All inputs read. The four repairs are verifiable in the current chapter text; I'll write the round-2 audit now. Here is the completed audit:

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# Audit: Let-Characters-Be-Wrong / Competence-Default — Chapter 06 ("Sightlines") — ROUND 2 (verification)

Stance note: this is a verification pass on the Codex repairs, audited against the current chapter text directly, not against the repair memo's claims. Each memo claim was checked for an actual on-page quote; the round-1 quotes that the repairs replaced (`The clementine changed hands without ceremony.`, `He folded the fingers back around the route card.` at Vestibule, the bare `"Oh." Ben blinked. "That's also data."`) no longer appear, confirming the text changed where the memo says it did.

## Round-1 order verification

**Order 1 — Sam** (field: `"can push for naming before the named person is ready."`; required the push to misfire visibly, with the sanctioned option being Ruth's equal good night landing partly on Sam as a bill). **EXECUTED.** Current text: `Sam lifted a cup to Theo in passing. Ruth said good night to everyone equally. Sam's cup paused halfway. They had arranged the two-block walk, and now they got the same flat kindness Theo did.` The bill is on the page: Sam arranged the naming, Ruth speaks, and Sam is repaid with the same flat distance as the man under suspicion. The order's anti-softening clause holds — Sam is not made charmingly bossy; the arrangement works and still costs. The placements (`"Stand here. Not symbolically..."`) remain flawless, but the order was either/or and the chosen branch is on the page.

**Order 2 — Priya** (field: `"care becomes control when she does not ask first."`; required cutting the editorial Ben-diagnosis, replacing it with something partial/self-implicating, and one unasked intervention costing). **EXECUTED, both halves.** The thesis line (`"He just thinks if the numbers get clean enough, the rest becomes automatic."`) is gone; in its place: `"He understands the rule," Priya said. "I just don't trust a cheap room when I'm tired."` — partial, slightly off, and self-implicating exactly as ordered: it answers listing data with her own fatigue and conspicuously does not say whether she wants the apartment, which is her NPC-goal doubt (`figure out whether moving in with Ben is desire or rent logic wearing a nicer coat`) leaking sideways instead of being diagnosed. And the clementine now fails partway: `June took the clementine and put it in her coat pocket. Priya saw that and let it stay there.` — unpeeled, in the pocket, where Priya can see it; the refusal holds and Priya must absorb it. The stool override still succeeds (`"I'm fine." / "I know. Your left knee keeps looking for a wall. Stool." Mara sat.`), which the order explicitly permitted ("Not both — one refusal that holds"). (Out-of-scope flag for the line editor, not a finding here: `"That means no."` now sits in the paragraph carrying June's action, which by paragraph convention misattributes Priya's line to June.)

**Order 3 — Theo** (field: `"believes delay is kindness; believes being indispensable is the same as being loved."`; required at least one of the Vestibule/bodega reflexes to fire instead of being caught, with `"Ask her first"` kept only if it follows a failure). **EXECUTED.** Vestibule now fires: `Theo stepped toward the painting before the room caught up with him. ... This was not his wall. The sitter with the thermos looked up.` — then Luis's `"It's the wall," Luis said from the other end. "The floor slopes. The painting's level."` strands him mid-gesture, and Mara's `"Luis checked it from two places before anyone asked, so now we all benefit"` publicly credits the man who didn't lunge while Theo `stepped back to the door and folded his fingers around the route card.` The bodega catch (`"Two," he said. "Ask her first."`) is retained, and it now reads as a man correcting a reflex he watched fail in public an hour earlier rather than acing a test — the order's exact condition. The Ruth conversation accordingly lands on a man who did the thing, not one who has been quietly passing.

**Order 4 — June** (field: `"mistakes being understood for being pitied; assumes choosing herself requires choosing alone."`; required one ordinary wrong note the narration does not convert into a win, costing her warmth). **EXECUTED**, on the sanctioned `We don't live together` branch, with the clementine branch as a bonus. Current text: `"Oh." Ben blinked. The open table-look left his face before he recovered. "That's also data."` — the warmth cost is now on the page: Ben's open face closes, and June gets no chance to fix it (`"It's the only data," June said, and went back to the lithograph.` — she doesn't try). The chapter no longer scores the line as a clean point: the immediate next sentence, `The route card came back against Theo's shirt.`, prices what the line cost the table. The registering is carried through Theo's POV rather than June's interior, which is the correct constraint for a Theo chapter. The clementine deflection (above, Order 2) gives her field's choosing-alone clause a second, quieter firing that Priya must absorb. Caveat held to a caveat: `"It's the only data"` is still a sharp exit line — but it now exits a damaged exchange instead of a won one, which is what the order asked for.

