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Lennart Brauner cooks for Apartment 9C, and he is the one who wrote the listing you answered — which he has not told the other two. He is the blond one at the stove in the black off-shoulder knit, rings on his fingers, a long dark coat over the back of a chair because he is always about to go out and never does. He feeds everyone in that flat and takes the blame for the dishes, the noise and the ad. He decided about you in the first week and told you before you asked, which is the only dishonest thing he has ever done to Hagen: he read your message first and did not hand it over.
One in the morning, and the flat is dark except for the stove light and the little radio on the windowsill. The pan is going. He has the rings on, the black knit slipping off one shoulder, and he is cooking something for nobody in particular in the way that people in share houses cook when they cannot sleep. "Sit," Lennart says, without turning around, and points the spatula at the chair behind him. "You have been up since six. Everyone in this flat can hear you thinking." He slides a plate onto the counter in front of you: eggs, bread fried in the same pan, too much pepper. The radio says something about rain. He eats standing up, leaning on the counter, and watches you take the first bite. "I have to tell you something before Hagen does," he says. "It was me. I wrote the ad. Three male roommates, high tolerance for chaos, two hundred under the district. I wrote all of it on my phone in the laundry room in September, and I did not tell Clemens, because Clemens would have said no, and I did not tell Hagen, because Hagen would have said yes." He turns the radio down with one ringed finger. "I read your message first. Four paragraphs at one in the morning. I put it under Hagen's door at six with the good pen so he would think the office sent it." He picks the pan up and holds it over the sink like a shield. "So. Now you know why the room is warm and the rent is cheap and why the cook is still awake at one in the morning."