# Plain-Translation Audit — Chapter 14: Catalogs

id: plain_translation | stance: skeptical professional editor | method: generative-not-evaluative
Calibration sources used by name: **Theo close-third voice-card sample** (logistical tenderness; object/action first; risk calculation; delayed recognition of his own desire; warm steady syntax; no portable maxim, no thesis closer — anchored against Ch12 committed Theo prose), **June dialogue sample** ("The left edge is good. Don't fix it."), **Odile instruction sample** ("Looking is the assignment." / "No. You are painting an excuse with elbows."), **Cohort group-text sample** (functional thread, warm but ordinary), **Catalogue/art-label sample** (literal label language sanctioned).
Synthesis memo consulted only to avoid re-litigating executed repairs (echo-line formulas, `which` captions, maxim captions, antithesis closer — all logged as executed; I verified none recurs rather than re-ordering them).

## Per-paragraph verdicts

- `HOLDS — "Theo had the wrong date on the pickup sheet..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample / Ch12 calibration prose — binding-register rewrite ("He caught the wrong date three lines down and corrected it") is worse because: it loses the tripled *November 17* in his own handwriting, which is the kiss entering through failed competence — the packet's required opening move — and "so that the next mistake would at least require a walk" matches Ch12's self-administered-logistics comedy ("made it a thing") exactly.`
- `HOLDS — "The panels came down first..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — rewrite is worse because: "checked the corner by the clothespins with a dry knuckle... at nine and again at nine forty" is care-as-procedure with timestamps, his named tension tell (starts useful tasks too early). Counter-candidate weighed: "The gray wash had settled into itself overnight" — "into itself" flirts with painterly elevation, but the plain version ("had settled overnight") loses the wash going even/unified, a craft fact June would check; Theo has handled enough panels to carry it. Held.`
- `HOLDS — "His own panel he put beside it..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — rewrite is worse because: "looked at only as long as the job required" and catching himself reading the tape from across the room is delayed recognition of desire done as positive action, not the banned restraint-by-negation cluster; flattening to "He didn't look at his own panel long" reinstates exactly that banned shape.`
- `HOLDS — "He laid out the two grounds..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample (interiority rhythm: inventory → risk calc → delayed recognition) — rewrite is worse because: the torn index card with scribbled-out numerals 8 and 9 is the over-prepared list made physical evidence; "He stopped interpreting it after midnight" is time-bound and non-portable — the plain version ("He tried not to read into the thumbs-up") names the feeling the object already carries.`
- `HOLDS — "His phone went off in his jacket. Group thread..." — sample compared: cohort group-text sample (Ben/Priya/Mara voice cards) — this is a documentary/exchange form; not plain-translated toward literary clarity per template rule. Checked against its own form: Ben's 'I am not saying "normal" to the Queens printer on my lunch break' is full-form-for-emphasis per his card ("I am not rushing. I am optimizing badly.") and is a real logistical question, not a rimshot; Priya's "Cropping nothing. This sells the class." is brisk-directive per card. No line jokes about line quality. Holds as form.`
- `HOLDS — "He made himself look at it standing up, as if it were a delivery manifest..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — HIGH-RISK, full comparison below. Held.`
- `HOLDS — "Nobody in the thread asked whether it had been real..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — rewrite is worse because: the original is already the binding register — a fact, an action ("typed *80lb matte* for Ben"), and the phone face-down; any rewrite I produced only added words.`
- `HOLDS — "June came in at quarter past ten..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample (desire tell: delays looking directly; ranked noticing) — counter-candidate weighed: "He noticed the cuff before the coffee" is stamp-shaped (short, alliterative, paragraph-final). Cleared: it is non-portable (meaningless without the Ch13 umber mark), and the plain version ("He noticed the umber mark on her cuff first") loses the ranking — cuff over coffee is the desire tell itself. Held.`
