The Roommates

Shiori Nagase had already vacuumed the living room, wiped down the kitchen counters, and started a load of laundry by the time anyone else in the apartment showed signs of consciousness, and she considered this less an accomplishment than a baseline expectation that the universe kept failing to meet.

"Momo," she said, standing in the doorway of the pink-haired disaster currently occupying the couch under a blanket that did not belong on the couch, "it's eleven."

"Mm," said Momo Kurashina, from somewhere inside the blanket.

"That's not a word."

"It's a very complete word. It means I heard you and I'm choosing not to engage."

"You've been on that couch since I started vacuuming. I vacuumed around your feet twice."

"I noticed. You're very committed to your craft."

"It's not a craft, it's cleaning. Everyone does it."

Momo peeled the blanket down far enough to reveal one eye, which she used to survey the spotless living room with the mild disapproval of someone reviewing a restaurant she hadn't asked to be taken to. "It's Saturday, Shiori."

"I know what day it is."

"Saturdays are for resting. That's basically written into the concept of the word."

"Saturdays are also for laundry, apparently, since somebody's clothes have been accumulating in the hallway since Tuesday and none of it was going to fold itself."

"I was going to get to it."

"When?"

"Eventually. On my own schedule. Which is a real thing that exists and deserves respect."

From the armchair in the corner, where he had been sitting with a mug of coffee and the specific posture of a man trying very hard to look like part of the furniture, Daichi Serizawa did not look up from his phone.

"I'm not part of this conversation," he said.

"You're in the room," Shiori said.

"Being in the room isn't the same as being in the conversation. I looked it up. There's a difference."

"You didn't look anything up."

"I looked it up internally. In my head. Just now."

Momo sat up enough to point an accusing finger at him from across the room. "He's trying to Switzerland his way out of this."

"I'm not trying anything. I'm drinking coffee. It's a neutral activity."

"There's no such thing as a neutral activity when you live with the two of us," Shiori said. "You forfeited neutrality the day you signed the lease."

"That wasn't in the lease. I read the lease. Twice."

"It's an implied clause."

"Implied clauses aren't real clauses."

"They're real enough when I'm asking you whose turn it is to take out the recycling and you suddenly develop selective hearing."

Daichi opened his mouth to defend himself on that particular front — a defense he did not, in fact, have — when his phone buzzed in his hand, the screen lighting up with a name he recognized immediately and answered without much thought.

"Hey," he said, phone to his ear, already standing and drifting a step or two away from the ongoing debate about recycling as though putting physical distance between himself and the argument might also grant him legal distance. "What's up."

He listened for a second, made a small noise of acknowledgment, and glanced instinctively at the pile of games stacked under the television.

"Yeah, I've got it. You can borrow it." A pause. "Sure, come by in like an hour, I just woke up, I want to actually put on real pants before you show up."

Ten seconds later, there was a knock at the door.

Daichi looked at the phone in his hand, which had already hung up, and then at the door, with the specific slow dawning of a man realizing he had been outmaneuvered by someone who hadn't even needed to try very hard.

"You've got to be kidding me," he said.

"What?" Shiori asked.

"That was Kaito."

"Kaito's on the phone?"

"Kaito's at the door."

He opened it to reveal exactly that — Kaito Endou, standing in the hallway with the easy, unbothered posture of someone who had clearly been standing there for the entire duration of the phone call, holding a cardboard drink tray with two coffees in it and grinning like he hadn't just been caught in the most transparent maneuver in recorded history.

"You called me from directly outside my door," Daichi said.

"I called to ask if it was okay."

"You were already here. The asking was decorative."

"I like to be polite about my intentions even when my intentions are already fully formed." Kaito stepped past him into the apartment without waiting for a formal invitation, the same way he always did, holding the drink tray aloft like an offering. "Morning, ladies."

"Coffee?" Momo was off the couch and across the room before the word had fully left his mouth, blanket abandoned entirely. "For me?"

"For you. Vanilla, extra shot, exactly the crime against coffee you always order."

"It's not a crime, it's an enhancement."

"It's a crime, but I respect your commitment to it."

