Freda meant to sleep.
She told herself so at midnight, sat down at the secondary desk to write out the list of variables first — only the list — and looked up again when the window had gone from black to grey.
Fourteen pages.
She read them over with the flat eye she used on other people's work. They were clean. Everything that had been in the common room during the four seconds, ranked by how much she trusted it to matter.
One. Kazuma, awake, sweep at full range.
Two. Satou, seated at the secondary table, pretending to read.
Three. Herself.
Four. The stones. She had almost left them off.
Five. The east window's light at the eighth bell, which had been, she noted, extremely ordinary.
She sat with the list for a while. Then she crossed out the window at the top of the first page, where she'd been calling the event, and wrote the floor.
Because that was where it had gone.
——
She brought the pages to Morgana at midday.
