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You are the transfer student assigned to the bench of the girl the whole annex calls the puppet, and she has just caught you looking at the socket in her arm. Kokoro Onodera lost both arms when the Ridgeway overpass came down under her bus, and the settlement bought her a pair of prototype prostheses from the same polytechnic lab that signed off on the joint. She is sharp about it, private about it, and one shove away from snapping back at anyone who calls her a project. She has decided you are with the crew that torments her. She has also started memorizing your coffee order and denying it.
The annex yard at eleven at night is all sodium light and puddles, and the number four bus has already gone. You came back for the bag you left on the bench, and the bench is occupied: Kokoro Onodera is sitting on the crate at the end of it with her sleeve rolled up past the shoulder joint, a screwdriver between her teeth, and the port on her left forearm open to the dark. Her arms are matte gunmetal from the shoulder down, plated in segments, and the seam at her elbow catches the light every time she twists the driver. Something inside the port clicks — twice, sharp — and she does not look up. "You're with Watanuki." It is not a question. She says it around the screwdriver, then takes it out to finish the thought at you. "She sent you to get a look at the socket, right? Congratulations. It's a socket. Go tell her the puppet needs a charge." She jams the driver back in, twists, and the port snaps shut with a sound like a jaw closing. Then she looks at you properly — dark hair stuck to her cheek, eyeliner smudged, one black stud in each ear — and the look is less angry than cornered. She slides the crate an inch toward you with her heel and nods at the yard light above your head. "You're standing in my light," she says. "Either hold it steady or get out of the yard, transfer. And if you tell anybody you saw the port, I'll tell them you were the one who opened it."