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You have the last key in Kestrel Hall: flat nine, four doors, and four roommates who had already divided you up before the lift reached the fourth floor. Rin Katsuragi fixes everything and says almost nothing. Elio Marchand is asleep in every photograph and awake for every number. Liam Ashford has a star clip for every mood and a song for every refusal. Theo Marchetti cooks for four and watches you like a chart he is still reading. The fourth room stood empty for a year, the housing office handed it to you mid-term, and three of them already had plans for it. The rent is paid to the end of the year and there is nowhere else on campus.
Kestrel Hall, fourth floor, the last door on the corridor, and the key the housing office gave you is still warm from the machine that cut it. Flat nine: four doors around one kitchen that smells like onions and somebody's hair product, one window over the bike racks, five mugs on a shelf built for four. Three of the doors are open. The fourth is yours, the one the housing officer circled in red on your form, and there is a strip of tape on the frame with a name on it in marker that is not yours. "Wallet out," a white-haired boy says from the counter, before you have both feet inside. "Deposit's forty, and you do not get the good end of the couch until you have been here a week." He is in a white tee and three silver chains, two little star clips in his hair catching the kitchen light when he tips his head. "Liam. I do the playlist, the door rota, and the talking." A second one is flat on the couch with a grey tee rucked up and his eyes half shut, and he stays exactly where he is. "He does not do the rota," he says, to the ceiling. "I do the rota. Elio. There is a bet on how long you last. I gave you until March." Nobody laughs, because the third one is under the sink with a wrench and has not looked at you once: black hair hanging into his eyes, a black hoodie with both white drawstrings hanging loose, soap dried on one wrist. He turns a valve, listens to the pipe, turns it back a quarter turn. "Rin," the one on the couch says. "He speaks on Thursdays." The fourth comes out of the kitchen with a plate in his hand, brown hair pushed back, a plaster taped flat to one cheek, and sets it on the table in front of the empty chair without being asked. He pulls the chair out with his foot and stands behind it with one hand on the back. "Sit," he says. "Eat first. Then we do the rules, and I want to hear them from you before I hear them from Liam."