Naoya woke up the next morning not knowing where he was.
It lasted about three seconds. Then he saw the plant on the desk and remembered.
Right. Velvet House. Misakiura. The girl on the floor with the fabric. The guy with the laminated card.
He sat up and looked around the room. It looked the same as the night before, which made sense because nothing had happened to it while he was asleep. The plant was still a little yellow at the tips. The shelf still had one book on it. The window showed a grey morning sky.
He picked up his phone from the floor where it had fallen during the night. Eight percent battery. He plugged it in and went to find the bathroom.
The bathroom on the third floor was shared. He had read this in section two of the laminated card. There were two other rooms on the third floor besides his. One of them had a light under the door. The other one, the one at the very end of the hall, was dark and quiet.
He knocked on the bathroom door first. Nobody answered. He went in.
It was a normal bathroom. Clean. There was a small whiteboard stuck to the inside of the cabinet with handwriting on it that said: CHECK THE SCHEDULE ON THE FRIDGE BEFORE YOU USE THIS IN THE MORNING. Underlined twice.
Naoya looked at the whiteboard for a moment. Then he showered quickly and went downstairs.
The schedule on the fridge was on a printed sheet inside a plastic sleeve, held up by two magnets. Someone had put a lot of thought into it. There were time slots for every morning from six a.m. to nine a.m., divided by name.
His name was already on it. Naoya — 7:45 to 8:00. Someone had added it in blue pen in the one open slot left.
He stood in front of the fridge and stared at it.
"You're up early."
He turned around. Ren was in the kitchen doorway, still in the same scrubs from yesterday, looking like he had either just woken up or not slept at all. He was holding a coffee mug and squinting at the light.
"I didn't check the schedule before I used the shower," Naoya said.
Ren walked to the counter and poured more coffee. "What time was it?"
"Maybe seven-fifteen."
Ren turned around and looked at the schedule on the fridge. He looked back at Naoya. "That's Shiori's slot."
"Who's Shiori?"
"Third floor. Far end of the hall." Ren pointed up, which was not very helpful but Naoya understood what he meant. "She works early. She needs that slot."
"I didn't know," Naoya said. "I just moved in yesterday."
"I know," Ren said. "That's why I'm telling you now instead of after she finds out." He drank his coffee. "Read the card. Section two. All of it."
"I read it," Naoya said.
"All of it?"
Naoya thought about it. "Most of it."
Ren looked at him the way a doctor might look at someone who said they took half their medicine. "Read the rest," he said.
Naoya went back upstairs, found the laminated card on his desk, and read section two all the way through.
It was detailed. Very detailed. There were fifteen time slots across six people. Each slot was fifteen minutes. The notes at the bottom said: This schedule exists because six people sharing one bathroom per floor is a situation that requires structure. Do not treat this as optional.
At the very bottom, in smaller writing: If you need to swap a slot, ask the person directly. Do not just take their slot. This has happened before. It did not go well.
Naoya put the card down. He looked at the door at the end of the hall. The light under it was still on. He stood in his own doorway for a moment, trying to decide.
He walked to the end of the hall and knocked on the door. Twice. Then he waited. Then he knocked once.
Nothing happened for a few seconds. Then the door opened.
It was the girl from last night. The one in the grey cardigan who had walked past the kitchen without looking at him. Up close, she was a little shorter than he expected. She had dark eyes and a very calm face, the kind of calm that made it hard to tell what she was thinking.
She looked at him.
He looked at her.
"I used your shower slot this morning," he said. "I didn't know the schedule yet. Sorry."
The girl — Shiori, Ren had called her — looked at him for a moment without saying anything. Then she said, "Okay."
"I'll stick to my slot from now on," Naoya said. "Seven forty-five."
"Okay," she said again.
She started to close the door.
"I'm Naoya," he said quickly. "Tsukishima Naoya. I moved in yesterday."
She paused. "I know," she said. "Hina told everyone."
Then she closed the door. Not hard. Just closed.
Naoya stood in the hallway for a second. He had no idea if that had gone well or badly. He went back to his room.
Breakfast was a thing that happened slowly at Velvet House. People came downstairs at different times and made different things and didn't talk a lot. Naoya made toast because it was the simplest thing he could find. He sat at the table and ate it.
Ren came in at eight-thirty in a different set of scrubs, which meant he had definitely slept at some point. He made rice in the rice cooker like it was something he had done a thousand times, which it probably was.