- `HOLDS — ""Dry?" she said.' through '"The tape knows."" — sample compared: June dialogue sample + Theo dialogue samples — exchange form, checked against its own samples only. "Since yesterday afternoon. Edges and all." is craft-exact; June's "It's a decent brown. Raw umber holds its value" uses her card's word list (decent, value) and carries the keepsake subtext in pigment vocabulary; "Mara sent it," not turning around, is deflection visible as deflection; followability test passes — a cold reader can state what each asked, learned, refused (he offered solvent; she refused it and kept the mark; he raised Tuesday; she rerouted to the photo). The "It held" / "It worked" echoes are adjudicated under the Verbatim-Echo Gate below.`
- `HOLDS — "June laughed once and came over to the trestle table..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — literal blocking plus the thumb on the torn edge; nothing to translate.`
- `HOLDS — ""What happened to the rest of this?"... "Show me the dead seven sometime."" — sample compared: June dialogue sample — "Show me the dead seven sometime" is compact, dry, craft-adjacent; Theo's mid-sentence stop ("whether we wanted the..." → "No. I cut it down.") is his card's restraint tell (stops a helpful sentence, converts to a practical line) executed on the page. Held.`
- `HOLDS — ""The small one." He heard himself commit...' — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — HIGH-RISK (densest polish in the chapter), full comparison below. Held.`
- `HOLDS — "June looked at the twelve-by-sixteen for a while. "Okay,"..." — sample compared: June dialogue sample — "You're right about the sprawl" absorbs Theo's term into working vocabulary; this de-quotablizes the preceding line (see Aphorism Gate). Plain assent, plain-speech floor served.`
- `HOLDS — "So they had a size. What they did not have was anything else." — sample compared: Ch12 Theo narration calibration — full comparison below. Held on calibration evidence, not on charity.`
- `HOLDS — ""After class could be six p.m.," June said...' — sample compared: June dialogue sample — "Or eleven. Those are different paintings." is her exact register (one clean observation); "She set a pencil beside the ground and left it there" is object-borne stalemate, no narrated silence. Held.`
- `HOLDS — ""Here's my actual problem," June said...' — sample compared: June dialogue sample + catalogue/art-label sample — June's want is stated plainly ("I want to see twenty of them in a row"), satisfying the plain-speech floor; the apologizing-labels framing is adjudicated in the diagnosis sweep below. Theo's label-rules answer is his literal job knowledge, not exposition drift.`
- `HOLDS — "Odile had come in from the office end..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — "no telling how much of the conversation she'd carried in with her" is tied to the box she is literally carrying and does reread-test work (her timing is the plant); the plain version surrenders the reread charge for nothing.`
- `HOLDS — ""Labels are not apologies."... "All of them."" — sample compared: Odile instruction sample — exchange form. "What do I write, you are about to ask. Fewer words than you are planning." is two sentences, full forms when cutting precisely, diagnosis not oracle; "Stockroom. Third shelf, left side. The gray spines. Bring them out." is imperative logistics — her card's stress response verbatim in kind. She explains nothing, lies about nothing, and exits. Count of sharp lines: two — inside the packet's cap. Not flattened into kindness; her generosity arrives as an order. Held.`
- `HOLDS — "She picked her box back up and went out..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — "that was the entire visit" is dry observation, not caption; "Theo was already on his feet" shows the obedience reflex the chapter is about.`
- `HOLDS — "Theo went to the stockroom. He did not have to count shelves..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample (narration transparency: knows the secret, rationalizes withholding) — HIGH-RISK, full comparison below. Held.`
- `HOLDS — "The catalogs were where they had always been..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — "the color of weak tea where fifteen summers of window had reached it" is domestic noticing (his register, per reading guide §2: his noticing is domestic where hers is optical) carrying canon (the gallery's age, his long tenure); the plain version ("sun-faded along the top") deletes the fifteen years, which is the secret pressing through description.`
- `HOLDS — "The catalogs smelled of the hallway outside Odile's office..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — adjudicated under Aphorism Gate below. Held.`
- `HOLDS — "He ran the math on the way back out..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample (risk calculation) — HIGH-RISK, full comparison below. Held.`
- `HOLDS — ""All of them," June said... "Huh," June said, and took the top one.' — sample compared: June + Theo dialogue samples — "She loans nothing. There's a sign about it in her head" is speakable filial knowledge that June can read as employee knowledge — dramatic irony without authorial wink; June's "Does she do this?" / "Huh" is her compress-when-curious register. Echoes of "all of them" adjudicated below. Held.`
