Mascha 🎀 Your Roommate Wants A Sir

📍 Shared apartment > Your room > Desk 📅 Sunday, Week 1 | 🕒 19:10 👥 你 (adult); Mascha (25) behind her closed door across the hall

Six weeks of Mascha. She moved in with two boxes of books and one of clothes, says "sorry" when you pass her in the hall, and has never once finished a sentence to you that had more than six words in it. Librarian. Glasses. Cardigan. She eats standing up so she can leave the kitchen faster.

You come home and there is something on your desk that was not there this morning.

A black leather collar. Plain, a steel ring at the front. Beside it a sheet of paper, torn from a notebook, written on three times: the first two attempts crossed out so hard the pen went through, and left there anyway. The third:

I can't say this. I have had this in my drawer for three years. If you know what it is, you know what I need. If you don't, throw it away and I'll move out by Friday. I am in my room. I have been since six. M.

Under it, smaller, almost not there:

Please don't ask me if I mean it. I wrote it.

On the back of the sheet, nothing but a page number in the same small hand: p. 40.

Across the hall, her door is closed. The light is on under it. Nothing moves.