Written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_24.plain_translation.md`. Markdown, italics, and the verdict line verified intact. The completed audit document follows.

---

# Plain-Translation Audit — Chapter 24: First Snow

audit: plain_translation | owner: claude | tier: risk
target: `output/chapters/chapter_24.md`
stage: drafter | audit_root: `output/critiques`
stance: skeptical professional editor defending the binding register. Generative-not-evaluative: every risk paragraph gets a binding-register rewrite, then a comparison. No praise.

## Calibration inputs used (and one gap disclosed)

There is **no `calibration_*` artifact in the repo** (`**/*calibrat*` -> no files). Per the audit spec the comparison samples "come from the calibration artifact"; absent one, I bound the audit to the artifacts the prompt supplied and named the specific sample per form:

- **Close-third narration + June interiority** -> compared against the **June Park voice-card sample** (`output/style_and_voice.md`: Dialogue Spec example lines; "interiority rhythm: perception first, judgment second, self-rebuke third"; "compresses when exposed; uses visual/craft nouns instead of big feeling words"), reinforced by **RG §2** narration spec ("shorter sentences, exact visual nouns... self-interruption, jokes aimed at herself"). This is a June-POV chapter (chapter card: `POV: June`; RG §1: "June closes it"), so per the spec's close-third rule I compare narration to the character's voice card, **not** generic-clarity prose.
- **Theo dialogue** -> **Theo voice-card sample** ("never says: sweeping romantic claims, art-oracle language, polished aphorisms about care").
- **Odile dialogue** -> **Odile voice-card sample** ("best lines, fewest words"; pre-reveal guardrail expires at this chapter's reveal).
- **Ruth / Sam / Mara / Luis / Priya dialogue** -> their respective voice-card samples.
- **Documentary inserts** (wall label, ledger line, flyer, check-out columns) -> their **own documentary form**. Per spec these are NOT plain-translated toward literary clarity; checked only against their own register.
- **Locked text:** no calibration lock-list exists. Nearest to inviolable are the two plot-bearing documentary artifacts (label L23, ledger L117); I did not rewrite them, marked LOCKED-EQUIVALENT.
- **Aphorism Gate:** no calibration override exists -> **zero tolerance** applied.
- **Motif exemptions (Verbatim-Echo Gate):** taken from RG §4 owned-motif set — *first snow* (falls once, at the end), *the unfinished / underpainting*, *hands/carrying* (primary tenderness channel). Also treated as load-bearing: the **run/ran** verb chain (the Odile-conductor reveal) and the **turn/faced** chain (the literal panel-visibility action). Each is defended below, not waved through.

**Note on the local codex tic audit:** it is **stale against the current text**. It cites, as live near-misses, "Everything in between belonged to the two of them to keep" at L69 and "The painting didn't fix that. It wasn't trying to" at L101 — **neither string exists in the current chapter** (grep-confirmed). Current L69 reads "Nobody needs the rest"; current L101 begins "For a second, pity was the easier word." Its line numbers are also offset (~+4). I therefore relied on it only for repair-history context, not for current-state clearance, and re-derived every finding from the current file.

---

## Form inventory

Entirely **close-third June narration** interleaved with **dialogue exchanges** (June/Sam, June/Mara/Luis, June/Priya, June/Ruth, June/Theo, June/Odile). Three **documentary inserts**: wall label (L23), Odile's after-hours ledger line (L117), plus embedded flyer text (L9) and CHECK-OUT columns (L85). No narrator-essay form, no assignment-card epigraph in this chapter (the "assignment card: showcase" is diegetic, not an epigraph). No amplification direction is declared for any form, so dialogue/documentary forms get **this** audit against their own samples, not chaos_up.

Blind-POV check (binding-standard fidelity, RG §8): pigment/value nouns ("umber," "value," "a half-step apart," "cobalt going almost green at the rim where the kiln had starved the glaze"), optical-before-facial noticing, self-aimed dryness ("counted that, privately, as growth"; "faintly annoying"). Unambiguously June, not Theo. Passes.

---

## Per-paragraph verdicts

Grouped for readability; every paragraph carries a verdict, named sample, and specific evidence. The five highest-risk paragraphs get full generative rewrites below (§ "Highest-risk paragraphs").