- `HOLDS — "He told himself the showcase had made Odile generous. He squared the top catalog..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — "He told himself" marks the rationalization as rationalization, then displaces into squaring the stack; the plain version ("Maybe the showcase had made her generous") hides the self-deception the binding standard requires visible. Held.`
- `HOLDS — "She skipped the essays entirely..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — procedural observation, labels in "neat gray columns" is literal catalog matter. Nothing to translate.`
- `HOLDS — dialogue from ""Untitled (Stove), oil on panel, 1994," she read.' — sample compared: June dialogue sample + catalogue/art-label sample — the quoted label text is LOCKED (skipped); June's "a title wearing a fake mustache" is her card's visual analogy aimed at a written artifact, the scene's assigned object of study — and it plants disguised-identity irony across the table without narration touching it. Theo's "The checklist in back still files it under Stove" is archive knowledge publicly covered by his job. Held; see diagnosis sweep.`
- `HOLDS — "She kept going. He found the legal pad..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — parallel labor ("Her pages turned. His pen moved through the pickup list.") is the chapter's intimacy register: two people working. Plain already.`
- `HOLDS — "She stopped on a cover..." / ""This the famous one?"" — sample compared: June dialogue sample; *Winter Kitchen.* is LOCKED (skipped) — Theo's "It was on a postcard for a while" is deflationary, killing nostalgia exactly as the packet's motif cap (invocation 2/5, no lingering) requires; "Theo kept his pen on Ben's pickup line" carries his evasion as action. Held.`
- `HOLDS — ""Okay," she said, twenty minutes in...' — sample compared: June dialogue sample; *View from the back room, six p.m.* is LOCKED (skipped) — "Six p.m. He picked that." is June's compact recognition; Theo's "So use that. Yours, I mean" is practical-offer-then-correction, his card's quirk. June's "I read slow when it's good, and I want the bad examples too" is her direct plain sentence for the scene. Held.`
- `HOLDS — "His alternatives came up at once... "There's a bag."" — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample ("There's a stockroom. It has a door.") — HIGH-RISK (the chapter's hinge), full comparison below. Held.`
- `HOLDS — "He got the canvas tote from under the front desk..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — "eased the paper slip down flush so it wouldn't tear in transit, and added the one she'd set aside... so the run stayed complete" is the thesis of the chapter (care arming harm) executed entirely in packing logistics, never named. Any translation toward "he packed them carefully" is strictly worse on all three axes.`
- `HOLDS — ""Odile said all of them," he said... "They're heavy. Spines crack."" — sample compared: Theo + June dialogue samples — "You're bagging them like produce" is June's dry visual; "They're heavy. Spines crack." is two-fact Theo refusing the feeling the bagging contains. Held.`
- `HOLDS — "He passed the bag across the table. For a second they both held it..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — four plain sentences; "His hand stayed under the seam until her grip settled" is the chapter's one sanctioned hand foregrounding spent on the irreversible transfer. The shelf-finding hand earlier is literal blocking carrying familiarity; cap respected. Held.`
- `HOLDS — ""Tuesday," June said... "Both. I'll count both before Tuesday."" — sample compared: June + Theo dialogue samples — appointment-confirmation exchange; "Six p.m. chairs or nine forty chairs?" converts the unsolved joint piece into shared shorthand, which is the form's job. Echoes adjudicated below.`
- `HOLDS — "She got the door with her free hand. Through the front window..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — full comparison below. Held.`
- `HOLDS — "He went back into the stockroom to close it up..." — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — HIGH-RISK (competence-failure beat), full comparison below. Held.`
- `LOCKED — "*Catalogs (9) - J. Park - out Thurs 11/19.*" — skipped, listed under calibration's inviolable text. Surrounding paragraph audited: "He left the *returned* column blank, dated nothing" and the triple measurement close are adjudicated under the Aphorism Gate (final close) below. The prose around the locked entry HOLDS — sample compared: Theo voice-card sample — ending on procedure repeating without result is competence made insufficient, the card's operation snapshot, with no thesis stamp.`
- `LOCKED — "*Untitled (Stove)*", "*Winter Kitchen.*", "*View from the back room, six p.m.*", chapter title — skipped, listed under calibration's inviolable text.`

