Naoya Tsukishima arrived in Misakiura with two duffel bags, a phone screen that was cracked in three places, and no real plan.
That last part was the problem.
He stood outside the train station and looked at the small coastal town around him. It was quiet in the way that places are quiet when you don't know anybody there.
There was a convenience store across the road. A few bikes were parked in front of it. Down the street he could see the ocean, just barely, between two buildings. It smelled like salt and something cold.
He checked his phone. The address he had written down was for a place called Velvet House. He had found it on a handwritten card pinned to the bulletin board of a convenience store back in Osaka, stuck between a flyer for a lost cat and an ad for piano lessons. The card said: CO-ED BOARDING HOUSE. ROOMS AVAILABLE. AFFORDABLE. CLOSE TO UNIVERSITY.
And then a phone number and an address.
He had called the number. A man had picked up and said, "Yeah, the room's still open. You can come look at it if you want." And that was basically the whole conversation.
Naoya had written the address on his hand because his phone had thirty percent battery and he didn't trust it. The ink was a little smudged from the train ride but still readable. He shifted his bags and started walking.
Velvet House was on a side street two blocks from the main road. It was a three-story building that looked like it had been built a long time ago and repaired several times since. Not badly. Just the way old things get fixed — a little bit at a time. The front door was painted dark green. There was a small sign next to it that said VELVET HOUSE in plain black letters.
The door was open.
Not unlocked. Actually open. Sitting wide open like someone had stepped out for a second and forgotten about it.
Naoya stood at the entrance and looked inside. He could see a narrow hall with shoes lined up against the wall. A staircase going up. A hallway going further back. No one was there.
He knocked on the open door anyway, because it felt like the right thing to do.
Nothing.
He knocked again, louder.
Still nothing, but this time he heard a voice from somewhere inside. Through a door to the left that was also open. Someone was counting.
"Forty-seven... forty-eight... okay hold on, don't move —"
He stepped inside. He lined his shoes up by the wall next to the others and walked toward the voice. It got clearer the closer he got.
He stepped into the living room and stopped.
There was a girl on the floor.
Not hurt. She was sitting cross-legged surrounded by fabric — red and gold and a lot of it. She was wearing what looked like the bottom half of a very big costume, and she was holding a measuring tape and staring at something on the floor with the focused look of someone doing math in their head.
She hadn't looked up.
Naoya opened his mouth to say something.
"If you're the new tenant," the girl said, still not looking up, "your room is up the stairs. Third floor. The one with the plant in front of the door."
Naoya closed his mouth.
"If you're a pervert," she continued, and now she did look up, just for a second, just to check, "so is the guy on the second floor and we have enough."
She looked back down at her fabric.
"I'm the new tenant," Naoya said.
"Great," the girl said. "The bathroom schedule is on the fridge. Don't mess with it." She looked up again properly this time. She had a round face and dark eyes and a small piece of gold fabric stuck in her hair that she clearly didn't know about. "I'm Hina. Hina Suzushiro. Second floor."
"Naoya Tsukishima," he said.
"Cool," Hina said, and went back to counting.
The room was at the end of the third floor hall. There was a small plant in a terracotta pot sitting right in front of the door, on the floor. The leaves were a little yellow at the tips.
Naoya looked at the plant. Then at the door. Then at the plant again.
Someone had owned this plant. Now they didn't. Which meant it was probably his problem now.
He opened the door and went in.
The room was small. A bed, a desk, a window looking out at the street, and a shelf that was empty except for one book someone had left behind. The walls were plain. The floor was wood. It was the kind of room that didn't have any personality yet, which was either a problem or not depending on how you looked at it.
Naoya put his bags down. He sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress made a soft sound under him.
He looked around.
He had been kicked out of his last place because his roommate had decided, very suddenly, to move in with a girlfriend. That had left Naoya with two weeks to find somewhere new and not much money to do it with.
He had not taken this well. He had called his mother twice, searched every housing board he could find, and ended up in a convenience store in Osaka staring at a handwritten card for a place called Velvet House in a town he had never heard of.
And now here he was.
He took out his cracked phone and took a photo of the room to send to his mother.
Then he looked at the photo and decided it was too sad to send. He put the phone away.
He came back downstairs twenty minutes later because he was hungry. He had eaten one onigiri on the train and that was it.
The kitchen was at the back of the first floor. It was bigger than his room. There was a table in the middle, chairs around it, a fridge covered in notes, and a rice cooker on the counter that looked like it got used every day.
A boy was standing at the counter.
He was tall, maybe a year or two older, wearing scrubs like he had just come back from somewhere. He had a stack of papers under one arm and a laminated card in the other hand. When Naoya walked in the boy turned around, looked at him for one second, and then broke into a wide grin.
"New tenant," the boy said. Not a question.
"Yeah," Naoya said.
"Perfect timing." The boy held out the laminated card. "I'm Ren. Mochizuki Ren. Third year, pre-med. I made this for you."
Naoya took the card. It was a full page, laminated, with small neat writing on both sides. The header said: THE VELVET HOUSE FIELD GUIDE TO SURVIVAL.
He read the first three lines.
"You made this yourself?" Naoya asked.
"I make one for every new tenant," Ren said. "The bathroom schedule is in section two. Read section two first. Actually no, read section one first because you need the background, but know that section two is the one that matters."
Naoya scanned the card. There were six sections. Section five said: REGARDING THE THIRD FLOOR: READ THIS CAREFULLY.
"What's the third floor rule about?" Naoya asked.
"That's where you're living," Ren said.
"I know. I just moved in. What's the rule?"
Ren pointed at the last line of section five. It said: Knock twice, wait, knock once. Do not deviate.
"What happens if I deviate?" Naoya asked.
Ren picked up his papers. "Let's just say it's better not to find out."
He walked out of the kitchen before Naoya could ask anything else.
Naoya made himself instant noodles and sat at the table and read the whole laminated card while he ate. It was, actually, pretty useful. The bathroom schedule made sense. The fridge system was clear. Section four said simply: Clean up after yourself. This is not optional.
He was on section six when he heard slow footsteps on the stairs.
A girl walked past the kitchen doorway.
She had long dark hair and was wearing a plain grey cardigan and carrying a notebook under her arm. She walked past without looking in. She didn't say anything. She was just there, and then she wasn't, gone somewhere deeper in the house.
Naoya waited.
She didn't come back.
He looked down at the laminated card. He was starting to think this house had more rules than he expected. Not the written kind. The other kind. The kind you had to figure out by paying attention.
He finished his noodles. He washed the bowl. He put it in the right cabinet because Ren had labeled every cabinet and it seemed easier to just follow the labels.
He went back upstairs.
The plant was still in front of his door where he had left it.
He picked it up and brought it inside and set it on the desk by the window. It would probably get more light there. He didn't know anything about plants. He supposed he would figure it out the same way he was going to figure out everything else about this place.
Outside the window the street was getting dark. Somewhere down the hill was the ocean. He couldn't see it from here but he had seen it from the station, and big things like that didn't just go away.
He sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress made its small sound.
He looked at the room. The plant on the desk. The window. The single book on the empty shelf.
He thought: okay. He thought: this is the new thing now.
He thought about the girl on the floor counting fabric. The guy in scrubs with the laminated card. The girl who had walked past without looking at him like he was invisible.
He thought: this is definitely not a romantic comedy.
He lay back on the bed with his shoes still on and stared at the ceiling and tried to figure out what, exactly, it was.