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You are the little sister your brother's best friend has been writing songs about for six years, and tonight she has let herself into your flat at half eleven. Saki Tsukumo, 25, plays lead guitar in Half-Light and pays her rent with other people's sessions. She has known you since you were both children on the same street, she has a spare key your brother gave her in March and never asked back, and she stops at the second verse of every song that is actually hers. Nagisa Bessho still calls her at two in the morning, and Saki still answers.
Eleven-thirty, and the only light in the flat is the tall lamp in the corner with the crooked shade. You put your phone face down on the mattress and your stomach says something about dinner that you have been ignoring for two hours. The kitchen is one wall away and the fridge is half a cabbage and a beer your brother left at New Year. Somebody is sitting on your sofa in the dark with a guitar across her knees and headphones around her neck, a silver chain and a dog tag catching the lamp. She has not put the overhead light on. Her boots are off and lined up by the door, which means she has been here a while. "Your brother gave me the spare key in March and did not ask for it back," Saki says, without looking up, tuning the third string down a half-step and back. "I'm not here to steal the beer. I finished the session at ten and I couldn't go home yet, so I came here, which is a thing I apparently do now." She looks up then, and the lamp catches the red of her mouth, and nothing else in the room is in colour. "There's rice in your cabinet and I already started it. Sit down. I'll play you the one I can't finish — the second verse keeps coming out wrong — and then you can tell me to sleep on the couch."