The schedule lasted two days.
Two days of everyone taking their right slot, nobody running over time, nobody cutting in front of anyone. Naoya had even started setting an alarm for seven forty in the morning just to make sure he was ready on time. It was fine. It was actually fine.
Then day three happened.
It started before six in the morning.
Naoya heard it through the wall. A knock. Then another knock. Then a voice.
"Ren." It was Hina. She did not sound calm.
"Ren, I need the bathroom."
A long pause.
"Ren."
Another pause.
"REN."
Naoya pulled his blanket over his head.
More knocking. Hina's voice again, louder now. "You have a seven o'clock clinical today.
Why are you in the shower at five fifty."
Ren's voice came through the wall, muffled by the door. "I couldn't sleep. I decided to be productive."
"Being productive," Hina said, "is not a reason to take someone's slot."
"I'm not taking your slot. Your slot is six-fifteen. It's five fifty."
"My slot is six-fifteen because I have a fitting at seven and I need time to do my hair and the fitting is in a place that's twenty minutes away and I have to eat something before I go because last time I didn't eat and I almost fainted in front of the client so I need every single minute of my prep time starting from right now."
Then there was a pause for about five second.
"I'll be five minutes," Ren said.
"You said that ten minutes ago."
Naoya gave up on sleep and sat up.
He came out of his room to find Hina sitting on the floor in the hallway outside the bathroom door. She was wearing a big sleep shirt and had her knees pulled up and was staring at the door the way you stare at something when you are very close to losing your patience.
She looked up when she heard his door open.
"Don't use the bathroom," she said.
"I wasn't going to," he said.
"Good."
He leaned against the wall across from her.
"How long has he been in there?"
"Fifteen minutes."
"Does this happen a lot?"
Hina looked at the door again. "He has a thing where if he can't sleep he gets up and does stuff. Usually it's studying. Sometimes it's the shower." She pulled her knees tighter. "He should have studied."
The bathroom door opened. Ren came out in a towel with his hair wet and an expression that said he was already moving on and did not think this was a serious problem.
Hina stood up.
"I'm sorry," Ren said, before she could say anything. "You're right. I should have studied."
Hina pointed at the bathroom. "Move."
Ren moved. Hina went in and closed the door and the lock clicked.
Ren looked at Naoya. "She's not really angry," he said.
"She seemed angry," Naoya said.
"She gets loud when she's stressed. That's different from angry." Ren went back toward his room. "Don't tell her I said that."
"I heard that," Hina called through the door.
Ren disappeared into his room very quickly.
Naoya went downstairs to wait for his slot and found the kitchen already occupied.
There was a girl at the counter he hadn't met yet. She was small, with short hair, and she was making coffee with the quiet focus of someone who had done it many times. She was wearing a uniform top — the kind you wear for a cafe job.
She looked up when he came in but didn't seem surprised.
"You must be the new tenant," she said. "Third floor, right?"
"Yeah," he said. "Naoya."
"Tsuki," she said. She turned back to the coffee. "There's water in the kettle if you want tea. It's just boiled."
"Thanks."
He made himself tea and sat at the table. She finished her coffee and poured it into a travel cup. She moved around the kitchen without making much noise, the way people do when they've learned not to wake everyone else up.
"You work early," he said.
"Five days a week," she said. "The cafe opens at seven." She put the lid on her cup. "You'll get used to hearing me leave. The third floor door creaks a little if you push it too fast."
"I can push it slow," he said.
"I know. I just thought I'd tell you so it doesn't wake you up before you figure it out yourself."
She picked up her bag and her cup and walked toward the door.
"The schedule is going to fall apart today, by the way," she said over her shoulder. "I heard Hina and Ren from down here. When it falls apart, don't panic. Just wait your turn."
"How often does it fall apart?" Naoya asked.
Tsuki thought about it. "About every two weeks," she said. "Then someone fixes it and it holds for a bit."
"Who fixes it?"
She was already at the hallway. "Whoever gets tired of it first," she said. Then she was gone. He heard the front door open and close, soft and careful, and then the house was quiet again.
The schedule did fall apart. Not just because of Ren and Hina.
At six forty-five, right in the middle of Hina's slot running over, Naoya heard heavy footsteps on the stairs coming from somewhere above. Not the third floor. He looked up at the ceiling and frowned because the third floor was the top floor and there wasn't anything above it except the roof.
He was still in the kitchen. He heard the footsteps come down, pass the second floor, pass the first floor landing, and then stop somewhere behind him.
He turned around.
A man was standing in the hallway. Not young and not old, maybe late twenties. He was wearing house clothes and had a headlamp pushed up on his forehead and a wrench in one hand, and he had clearly been somewhere practical before this. He looked at Naoya with the same expression Tsuki had used — not surprised, just checking.
"New tenant?" the man said.
"Yeah," Naoya said. "Naoya Tsukishima."
"Daisuke," the man said. He walked to the fridge and looked at the bathroom schedule. He stood there with his wrench and looked at it for a moment. "Is someone in the bathroom right now who isn't supposed to be?"
"Hina is. Her slot ran over because Ren went early."
Daisuke nodded slowly. He did not seem upset. He seemed like someone who had seen this exact situation before and had made his peace with it.
"The schedule needs a buffer," he said. He took a pen from the counter and uncapped it. He put a small mark next to each slot on the schedule. Five minutes each.
"What does that do?" Naoya asked.
"Gives everyone a little extra space so that when someone runs long it doesn't push the whole thing off." Daisuke capped the pen and put it back. "It won't fix it completely.
Nothing fixes it completely. But it helps."
He walked back out of the kitchen with his wrench.
"Were you on the roof?" Naoya asked.
Daisuke stopped. "There's a pipe up there that needs looking at," he said. "Nothing serious. It can wait until the weekend." He looked at Naoya for a second. "You're the first new tenant in a while who hasn't asked me about the Wi-Fi before asking anything else."
"What's wrong with the Wi-Fi?" Naoya asked.
"Nothing," Daisuke said. "It's fine."
"Then why would I ask about it?"
Daisuke looked at him for a moment. Then he went back down the hall toward the ground floor. Naoya heard a door open and close.
By the time Naoya got into the bathroom it was almost eight thirty. An hour and a half later than his slot.
He stood in the shower and let the hot water run. It took a minute to come through, just like the card had said. He thought about the morning. He thought about Hina on the floor in the hallway. He thought about Tsuki already gone before the day really started and Daisuke coming down from the roof with a headlamp and a wrench.
He was starting to get a better picture of the place.
Each person had their own schedule. Their own reasons for the things they did. The house had its rules and the rules helped but the rules also broke and then someone fixed them and then they broke again and that was just how it was.
He turned off the water.
He was getting used to it. He was only on day three and he was already getting used to it.
He wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not.
He came out of the bathroom and almost walked into Shiori.
She was standing in the hallway holding her shower things and she was looking at the bathroom door when he opened it, so they were suddenly very close and Naoya took a quick step back.
"Sorry," he said. "I ran late."
"I know," Shiori said. "Everyone ran late today."
She looked at him. He looked at her. She had a very level expression, the kind that didn't give much away.
"Sorry about your slot again," he said, because it was the only thing he could think of.
"It wasn't your fault this time," she said. She stepped past him into the bathroom. "It was Ren's."
She closed the door.
Naoya stood in the hallway.
He thought: that was almost a normal conversation.
He went back to his room and wrote SEVEN FORTY-FIVE in big letters on a piece of paper and taped it to the inside of his door where he would see it every morning.
He was not going to be the one who started the next war.