Chapter 4

Three days after moving in, Lookmhee had learned a few important things about apartment 4B.

The ceiling fan made a soft clicking sound every third rotation. The kitchen tap ran cold for exactly eleven seconds before it turned warm. The wall between her apartment and 4C was thin enough that she could sometimes hear music — low and quiet, nothing she could name, just the suggestion of a melody drifting through at odd hours of the night.

She had also learned that living across the hall from Engfa meant that her door got knocked on at least twice a day. Once in the morning, usually with something food-related. Once in the evening, usually with an invitation to something.

Tonight’s knock came at half past six.

“We’re doing dinner,” Engfa said, when Lookmhee opened the door. She was already holding a dish covered in foil and had the expression of someone who had never once in her life taken no for an answer. “Becky’s place this time. Third floor.”

“How many people?” Lookmhee asked.

“All of us.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

Engfa smiled. “You’ll be fine. Wear something comfortable. Becky’s apartment has a lot of floor seating.”

✦ ✦ ✦

Becky’s apartment was exactly what Lookmhee had expected and also somehow more.

It was small, like all their apartments, but it felt enormous because of how much was happening inside it. There were plants on every surface — not in a careful, curated way but in the way of someone who kept buying plants because she liked them and had long stopped worrying about where to put them. There were stacks of books on the coffee table and a string of lights along one wall and a cork board covered in photographs and notes and what appeared to be a hand-drawn chart of some kind that Lookmhee decided not to look at too closely.

Freen was already there when they arrived, sitting cross-legged on the floor and eating something directly from a bowl without a spoon. She waved enthusiastically when she saw Lookmhee.

“You came! Sit by me!”

“Let her get in the door first,” said TK, who was sitting on the couch with her legs stretched out, looking calm and slightly tired in the way she always seemed to look — like she was conserving energy for something important later.

Becky emerged from the kitchen with a pot in both hands and a tea towel thrown over her shoulder, looking like she was in the middle of seventeen things at once and enjoying every single one of them.

“New girl!” she said, which was apparently what Lookmhee was going to be called until Becky decided otherwise. “Good. Sit anywhere. Don’t touch the cork board.”

“I wasn’t going to—”

“People always say that.” Becky set the pot on the low table in the center of the room and looked at Lookmhee with bright, assessing eyes. “How are you settling in? Is the apartment okay? Has the elevator been fixed yet?”

“Getting there,” Lookmhee said. “And no.”

“Classic.” Becky shook her head. “It was broken for two weeks last spring. I carried my groceries up three flights every day for two weeks. You know how heavy oat milk is? Very heavy. Oat milk is deceptively heavy.”

“It really is.” Freen agreed seriously, as though this was an important topic she had also considered at length.

Lookmhee sat down next to Freen on the floor, which was covered in a large, slightly mismatched collection of cushions that somehow worked together. She looked around the room — the plants, the lights, the photographs on the board — and thought that a person’s apartment always told you something true about them. Becky’s said: I collect things I love and I don’t apologize for any of it.

She liked that.

“Where’s Sonya?” Engfa asked, setting her foil-covered dish on the table.

“Said she’d be five minutes,” Becky said. “That was ten minutes ago.”

“So five more minutes,” TK said.

“Exactly.”

✦ ✦ ✦

Sonya arrived seven minutes later.

She knocked twice — not a casual knock, a precise one, two even sounds — and then came in without waiting, which suggested this was a group where knocking was more of a formality than an actual request for permission. She was wearing a dark sweater and her hair was down, which was different from how Lookmhee had seen her before, and she looked — Lookmhee searched for the word — easier. Slightly less composed. Like she had left the careful neutral expression in her own apartment and come out without it.

She looked at the room, did her quick assessment, and then her eyes landed on Lookmhee.

“You came,” she said.

“Engfa invited me.”

“Engfa invites everyone.” She said it without any particular edge. Just a fact. She sat down on the other end of the couch from TK, tucked her feet under her, and looked at the pot on the table. “What did you make?”

“Spicy noodles,” Becky said. “Engfa brought the dumplings. Freen was going to bring something but I told her not to after last time.”

“The soup was fine,” Freen said.

“Freen. The soup was not fine.”

“TK said it was fine.”

Everyone looked at TK.

“I said it was edible,” TK said. “Those are different things.”

Freen pointed at her. “You are so—”

“Accurate,” said TK.

Freen made a noise of protest and then immediately started laughing, because that was the thing about Freen, Lookmhee was learning — she couldn’t stay annoyed. It just wasn’t in her. Whatever frustration she picked up, she put back down within seconds, and the laugh that replaced it was always genuine, always loud, always the kind that made the people around her want to laugh too.

Lookmhee felt herself smiling before she even realized it.

✦ ✦ ✦

Dinner was loud.

There was no other word for it. Everyone talked at once and interrupted each other and then apologized and then talked over the apology and somehow it all made sense. Becky had opinions about everything and delivered them with the confidence of someone who had never once second-guessed herself. Freen asked Lookmhee fifteen questions about the bookstore — what kind of books they sold, could she get discounts, did they do events, was there a cat, many bookstores had cats — with the enthusiasm of someone who had just discovered something delightful.