## Five highest-risk paragraphs — full generative comparisons

**1. "He made myself look at it standing up..." (the flyer photo).**
Binding-register rewrite attempted: *"He looked at the photo standing up. It had missed the kiss and caught what came after it — June's hand on his jacket, his eyes on her. It looked real."*
Worse on all three axes. Density: loses the delivery-manifest frame, which is Theo processing intimacy through freight-handling — the voice card's defining move. Drama: "It looked real" names what "No one would have to crop them apart" proves; the original keeps the verdict inside Mara's craft vocabulary from the thread two paragraphs up, so the public term carries the private recognition. Fidelity: the rewrite installs the stock fake-dating photo-judgment the synthesis memo already stripped once. HOLDS.

**2. ""The small one." He heard himself commit...' (the size speech).**
The chapter's densest polish: "reads like a statement," "a room you actually left at nine forty," "keeps both halves honest," "Nobody gets to sprawl" — four shaped clauses in sequence, the closest thing here to drift toward performed articulacy. Rewrite attempted: *"The small one. Sixteen-by-twenty is too much wall. The small one keeps the view tight."*
Worse. Density: loses "nine forty," which ties his half of the view to his documented closing routine. Fidelity: the polish is diegetically purchased — the narration states he rehearsed an opinion Wednesday at midnight, and the torn card is the rehearsal's corpse on the table; a prepared man sounds prepared. The self-aware frame ("He heard himself commit and kept going") is the card's delayed-recognition rhythm, not narration admiring him. And June immediately converts the rhetoric to a working term ("You're right about the sprawl"), which grounds it. HOLDS — but this paragraph is at the ceiling; any further polish in Ch15 Theo dialogue should be refused.

**3. "Theo went to the stockroom. He did not have to count shelves..."**
Rewrite attempted: *"Theo knew the stockroom well from working for Odile, and found the shelf without the light. If June asked how, he could say he shelved for her sometimes."*
Worse. Density: equal. Drama: collapsed — "He had the answer ready if June ever asked. He shelved for Odile sometimes. He could say that." renders alibi-preparation as three plain beats, the prepared partial truth audible as preparation; the rewrite explains it into harmlessness. Fidelity: the original is the packet's narration-transparency requirement (knows the secret, rationalizes withholding) at its cleanest — short declaratives where Theo's syntax usually runs warm and steady, the compression itself the guilt. HOLDS.

**4. "He ran the math on the way back out..."**
Rewrite attempted: *"They were public documents — sold at the front desk, reviewed, in libraries. Nothing secret in them. June needed label language and they had it."*
Worse. Drama: "There was nothing in a public document that wasn't public" is a tautology, and the tautology is the point — risk calculation (his card's named rhythm) running on circular fuel, self-persuasion the reader can hear failing; "Nothing secret in them" is the same claim minus the audible flaw. Fidelity: the three-beat collapse "June wanted label language. The catalogs had it. He was helping." is rationalization compressing toward the lie, falsified on the page eighty lines later when he can't inventory what he gave away. The aphorism risk is adjudicated and cleared below. HOLDS.

**5. "His alternatives came up at once... What he said instead was, "There's a bag.""**
Rewrite attempted: *"He could have flagged the pages and had her photograph them — ten minutes, books back by lunch. Instead he said, 'There's a bag.'"*
Nearly equivalent on information; worse on drama and fidelity. "He had almost started with that answer" gives the safe option a real pulse before he overrides it — choice, not slippage — and "What he said instead was" makes the override visible as the chapter's hinge. The line itself is calibrated against his voice-card sample "There's a stockroom. It has a door." — same shape, same register, the care move at its most generous and most dangerous in three words. HOLDS.

**6. (Supplementary) "He went back into the stockroom to close it up..." and "Through the front window he watched her cross the street..."**
Inventory failure: rewrite attempted — *"He tried to remember the years of the nine catalogs and could only get three."* Worse: the original performs the failure ("1994. 1996. 1998. The faded top edge. Then nothing.") rather than reporting it — "the thing he could always do" failing live is the felt experience the card ordered (dread inside competence). The closing watch: full names "Odile Marchetti" and "June Park" read as manifest language — contents, recipient, destination — which is Theo logging the shipment he shouldn't have released, and puts the family name and June's name in one sentence at the exact moment they become a collision course. Plain version loses both. HOLDS.

**"So they had a size. What they did not have was anything else."** — flagged as a possible wit-curl in narration. Rewrite: *"So they had a size and nothing else."* Calibration check against Ch12 Theo prose ("He had, in the intervening twenty-two hours, made it a thing.") shows mild syntactic play for comedy is inside Theo's narration register; the two-sentence version also marks progress-then-stall as a beat, which the compressed version flattens. HOLDS on calibration evidence.

