He woke at so point later into the deep part of the night when the building’s noise was at its minimum. Petricia was asleep beside him with the settled quality she always had when she had made a decision she was at peace with, and the room was dark except for the streetlight coming through the east-facing window at the low angle that said it was sowhere between two and four.
He looked at the ceiling for a mont.
He considered Gerald and the Phoenix, realizing that Big G would eventually wake up in a dumpster, with his priorities sharply focused on his own situation rather than on Gerald’s debt. That was the window of opportunity, tangible yet limited.
He reflected on Gerald’s comnts regarding the savings account and its intended purpose.
He thought about Petricia, asleep next to him, who was the person that savings account had been partly intended for and who had spent years building a building and a life and had not known the shape of what was happening in the background of it.
He reflected on many thoughts with the organized quiet of soone whose mind continued to work even though the day had ended.
He got up carefully and crossed to the small kitchen, poured a glass of water, and stood at the window looking at Harwick Lane in its three-in-the-morning configuration, the street empty, the lamps doing their work.
He drank the water slowly.
And then he heard it.
From the wall that separated Unit 6 from Unit 5, which was the wall he already knew conducted sound with the particular efficiency of older construction, a sound that was not the pipe and was not the building settling, but was sothing with a different rhythm. The sound had a particular rhythm, as if soone was trying to be quiet but not quite succeeding.
He stood still for a mont and listened.
The sound had the quality of soone who had been awake and occupied and was now arriving at the conclusion of that occupation.
It was Haruka.
Mike set the glass down. ’She’s still awake, huh...?’
’It’s fucking perfect to execute my plan here and now...’
He glanced at the wall for a mont, then at the clock, which read 3:04. Next, he looked up at the kitchen ceiling, and his expression reflected the bemusent of a man who has unexpectedly discovered sothing genuinely amusing at three in the morning.
He checked that Petricia was still asleep, which she was, with the completeness of soone who had had an emotionally exhausting evening and had finally put it down. Then he collected his jacket from the chair and went out into the second-floor hallway.
Unit 5 was four steps to the left. He had walked this distance several hundred tis in the past three weeks.
He knocked. Three firm knocks, solid enough to resonate through the door without coming off as aggressive.
From inside, there was a sound—muffled, suggesting that soone had been startled from whatever they were doing.
A pause.
Haruka’s voice ca through, slightly breathless and attempting to sound casual: "One second! I’m coming! Wait!"
The pause stretched longer than expected for soone rely moving across the room.
Then the door opened.
Haruka stood in the doorway wearing her yellow sweatshirt, which was notable because it had clearly been put on in a hurry; her hair was less organized than usual, and her face displayed the particular quality of soone who was simultaneously too warm and trying not to show it.
She looked at Mike.
Mike looked at her.
He said nothing.
And she also said nothing.
Then ca the awkward silence that felt long between them.
The hallway was also quiet between them in the specific way that hallways are quiet at three in the morning when two people are standing in them and one of them has just knocked on the other’s door for no reason that has been stated.
"W-what’s wrong...?" she said.
Her voice was trying to be normal and was approximately eighty percent successful. Mike looked at her for another mont, taking his ti with it.
"You’re sweating," he said.
Haruka stared at him, even though her expression looked calm, but her eyes panicked because they looked in different directions with a fast pace.
"I-I was," she said, "...exercising!"
That explanation sounded foolish given her level of panic.
"What do you an exercising...?" Mike laughed. "It’s three in the morning!"
"Well, uhm...! Ah! So people exercise at three in the morning, you know! Especially in Japan!"
"Yeah, yeah, so people do," Mike said. "You are not one of them; I could see that because you complain about the stairs."
Her mouth opened and then closed. She pulled the neck of the sweatshirt slightly away from her skin in the gesture of soone who had just beco very aware of how warm they were and would have preferred not to be observed doing it.
"What are you doing here...?" she said. "Why are you even awake?"
