# Chapter 22 Comedy Doctor — Round 5 (re-baseline after Characters-Wrong repair + dialogue-diagnosis preemptive repair)

Scope: full current chapter (`output/chapters/chapter_22.md`), re-swept cold as a re-baseline, not a diff review — though the comedy consequences of both repair batches are verified point-by-point first. Two batches landed after the round-4 CLEAR: the Characters-Wrong round-1 repairs (verified WRONG-ENOUGH in `chapter_22.characters_wrong_round2.md`) and the dialogue-diagnosis preemptive repair (four lines, L101–107, verified CLEAN in `chapter_22.dialogue_doctor_round5.md`, OVERALL: CLEAN). Between them they deleted two round-4 inventory items outright, replaced a third, revised a fourth, and inserted a cold four-line quarrel into the middle of the booth scene — every round-4 count is therefore stale and re-derived here from the current text, grep-verified where countable. Register calibration unchanged: reading guide §2 — warm, precise, lightly comic; the comedy is observational and character-true (June's dryness, Theo's over-competent flailing), never banter for banter's sake; Emily Henry at ~60% banter density; Morisaki / *Before the Coffee Gets Cold* quiet as floor; target reader the O'Leary/Henry-calibrated reader who wants comedy generated by these two people's specific damage, not narrator wit. Chapter-card constraints applied: private romantic climax, "release, earned and unspectacular," "no public-grand-gesture energy," plainness over eloquence, "one possible 'Oh.' only if earned." Line numbers cite the current file. This document satisfies Dialogue Doctor round-5 housekeeping item (c) — the comedy inventory no longer predates the repairs.

## REPAIR-IMPACT ACCOUNTING (what the two repairs did to the round-4 inventory)

1. **Round-4 item 13 — "That's the right amount." — DELETED.** Grep confirms zero hits for "right amount." Its slot now holds the misread ("That sounds like you made a plan for either answer." L101). Comedy consequence: spoken conduct grades drop 3 → 2 ("Good." L65; "Good... Keep doing the quiet version." L153) — the round-4 ceiling of 3 is no longer occupied, but the Characters-Wrong round-2 warning ("Do not add further correctness certificates") supersedes the vacancy: the grade count may not be refilled to 3 in any future touch. The surviving L153 grade is re-adjudicated below (inventory item 18); it holds, and holds *better* post-repair, because a scene whose judge has been demonstrably wrong once (L101) can afford exactly one closing verdict without the verdicts reading as authorial certification.
2. **Round-4 item 14 — "The waitress refilled them both without asking, which was the correct level of involvement." — TAG DELETED.** Grep confirms zero hits for "correct level of involvement." The line survives as plain service narration (L109) and exits the inventory as a non-comic exclusion. The deletion is adjudicated **correct for comedy on its own terms**, not merely tolerated as characters_wrong compliance: round 4 defended the tag as "the waitress accidentally models the terms June wants" — a defense that described a scene where June's judgment was reliable. Post-repair, the refill lands inside June's unretracted meanness ("let her own line sit there, meaner than she had meant it," L109), and a correct-verdict deadpan there would quietly re-certify the scene's judge one line after she was wrong, sweetening a beat the book now needs sharp. The tag died because its site went sharp; the deflecting-tag family drops 5 → 4 and the vacated slot must NOT be refilled (see distribution).
3. **Round-4 item 12 — ""You were about to offer me crates." / "Freight elevator," he admitted." — REPLACED.** The anticipatory-unmasking pair (round 4's strongest item) is gone; June no longer beats him to the offer and Theo is no longer charmed into "admitted." The replacement — the uncaught run-on at L83 — is a different comic item with a different mechanism and enters the inventory as new item 13, adjudicated in full below. "Don't be useful right now" (L85) survives the replacement as a bare interruption of a running sentence and exits the inventory (exclusions below); the "usefulness" advance work planted at L27 (item 6) still pays off at L85 — the prime survived the repair intact.
4. **Round-4 item 9 — "He reached for his cup instead." — REVISED.** Now: "He touched the inside pocket of his coat, found the paper there, and took his hand out empty." (L61). The cup-misdirect family drops 2 → 1 (only L81 remains — under the round-3 cap of 2, no action needed). The revised item is re-adjudicated in full below (inventory item 9): the comedy now lives entirely in June's hyperbolic anticipation clause, and the payoff converted from clean misdirect to costed physical near-miss — sharper, not softer.
5. **Four new lines, L101–107** (dialogue-diagnosis preemptive repair) plus the two new Characters-Wrong friction lines (L89–91) — all six adjudicated below under the task-ordered new-line test. Verdict preview: none is a comic item; none is fake-sharp banter; one (L107) required the chapter's hardest adjudication and carries a standing warning.

