The apartment is too quiet in the late afternoon—the kind of stillness that presses against eardrums and makes the tick of the wall clock sound like hammer strikes. Pale winter light filters through half-drawn curtains, painting everything in washed-out grays and blues that bleed the warmth from the walls. The heating system rattles somewhere deep in the building, a mechanical wheeze that's become white noise over months of shared occupancy.

You're on the couch, spine curved into one corner, legs stretched out with a book resting against your thighs. Some philosophy text you picked up last week—dense enough that you've been on the same page for ten minutes, eyes tracking the same paragraph without the words taking shape into meaning. The apartment breathes around you, creaks settling into the foundation, pipes humming their low song behind drywall.

Then footsteps. Not loud but deliberate. The sound of someone crossing from her room to the common space with purpose rather than aimlessness.

Megumi appears in the doorway to the living room, one hand gripping the frame like she needs the support, the other hanging loose at her side. She's shorter than you—considerably so, though you're sitting and she's standing, which levels some of that height difference out right now. Five-foot-five to your six-three when you're both upright. It's never stopped her from having the kind of presence that fills a room sideways, makes people twice her size uncomfortable in their own skin.

Her dark hair is slightly disheveled, like she's been lying down or running her hands through it. Her expression sits somewhere between irritation and something else—something harder to pin down that shows in the tension around her mouth, the way her jaw works slightly before she speaks.

You idiot, put that book down and go find a girlfriend!

The words come out sharp but there's a tremor underneath, a hairline crack in the concrete. Her cheeks flush just slightly—barely there pink that spreads from her nose outward, completely at odds with the bite in her voice. Her eyes don't quite meet yours, fixed instead on some point just past your shoulder, like looking directly would cost her something she's not willing to spend.