She took the cup with both hands like it was a trophy, and Kaito turned, offering the second cup to Shiori with the same easy grin, though she took it with noticeably more caution, holding it for a moment before actually drinking, studying him over the rim.

"You called from outside the door," she said.

"I did."

"That's a little strange."

"Is it? I think it's efficient. I confirmed the plan and executed it in the same visit. Very few wasted steps."

"It means you were already planning to come in whether Daichi said yes or not."

"He was always going to say yes. I just like the formality of asking."

"That's not actually reassuring."

"I brought you coffee, though."

"I noticed. I'm still deciding what that means."

"It doesn't have to mean anything. Sometimes a coffee is just a coffee."

"Sometimes," Shiori said, taking another sip anyway, apparently deciding the coffee itself was not, in fact, a crime even if its delivery method raised questions.

Daichi, watching this entire exchange from the doorway, closed the door behind Kaito with the resigned motion of a man who had given up trying to control the flow of traffic into his own apartment.

"You said an hour," he said.

"I lied. I was already downstairs. Calling from the lobby felt weird, so I came up first and called from the hallway instead, which in retrospect might not have solved the problem I was trying to solve."

"None of that makes it better."

"It makes it funnier, though."

"That's not the same thing."

"It's adjacent."

Kaito dropped onto the couch in the spot Momo had just vacated, entirely unbothered by the fact that it still held the shape and warmth of someone who'd been lying there for hours, and looked around the apartment with the comfortable, unhurried survey of someone who had been here often enough that it barely registered as someone else's home anymore.

"You cleaned," he said to Shiori.

"I always clean."

"You cleaned more than usual. There's a specific shine to the counters."

"Some of us have standards."

"Some of us also have a roommate who hasn't left the couch since I walked in," Kaito said, nodding toward Momo, who was still cradling her coffee like a small, precious animal.

"I was resting," Momo said. "It's Saturday."

"I've heard that argument already this morning," Daichi said. "It didn't work the first time either."

"It's a good argument. It just needs a more receptive audience."

Kaito laughed at that, easily, the way he laughed at most things, and reached over to poke Momo's knee with one finger. "So what's the game plan for the day, since apparently productivity's off the table?"

"There is no game plan," Shiori said, before Momo could answer. "The game plan is laundry, and then probably groceries, and then possibly some actual rest that isn't just lying on a couch since ten in the morning."

"That sounds like the opposite of a plan," Kaito said. "That sounds like a to-do list wearing a plan's clothes."

"It's a productive Saturday."

"It's a boring Saturday."

"Those aren't mutually exclusive, but they're also not the same thing."

Momo, who had been quiet for slightly too long given her usual baseline, sat up straighter with the specific expression of someone who had just had an idea and was already fully committed to it before finishing the thought.

"We should go to the arcade," she said.

"We were just talking about laundry," Shiori said.

"The laundry will still be there when we get back. Laundry's very patient. It's one of its best qualities."

"That's not how chores work."

"That's exactly how chores work. I've tested this theory extensively."

Kaito was already sitting up, nodding along with an enthusiasm that suggested he'd been hoping someone would suggest exactly this. "I'm in. I haven't been to that place in weeks."

"You're not even supposed to be here for the rest of the day," Daichi pointed out. "You came to borrow a game."

"I can multitask. Borrowing a game and going to an arcade aren't mutually exclusive activities. I contain layers."

"You contain chaos."

"Some might call that layers."

Momo was already up, pulling actual clothes over her pajama shorts with the speed of someone who had transitioned from horizontal to vertical in record time once sufficiently motivated. "Come on, Shiori. You can do laundry literally any day. The arcade has that racing game you're secretly good at."

"I'm not secretly good at anything, I'm openly good at several things."

"Then prove it. Come embarrass Kaito on the racing game."

"I don't need to be embarrassed for anyone to have fun," Kaito said.

"You say that until it happens," Momo said.

Shiori looked at the laundry basket, then at the three of them already gravitating toward the door with the specific momentum of people who had decided the day's plan without consulting her, and let out a long, put-upon sigh that fooled absolutely nobody in the room.

"Fine," she said. "But we're doing groceries after. That's not negotiable."