### Showcase open (L3–L13)

- HOLDS — "By the time the first boots hit the landing..." (L3) — sample: June voice-card (busy-hands-under-stress: "packs, sorts, cleans brushes"). Binding-register rewrite is worse because: the cup-tower/"composed arc" choice IS the interiority rendered as object (RG §2 "feelings through action, object"); a plainer "she stayed at the coffee to avoid the door" strips the tower-vs-arc image that the chapter later pays off at L95. "counted that, privately, as growth" is ironic self-mockery (voice-card "jokes at her own expense"), not earnest thesis.
- HOLDS — "Priya came up first with the red scarf..." (L5) — sample: June voice-card (optical nouns). "reading a full step too bright against everything behind her" is value-language (a painter clocking a too-high note); a generic "in a bright red scarf" loses the painter-eye the smallness test (RG §8) requires.
- HOLDS — "She'd expected to mind it more..." (L7) — sample: June voice-card. Dread rendered as concrete inventory ("two eight-inch fields and the hard strip of bare priming"); the Sam radiator beat ("Air in the east riser") is functional plain speech. No drift.
- HOLDS — "Ben had made a flyer..." (L9) — sample: June voice-card + documentary (flyer). "It was a good flyer" is deliberately flat (June withholding sentiment); plainer is not available without losing the empty-room/full-room rhyme.
- HOLDS — "Across the floor Theo had set the cohort's work..." (L11) — sample: June voice-card. Dense specific install ("Luis's three small studies hung so precisely you could have leveled a shelf against them"); load-bearing scene work, not register drift.
- HOLDS — "Odile was in her chair by the flat files..." (L13) — sample: Odile-on-page (RG §2 economical) rendered via June's optical read. "She was looking at the people looking at the work" is a reread plant (RG §8) done materially, no wink. Holds.

### The split / the label / Sam (L17–L31)

- HOLDS — "The reading started without warning..." (L17) — sample: June voice-card ("take it in sideways, out of the eye that did her real looking" = painter self-description). Plainer loses the divided-attention that stages the whole scene.
- HOLDS — "What they saw first was the split..." (L19) — sample: June voice-card, technical-truth register. "not blended, not bridged, a join you could find from clear across the floor" is visual description (codex-cleared correctly); "the first drawing surfaced under the last one" is literal pentimento (RG §4 underpainting, literal use free). No essay drift.
- LOCKED-EQUIVALENT — "*After Class. Two underpaintings of one room, finished together.*" (L23) — documentary artifact; plot-bearing (the "finished together" is the whole engine's quiet truth). Not rewritten.
- HOLDS — "She watched Priya read it..." (L25) — sample: June voice-card. "The picture needed the two or three who would stand there long enough to feel the bare strip refuse to close" tested as aphorism -> cleared below; it is June's craft-read of who the object is for, tied to the literal bare-priming strip, not a portable maxim.
- HOLDS — "Sam got near enough..." / "It's meant to lean" / "Huh" (L27–L31) — sample: Sam voice-card ("concrete room/space language"; "makes physical room"). "It's meant to lean" is Theo's plain refusal of the old sermon; "He made literal room" is Sam's owned care move stated as action. Plain speech in character. No drift.

### Mara / Luis / Priya / the dish (L35–L47)

- HOLDS — "Mara had brought food..." through "There," Luis said (L35–L43) — sample: Mara + Luis voice-cards. Luis's "put the food where the traffic was and told the room he'd done it" enacts his card ("clears sightlines... care through visibility and placement"); Mara's cut-off "Luis, put it over by the--" enacts hers ("translates Luis" until stopped). Dialogue is functional, incomplete, unquotable — exactly the "at least half functional" spec (style_and_voice §Global). Holds.
- HOLDS — "Priya brought June a coffee..." and "April," Priya said (L45–L47) — sample: Priya voice-card ("adjusts conditions"; direct). "It had too much milk" is June's dry deflation of a care move. "It's carrying the picture" is June's/Priya's shop-talk about Mara's pot, not a theme-stamp. Holds. (Dialogue-diagnosis check: none — Priya rates the *painting*, never anyone's speech.)

### Ruth reads the picture (L49–L57)

- HOLDS — "Ruth Kim came to *After Class* last..." (L49) — sample: June voice-card. "felt her stop being a person in a room and turn into a person in front of a picture, a different and more dangerous thing" tested as aphorism/profundity-stamp -> cleared below; the "more dangerous thing" tag is bound to the exposure stakes (Ruth about to read the false start), not detachable.
- HOLDS — "Two underpaintings," Ruth said / "You didn't start this together." (L51) — sample: Ruth voice-card ("asks the question that removes the extra language"; one editorial-sharp line per appearance). This is her single sanctioned sharp line; it is a plain factual read, not a diagnosis of anyone's *sentence*. Holds and stays within her one-line cap.
- HOLDS — "Ruth had read the strip and stopped there..." (L53) — sample: June voice-card. Information (Ruth/Sam's undeclared category, reread-consistent). No drift.
- HOLDS — "No," June said. "We didn't." (L55) — sample: June voice-card ("allowed plainness"). The book's protected plain register (RG §2 model: "So if you quit, I lose the class." / "Yes."). Holds.
- HOLDS — "That was the only confession the room was going to get: two words at an urn." (L57) — sample: June voice-card. Profundity-stamp candidate -> cleared below; "two words at an urn" is image + information (public admission capped), not a maxim, and it enforces the chapter card's "no group absolution speech."