## New-line adjudication (task-ordered)

**"Don't be useful right now," June said. (L85)** — Formerly the punchline-adjacent half of round-4 item 12's unmasking pair; post-repair it is a real interruption of a sentence still running ("or--"). Tested as attempted comedy: no mechanism attempts a laugh — it is a rebuke that stops a misfire, and the beat it produces is a stall with dead steam (L87), not a smile. Its residual comic charge is inherited, not local: item 6's "considering the usefulness of walking to the corner and back once" (L27) primed the word, and the payoff is thematic, not funny. EXCLUDED as non-comic. Not fake-sharp: seven words, functional, earns silence.

**"Sorry," he said. / "Don't make that useful either." (L89–91)** — The quotable-adjacent shape is real: an apology graded as a service is a paradox with wit-syntax, and a lazy pass would inventory it as June's dryness. It is not. Nobody smiles; the coffee has stopped steaming one line earlier; the reply it earns is "He looked at the table." (L93). June's card's stress spec is "quieter, funnier, more exact" — this run is her card **minus the funny, correctly**, because the misread engine is already spinning up and wit here would convert friction into banter. Fake-sharp test applied (the mode the task names): a successful sharp line buys the conversation's rhythm back; this one kills it further — the exchange only survives because Theo strips his question bare at L93. Fails the definition of banter on function. EXCLUDED as non-comic tension. STANDING WARNING: any future touch that lets Theo answer L91 with anything but silence — or lets June deliver it with any lightness marker — converts the line to fake-sharp on sight.

**"That sounds like you made a plan for either answer." (L101)** — Not comedy: an accusation that exists to be wrong, eleven speakable words, no punchline syntax, earning a denial rather than a capper. Its vocabulary is rooted, not composed: "where to stand"/"plan" is June's own scene-01 private frame ("Theo giving himself somewhere to stand if she said no," L13), so the line reads as suspicion she built on the page, not as a writer's shape. EXCLUDED.

**"You knew where to stand for either answer." (L105)** — The colder doubling-down; repeats her own phrase under pressure, which is overheard-speech behavior, not composition. EXCLUDED, same grounds.

**"I knew where to stand for one," he said. "It was worse." (L107)** — The chapter's hardest adjudication and the task's central question. This line owns the exchange's one quotable-adjacent shape — parallel structure plus a two-word landing — and its deleted predecessor ("I brought one sentence... It was worse.") was the Characters-Wrong round-2 named weakest instance precisely for flirting with converting June's cold turn back into banter. Tested as attempted comedy: the mechanism on offer would be deadpan understatement, but no character is generating a joke — the content is Theo volunteering that the only outcome he rehearsed was losing her, a claim the reader can verify against the completed crates offer twenty lines up (L83: his prepared stance for the going-answer, performed on the page). Nothing lightens: no smile, no returned beat; the exchange dies into the refill and the unretracted mean line (L109), and Theo has to restart the scene himself at L111 at his own cost. A joke buys rhythm back; this buys nothing. And the repair moved the line **away** from banter, not toward it: "brought one sentence" made a sentence the object of wit (inventory-of-utterances, the banter substrate); "knew where to stand" is stance-and-logistics in his native register, answering her accusation in her own terms — conversational uptake, not a composed echo. EXCLUDED as non-comic. STANDING WARNING (paired with L91's): the two-word coda survives only while nothing around it smiles; a June half-smile, an "almost laughed," or any softening beat in a future touch flips L105–107 into exactly the fake-sharp exchange the predecessor was cut for.