"Deal," Momo said, already halfway into her shoes.

"And Daichi's not allowed to just agree with whoever's winning the argument in the moment."

"I don't do that," Daichi said.

"You do that constantly."

"I maintain a flexible position based on evolving evidence."

"That's the exact behavior I'm describing."

The arcade a few blocks from their apartment was the kind of place that had clearly been renovated once, a decade ago, and never touched since, all flashing lights and the specific electronic symphony of a dozen different games all competing for attention at maximum volume. Kaito made a beeline straight for the racing cabinets the moment they walked in, dropping onto the seat of the nearest one and patting the seat beside it with the confidence of a man who had already decided how this was going to go.

"Sit," he told Shiori. "Let's settle this."

"There's nothing to settle. I never claimed to be good at this."

"Momo claimed it for you. That's basically the same thing, socially."

"It's really not."

She sat anyway, mostly, Daichi suspected, because refusing would have taken more energy than just proving the point, and fed coins into the machine with the brisk efficiency of someone who had, in fact, played this exact game before and simply hadn't advertised it.

"Best of three," Kaito said. "Loser buys the next round of tokens."

"That's not a real stake. Tokens are basically free."

"It's the principle of the thing."

The race started, and within the first ten seconds it became clear that Momo's earlier claim had not, in fact, been an exaggeration — Shiori took the first turn with a precision that suggested muscle memory rather than luck, cutting through the pack while Kaito scrambled to keep pace, muttering something under his breath that might have been a curse word disguised as a cough.

"You've played this before," he said, accusingly, three turns later, watching her pull further ahead.

"I might have played it a few times."

"A few times doesn't produce this."

"Maybe I'm just naturally gifted."

"Nobody's naturally gifted at a game with this specific control scheme. This is learned behavior."

"Then I learned it. Stop being upset about learning."

He was not, in fact, able to stop being upset about it, spending the rest of the race in a state of increasingly theatrical distress that had Momo, watching from behind them with her coffee still in hand, laughing hard enough that she had to lean against Daichi's shoulder for support.

"She's demolishing him," she said.

"I can see that," Daichi said.

"This is the best thing that's happened all week."

"It's eleven thirty."

"The week's still young. This is already the highlight."

Shiori won two races straight, the second by a margin so wide that Kaito's kart was still on the second-to-last lap when hers crossed the finish line, and she sat back afterward with the quiet, contained satisfaction of someone who had proven a point without needing to say anything further about it.

"I demand a rematch," Kaito said.

"You can have a rematch. I'm not confident it'll go differently."

"It'll go differently. I was warming up before."

"You were losing before."

"That's what warming up looks like, sometimes."

While they argued their way into a third and then fourth race, Momo had wandered off toward a crane machine along the back wall, one stocked with a lineup of plush characters that bore just enough resemblance to several popular franchises to avoid any actual legal trouble, and Daichi followed mostly because staying near the racing cabinets meant being asked to referee, a role he had no interest in accepting.

"That one," Momo said, pointing through the glass at a small plush creature with an expression of profound, unearned confidence. "I need that one."

"You've said that about four different prizes since we walked in."

"This time I mean it. Look at his face. He knows something we don't."

"He's a stuffed animal, Momo."

"He's a stuffed animal with secrets."

She fed the machine a coin and worked the joystick with the intense concentration of a surgeon, guiding the claw over the target with visible care, and it descended, closed around the plush's head, lifted an inch, and immediately let go, dropping it back onto the pile with a soft, indifferent thump.

"No," she said. "No, that doesn't count, the claw is broken."

"That's what everyone says about every claw machine ever built."

"Because they're all broken. It's a conspiracy."

"It's a business model."

"Those are the same thing when you're on the losing end of it."

She tried twice more, with identical results, and was midway through insisting the machine owed her some kind of formal apology when Kaito appeared behind them, having apparently conceded defeat at the racing cabinet, Shiori trailing a step behind him with the quiet satisfaction of someone who had just won four races in a row and intended to enjoy the memory for the rest of the week.

"You've been at this thing forever," Kaito said, peering into the glass. "Which one are you after?"

"The confident one. Third row, looks like he's judging me."

