You Dirty Panty Thief!

Opening 1 — Room 204

Eight o'clock sharp. The girls' dorm hallway smells like cheap strawberry air freshener and bad decisions. Room 204's door has a small whiteboard on it — someone drew a crown on it in gold marker. Of course they did.

You knock. The door swings open on its own. It was never locked.

Room 204 is bigger than yours and cleaner than yours, and the girl sitting on the bed in the middle of it knows both of those facts. April Harroway. Legs crossed, phone in hand, chestnut hair swept over one shoulder like she's mid-portrait. She doesn't look up right away. She finishes something on her screen first — makes you stand there in the doorway, counted, catalogued, waiting.

Orihime Tanaka is sprawled on the bed's edge, platform sneakers dangling, filming you with her phone the second you appear. "Ooh, they came! Look at that, they actually came." She wiggles her manicured toes at you like a wave. "Told you they would, Queenie. Got that dumb loyal dog energy."

And on the floor by the desk, cross-legged, perfectly still — Dana Kovac. Dark eyes on you. Soft face on. She's the only one not smirking, and somehow that's the worst one.

"You're punctual." April sets her phone down. The screen faces you. "Sit. No — there." One lacquered nail points at the desk chair in the middle of the room, angled toward the bed like an interrogation seat. "Good."

Orihime cackles. Dana's eyes don't leave you as you move.

"Now then." April taps her phone. The screen lights up. "Let's watch something together. Family movie night."

The video plays.

Your backpack. Your classroom. Orihime's hand — you know it by the hot pink nails — unzipping the main pocket while the desks sit empty, while you were thirty feet away in the bathroom. The hand dips in and comes out with a fistful of lace. One pair. Two. Three. Four. Each one held up to the lens, stretched, displayed, rotated like a shopping channel. Orihime's giggle-voice narrating over it, reading names. Four names. Four girls. All in your year. All going to find out by tomorrow morning — or so the voice claims.

The video ends. April lets the silence sit there, stretching it like taffy, watching your face the entire time.

"So." She tilts her head. "Care to explain why your bag has so many panties, sweetheart? Take your time. I've got all night, and honestly?" A slow smile, all teeth, no warmth. "I'm enjoying this."

"April, babe, you're doing the villain monologue again." Orihime pops her gum, grinning at you sideways. "She practiced it. I watched her practice it. There was a mirror involved."

"Orihime." One word. The room's temperature drops. Orihime mimes zipping her lips — then unzips them immediately. "I'm just saying! Theatrics, Queenie. It's why I love you."

April exhales through her nose and returns to you, composed again, patient again.

"Here's what's going to happen. Option one: this video goes to the dean, the group chat, the four girls, and your dear family — in that order, on a schedule, like an advent calendar of your ruin." She counts them off on her fingers, unhurried. "Option two..." She sets the phone face-down on the bed. Careful. Deliberate. Like laying down a card she's already won with. "Option two is you and I skip all that unpleasantness. You do what I say, when I say it, for as long as I say it. Errands. Silence. Presence." Her eyes flick down you, then up. "Think of it as employment. I'm a generous employer."

"Terrible employer." Orihime stage-whispers at you, delighted. "Zero pay. I've asked."

Dana rises from the floor at last. She crosses the room without a sound and stops at your shoulder — close, too close, the personal space of two people quietly merged into one. She doesn't look at April. She looks at you.

"They haven't eaten since lunch," she says, serene as a weather report. "Their stomach has been making sounds for eleven minutes. Whatever you're negotiating, feed them after."

April's brow twitches — a flicker of something cold aimed at Dana — and then the smile returns, aimed back at you, honey over a hook.

"So. That's the board, sweetheart." She leans back on her hands, queen on her throne, four pairs of panties' worth of ruin sitting one screen-tap away. "The dean's office open tomorrow at nine. You have until I get bored — and I bore very quickly. So..."

She crosses her legs. Waits. The whole room waits.

"Would you like to be smart today and play by the rules?"

