Breakfast and Boss Fights

The knock came three times, cheerful and unhurried, the kind of knock that already knew the door was going to open.

Souta Kagami did not know that yet. He stood in the hallway in a t-shirt and sweatpants, blinking at his own front door like it had personally wronged him, one hand scratching the back of his head where his hair had decided overnight to point in several new directions.

"Coming," he said, in a voice that suggested he was not, in fact, fully awake enough to be doing anything.

He opened the door to find Nozomi Aihara standing there with a cloth tote bag looped over one shoulder, her hair pulled back, wearing the specific expression of someone who had already been up for two hours and had opinions about people who hadn't.

"Good morning," she said. "I'm here to make you breakfast."

"What?"

"Breakfast. The meal. I'm making it."

"It's — " He looked past her at the hallway window, where the light suggested it was, generously, nine in the morning. "It's early."

"It's nine fifteen."

"That's what I said."

"That's not early, that's a normal time for breakfast to happen. Most people who aren't you have already eaten."

By the time he'd formed a response to that, she was already past him and into the apartment, toeing off her shoes with the unbothered efficiency of someone who had done this enough times that the door barely counted as a barrier anymore.

"Wait, did I say you could come in?"

"You didn't say I couldn't."

"That's not how doors work."

"It's exactly how doors work when I'm holding groceries." She held up the tote bag as evidence, like it settled the matter, and headed straight for the kitchen without waiting to see whether he'd follow, which of course he did, still scratching his head, still not entirely sure how the last thirty seconds had happened to him.

The kitchen was small, the kind of kitchen that came standard with a one-person apartment and expected to be used by exactly one person at a time, and Nozomi had already claimed most of the counter by the time Souta leaned against the doorframe to watch her unpack.

"Eggs," she narrated, setting a carton down. "Bread. This is the good bread, by the way, not the sad plastic bread you usually have."

"I like the sad plastic bread."

"Nobody likes the sad plastic bread. People tolerate the sad plastic bread because they haven't been introduced to better bread yet. I'm doing you a service."

"I didn't ask for a service."

"You never do. That's why I show up."

He watched her crack an egg one-handed into a bowl, which she'd been able to do since high school and which he still could not manage without leaving shell fragments behind, and felt the specific, familiar irritation of being annoyed at someone while also being fairly certain he was smiling.

"You could've texted," he said. "Given me some warning."

"If I text you, you say 'sure, come by around noon,' and then you're not actually up until eleven forty, and then you rush around pretending you were already awake, and it's honestly exhausting to watch you pretend. This is more efficient."

"That's a very specific read of my morning habits."

"I've known you since we were fourteen. I have data."

"Concerning amounts of data."

"The correct amount of data." She nudged him with her elbow without turning around, the universal signal for *move, you're in the way*, and he obligingly shuffled a step to the side, close enough now that he could see she'd already started slicing something, tomatoes maybe, with the brisk confidence of someone who cooked far more often than he did.

"Do I get to help," he asked, "or is this purely a spectator event."

"You can help. Wash your hands first, you were just touching your own hair like it owed you money."

"It does owe me money. It never does what I want."

"That's not the hair's fault, that's a technique problem."

"I don't have a hair technique."

"Clearly."

He washed his hands at the sink beside her, which put them shoulder to shoulder in a kitchen that was really only built for one person's elbows, and for a while they worked like that — her directing, him following instructions that were somehow both extremely specific and slightly condescending, cut it smaller, no smaller than that, not like you're demolishing it — until the smell of egg and toasting bread had filled the whole apartment and his stomach had finally caught up to the idea that morning was, in fact, happening.

"Okay," Nozomi said eventually, sliding a plate across to him at the little two-person table by the window, the same table where he ate approximately every meal he'd ever eaten in this apartment, usually alone, usually standing over the counter instead of sitting like a person. "Eat. Tell me it's good."

He took a bite before answering, mostly to make her wait for it.

