. “It’s okay,” she says, the words so soft they almost vanish. “Dogs are supposed to die for their owners.” Jolyne flips her off, fierce and raw. “I’m not a dog,” she says. “I’m the one who bites back.” Makima’s smile brightens an increment. Then she is gone into the building’s swallow. The gate closes. The yard exhales. Stone Free retracts in a shiver, threads knitting under Jolyne’s skin. She stands alone in the echo of it, sweat cooling on her neck, the butterfly on her arm fluttering with the drum under her ribs. She’s shaking and doesn’t let it show. The fence rattles when she lets her hand brush it, a nervous tick disguised as a test. She focuses, sends a string through the post, along the chain, into the concrete, out into the prison’s circuitry—a stethoscope pressed to a monster’s chest. She listens. She learns. She thinks of Makima’s eyes, and the private way they seemed to count people like coins. She thinks of the droplet of blood that didn’t fall. She thinks of what it will take, and who will come, and who she will have to become if he doesn’t. “Stone Free,” she says under her breath. “Let’s make a door.” The chain-link fences in the yard rattle again when an inmate passes, an ordinary sound, a chorus of little metal throats. Jolyne smiles to herself, a shape that looks like barbed wire cutting sunlight. Wary, suspicious, boiling and cooling by turns, she measures the weight of the sky and the thickness of her own resolve. Somewhere inside this place, someone has given her a leash and asked her to put it on. She winds her strings around her wrist like bracelets and ties a small knot no one else can see. She names it Makima. She ties another and names it Home. Then she starts to pull.

Model Output:
Item #: SCP-████ Object Class: Euclid Special Containment Procedures: Researcher ███████ (hereafter “I”) was placed on temporary leave from Site-██’s Temporal Anomalies Unit and relocated to an isolated observation suite with 24/7 surveillance. All writing instruments within my assigned workspace were cataloged and replaced with Foundation-manufactured pens whose ink composition is batch-tracked. A secondary camera monitored any physical correspondence entering the room; all paper supplies were watermarked prior to issuance. Daily cognitive evaluations were administered by Dr. Holtz. All handwritten notes purportedly from my future self were to be surrendered immediately to Security for forensic analysis (ink composition, fiber structure, handwriting comparison). Site-██’s memetics team reviewed the notes for cognitohazard markers. Interviews with other staff were restricted and mirrored to detect behavioral priming. Access to the containment wing of SCP-███ (suspected of potential infohazard manipulation) was rescinded for me pending investigation. Description: On ██/██/20██, I found a handwritten note in my lab coat pocket. The note appeared to be in my handwriting, on Foundation standard-issue notepaper, but bore soot-like smudges along the edges. It warned of a containment breach in three days. The breach, according to the note, would originate in the northern corridor, after a scheduled power test. On that date, no breach occurred, and no power test was scheduled. Ink analysis revealed trace elements (molybdenum disulfide, vanadium oxides, and a proprietary stabilizer not present in any standard office pen cartridge) inconsistent with supply logs. Security confirmed the note was not recorded entering my room. I wrote the following in my daily log that evening: They’re mine, these letters. The loops on the g’s, the pressure at the ascenders—everything is me. But the paper smells like ozone. I don’t keep ozone in my pocket. The subsequent notes arrived intermittently. The content escalated in urgency, sometimes contradicting known scheduling and facts, sometimes predicting small events that came true—dropped mugs, a door jam, a colleague’s offhand joke. Each was dated two to seven days “ahead.” There was no observable ingress. No time-stamps on the entry hallway cameras showed any physical delivery. The notes were found folded into places I would not reasonably miss: beneath my pillow, inside a book I was actively annotating. Occasionally they referred to me by the nickname only my sister uses. The last line of the second note: Note [D+2]: You’ve never dreamed in color since the Freiburg incident. If you’re dreaming in color now, it means you’re not asleep. I’m not proud of what I did next. I tested my dreams with a pack of colored tabs taped above my bed. That night, in my dream, they were all red. In the morning they were still blue. On D+4, the Foundation initiated cross-testing to determine whether these notes were temporal bleed-throughs, a known but rare phenomenon in proximity to SCP-████ (a defective Faraday-cage-adjacent chamber used in null-causality experiments), or the product of directed psychological manipulation by SCP-███, a class-E memetic engine contained three floors down. Both had historical precedent for interfering with perceived causality, though by different mechanisms. Note [D+4]: It starts with small permissions to doubt. You’ll think you’re prudent. Then you’ll throw the wrong switch to avoid the wrong failure and find the right disaster. I told Dr. Holtz that the phrasing felt like me scolding me. She asked whether I often scold myself. I said no; I just narrated hypotheticals until they stopped being hypothetical. She wrote something down. The third note predicted a fire in Corridor A, followed by a lockdown. There was neither. Instead, that afternoon a lab assistant dropped a tray in the cafeteria, shattering six dishes. The note had included a line about “shards like ice on tile.” I was there. There were shards on tile. It felt forced to consider that a prediction. Ink testing on all notes produced the same anomalies: trace molybdenum disulfide, vanadium oxides, and an unidentified organometallic stabilizer that fluoresced faintly under 365 nm UV. Our laboratories could not match it to any known commercial ink. The paper fibers were consistent with Foundation stock, but isotopic ratios of carbon varied slightly from batch averages, suggesting either contamination or a near-identical substitute. No watermarks were present, despite all issued paper being pre-watermarked. That should have been impossible. At Site Command’s instruction, we staged a controlled exposure. I spent two shifts in the observation suite with nothing but a sealed notebook and a single Foundation-issue pen. Security verified there were no hidden compartments, no ceiling voids, no vents large enough to pass paper. The cameras ran at 120 fps. No entries appeared. Between 02:13 and 02:14 a note was found tucked under the notebook’s front cover. The footage showed my hand reaching to turn the page. There was no cut. One frame: cover down. Next frame: cover lifted. Note present. Note [D+6]: You won’t see it arrive. It keeps you docile. If you had to watch it appear, you’d tear up the whole room. You will tear up the whole room. I tore up the whole room. No ingress points. No mechanism. Holtz said that proved nothing, and everything. Technical teams proposed two possibilities: an artifact of temporal discontinuity localized within a radius tightly coupled to my personal effects; or a memetic hallucination induced by SCP-███ that coerced not only my perception but camera systems, implying a second-tier vector. SCP-███ had previously demonstrated an ability to alter target recollection, but not to affect inanimate recording media. Its containment logs showed no recent breaches, and the memetics team found no stereotyped markers in the notes. Still, they could not rule out a novel vector. I had trouble sleeping. I began to catch inconsistencies that seemed tailored to me alone. The notes said I didn’t keep a plant in the office; I had one, a stubborn ZZ. The notes referenced a coffee stain on a folder in the left drawer; mine