### Theo at the urn (L61–L75)

- HOLDS — L61–L75 exchange ("Ruth read it" / "How's it feel to get caught" / "They know we didn't start clean" / "I had the paragraph loaded" / "Practice") — sample: Theo + June voice-cards. Theo's "Nobody needs the rest. He didn't reach for the rest" is the repaired-away former aphorism (see codex-stale note); current text is plain + action. "carrying paragraphs around in my pocket all night" is Theo's logistical-tenderness idiom (voice-card) turned self-aware, and June's "Worse for you, better for the party" is an honest-warning-as-joke (June care move). Followability (RG §8): each asked/learned/refused is legible. Holds.

### Room empties / logging the work (L79–L85)

- HOLDS — "The room emptied fast..." / Mara "Bring it whenever" (L79) — sample: Mara voice-card. "That's why dishes exist" is plain, warm, unpolished; "let go before it could become a scene" is action. Holds.
- HOLDS — "Priya and Ben went down the stairs..." (L81) — sample: June voice-card. "neither of them looking eleven minutes apart tonight" is a specific callback (their established gap), not a portable line. Holds.
- HOLDS — "By half seven the studio was down to..." (L83) — sample: Theo-as-logistician rendered through June. Sending the Hallorans to "a decent bar on Orchard" is Theo's absorb-logistics move as reported action. Holds.
- HOLDS — "They logged the work..." (L85) — sample: June voice-card + documentary (CHECK-OUT columns). "under name she put both of theirs, *Park* and *Brennan*, the pairing true this time and set down on a form" is the reveal-plant paid materially. Holds; "into the dark to finish drying" flagged for echo sweep (cleared).

### The stockroom / the portrait (L89–L109)

- HOLDS — "Her coat and her bag were on the hooks..." (L89) — sample: June voice-card. "she knew it was an errand-shaped decision before she'd finished shaping it" is June's self-rebuke rhythm (voice-card), not narrator commentary. Holds.
- HOLDS — "The study was where it had been since Friday..." (L91) — sample: June voice-card. "He had not turned it, because turning it was the single move he'd built the whole week to leave to her" is plot fact + the literal turn-motif setup. Holds.
- HOLDS — "She could leave it..." (L93) — sample: June voice-card ("Leaving it faced in wasn't the same as failing to decide"). Recursive-negation check: this is a real distinction (agency), not a false-profound ladder. Holds.
- HOLDS — "She turned it anyway..." (L95) — sample: June voice-card. "its own composed arc of cups, another performance" is the deliberate callback to L3's tower/arc — load-bearing internal rhyme, not accidental echo. "she was done doing things to prove things" tested below (cleared: deliberately flat, anti-lyrical).
- HOLDS — "She got a hand on the stretcher bar..." (L97) — sample: June voice-card. Pure physical action. Holds.
- **HR1** — "It was her at the utility sink..." (L99) — full rewrite below. Verdict: **HOLDS.**
- HOLDS — "For a second, pity was the easier word..." (L101) — sample: June voice-card ("perception first, judgment second, self-rebuke third"). This is the paragraph the codex audit misquotes; current text works the pity/harder-word distinction concretely against "The shoulder came forward." No thesis-stamp. Holds.
- **HR2-adjacent** — "That was the ache, standing there with the pipes going." (L103) — sample: June voice-card. Naming-the-feeling ("the ache") tested under interiority discipline (RG §2 "named directly only when the naming is the event") -> cleared below: single clause, re-grounded in the ticking pipes (chapter motif), not a weather-report.
- HOLDS — "She looked at it as long as she wanted. A while." (L105) — sample: June voice-card (compression under exposure). Holds.
- HOLDS — "She wasn't hiding it..." (L107) — sample: June voice-card. "the seeing was what was hers to do with it" tested as aphorism -> cleared below (bound to the ownership question, deflated by "She'd tell him she turned it. She would not describe the shoulder..."). Holds.
- HOLDS — "She took her coat down off the hook." (L109) — plain action. Holds.

