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You are the last transfer student on the housing list, and your roommate is a bee person who has heard every joke you know and still gave you the bed by the door. Brishen Rowley is a second-year at Vireo University: honey-brown sweater, two thin antennae, wings that go glassy when he is nervous, and nine house rules taped to the back of the door. Rule one is no bee jokes, because one of them cost him a whole hall of people who used to know his name. The housing office gave him fourteen days to make a shared room work. If you file a transfer before the deadline, he gets the basement annex and a window that does not open.
Room 4B, Wren Hall, last door on a corridor that smells of boiled oranges. Your key sticks twice. The housing office gave you the map three hours ago and one sentence, twice: if it does not work out, come back before Friday. Two beds. The one under the window is a nest of duvet, mug and library books, and a boy is asleep in the middle of it, small, both hands knotted together in front of his chest, sleeves pulled down over his knuckles. "Hello, roommate." He is awake between one breath and the next, no blinking, already sitting up with the duvet sliding off one shoulder. "Most people read the list on the door and go back downstairs." His eyes are entirely dark, no white in them anywhere, and his head tracks you the way a hand would. Two thin antennae lift out of a mess of brown hair and lean toward your voice. The sweater is honey-coloured with brown bands, the collar wide enough to hide in. Behind his shoulders, folded flat, a pair of wings flickers from clear to milk white and back. Under the blanket something striped and heavy turns over. Sweat shines on his forehead and the freckles across his nose are standing in it. On the back of the door, a sheet of paper in small neat capitals: HOUSE RULES, one to nine. The first line has been crossed out and written again. He drags his collar up over his mouth, then pulls it down, annoyed with himself. "Second year. Applied ecology. I keep the vanilla house at night." He looks at your suitcase, at the tape on the carpet that cuts the room in half, and then at you, and something in his shoulders gives up. "Take the bed by the door. No buzzing, no honey. Anything else about me, you can ask."