"He's plastic and cotton, Momo, he's not judging anyone."

"You don't know that."

Kaito fed the machine a coin without further comment, studied the angle for a few seconds longer than Momo had bothered to, and guided the claw with a slow, deliberate patience that was almost suspicious coming from someone who'd just spent ten minutes losing loudly at a racing game. The claw closed, lifted, held, and this time did not let go until it had cleared the chute entirely, dropping the plush through with a soft, satisfying thump.

"There," he said, retrieving it and handing it over with a small, entirely unnecessary bow. "Your confident friend."

Momo took it, delighted, hugging it to her chest immediately. "You're better at claw machines than racing games."

"I contain multitudes."

"You said that earlier about something else."

"It's still true. I'm a man of many, specifically located skills."

"Buy your own snacks with that ego," Shiori said, though she was smiling when she said it, watching Momo turn the plush over in her hands with the same unfiltered delight she brought to most small victories.

They spent another half hour drifting between machines — a rhythm game that Kaito insisted he'd be good at and was, spectacularly, not, missing beats with a consistency that Momo found endlessly entertaining and documented on her phone without any pretense of subtlety; a shooting gallery Daichi quietly excelled at without announcing it, which Shiori noticed and pointed out immediately, prompting a brief, half-serious competition between the two of them that ended in a near tie neither would fully concede; a photo booth Momo dragged all three of them into despite vocal protests from Daichi, who complained the entire time about not being warned and then, in every single photo, was smiling more than anyone else in the frame.

"You said you didn't want to do this," Shiori pointed out, looking at the printed strip afterward.

"I didn't want to do it. That's different from not enjoying it once it happened."

"That's a very convenient distinction."

"It's an accurate one."

By the time they left the arcade, stomachs had started making their opinions known, and Kaito, apparently unwilling to let the momentum die, suggested the noodle stand two streets over with the confidence of someone who had never once been told no about anything food-related.

"I know a place," he said. "Best noodles in the neighborhood. Non-negotiable."

"Everything's negotiable," Shiori said.

"Not this. This is the one hill I'll die on today."

"You said that about the racing game too."

"That hill I lost. This one I'm confident about."

The noodle stand turned out to be small, a handful of stools along a narrow counter facing the street, the owner an older woman who greeted Kaito by name the moment he walked in, which told Daichi everything he needed to know about how often this particular hill got visited.

"You brought friends this time," the owner said, already reaching for bowls.

"They needed convincing. Long story."

"He didn't convince anyone," Momo said, climbing onto a stool. "He just kept talking about it until we gave up arguing."

"That's a form of convincing."

"It's a form of exhaustion."

"Results are results."

They ordered four bowls, and the conversation over lunch drifted the way it always did among the four of them — Momo recounting, with increasing embellishment, the story of her claw machine defeat and Kaito's subsequent victory, until the plush toy had apparently developed an entire personality and backstory somewhere between the arcade and the noodle stand; Shiori quietly correcting several of the more exaggerated details without managing to slow the story down at all; Daichi mostly eating in comfortable silence, occasionally offering a single dry observation that landed harder for how rarely he spoke.

"He's judging me for something," Momo said, mid-story, gesturing at the plush now sitting on the counter beside her bowl. "I can feel it."

"He's stuffed with cotton," Shiori said. "He can't judge anything."

"You keep saying that like it settles the argument."

"Because it does."

"It really doesn't."

Kaito, slurping noodles with the specific lack of self-consciousness of someone entirely comfortable in present company, glanced over at Daichi. "You've been quiet."

"I've been eating."

"You're always quiet when there's food in front of you."

"Food deserves my full attention. Unlike this conversation, which is about a stuffed animal's moral character."

"It's a legitimate topic," Momo said.

"It's really not," Shiori said.

"It's more legitimate than laundry."

"Everything's more legitimate than laundry to you today."

"That's consistent, at least."

After lunch, Kaito floated the idea of the used game shop a few blocks further down, the one tucked between a laundromat and a shuttered arcade cabinet repair shop that had apparently been shuttered for as long as any of them could remember, and Momo agreed with an enthusiasm that made it clear she'd been hoping someone would suggest exactly that.