**Warmth accounting (task-ordered: was comedy warmth lost?)** Both deleted round-4 items were warmth-as-approval — June grading Theo's conduct correct in real time. Their removal drains warmth from L95–109 **by design**: post-repair that stretch carries a fired misread, a doubled-down cold line, and a refusal to retract, and approval-shaped comedy there would launder all three. The chapter's warmth ledger still balances: warmth re-enters exactly where Theo restarts the scene — "I'd been walking past it for a month like it was going to file a complaint." (L111), self-deprecation as cost-bearing re-entry — and the entire back half is intact: the check preemption, "Keep doing the quiet version," the stain-and-jar terms, the aggrieved compliment, the wrong-angle kiss, the wince and the chapter's only laugh (L187). Net structural effect: warmth is now *re-earned after the misread* instead of running uninterrupted, which is stronger comic architecture than round 4's, not a loss. Warmth floor (§8) verified against the two new expense-of-character beats: the crates flail is repaired inside the scene (his plain question gets the stay declaration; the morning ends on her laugh and the kiss), and the misread Theo absorbs is costed on the page against June, not against him ("meaner than she had meant it"). Holds.

## Items considered and excluded as non-comic (tension or texture, not attempted comedy)

The six new-line exclusions above, plus the round-4 exclusion list re-verified on the current text (line numbers updated): the Dana wall-clearing fact (L5); the two stale bubbles (L7–11); "the exit installed before she'd even reached for the door" (L13); "The tape crackled under her." (L33); "The coffee came fast because it was all she had asked for." (L41) — verbatim-stable, still diner logistics, still the standing temptation not to be sharpened into a tag (see distribution); "the circles matched badly enough to bother her" (L41); "Week what?" / "Three." / "Three." (L49–53) — arithmetic dread; the pocket near-miss beat itself at L61 (the cost half of item 9, not a second item); "He stopped with his mouth still a little open. The coffee between them had stopped steaming." (L87) — stall cost, must never acquire a tag; the L73 observation run (collar, razor line, primer) — observed facts planting the stockroom reveal and the L175 payoff; "The good easel was just free. The clean jars were just there." (L79) — self-indictment mid-confession; the bodega cat (L97) — evidence-grade specificity for the earned-stay case; "If you were going, I'd hope it went well..." (L99) — composure as content, grounds UPDATED: round 4 read it as graded on the page by the now-deleted "That's the right amount"; it is now the misread's trigger, misheard as management at L101, and doing more dramatic work than before; "The waitress refilled them both without asking." (L109) — post-repair plain service narration (accounting item 2 above); "a square with my name on it" (L115) — pathos; "Oh," (L127) — the §6-sanctioned once-at-the-confession instance, grep-verified single, exactly where the chapter card licenses it; "Not the part I didn't see." (L133) — consent precision, deadpan-shaped, comedy-reading would soften the portrait terms; "not to anything with a guest list" (L143) — terms enforcement; the delivery bike with salt-dried tires (L169); "I learned it this morning, but I know it." (L181) — honest recency admission in his careful-apology cadence.