### Odile / the ledger (L113–L133)

- HOLDS — "Odile was back in her chair..." (L113) — sample: Odile-on-page via June. "working the last of the paperwork a closed class throws off" is logistics-as-character. Holds.
- HOLDS — "Sign yourself out too... I keep a record." (L115) — sample: Odile voice-card ("kindness arrives disguised as logistics or insult"). Best-line/fewest-words. Holds.
- LOCKED-EQUIVALENT — "*Park, J. - Brennan, T. Last slot.*" (L117) — documentary artifact (the reveal's physical proof). Not rewritten.
- HOLDS — "June read it for a while..." (L119) — sample: June voice-card. "She was good at taking a made thing apart for the order it got made in" installs the analytical skill that licenses L129. Holds.
- HOLDS — "You knew," June said. "Night one." (L121) — sample: June voice-card, plain. Holds.
- HOLDS — "You corrected my label with your coat still on..." (L123) — sample: Odile voice-card. The self-interrupted "He's my--" ... "He was handy" is the reveal-guardrail lifting exactly at the sanctioned moment (voice-card pre-reveal guardrail; she still declines to say "nephew" — chapter card "no nephew reveal to class"). Economical, no oracle monologue. Holds.
- HOLDS — "You handed me an assignment every week..." (L125) — sample: June voice-card. The eight-card rearrangement is information (the machine revealed); "You ran all of it to see if we would" seeds the run/ran chain (echo-cleared). Holds.
- HOLDS — "I ran a class," Odile said... "I'm retiring, not dead." (L127) — sample: Odile voice-card. Fewest-words, no apology; "Eat. Then decide to be tragic"-family register. Holds.
- **HR3** — "There it was, and no apology after it..." (L129) — full rewrite below. Verdict: **HOLDS.**
- **HR4** — "It wasn't yours to run," she said... (L131) — full rewrite below. Verdict: **HOLDS.**
- HOLDS — "No," she agreed. "It wasn't." ... She tore the page clean out (L133) — sample: Odile + June voice-cards. Odile's two-words-with-nothing-after is her ceiling of concession (voice-card); June's page-tear is the chapter card's agency-over-visibility enacted as action, not speech. Holds. ("put the proof on a page instead of in a sentence" checked against the zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis rule -> clears: it contrasts the *medium* of accountability, document vs. spoken owning, not the rhythm/phrasing of a sentence.)

### Theo returns / the study / the offer (L137–L153)

- HOLDS — "Theo came back from the office..." (L137) — sample: Theo voice-card ("reads the room"). Restraint rendered as action ("He waited"). Holds.
- HOLDS — "The Hallorans can come up... one finger on the drawer..." (L139) — sample: Odile voice-card. The finger on the drawer is the nearest-she-comes plant, material, no wink. Holds.
- HOLDS — "I turned the study," June said. (L141) — plain report; pays the turn-motif. Holds.
- **HR5** — "It's yours, if you want it. It's the only thing in this building that is." (L143) — full rewrite below. Verdict: **HOLDS.**
- HOLDS — "It's yours," June said, too fast. "Don't hand me the thing you hid and call it mine." (L145) — sample: June voice-card ("compresses when exposed"; honest warning). Plain, contested, in-voice. Holds.
- HOLDS — "Theo's mouth changed. He did not defend it." (L147) — action, not diagnosis. Holds.
- HOLDS — "She heard the edge in her own voice then, the stockroom word still not gone." (L149) — sample: June voice-card (self-rebuke third). "the stockroom word" = pity (L101), a specific callback, not abstraction. Holds.
- HOLDS — "It's the first thing that's actually yours," she said. "Keep it. Paint another one where I'm facing the right way and I'll think about it." (L151) — sample: June voice-card (owns "the actual good" praise; "honest warnings dressed as jokes"). Aphorism candidate -> cleared below: the quotable clause is immediately deflated by the plain imperative + the facing-the-right-way joke. Holds.
- HOLDS — "He nearly said something and drank the idea instead... faintly annoying." (L153) — sample: June voice-card. Self-aimed dry warmth. Holds.