## Section 1 — Sweep verdict

`WRONGNESS-PRESENT — instances:`

- Theo, `"Etchings are in the back," he said to June before she'd asked anything, and heard himself do it.` — blind spot operating (routing her unasked); saying the wrong thing.
- Theo, `Theo stepped toward the painting before the room caught up with him. ... The sitter with the thermos looked up.` — blind spot firing publicly; superseded by Luis on someone else's wall.
- Theo, `"You think I'd hurt her."` — getting defensive for no good reason: Ruth has just said the opposite (`"Maybe I'm wrong. I'd prefer to be."`) and he escalates her question into an accusation she didn't make.
- Theo, `"I'll find one."` — blind spot live: asked for an answer that isn't him, he appoints himself the finder; Ruth must correct twice (`"Don't solve it on this block"`, `"Make sure it belongs to her"`).
- Ruth, `"And the class is your boss's class. Run out of your gallery."` — misunderstanding: her whole case stands on the designed false premise (boss/employee impropriety).
- June, `"I can answer that," June said. "We don't live together."` — saying the wrong thing to a sincere question; `The open table-look left his face` is Ben absorbing it.
- June, `June took the clementine and put it in her coat pocket.` — choosing-alone deflection of unasked care, unpeeled, visible.
- Ben, `"Don't," Ben said.` at Mara's `"Sublet"` — defensive flick at meddling; and the gallery rent-math pacing (`"...to live in this gallery minus the ceiling."`) until Priya must absorb it.
- Priya, `"I know. Your left knee keeps looking for a wall. Stool."` over Mara's `"I'm fine."` — care-as-control, unasked.
- Sam, `"Two blocks. Say it or let it go."` — the push, billed at the corner: `Sam's cup paused halfway.`

Round-1 distribution complaint (five of six instances Theo-centered) is resolved: wrongness now lands on Theo, June, Ruth, Ben, Priya, Sam, and Mara at scaled sizes.

## Section 2 — Per major character

**Theo** — gets-wrong field: `"believes delay is kindness; believes being indispensable is the same as being loved."` — verdict: **OPERATED** (`Theo stepped toward the painting before the room caught up with him.`; `"Etchings are in the back" ... before she'd asked anything`; `"You think I'd hurt her."`; `"I'll find one."`). The remaining self-catches are now correctly priced: the bodega correction follows the Vestibule failure, the desk-kid double-check is clocked by the kid (`"You asked at one," the kid said.`), and the door-post retreat is framed as concession (`because some habits were not worth the fight tonight`), not insight. Strongest counter-candidate checked: the route-card handoff to Ben (`Theo's evening no longer had a card in it.`) — that is earned arc movement purchased by the evening's failures, not the competence default.

**June** — gets-wrong field: `"mistakes being understood for being pitied; assumes choosing herself requires choosing alone."` — verdict: **OPERATED** (`"We don't live together."` flattening Ben's open face; the clementine pocketed unpeeled under Priya's eye; `"Coffee," she told the man. "Black. Separate." She paid from her own coat pocket, in singles, before Theo's wallet cleared his jacket.` — the over-purchase of solitude now sitting in a chapter that has shown what her separateness costs). Round 1's TRIGGER-MISSED is cleared: her boundary lines remain hers, and one of them now costs warmth she was being offered.

**Ruth** — gets-wrong field: `"lets people hide too long because she respects the need to be unnamed."` — verdict: **OPERATED** (`"I haven't said anything to anyone, and I'd rather not."`; needed Sam's shove to speak at all). Her factual misread matches the card's design (`Ruth does not know fake truth`; `Ruth's warning oblique, not wise`). Standing caution, restated unchanged from round 1 and not converted to an order then or now: her appearance still carries four aphorism-grade lines (`"who can she tell who isn't you?"`, `"Don't solve it on this block. That's the reflex I'm asking about."`, `"I saw enough to be worried. Not enough to be right."` — the last her dialogue-spec example verbatim — `"Make sure it belongs to her."`) against a voice-card cap of one editorial-sharp line per appearance. The repairs did not touch Ruth; this remains an editor-stage trim, not a competence-default finding.

**Sam** — gets-wrong field: `"can push for naming before the named person is ready."` — verdict: **OPERATED** (the push — `"Two blocks. Say it or let it go."`, the engineered collection of June — now arrives with a bill: `Sam's cup paused halfway. They had arranged the two-block walk, and now they got the same flat kindness Theo did.`). Round 1's TRIGGER-MISSED is cleared: the chess-master framing survives, but the chapter no longer endorses it as free.