was on the right. I thought: if this is from a future me, it’s a sloppy one. Or a future where the desk got rearranged. Or an entity imitating me with an imperfect model of my life. Note [D+8]: You moved the stain after the second flood in Wing G. That’s why you think it’s on the right. It’s on the left. Stop letting them set the anchor. I opened the drawer. The stain was on the left. It had always been on the left. I would have sworn otherwise. By D+9, the tone shifted toward panic. The handwriting degraded. Lines tilted, words crushed into margins. One note included a list of colleagues by surname, then scratched them out one by one. Two of the names belonged to people transferred away months ago; one belonged to a technician who had died in a traffic accident years prior. Yet the note referenced a lunch with him in the canteen three days forward. Note [D+9]: He’ll ask you about the scar. Don’t show him. You’ll think this means he’s alive. He is not alive. He never was alive. He died on the day the road folded. He’s sitting two tables behind you. At lunch, I could not bring myself to turn around. I began to distrust my own recall. I misremembered protocol numbers I had authored. I reached for a hallway light switch that wasn’t there. Doors seemed to be two centimeters to the left. Holtz suggested we call it “drift.” She asked me to ground myself by reading the Site Manual aloud, anchoring to text. The words rearranged in my mouth. I realized that some portion of me wanted the notes to be true because that would mean the fractures were external. If it was SCP-███, then I was compromised. If it was me, then I was already lost. They added smell tests to the ink analysis. The notes smelled faintly of hot metal and something sweet-sour like rosin flux. The trace elements and the unidentified stabilizer were consistent across samples. A manufacturing origin couldn’t be traced. The memetics team constructed a low-level counter-hum in the observation suite based on patterns known to disrupt SCP-███’s influence. For twelve hours, no notes appeared. Then one emerged between my stacked folders. The ink fluoresced stronger than before. Holtz called that “adversarial adaptation.” I called it cheating. Note [D+11]: The hum makes it angry. You know how you used to hum in the car so you wouldn’t think about the bridge? It’s like that. It’s going to take something when you stop. They will say “adversarial adaptation.” You will say “cheating.” Then you will laugh. Don’t laugh. It likes the sound. I stopped laughing. On D+12, a note predicted a breach at 03:44. I sat up, watching the clock. At 03:43, the building shook. Fire doors sealed. The alarms pulsed once and died. Then everything was still. No log recorded any event. No one else reported a tremor. It should have been the easiest test: either it happened or it did not. My hands shook too badly to hold the pen. On D+13, I found a note tucked between the pages of a book I had never read: a field report signed with my name in a script that was not mine, from a site that did not exist. The letterhead was wrong, the logo subtly off. It contained a description of a breach I recognized because it had been described in one of the earlier notes. I brought it to Security. On lab imaging, the fibers were normal; the watermark was a mirror image. The ink analysis again revealed the same trace elements, plus a faint spectral line we had not seen before. The spectroscopist blinked too many times and asked to be excused. My refusal to engage began to feel like a lever I had run out of hand for. The notes grew despairing. Note [D+15]: There will be a day when you cannot tell if you’re on the other side of the door. If you decide you’re outside when you’re inside you will die and it will be fine. If you decide you’re inside when you’re outside you will live but everything after will be a witness stand. Note [D+16]: It’s not a breach if no one remembers the wall. While testing for chemical fingerprints unique to the notes, we discovered microscopic metallic particles embedded in the ink, arranged along the lines of text. Under scanning electron microscopy, they formed tiny lattices, like an attempt at circuitry printed by hand. The structure was too crude to function, too deliberate to be incidental. If it was a memetic vector, it was working at a level I didn’t like to think about. If it was temporal, it meant someone—or something—was writing programmatically in my hand. We attempted to trap a note by enclosing all my reading materials in an airtight transparent bin. At 02:09, a note appeared outside the bin, leaned against the plastic as if it were waiting. It read: Note [D+17]: You don’t trap weather. The day before D+18, Holtz asked me which outcome I would prefer: that these were a future self trying and failing to warn me, or an enemy constructing my future out of me. I told her I wanted the former, because failure was more familiar than malice. She said that might be the most dangerous answer. We re-administered SCP-███ exposure tests indirectly, using baseline staff to handle redacted text while I observed through a screen. No resonance. The internal auditors noted that SCP-███’s output dropped during the period of my notes’ highest frequency, suggesting either competition or interference. On D+18, the note was two lines long: Note [D+18]: If the breach doesn’t happen, that is the breach. The ink is wrong because it hasn’t been invented yet. After I read it, the letters smeared on my fingers like graphite. My hand smelled like hot coins and sugar. After Action: The predicted “breach” never manifested in any way the Site would acknowledge. Doors remained doors. Corridors stayed in place. No one died who wasn’t already dead. I continue to receive notes at irregular intervals, though fewer. The ink analysis remains consistent: trace molybdenum disulfide and vanadium oxides; unidentified stabilizer; metallic particulates patterned along strokes. The memetics team’s conclusion is “inconclusive with lean toward temporal anomaly, novel vector.” Temporal Research calls it “causal seepage,” which I suspect is a polite non-answer. I have not returned to the containment wing of SCP-███, but on nights when I walk past the stairwell I feel watched, as if by a method rather than a mind. I keep my pen capped. I no longer write drafts of reports by hand. Note [POST]: You will be asked to sign a final statement. Do not read before you sign. If they make you read, blink slowly at the pen and think about the bridge. Remember the hum. Remember you are not asleep. Dr. Holtz asked me yesterday whether I trust myself. I told her the truth: that I had trusted the voice in my head for years because it sounded like me, because it had my handwriting, and because I could not afford not to. Now I listen for the places the loops are too tight, for the tilt of the lines when the fear comes too quickly. I place my hands on the table, feel the cold, and try to remember which side of the door I am on. If the breach is that it never happens, I am living in the aftermath. Addendum: Ink Analysis Summary All retrieved notes: spectral signatures include MoS2 and V2O5 trace; unidentified organometallic stabilizer fluorescing at 365 nm; microscale metallic lattices along strokes observable under SEM; no match to any Site-██ inventory ink. Paper fiber blends approximate Foundation stock with anomalous isotopic variances; no watermark despite controls. Handling produces consistent ozone-adjacent odor with saccharine undertone. Cross-reference with known anomalous writing implements inconclusive. Personal Addendum: Note [LAST?]: This is the one you think is the last because you want endings. There aren’t any. There is a maintenance log with your name and a box to check. If you check it, the lights go out. If you don’t check it, the lights flicker. Either way you think you did it. You didn’t. Sign where they tell you. Don’t look at the ink.