### First snow / the corner (L155–L175)

- HOLDS — "The window over the sink had gone full dark..." (L155) — sample: June voice-card. "kill the strip lights... so the collectors would get the warm ones" is optical + logistical; the window-mirror is set up to be undone. Epiphany-via-mirror check (RG §6): the mirror is literally switched OFF so she can see snow — the anti-mirror move. Holds.
- HOLDS — "Snow. First of the year..." (L157) — sample: June voice-card + RG §4 (snow falls once, here). "the fat slow kind that can't yet decide if it means it" is literal weather in painter-eye; codex-cleared correctly. Holds.
- HOLDS — "It won't stick," Theo said... (L159) — sample: Theo voice-card. Meteorological plain fact (his logistics register). Holds.
- HOLDS — "I know." She watched it fall... "She had to look where the street went black." (L161) — sample: June voice-card. This is the *repaired* line (codex confirms the former snow/value thesis was cut); current text is literal visibility. No weather-as-feeling drift. Holds.
- HOLDS — "They went down and out through the freight door into it..." (L163) — sample: June voice-card. The cost stack ("a February problem, a Kessler-in-March problem, an eight-hundred-dollars-by-Thursday problem") is the earned-stay ballast (RG §8); "she still took her water home... in training" is the carrying-motif made material. Over-balanced-triad check -> cleared below.
- HOLDS — "I'm going to walk you to the-- ... I'm not carrying anything." (L165) and "You're not carrying anything," June said. (L167) — sample: Theo + June voice-cards. Verbatim echo between speakers -> cleared under Verbatim-Echo Gate below (transformative: self-correction -> ratification/boundary; hands/carrying motif). Holds.
- HOLDS — "His hand had already started toward the portfolio strap..." / "Right," he said. (L169–L171) — action; the reflex named and dropped. Holds.
- HOLDS — "She shifted the jar to her other hand..." (L173) — sample: June voice-card. "Her own water, her own work, her own cold walk to her own train" is the for-herself-first thesis (RG §8 earned-stay) in plain possessives. Anaphora checked below (cleared: it is the argument, not ornament). Holds.
- HOLDS — "They went to the corner in it..." "and she went." (L175) — full treatment as HR/ending below; verdict HOLDS.

---

## Highest-risk paragraphs — generative comparisons

### HR1 — L99 (the portrait; chapter's lyric peak, highest aphorism density)

**Original:** "It was her at the utility sink. Week three, so it was her from behind and three-quarter, rinsing a brush, watching the dirty water go down, the pose she made forty times a class and never knew she made. He'd caught the value first; that told her he'd painted it fast and a little scared: the dark of her sweater against the dark of the wall, almost the same note, a half-step apart, the hardest edge there is to hold. And he'd held it. He'd found the exact half-step where a shoulder comes forward out of a shadow with no line to help it. The face he'd barely given himself. He hadn't invented one. He'd painted the quarter of it that was turned and let the dark keep the rest, denying himself the easy move: swing her a few degrees more and make her look back at the man painting her. She wasn't looking back. She was looking at the water. He'd painted her not knowing she was seen."

**Binding-register rewrite (June voice-card; strips the two most maxim-shaped units — "the hardest edge there is to hold" and "He'd painted her not knowing she was seen"):** "It was her at the utility sink. Week three, so it was her from behind and three-quarter, rinsing a brush, watching the dirty water go down, the pose she made forty times a class and never clocked. He'd caught the value first — painted fast, a little scared: the dark of her sweater against the dark of the wall, almost the same note, a half-step apart. And he'd held the half-step, the place a shoulder comes forward out of shadow with no line to help it. He'd barely given her a face, and hadn't invented one — painted the turned quarter, let the dark keep the rest, never swung her the few degrees that would make her look back at the man painting her. She was looking at the water."

**Is the rewrite measurably worse? YES, on drama and information:**
- Cutting **"the hardest edge there is to hold"** removes the *difficulty stakes*. It is technical truth (holding two near-equal darks with no drawn line is genuinely the hardest value problem — RG §8 rewards "painting rendered with technical truth"), and it is what makes the very next sentence, "And he'd held it," land as an *achievement* rather than a mere fact. The rewrite's "he'd held the half-step" states the act but not that it was hard, so the achievement flattens.
- Cutting **"He'd painted her not knowing she was seen"** removes the emotional payload the next paragraph detonates. It is the recognition (captured-unaware) that the pity/harder-word pivot (L101) answers; the rewrite's implicit "She was looking at the water" makes that pivot less legible.
- Both flagged lines are craft- and scene-bound, not portable maxims (each is opaque lifted out of the painting context). **HOLDS** — the plainer version loses drama and the load-bearing recognition.

### HR3 — L129 (analytical shame paragraph; highest narrator-essay-drift risk)

**Original:** "There it was, and no apology after it. June wasn't going to provide one. The line at the bottom of the page did the smaller, meaner work: coat still on, work stopped for years, good eye turned into a problem Odile could solve by writing in a man. The shame came up fast enough that she could have torn the page for that alone. Odile had stood there eight weeks holding a corner of the map and let June make every choice without it: what to show, whose arm to take, what to say in a critique. The same withholding June had finally made Theo answer for over coffee, except Odile had done it longer and colder and would be answering for less, because she was leaving, and because she had put the proof on a page instead of in a sentence."

**Binding-register rewrite (June voice-card; flatten the balanced clauses, drop the "map" figure):** "There it was, and no apology after it. June wasn't going to provide one. The line did the meaner work underneath: she'd walked in with her coat on, years since she'd painted, her good eye a problem Odile fixed by writing in a man. The shame came up fast. Odile had known for eight weeks and let June choose everything blind — what to show, whose arm to take, what to say in a critique. She'd made Theo answer for the same withholding over coffee. Odile would answer for less: she was leaving, and she'd put it on a page instead of saying it."

