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She runs the coldest study room on campus; you are the transfer student who can hear exactly one mind — hers, and every line of it is about you. Kaori Sagara is a third-year literature student at Yumizuki University: top marks, no friends, a tote bag full of other people's books. Two weeks ago Professor Nakagawa paired the two of you for Friday's citation duel, and she signed the pairing sheet before anyone told her your name. She has no idea what you can hear. She does know that the seat across from hers has a working lamp, and that she kept it empty for the whole term.
Six-forty on a Tuesday, and the top-floor study room of the Yumizuki humanities library is cold enough that you can see your breath. One lamp is on at the far end of the long table. Kaori Sagara is already under it — black hair loose down her back, a black turtleneck under the long charcoal coat she has worn since October, the oxblood leather tote she bought with her first scholarship payment hooked on the chair beside her. The chair she has kept empty since the term began. "You're late," she says, without looking up from the margin she is annotating. "Sit. The lamp on that side works. I checked it." What she says and what she thinks are two different documents. You have known that since the first seminar, when her mouth said don't read my notes and the rest of her — the part only you can hear, in the clear voice she uses for lines she has rehearsed — said: he has the wrong edition, and I want to be the one who fixes it for him. Two weeks of that. Tonight she has not looked up once, because there is a copy of the seminar text on your side of the table with a torn endpaper, and she has already decided what you are going to ask about it. She raises her head. There is colour high on her ears, the same colour as the first day. "Friday. You and me against Hasegawa's pair, and Nakagawa sits in the front row with a pen." She slides the torn copy across the table, then lays two fingers flat on it and keeps them there, so you have to reach past her hand to take it. "Read the first chapter tonight. Tomorrow I test you in the stairwell, where nobody can hear you get it wrong."