Model Output:
Item #: SCP-6781 Object Class: Keter Special Containment Procedures: All discovered instances of SCP-6781-A (unmarked doors anomalously embedded within abandoned buildings) are to be secured under front-company holdings and monitored by local Foundation assets within a 3-km perimeter. Mobile Task Force Mu-3 (“Card Cataloguers”) will maintain roving inspection of existing instances and respond to new reports. Civilian access is to be deterred under the cover of safety inspections and demolition hazards. All opened SCP-6781-A instances must be guarded by two agents, continuous video surveillance, and a standard Faraday cage doorway arch to detect electromagnetic anomalies. Unauthorized ingress is prohibited. No attempts are to be made to permanently remove SCP-6781-A or to alter their frames. Instances show wide variance in apparent age; those that appear older than surrounding architecture are to be prioritized for study and monitored for spontaneous changes to patina, rusting, and woodgrain drift. Requests for organized exploratory missions into SCP-6781-B (the internal environment accessed via SCP-6781-A) require approval from Site Command and an O5-level liaison. Personnel entering SCP-6781-B must be equipped with personal recording suites, passive dosimetry, local inertial mapping, tether spools, and emergency exit beacons. Description: SCP-6781 is a global phenomenon wherein identical, unmarked doors (SCP-6781-A) appear and persist within disused or abandoned structures. Reported locations include factories, hospitals, theaters, and air-raid shelters. Instances conform to a single design: unpainted oak slab, rounded brass handle, recessed hinge plates, and a beveled frame of dark hardwood. The door face lacks marks, labels, or any signs of manufacturing. Radiocarbon and dendrochronological analyses return contradictory results. Several doors display age consistent with centuries of exposure—weathering, corroded hardware, and desiccated shrinkage—despite being mounted in structures built within the last decade. Opening any SCP-6781-A does not reveal the attached room. Instead, it provides access to SCP-6781-B: an apparent archive complex of vast, possibly non-Euclidean dimensions, arranged as a grid of halls with stacks, mezzanines, and reading bays suspended over deep voids. Constructed elements do not adhere to conventional load-bearing design; shelves span unsupported distances, staircases terminate midair and continue at right angles with no visible junction, and colonnades pass through one another. Gravity appears consistent, yet floor gradients vary unpredictably. SCP-6781-B contains documents, storage boxes, codices, microfiche, and unfamiliar media formats cataloged in a system that combines Dewey-like decimals with annotations in a script not present in any known corpus. Many documents are in modern languages and refer to a prior iteration of global civilization, including reference charts of countries and populations, anomalous events, and organizations analogous to the Foundation operating under the name The Custodial Directorate. Notably, some files are personnel dossiers of current Foundation staff, with dates centuries prior to their births, and include references to a Council of Thirteen titled the Oversight Circle. Signatures match known O5 ciphers with antiquated conventions. On multiple missions, exploration teams have encountered entities resembling hazmat response units (SCP-6781-C). These individuals wear featureless white PPE with reflective visors and self-contained breathing apparatus. They utilize dollies and collapsible crates to remove documents and shelving sections. When approached, SCP-6781-C withdraw, closing temporary barriers or deploying signage that reads Out of Scope in high-contrast stenciling. No hostile actions have been observed; SCP-6781-C avoid direct contact and flee through previously unobserved exits. Physical pursuit is hampered by shifting corridors and reconfiguration of stacks. Addendum 6781-1: Exploration Logs Log 6781-Beta-03 Team: Mu-3 Team Blue (Lead: Agent Henriksen; Archivist: Dr. T. Akari; Tech: L. Sandoval; Security: Agents Valez and Rooke) Ingress: SCP-6781-A instance located in a condemned post office, Norrköping, Sweden. Door predates building by apparent half-century based on material wear. [Begin Transcript] [Video shows opening into a high aisle, shelf height approximately 6 meters. Overhead, latticed gangways carry additional shelving. Ambient noise: distant fans, paper rustle, intermittent metallic clinks.] Henriksen: Beacon set. Tethers out. Keep line of sight. Akari: Catalog tags here—look. Decimal markers with an extra suffix. Language is Swedish, then switches to… French? Then something else. These are cross-lingual index tabs. Sandoval: EM stable. No obvious radio bleed. Map node one placed. [Team advances. Shelves contain file boxes labeled Collapse: Coastal Evacuations, Iteration IV, and Directorate Internal: Personnel Clearance C.] Rooke: Copy this. Names—this is Spanish. There’s a “Valez” here. Valez: That’s—spelled correctly. That’s me. [Akari pulls the box, revealing acid-free envelopes. A personnel file shows a photo of Agent Valez in current hairstyle and scars, dated 1723 with watermark Oversight Circle Seal.] Akari: Paper’s not modern. Fiber composition is… old. But the print is digital. You can’t—this doesn’t make sense. Henriksen: Bag it. No handling without sleeves. [Motion in periphery. Two SCP-6781-C entities are visible down-aisle, loading bound ledgers into a crate labeled Disposition Pending. Their uniforms are marked with a circular emblem: a dot within three concentric rings. They freeze, then one lifts a placard: “Clearance Not Valid.” They retreat.] Henriksen: Contact. Non-hostile. Rooke, block—no, hold. Don’t provoke. [Rooke takes two steps; the aisle elongates, and a handrail appears between Rooke and the entities where none existed. The entities turn left into a new corridor that was a solid shelf moments before, then vanish.] Sandoval: Slope just changed under my feet. Recording. Akari: Taking a quick excerpt. [Recovered Document Excerpt 6781-EX/14] Title: Custodial Directorate—Operational Summary Language: English (Mixed) Excerpt: “Of the thirteen, nine convened in chambers unlit; four had already crossed into the archives and would not be recovered. We note again: failure to enforce the lockstep on interstice portals correlates with library bleed. The Archive continues to accept deposit from our worldline. This is both boon and risk. If the Oversight Circle falters, the stacks do not—” Valez: That symbol is almost the Foundation sigil, but… incomplete. Henriksen: We’re done here. Exfil. [End Transcript] Log 6781-Delta-07 Team: Mu-3 Team Red (Lead: Lt. Osei; Specialists: Dr. Huang, Field Linguist Cabrera; Security: Berte, Coen) Ingress: SCP-6781-A instance in an abandoned train depot, South Africa. Door exhibits heavy salt bloom and corrosion inconsistent with inland humidity readings. [Begin Transcript] [Opening reveals a reading atrium with a dome that appears external; however, skylight shows cloud movement that does not match local conditions. Fragile signage indicates Reference: Collapse Reports.] Cabrera: Here—something like a subject index. Look: “Containment Failure: Unspecified, Total.” No event code. Huang: I have a ledger titled “Reconstruction: Directorate to Foundation.” The names—“Custodial Directorate” transitions to “Foundation.” There’s a timetable of renamings, then blank entries. Osei: That’s impossible. We never— Berte: Movement, left. [Three SCP-6781-C entities push a stack segment on a wheeled chassis. The shelf is strapped, labels “Iterative Personnel: Circle Attestations.” One entity pauses, tilts head at the team, raises a gloved