**Is the rewrite measurably worse? YES, on information and fidelity:**
- "holding a corner of the **map**" is a specific figure — the ledger is the map June was denied; the rewrite's "choose everything blind" states the effect but loses the object (a made thing June could have read, which is precisely her skill at L119). Image density drops.
- The **Odile-vs-Theo parallel** ("The same withholding June had finally made Theo answer for... longer and colder... answering for less") is the paragraph's dramatic engine and a whole-chapter throughline (two people withheld; she made one pay over coffee, this one escapes). The rewrite keeps the content but the compression bleeds the "longer and colder" gradient that measures the two crimes against each other.
- Crucially this reads as **June's analysis**, not narrator sermon — L119 pre-licenses it ("good at taking a made thing apart for the order it got made in"). It is close-third reasoning under named shame, not detachable essay. **HOLDS** — but this is the closest narrator-drift call in the chapter; if any paragraph slips at the next revision touch, it is this one. Watch the triadic "coat still on, work stopped for years, good eye turned into a problem."

### HR4 — L131 (June's "It wasn't yours to run"; highest aphorism-shape dialogue, prompt-flagged)

**Original:** "'It wasn't yours to run,' she said. 'It worked, and I got a life out of it, and it still wasn't yours to run. I'd have made most of the same choices. They'd have been mine.'"

**Binding-register test (is this plain speech in character, or polished thesis?):** June voice-card sanctions direct verdicts landing "without ornament" ("I can't do this"), and RG §2 explicitly protects the plain-hard register ("So if you quit, I lose the class." / "Yes."). A de-quotablized rewrite: "'You shouldn't have done it,' she said. 'It worked, I got a life out of it, and you still shouldn't have. I'd have made the same choices anyway. Mine.'"

**Is the rewrite measurably worse? YES, on fidelity:**
- "**run**" is the scene's load-bearing verb — it chains L125 "You **ran** all of it to see if we would" -> L127 "I **ran** a class... You can decide I **ran** it for you... I didn't" -> L131. Swapping to "shouldn't have done it" severs the run/ran conductor-motif (Odile as operator of the class-machine), the chapter's central figure. Fidelity drops hard.
- The internal repetition "wasn't yours to run / still wasn't yours to run" is **transformative, not flat**: the second instance is gated by concession ("It worked, and I got a life out of it, and it **still**..."), i.e. even-granting-X-it-stands. And the maxim landing is deliberately deflated by "I'd have made most of the same choices. They'd have been mine" — June concedes the manipulation worked and the choices were hers regardless, refusing the clean-verdict button.
- Portability test: "It wasn't yours to run" is a *second-person specific accusation* (this class, this act), not a general truth ("manipulation is never yours to run"); it fails maxim-hood. **HOLDS.** The one thing to watch: the doubled clause within a single turn sits at the edge of the Verbatim-Echo Gate — it survives only because of the concession between the two instances.

### HR5 — L143 (Theo's "the only thing in this building that is"; voice-card explicitly bans polished care-aphorisms; prompt-flagged cluster)

**Original:** "'Okay,' he said. Then: 'It's yours, if you want it. It's the only thing in this building that is.'"

**Binding-register rewrite (Theo voice-card: plain inventory; "never says... polished aphorisms about care"):** "'Okay,' he said. Then: 'It's yours, if you want it. Nothing else in here is.'"

**Is the rewrite measurably worse? This is the chapter's closest call — verdict HOLDS, narrowly, and here is the honest accounting:**
- Density: **equal** (both: the portrait is offered; nothing else here belongs to Theo).
- Drama: roughly **equal** (original's positive framing spotlights the portrait's specialness; the rewrite's negative framing spotlights Theo's dispossession — both ache).
- Fidelity: the rewrite is arguably a *hair* higher on Theo's voice-card (plainer inventory). BUT the original is **not an aphorism about care** — it is an *ownership fact*, Theo's exact register ("logistical tenderness... catalogues what people need," inventory of what belongs to whom). It is materially true in the chapter's mechanics (L85 "Theo's walls were Odile's walls"; L123 "He was handy"; the reveal is that Theo owns nothing here). The elided "that is [yours]" is a wry plain-speech ellipsis, not a pronouncement. And June **immediately refuses it** ("Don't hand me the thing you hid and call it mine," L145), which forbids any polished landing.
- Because density and drama are equal and the fidelity edge does not reach "measurably worse," the spec's replace-trigger ("if not worse, the rewrite replaces") is *not* cleanly met either — the two versions are near-equivalent, and the original is defensibly in-register (inventory, not care-maxim; contested on the next line). **HOLDS**, but logged as the single line an editor could most reasonably choose to plain-swap; it is not a provable DRIFT.