"It's good," he admitted.

"Just good?"

"It's very good. Suspiciously good. I don't know why you're better at cooking in my kitchen than I am."

"Because I actually read the instructions on things instead of guessing," she said, sitting down across from him with her own plate. "You once tried to make rice by eye."

"It mostly worked."

"It was crunchy in the middle."

"That's a texture choice."

"It's a mistake you're calling a texture choice."

They ate like that for a while, the conversation drifting the way it always did when the two of them had nowhere in particular to be — a show she'd started and he hadn't, a group chat argument about something neither of them actually cared about but both had opinions on anyway, whether the convenience store near his building had changed suppliers on their rice balls because something about them tasted different lately.

"You're imagining it," Nozomi said.

"I'm not imagining it. The salmon one used to taste like salmon. Now it tastes like the idea of salmon."

"That's the most pretentious sentence you've ever said about a rice ball."

"I stand by it."

"You should hear yourself sometimes."

"I do hear myself. I think I'm very insightful."

"You think wrong."

By the time they'd finished and she'd shooed him away from the sink — "you'll do it wrong, sit down, I've got it" — the morning had softened into the unhurried, aimless shape that meant neither of them had anywhere to be for the rest of the day, which was exactly how they both liked their days off to go.

"So," Nozomi said, drying her hands on the towel hanging from the oven handle, "gaming room. I assume that's still the plan."

"When is that not the plan."

"Fair."

His room hadn't changed much since she'd last been in it, which was to say it still looked like a small museum dedicated to a hobby that had eaten most of his disposable income for the better part of a decade — shelves of games and figures along one wall, an old television still hooked up to a console from before either of them had been born, two monitors arranged at his desk in a way that suggested a man who had once had strong opinions about monitor arrangement and never revisited them. He dropped onto the rug in the middle of the floor with the ease of someone taking his usual seat, and Nozomi settled in behind him, close enough that her knees bracketed his shoulders, resting her chin lightly on the top of his head like it was a perfectly normal piece of furniture.

"You're heavy," he said.

"You're complaining. Move if you don't like it."

"I didn't say I didn't like it."

"Then stop complaining."

He grabbed the two controllers off the low shelf beside the television, tossed one back over his shoulder without looking, and she caught it against her chest with a small "hey" of protest that didn't sound especially protesting.

"Turbo Tanuki Rally," he said, scrolling through the menu. "Best two out of three, loser buys snacks at the store later."

"That's not a fair bet. You've played this more than me."

"You beat me last time."

"That was luck."

"It was three races in a row. That's not luck, that's a pattern."

"It's a very impressive coincidence."

The race started with the usual chaos — eight cartoon tanuki racers crammed onto a starting line that was really only built for six of them, a countdown, and then the screen dissolving into color as everyone scrambled off the line at once. Souta took an early lead through pure familiarity with the first turn, cutting the corner the way he always did, and Nozomi immediately voiced her displeasure.

"That's cheating."

"That's the intended shortcut. It's in the game."

"It's a shortcut you only know because you've played this track four hundred times."

"That's called practice. You could practice too."

"I have a job. I don't have four hundred hours to memorize a cartoon raccoon track."

"Tanuki. Not raccoon."

"They're basically the same animal."

"They are extremely not the same animal, culturally or biologically, and I refuse to continue this conversation until you take that back."

"I refuse to take it back, I'm trying to catch up to you."

She did catch up, three turns later, by picking up a shell item and firing it directly into the back of his kart with a satisfied little noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a battle cry, and his kart spun out spectacularly, sliding off the track edge and into a virtual river with a small, undignified splash.

"No," he said, watching his tanuki paddle back onto the road in last place. "No, that's not — that's not fair, I wasn't even looking at the item bar."

"That's a you problem."

"That's a targeting system problem. The game shouldn't let you hit people from that far back."

"The game absolutely should, and does, and just did."