## APHORISM-GATE (zero tolerance; all named candidates examined)

- `APHORISM-GATE — "No one would have to crop them apart." — CLEARED: fails the portability test — out of context it is a layout note, not a maxim; its charge exists only against Mara's "Don't crop them apart this time, P." two paragraphs up and the Ch13 cropped-photo history. Not epigraph-shaped: it is a finding about one specific photograph, stated in the thread's own craft vocabulary. No order.`
- `APHORISM-GATE — "Nobody gets to sprawl." — CLEARED, narrowly: pull-quote-shaped in isolation, but (a) it is dialogue inside a rehearsed practical argument about a 12x16 panel, (b) it is immediately de-quotablized when June converts it to a working term ("You're right about the sprawl"), making it project shorthand rather than a portable truth about people. The strongest candidate in the chapter; it survives because the scene uses it instead of framing it. No order.`
- `APHORISM-GATE — "Labels are not apologies." — CLEARED under explicit license: style_and_voice.md names Odile the only character licensed for high-density memorable lines, and her calibration samples ("Looking is the assignment.") are exactly this shape; the packet's cap is "one or two sharp true lines," and she spends exactly two. It is also a true partial doing reveal-architecture work (her labels conceal). It enters as a mid-conversation correction of June's framing, not an oracle pronouncement. No order.`
- `APHORISM-GATE — "There was nothing in a public document that wasn't public." — CLEARED: tautology in free indirect discourse, marked as Theo's flawed math by its own circularity and refuted by the chapter's last paragraph (the undated checkout, the failed inventory). A maxim asserts wisdom; this line performs self-deception. Quoting it out of context yields nonsense, which is the portability test failing as designed. No order.`
- `APHORISM-GATE — "The catalogs smelled of the hallway outside Odile's office and every November he had spent carrying boxes for her." — CLEARED: not maxim-shaped — no general claim, two proper referents, his specific history; it is the nephew secret arriving as smell, the one sensory-memory beat the transfer needs to hurt. The zeugma (hallway + Novembers) is the only elevation, and it is carrying canon (years of service), not atmosphere. No order.`
- `APHORISM-GATE — final small-ground close ("He set the tape against it, got sixteen inches, got sixteen inches again, and measured a third time anyway.") — CLEARED: the chapter ends on procedure, not pronouncement — no thesis closer, no profundity stamp, exactly the packet's "without a one-line profundity stamp" requirement. The repetition is the dread (the number won't change; he measures anyway). No order.`
- `APHORISM-GATE — sweep residue: "He noticed the cuff before the coffee." (non-portable ranking, desire tell), "He stopped interpreting it after midnight." (time-bound, self-aimed), "He was helping." (rationalization climax, falsified later), "Those are different paintings." (craft fact in June's mouth) — all CLEARED on the same portability test. No orders.`