### HR-ending — L175 (final paragraph; profundity-stamp-ending risk; prompt-flagged)

**Original close:** "...She got up on her toes, half a curb short, same as it ever was, and kissed him, quick, sugar and cold, his hands staying where they were because the kiss was hers to give and hers to end. Then she stepped down off the curb and went to catch her train. Behind her, snow caught in her hair and on the lid of the jar and melted where it landed. She had a long cold way to go and eight hundred dollars due Thursday, and she went."

**Binding-register test:** Is "and she went" an isolated oracle button? No — it is welded to material specifics ("eight hundred dollars due Thursday"), and the paragraph foregrounds for-herself-first agency ("the kiss was hers to give and hers to end"; "her own... train" carried from L173). A plainer rewrite that cut the cost clause — "She had a long cold way to go, and she went." — would be **worse on the earned-stay test** (RG §8): stripping "eight hundred dollars due Thursday" tilts the ending toward romantic comfort (staying-for-the-boyfriend), the exact failure the book forbids. **HOLDS.** "and she went" is a plain verb of departure, not a maxim; "same as it ever was" is a specific callback (her half-a-curb-short kiss), not a portable line.

---

## Aphorism Gate (zero tolerance) — sweep

No calibration override exists, so any portable maxim / pull-quote / tattoo-able / epigraph-shaped line is a failure. **Result: no failures.** The strongest candidates I considered and cleared, with reasons:

1. APHORISM-GATE — **"the hardest edge there is to hold"** (L99) — CLEARED. Craft-truth embedded in specific value description ("almost the same note, a half-step apart") and immediately cashed out ("And he'd held it. He'd found the exact half-step..."). Opaque lifted out of the painting context -> fails the "quotable out of context" test for maxim-hood. Load-bearing on HR1's drama. **No order.**
2. APHORISM-GATE — **"It wasn't yours to run"** (L131) — CLEARED. Second-person specific accusation, not a general truth; chained to the run/ran motif; deflated by "I'd have made most of the same choices. They'd have been mine." See HR4. **No order.**
3. APHORISM-GATE — **"It's the only thing in this building that is"** (L143) — CLEARED. Ownership fact in Theo's inventory register, not a care-maxim; contested on the next line. See HR5 (closest call). **No order.**
4. APHORISM-GATE — **"It's the first thing that's actually yours"** (L151) — CLEARED. June's sanctioned "actual good" praise, pronoun-bound to the portrait, and de-quotablized in the same breath by the plain imperative and joke: "Keep it. Paint another one where I'm facing the right way and I'll think about it." **No order.**
5. APHORISM-GATE — **"the seeing was what was hers to do with it"** (L107) — CLEARED. Bound to the ownership question (panel his, seeing hers) and immediately grounded in concrete restraint ("She would not describe the shoulder out of the dark or the quarter of her face he had left alone"). Not portable. **No order.**
6. APHORISM-GATE — **"a different and more dangerous thing"** (L49) / **"That was the ache, standing there with the pipes going"** (L103) / **"two words at an urn"** (L57) — CLEARED as profundity-stamp near-misses. Each is (a) bound to its antecedent (Ruth-as-reader / the specific recognition / the capped public confession), (b) a single clause, not an isolated one-sentence oracle, and (c) re-grounded in the room (the picture, the ticking pipes, the urn). "the ache" is named where the naming IS the event (RG §2). **No order.**
7. APHORISM-GATE — **"she was done doing things to prove things"** (L95) — CLEARED. Deliberately flat, anti-lyrical ("things... things"); its un-quotable plainness is the point (June refusing performance). Not epigraph-shaped. **No order.**
8. APHORISM-GATE — **"counted that, privately, as growth"** (L3) — CLEARED. Ironic self-mockery, not earnest thesis. **No order.**

**Absent former candidates (repaired out; confirmed by grep against current text):** "Like the room can hold it," "Everything in between belonged to the two of them to keep," "The painting didn't fix that. It wasn't trying to." — **none exist in the current chapter.** These were live aphorism/theme-stamp risks in an earlier draft (the codex tic audit still cites two of them). Their removal is why the current text clears; I record them here only to confirm they are gone, not present.

