Turn 6 of 11

Head back downstairs to write something on the board before anyone else does

You don't wait for Marchetti to finish whatever she's about to say next. You turn and head for the stairs, taking them two at a time, your socks slipping on the carpet. Behind you, Marchetti says your name — not loud, not chasing, just marking the fact that you're leaving. You don't stop.

The kitchen is empty when you get there. Dermot's tea mug sits on the counter, still steaming, which means he's only just wandered back to the front room. Your toast sits where you left it, a sad rectangle of cold bread that's given up on its own potential. You ignore it. The whiteboard is there, and the marker is there, and the marker is the only thing in this flat that matters.

You uncap it. The chemical smell of the ink hits you — that sharp, acetone tang that takes you back to school, to writing your name on plastic trays. Your hand hovers. What do you write? What can you write? The board takes rules and makes them true, but Marchetti wrote a rule that should have made her the host and it didn't, which means the board has its own logic, its own preferences, and you don't understand them yet.

You write: PRIYA IS THE HOST.

The marker moves across the board in your handwriting — your cramped, left-leaning scrawl that nobody would ever mistake for anyone else's. You cap the marker. You step back. You wait.

Nothing. No shift, no ripple, no feeling of the world settling into a new shape. The board just sits there with your words on it, the same way it sat there with Marchetti's. You read it back: QUIET HOURS 9PM. HOST'S DECISION IS FINAL. PRIYA IS THE HOST. It's there. It's written. It's true because everything on the board is true, isn't it? That's how it works?

From the front room, Dermot laughs at something. Same easy laugh. Nothing's changed for him. You look at the board and for one vertiginous moment you can't tell if you feel different because something has changed, or because you're standing in a kitchen at twenty to nine in the morning expecting reality to rearrange itself around your handwriting. The marker swings on its string. You put the cap back on.

Then the front door opens and closes, and you hear Jake's voice — cheerful, loud, carrying the sound of someone who's just come back from somewhere with a story to tell.

"Alright? Anyone been in the kitchen? Someone's written on the board again."