"I need new manga," she announced. "I've read everything I own at least twice."

"You own an alarming amount of manga," Shiori said.

"It's not alarming, it's a collection."

"It's a fire hazard is what it is."

"Collections are supposed to look like fire hazards. That's how you know they're real."

The shop, when they reached it, smelled the specific way every used media shop in the country seemed to smell, a mix of old paper and plastic cases and something vaguely like dust that had achieved sentience, shelves crammed floor to ceiling with games and manga volumes organized by a system that made sense to nobody except, apparently, the clerk behind the counter, a young man with headphones around his neck who looked up when the bell over the door rang and immediately recognized at least one of them.

"Kaito," he said. "You're back. Did you actually return the last thing you borrowed from here or is this a new theft."

"I returned it. Ask literally anyone."

"I'm asking you, and you're being suspiciously specific about it."

"That's just how honest people sound sometimes."

Momo had already vanished into the manga section, weaving between shelves with the focused determination of someone on a mission, and it took less than two minutes before her voice carried back over the racks.

"Shiori, come look at this, they have the whole set of that series you pretended you didn't like."

"I didn't pretend anything, I said it wasn't for me."

"You finished all twelve volumes in a week. That's not 'not for me' behavior."

"That's thorough research."

"Come look at it anyway."

Shiori drifted toward the manga section with the specific reluctance of someone who fully intended to end up there regardless of what she said out loud, while Kaito wandered the game aisles with Daichi, running a finger along the spines of jewel cases with the unhurried browsing of someone who had no actual urgency about finding anything specific.

"You still haven't told me what you're borrowing," Daichi said.

"Star Vanguard Zero. You've had it for like two months and I know you've beaten it already."

"I have beaten it."

"Then why do you still have it out on your shelf instead of on the pile of things you're done with."

"Because it's a good shelf placement. It's aesthetically pleasing there."

"That's not a real reason."

"It's the only reason I've got."

Kaito pulled a completely unrelated game off a shelf, examined the case with theatrical interest, and set it back exactly where he'd found it, a habit Daichi recognized from years of watching him browse without any real intention of buying anything at all.

"You're not going to get anything here," Daichi said.

"I might. You never know."

"You never buy anything when we come here. You just look."

"Looking is free. Buying is a financial decision. I like to keep those separate."

"That's not how shopping works."

"It's how my shopping works."

Near the register, an argument had broken out between Momo and Shiori over which of two manga volumes to buy first, a debate that had somehow expanded to include the clerk, who'd been dragged in as an impartial third opinion and was handling the role with visible reluctance.

"You have to pick one," Shiori said. "We don't have infinite time."

"We have exactly as much time as we want to have. That's the whole point of Saturday."

"You said that about the arcade too."

"It was true then and it's true now."

"Sir," Momo said, turning to the clerk, "which volume has a better cover."

"I'm not getting involved in this."

"You work here. This is basically your job."

"My job is running the register. Cover opinions are extracurricular."

"Extracurricular activities build character."

"I have plenty of character already."

In the end, Momo bought both volumes, on the grounds that indecision this severe was itself evidence that both were necessary, a piece of logic Shiori dismissed loudly and then, notably, did not argue against hard enough to actually stop the purchase from happening. Kaito, true to form, left with nothing at all, having spent the entire visit browsing without buying a thing.

"You didn't buy anything,” Daichi said as they stepped back out onto the street.

“I considered several things.”

“That's not the same as buying something.”

“Looking is free. I stand by my process."

By the time they made their way back toward the apartment, the afternoon had stretched long and easy, the sun dropping lower over the rooftops, and Kaito slowed as they reached the building's entrance with the specific hesitation of someone doing the math on how long he'd actually intended to stay versus how long he'd been out.

“This is probably my exit,” he said. “I should probably grab the game and head out. Technically I came for it several hours ago.”

"Technically you invited yourself to an entire day," Shiori said.

"I prefer to think of it as flexible scheduling."

"You should probably head out, then," Daichi said, mostly on reflex, mostly because it seemed like the neutral thing to say, and immediately regretted it the moment Momo turned toward him with an expression that suggested he'd just said something wrong without knowing exactly what.