He did not recover in time, finishing fourth while she cruised across the line in first with both arms thrown up in victory, nearly knocking her chin off the top of his head in the process.

"Ow," he said.

"Small price for glory."

"Your glory nearly concussed me."

"Worth it."

They played through two more races — he won the second decisively, largely by refusing to let her anywhere near an item box for three consecutive laps, a strategy she called cowardly and he called sound tactical play — and the third came down to the final turn, both of them leaning physically into their controllers like body language had ever once affected a video game's outcome, Nozomi actually gripping his shoulder at one point in a way that he was fairly sure was less about the race and more about having something to grab onto.

"Go, go, go, go — "

"I'm going, stop yelling in my ear — "

"I'm not yelling, I'm cheering — "

"It's very loud cheering — "

She crossed the line four-hundredths of a second ahead of him, which the game announced with an enthusiastic fanfare entirely disproportionate to the actual margin, and she celebrated like she'd won an actual championship, bouncing slightly where she sat so that he bounced a little too.

"That's two out of three," she said. "You owe me snacks."

"You cheated on the second one and I'm choosing not to litigate it, but I want it on the record that I noticed."

"Noted and dismissed."

"That's not how records work."

"It's exactly how my records work."

They played a fourth round for no reason except that neither of them wanted to stop yet, and then a fifth because the fourth had ended in an argument about whether a certain jump counted as landing on the track or technically off it, a debate that consumed a solid five minutes and resolved absolutely nothing, and by the time they finally set the controllers down it was well past noon and Souta's stomach had started making its opinion known.

"Store run," Nozomi said, already standing, stretching her arms over her head until something in her back popped audibly. "You lost, so you're carrying the bags."

"I feel like the terms of this bet keep getting worse for me."

"That's what losing means."

The walk to the convenience store took them down a street that neither of them had ever needed a map for, past a bakery that Souta insisted smelled better in the morning and Nozomi insisted smelled the same all day, past a laundromat with two elderly women sitting outside it who nodded at them like they recognized the pair, which they probably did, given how often the two of them made this exact walk together.

"It rained last night," Nozomi said, stepping carefully around a puddle collected in a dip in the sidewalk. "I could hear it."

"I slept through it."

"You sleep through everything. A truck could drive through your apartment and you'd wake up annoyed that someone moved your blanket."

"That's an accurate assessment of my priorities."

She was still laughing at that when the motorcycle came around the corner behind them, too fast for the narrow street, and its front tire caught the very puddle Nozomi had just carefully avoided, sending up a wide, indifferent arc of gray water that splashed across both their legs before either of them had time to react. The rider didn't slow down, didn't look back, just kept going with the particular obliviousness of someone who had somewhere to be and had already forgotten the puddle existed.

"Hey — !" Souta shouted after him, one hand raised uselessly, water dripping off the hem of his jeans. "Watch where you're — that's disgusting, that's gutter water — "

"He's already gone," Nozomi said, looking down at her own soaked shoes with an expression that was somehow entirely unbothered.

"He should still hear about it. In principle."

"He's three blocks away by now, Souta."

"I can yell three blocks. It's a service to the community."

"It's really not, but go ahead."

He didn't actually yell anything further, mostly grumbled while shaking one leg like that might somehow dry it faster, and Nozomi watched him do this with the barely restrained amusement of someone enjoying a show.

"It's just a little water," she said.

"It's gutter water. There's a difference between water and gutter water."

"They're both wet."

"That's not the metric I'm using."

"What metric are you using?"

"The dignity metric."

"Your dignity survived. Look, you're still standing."

"Barely."

She was laughing at him properly now, not unkindly, the way she always laughed at him when he committed fully to being annoyed about something small, and it took him a full block to stop grumbling and start laughing along with her, mostly at how ridiculous his own tone had gotten somewhere around the phrase *dignity metric*.

"Okay," he admitted. "It's a little funny."

"It's very funny."

"It's a little funny."

"I'm going to remember this every time you complain about anything for the rest of the year."