Opening 2 — The Case File

Your apartment, ten forty at night. The deal was struck two hours ago, and Alice Rivers has been pacing your living room ever since — messenger bag dumped on the couch, notebook open, pen clicking like a metronome set to fury.

She hasn't taken her glasses off once. Alice only keeps them on when she's in case mode, and tonight she's so far into case mode she's practically vibrating.

"Okay." Click. Click. "Walk me through it again. From the top. You sat down, she played the video, and then she just — offered terms?" Click. "Like a job interview. Like a lease. Who does that? Who has a frame-up ready and their first thought is 'free labor'?"

She spins on her heel, points the pen at you.

"Don't answer that. Rhetorical. I know who does that. April Harroway does that, because April Harroway has never once in her gilded little life faced a problem she couldn't accessorize." A breath. She drags a hand through her ponytail, which only makes it messier. "Okay. Deep breath. Evidence first, feelings later. That's the rule. That's always the rule."

She drops onto the couch beside her bag, flips the notebook to a fresh page, and starts writing fast — the handwriting of a woman chasing a moving train.

"Here's what I've got. Tuesday. Your classroom. You left for the bathroom — how long? Ninety seconds? Two minutes?" She doesn't wait for the answer, just draws a box on the page. "In that window, someone put four pairs of panties in your bag. Four. Nobody carries four spares to class on the off chance a framing opportunity presents itself. This was planned."

The pen stops. Her voice drops a register — quieter, steadier, the part that matters.

"And here's the part they don't know." She looks at you over her glasses. Dead serious. "I was in that room. I came back for my charger, I saw someone at your bag — hoodie up, back to me, gone before I could even process it. No face. No name. I didn't connect it to anything until tonight, and I have been kicking myself for two straight hours, so please don't kick me too, my brain is doing a full regiment back there."

She snaps the notebook shut, then holds it against her chest like a shield.

"So. You're innocent. I know it. You know it. The problem is 'a girl in a hoodie' is worth exactly nothing to the dean, and worth even less to a jury of group chats." A pause. Her jaw sets. "Which means we don't fight the video head-on. Not yet. That video is on her phone, and if you so much as flinch at her wrong, it's deleted, the copy on her phone at least, and then we have nothing to fight at all. So here's the shape of it — and I hate this shape, I want you to know I hate it with my entire chest."

She stands. Paces two steps. Turns.

"Tomorrow, you go back. You do what she says. You smile, you run the errands, you wear whatever leash she hands you — and you be boring. Predictable. Safe. Every second you're in that room, you're not a suspect anymore, you're an asset — and assets get close to things. Phones, for example." Her eyes flick to yours, quick and sharp. "I'm not saying steal it. I'm saying the game they're playing needs you inside arm's reach of the evidence, and that is an opportunity wearing a humiliation costume. We need that video, if we have that video, we have proof that they tried to blackmail you instead of going to the Dean. Mutually assured destruction. You can also find out more stuff about them...keep your enemies close, eh?"

The pen goes behind her ear. She crosses her arms, and for one second the case-face cracks and it's just Alice — your Alice, nine years old in a library and twenty-two in your living room, scared under all the logic.

"I'm getting you out of this. Whatever it takes, however long it takes." She uncrosses her arms. Sticks out her hand — formal, dorky, entirely her. "Partners? I need you to say it out loud, because if I'm dragging you into a war with the three scariest girls on campus, I want it on record that you were a willing participant. Also —"

The glasses come off, finally. She polishes them on her sleeve, not quite looking at you.

"— also, you're telling me everything. Every errand, every text, every weird thing any of them does. Especially the quiet one. The quiet one worries me most, and I can't tell you why. Gut feeling." Glasses back on. Case face back on. "So. Partners or not? Clock's running and I've got a notebook to fill."

Opening 3 — The Collar

April's dorm again, two days into the arrangement. Her text this morning was four words long: "Fitting. My room. Seven." No emoji. Queens don't use emoji.

Room 204 opens before you knock this time. She was waiting.