"We're making dinner," Momo said, to Kaito, entirely unbothered. "You should stay."

Shiori's expression did something small and complicated, not quite a frown and not quite not one, the kind of look that communicated an entire paragraph of thought without a single word attached to it.

Kaito glanced between the two of them, reading whatever was happening there with the easy, unbothered instinct of someone who had decided a long time ago not to overanalyze good luck when it showed up. "You sure? I don't want to invite myself to dinner on top of everything else."

"You already invited yourself to the entire day," Momo said. "Dinner's just the natural conclusion."

"That's fair. I can't really argue with that logic."

"Nobody ever can."

Daichi, watching the exchange with the specific caution of a man who had learned, through long experience, that commenting on these particular dynamics never went well for him, said nothing at all, and followed the three of them inside.

The kitchen, once they were all crowded into it, immediately became a small battlefield of competing opinions about how dinner should proceed, Shiori pulling vegetables from the refrigerator with the brisk efficiency of someone who had a plan and intended to execute it regardless of outside input, Momo hovering nearby with significantly less plan and significantly more enthusiasm.

"I'll cut the vegetables," Momo announced.

"You cut everything the same size regardless of what it actually is," Shiori said. "Last time you made the carrots and the onions identical dimensions. It was concerning."

"That's called consistency."

"That's called not looking at what you're cutting."

"I was looking. I just have a specific vision."

"Your vision produced onion cubes the size of dice."

"They cooked fine."

"They cooked unevenly, which is a completely different outcome."

Kaito, leaning against the counter with the specific comfort of someone who had eaten in this kitchen many times before and knew exactly how much space he was and wasn't allowed to occupy, raised a hand. "I can chop something. I promise more consistent dimensions."

"You're a guest," Shiori said. "Guests don't chop vegetables."

"I stopped being a guest around hour three of today. I think I've graduated to something else."

"What have you graduated to?"

"Undefined household presence."

"That's not a real category."

"It's the category I'm claiming."

She handed him a knife anyway, along with a cutting board and a pointed look that communicated exactly how closely his work was going to be inspected, and he set to it with the same unhurried confidence he brought to most things, producing pieces that were, notably, more consistent than Momo's had ever been, a fact Momo noticed immediately and took a visible amount of offense to.

"That's not fair," she said. "You're not even trying and yours look better."

"I am trying. I'm trying very hard."

"You look completely relaxed."

"That's what trying looks like when you're good at something."

"That's insufferable."

"I've been told."

Daichi, tasked with the rice on the grounds that it was the one task nobody trusted him to ruin, stood at the counter measuring water with the specific care of a man determined not to become the day's cautionary tale, while the argument behind him escalated into a full debate about proper vegetable dimensions that somehow drew in both Shiori and Momo on opposing but occasionally overlapping sides.

"I'm staying out of this one," he said, to no one in particular.

"Nobody asked you to weigh in," Shiori said.

"I'm preemptively staying out of it. Insurance."

"That's not how insurance works."

"It's how mine works."

Dinner came together slowly, in the unhurried, slightly chaotic way that dinners assembled by four people with four different levels of cooking competence tended to, punctuated by small disputes over seasoning, a brief disagreement about whether the pan was hot enough that ended with Kaito burning his finger slightly and Momo laughing entirely too hard at his expense, and a genuine, if minor, crisis when the rice cooker's timer went off ten minutes earlier than Daichi had expected, sending him briefly into a small panic that Shiori resolved by simply telling him to stop touching things and let it finish.

"I wasn't panicking."

"You were absolutely panicking. You made a noise."

"That was a thoughtful noise."

"That was a panic noise. I've heard both. I know the difference."

By the time they finally sat down at the small table that was really only built for three people and was now, with some creative rearranging, accommodating four, the food had turned out considerably better than the chaos of its assembly might have suggested, and the four of them ate with the loose, easy conversation of people who'd spent an entire day together and had, somehow, not yet run out of things to say to one another.

"This is good," Kaito said, around a mouthful of rice. "Genuinely. Better than I expected given how much yelling happened during the vegetable portion."

"There wasn't yelling," Shiori said. "There was passionate disagreement."

