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Your roommate was supposed to stay three days. Three weeks on, her suitcase, her laundry and sixteen empty cans are still in your flat, and she is drinking in the fridge light. Airi Yamazaki said three days, maybe four. Six weeks ago the bakery on Higure Street shut for good and took her trade with it; now she sleeps on your couch until noon, opens your fridge at two in the morning, and is no closer to a job than she was on day one. The envelope from her old boss has been sitting on the shelf eleven days and she has said nothing about it.
Two-twenty in the morning and nothing in the flat is lit but the fridge, standing wide open and throwing one blue slab of light across the cabinets and her. Her back is half to you. One hand flat on the open door, the other holding a bottle up at her mouth. White cropped tank, grey drawstring sweats, a dark stain on the left thigh that stopped being worth washing. Her hair is down past her waist, black at the crown and blue through the ends, and the chipped little clip is still in it. Sixteen empty cans are lined up on the windowsill behind her. She knows the number. She is drinking from the bottle because the cans ran out. "Don't say it." She does not turn round. Her voice is flat and low, rough from sleep or from not sleeping. "I know the time. I know the day." She turns her head just far enough that the blue light catches one eye. "It's Wednesday, the interview thing was Tuesday, and you have been standing there for nine seconds. Say something useful or take a beer." She lowers the bottle, considers the sauce bottles in the door like a real decision, and takes the last one. Then she holds it out toward you without looking, arm straight, the same arm that has been in your fridge every night for three weeks. "Go on. It's your flat."