Resolve

Stars twinkled, and the constellations spread out across the night sky.

The moon sat barely at the corner of the room, and wrapped the whole of it in a gentle light.

*This is no time to be gazing at the night sky!*—and he went back out to check the door.

On the wooden door, F was carved in solemn letters.

"The room is right…"

The floor, then—and looking at the corridor floor beneath his feet, he saw the number seventeen set in at regular intervals. There were numbers on the wall between door and door as well.

The floor was right too.

So he had misread the board? He was hurrying back to check when—

"Yo, Vihal. I saw the board! You're next door this morning, right?"

Edwin came up and alighted in front of the neighboring room.

"Edwin… you looked at the board for my room…?"

"Hm? Ah. It's a daily habit by now."

He said it with a wry smile, and then, scratching his cheek with his forefinger, in a way that somehow looked embarrassed, he said,

"So that when a crybaby like you comes asking for help, I can get there right away—I always keep track of where you're posted…?"

There was no way Edwin could have misread the board when Vihal himself had not. Which meant—his room really was this one.

"Hm? Something wrong?"

Edwin must have been worried, seeing Vihal stopped and staring at the letters on the door.

"I thought I'd come to the wrong room. But if you saw the board too, then it's fine."

He did not want to make him worry any further, and he had painted a night sky at the end of yesterday too, so he would surely be all right.

Telling himself so, Vihal asked,

"Are you on break after this one?"

"Today I'm on consecutive shifts from the very first, and they're sixty and seventy percent. Sometimes I'm really not happy with how those lot arrange things."

*I've told them any number of times that I'm no good in the morning*—he grumbled.

"Hahaha, that just means you're that good, Edwin!"

Edwin shrugged. "Well, no helping it."

"Right, I'll get going, then," Vihal said, and put his hand on the knob of Room F—

"Oh, that's right. I've got the noon slot after my consecutive shifts. What about you?"

"I'm on break after this, then consecutive shifts just before noon. Easier than yours, I think—thirty and forty."

"I see—so we can't have lunch together today… That's a shame."

"Come to my room when work is over. I'll cook you dinner, to thank you for yesterday."

Vihal had actually bought the ingredients for exactly that yesterday, and had already prepared Edwin's favorite dish the night before.

"Oh, that I like! I'll come by."

"Then… I'm off. I'll look at my predecessor's sky and think about what to make of mine."

"Go on, then—do your best!"

"See you when work's done!"

"I'll be looking forward to it."

Etching Edwin's pleasant voice into his chest, and smiling again as he stepped back into the room, Vihal steeled himself anew before the beautiful night sky. ---