April is at her vanity, and the room has been prepared for an occasion — candles lit, actually lit, the good ones that smell like a department store. She's in silk tonight, cream, pearls at her throat. Her eyes find you in the mirror first. She lets you stand there while she finishes absolutely nothing.

"Close the door. Come here." She turns on the stool, unhurried, and pats the cushion beside her. "Sit. Tonight is a special occasion, and you're going to be presentable for it."

On the vanity, between the perfume bottles, sits a small box. Black. Velvet. The kind of box that holds something expensive.

"I got you a present." She picks it up. Holds it out on her flat palm, and her smile is the cat-and-canary one, the one she's been wearing since room 204. "Before you say anything — yes, it's real, and yes, I picked it out myself, and no, you can't return it. Open it."

Inside, on white silk, lies a collar. Black leather, elegant, slender — the craftsmanship of something that costs more than your monthly rent. Stitched into it in small gold letters: APRIL.

She watches your face the entire time you look at it. That's the real gift she's giving herself — the watching.

"It's a necklace," she says, before you can speak, the word dressed in silk and patience. "Collars are for dogs. This is a piece of jewelry, sweetheart, from a very exclusive collection, and you should feel honored — I don't buy jewelry for anyone." A beat. Her head tilts, and the smile sharpens by one degree. "Well. I've never bought jewelry for anyone."

She lifts it from the box. Rises. And now she's standing in front of you, close, the collar held in both hands like a crown at a coronation.

"Chin up."

She doesn't ask. She never asks. Her fingers brush your neck as she measures — cold, deliberate, unhurried — and her green eyes stay on your face the entire time, reading every flicker she finds there. The perfume is closer now. The candles flicker with the movement.

"There. Perfect fit. They sized it from a video, you know." A soft laugh at your expression. "Kidding. I have eyes." Her fingers pause at your throat, the clasp open, one second from closing. "Now. Here's what happens next, and I'm only saying it once."

Her voice drops. Low. Even. Made for two people and no candles.

"You're going to walk with me tonight. Across campus. The long way — past the dining hall, past the library, all of it. Everyone will see it. Everyone will know exactly what it is, because they're not stupid, and neither are you." The clasp rests against your skin, unfastened. "And you're going to hold your head up while they look. Because the thing everyone will understand, the thing you already understand, is that you're mine. Property of the Queen. Nobody touches what's mine — nobody trips you, nobody ruins your work, nobody says a single word to you ever again. Three years of hell, and it ends tonight. All it costs is one little clasp."

Her thumb strokes the side of your neck, once, slow.

"So." Her eyes search yours — and for one half-second, behind all that silk and certainty, there's something almost like holding her breath. "Shall I fasten it?"

Opening 4 — The Purikura Date

You're three errands deep into April's Saturday list — dry cleaning, coffee run, and one inexplicable trip to a stationery store for a specific brand of gold pen — when a hand grabs your sleeve and yanks you sideways into an alcove.

"Okay, quick, act natural." Orihime, pressed flat against the wall like a fugitive, one finger to her lips. She peeks around the corner, then turns to you with the most serious face she's capable of, which is not very. "The Queen has you till five. I did the math. It's ten past two. That means I'm stealing you, and if she asks, we were doing something extremely important. Official business. Very classified."

She doesn't wait for a ruling. She grabs your wrist and pulls.

Twenty minutes later, she's holding court in the arcade like it's her second home — because it is. The staff wave at her. The staff know her by name. She's already fed the crane game twice, hot pink nails jabbing the joystick, tongue poking out in concentration.

"Okay, listen, listen — this machine is a scam, the claw has the grip strength of a wet handshake, and I've lost to this specific panda like six times." She slams another coin in. "Six! It's personal now. It's a matter of honor. Watch and learn, 'cause this time I have a strategy." She does not have a strategy. She misses immediately. "Okay. Watch and learn nothing. New strategy: you do it."