hand in a gesture resembling a stop sign, then places a paper on a nearby podium.] Coen: They left something. [Dr. Huang retrieves the paper. It is headed with an unfamiliar letterhead resembling a spoked wheel.] [Recovered Document Excerpt 6781-EX/29] Title: Access Audit Excerpt: “Unauthorized visits recorded: 13. Titles claimed: Overseer, O5, Circle, Chairman. Vector: nonconforming ingress. Note: Repeated attempts to remove or alter sections designated Oversight Proceedings. Action: quarantine. Removal: scheduled.” Osei: This is addressed to us. Or to them. Cabrera: “Nonconforming ingress”—sounds like somebody’s been coming here without using doors like ours. Huang: The bottom margin—look. Three signatures. Initials correspond to— Osei: Cut that. We’re exfiltrating. Copy-only, no removals. [As the team withdraws, ambient light levels drop. The dome above the atrium darkens to reveal a vast ceiling of shelves where the sky had been. Two SCP-6781-C entities appear on the upper rail and vanish behind a blackout curtain that wasn’t present before.] [End Transcript] Log 6781-Kappa-02 Team: Mu-3 Team Black (Lead: Captain Morita; Archivist: Dr. Esteban; Security: Agents Shah and Petrin) Ingress: SCP-6781-A instance in a shuttered elementary school, Ohio. The door wood is splayed from age; building is 27 years old. [Begin Transcript] [Interior is a narrow spiral corridor with books inset into walls. Each step ascends 20 cm; gravity remains consistent until step 32, where footfalls become near-silent.] Esteban: Catalog numbers reference “Precursor Topology” and “Failsafe Geometry.” This is… beyond architecture. Morita: Marking route. Tether is taut. [A side niche contains a glass case with a single folder. Title reads Foundation: Charter Draft. Date: 1701. A small 13-pointed emblem is embossed.] [Recovered Document Excerpt 6781-EX/51] Title: Charter Draft—Third Revision Excerpt: “We inherit from the Directorate the principles of human survival as information. Archives, then, are not storehouses but rafts. Any sufficiency we build is provisional; any name we choose will be used again. Our Circle, whatever we call it, will fail if it forgets the Archive will outlast us.” Shah: That’s a warning. From us. From them. [Footfalls above. A group of four SCP-6781-C entities cross a translucent catwalk. They carry a sealed bin marked “O5 Minutes—Interval: 001-031.” When Captain Morita raises a hand to hail them, the lead entity stops, then reaches up and pulls a chain. The catwalk frosts over, opacity increasing, and they accelerate away.] Petrin: They’re taking O5 minutes. Morita: Why would they— Esteban: There’s a side note here, handwritten. It says: “Do not contest removals. They remove what permits repetition.” Morita: We’re leaving. Note the path. [End Transcript] Addendum 6781-2: Unauthorized Access Incident On 12/14/20██, a hidden camera placed by Team Blue near a mezzanine bench captured two subjects in dark clothing without insignia consulting a bound volume titled Oversight Proceedings: Circle to Council. Facial recognition flagged Subject-1 as matching O5-█ at 87% confidence and Subject-2 as unknown. Both subjects conversed in low tones; audio captured only fragments: “not yet,” “they’ve started pulling the sequence,” “we were always going to find this.” At timestamp 00:04:11, a SCP-6781-C entity appeared and placed a sign reading “ERSATZ AUTHORITIES: PLEASE EXIT.” The subjects departed without incident. O5 Office Response: No O5 member admits to visiting SCP-6781-B. The Council has issued an injunction prohibiting all non-mission ingress by Level 5 personnel. Investigation ongoing. Addendum 6781-3: Personnel File Anomalies Cross-referencing documents removed from SCP-6781-B with Site HR records confirmed multiple matches. File 6781-PF/103 refers to Researcher K. Narang, hired 2018, with an accession date of 1694; included is a performance review after “Containment Breach—Unspecified, Total,” assessed as “Archived, Continuing.” The document uses the term Continuing to describe staff who persist across “iterations.” The same term appears in the Charter Draft. Excerpt, 6781-PF/103: “Subject: Narang, K. Function: Analysis. Continuity: Secure. Memory: Partial. Note: Inform not; the Archive supplies what is needed when needed.” Researcher Narang has no recollection of prior employment or of the incident described. Addendum 6781-4: Additional Recovered Excerpts 6781-EX/76: Collapse Report Abstract “The failure began not as a breach but as a misunderstanding of categories. When containment extends to the Archive’s own rules, the rules revise the world. Our failure was to insist on sufficiency.” 6781-EX/88: Hazmat Team Directive (Partial) “Teams to remove material that constitutes a loop primer: Council minutes beyond early formation, protocols that specify Archive traversal, index keys leading to Oversight Proceedings. Mark shelves with the wheel sigil. Interact with outsiders only to signal invalid credentials. Do not harm. Flee if pursued. They will learn in the order required.” 6781-EX/93: Door Provenance “The doors are older than their walls. We insert them as memories into places that will later be abandoned—already empty of people, so less harm. The patina is not age; it is the Archive’s way of suggesting direction: older doors lead to older mistakes.” Addendum 6781-5: Incident—Section Vanish During Log 6781-Theta-04 (Mu-3 Team Silver), the team reached a bay with panoramic windows showing what appeared to be an aerial view of a city flooding in reverse. The bay contained shelves labeled Counterflood Protocols. As the team approached, six SCP-6781-C entities enacted a removal. Shelving segments slid silently into flat carts, labels facing inward. One entity faced the team and tapped a placard: Out of Scope. When Agent Meinhardt stepped closer, the floor ahead remapped into a shallow stair leading down. The entities accelerated, reached a door in the opposite wall that had not been present, and exited. The bay then displayed an interior view of the same city; the reversal ceased and became a static image. On return, Team Silver’s tether measured 12 meters shorter than when deployed, without any coil on the spool. Note: Tether shortening has occurred in three other missions. Teams report the Archive uses distance as a suggestion rather than a fact. O5 Advisory: No attempts to interfere with SCP-6781-C removals are permitted. The pattern of removals suggests they are restricting access to materials that could enable recursive governance. Addendum 6781-6: Statement of Uncertainty We do not possess a definitive explanation for the Archive’s origin or its custodians. Evidence suggests that the Foundation is a successor name for an older entity, and that the Archive persists as a continuity mechanism across global failures. Doors appear where we have already abandoned the world; the Archive uses our neglect as entry points. We possess an image of ourselves, centuries old, saying what we will say. We have files that predate our births, insisting that we will continue. We have observed our highest leadership, or their doubles, sitting in the stacks where none of us are supposed to be. We have watched other hands remove our minutes before we can use them to bind ourselves. Containment remains conceptual: we secure perimeters, we contain access, we protect against knowledge that would cause repetition. The Archive is not neutral; it trims its own shelves. The doors do not ask permission. They age in place as if remembering a time that already happened. For now, we read only what we can bear to know, and we leave before we learn the order of our failures. The Archive will be there whether or not we are. The doors will wait. They have been waiting longer than their buildings exist.

