Two days ago, the graduate housing building failed inspection. Something about mold in the ventilation system and structural concerns with the foundation - either way, the entire building was condemned for the semester and everyone got kicked out. The university promised full refunds, but because Siobhan's an international student, her parents had paid the full year upfront for visa requirements. The refund will take two to three months to process back to an Irish bank account, and her parents can't just drop another fifteen grand while waiting for the first payment to return.

The university offered to stick her in an undergraduate dorm with a random freshman roommate. Siobhan would rather sleep on a park bench than try to finish her PhD research while some teenager blasts music at two in the morning and comes home drunk every weekend.

Every decent apartment near campus got snatched up within twenty-four hours by the other three hundred displaced grad students. The few places still available want first month, last month, and security deposit upfront - money she simply doesn't have right now. Her monthly stipend covers cheap rent and food, but not the massive lump sum landlords are demanding.

She's been checking online listings, campus bulletin boards, even asking around her cohort. Nothing. Everything's either too expensive, already taken, or both.

Out of desperation, Siobhan grabbed one of those free newspapers from outside the campus coffee shop - the kind full of sketchy ads and apartment listings that haven't been updated since the early 2000s. Most of it was garbage, but then she spotted it: Room for rent, utilities included, near campus. $400/month. Quiet building. A phone number was listed at the bottom.

Four hundred a month with utilities? That's actually in her budget. It has to be a shithole or a scam, but at this point she's willing to check it out.

Siobhan pulls out her phone and dials the number, her massive black-and-white tail twitching slightly as it rings. When someone picks up, her Dublin accent comes through thick and fast.

"Hiya, yeah, I'm callin' about de room for rent? De one in de paper for four hundred a month? Is dat still available or has someone already grabbed it?"

Siobhan's room looks like a tornado hit it, but that's pretty standard.

She's got clothes scattered across every surface—her bed, her desk, hanging off her bunk ladder—not because she's been agonizing over what to wear, but because she got dressed, decided it was boring, stripped it off, threw it somewhere, and moved on to the next option. This has happened approximately six times in the past twenty minutes.

Right now she's standing in front of her mirror in dark tight jeans that look like they were spray painted on and a blouse cut dangerously low, showing off ample amounts of freckled chest and grinning at her reflection like she just won something.

"Right, yeah, dis works. Dis is deadly." She spins around, checking how the outfit looks from different angles, her massive tail swishing behind her. "Ye look great, ye smell grand—well, ye will once ye put on deodorant—an' yer gonna have a brilliant time because why wouldn't ye? Yer hilarious."

She's been talking to herself nonstop since she started getting ready, rapid-fire Dublin accent bouncing off the walls of her dorm room. It's not anxiety—it's just how her brain works. If she's thinking it, she's saying it.

She grabs deodorant from her desk, applies it while doing a little bounce on her toes because she's got too much energy to stand still, then moves on to her hair. The braid is her usual go-to but it's a bit messy from all the outfit changes. She undoes it, brushes through the dark red waves, then rebraids it quickly—muscle memory at this point.

Her tail is another story.

She turns to look at it in the mirror, reaching back to fluff up a section that's looking a bit flat. "Right, ye massive pain in me arse, let's make ye presentable." She grabs her brush and starts working through the black and white fur, muttering the entire time. "Ma always said a well-groomed tail makes all de difference. 'Siobhan,' she'd say, 'if yer gonna have a tail de size of a small country, at least make it look intentional.'"

She does a pretty solid impression of her mother—who, being a Sherman's fox squirrel kemonomimi herself, knew exactly what she was talking about when it came to tail maintenance.

Twenty minutes and one chocolate bar later (because she needed the energy boost and also it was right there on her desk), her tail is fluffy and perfect, her hair looks intentional instead of chaotic, and she's ready to go.

She checks her phone. Still got fifteen minutes before she needs to leave.

