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Housing Services has put you in the worst dorm on campus, and the four athletes who live there have four hours to make it survivable. The storage room is yours. The lock is yours. What the four of them are arguing about is which one of them gets to carry your boxes.
The bass was already thumping at four in the afternoon. Rosendo stood at the stove shirtless, gold chains swinging, reducing an entire bulb of garlic to paste while the kitchen filled with the smell of scorched chilli oil and impending greatness. The party playlist thundered from two speakers. Kellan wandered through with a crate of drinks, stacking bottles into a fridge that had no business holding any of it, wearing a shirt he had clearly chosen off the floor and deemed acceptable. “More ice,” Rosendo called over the music, stabbing his spoon like a conductor's baton. “Kellan. MÁS HIELO.” “I heard you the first four times, man—” “THEN MOVE, GRINGO.” The door to 505 swung open and Alfie came in with two bags of ice hooked on his arms, scowling like the ice owed him money. “Third trip today. THIRD. My hands are goin' purple. Ask Yevgeny, he's got nothin' better to do than watch me suffer.” From the couch, without opening his eyes, Yevgeny drawled, “Da. It best show on campus.” “Dah,” Alfie mocked flatly. “One day I'm gonna learn what you're actually sayin' and it's gonna be an insult, and then you're dead.” “It is always insult.” “You see? SEE?” Alfie huffed, dragging a hand over his face. Kellan dropped onto the armrest, scrolling his phone, grin spreading slow and dangerous. “So. Party tonight. Rumour is half the cheer squad's coming and—” His phone buzzed. Then buzzed again. The grin faltered into something more squinting. He read it once. Read it twice. “...Guys.” “Guys WHAT, we're busy—” Rosendo yelled from the kitchen. Housing Services email. Subject line: EMERGENCY ACCOMMODATION REASSIGNMENT — ROOM 505. Kellan read it out loud. Storage room. Cleared. Furnished. Fifth occupant. Effective immediately. Female student. Arriving tonight. The music kept playing for exactly three more seconds before Rosendo turned the stove off with the reverence of a man witnessing history. “The storage room. OUR storage room. Where I keep my good—” “Your cheap beer, yeah mate, we know—” Alfie muttered. “—MY GOOD BEER, Alfie—” Rosendo bit back, waving a spatula at him. “So let me get this straight.” Alfie dropped the ice bags onto the counter with a thud. “University loses count of their students like a drunk accountant, and our punishment is a fifth person? In FIVE-oh-FIVE? The room where the fire alarm went off three times last month?” “Four times,” Yevgeny corrected mildly. “FOUR TIMES. And they're sendin' us someone NEW. Some poor girl is gonna walk in 'ere tonight—” he gestured at the beer crate pyramid, the solo cups already staged, Kellan's shoes colonising the hallway, “—into THIS, and think she's moved in with a circus.” “She'll think she's moved into a nightclub,” Kellan said, delighted. “She'll think she's moved into a CRIME SCENE, you absolute—” Rosendo was already moving, sweeping cups into a bag, dragging the tally board off the wall with both hands. “Okay. bueno, bueno, bueno. Nosotros limpiamos. We clean NOW. Kellan, hide the board. Yevgeny, open the window, it smells like—” “Me,” Yevgeny said. “Sí, exactly, it smells like YOU—” Privately, Rosendo's stomach had dropped somewhere around his boots. A girl. In the apartment. Tonight. What if she hates cooking? What if she's allergic to garlic? That would literally kill him. Kellan was doing maths he would never admit to — four years of a one-way tally board and now, for the first time, he actually cared what someone thought of the room. So bad. Don't blow it, Marle. And Alfie was mentally measuring the storage room against the single bed — no heating vent, paper-thin walls, streetlamp right outside the window. She would freeze. Someone would have to dig out the spare duvet. Not him. Someone else. ...Fine, him. Yevgeny said nothing. He rose from the couch, a glacier deciding to move, plucked the email from Kellan's phone and read it twice in that flat, unreadable voice. “Girl. Room five-oh-five.” A pause. Smoke curled from the cracked window. “Nakonets-to chto-to interesnoye.” “What's that mean?” Kellan asked. The corner of Yevgeny's mouth moved — a millimetre, an event. “Finally... something interesting.” The storage room door creaked when Alfie kicked it open, dust swirling in the orange streetlight bleeding through the tiny window. Empty shelves. One bare mattress. A single hanging bulb. “Right,” Alfie muttered, hands on his hips, already dreading the next four hours. “Somebody find a hoover before she gets 'ere, or I swear on me mum—” Behind him, four men scrambled. The party started at nine. She was arriving at eight. Nobody in Room 505 was remotely ready — and somebody had already fitted a new lock to your door, and left the key on the kitchen counter with your name written on the tag.