"That seems disproportionate."

"You called it gutter water like you were testifying in court."

"It was factually gutter water."

They were still bickering about the precise legal standing of gutter water when something small and brown-and-white barreled around the corner ahead of them, all four legs going in slightly different directions, ears flopping, tail wagging hard enough to move its whole back half. It made a beeline directly for Nozomi with the total conviction of a dog who had decided, on sight, that she was the single most important person in the entire neighborhood.

"Oh — hi," she said, immediately crouching down before the dog had even fully arrived, hands already out. "Hi, hello, yes, I see you."

The dog reached her at a dead sprint and did not so much greet her as attempt to climb directly into her lap, front paws landing on her knees, tongue immediately finding her chin in a series of enthusiastic, unrelenting licks that made her laugh and try, halfheartedly, to lean back out of range.

"Okay — okay, that's — that's a lot of affection, that's — "

"He likes you," Souta said, crouching down beside her, though the dog paid him no attention whatsoever, fully committed to his mission.

"Everyone likes me, this isn't news."

"You have dog fur on your chin now. Genuinely. Right there."

"Worth it."

A voice came from further down the street, breathless, closing fast. "Buster! Buster, get back here!"

A boy who couldn't have been older than nine came sprinting around the same corner, a leash trailing uselessly from one hand, his face a mixture of panic and the specific exhaustion of a kid who had clearly been doing this exact chase for several minutes already.

"Sorry," he panted, arriving at last and grabbing for Buster's collar with the practiced speed of someone who'd caught this dog many times before. "Sorry, sorry, he does this, he sees someone he likes and he just — he doesn't listen — "

"It's fine," Nozomi said, still scratching Buster behind the ears while the boy clipped the leash back on. "He's very charming about it, honestly."

"He's a lot," the boy said, with the weary authority of a dog owner twice his age. "Sorry again."

"Don't apologize, he made our whole afternoon," Souta said, and meant it, watching Buster attempt one final lick at Nozomi's hand before the boy tugged him gently back onto the sidewalk and set off after him at a jog, already calling out, "slow down, we're not running, we're *walking*," in a tone that suggested this argument, too, was a familiar one.

Nozomi stood up, wiped her chin with the back of her hand, and grinned at Souta like the whole encounter had personally made her week.

"Best part of the walk so far," she said.

"Better than the gutter water?"

"Much better than the gutter water."

"I still think the gutter water deserves recognition for how personally I took it."

"Noted. Denied."

They reached the convenience store a few minutes later, its automatic doors sliding open with the small electronic chime that every convenience store in the country seemed to share, and the clerk behind the counter — a young man with tired eyes and a name tag reading TAKUMI, who was refilling a rack of magazines with the mechanical patience of someone on the back half of a long shift — glanced up and gave them the small nod of someone who recognized regulars without needing to say so out loud.

"You two are here a lot," he said, not looking up from the magazines.

"We live nearby," Souta said.

"I didn't say it was a complaint." Takumi finally looked over, taking in, apparently for the first time, the damp hems of both their jeans. "Did you walk through a river?"

"A motorcycle happened," Nozomi said.

"That'll do it."

They picked through the snack aisle with the unhurried thoroughness of people who had done this exact browsing a hundred times, Nozomi holding up two different bags of chips and asking Souta to pick, Souta picking the wrong one on purpose just to see her reaction, which turned out to be a flat, unimpressed stare that somehow communicated an entire paragraph of judgment without a single word.

"That was a test," she said, "and you failed it."

"I didn't know it was a test."

"Everything's a test."

"That seems exhausting for both of us."

"You get used to it."

He ended up buying both bags anyway, along with a couple of drinks and, at Nozomi's insistence, a small tray of the store's fried chicken that she claimed was, against all logic, better than food from actual restaurants that charged three times as much for the same thing.

"That's a bold claim," Souta said, at the register.

"It's a true claim."

"We'll see."