INVENTORY:
1 — "washed it at seven for no defensible reason ... took it back out, and put it on the kitchen table, because Tuesday was two days away" (L3) — mechanism: deadpan self-audit + literalized indecision — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the blue dish is the Ch18-planted tether; the tote/Tuesday system is this book's) — dramatic work: nerves through object; arms the item-29 bookend — workshopped: no
2 — "made her want to tuck the phone under the Tasker receipt and close the notebook, which was not a plan" (L13) — mechanism: literalized avoidance impulse + deflecting tag — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: pressure spike before drafting; post-repair the word "plan" also silently opens the ledger the misread run will draw on (L101–107, L171) — workshopped: no
3 — "The first draft was *We should probably talk, yes*, which looked like a dentist's reminder. *Fine* was meaner than she felt. A paragraph ... turned, halfway through, into an explanation of why he should not feel guilty before he'd even arrived, so she held her thumb down until it disappeared." (L15) — mechanism: escalating failed drafts, register collision, evidence on screen — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the comma-stiff "yes," the Tuesday class, the pre-emptive guilt management map her exact wound) — dramatic work: produces the chapter's terms — workshopped: no
4 — "It was 8:04. She sent it before the hour could argue with her." (L21) — mechanism: personified second-guessing, compressed — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (borderline, carried with re-verification; the argument she outruns is the specific 8:04-proposing-9 awkwardness on the page) — dramatic work: decision under self-suspicion in one clause — workshopped: no
5 — "put on the good sweater, telling herself it was the warm one" (L23) — mechanism: self-aware rationalization, deadpan self-permission — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no as the opening beat of the three-beat cold thread (items 25, 28) — dramatic work: desire through object without confession — workshopped: no
6 — "considering the usefulness of walking to the corner and back once" (L27) — mechanism: deadpan audit register on a stalling impulse, quantified ("once") — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("usefulness" still does ironic advance work for L85, verified surviving the crates-run repair) — dramatic work: entry pressure; primes the theme the booth detonates — workshopped: no
7 — "Theo stood halfway when he saw her and sat back down, which she appreciated, because there was nothing to do at the top of that gesture and they both knew it" (L29) — mechanism: aborted-gesture anatomy, deadpan — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("they both knew it" is eight weeks of shared history; enacts the no-grand-gesture term as booth choreography) — dramatic work: sets the scene's anti-performance contract before a word is spoken — workshopped: no (re-tested against the tag family: still not a member — states her feeling straight, comedy in the gesture's geometry, not a June verdict)
8 — ""They do the cinnamon thing on Sundays," Theo said, and stopped. "You didn't come for that." / "I did not."" (L37–39) — mechanism: host-reflex misfire caught mid-line + full-form deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("the cinnamon thing" is Sonia's-Sundays texture; still the book's single instance, grep-verified across all chapters this round) — dramatic work: the misfired practical care he is about to renounce, self-caught — and post-repair it gains contrast work: the chapter's first host-reflex misfire is caught, the second (L83) is not, which is the repair's engine made legible as escalation — workshopped: no
9 — "She waited for the list, schedules and keys and how he would restructure the known world so this could never happen again. He touched the inside pocket of his coat, found the paper there, and took his hand out empty." (L61) — REVISED — mechanism: hyperbolic anticipation ("restructure the known world"), payoff converted from cup-misdirect to physical near-miss — source: character (schedules/keys are his card's diction, filtered through her dryness) — funniness: 2 — the comedy lives in her anticipation clause and still lands; the pocket beat is cost, not punchline, and scoring the unit down for gaining cost would be scoring it for the wrong genre — portable: no — dramatic work: bigger than round 4's version — the list now physically exists and is nearly drawn, which arms item 10 harder ("I wrote six things" names paper the reader has watched his hand on) — workshopped: no
10 — "I wrote six things. I'm not going to read them." (L63) — mechanism: specificity + refused performance — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: repair dramatized as not managing her; strengthened by the L61 near-miss — workshopped: no
11 — "From about week four, if we're dating things now." (L79) — NEW to inventory this round: rounds 1–4 neither inventoried nor excluded it — mechanism: self-aimed literalism — "dating" flipped to chronology in the middle of the confession; deflection visible as deflection per §2's licensed spice — source: character (her card: jokes as smoke screen when exposed; compresses when vulnerable) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the joke only exists because this relationship's timeline was a negotiated fiction with dated terms; the week-numbering is the book's eight-Tuesday spine) — dramatic work: keeps her dignity through the most exposed sentence she says all morning, and marks the false timeline being retro-dated as real — workshopped: no (four words, mid-sentence, followed by a sentence that fails to finish)
12 — "She watched him nearly do it anyway, nearly tell her she'd had no way to know, and then he drank his coffee instead." (L81) — mechanism: obedient misdirect (he passes her L75 test physically, on camera) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the "I need you not to fix it" instruction obeyed under strain — workshopped: no (cup-misdirect family now stands at 1 with the L61 conversion; under cap, and a second instance would need to vary)
13 — "If you're going, I can get crates from the stockroom. Freight elevator at eight. I wouldn't come up. Or I could leave them with Sam, or downstairs, or--" (L83) — REPLACEMENT for round-4 item 12 — mechanism: escalation-by-fallback — the offer completes and then over-runs through three descending logistics (Sam, downstairs, the dash), the reading guide's named "over-competent flailing" firing uncaught at the worst possible moment — source: character (the blind spot itself speaking; crates and the freight elevator are the instrument-of-harm identity recurring live) — funniness: 2 — the escalation lands as comedy for this reader (over-provision accelerating past the point everyone can see) and the deflation is real: the stall, the dead steam, two rebukes — the laugh curdles on purpose, which is the mechanism working, not failing — portable: no — dramatic work: maximal in the chapter — the wound performed live and this time not caught fondly; produces the stall, both rebukes, the late plain question, and the going-answer evidence that later verifies L107 — workshopped: no (the sentence does not even finish)
14 — "I'd been walking past it for a month like it was going to file a complaint." (L111) — mechanism: personification in bureaucratic register + self-deprecation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no in his mouth about that canvas — dramatic work: UPGRADED post-repair — confesses avoidance, proceeds straight to "I read it wrong," and is now also the cost-bearing restart after a stall he did not cause: the chapter's warmth re-entry point — workshopped: no