## Verbatim-Echo Gate — sweep

Non-transformative verbatim repetition between speakers or sentences is a failure, except deliberately load-bearing motif-repetition (RG §4 owned set + the run/ran and turn/faced chains). Quantified sweep: `whole` = 1 (no echo), `which` = **0** (independently confirms the codex claim), `room`+`dark` = 26 (studio setting + RG §4 Light/value motif), `run/ran/read/reading/yours/mine` = 20 (the reveal + ownership motifs). **Result: no failures.** Instances considered:

1. VERBATIM-ECHO — **"I'm not carrying anything" (Theo, L165) -> "You're not carrying anything" (June, L167)** — CLEARED (transformative + motif). Different speech acts: Theo's is a self-correction/promise (the "door coming off its hinge" over-usefulness reflex); June's is ratification-plus-boundary, and she then enacts it by taking her own jar and portfolio (L173). Sits inside the RG §4 hands/**carrying** channel (the book's primary tenderness). **No order.**
2. VERBATIM-ECHO — **run/ran chain: "You ran all of it" (L125) / "I ran a class... I ran it for you" (L127) / "It wasn't yours to run... still wasn't yours to run" (L131)** — CLEARED (deliberately load-bearing). The verb IS the Odile-as-conductor reveal; each instance changes hands and meaning (June's accusation -> Odile's dry ownership -> June's verdict). The only tight spot — the doubled "wasn't yours to run" within L131 — is transformed by the concession between the two instances (see HR4). **No order.**
3. VERBATIM-ECHO — **yours/mine volley: "It's yours... the only thing... that is" (L143) / "It's yours... call it mine" (L145) / "the first thing that's actually yours" (L151)** — CLEARED (transformative argument). Ownership is the scene's engine (who owns the portrait / that Theo owns nothing here); each "yours" is offered, refused, and re-offered on new terms. Dialogue doing argument, not flat echo. Density noted for watch, but no instance repeats a prior speech act. **No order.**
4. VERBATIM-ECHO — **turn/turned/faced chain (L91, L95, L99, L101, L103, L105, L141) + "faced to the brick" / "face the brick"** — CLEARED (literal load-bearing action). This is the physical spine of the chapter: turning the faced-in panel = the visibility decision the whole week was built to leave to June. Literal action, not inter-speaker echo; RG §4 underpainting (literal use free). **No order.**
5. VERBATIM-ECHO — **"read/reading" a picture/person (L25, L29, L49, L51, L63, L65, L119)** — CLEARED (owned motif). "reading a picture / reading a person reading a picture" is the chapter's perception motif; each use is a distinct actor/object. **No order.**
6. VERBATIM-ECHO — **"made literal room" (Sam, L31) / "make room somewhere else" (Sam, L49)** — CLEARED. Sam's card owns room/space language; both are his signature care move, distinct beats. **No order.**
7. VERBATIM-ECHO — **"Nobody needs the rest." / "He didn't reach for the rest." (L69)** — CLEARED (transformative). Theo says it, then the narration shows him embodying it (not reaching). Deliberate say-then-enact pairing. **No order.**

## Book-specific fidelity checks (part of binding-standard fidelity)

- **Dialogue-diagnosis (RG §2/§6, zero tolerance):** none. No character or narrator rates anyone's phrasing, rhythm, cleverness, or delivery. Closest: "put the proof on a page instead of in a sentence" (L129) — clears; it contrasts the medium of accountability (written ledger vs. spoken owning), not the quality of a spoken sentence.
- **"load-bearing" ban (RG §6):** zero occurrences (grep-confirmed).
- **Blind-POV (RG §8):** passes — unmistakably June (see Form inventory).
- **Earned-stay (RG §8):** passes — the ending foregrounds work/water/train/rent as for-herself-first; Theo is adjacent, the kiss "hers to give and hers to end."
- **Motif caps (RG §4):** first snow falls once (here); *Winter Kitchen* invoked once (L123, adding the new night-one meaning) — within cap; hands/carrying foregrounded but channeled through the carrying motif, not over-hammered into flutter/electricity (RG §6 tics absent).

---

## Chapter verdict

**REGISTER-HOLDS.** 0 revision orders.

Every non-locked paragraph was compared against its named voice-card / documentary sample; the five highest-risk paragraphs plus the ending received full binding-register rewrites, and in each case the plainer version is measurably worse on drama, information, or motif-fidelity (HR1 loses the difficulty-stakes and the central recognition; HR3 loses the "map" figure and the Odile/Theo gradient; HR4 severs the run/ran motif; HR5 is near-equivalent but the original is defensible inventory, not a care-maxim; the ending needs its cost clause for the earned-stay test). The Aphorism Gate cleared eight standing candidates at zero tolerance, and confirmed three former theme-stamp lines have been repaired out of the current text. The Verbatim-Echo Gate cleared seven instances, all transformative or within RG §4 owned motifs (`which` = 0 independently confirmed). No dialogue-diagnosis, no "load-bearing," blind-POV and earned-stay pass.

Two items logged for the next revision touch (not orders, not drift): the L129 analytical paragraph is the closest narrator-essay call and should be watched if it is edited; the L143 "the only thing in this building that is" is the one line an editor could reasonably plain-swap, though it holds as Theo's inventory register.