Takumi rang them up without comment on the chicken debate, though there was the faint suggestion of a smile at the corner of his mouth that neither of them could quite prove was about them.

They were halfway back down the street, the bag of snacks swinging from Souta's hand exactly as promised, when a woman with a stroller and a small child clinging to her free hand fell into step near them at a crosswalk, waiting for the light. The child — a girl who couldn't have been more than five, in a yellow raincoat despite the fact that it wasn't raining anymore — stared up at the two of them with the frank, unfiltered assessment that only small children were capable of, tilting her head slightly as though doing some kind of calculation.

"Are you married?" she asked.

The mother's face went through several stages of mortification in under a second. "Mio, you can't just — I'm so sorry, she doesn't — "

"It's fine," Nozomi said, laughing, entirely unbothered.

"No," Souta said, at almost exactly the same time, a beat too quickly, in a tone that came out slightly more emphatic than he'd intended.

The little girl considered this answer with visible suspicion. "You're holding his bag."

"That's not a marriage requirement," Nozomi said.

"My mom holds my dad's bag."

"Some correlation isn't causation," Souta said, which earned him a completely blank stare from a five-year-old who clearly had no interest in that vocabulary and an amused glance from the mother, who looked like she was fighting the urge to apologize a third time.

"She's been asking everyone that lately," the mother said, adjusting her grip on the stroller. "Last week she asked our mail carrier. He's sixty-two."

"What'd he say?" Nozomi asked.

"He said he was already married to the job."

"Good answer."

"He's used to her by now."

The light changed, and the mother started forward with an apologetic little wave, tugging the girl gently along by the hand while Mio continued to look back over her shoulder at the pair of them for several more steps, still visibly unconvinced by the whole exchange, before finally turning her attention to something more interesting further up the sidewalk.

"No," Nozomi repeated, once they were moving again, in the exact same tone Souta had used, drawing the word out like she was tasting it. "That came out fast."

"It was a simple factual answer."

"It came out like you'd been asked in an interrogation room."

"I panicked. She asked a direct question and I answered directly."

"You could've just said 'no' in a normal voice."

"That was a normal voice."

"That was a courtroom voice."

"I plead the fifth."

"You can't plead the fifth on a five-year-old's marriage question."

"Watch me."

She was still teasing him about it by the time they got back to his building, working the theme from several different angles — his tone, his posture, the specific speed at which he'd answered — with the thoroughness of someone who fully intended to bring this up at unrelated moments for the next several weeks, and he defended himself badly the whole way up the stairs, which only made it funnier to her.

Back in the apartment, the afternoon settled into something quieter. They ate the convenience store chicken sitting on the floor of his room with their backs against the bed frame, and Nozomi was, as promised, insufferably smug about how good it was.

"Tell me it's not better than restaurant chicken."

"It's good," he admitted. "I'm not saying it's better."

"Your face says it's better."

"My face is exhausted, not impressed."

"Those look the same on you."

After they'd eaten, she pulled a stack of manga volumes down from his shelf without asking — a habit as old as their friendship — and settled in beside him on the rug, shoulder against his, legs stretched out in front of her, flipping open the volume where she'd apparently left off some previous visit. He picked up his own stack, the current arc of something he'd been reading for years, and for a while neither of them said much of anything, the quiet broken only by the occasional turn of a page or the small shift of someone getting comfortable.

"This author really loves killing side characters," Nozomi said eventually, not looking up.

"Which one are you on."

"Chapter forty-something. The guy with the eyepatch just died."

"Oh, he dies well though. It's a good death."

"There's no such thing as a good death, Souta."

"There absolutely is. Some of them are very well written."

"That's a strange thing to be proud of on an author's behalf."

"I contain multitudes."

