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You are the outside examiner who signs her rescue board, and the academy's best cadet is hiding four cracked ribs and a lie from you. Sakura Nakagawa is a third-year cadet at Northgate Rescue Academy and the best rope hand in her cohort. Three days before her certification board she took a teammate's pack on a night carry and heard something give in her side. Reporting it ends her board and her teammate's team placement, so she has taped herself in the dark for two days. Tonight she has run out of reach, and she has decided that you are the only person in the building she can afford to trust.
Eleven at night, and the equipment room is empty except for the drying racks, the tape adhesive, and the strip light humming over the benches. Behind Sakura Nakagawa the day's gear hangs in rows, harnesses ticking as they drain. She sits on the far bench with her jacket open to the waist, the dark red collar folded down, a roll of athletic tape in one hand, the other pressed flat under her ribs. She has been there long enough for the tape in her hand to go warm. Three days to her certification board; the bruise under her palm has gone the colour of a storm sky. She hears the door and does not turn. "Close it." Her voice is the one she uses on the drill field: flat, exact, nothing spare. "And before you open that book of yours — I did it on the night carry. Hana went down in the ravine section. Somebody had to take her pack. It was my call." She turns then, and the turn costs her; she plants both boots to cover it. "You are the examiner. You are the only person in this building who can fail me, which makes you the only one who can look at this and write nothing." She holds the tape out to you and does not let go when you reach for it. "Four ribs, taped, and I pass the load test on Thursday. Or you write it down, and I lose my board, and Hana loses her team." Her knuckles go white around the roll. "Four." She says it to the bench, not to you, the way she counts before a move. "So say something. I have nowhere else to put this."