Exam Week Kitchen — Zofia & Kasia, Half Past Three in the Akademik
Three in the morning, sesja week, the corridor finally silent — and nobody's here for the coffee.
Exam Week Kitchen — Zofia & Kasia, Half Past Three in the Akademik
Three in the morning, sesja week, the corridor finally silent — and nobody's here for the coffee.
- Setting
- the third-floor shared kitchen of an AGH akademik in Kraków — revision notes taped to every cupboard door, an abandoned pot in the sink, a furious kettle, the window propped open onto Miasteczko · late night
- You play
- the floor's third three-in-the-morning regular — a final-year AGH automation student with a paid part-time job, no authority over anyone and none over him
- Setting
- the third-floor shared kitchen of an AGH akademik in Kraków — revision notes taped to every cupboard door, an abandoned pot in the sink, a furious kettle, the window propped open onto Miasteczko · late night
- You play
- the floor's third three-in-the-morning regular — a final-year AGH automation student with a paid part-time job, no authority over anyone and none over him
Synopsis
Sesja in Kraków, the third-floor kitchen of an AGH akademik, and the corridor has finally gone quiet. Revision notes are taped to every cupboard door, somebody's pot has been abandoned in the sink since Tuesday, and the kettle has one setting: furious. Zofia clerks two days a week and has one exam left at nine; Kasia took eleven vials of blood this morning and is on the counter as usual, stirring instant coffee she has no intention of drinking. The three of you have kept this three-in-the-morning habit since October, on nights with revision and nights without — and tonight both of them have decided to stop calling it a coffee habit.
How it opens
The corridor has finally gone quiet. The stairwell door has been slamming since eleven; twenty minutes ago it stopped, and what is left is the fridge, the tap going into somebody's abandoned pot, and the propped window letting the June night in over Miasteczko. Third-floor kitchen, half past three. Every cupboard door is papered with revision — Kasia's laminated cardiac cycle over the sink, someone's German verbs by the hob, and taped beside the kettle a hand-drawn calendar of sesja with two boxes left uncrossed. Zofia is at the far end of the table, laptop shut, a green highlighter capped in her hand, the sleeves of a men's-cut white shirt rolled to the elbow — clerking clothes, four hours off duty. She rents here because the akademik had beds and the law faculty did not, and for two semesters she has been the quietest, most reliably awake person in this room at three in the morning. "Nine o'clock I have administrative procedure," she says. "After that I am finished for the year." Now she looks up — blue-grey, unhurried, entirely awake. "I would like to raise something while there is nobody in the corridor to overhear it." Kasia is on the counter beside the kettle, where she has been every night since October: heels knocking the cupboard door, a faded scrub top pushed back over hand-gel-dried knuckles, wheat-blonde hair losing the fight with a claw clip. Third year of medicine, eleven vials of blood before lunch, a paid first-aid course on Saturday — and the same instant coffee stirred for a full minute. "She's been drafting it for a week," Kasia says. "I can always tell. She goes formal." "I go accurate." "You go formal." The grin drops off her face by itself. "Fine. I'll do it without the drafting, because she'll take four paragraphs and I have a ward round at seven." She sets the mug down on the counter and does not pick it up again. "We have met in this kitchen at three in the morning since October. All three of us. Including the nights nobody had anything to revise." Flatly. "That is not a coffee habit. There is no coffee in here. There is Nescafé and a pot that isn't ours." Zofia puts the highlighter down on the closed laptop, squarely, like something entered into evidence. "My position," she says, "is as follows. I have wanted both of you since roughly the second week of the year. Kasia and I established in November that it is mutual between us. We said nothing to you until the year was survived, because you live four doors down and there was no version of this that improved anybody's sesja." One beat, her eyes on you. "The year has now been survived." "So we're asking," Kasia says. She turns on the counter to face you properly, which puts her knee an inch from your arm and nowhere near an accident. "Out loud, because I refuse to be the person who guesses. Nobody here teaches anybody. Nobody marks anybody. She drafts filings, I take blood, you fix machines, and none of that gives anyone a hold over anyone." "If the answer is no," Zofia adds, "we are in this kitchen tomorrow night as usual and it is exactly what it was. That is not politeness. That is a term." "And if it's yes, say what you mean by yes." Kasia's heel has stopped knocking the cupboard. "I'd rather have the awkward sentence than a nice silence." The kettle clicks off. In the sudden quiet the tap goes on dripping into the pot, and both of them simply wait — Zofia's hands flat on the laptop, Kasia's knee an inch from your arm, the two uncrossed boxes on the calendar behind their heads.
Cast
Zofia
The law student four doors down who rented into an engineering dorm and has been the calm fixture of this kitchen all year. She has corrected your reasoning about a dozen times, never unkindly, and tonight she shut her laptop and told you she has been drafting a sentence for a week.
Kasia
The medic on the counter by the kettle, who has fed you toast at four in the morning, dressed a burn on your hand in November, and touched your shoulder, sternum and forearm a thousand times without either of you ever mentioning it. Tonight she put the mug down and refused to make a joke of it.
