The protein bar hit Arthur's desk with the force of a small, dense missile, landing squarely on top of his keyboard just as he was about to submit a pull request.

"Eat that," Diana said, already halfway to her own room, tossing the words over her shoulder like an order barked mid-drill. "You looked like a corpse this morning. A corpse cannot function on an empty stomach, and neither can whatever it is you are."

"I had breakfast."

"You had coffee. Coffee is a beverage, not a food group, no matter how many calories you convince yourself it has." She reappeared in the doorway of her room, already changed into gym clothes, watching him with the particular intensity of someone accustomed to monitoring other people's compliance for a living. "Eat it. I will know if you don't."

"How, exactly, will you know?"

"I have my methods." She disappeared again, leaving Arthur alone in the living room with an unopened protein bar and the distinct, uncomfortable feeling of having just been outmaneuvered by someone whose primary weapon appeared to be sheer, immovable conviction.

He ate the bar. It was, he noted with some irritation, actually quite good.

This had become the shape of the past several days — an odd, undeclared campaign that Diana had launched with the same tactical precision she likely brought to designing a client's workout regimen, though neither of them acknowledged it directly. A protein bar appearing in his bag before he left for work. A pointed comment about his sleep schedule delivered with the subtlety of a battering ram. An unsolicited lecture on hydration that had somehow expanded into a ten-minute monologue about electrolytes he never asked to receive.

At MegaIron that same afternoon, Diana found herself distracted mid-session, watching a client perform lunges with only half her usual focus while some other, more persistent thought kept intruding at the edges. She'd caught herself, twice now, thinking about whether Arthur had actually eaten the protein bar, or whether it was currently sitting untouched in the bottom of his bag, forgotten beneath a laptop charger and whatever else developers apparently carried around all day.

"You're staring at the wall again," her client said, pausing mid-rep to catch her breath. "Everything okay, coach?"

"Fine. Perfectly fine." Diana snapped back into focus, correcting the client's form with slightly more enthusiasm than the moment required, using the burst of energy to bury whatever strange, unproductive thought had briefly hijacked her attention. She was not, she reminded herself firmly, the kind of person who spent company time wondering about a roommate's snacking habits. That was absurd. That was the kind of behavior reserved for people with actual romantic investment in another human being, and she had made her feelings on that subject to herself abundantly, repeatedly clear: none. Zero. Not applicable.

She finished the session, showered, and drove herself home rehearsing, somewhat aggressively, all the reasons her fixation on Arthur's nutritional habits was purely professional, a rehearsal that lasted the entire commute and convinced her of absolutely nothing.

"You know," he said instead, raising his voice slightly over the blender, "for someone who insists this isn't affection, you spend a remarkable amount of energy on my caloric intake."

The blender shut off. Diana turned to face him with an expression that suggested she was recalibrating a response on the fly. "It's called professional habit. I care about all bodies in my orbit reaching their maximum physical potential. You happen to currently be in my orbit."

"That's a very clinical way to describe living in the same apartment."

"I contain multitudes." She poured her smoothie with slightly more force than necessary, a faint flush creeping up her neck that she would have denied existed had he pointed it out, which, wisely, he chose not to do.

"For someone with multitudes, you seem remarkably fixated on one very specific multitude. Namely, whether I've eaten enough fiber this week."

"Fiber is important, Arthur. Digestive health is not a joke."

"I never said it was a joke. I'm simply observing a pattern."

"Observe less. Eat more vegetables." She grabbed a knife from the drawer with unnecessary force and began chopping something that did not, strictly speaking, need to be chopped that violently, a clear signal that the conversation, as far as she was concerned, had reached its natural conclusion.

Arthur watched her for a moment longer than he probably should have, something about the deliberate ferocity of her vegetable chopping striking him as disproportionately entertaining. He found, increasingly, that he enjoyed provoking these small, defensive outbursts from her — not out of any particular cruelty, but because there was something oddly endearing about watching someone insist, with escalating vehemence, that they didn't care about something they very clearly, demonstrably, cared about a great deal.

The moment stretched a beat longer than either of them seemed prepared for, something unspoken passing between them that neither had the vocabulary yet to name, before Diana broke it by grabbing her bag and announcing, with performative urgency, that she was late for a client, and disappearing out the door before he could formulate a response.

Arthur stood alone in the kitchen once more, staring at the sticky note still sitting on the counter, the small heart beside "hydration" catching the morning light in a way that felt, against every ounce of his better judgment, disproportionately significant for a piece of scrap paper about electrolytes. He picked it up, studied it for a moment longer than strictly necessary, and then, instead of throwing it away as he'd intended, folded it carefully and slid it into the inside pocket of his jacket, telling himself it was simply useful reference material for his own health, a justification so transparently weak that even he didn't bother trying to believe it.

---

That night, the conversation on Nexus turned, unexpectedly, toward the subject of home.