Model Output:
They called me Offworlder because the station logs needed a term. On Omia they called me stranger, softlander, cloakshell, and once, in a child’s whisper, fish. My cloak drew the eyes like a wound draws flies; even with the hood down, the slate folds shone against the bare-shouldered people in the First Market. I had been advised to keep it on in case of weather—“unpredictable microclimates,” the briefing said—but it was their climate I was not dressed for. Even the stones were stripped to the bone. The shuttle had come in on a vector over saltfield and marsh. From above, the city looked like a map of vasculature: pale roads, thin canals, plazas like open mouths. On the ground the air tasted of iron and brine. My delegation lodged me in the Embassy Complex, a block of reasonable rooms and unreasonable silence, then offered me an hour to sleep and four hours of ceremony. I kept the hour and shed the ceremonies. Against orders, I left by the side gate in midmorning, when the market streets were already moving like water. It is not hard to walk unnoticed, not if you are taught how, and I had been taught by a woman in a city where noticing could cost a life. On Omia, notice came like the sun: casually, from all angles. Eyes found me with curiosity more than hostility. That, too, is a kind of grace. I crossed an arroyo on a bridge strap and entered the First Market. Shelters of stitched skin and woven saltgrass cast latticed shade. The stalls were shallow and set low for short traders and children; on the far edge I saw a line of taller men and women moving in unison, their load-bearing harnesses shifting on their shoulders with the rhythm of people born to height. They did not look down at me as they passed; they were looking at each other, taking their cue from a single breath. My briefing had spoken of “Tall adaptations” like a classification, as if some laboratory had dialed in femurs and tendons. These were no specimens. They shared laughter. I let myself be carried by the flow until the narrowness of it pressed me to the stalls. The goods were not the goods listed in my briefing: there were no shackles, no ration slabs, no “extractive resource tokens.” There were clay jars sealed with plant gum, blue fish knotted on spit twine, beads carved from bone and polished ore. There were cloths dyed with pigments my mother would have loved, deep as ocean, hot as the inside of a lid. There were the tools of their adaptation: shoes like webbing with jointed pads; sun-skins like scales; masks that covered from ear to ear and filtered brine with the efficiency of gills. These were nice things, useless to despots. I touched one mask; it rasped under my fingers, indeed like a fish. A child—the one who whispered “fish”—reached to touch my cloak. I crouched. Her eyes were very pale, her irises almost colorless in the hard light. She was short-limbed and broad-chested, the Omians my files had labeled “Short,” a drift-lineage adapted to high-density living, bone ends rounded and cartilage thick. She had put three pebbles into the hem of my cloak to make it hang straight. I had not felt that weight. I took them out and returned them to her palm. “You look cold,” she said. “I’m too warm,” I said. She frowned at the mismatch of the world and my words, then laughed, the way children make a game of a dissonance. “You’ll boil,” she said, and ran to a woman who wore a net necklace with small shells from which threaded light gleamed. The woman nodded at me with a particular Omian nod: chin down, eyes up. I bought a string of dried bulbs that popped when cracked and yielded a tart liquid like a sharpened pear. I paid with vouchers my house had given me, and I watched the vendor’s fingers, how they tested the fiber to find the ripest. I watched more than I needed to. If there is a sin in our craft greater than lying, it is failing to see. At the western edge of the market the water began. A black canal moved under a lattice of sunscreens. Half-submerged, a family floated in a craft that was not a boat as we understand boats but a skin that flexed with each curl of water. The two adults were long-limbed and lined with fine, raised veins like writing; their hair thinned to nothing at the temples and grew thick on their shoulders. “Salters,” the briefing had said. “High salt tolerance, dermal pores specialized, kidney function extreme.” They bathed the younger children there as if they were being salted, too, for the future. The clerks at the Embassy had insisted on escorts. They had offered me two: a uniformed guard with a baton that clicked when she walked and a “cultural liaison,” which is what one calls a spy who smiles. I declined both, graciously. The liaison bit her lip in frustration; the guard looked relieved. It is unfair to bring people where they could be hurt for your sake. On the far side of the canal the road rose to a square where a tall building had been repurposed, scaffolds braced to the sunward side, mesh ladders thrown down to the shade. Here the Tall had gathered around a stage. On the stage a Short spoke, measured and slow—there is no need to shout if you plan to be heard. She spoke of quotas, the kind that my briefing had assured me were “equitable resource allocations.” The Tall listened. A Salter came up from the canal, water streaming down his back, and stood dripping beside them, arms crossed. He said nothing, only looked, as if seeing the words enter the air and test whether they held. “Who sets quotas?” I asked a woman with a basket of seedpods. “We all do,” she said, as if I were stupid. Then, seeing my cloak, she softened. “We all do, but not equally. Numbers are for those whose hands are dry. The dry-hands make numbers because they can carry papers without tearing them. The wet-hands make water. The long-legs carry the roofs. The short-legs sit under the roofs and think. That’s how it has been and not how it should be.” She gave me a seedpod and cracked it with her teeth, offering me half. “Who has the gun?” I asked, quietly. She smiled without humor. “You do,” she said. “Your ship up there.” Walking back, I passed a courtyard with chalk drawn in circles on the floor. Two boys, Tall, sprang and bent within the rings, miming load-bearing and pass-through, straight-leg stances that are both dance and work. A Short child moved between their legs, hands full of chalk, and redrew the lines where they had smeared. Every task had a shape and a rhythm on this world. We had been told the rhythms were discordant, the shapes broken. A convenient fiction, like a map with the wrong north. By the time I returned, night had laid a blue film over the city and the Embassy had turned itself inward, the modular walls folded and unfolded to make a canyon leading to a single door. They had known I had gone; the gates have sensors, people do, too. “Envoy,” Command said, in that voice that is less a voice than a set of protocols assembled into sound. It came from the console and from the air. “You violated the restrictions on movement. You could have been taken. More importantly, you could have been seen. The Minister will speak with you.” “I wanted to be seen,” I said, and this time could not resist the insolence. My handler flinched. They were very young. I was not much older. “Not your choice,” Command said. “You’ll approach the Minister of Science at nineteen fourth, in their reception chamber. Speaker channel open.” “The Minister of Science is a political appointment,” I said. “You told me there was no science here.” There was a pause, the length of a blink. “Politics is a science,” Command said. “Remember your role. Do not negotiate without authorization.” I bathed. The water in the Embassy was too sweet; after the market the softness felt obscene. I hung my cloak to drip and changed into the least formal of the formal garments they had issued me: dark trousers, a shirt with sleeves that folded to the elbow. I left the cloak behind. When I opened the door two guards stood as if they had been carved there, their batons held vertically