’Heh... it seems like she’s trying not to talk about the sound she heard when Petrica and I had sex.’ Mike thought. ’I’ll just have to tease her.’
"I heard sothing," he said.
The look she gave him in that mont was a look that contained several distinct emotions arriving at the sa ti, and none of them were happy to be there.
"Y-You heard...?" she said.
"Through the wall," Mike said. "It’s a thin wall, you know, and we have discussed it on multiple occasions."
"I was being quiet," she said.
"You were t-r-y-i-n-g to be quiet," Mike said. "There is a difference."
"That is such a—" She stopped.
She looked at the ceiling, and then she stared back at him. "You knocked on my door at three in the morning to tell I wasn’t quiet enough."
"I knocked on your door at three in the morning because the sound stopped very suddenly and I wanted to make sure you were alright," Mike said. "Those are different reasons."
She blinked. Whatever she had been prepared to say next did not survive this, and she stood there for a mont reassembling.
"I’m fine," she said.
"Well, yeah, I can see that," he said.
"You could have texted ... it’s just... you know... so sudden..."
"You wouldn’t have answered because you’re going to be more panicked than before."
She opened her mouth and then closed it back because this was accurate, and she knew it was accurate, and there was nothing productive to do with accurate things at three in the morning except acknowledge them and move on.
"This is... extrely embarrassing," she said, conversationally, in the tone of soone who has decided that the only way through an embarrassing thing is to na it directly. "I want you to know that."
"I gathered," Mike said.
"You gathered." She repeated it slowly. "You knocked on my door at three in the morning and told I was sweating and you gathered that it was embarrassing."
She leaned against the doorfra. "I already know from that look... you’re enjoying this."
"A little," Mike said.
"Of course you are." She rubbed her face with one hand. "You were right there..."
"On the other side of the wall."
"I was in the kitchen," Mike said.
"With Petricia," she said.
"She’s asleep," he said.
Haruka looked at him.
"She’s asleep in your apartnt," she said, "and you are standing in the hallway."
"Yes."
"And you heard through the wall."
"The kitchen shares the wall with your bedroom," Mike said. "The acoustics in this building are, as we have established, extrely thorough."
She stared at him for a mont with the expression of soone who was recalculating sothing and finding the new number worse than the old one.
"I have been living here for almost a week," she said. "How many tis have you been in the kitchen while I was—"
"This is the first ti the sound was unambiguous," Mike said.
"That is not the reassurance you think it is."
"It wasn’t intended as reassurance," he said. "It was intended as accuracy."
She pulled the sweatshirt sleeve down over her hand and pressed the fabric against her cheek, which was still warm, and looked at him with the expression she had when she was trying to decide how angry to be about sothing and kept getting distracted from the anger.
"What were you thinking about," she said. "In the kitchen..."
"Before you heard ."
The question was not what he had expected, and the fact that it was not what he expected was interesting in its own right. She asked questions that arrived from unexpected angles, it was one of the things he had noted about her, the way she approached a conversation from a direction that left the other person slightly off-balance.
"The Phoenix," he said. "Gerald and the tiline, probably."
"Who is the Phoenix?"
"A problem I acquired tonight," he said. "I’ll explain another ti."
She looked at the cut on his cheek. "Does this problem have sothing to do with that?"
"Indirectly," he said.
She studied him for a mont with the specific attention she brought to things she was filing. He had been on the receiving end of this attention enough tis to recognize it. She was deciding how much weight to give what she was seeing.
"You have very full nights," she said.
"This one was fuller than average," he said.
She was quiet for a mont, leaning against her doorfra, looking at him with the relaxed quality of soone who had moved past the acute embarrassnt and into the more sustainable version of it. Her hair was still disordered and her face was still too warm and the sweatshirt, he noticed now, was inside out. The tag was sitting at her collar, visible.
He said nothing about this.
Not yet.
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