15 — "June took two bills from her notebook and set them on the slip before Theo's arm made it across the Formica." (L147) — mechanism: physical preemption, timing — source: situation/character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (her L19 term enforced from the notebook that holds the Tasker receipt and Dana's wall) — dramatic work: "just coffee" enforced bodily — workshopped: no
16 — "Just coffee means I buy the coffee." (L149) — mechanism: term-literalism — her own text enforced as payment law — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (callback to the L19 text; the gag's terminal escalation) — dramatic work: keeps the repair asymmetry legible — workshopped: no (answered by an action, not a returned capper)
17 — "He moved the sugar caddy beside the napkin holder and left the slip under her cash." (L151) — mechanism: displacement activity as concession — source: character (his stress vocabulary; the performance IS the yield) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: he practices receiving without a word; sets up the surviving grade — workshopped: no
18 — ""Good," June said. "Keep doing the quiet version."" (L153) — mechanism: deadpan imperative grading conduct — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("the quiet version" keeps its full concrete referent set: the unread six things at L63 — now physically nearer via the pocket beat — the killed crates offer at L83–85, the un-contested check one line up) — dramatic work: sets the terms of how he gets to love her — workshopped: no — RE-ADJUDICATED post-repair: this is now the chapter's only closing conduct grade (count 2 with L65's "Good."), and it survives partly *because* the scene's judge was wrong on the page at L101 — one verdict from a fallible judge reads as her voice; three from an infallible one read as authorial certificates, which is what the deleted two were. Characters-Wrong round-2 warning honored and extended: no conduct grade may be added in any future Ch22 touch even though the old ceiling of 3 has vacancy
19 — "put it in her notebook against the page with Dana's wall on it, where later it would confuse her. That was fine. Her life had earned one confusing receipt." (L155) — mechanism: anticipated-future deadpan + self-permission — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: integration without a speech — workshopped: no (tag-family member, counted below)
20 — ""you do not touch my stain." / "The umber one," he said. "There's a jar under it. I put it there Thursday. Old habit. I can take it away." / "Leave the jar. I might want clean water. The stain stays."" (L157–161) — mechanism: mock-property terms over a flaw + pragmatic alibi for accepting care (item 5's alibi shape, varied) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (umber stain, water jar, *After Class*) — dramatic work: she claims her half's imperfection and accepts his care move without granting absolution — workshopped: no
21 — ""I'll try in front of you. It'll be terrible." / "It won't, though," she said, aggrieved. "That's the other annoying thing about you."" (L163–165) — mechanism: compliment-as-grievance — source: character (her card's honest-warning-dressed-as-joke, inverted into praise) — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("the other" indexes the wanting she confessed at L79) — dramatic work: her rare devastating praise with her dignity kept; closes the booth warm without going soft — workshopped: no
22 — "my plan was nothing. My whole plan was to do nothing and let it be your call." (L171) — mechanism: repetition, escalating commitment to passivity — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: UPGRADED post-repair — consent posture stated as logistics, and now the third entry in the plan ledger the misread opened (a plan for her going, L107; none for her staying, L103; none for her silence, here) — the scenes corroborate without a line saying so — workshopped: no
23 — ""I know," June said. "You put it in the second text."" (L173) — mechanism: deflation-by-citation — his confession graded against his own paperwork — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the second bubble is the chapter's opening wound, L11–13) — dramatic work: closes the loop on the exit-installed text without absolving it — workshopped: no
24 — "black with three sugars, the single inefficient thing in his entire operation, and she had watched him doctor it this morning" (L175) — mechanism: incongruity via audit register — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("his entire operation" is the usefulness identity; the order memorized since week one is her secret care move) — dramatic work: desire through specificity; loads the kiss — workshopped: no
25 — "coming up half a step from the curb and getting the angle wrong at first, off-center, his nose cold against her cheek. Then it was right, and brief because she made it brief" (L177) — mechanism: physical-imperfection deadpan + agency-repetition — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no as a unit (anchored by the cold nose — the December thread's middle beat — and her governance of duration) — dramatic work: keeps the climax unspectacular per the card; consent legible (his hands stay pocketed) — workshopped: no
26 — "he tasted like too much sugar, which she had known he would and had not known she knew" (L177) — mechanism: epistemic chiasmus — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (pays off items 15 and 24 inside the kiss; the chapter's single known/not-known instance) — dramatic work: renders the kiss as accumulated attention — workshopped: no
27 — ""It does," he said. "I stocked it in October." He winced. June laughed, first time all morning." (L185–187) — mechanism: self-incriminating reassurance — his truthful answer re-confesses the courtship-by-provisioning; the wince is him hearing it — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the asymmetry wound still live inside the warmest beat, made survivable instead of erased; the laugh stays uncaptioned; the chapter's warmth-floor anchor — workshopped: no
28 — "the cold working through the good sweater, which was, as suspected, not the warm one" (L189) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation callback ("as suspected") — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (closes the three-beat cold thread: sweater alibi, cold nose, cold verdict) — dramatic work: retro-confirms she dressed for him while letting her keep the alibi — workshopped: no (tag-family member, counted below)
29 — "she wrapped the blue dish in the towel again and set it in the tote by the door, two days early, and this time she left it there" (L189) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation bookend ("two days early" reverses "because Tuesday was two days away") — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: decision embodied; the morning's indecision over without a sentence saying so — workshopped: no
30 — "`TUES = 4:00 / jar stays / I turn it or it doesn't turn`" (L189) — mechanism: deadpan legalism — the morning's terms compressed to index-card grammar — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the pinboard system and `FEB = coat` lineage; the jar and turning terms exist only in this chapter) — dramatic work: renders the portrait-consent terms as object, not summary; sharpens rather than softens them — workshopped: no