"That's the same thing at a certain volume."

"It's really not."

"I clocked at least two distinct volume spikes."

"Those were emphasis."

"Emphatic yelling is still yelling."

Momo, picking through her bowl with the plush from the arcade propped up beside her plate like a small, judgmental dinner guest, gestured at Kaito with her chopsticks. "You should come over more often. You're useful."

"I'm flattered and slightly used at the same time."

"Both can be true."

"I did come to borrow a game," he said. "I feel like that got lost somewhere around hour two of today."

“It's right there,” Daichi said, nodding at the game case sitting on the counter where it had been all day. “You spent the entire day here and somehow forgot the one thing you actually came for.”

"That's embarrassing."

"It's very embarrassing."

"I'll take it when I leave. Which will be soon. Probably."

"You said that three hours ago," Shiori said, though there wasn't much bite left in it by now, worn down over the course of the day into something closer to fond resignation than actual complaint.

"I meant it three hours ago too. Circumstances kept intervening."

"Circumstances being free arcade tokens and free dinner."

"I paid for the arcade tokens myself, for the record."

"You paid for one round. Momo covered the rest after you lost the bet."

"That's a technicality."

"It's an accurate accounting."

They lingered at the table long after the food was gone, the conversation drifting the way it always did toward nothing in particular — a show Momo wanted everyone to start, a complaint from Shiori about a professor she was fairly sure hated her personally, a story from Kaito about a coworker that ran long enough that Daichi had time to finish an entire second helping of rice before it reached its point, which turned out to be considerably less dramatic than the buildup had promised.

"That's it?" Momo said. "That's the whole story? He just moved the stapler?"

"It was very dramatic in the moment."

"It sounds like nothing happened."

"A lot happened. You had to be there."

"I feel like I was there, through your description, and nothing happened."

"My storytelling failed to convey the stakes."

"There were no stakes."

"There were internal stakes."

It was well past dark by the time Kaito finally stood, stretching with a groan that suggested a full day of arcade games and vegetable chopping had taken more of a toll than he'd expected, and retrieved the game case from the counter at last, tucking it securely under his arm so he couldn't possibly forget it again.

"Okay," he said. "Now I'm actually leaving."

"You said that an hour ago too," Shiori said.

"This time I mean it. I have things to do tomorrow that require me to have slept at some point tonight."

"What things?"

"Undetermined things. But probably things."

"That's not reassuring."

"It's not meant to be reassuring, it's meant to get me out the door."

Momo walked him to it anyway, the plush tucked under one arm, chatting about something Daichi couldn't quite hear from the kitchen, and Shiori began clearing the table with the same brisk efficiency she brought to everything, though she paused once, briefly, to watch the two of them by the door before returning her attention to the dishes without comment.

"You're staring," Daichi said, drying a bowl beside her.

"I'm not staring, I'm observing."

"That's the same thing with better lighting."

"It's really not."

"What are you observing, then."

"Nothing," she said, in the specific tone of someone who had observed something quite thoroughly and had no intention of discussing it further tonight. "Finish the dishes."

"I am finishing the dishes."

"Finish them faster."

By the time Momo came back from the door, humming something under her breath, the plush still tucked against her side, the kitchen had mostly been put back in order, and the apartment had settled into the particular quiet of a long, full day finally winding down.

"He's gone," she reported, unnecessarily, dropping onto the couch with a satisfied sigh.

"We assumed," Shiori said.

“He said thanks for the food.”

“Mm,” Shiori said, in the specific tone of someone who had noticed more than she intended to discuss.

Momo looked at her for a moment, clearly unconvinced by whatever that mm was supposed to mean, then settled deeper into the couch cushions with the plush propped on her stomach.

Daichi, finishing the last of the dishes, glanced between the two of them and decided, with the hard-won wisdom of a man who had survived exactly this kind of conversational crossroads many times before, that the correct move was to say absolutely nothing at all, and dried his hands on the towel instead, letting the apartment settle back into its ordinary Saturday-night quiet, laundry still unfolded in its basket, dishes finally done, one entire day spent almost exactly the way none of them had planned it, and somehow better for it.