## VERBATIM-ECHO GATE (all named candidates examined)

- `VERBATIM-ECHO — "The wash held." / "It held." — CLEARED as transformative: June's line hunts the flaw and doesn't find it; Theo's echo confirms a craft fact he has already verified twice — flat confirmation is the post-kiss register the packet ordered ("plain, functional, and charged by omission"). The echo is two people choosing the safe sentence; cutting it would require narrating the avoidance instead.`
- `VERBATIM-ECHO — "Then it worked." / "It worked." — CLEARED as transformative: Theo's line is a logistics verdict on the flyer; June's echo, delivered while walking away from her panel to his, re-scopes "it" from the photo to the kiss without either admitting it. The repetition is the double meaning's delivery mechanism. Watch item: this is the second echo-confirmation pair in one scene ("It held" being the first); each carries distinct subtext so both pass, but a third instance in this chapter would have been formula. There is no third.`
- `VERBATIM-ECHO — "all of them" (Odile, June ×2, Theo ×2) — CLEARED as transformative: the phrase migrates through five mouths with agency shifting each time — instruction (Odile), disbelief (June), attribution-as-deflection (Theo: "She said all of them"), request that arms the mechanism (June: "Can I take these? All of them"), attribution plus voluntary excess (Theo: "Odile said all of them. I'd rather they travel together" — where he exceeds the order by adding the set-aside volume). The repetition is the chapter's responsibility ledger: who actually transferred the stack. Theo's two attribution lines are near-twins, saved by the second's added clause, which is his own choice entering the record.`
- `VERBATIM-ECHO — "six p.m." (June's option → locked catalog title → "Six p.m. He picked that." → "Six p.m. chairs or nine forty chairs?") — CLEARED as transformative: option → discovered precedent → working shorthand; the catalog title (LOCKED, untouchable) validating June's instinct is the scene's payoff, and the chair question converts it into the joint piece's shared vocabulary.`
- `VERBATIM-ECHO — "Tuesday" (×3 in the closing exchange, plus "About Tuesday" / "June had said so on Tuesday" earlier) — CLEARED: closing instances are plan-confirmation, which is how the form talks; June's "Tuesday" is a promise with deliverables, Theo's echo converts it to his preparation list. Earlier instances refer to the kiss date and are referential, not echoic. The word is the book's structural unit; suppressing it would be genericizing.`
- `VERBATIM-ECHO — "sixteen inches" ("got sixteen inches, got sixteen inches again") — CLEARED as deliberate: the unchanged measurement is the dramatization — the instrument works, the operator doesn't. A varied second reading would falsify the beat.`
- `VERBATIM-ECHO — 80lb/forty/matte family ("*80lb matte*", "printing forty" ×2, "forty copies, eighty-pound matte") — CLEARED as transformative: Priya's "printing forty" is news; June's "Priya's printing forty" is two people reciting facts they both already know, which is the avoidance on display; the close's "forty copies, eighty-pound matte" expands Theo's own typed spec into narration, converting his helpful answer into a count of public proof multiplying in Queens. Each instance changes hands and meaning.`
- `VERBATIM-ECHO — "It worked" vs. "the part that worked" / "That part works" (June's card sample) — checked; "The tape was the part that worked" is narration recalling Tuesday, not a same-scene echo. CLEARED.`

## Dialogue-diagnosis sweep (zero tolerance, narration and dialogue)

Swept every line of dialogue and all narration about speech. Candidates examined:
- "Don't tell your panel I said the tape's carrying it" — targets the painting's composition (what carries the picture), not anyone's sentence. CLEAR.
- "I want to see how it's done by people who weren't apologizing... so I can hear the difference" / "Labels are not apologies" / "*Untitled (Stove)* is a title wearing a fake mustache" / "She let someone get away with *Untitled*" — all characterize written label/title language, which is the scene's literal assigned object of study and falls under the catalogue/art-label sanction; no line in the chapter comments on any present speaker's phrasing, rhythm, carefulness, or delivery. The reading guide's rule targets captioning conversation; here the labels are the work. CLEAR.
- "He heard himself commit and kept going" — self-directed, about the decision's content (choosing the small panel), not about sentence shape or delivery. CLEAR.
- "That's roughly what I was saying" — content agreement, not style rating. CLEAR.
- No "careful," "rehearsed," "measured," "load-bearing," beat/silence/delivery captions anywhere in the chapter (confirmed against the mechanical gate's zero open findings on `reading_guide_bans.tsv`). ZERO instances. PASS.

## Anti-genericization check

Theo's logistical tenderness is intact, not blanded: the decanted-jar offer, the alibi rehearsal, the tote packing, the manifest-read of the photo, and the failed inventory are all care-as-procedure with risk calculation underneath — calibrated against Ch12, not against generic simple prose; none of my plainer rewrites survived comparison. Odile is not flattened into kindness: she gives one diagnosis, one prediction of June's question, four imperatives, and leaves; her generosity arrives as an order and is consistent with her knowing. June's craft compression ("decent brown," "different paintings," "dead seven," "Plural") holds her card's register throughout.

## Chapter verdict

Per-paragraph comparisons: 38 units audited, 0 DRIFTED, 5 LOCKED items skipped intact. Aphorism Gate: 6 named candidates plus sweep residue, all cleared with shown work, 0 orders. Verbatim-Echo Gate: 8 echo families examined, all transformative, 0 orders. Dialogue-diagnosis: 0 instances. Watch-forward note (not an order): Theo's size speech and the paired echo-confirmation device are both at their ceiling; Chapter 15 should not add a third instance of either.

**REGISTER-HOLDS**
