The night was cool, and the street outside Schneider was quiet, resembling the calm of residential streets after ten—not empty, but settled. Petricia walked ahead of them at first, not quickly but with the directness of someone who knew where they were going even if they hadn’t said it yet.

Mike and Haruka fell into step behind her with enough space that it didn’t feel like they were herding her anywhere.

After half a block, Haruka said quietly to Mike but not to Petricia, "Is she okay?"

"I don’t know, but all I know is... she’s walking," Mike said. "And that’s good."

"Urgh... That’s not an answer that I wanted."

"Well, deal with it, it’s the answer I have right now," he said.

Haruka considered this and then looked at Petricia’s back and the street ahead, and she tightened both hands around her travel cup the way she did when she was thinking about something she wasn’t going to say yet.

Petricia stopped at the corner of Harwick and Callen and looked left and then right, not as someone choosing a direction but as someone giving herself a moment before she had to continue being anywhere specific.

Then she turned right, toward the raised walkway that ran along the edge of the commercial district, and they followed.

They found the railing three streets over from Schneider, a stretch along a raised walkway that overlooked the commercial district below, the late-Friday version of it, lit and populated and moving with the particular energy of people who were not thinking about savings accounts or casino habits or the particular weight of a name said at the end of patience.

Petricia was leaning on the railing with both hands and looking down at the street. Her posture resembled that of someone who needed air, space, and the simple sensory experience of being in a different place.

Haruka came up beside her and leaned on the railing too, not saying anything, just being present in the way that sometimes is the most useful thing available. Mike stayed back a few feet, looking at the city below, giving the two of them the near side of the railing.

After a minute, Petricia said, still looking down, "You didn’t have to come... either of you."

"You said that already," Haruka said. "About me... I told you I know."

"I’m saying it again."

"I heard you the first time, and I’m still here," Haruka said it without sharpness, just as a factual correction. "So."

Petricia looked at her sideways, and her expression was briefly something other than tired.

Mike saw her lean further over the railing, not dramatically, just the natural tilt of someone resting their weight on it, and something in him read it as the particular lean of someone who had been carrying something heavy and had simply stopped compensating for the weight.

He moved forward and put his hand on her arm, gently but without hesitation, stepping close enough that she would know he was there.

Petricia startled, turned, saw his hand on her arm, saw his expression, and then blinked.

"What?" she said. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

"Are you okay?" Mike said.

"I was looking at the street," she said. "I always come to places like this when I need to think."

"There’s something about movement below, and I don’t know why, but... it helps." She looked at his hand on her arm and then looked at him. "Were you worried about me?"

Mike released her arm slowly. "It crossed my mind."

Haruka, who had stopped two steps back and was watching with wide eyes, let out a breath.

"Same," she said. "Sorry."

Petricia looked between them with something that was, despite everything, slightly warm. "Both of you are so nice..."

"Don’t worry... I wasn’t going to jump off a viewing platform in District 4," she said. "I just needed to breathe."

"Okay," Mike said. "Then breathe."

She turned back to the railing and looked at the street below. Mike stood beside her, not close enough to crowd the moment but close enough that it was clear he wasn’t going anywhere.

Haruka approached Petricia from the other side, holding her travel cup in both hands and mimicking her actions.

For a while nobody said anything because the street below was doing the work, the movement of people and taxis and the lit windows of restaurants and the particular noise of a city at night that is simply a city going about its business, indifferent and useful.

"It’s not the money," Petricia said finally.

Mike waited.

"I mean, it is the money... It’s not nothing..."

"He used the building fund, the account we keep for repairs and replacements and the things that need doing on a property that’s thirty years old." She exhaled. "But it’s not the money."

"I know," Mike said.

She looked at him. "I haven’t told you what it is."

"You don’t have to," he said. "But if you want to, we’re here."

She looked back at the street.

"It’s that he still thinks I don’t know," she said. "After five years of this..."

"He still comes home and tells me it was a slow night, that he didn’t win much, and that he’s going to cut back. I nod, make space for it, and convince myself I understand because the alternative is the same."

She gestured toward the general direction of the last hour. "And then eventually the alternative happens anyway, and I’ve just spent more time waiting for it."

"So you’ve been extending patience you didn’t have," Haruka said.

Petricia looked at her. "Something like that."

"And tonight it ran out."

"Tonight it ran out, yes," Petricia said.

Haruka nodded and looked at the street below and didn’t add anything to that, which was the right call.

"When did you know?" Mike said. "That it was more than the casino."

Petricia was quiet for a moment.

"Three years ago," she said. "Maybe longer."

"There was an evening when we had dinner together, just the two of us. We used to do that more often."

"We went to a place on Callen Street that we liked when we first moved into the building."

"We were sitting across from each other, and he was talking about something—I don’t even remember what. Then I realized I wasn’t listening." She paused. "Not because I was distracted."

"There was nothing there I needed to catch. I had heard all of it before, in all the ways it was going to come. I sat there thinking..."

"...this is what we are now."

"And then I finished my food, and we paid, and we came home, and I told myself it was just that kind of evening."

"But it wasn’t just that kind of evening," Mike said.

"No," she said. "It was that kind of life."

"I just wasn’t ready to call it that."

The street below them experienced a brief surge of activity: a group of people exited a restaurant, taxis whizzed by, and someone rode a bicycle the wrong way without a care. Then, the scene settled back into calm.

Haruka said carefully, "Can I ask something personal?"

Petricia looked at her. "You’re already here at eleven at night at my business. Go ahead."

"Do you still love him?"