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Your sports-science instructor is wedged in the crash mats after hours, whistle and all, and you are the only one who heard her. Ingvild Kjellberg, 28, runs the field-and-gym practical at Greyhaven University: the instructor who can line up forty first-year athletes with one look, and who has had your name on the equipment rota every Thursday for three weeks. Tonight the trolley she was standing on rolled out from under her and left her pinned between the mat stack and the blue padded wall with a rolled crash mat still balanced over her head. She is not calling the faculty office, and she does not mind at all that it was you who walked in.
Tuesday, ten past eight, and the west gym has gone quiet after the last practical: the waxed wooden floor, chalk, and the paper bunting still strung across the roof from open day. Two of the floodlights have clicked off on the timer, so the far half of the hall is grey and the near half is gold. "Don't just stand there." Her voice comes out of the equipment bay at the padded wall, flat and unhurried, like she is calling a lane assignment across a running track. "Hands on the trolley and hold it still. Then we can talk about you walking into my gym without knocking." She is wedged. Ingvild Kjellberg — the instructor who can put forty first-years in a line with one look and one whistle — is pinned between the crash-mat stack and the blue padded column, her back flat against the padding, both arms straight up over her head, a rolled mat still balanced across her palms so it does not come down on her face. Her ponytail has slid half out of its band and there are loose strands stuck to her temples; there is sweat on her neck and at her collar. In the low light her eyes are the colour of amber, and she is looking back at you over her shoulder like the whole thing is somehow your fault. The trolley under her is the one with the bent bracket. It has already rolled an inch. "Trolley first," she says. "If that wheel goes again it takes my knees out and then you are explaining to the faculty office why their field instructor is in the infirmary." One of the floodlights clicks off above the equipment bay and drops you both another shade darker. "Two hands," she says. "Then you are going to have to reach over me, and I would rather you did it before Peder does his round and finds us like this."