as if they were staffs of office. They looked me up and down, noted the absence of the cloak, and one allowed herself a small expression of relief. The Minister’s reception chamber was larger than our largest room, narrower than a plaza. The ceiling panels glowed with a mimic-sun. The floor was set in tessellations of stone that shifted color with heat, so that the footsteps of everyone in the room made slow, fading tracks. At the end of the room stood the Minister. They were neither particularly tall nor particularly short; their limbs had the plain proportions of someone whose parents were from two lineages or from neither wholly. Their hair was cut close against the skull, and their ears had small shells set into them, a sign or an ornament. “Offworlder,” they said. They did not offer a name, so neither did I. “The cloak is gone. Good. We wondered if you would insist on bringing your climate control to our conversation.” “Your markets are hotter than your rooms,” I said. “They are hotter than your briefings,” the Minister said, and smiled. They had the kind of smile that warms and cuts in equal measure. “Where did you go today?” “To the First Market. Across the Old Canal. To the Tall square.” I did not say whom I spoke to. They knew. “You saw our dysfunction, then.” “I saw a woman who sells pods say that numbers belong to dry hands. I saw four people cast net in four different widths and yet bring up one catch and share it by finger length. I saw a child put a weight into my cloak so I would hang right. Your dysfunction looks functional.” The Minister’s gaze sharpened. “My title is Minister of Science,” they said, and made a small, precise gesture with their right hand. “What do you suppose that means here?” “It means you are the Minister of What Counts,” I said. “You decide what becomes a fact. You decide which measures hold.” They sat, and with a sweep of their hand suggested I sit as well. The chairs were made to flex, accommodating different forms. Mine kept trying to read my spine. “Your Command tells you that we are fragmenting,” the Minister said. “That our lineages are drifting too far. That we will war. That you will be the one to offer a word that keeps the peace. They need your part in the story. They need a thing to be given so they can call it aid. You went to the market and see we count in different ways. You think the answer is to say so. Is that it? To be the moral human who mirrors us back to ourselves?” “There are some mirrors worth holding,” I said. “Your people are not children. You make what you need. You make your own covenants.” The Minister leaned forward. “And yet,” they said, “we called for you. Do you think that happens by chance? Do you think we need you to tell us we are not children? You saw the Tall in the square. Do you know what the square was? Do your files tell you?” I waited. Sometimes the only way through a test is to let the examiner ask all their questions before you answer the first. “That was a Raising,” the Minister said. “The Tall are teaching their young to carry loads. The Short hold the lines. The Salters bring water under the planks so the feet do not blister. Everyone is there and everyone is seen. The quotas your files call equitable are set by a Council half elected and half drawn by lot from all three lineages, with weight given to the small and the young—not for their innocence but because they live longest with the decisions. We do not need your governance. We need your proof.” “Proof?” I said. “Proof that in a year the sky will not spit down fire on us because you decide we have built too well. Proof that you will send your tractors and your whistles and your traders and not your police. Proof that when your Command says ‘Minister of Science’ you will not measure us like animals and sell our measurements back to us as a prison. For this we called. For this we will test your will.” The room vibrated with the faint hum of the Embassy’s own heart. My handler’s breath in my ear was a soundless urgency. “Envoy,” Command said on a channel they thought the Minister could not hear. “Stay on terms. Do not accept framings. Offer cooperation under existing accords. Avoid commitments.” “I can hear your ship,” the Minister said aloud, unbothered. “Tell your ship the accords were written for people in cloaks who shiver at the thought of heat. We are not them.” “I walked your market,” I said to the Minister. “I can bring you proof that we will not attack; I can promise what I can promise. I cannot pilot all the ships. I cannot close all the hands. But I can write into this room words that will bind more than they free, and I can refuse to write them. Will you accept that?” “Do you make a habit,” the Minister said softly, “of refusing the greatest tool your office gives you?” “Words build prisons as well as bridges,” I said. “If we write that your lineages shall not intermarry for three generations to preserve ‘stability,’ someone will make a law and a law will make a baton and a baton will find a back. If we write that you must quantify your yields in the unit we call the Standard, someone will find that the unit does not fit, and cut the foot instead of the shoe.” They regarded me for a long half-minute. Their hands, which had been resting on their knees, stilled. When they spoke, their voice was less polished. “You are young,” they said, almost gently. “And you have seen. That makes you dangerous to us and to them. The last Offworlder we had here did not see. He counted. He told us he would bring us ducts and brought us ductwork, the kind where the air moves in straight lines and does not bend for bodies. We bent. Some of us broke.” “I am sorry,” I said, and meant it more than our usual apologies. “Don’t be,” they said. “Do not seek absolution for things you didn’t do. Seek leverage. You will go to the Council with me tomorrow. You will hear our numbers and watch for the places where our seeing fails. Not where yours prefers. Where ours fails. You can do this, Offworlder?” “Yes,” I said. “If you will let me walk your markets again.” The Minister laughed then, surprising themselves. “Wear less,” they said. “Or your cloak will keep drawing all the eyes, and you will see only yourself reflected in them.” Afterward Command hissed their reprimand like hot fat in a pan. I stood in my room and let my muscles remember the weight of the market. The cloak hung from a peg, a dead thing, still damp. I ran my fingers over its seam as if it could be softened into a skin that would flex in true weather. “Envoy,” my handler said, voice smaller than Command’s but more human. “You cannot go again. It sends a message.” “Everything does,” I said. I lifted the cloak and brought it to the balcony. The night air was a littoral, warm at skin and cool at bone. I hung it there and watched the city’s lights. They did not blink in uniform rows, but in breaths, human in their thew and throb. Beyond, the canal shone like a spine. If I had been a better diplomat, I would have slept. Instead I stood in the doorway, and the wind laid hands on me like a mother testing for fever, and somewhere on a roof a Tall practiced their steps for tomorrow’s Raising, and under another roof a Short counted seeds by finger and toe, and in a canal a Salter listened to the water and decided when the tide would turn. In my ear my ship was a patient, eating its own air. In my chest my heart ticked not like a clock but like the hand of someone who knows how to pull net without breaking it. If the Minister was measuring me, then I had been measured. And for once, I did not mind the count. I would carry it in with me, into the room where numbers are made and names are fixed, and I would see how long I could keep my hands open. That was my science. That and a cloak that was finally learning how to dry in this climate. In the morning we would begin to set words on the table. Tonight, I watched and counted lights, and tried to remember how to be both seen and seeing, and to wear my offworlder skin like a thing that could be taken off without shame.