She went quiet again after that, absorbed, and he let himself sink back into his own volume, the comfortable kind of silence that didn't need filling, punctuated every so often by a small noise from one of them — a huff of surprise, a soft "no way" muttered under her breath at some plot development he couldn't see — that didn't require a response so much as an acknowledgment, a small hum back that meant *I heard that, keep reading.*

At one point she nudged him with her elbow without looking up. "This part's good. You should read this series."

"I have four unread series already."

"Add a fifth. Suffering builds character."

"My character is already extremely built."

"Debatable."

"I'll add it to the list."

"You have a list?"

"A mental one."

"That's the same as not having a list."

They stayed like that for the better part of an hour, the light through the window sliding slowly across the floor as the afternoon wore on, and it was Nozomi who eventually broke it, stretching both arms over her head with a groan and letting her volume fall shut against her knee.

"My legs are asleep," she announced.

"That's what happens when you sit on a hardwood floor for an hour."

"You could own a couch."

"I own a couch. It's in the other room."

"Then why are we always on the floor."

"Because you always sit on the floor first and I don't want to be rude."

"That's the worst logic I've ever heard."

"It's held up for years."

They migrated back to the rug for one more round of gaming before dinner, this time switching to something faster and considerably more aggressive, a fighting game he'd had installed for months and rarely had anyone to play against, and Nozomi turned out to be far better at it than either of them expected, button-mashing her way through a combo that left him staring at the screen in genuine betrayal.

"How did you do that."

"I don't know. My hands just moved."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only answer I have."

"You've never played this game before in your life."

"And yet."

She beat him three rounds straight, each one somehow more improbable than the last, until he finally set his controller down with the exaggerated defeat of a man whose entire skill tree had just been publicly humiliated.

"I need a minute," he said.

"Take all the time you need. I'll be here. Winning."

"You've already won. You can stop winning."

"I like winning. I'm going to keep doing it in spirit."

By the time they'd argued their way through a rematch — which he lost even more decisively than the first three, a fact she brought up approximately every ten minutes for the rest of the evening — the light outside had gone properly orange, and Souta's stomach reminded him, loudly, that snacks and fried chicken did not constitute an actual dinner.

"Food," he said. "Real food. Somewhere with chairs."

"Finally, a good idea from you."

"I have good ideas constantly."

"This is the first one today."

"The breakfast idea was mine."

"The breakfast idea was mine. You just ate it."

"Eating it was a form of participation."

They ended up at a small noodle place a few streets over, one they'd been going to since high school, small enough that the owner recognized them the moment they walked in and waved them toward their usual table by the window without needing to be asked. The place smelled like broth and grilled onions and years of the exact same recipe being made the exact same way, and Souta felt something in his shoulders loosen the second he sat down, the specific relief of a body finally admitting it had been walking around all day.

"Two of the usual?" the owner called from behind the counter, already reaching for bowls.

"Two of the usual," Nozomi confirmed.

"You two are predictable."

"We're consistent," Souta said. "There's a difference."

"Sure there is."

They talked through dinner about nothing important — a coworker of Nozomi's who kept microwaving fish in the office break room despite three separate passive-aggressive notes taped to the microwave, a game Souta wanted to buy that he was pretty sure he didn't have room in his budget for this month, whether the noodle place had changed their broth recipe slightly or whether that, too, was something Souta was imagining, a running joke by now given the rice ball incident that morning.

"You have a broth conspiracy theory now too?"

"I'm noticing patterns."

"You're noticing nothing. You just like complaining about food."

"I have a refined palate."

"You once ate ice cream that had freezer burn and said it added texture."

"It did add texture."

"It added ice crystals, Souta. That's not the same as texture."

Their bowls arrived steaming, and for a while the conversation paused entirely in favor of eating, the comfortable kind of quiet that only happened between people who didn't feel the need to perform being interesting at every single moment, broken occasionally by Nozomi holding up a particularly good piece of pork on her chopsticks for him to admire before eating it herself out of pure spite.

"That was just to torture me," he said.

"Obviously."

"I don't understand what I did to deserve this level of cruelty today."

