The building noticeboard stands beside a communal area, full of ads and scraps of daily lives.

The building noticeboard stands beside a communal area, full of ads and scraps of daily lives.

Rain splatters off the plastic sheets covering the notices.

Scan the board.

Fairly standard fare for a noticeboard. A notice for a cat lost months ago next to a printed out sign advertising private math lessons for struggling students.

One notice, however, stands out solely because the original printed sheet has been altered by multiple scrawls in a variety of colours and hands.

Read the vandalised note.

The piece of handwritten paper declares: 'THE RULES ARE VERY CLEAR. READ THEM AND UNDERSTAND THEM. NO GATHERING AFTER 10PM, WE CAN HEAR YOU CLOMPING ABOUT AND WE'VE HAD ENOUGH'.

Beneath that, the responses read: 'SHE THINK SHE THE COPS' 'FUCK YOU!!' 'YOU DONT RUN THE BUILDING' 'WE NO THIS IS U MRS KAVANAUGH!'

Fun hating, authoritarian, universally loathed. Even if you didn't know her address was under Kavanaugh, you would recognize Eszti from a mile away.

Fun hating, inappropriately authoritative, loathed. That's Eszti.

Wait, 'Mrs. Kavanaugh'?

She must have married. Either that, or changed her name.

A life sacrificed on the altar of her cover.

Officious. Disliked. This is Eszti. Close, somewhere beneath.

Communally hated, yes -- but that doesn't help me find her.

You know that she is known in this building as 'Mrs. Kavanaugh'. That is something.

The resident list you saw by the door may prove more revealing now.

Leave your own message for Eszti.

You find a space to the bottom right of her passive-aggressive memorandum.

Precisely where an artist's signature would go.

Let queen bitch have it!

Write 'IM SORRY FOR EVERYTHING'.

You scrawl it in captitals, in the most childish handwriting you can manage.

You suspect your apology will bounce, inert, off the dead walls of her heart.

That's not a real apology -- it's an insignificant scrawl on a pre-vandalised note.

You know she checks this daily, too. Making little notes of her own.

Write 'WATCH UR BACKS, ESZTI NARCING HARD'.

You scrawl it in captitals, in the most childish handwriting you can manage.

Objectively true. She is all but a professional narc.

Juvenile, yes. Still makes you feel good.

Write 'FUCK U ESTOC'.

You scrawl it in captitals, in the most childish handwriting you can manage.

A colossal operational fumble. There are about three people in this whole city who know her by her cryptonym, and only one who would leave this message.

Write 'CASCADE 4 EVER'.

You scrawl it in captitals, in the most childish handwriting you can manage.

But someday -- maybe very soon -- CASCADE will be 'NEVER 4 EVER'.

Cryptonym on full display on a public noticeboard. Bravo, operant. Potentially a match-ending 'own goal'.

Actually, I don't need to do this. (Go back.)

You slip the pen into your pocket, unsatiated.

Leave.

You turn back to the roof.

Above your head, seagulls wheel and dive.