TK said less than everyone else but when she spoke people listened, because what she said was always either useful or very funny and sometimes both.

Engfa kept filling everyone’s bowls without being asked, kept the conversation moving when it stalled, kept an eye on everyone the way she always did — not intrusively, just with a quiet awareness, like a person who found it natural to make sure everyone around her was okay.

And Sonya—

Sonya was different here than she had been in the hallway. Still precise. Still choosing her words carefully. But she was more — present, somehow. She argued with Becky about something Lookmhee had missed the beginning of, and there was a sharpness to it that was clearly affectionate, the kind of arguing that two people do when they know each other well enough to push. She laughed once — a real one, short and sudden, at something TK said — and it changed her whole face for just a moment before she put it away again.

Lookmhee noticed.

She noticed and then told herself she was just observing, the way she always did with new people, cataloguing details. It was a writer thing. It was completely normal.

She looked back down at her noodles.

✦ ✦ ✦

After dinner, when the bowls were stacked and Becky had made tea and they were all spread out across the cushions and couch in the comfortable, heavy way of people who had eaten well and were in no hurry to go anywhere, Becky looked at Lookmhee with her sharp clever eyes and said:

“So. The bookstore. What do you actually do there?”

“I work the floor mostly,” Lookmhee said. “Help people find things. Shelve books. Write the little recommendation cards for the display table.”

“You write the cards?” Freen sat up straighter. “I love those cards. The little handwritten ones?”

“We type them actually, but yes.”

“I read those every time I go into a bookstore,” Freen said. “I always buy whatever the card says. Even if I’ve never heard of it.”

“That’s exactly what they’re for,” Lookmhee said, smiling.

“Do you write?” Sonya asked.

The question came from across the room, casual, like it wasn’t a particularly loaded thing to ask. Lookmhee looked up. Sonya was watching her with that calm, steady gaze over the rim of her tea cup.

“Sometimes,” Lookmhee said.

“What kind of writing?”

A beat. “Just — things. Notes. Observations.” She paused. “Poems, sometimes.”

She didn’t know why she said that last part. She didn’t usually tell people about the poems. They were private, small, just for herself — words she wrote when something felt too big to hold in her chest without putting it somewhere.

But Sonya had asked in that direct, uncomplicated way she had, and the answer had just come out.

Sonya nodded once, like this confirmed something. “I thought so,” she said.

“What does that mean?” Lookmhee asked.

“The box,” Sonya said simply. “Emotional damage inside.“

The room went quiet for exactly one second and then Becky burst out laughing.

“Wait, she labeled her boxes?” Becky looked between them. “What else did the boxes say?”

“One said books — heavy, do not trust yourself,” Sonya said, and there was the smallest pull at the corner of her mouth. Not quite a smile. The suggestion of one. “And one said misc — do not open.“

“I had a system,” Lookmhee said, her face warm.

“It was a very specific system,” Sonya said.

“She’s a poet,” Becky announced to the room, as though this explained everything. “That makes complete sense. TK, doesn’t that make complete sense?”

“Yes,” said TK, who was looking at Sonya with an expression Lookmhee couldn’t read.

“I want to read your poems,” Freen said earnestly.

“They’re not — they’re just for me,” Lookmhee said.

“That’s okay,” Engfa said gently. “Writing doesn’t have to be for anyone else.”

The room settled back into its comfortable warmth. Someone refilled the tea. Becky started a new argument about something entirely different. Freen got distracted by a plant on the windowsill and asked if it had a name, which led to a ten-minute discussion about whether plants should have names, during which it was revealed that Becky had named all seventeen of her plants and Sonya thought this was unnecessary but did not say it unkindly.

Lookmhee sat with her tea and listened and laughed and let herself be pulled into it all, this warm loud room full of people she had known for three days who somehow already felt like something close to familiar.

At one point she glanced across the room and found Sonya already looking at her.

Sonya looked away first.

Lookmhee looked down at her tea.

She thought: I should write that down later.

She thought: I absolutely should not write that down later.

She wrote it down later.

✦ ✦ ✦

Walking back upstairs at the end of the night, Lookmhee and Sonya ended up in the stairwell at the same time. The building was quiet around them, just the hum of the lights and their footsteps on the stairs.

“Your friends are wonderful,” Lookmhee said, because it was true and she wanted to say it.

“They’re loud,” Sonya said.

“That too.”

A pause. Two more steps.

“They like you,” Sonya said. Not warmly, not coolly. Just as a statement of fact, the way she said most things. “Freen especially. But all of them.”

Lookmhee looked at her. “What about you?”

Sonya glanced at her sideways. There was that not-quite-smile again, brief and controlled. “I haven’t decided yet,” she said.

She said it like it was a neutral thing. But there was something underneath it — something that felt less like indifference and more like the beginning of a decision that had actually already been made.

They reached the fourth floor. Sonya went to 4C. Lookmhee went to 4B.

“Good night,” Lookmhee said.

“Good night,” said Sonya. She unlocked her door. Then, without turning around: “The poems. You should keep writing them.”

She went inside before Lookmhee could answer.

Lookmhee stood in the hallway for a moment, key in hand, looking at the closed door of 4C.

Then she went inside, sat on her mattress, opened her notebook, and wrote for a long time.

✦ ✦ ✦