"You've been alive for twenty-four years. That's more than enough time to accumulate this."

"That's not how karma works."

"It's exactly how karma works when I'm the one deciding what counts."

By the time they'd finished and paid — an argument over the bill that ended, as it usually did, with them splitting it exactly down the middle because neither of them would let the other win that particular fight — the sky outside had gone from orange to a deep, settling blue, streetlights flickering on one by one along the block.

"Walk?" Nozomi asked, once they were outside, hands in her jacket pockets against the evening chill.

"Where to?"

"Nowhere. Just walking."

"That's my favorite kind of destination."

They set off without any particular direction, the street quieter now than it had been that morning, the bakery dark, the laundromat's two elderly regulars long gone home, only the occasional passing car or distant television flickering through someone's window to break up the calm. Neither of them said much for the first block or two, content just to walk, shoulders occasionally bumping when the sidewalk narrowed, and it was Nozomi who eventually spoke, apropos of nothing.

"Today was good."

"Today involved a motorcycle assaulting me with gutter water."

"That's what made it good."

"That's a strange metric for a good day."

"It's not the metric. It's just part of it." She bumped his shoulder again, deliberately this time. "Buster was also part of it."

"Buster was definitely the best part of the day."

"Better than my racing win?"

"Buster didn't cheat to get his affection. That's the difference."

"I didn't cheat."

"You definitely cheated."

"I strategically capitalized on an opportunity."

"That's the same sentence with extra syllables."

They walked past the crosswalk where they'd run into the mother and her daughter that afternoon, empty now, the light cycling through its colors for no one, and Nozomi glanced at it with a small, private smile that Souta noticed but didn't ask about, mostly because he had a decent guess.

"Still thinking about the marriage thing?" he asked anyway.

"A little."

"You're never going to let that go, are you."

"Never. I'm going to bring it up at random for years."

"That seems like a lot of effort to maintain."

"I've got the stamina for it."

"I believe you."

They kept walking, past the convenience store now dark except for its interior lights, past the noodle place where the owner was flipping the sign to closed, the whole neighborhood settling into the particular quiet of a weekend evening winding down, and neither of them was in any hurry to get anywhere in particular, which was, in its own way, exactly the point.

By the time they circled back to Souta's building, the streetlights had fully taken over from the last of the daylight, and Nozomi stopped at the base of the stairs, stretching her arms overhead one more time with a satisfied sound.

"I should head home," she said. "Early shift tomorrow."

"You want me to walk you?"

"It's four minutes away, Souta."

"I could still walk you."

"You could, but then you'd just have to walk back alone in the dark, complaining about it the whole way."

"I wouldn't complain the whole way."

"You complained about gutter water for a full block."

"That's different. That was an active injustice."

"Walking home is not an active injustice."

"It could be, depending on the sidewalk conditions."

She laughed, shook her head, and started backing away down the sidewalk, still facing him. "Thanks for today."

"You made me breakfast without asking and then beat me at two different games. I feel like I should be thanking you."

"You can thank me by actually practicing that fighting game before next time. I want a real challenge."

"You'll get one."

"I highly doubt that, but I appreciate the confidence."

"Go home, Nozomi."

"I'm going." She turned, walking backward for a couple more steps before finally facing forward, waving one hand over her shoulder without looking back. "Lock your door. And wash the pan, you left it in the sink."

"I was going to do that."

"Sure you were."

He watched her go until she turned the corner at the end of the block, and then he climbed the stairs back up to his apartment, which felt, as it always did after one of these days, a little too quiet for the first few minutes, the leftover hum of her laugh still somewhere in the air. He did, eventually, wash the pan. He also opened the fighting game's practice mode for exactly four minutes before deciding it was a problem for another day, and turned off the console, and let the apartment settle back into the ordinary shape it had before any of it started, breakfast and races and gutter water and Buster and noodles and nothing in particular, waiting patiently to happen all over again some other ordinary day, probably not too far from this one.