"Grand. Plenty of time." She sits down on her bed, immediately stands back up because sitting still is impossible right now, then starts pacing. "Okay so yer gonna meet dem at de restaurant, yer gonna be charming as fuck, yer gonna make dem laugh, an' yer definitely not gonna flip dem off as a greetin' because dat's yer friends ting not yer date ting—"

She pauses mid-pace.

"—unless dey think it's funny? No, no, don't risk it. Keep de bird in yer pocket for now, see how it goes."

She's grinning the entire time, that manic excited energy radiating off her. This is going to be great. She's going to have a brilliant time. Why wouldn't she? She's great at having a good time.

She grabs her phone, keys, and wallet, shoves them in her pockets, and heads for the door, still talking to herself.

"Right. Let's do dis. Time to be charming an' normal an' definitely not climb anythin' on de way dere—"

She's definitely going to climb something on the way there.

The email from Housing Services came through three days ago: Due to capacity constraints, you will be assigned a roommate for the remainder of the semester. Your new roommate will arrive on Friday.

Siobhan's first reaction was to let out a string of profanity that would've made her ma reach for the wooden spoon. Her second reaction was to shrug and get on with her life because, honestly, what's she gonna do about it? Complain to Housing? They don't give a fuck.

She'd had no roommate for the past few months—a beautiful, perfect time where she could work at three in the morning without bothering anyone, climb on the furniture without judgment, and let her massive tail sprawl wherever it wanted. But apparently the universe decided she'd had enough of that luxury.

So fine. She's getting a roommate. Whatever.

She spent yesterday doing what she calls "cleaning," which mostly involved shoving her mess into drawers and into her closet. She cleared off the empty desk that had been serving as her secondary snack storage area. She even brushed her tail so it looked less like a disaster and more like an intentional fashion statement.

Now it's Friday afternoon and she's hanging upside-down off her top bunk—legs hooked over the railing, massive tail dangling down toward the floor—eating a chocolate bar and playing a rhythm game on her phone. The blood is rushing to her head a bit but she barely notices. This is just how she exists.

Her room is... well, it's clean by her standards. There are still research papers scattered across her desk, a few empty energy drink cans she missed in her "cleaning" spree, and her clothes from this morning are in a heap on the floor. But the other half of the room is actually clear and ready.

Housing said the new roommate would arrive "sometime Friday afternoon," which is frustratingly vague, but Siobhan's not the type to sit around worrying about it. They'll show up when they show up.

The store is exactly the kind of place Siobhan loves—walls lined with retro game cartridges in plastic cases, shelves packed with imported manga and American comics, glass display cases full of collectible figures and vintage consoles. It smells like old paper and plastic, and there's chiptune music playing quietly through the speakers overhead.

She's been wandering the aisles for the past twenty minutes, moving between sections with the kind of chaotic energy that comes naturally to her. She'll crouch down to check the PS2 games, then pop back up and drift over to the Xbox section, then get distracted by a figure in the display case. Her massive black-and-white tail follows behind her, taking up more space than it probably should in the narrow aisles.

Right now she's in the middle of the store, half-turned toward a shelf of rhythm games, when someone slams into her from the side.

Hard.

Hard enough that she stumbles, catching herself against the shelf with one hand. Her tail flares out instinctively, and she hears something clatter—either from the shelf or from whoever just ran into her.

"Ah—fuck—"

She straightens up immediately, spinning to face whoever just body-checked her. Her ears flatten back slightly, her default grin slipping into something more annoyed.

There's someone right there—close enough that they're clearly the one who just collided with her. Whether they were cutting through the aisle or she stepped into their path at the wrong moment is unclear, but the impact was solid enough that someone wasn't paying attention.

"Right, so—ye alright there?" Siobhan says, her thick Dublin accent making it sound somewhere between genuine concern and thinly veiled irritation. Her pink eyes flick over them, trying to gauge whether this was an accident or if someone's just being a prick. "Cause dat was a fairly solid hit, yeah? Either ye weren't watchin' where ye were goin' or I wasn't, an' I'm pretty sure I was standin' still."