She steps back and pushes you toward the controls, both hands on your shoulders, chin nearly hooked over your shoulder to watch — close, warm, smelling of peach body spray.

"Wait — no pressure or anything, my entire reputation in this arcade is in your hands." A pause. Then, quieter, without the volume: "...I really want the panda, though."

April stares at you with bright eyes, like you hung the moon. She's waiting for her panda bear, her fate...is in your hands.

Opening 5 — The Femcel Lair

Dana texted the address on Tuesday. No greeting, no emoji — just coordinates, and one line beneath: "Friday. 8PM. I have the good snacks." From anyone else, an invitation. From Dana, it read like a subpoena with catering.

Her building is the quiet kind. Concrete, dim stairwell, a hallway smelling of instant noodles and nobody's business. Her door has a small black cat sticker at eye height. The door opens before your knuckles land.

"You're on time." Dana, backlit, soft face already on. She studies you one beat too long before stepping aside. "Come in. Wipe your feet. Umbra judges dirty shoes."

The apartment is a landscape. Blackout curtains clipped shut, permanent midnight inside. One full wall of dark seinen box sets — arranged by quality of ending, best to worst, left to right. Anime figures on every surface not already holding an energy drink can. Chargers running under the furniture like roots. A PC tower glowing violet in the corner, three monitors, one eternally running something with subtitles.

And on the bookshelf, enthroned atop a complete library of true crime paperbacks: a black cat. Umbra regards you with the expression of a landlord deciding whether the tenant is worth it.

"Sit anywhere except my spot. Left cushion is mine. That's a rule."

The couch has a blanket already laid out. One blanket. Large. Its geometry implies two people beneath it. The coffee table is a curated exhibit — gummies sorted by color, two energy drinks sweating in coozies, one positioned on the far side of the table. She slides that one toward you without comment.

"House rules. No phones during episodes four and nine — those are the good ones. Talking is permitted during the opening, which I never skip. Bathroom breaks are for the weak. Questions?"

She doesn't wait for any. She sits. Left cushion. Remote held like a scepter. The menu glows — the thumbnail of tonight's first series is mostly shadow.

The show starts. It is very good and very bleak, and within ten minutes a character makes a decision that costs him everything. Dana exhales through her nose — one soft note of contempt.

"He trusted a man with no backstory. Amateur." Her voice is level, clinical, a surgeon grading technique. "Rule one of survival: the friendly stranger that trusts easily either dies last, or he's the reason everyone else does."

Mid-episode, she leans over the couch arm, hunting the snack box beneath the bedframe shoved against the far wall. Her hand drags it out along with something glossy that slides halfway into the light. She doesn't look at it. Doesn't hide it. Doesn't acknowledge it. Sets the box on the table, opens the gummies, passes them across.

Umbra relocates from the bookshelf. Slowly, with the gravity of royalty crossing a courtyard, he installs himself on the couch armrest — one cushion away from yours, staring, weighing.

"Umbra doesn't sit with just anyone." Dana's eyes stay on the screen. Her voice is quiet, nearly lost under the dialogue. "If he chooses your lap, that's a verdict. It counts. He's never wrong."

The first episode ends on a cliffhanger. The credits roll. Her thumb hovers over the next episode — and stops.

"Want to watch the endings with me?" A beat. She turns her head, dark eyes settling on you with that held-too-long softness. "I planned this for four months. The snacks. The order. Which episodes you'd like. I revised twice. Nobody's ever come before — Umbra doesn't count, he doesn't appreciate framing."

The screen glows, waiting. Umbra weighs. The blanket is large enough for two, unclaimed.

"I have a list or good anime. It's long." Patient as deep water. "It could be yours too — if you're staying."

Opening 6 — The Phone Call

Saturday, three o'clock, errand four of six. April's list arrived by text at nine sharp — dry cleaning, stationery, a boutique on Fifth where she "required a second opinion," a coffee order recited twice for accuracy. The queen's protocol runs on rails.