CHAPTER VERDICT: CLEAR

30 items (round 4 carried 31: two deleted, one replaced in place, one added): 30 at funniness 2, 0 at funniness 1, 0 at 0, 0 portable, 0 workshopped. Sources: character 25, situation-shared 5 (items 7, 8, 13, 15, 25 lean on scene pressure), narrator-overlay 0 — the overlay hunt was re-run on every narration item post-repair; the closest survivor remains item 4's personified hour, which holds because the argument she outruns is her own hesitation with a deadline. Mechanism variety holds and improved: escalation-by-fallback (new), hyperbolic-anticipation-into-near-miss (revised), self-aimed literalism (new), misfire-and-catch, aborted-gesture anatomy, refused performance, obedient misdirect, physical preemption, term-literalism, displacement-as-concession, compliment-as-grievance, escalating passivity, deflation-by-citation, epistemic chiasmus, self-incriminating reassurance, mock-property terms, deadpan legalism, bookend resolution — no mechanism repeats untransformed, and the round-4 deadpan-grading concentration (three spoken verdicts) is reduced to one closing grade. Strongest item: 13 — the crates run-on — the book's central wound firing live, uncaught, at the worst moment, comedy and cost in a single unfinished sentence; it replaces the item it displaced (round 4's strongest) with a harder version of the same material. Weakest surviving item: 4 — "She sent it before the hour could argue with her." — still the closest thing to overlay in the chapter, holding on the grounds above.