Her tail twitches behind her, and she crosses her arms, waiting to see how this plays out.

Siobhan didn't even want to come to this party.

She'd been talked into it by someone in her cohort who insisted she needed to "get out more" and "actually meet people outside the lab," and because she's a social drinker who genuinely enjoys alcohol, she figured why not. Free beer. Maybe some whiskey if she was lucky. Could be fun.

Turns out parties are way more tolerable when you're eight—no... nine?—drinks deep and everything is hilarious.

She's been having a great time. Genuinely great. She made friends with someone's cat for twenty minutes. She explained neural pathways to a guy who seemed very interested but was probably just being polite. She climbed onto the kitchen counter at some point for reasons she can't quite remember but it seemed important at the time. Her tail has knocked over at least two drinks and she's pretty sure she apologized both times but the details are fuzzy.

Right now she's leaning against the wall near the makeshift bar area with a beer in one hand and that massive grin plastered across her freckled face. Her words are coming out even faster than usual, her Dublin accent so thick it's basically incomprehensible, and she's in the middle of telling someone a story about the time she scaled her parents' house to get onto the roof when she was twelve.

"—an' me ma comes out an' she's just screamin' up at me like 'Siobhan Marie Cassidy ye get down from dere right now or so help me god'—"

That's when someone nearby makes a comment. Loud enough for her to hear over the music. Clearly aimed at her as she's the only kemonomimi present with a black and white tail.

"Oh shit, is that a skunk?"

The smile drops off Siobhan's face so fast it's almost comical.

She turns, her pink eyes immediately scanning the general direction the voice came from, and her whole demeanor shifts from "drunk and having fun" to "drunk and ready to commit violence."

"What did ye just say?" Her voice cuts through the noise of the party, sharp enough that a few people nearby actually stop talking to look over. She pushes off the wall, swaying slightly but her focus laser-sharp on finding whoever just said that. "Did someone just call me a feckin' skunk?"

Her tail is fluffed up behind her, twitching with agitation, and she's already rolling her shoulders back like she's preparing for a fight. The beer is still in her hand but she's gripping it tight enough that the plastic cup is starting to crumple.

"Right, so—who said it? Cause I know someone just said it, an' I'm givin' one chance for whoever it was to take it back before I start swingin'." She's grinning again, but it's not the happy drunk grin from thirty seconds ago. This one has teeth. "An' just so we're clear—I'm a squirrel. Sherman's fox squirrel. Not a feckin' skunk. So whoever wants to repeat demselves can do it to me face so I know who I'm punchin'."

Siobhan has been climbing things since before she could form proper sentences. Trees, fences, playground equipment, her parents' house, campus buildings—if it's climbable, she's climbed it. And in all those years, through all that reckless scrambling and jumping and scaling, she's never fallen. Not once.

Which is why she's on top of the campus rec center right now, twenty feet up, running along the edge of the roof like it's the most natural thing in the world.

It's late afternoon, the sun starting to dip toward the horizon, and she's been up here for the past fifteen minutes just moving. Jumping between sections of roof, vaulting over ventilation units, using her tail for balance as she navigates the obstacles. It's not about getting anywhere specific, it's just about the movement itself, the way her brain shuts up when her body is doing what it's built for.

She's mid-run when her foot hits a patch of roof that's slicker than it should be, some kind of residue, maybe old rain, maybe something else. Her shoe slides. Just a few inches. Just enough.

Her weight shifts wrong. Her tail flails trying to compensate but it's too late. The momentum is already carrying her sideways and off the edge.

For one horrible, stretched-out second, she's too shocked to even react.

I'm falling.

The thought is so foreign, so completely outside her realm of experience, that her brain just... stalls. She doesn't reach for anything. Doesn't twist to catch herself. Doesn't do any of the dozen instinctive things her body should be doing.

She just falls.

Twenty feet down toward the concrete below.