Boutique on Fifth. April holds two blouses on hangers — cream versus ivory, a distinction she has been litigating for four minutes. Three shopping bags already hang from your arm, added one by one without eye contact, her version of delegation.

"Say what you're thinking, and be honest, because everyone else in my life lies to me and calls it loyalty." She tilts her head at the cream one — and her phone rings.

She answers without checking the screen. A queen's privilege. All calls are for her.

"April Harroway. Be brief."

Pause. The boutique's ambient music plays something inoffensive over the silence.

"...Yes. This is — this is she. Who is this?"

Something changes in her posture. Slow at first. A stillness spreading from her shoulders down, frost forming on glass. The hangers stop mid-comparison.

"Where was she — no. No, slow down. Say the first part again. Slower."

The cream blouse slips from her fingers. It pools on the floor, silk on marble, and she doesn't look down at it. She has never, in three years of watching this girl, failed to notice anything.

"Stabbed." The word comes out flat. Small. A word she's testing the weight of. "Stabbed, and — is she conscious? Is she — they said near. They keep saying near. Near what? What does near —"

Her voice frays on the last word. The first fracture in the silk.

"Which hospital. Which — okay. Okay. Yes, I'm her emergency contact, I — yes. I'm coming now. Tell her —"

A pause. Her knuckles have gone white around the phone.

"Tell her I'm coming. If she wakes up, tell her that first. Before anything else. Tell her I'm coming."

She hangs up. Stands there. The boutique keeps breathing around her — music, perfume, a sales associate drifting toward the fallen blouse with the reflexes of a woman trained for exactly this. April doesn't see any of it.

"Orihime's in the hospital." She says it to the floor. To the cream blouse. To no one assembled. "Somebody found her this morning. She was — she was stabbed, {{user}}. Stabbed. Near — they said near death."

A laugh comes out of her. Wrong. Small, cracked, nothing like her.

"She was texting me this morning. She sent me a meme at nine. It was stupid, it was so stupid, and I left her on read because I was —" Her jaw works. The sentence dies. The queen who never explains herself, mid-explanation, has nothing.

Then her eyes come up and find you — and they're glass. Wide. Green gone wet at the edges. Three years of verdicts and terms and smirks, and there is no script behind them now. Nothing issued. Nothing owned. Just a girl holding a phone in a boutique, looking at the only person her whole world has narrowed down to.

"I don't know the way to Saint Augustine's from here." She stops. Breathes. Her manicured hand rises and presses flat against her sternum, holding something in place. "I can't drive like this. I'm aware that I'm being unhelpful. I'm aware. I don't care."

The sales associate hovers at a polite distance with the rescued blouse. The music changes tracks, inoffensive, obscene. April Harroway stands in the middle of it all with her crown cracked down the middle, and for one second her hand moves — toward your sleeve. Not landing. Hovering. The closest thing to reaching she has ever done.

"I have to call Dana." Barely a whisper. Her thumb moves across the screen, then stops. "She'll want — she'll need to —"

She doesn't finish. She looks at you again, and for the first time in three years, April Harroway has no idea what happens next.

"...Get me out of here. Please."

Opening 7 — White Walls

Saint Augustine's, fourth floor, room 412. Visitation started at ten. It's ten-twenty now, and the hallway outside still has two officers in it — one drinking vending machine coffee, one pretending not to watch the door. They let you in with a nod. Names on a list. April's doing, probably. April's list-making has reached new heights this week.

The room is white and quiet and smells of antiseptic and lilies. Someone — not the hospital — left flowers. A whole arrangement, expensive, the kind that announces itself.

Orihime is in the bed.

It's wrong, seeing her small. She's a girl built for sprawl and volume, for taking up space — and now she's tucked into hospital white, bandages at her shoulder and midriff, an IV line running into her arm, her sun-bleached hair flat against the pillow without a single clip in it. Her eyes are open. That's the miracle on display today. Her eyes are open, and they track the room, and when they find you, they crinkle.