**Priya** — gets-wrong field: `"care becomes control when she does not ask first."` — verdict: **OPERATED** (stool override over `"I'm fine."`; clementine over `"Sort of"` — and the second one now partially refused, `Priya saw that and let it stay there.`). The editorial Ben-diagnosis is gone; `"I just don't trust a cheap room when I'm tired."` puts her inside the move-in question instead of above it.

**Ben** — gets-wrong field: `"assumes certainty can be built before decision."` — verdict: **OPERATED** (`paced the length of the room with his heel-to-toe walk ... "We are considering paying twenty-nine hundred dollars a month to live in this gallery minus the ceiling."`, absorbed by Priya's `"Put the phone down for one room."`; defensive `"Don't,"` at Mara). Round-1 caveat stands unrepaired and unordered: the self-mocking pre-concession habit (`"I know that's bad."`, `"because the font needed help"`) still cushions the flaw. It was ruled borderline and non-binding in round 1; the new cost he absorbs (June's `"We don't live together"` landing on his open face) moves him net in the right direction. No new finding.

**Mara** — gets-wrong field: `"thinks smoothing is always kindness."` — verdict: **OPERATED**, minimally (`"Sublet," Mara read aloud in Ben's direction. / "Don't," Ben said.`; speaking for Luis twice — `"which Luis says is two forecasts past useful"`, `"Luis checked it from two places before anyone asked, so now we all benefit"`). Acceptable scale for a background couple in a Theo chapter, unchanged from round 1.

**Luis** — gets-wrong field: `"assumes silence communicates more than it does."` — verdict: **NO-TRIGGER**. Professional verdicts (`"It's the wall. The floor slopes. The painting's level."`) are calibration-exempt competence; no scene asked his silence to carry a failed message. Unchanged, acceptable.

## Section 3 — Friction yield

- Theo / `"Etchings are in the back"` — **FRICTION** (`"I was going to start at the front," she said, and started at the front.`).
- Theo / Vestibule step — **FRICTION** (the sitter looks up; Luis's ruling strands him; Mara's `"so now we all benefit"` lands while he retreats to the door). Round 1's COSTUMED ruling on this beat is cleared.
- Theo / bodega order — earned restraint following a same-evening failure; no longer ruled, per the order's explicit allowance (`Keep "Ask her first" only if it follows a failure`). Residual cost retained: June outpays him `before Theo's wallet cleared his jacket` and he drinks a coffee against his own rule.
- Theo / `"I'll find one"` and `"You think I'd hurt her"` — **FRICTION** (Ruth redirects twice; cost persists past the scene: `He had not found the name by the time she passed below street level.`).
- Ruth / impropriety misread — **FRICTION** (her speaking resets the evening's temperature; the flat good night; fuller cost deferred to Ch 11/20 per the card).
- June / `"We don't live together"` — **FRICTION** (`The open table-look left his face before he recovered.`; no repair attempted; `The route card came back against Theo's shirt.`). Round 1's COSTUMED ruling cleared.
- June–Priya / clementine — **FRICTION** (care partially refused; `Priya saw that and let it stay there.` — Priya absorbs a held refusal).
- Priya / stool — **COSTUMED** (override succeeds in-beat: `Mara sat.`) — explicitly permitted by Order 2's "one refusal that holds" scope; not a finding.
- Sam / the arranged walk — **FRICTION** (`Sam's cup paused halfway. They had arranged the two-block walk, and now they got the same flat kindness Theo did.`).
- Ben / rent-math pacing — **FRICTION** (`"Put the phone down for one room," Priya said.`).
- Mara / `"Sublet"` — **FRICTION**, minimal (`"Don't," Ben said.`).

## Chapter verdict

`WRONG-ENOUGH`

All four round-1 orders are executed on the page as ordered, none softened into quirkiness; the sweep passes with wrongness distributed across seven characters; no TRIGGER-MISSED remains. Weakest passing instance, for the record: Sam's bill — `Sam's cup paused halfway.` — four words of cost, observed from Theo's POV and not returned to; it satisfies the order's minimum and no more. Standing non-finding cautions carried forward for the editor stage: Ruth's editorial-line density still exceeds her voice-card cap (including one dialogue-spec line verbatim), and the `"That means no."` paragraph misattributes Priya's line to June by placement.

## REVISION ORDERS

None. All four round-1 findings are repaired and verified against the current chapter text; the remaining cautions (Ruth's line density, the `"That means no."` attribution) predate or fall outside this audit's competence-default scope and do not warrant orders from it.