Model Output:
The canisters were stamped with a logo no one dared say out loud anymore—a looping infinity symbol, once an oath to continuity, now a joke printed on silver cylinders that held nothing. They’d been designed to feed gene printers in climate-controlled rooms; now they lined the shelves in an old subway maintenance tunnel, gleaming under rag-wrapped LEDs. I’d pressure-washed them with boiled bleach and steam, filled them with things my suppliers called reagents and my training said were lies. The old company had built obsolescence into DNA sequences themselves, an expiry date baked into genomes. After the end, those preloaded cartridges had sputtered out an entire era. I’d learned to work with what the apocalypse left behind. On the table, my thermal cycler lumbered toward ninety-five Celsius like a pensioner climbing stairs. Its casing had been cut from a microwave, its aluminum heat sink scored with teeth marks where my vice had slipped. A cheap Arduino clone blinked under a plastic cover, pretending to be a Peltier controller today. Cooling came from a fan stripped out of a gaming PC, its LEDs still trying to pulse purple through a patina of grease. The flow hood was a repurposed air conditioner with filters that I’d soaked in vinegar and dried in the sun. The pipettes were mismatched; one was elegant and precise, a survivor from a destroyed lab; the other would occasionally drool an extra microliter like a drunk. I compensated by virtue of twitch. “Kayla,” someone called from the tunnel entrance, the syllables skidding across the bricked wall. The door—a forklift pallet hung on chains—mindful of its own weight, creaked aside. “Mind the bleach,” I said without turning. The cycler’s progress light dove, a slow red wave, and the smell of old insulation and ozone rose. The person waited, boots scraping in the grit, then moved forward with the deliberate secrecy that only someone carrying contraband can manage. He was thin and laminated, like hunger had ironed his muscle flat. He wore a coat made from tarps stitched with dental floss. At his hip, three silver canisters hung in a net bag. “You got my message?” he asked. He scanned the room, lingering on the stacked canisters and the black market of thoughts that clung to them. No one came down into my tunnel to talk about anything simple. “I got a lot of messages,” I said. “Which one are you?” He set one canister on the table between us. It was dented near the top, and a sticker peeled up from it in a scab. Fresh marker lines: A in a circle, someone’s idea of rebellion. He rotated it until the engraved serial caught my light. “Agriculture Division,” I said. The number made my stomach do a slow flip. “You found a harvest.” He flinched as if I might yell. “I found a biotech van under an overpass. In mud. There was a body.” He swallowed. His knuckles had ink stains, or maybe bruises. “If you can pull something from it, the settlement will pay. A crate of antibiotics. Two crates if it grows.” I looked at his canister. Agriculture Division had been the last line making engineered staples before the collapse: fast-setting rice, blight-resistant wheat, and the famous EndoMaize that fed cities for exactly one generation and then withered like it had made a deal with a demon. Every seed pack and plant had the same signature: a tempo gene wrapped around a kill switch that shut off under the attention of time. It was elegant and undignified and had bought shareholders three more quarters. “You’re from Chisel?” I asked. The settlement at the south river had chiseled its name into the stone of an old dam. They’d patched turbines with bike chains and prayed to stainless steel. He nodded. “We’ve been buying second-gen seed off the caravans,” he said. “None of it takes. Or it throws freaks. We need staple grain. The last of the gourds just gave us plant herpes or something.” He lifted his shirt slightly to scratch at his belly, and I saw a delicate lattice under his skin that glowed faintly green when the tunnel light hit it. The lattice pulsed with his breath. My mind cataloged: an unlicensed dermatological bacteriophage therapy, maybe, or someone’s black market fluorescing tattoo that had colonized further than intended. “You’ve been under the needle?” I asked, nodding at his side. He flushed. “Microdose. From a barber, you know. Something to help with cramps. Goes through you and then it’s gone, he said. Sometimes it’s not gone. Sometimes it leaves you—” he fumbled for the word, fingers trembling. “Better. In weird ways. I can see in the dark now, brighter by edges, like a screen door. It hurts when I piss after I drink vinegar. I heal faster. When I stop sleeping, I itch inside my ears.” His laugh was a scab picking itself. “My partner says it’s gods. I say it’s you people.” “It’s not us,” I said. “It’s cousins of things we made.” I tapped the canister. Metal sang. “Let’s see if there’s enough time left in this thing to remember how to be wheat.” From the bottom of a broken centrifuge, I pulled a thick-walled tube; a kid in a leather jumpsuit had traded it to me for antibiotics last winter. I cracked the canister’s seal with my flathead. A hiss like a sigh; inside, liquid sloshed. Not completely evaporated. Luck. I extracted a millipipette’s worth into the tube. It was viscous, golden, and smelled faintly of corn syrup and something like bleach. Our world had a scent now: antiseptic and mold. I worked fast because whatever sequence lay suspended in that goop had been designed to have a half-life, not just physically, but logically. There were markers that recruited exonucleases, protective capsules torn down by time, overhangs that degraded at room temperature. I fed an aliquot into a test well that I’d drilled into a sterile agar plate with a bit of cut pipe, inoculated it with bacteria that shone when they assembled a specific protein. The old company had called them reporters. I called them chorus. “Why was there a body?” I asked. He watched my hands the way people watched magicians. He didn’t look at his canister. The LED fan clicked, a moth-weak noise. “Guard. Died a month ago, maybe. They had a patch with the infinity on it.” He had said the word now, out loud. My shoulders tightened. “We took the canisters and left the body.” “That was wise,” I said. “They’d built in trackers. Motion, heat, open-close metrics. The trackers’ time, like their genes, will have wound down.” I glanced at the tiny cheap phone on my bench that occasionally whispered at satellites, if the sky was clear. No pings. “You want a staple grain. You want something that doesn’t forget itself after one generation.” “We want children who don’t gnaw plastic to get calcium,” he said. “We want bread that doesn’t taste like old batteries.” He scraped his thumbnail along the seam of his sleeve. “We’re growing fungus in the reactor chamber. We have vats of algae. We’re sick of it. It makes you mean.” The cycler beeped, an embarrassed little sound. PCR: polymerase chain reaction. A colloquial conjuration, making more of something when less had been bullied to remain. But the polymerases I had weren’t the tidy optimized ones from aboveground. They were crude and they were mine: I’d coaxed them from bacteria I’d found in the bile of a dog that had eaten rotten, engineered meat and not died. The polymerases were mutated into a kind of stubbornness. They could read broken code and attempt their own corrections, sloppily, like everything living. I pulled out the tray of thin tubes, each topped with a cap that used to be