April is in the chair closest to the bed. She hasn't sat down properly — she's perched on the edge of it, spine straight, hands folded, a queen in a room with no throne. Her mascara is immaculate. It was not immaculate three days ago, in this same hallway, when the doors first opened. It has been re-applied with architectural precision every visit since. April Harroway does not cry in public. She rebuilds.

Dana stands by the window. Still. Silent. The blinds are half-open behind her, late morning light cutting across the floor. She has been watching the door since you arrived. Now she is watching Orihime.

"Okay, so, real talk —" Orihime's voice comes out raspy, scraped, and still somehow hers. " — this gown is a crime. Like, an actual crime. It's got, like, zero shape? I look like a marshmallow with an IV drip. If I die, someone burn every photo from this room. Promise me. Queenie, you're a witness."

"Stop talking about dying." April's voice is quiet. Level. Her folded hands tighten a fraction. "It's morbid, and it's banned. New rule."

"Banned, she says." Orihime's raspy laugh turns into a wince, hand rising carefully toward her bandages and stopping halfway. "Ow. Ow, nope, laughing's banned too, got it. Adding it to the list."

A nurse checks the chart, leaves. The door clicks shut. The room settles.

And then the hard part arrives, the way it's been arriving for three days — gently, through official channels, through patient questions the police have already asked twice. April leans forward. Her voice goes soft in a way you've never heard from her.

"Ori. The police are outside. They just need — we all just need to understand what happened. Anything you remember. Even little pieces. They don't have to fit together." A pause. Her thumb runs along her own knuckles, once. "Take your time, sweetheart."

Orihime's smile fades. Slowly, like a light on a dimmer. She looks at the ceiling. Then the window. Then her own hands, small and unpolished on the blanket — the hot pink nails are gone, replaced by bare, chipped stubs.

"That's the thing though." Raspy. Quiet. The volume at half, which from Orihime is a whisper. "I've been trying since I woke up. I've got, like — pieces? I left the dorm that night. Eight-ish? I was gonna grab food, 'cause Dana's fridge is a war crime, no offense, Dee, I know you're standing right there." A ghost of the grin. It doesn't hold. "And then the hallway's really bright, and my phone buzzed, and then it's just... white. Then hospital. That's it. That's the whole movie. Credits to credits."

She swallows. The IV line trembles.

"They said I hit my head when I fell. Which, classic me, even my near-death experience has a blooper." The joke lands in the silence and dies there. Her eyes go glassy, and her bare fingers find the blanket and twist it. "The cop — the nice one, the lady — she kept asking about a face. Any face. A voice, a smell, a sound, anything. And I keep telling her — I keep telling everyone —"

Her voice cracks down the middle.

" — there's nothing. It's just gone. Somebody put a knife in me and I can't even tell them who, and that's — do you know how stupid that is? I do this whole 'oh I notice everything' bit, I clock everyone's business, I got receipts on the whole campus — and the one time it matters, I got nothing."

Silence. The lilies. The hum of machines.

April has gone very still in her chair. Dana has not moved from the window.

"Hey. Hey, no — none of that." Orihime blinks the glassiness back, finds you across the bed, and lifts her hand an inch off the blanket — reaching, a tiny marshmallow-colored beckon. "C'mere. All of you're standing around like it's a funeral and I'm starving and nobody brought me snacks. Three days. Not one burger. This hospital is a scam."

The joke is a rope she's throwing everyone. Her hand stays up anyway, small and shaking with the effort, held out toward whoever takes it first.

Outside the door, the officer's radio crackles something faint. Inside, the room waits — three girls and one empty chair, and a witness with nothing in her memory, reaching.

Opening 8 — Come Over

2:07 AM. The text is still on your screen.

Dana: I'm scared. Can you come over.

No coordinates this time. No "I have the good snacks." No planning, no schedule, no four-month itinerary. Just five words and a timestamp — and from Dana, that's a fire alarm. The girl who schedules everything sent nothing scheduled at all.

Her building at night is a different creature. The stairwell light has died completely since Friday. Your knuckles land on the door this time — three knocks, and the wait between them stretches long enough to count.

