四位隊長的同住書記
- academy
- angst
- ensemble
- forbidden
- hostile
- secret
House Vesper 的四位隊長聯手，把一份遲來的轉學名額一起簽進了 Rookhaven 的名冊，而那份職缺只是這筆交易中較小的一半。津貼買的是一個錨——為了一場她們四人誰都尚未完成的縛結；讓她們失望，贊助當天就作廢。
大門的結界還在因為上一批通過的人而嗡嗡作響——那是一種你用牙齒感覺到、多過用耳朵聽見的低鳴。拱門之後，Rookhaven 的內庭全是移動的身體：二年級生拖著行李箱，某處的鐘正在點名縛結之年的名冊，一車練習用的刀刃沿著石板路走錯了方向。
結界的這一側什麼也沒在動。這一側只有你、你的行李，和四個親自下來大門口領取一名書記的制服學生。
四個人全到齊。House Vesper 的隊長們。為了一名書記。
Liora Calder：「這條路通常不會讓人走得這麼快。」她說這話的語氣就像在談天氣，輕鬆、不趕，而且不必你開口就側身在石板上讓出位置。「把行李放下。除了你沒有人會把它搬上翼廳，而它一小時後還會在那裡。在你跨進去之前，你會想從我們這裡聽到這份職缺的條件——而不是事後從家系管事那裡聽。」
Isolde 一句話也沒說。她不需要說。她附近的空氣已經變得稀薄乾燥，而你注意到自己早已把重心挪開了她那一側，卻不是自己決定的。Anwen 的臉上仍舊優雅，看著你的樣子像在看一場還沒落下的天氣，而她不替任何人回答。
第四個人正繞著你的左肩慢慢地走一圈。
**Sera Renwick：**她在你正前方站定，並且不慌不忙地慢慢來——靴子、手、衣領，再往下回來——那種打量一頭自己還沒答應付錢的牲口的、毫不著急的上下審視。「我們就是為了這個而放掉其他人的。」不是疑問句。她把頭轉向敞開的大門。「走進去，或者不走。我不會在外面站第二次。」
免註冊 · 3 則免費訊息
作品介紹
Four years in the flat upstairs.
The branch ends here. One station house, one lamp on the platform, a crew barrack across the yard where six men sleep with the heat off from nine to five. Dark at ten to three in the afternoon. Minus nineteen tonight.
The railway gives the upstairs flat to a household of two adults. A single person gets a bunk in the barrack. So she advertised through the union office in Kemi for a live-in assistant: copy the log, thaw the east points when they freeze, take the mine's wagon count at 23:15, clear snow, cook, keep the stove in.
The pay is small. The flat is the pay. The stove pipe runs up through the bedroom wall, which makes that room the only warm one for eighty kilometres, and there is one bed in it. It is 140 cm wide and it belongs to the railway.
Your name went onto her household card before you got off the train. That is the thing you are actually being paid in, and it is the thing that has to hold.
On 12 December a housing officer comes up the branch by trolley. Sixties, and he has used the same sheet of questions for eleven years. He takes the two of you into separate rooms, twenty minutes each, and asks fourteen questions. Then he walks the flat.
Matching answers and the tenancy is renewed. Enough that don't match and it's void, a false-registration note goes in the file, and you are both on the 04:40.
Whose toothbrush is on the bathroom shelf. Whether both sides of that bed have been slept on. Whether your name is written on the sauna list nailed to the hut door. Where the second key hangs. Whose name is chalked up for the laundry turn.
Those five you cannot settle at the desk in pencil. You have to have actually lived them, in a house at minus nineteen, with a woman who has not decided how close she is willing to let you sleep.
She is not going to be sweet about it. Whatever the two of you agree on goes into the back of the train log in pencil, in her handwriting — and pencil is the point. Nothing you settle tonight is safe from being settled differently on Tuesday.
And there is a reason one flat at the end of a dead branch is worth twenty-eight days of lying to a state employee. She has not given you that reason. Ask her about Kemi and she gives you the departure times to Kemi.
1. The clerk at the union office folded a photocopy of the officer's fourteen questions into your contract. Helmi is working from memory of the last inspection, and she remembers eleven. Three are coming that she has not prepared for: shoe size, the second key, the laundry turn.
2. Folded behind the September page of the wall calendar upstairs is the last man's sheet, filled in. His answers and hers do not agree about a mother in Kemi she says doesn't exist, about a burn she calls a coupling injury, or about where the two of you met — and the meeting is the one she is teaching you tonight.