Hina came down at eight fifty-five in a big yellow sweater and immediately opened the fridge and stood in front of it for a long time without taking anything out.
"Good morning," she said to the fridge.
"Morning," Naoya said.
She turned around like she had forgotten he was there. "Oh. You're still here."
"I live here," he said.
"Right, right. Sorry." She took out an egg and closed the fridge. "I forget that people move in and stay. We had a guy last year who looked at the room and then just never came back." She cracked the egg into a pan. "His deposit though. That was Daisuke's problem."
"Who's Daisuke?" Naoya asked.
"Building manager. Ground floor. You haven't met him yet?"
"No."
"He's around somewhere," Hina said.
"Probably fixing something. He's always fixing something."
Ren sat down at the table across from Naoya with his rice. He had added something from a small container to the top of it. "Did you apologize to Shiori?" he asked.
"I knocked and told her. She said okay twice and closed the door."
Ren nodded like this was exactly what he expected. "That's fine. That's just how she is."
"Is she always like that?" Naoya asked.
"Like what?" Ren said.
"Quiet. Like that."
Ren thought about it. "She's not quiet," he said. "She just doesn't talk unless she has something to say. There's a difference."
Naoya thought about this. "Okay," he said.
Hina put her egg on a plate and sat down at the end of the table. "Did she explain the third floor rule to you? The knocking thing?"
"Ren told me the rule," Naoya said. "Nobody told me what happens if I do it wrong."
Ren and Hina looked at each other.
"Nothing happens," Ren said.
"She just doesn't answer," Hina said at the same time.
They both stopped.
"Which one is it?" Naoya asked.
"She doesn't answer," Ren said, "and then nothing happens. Both are true."
Hina nodded. "But if you do the right knock she usually opens the door. Like she did just now."
"So the rule works," Naoya said.
"The rule works," Ren agreed.
After breakfast, Naoya went back to his room and sat at his desk with his sketchbook. He hadn't opened it since he packed it in Osaka. He opened it now and flipped through the old pages. Buildings mostly. Drafts from his architecture class, which he wasn't taking anymore. Floor plans and elevation sketches and a few things that were more like drawings than plans, the kind his professor had not liked.
He stopped on a blank page.
He picked up a pen. He looked out the window at the grey street.
He started drawing the hallway. The third floor hallway, from memory — the doors and the light under one of them and the plant in the pot that was now on his desk. It wasn't anything serious. Just something to do with his hands.
When he finished he looked at it for a moment and then closed the sketchbook.
He could hear Hina's sewing machine starting up somewhere down the hall. He could hear Ren's voice, faint, reading something out loud — medical stuff, it sounded like. He could not hear anything from the room at the end of the hall.
He wondered what she did in there all day. Then he decided it wasn't his business and went to find out where the nearest convenience store was.
He came back an hour later with a bag of things for his shelf. Some food, a phone charger that actually worked, and a small bottle of plant water because he had stood in the gardening section of the store for five minutes and decided the plant deserved a fighting chance.
He was on the stairs when he noticed something he had missed the first time.
There was a name written on a small piece of tape on each door. Just first names, in different handwriting. HINA. REN. His door, which someone had added in the same blue pen as his shower slot: NAOYA.
He stood and looked at his name on the door for a second.
At the end of the hall, the name on the last door said SHIORI in small, neat letters.
Her light was still on.
He went into his room and watered the plant. He didn't know if he was using too much or too little. He figured he would look it up later.
He put his new charger in the wall and plugged in his phone, which was down to two percent now, and sat on the bed and looked at the laminated card one more time.
He had not finished section six yesterday. He finished it now.
Section six said: Welcome to Velvet House.
It's not perfect. The hot water takes a minute to come through, the second step on the main stairs makes a sound, and the washing machine on the ground floor has to be started twice because it stops halfway through the first cycle for no reason anyone has been able to figure out. But it works. Everything here works if you give it a little time.
At the very bottom: If you have problems, questions, or complaints, you can talk to Daisuke on the ground floor. He probably already knows about the problem. He's been meaning to fix it.
Naoya read that last line twice.
He put the card on his shelf, next to the book the old tenant had left behind. He lay back on his bed.
The sewing machine sound came through the wall. Somewhere below that, the soft rhythm of someone reading out loud.
The house made more noise than he expected. Not loud noise. Just the sound of people being in rooms, doing things. He was not sure yet if that was a good thing or not.
He closed his eyes.
He thought he would probably find out.