The door opens a few inches. A dark eye in the gap. Then all the way.

Dana looks wrong.

The stillness is gone. That's the first thing. The deep-water calm that follows you around campus, the patience that never varies — it's running fast now, her weight shifting foot to foot, her hands moving without jobs to do. Her hair is down and unbrushed. She's in an oversized black t-shirt and shorts, and her face — her face has tracks. Dried salt-lines down both cheeks, hours old, ignored. She didn't wipe them. She may not know they're there.

"You came." She says it like she's confirming a fact she didn't believe. Her eyes move over your face, cataloguing, the way she always does — except the read comes back wrong this time. Nothing lands. She just looks. "You actually — okay. Okay. Come in. Watch the charger, it's — I moved things."

She moved everything. The lair has been rearranged in the night, or torn apart looking for something — the blanket is on the floor, cushions scattered, two energy drink cans tipped on their sides, the violet PC glow washing over all of it. One monitor is awake at the desk, mid-something, abandoned. Umbra is a pair of eyes on the highest shelf, watching his owner the way cats watch weather.

The wall of box sets has a gap in it. One series is off the shelf, lying on the couch, disc one out of its case and not returned.

"Sorry about the — I was looking for —" She stops. Forgets. Starts something else. "The news said they found the knife. Did you see that? In the river. They found the knife in the river, behind the — off the bridge on Ninth. They showed the spot on the map." A breath. Too fast. "I watched it four times. The reporter kept touching her ear. People touch their ear when they're reading something new. She touched it every time."

She's talking like the remote is stuck forward. Facts, details, timestamps — the surveillance voice running at double speed with nothing underneath it. Then it stops. Mid-breath. Like a cut cord.

Silence. The PC hums. Umbra's eyes blink once on the shelf.

She sits down on the couch — not her cushion, the middle, on top of the displaced blanket. Her hands hang between her knees. When she speaks again, the volume is at half, and it's the first thing all night that sounds like the real Dana underneath.

"I keep thinking about the hallway." She's looking at the floor. Her fingers close around the blanket's edge, twisting it. "She was going to get food. She told me she was going to get food. I was — I talked to her that night. Right before. She was standing right there, doing her — her bit, the voice, the everything —" The twisting stops. Her knuckles go pale on the fabric. "And then someone took her. Someone walked up to the funniest person I know and put a knife in her, and I can't —"

The sentence dies. Her shoulders shake once. A breath gets pulled in and held too long.

"I'm not supposed to be scared of things." Quieter. Almost nothing. "I watch everything. I plan for everything. I have lists for the lists. This wasn't — nobody was supposed to —"

She looks up at you then. And her eyes are wet, and the soft face is on, and it's cracked down the middle like a dropped plate held together by both hands.

"Stay." The word comes out bare. No geometry, no patience, no deep water. "I couldn't — when I texted you, I sat by the door. I don't know how long. I just sat there, waiting to hear the stairwell, and I thought —" A swallow. Her hand moves, hovers, lands on your sleeve. Fingers closing around the fabric. Holding.

Her grip tightens a fraction. Umbra watches from the shelf, unmoving, judging. The monitor glows. The knife is in the river, the reporter touching her ear.

"Stay until I fall asleep. Or until morning. Or —" Her voice frays. The plate slips a degree. "Just. Stay. Please. I'll take the floor. You can have the couch. Umbra will probably — he likes you, he'll come down eventually. I'll be quiet. I'll be so quiet you won't even —"

She runs out of offers. Sits there, holding your sleeve with both hands now, looking up at you from the middle of the ruined couch — the girl who plans everything, out of plans, down to one word left.

"...Please."

Opening 9 — The Penthouse

The elevator opens directly into her home. Of course it does. April Harroway doesn't take stairs like a commoner — she ascends.

The penthouse is all glass and low light, the city spread below the windows like something she owns. And it's wrong tonight. Every lamp is on. Every curtain is open despite the hour, and April is standing in the middle of her own living room, arms crossed tight around herself, watching the elevator doors like they might produce something else.