*Hắc Long Cô Độc: Do you ever think about what you'd say, if you ran into someone from your old life here, by accident?*

*Ánh Sáng Ban Mai: Constantly. I've rehearsed at least six different versions of that conversation, none of which end well in my head.*

*Hắc Long Cô Độc: Same. Though in my case, most former acquaintances would likely try to either flee or attack, historically speaking.*

*Ánh Sáng Ban Mai: That's dramatic even for someone who describes his roommate situation like a hostage negotiation.*

*Hắc Long Cô Độc: I contain layers. Most of them dramatic.*

*Ánh Sáng Ban Mai: I actually did run into someone today, sort of. New coworker started acting deeply strange around me, kept staring like he recognized me from somewhere. Very unsettling. Possibly the ghost sighting continues.*

Arthur's fingers hovered over the screen for a long moment. The description matched, uncomfortably closely, the exact behavior he'd witnessed from Malphas over the past several days — though he told himself, firmly, that half the city probably had at least one anxious coworker prone to staring, and there was no reason to assume every strange encounter in Metropolis Neo-Elysia was somehow connected to his own.

*Hắc Long Cô Độc: Strange coincidence. I have a coworker doing something remarkably similar. Possibly this city just breeds unsettling behavior in office environments.*

*Ánh Sáng Ban Mai: Must be something in the water. Or the fluorescent lighting. Fluorescent lighting makes everyone slightly insane, I've decided.*

*Hắc Long Cô Độc: A reasonable scientific conclusion.*

*Ánh Sáng Ban Mai: I have many. Ask me about my theory on why gym mirrors are always slightly warped sometime.*

*Hắc Long Cô Độc: I look forward to that lecture.*

They talked for another hour, meandering through smaller, sillier territory, the earlier moment of near-recognition dissolving into the comfortable static of ordinary conversation. Neither of them pursued the thread any further, though both, in their own private ways, filed the coincidence away somewhere just beneath conscious suspicion — close enough to notice, far enough to dismiss.

---

The following morning brought a new development in Diana's ongoing campaign of imposed wellness: a full nutritional breakdown, handwritten on a sticky note and affixed directly to Arthur's laptop, listing recommended daily intake for someone who "apparently subsists entirely on caffeine and spite."

"This is excessive," Arthur said, peeling the note off his screen and holding it up like evidence in a trial.

"This is basic biology. You're welcome." Diana didn't look up from the smoothie she was blending, the noise entirely drowning out whatever response he might have offered anyway.

He set the note down on the counter, glancing at it again despite himself — the careful handwriting, the small, almost imperceptible heart doodled beside the word "hydration" that she'd clearly drawn without thinking and would likely deny to her grave if he ever mentioned it. He decided not to mention it, at least for now, filing it away instead alongside every other small, inexplicable detail about her that he seemed to be accumulating at an alarming rate.

That afternoon, on his lunch break, Arthur found himself standing in the snack aisle of a corner store two blocks from CyberCore, staring at a shelf of protein bars with an intensity that would have embarrassed him had anyone been watching closely enough to notice. He'd told himself he was simply out for air, that the errand had nothing to do with anything Diana had said that morning, and yet here he was, methodically comparing sugar content and protein ratios like a man conducting field research.

He selected a box of the same brand she'd left in his bag the week before, paid without quite meeting the cashier's eyes, and told himself the whole way back to the office that this was purely a matter of convenience — that having his own supply meant one less thing to argue about at home, nothing more, nothing that required further examination.

He was still telling himself that when Malphas appeared at his elbow in the break room later that afternoon, hovering with his now-familiar mixture of dread and devotion.

"Those look nutritious," Malphas offered, eyeing the protein bars Arthur was transferring into his desk drawer with what could only be described as forced casualness. "Very... balanced. Good choice. Very responsible choice for a person in a position of, uh, general responsibility."

"They're protein bars, Malphas."

"Yes! Exactly! A wise choice for any person, regardless of former or, hypothetically, current station in life." Malphas laughed, a strange, strangled sound, before adding, in a rush, "Speaking of station — completely unrelated topic — have you ever, hypothetically, wronged someone badly enough that you weren't sure they'd ever want to speak to you again? Purely as a philosophical question. For a friend. Who isn't me."

Arthur paused, halfway through closing his desk drawer, and studied his new coworker with the particular scrutiny he usually reserved for suspicious pull requests. "Is this a genuine question, or an elaborate lead-up to something you're avoiding saying directly?"

"Genuine question! Extremely genuine. Philosophy is important to me. I minored in it. Hypothetically."

"I don't believe you minored in anything, hypothetically or otherwise." Arthur closed the drawer fully, considering the strange, nervous energy radiating off the man in waves. "But to answer honestly — yes. I have wronged people. Some of it under circumstances I'd rather not revisit. I've found that most people, given enough time and enough evidence of genuine change, are more capable of forgiveness than we tend to assume. Not all of them. But more than you'd expect."

Malphas stared at him for a long moment, something in his expression shifting rapidly between relief and renewed anxiety, before he nodded several times in quick succession and backed away toward his own desk without further comment, leaving Arthur mildly bewildered but not especially concerned, filing the exchange under the same broad category of "things about this office I don't fully understand" that already contained several dozen entries.

---

Back at MegaIron, Diana was midway through her final session of the day when her phone buzzed against the equipment rack, the Nexus notification catching her eye during a brief water break.