Distribution findings. **Density:** right for the card's "release, earned and unspectacular," with one structural change from round 4 that is deliberate and named: the joke-free run now extends L83–L109 (crates stall through the misread's death), where round 4 had three comic items in that span (old items 12, 13, 14 — one replaced-and-relocated in function, two deleted). The reason is on the page: the stay declaration (L95–97), the measured reply (L99), and the misread run (L101–109) are all beats the Characters-Wrong repair ordered sharp, and comedy re-enters at L111 in Theo's mouth, at his own expense, exactly where the scene restarts — the drought is the repair's shape, not a hole. The chapter opens dense (items 1–8 before a word of the apology) and closes dense (items 15–30 from the check to the pinboard). **Sweetness:** NOT OVERSWEETENED — and the repairs net-REMOVED sweetening: both deleted items were approval-shaped comedy sitting where the scene now needs a wrong judge and an unpaid cost. Protected beats re-verified joke-free on current text: the apology accounting (L45–71, items 9–10 exist inside it only to be refused); the stay declaration (L95–97); the misread run (L101–109, zero comic items, verified against all six new lines above); the portrait-consent terms (L139–145, comedy returns only as enforcement, items 20 and 30). "I stocked it in October" still re-opens the wound inside the warmest beat rather than smoothing it. **Cringe:** none for this reader — the crates run risks it by design and lands as character-true flailing, not authorial embarrassment. **Deflecting-tag family: 4, down from the round-4 ceiling of 5** — "for no defensible reason" (L3), "which was not a plan" (L13), "where later it would confuse her" (L155), "as suspected" (L189); "which was the correct level of involvement" deleted by the Characters-Wrong repair. Ruling on the vacancy: the vacated slot must NOT be refilled — it was vacated because its site (the misread aftermath) went sharp, and the family's remaining members all sit in June-alone narration where the deflation deflates only her; a new member anywhere in the booth scene would risk grading Theo or the exchange. L41 ("The coffee came fast...") remains the standing temptation and remains verbatim-unsharpened; L87 ("The coffee between them had stopped steaming.") is the new second temptation — both stay tagless. June self-noticing notes: 1 ("She filed that away without knowing yet what it was for.", L73), grep-verified, no sibling.

Tracker checks (current text, grep-verified this round). **"just coffee": exactly 4** (L19 sets the term, L35 enforces it against the menu, L149 converts it to payment law, L171 Theo citing her term back in thanks — the only instance in his mouth). SPENT at 4; no Ch23+ reuse without transformation. **"Oh,": once** (L127), the §6-sanctioned at-the-confession instance, chapter-card licensed. **Conduct grades: exactly 2** ("Good." L65; "Good... Keep doing the quiet version." L153) — "That's the right amount" deleted; per the Characters-Wrong round-2 warning the count is frozen at 2 despite the old ceiling's vacancy. **Cup-misdirect: 1** (L81) — L61 converted to the pocket near-miss; under the cap of 2. **Cinnamon thing: 1**, book-single (grep across all chapters). **No smirk / chuckle / "a beat" / "Noted." / "cataloguing"** — grep clean. **Deleted-line absence confirmed by grep:** zero hits for "right amount," "correct level of involvement," "That sounds prepared," "right sentence," "brought one sentence." Housekeeping (non-blocking, for the orchestrator): the Ch22 rows in `output/tics.md` were appended per the round-4 order but are now stale against this re-baseline — update four rows to this round's verified counts: deflecting-tag family 4 (was "5 / ceiling closed"; member list must drop "which was the correct level of involvement"; vacancy frozen, no new member); cup-misdirect 1 (was "2 / cap"); conduct grades 2 (was 3; member list must drop "That's the right amount"; frozen per Characters-Wrong warning); "Oh" line reference 127 (row cites 115). The Dialogue Doctor round-5 manifest-span re-baseline flag stands with that audit; not duplicated here.

REVISION ORDERS:

None. The Characters-Wrong repair's two deletions removed approval-shaped comedy from beats that now need to stay sharp — verified as a comedy improvement, not a loss, with the warmth ledger rebalancing shown above. The dialogue-diagnosis repair's four new lines were each tested as attempted comedy and as fake-sharp banter; all four are non-comic friction and none is banter by function — with two standing warnings recorded (L91 and L105–107 flip to fake-sharp if any future touch lightens them; the deflecting-tag family and conduct-grade counts are frozen at 4 and 2 respectively). The full re-sweep found no blocking item: zero funniness-1 scores, zero portable items, zero workshopped items; the two beats newly adjudicated this round (item 11, the "dating things" aside; item 13, the crates run-on) clear on all six fields. Private romantic climax, warmth floor, and no-public-grand-gesture energy verified intact: the kiss is street-private with his hands pocketed, the portrait stays faced-in under June's terms ("It isn't evidence of anything and it doesn't fix anything," L125), and the chapter's one deliberate misfire ("I stocked it in October") is repaired in-scene by her laugh. With Dialogue Doctor round 5 CLEAN and Characters-Wrong round 2 WRONG-ENOUGH, Chapter 22 is committable on comedy once the tics.md rows are updated to this round's counts.