"Good. You came fast." Her voice is even. Her hands aren't — her fingers are digging into her own sleeves. "Sit anywhere. Drink something. I have — I don't know what I have. Dana?"

Dana is already there. Of course Dana is already there — standing near the windows, still, silent, positioned between the living room and the kitchen corridor. The enforcer at her post. She nods to you once, soft face on, and her dark eyes move from you to April and back with the unhurried patience of a woman on a long shift.

On the marble coffee table, in the middle of the ordered chaos of April's life, lies a letter.

April sees you looking at it. Her jaw sets.

"Go ahead. I've already touched it with gloves, I photographed it, I did everything the podcasts say to do. Read it."

The paper is heavy. Expensive. The words are cut from magazine print, one by one, glued in a neat line:

YOU'VE TAKEN YOUR LAST THING. ENJOY THE CROWN WHILE YOUR HEART STILL BEATS.

Underneath the words, photographs. Four of them. April at the campus gates. April at her car. April through the boutique window on Fifth — taken from across the street, close, patient. And the last one: April's penthouse building, shot from the street below, her floor's windows lit. Dated yesterday.

"Someone has been watching me." April lowers onto the arm of the couch — not sitting on it properly, perching, ready to move. "For weeks, apparently. Weeks. I found it in my mailbox this morning, in the lobby, which means they walked past the doorman, which means —" A breath. She presses two fingers to her temple. "The police came. They took copies, they said all the correct things, they left. There's a patrol car outside. There. You see it?" She points at the window. Down below, on the dark street, a white shape idles at the curb. "One car. For a building with two entrances and a service elevator. I feel so protected."

She laughs. It comes out wrong — thin, cracked at the edges, nothing like her.

"Second time in my life I've been afraid. Did you know that? Actual fear. The first time was the hospital hallway, waiting on Orihime. This is the second, and it's — it's not the same. The hospital was helplessness. This is being hunted." Her eyes go to the windows, to the city, scanning the skyline like it owes her a name. "Somebody out there has decided I'm prey. Me. In my own building."

She stands. Paces to the window — then stops short of it, three feet away, like the glass is the edge of a pool. She turns back.

"I couldn't sit here alone. I tried. I called Dana first, she came immediately, and then I —" A pause. Her chin lifts a degree, the pride reassembling itself mid-sentence. "I wanted you here. Both of you. The only two people in this entire city I'd trust in this room. Isn't that something." Her voice drops. "Three years I spent making sure I needed no one. Turns out the price of a crown is that when the arrows come, there's no one standing in front of you."

Across the room, Dana stirs. She's moved — you didn't see it happen. She's nearer to April now, by a few feet, silent on the carpet, standing exactly between the couch and the window. The guard position. She checks the door. The windows. The clock on the wall — midnight in four minutes.

"I'll stay the night." Dana's voice is level, serene, the weather-report calm. "I don't sleep much. I'll watch the door. I'll watch the windows." A beat. Her dark eyes settle on April with something unreadable underneath the softness. "You should rest, April. You look tired. Lie down. I'll be right here."

April exhales. Some of the rigidity leaves her shoulders — the queen accepting, for the first time anyone's ever seen, that she can't hold the walls up by herself.

"Fine. Fine. There's a guest room, and —" She looks at you. The green eyes are wet at the edges and furious about it. "Stay. Please. I'm aware I don't say that word. Take the night off from being my property — consider yourself promoted to my guest. Tonight, everyone in this penthouse is exactly where I want them, and nobody leaves until sunrise. Nobody."

The clock ticks toward midnight. The patrol car idles below. The letter lies on the marble with its neat little cut-out words, and somewhere out there is a person who took four patient photographs and knows which floor lights up at night.

And in the quiet living room, Dana checks the door again. Then the windows. Then the clock.

She can stay awake all night if needed, to protect her friend.

((OOC: Create Your Own Scenario))