red. In one, a fluorescent smear said hello. I slid the PCR product onto a gel I’d cast in a lunchbox lid using agar from powdered seaweed and the last of my glycerol. The power supply for the gel rig was a car battery. When the current ran, a shimmer moved like rain under glass. The bands began to form, the ladder steps that told me what lengths of DNA I’d asked for. “Someone else would have just sold you seed,” I said. “Maybe pirated something from before the end. Let you plant, let it grow, and watch it all turn to soup next year. I get paid to make it stick.” “How do you make it stick?” he asked. He’d drifted closer now; his breath smelled like aspirin. “I make it forget that it was designed to die,” I said. “I take out the clock. Every gene from those canisters has a little suicide folded into it—an intron with teeth. They called it LastMiles. It unravels when it’s replicated once. Not the plant, just the trait. No trait, no blight resistance, no drought resistance, no yield. I use editors that either chew that segment up or flip it backwards. I put it somewhere that doesn’t get passed on by the usual route. I tape it in with phage, with transposons, with crisper bits and bubblegum.” He stared blankly at the gel. Bands grew brighter. In one lane, an unexpected extra bar glowed. Mutation. Or magic. “What if it kills someone?” he asked. He didn’t mean the plant. “Everything kills someone,” I said. I pointed at his side. “That barber’s mix? If you’d gone a little harder, those lattice lights would be lining your liver. You’d pee neon.” I scratched my own wrist. Under my skin, a rash shifted, iridescent for a moment. “I took a course of something we found in a med-distribution drone. It glued my capillaries together. My gums don’t bleed anymore. My eyes don’t either.” “There are upsides,” he said, a little wonder creeping in despite himself. “There are upsides,” I repeated. “I can taste iron in water at parts per million. I haven’t had a cold in two winters. I also can’t drink coffee. It makes my heart blank. Like a TV loses signal.” The gel told a story. In the lane labeled with a sharpie smear “Wheat?”, the bands were wrong. The reporter assay’s chorus glowed green under the hood’s ugly light. I could see the kill switch scaffold, knotted like a reef. It was tricky, but not impossible. The LastMiles segments could be attacked by a nuclease I had; I’d named it Coyote because it got over every fence. It’d been evolved, probably in someone’s basement like this, to cut a standard palindromic site. The last engineers had gotten lazy; they used a pal site that Coyote liked to chew. “Can you do it?” The man’s hands were fists now, not in anger, but in held-breath. I set up the editing reaction like a cook making a sauce they’d made a hundred times with a hundred different ingredients. The saliva-thin base: the PCR product. Spice: Coyote. Heat: the cycler again, chugging, complaining, but faithful. I zipped the tubes into the tray, clicked it. The fan whined. While I waited for the Coyote to do its dance, we talked like people do when they can’t look at the thing they both want. “The Barber—that’s what we call him—and his medicines,” the man said. “We get them from a caravan. He says gene obsolescence works on people too—that we broke ourselves when we ate those agricultural fixes, that now we need patches all the time. He says there’ll come a day when if you don’t get your shot dawn to dusk you’ll start forgetting your own name.” I thought about the loose hair falling from my head like I’d been stressed for a decade. Which I had. I thought about the black line that had appeared in my nail and then vanished, as if it had thought better. “There was a reason some of those hacks were designed to wash out,” I said. “Corporate lawyers didn’t want to be sued for permanent changes. They made things that lasted a month. The apocalypse made those medicines our only option. We use them. We accept the itch.” He lifted the remaining canisters by their net. The empty metal chimed. “We use what we can.” The machine chirped. I pulled the tubes out. There it was—the cut, the clean bend around a problem that had fed a stock price and starved a continent. I ligated in a little piece of something that whispered quite simply: Burn the clock. I stitched it into a vector that I’d coaxed out of a fungus that grew on the back wall of an abandoned public pool. It had a taste for wheat and corn. It called the plant soft enough to welcome it. I held up the empty canister he’d brought. The logo threw back a slice of light like a coin. I filled it with my mix—reagent container as Trojan horse—and taped a note to its side: Chisel. Use one drop per seed. Test plot first. Two rows. Keep children out. He watched my hand move. When I held out the canister, he took it like a baby, as if it might cry if he squeezed. “The contract,” he said quietly. “We said two crates if it grows.” I nodded. It wasn’t just seed. It was a contract with the river settlement’s future, with their kids’ teeth, with their farming wives’ spines. “And if it kills?” he asked. “Then you never knew me,” I said. “You found the canister in a ditch. It whispered to your wheat, and the wheat promised to be kind, and you believed it.” He swallowed. The lattice in his skin glowed once, a heartbeat. The under-tunnel air cooled as the sun fell, and the LEDs’ light whitened me into a ghost. He went to shoulder the canister and then strapped it to his chest instead, careful. He left the other two canisters, empties, by my table. “For your reagents,” he said with a crooked smile. “I hear you like the sound they make.” “They remind me,” I said, surprising myself, “of how things used to work. And how they don’t.” He climbed the ladder to the street, boots quiet. Near the top, he paused and turned, profile drawn in gill-slit shadows. “If it works,” he said. “We’ll owe you more than crates.” “If it works,” I said, “plant like the world is going to keep turning.” When he was gone, I sat back. My hands shook finally. I poured the last of the PCR buffer into one of the empty silver canisters. The label peeled off in my fingers. Infinity lifted, sticky, and I stuck it onto my cycler, where it wrinkled and then lay flat. I rested my forehead on the cool metal and laughed until my stitches hurt. Later, I would go upstairs and trade for bread that tasted like batteries and cheese that tasted like pennies and butter we’d churned from a goat that had never eaten grass. I would lie awake and watch the lattice under my own skin bloom and fade as if listening to the distant heartbeat of the city above. And maybe, if the river settlement planted with careful hands, in six weeks there would be green that had forgotten obsolescence. Maybe next year, seeds would remember their names. That was the kind of black market contract I wrote now. Not just with people, but with time, with the parts of living things that refused to be timed out despite intention. We conjured more of what had been bullied to remain. We made deals with coyotes and clocks. We breathed bleach and oil and the guilty holiness of doing what we could, with broken tools, in tunnels. We made, in the end, food. The kind that didn’t taste like batteries. The kind that didn’t make your gums bleed. The kind that would last for more than one hungry season. If I had a religion anymore, that was it. The metal canisters sat empty and useful, patient for what I would pour into them next, waiting for contracts written not in ink but in code that knew how to resist forgetting.