*Hắc Long Cô Độc: Slightly unrelated, but do you think it's possible to care about someone's wellbeing without it meaning anything beyond basic human decency?*

She stared at the message for a long moment, her client politely pretending not to notice her sudden distraction, before typing back with more speed than caution.

*Ánh Sáng Ban Mai: Depends. Are we talking about actual basic decency, or are we talking about a specific person whose wellbeing you have developed an unusually intense interest in?*

*Hắc Long Cô Độc: Purely hypothetical. Academic curiosity.*

*Ánh Sáng Ban Mai: Sure. Academic. I have a similar academic curiosity about a specific roommate's caloric intake, purely for research purposes.*

*Hắc Long Cô Độc: Research is important. I respect the scientific process.*

*Ánh Sáng Ban Mai: As do I. In the name of science, I've started leaving snacks in strategic locations to monitor consumption patterns.*

*Hắc Long Cô Độc: A rigorous methodology.*

*Ánh Sáng Ban Mai: I thought so myself.*

She smiled at her phone, quickly schooling her expression back into professional neutrality when her client cleared his throat, waiting for the session to resume. She pocketed the phone, returned to counting reps, and spent the rest of the hour distracted by an entirely unhelpful, entirely persistent thought: that somewhere in this city, a man she'd never met in person had just described, almost word for word, the exact same quiet, deniable form of caring she'd been practicing on her actual roommate all week, and that the coincidence, however impossible, felt less like coincidence and more like something she didn't yet have the courage to name.

By the time she finished her last client and locked up her section of the gym, the evening had settled into its usual cool haze, neon signs flickering awake one by one along the street as she walked the six blocks home, gym bag slung over one shoulder, mind still circling the same unproductive loop it had been stuck in for most of the day. She told herself, as she often did lately, that it meant nothing — that caring about a stranger's hypothetical wellbeing and caring about her actual roommate's very real habit of forgetting to eat lunch were two entirely separate categories of feeling, unrelated, non-overlapping, filed in different mental drawers that had absolutely no business touching.

She let herself into the apartment to find Arthur already home, hunched over his laptop at the kitchen table instead of his usual spot on the sofa, a small pile of protein bar wrappers stacked with uncharacteristic tidiness beside his elbow.

"You bought your own," she said, stopping in the doorway, unable to keep the surprise entirely out of her voice.

"I got tired of relying on unpredictable snack deliveries." He didn't look up from his screen, though something in the set of his shoulders suggested he was aware of her scrutiny regardless. "Efficiency. Nothing more."

"Right. Efficiency." She dropped her bag by the door, crossing to the kitchen to pour herself water, watching him from the corner of her eye with an expression she hoped read as neutral. "For the record, I approve. Independent nutritional planning is a sign of personal growth."

"I'll add it to my list of accomplishments, somewhere below fixing three production bugs today and above successfully avoiding a conversation with my coworker about, apparently, philosophy."

"Sounds like a productive day for a corpse." She said it lightly, a small smile tugging at her mouth despite herself, and settled into the chair across from him at the table instead of retreating immediately to her room as she usually did, an adjustment neither of them commented on directly, though both silently registered it as a small, quiet shift in the shape of their evenings together — one neither was quite ready yet to examine too closely, but one that neither, if pressed, would have wanted to undo.

They sat like that for a while, the hum of the refrigerator and the distant traffic outside filling the silence between them, two people who had spent the last week insisting, separately and repeatedly, that whatever was growing between them meant nothing at all, sitting close enough now that the insistence was beginning, very quietly, to feel like exactly what it was: a lie neither of them had quite worked up the courage to stop telling.

Eventually Diana rose to make dinner, and Arthur, without quite deciding to, found himself setting his laptop aside to help — chopping vegetables badly, burning the garlic once, enduring her running commentary on his complete lack of kitchen competence with far more good humor than he would have managed a week earlier. She corrected his grip on the knife twice, adjusted his stance at the stove once, entirely unprompted, with the same brisk authority she brought to every physical correction she gave her clients, and neither of them remarked on how easily he let her, or how natural it felt to be handled that way by someone who, technically, still considered this entire domestic arrangement a temporary inconvenience.

At one point, reaching past him for the salt, her shoulder brushed his arm, barely a touch, gone in less than a second, and yet something in the kitchen seemed to shift its temperature by several degrees in the aftermath. Neither of them commented on it. Both of them noticed it far more than either was prepared to admit, and both found excuses, in the minutes that followed, to keep a slightly more deliberate distance than the small kitchen strictly required. It was, by any reasonable measure, an unremarkable evening, one of dozens they would likely spend exactly this way before either of them found the nerve to call it anything else. And yet, lying awake later on the sofa, staring at the ceiling in the dark, Arthur found himself thinking that unremarkable evenings had started, somewhere along the way, to feel like the best part of his day, and that the reason for that shift had a name he wasn't yet ready to say out loud, even to himself, even in the privacy of his own head, alone in the dark, with the whole sleeping city humming faintly beyond the window, indifferent and endless and utterly unaware, as vast indifferent cities so often are, of the small, quiet thing steadily taking shape inside apartment 404.