# Comedy Doctor — Chapter 20: No Advice / Keys Here — ROUND 9 (post-voice-repair verification)

Register audited: warm, precise, lightly comic; never sitcom, never banter-for-banter (READING_GUIDE §2). Target-reader calibration: O'Leary warmth, Henry at ~60% banter density, Morisaki/Coffee quiet — a reader who wants small routines to carry feeling and is bored by workshopped wit. Chapter-card dials re-pinned (CHAPTER CARD - 20): "June plain, less jokey, precise about money and materials"; Ruth one sharp line max; no inspirational refusal; the humor must not soften the Tasker loss.

Scope note: Round 8 returned CLEAR on 41 items. Since then a voice repair changed exactly three dialogue sites — confirmed against the current text by re-locating every round-8 quote at its cited line (all 41 survive verbatim) and by the Dialogue Doctor round 14 charge, which names the same three: (a) line 71, Asha's "Why aren't you taking it? That's not me being polite." now grounded by a new sentence, "Ninety days to benefits changes the math."; (b) line 75, the abstraction "written access is real" replaced by "Forty-nine five and written access pays invoices."; (c) line 125, June's counter recital now reads "A hundred fifty more for the wall share and a north window" instead of a third spoken "ten feet of wall." Dialogue Doctor round 14 returned CLEAN on those sites, but that verdict is evidence about convergence and fake-sharp, not about comedy — the three sites are audited here as prime suspects, not pre-cleared repairs. Two questions govern this round: did the repairs install any comic attempt, logged or unlogged, landing or failed (an unlogged attempt is an inventory failure); and did they flatten or workshop any timing adjacent to surviving items.

INVENTORY:

1 — "Twenty-six hours, give or take the walk from the sink to the table." (line 3) — mechanism: mock-precision (deadline tolerance measured in footsteps) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sets the noon clock and June's arithmetic-as-coping in one stroke; frame varied at item 41 — workshopped: no.

2 — "She had kept stepping back from paintings all fall as if the problem were viewing distance." (line 13) — mechanism: rueful mock-diagnosis (a decision problem misfiled as an optics problem) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names her avoidance in her own trade term and plants the payoff cashed physically at lines 157–159 (the step back "the distance she'd have at Dana's," the step in, "The corner stayed.") — workshopped: no. (Still the inventory's quietest item; re-read cold this round and holds at 2 on the Morisaki calibration — the commitment lives in the plant, not the sentence's cadence; no repair touched it.)

3 — "She'd done it four times and it came out the same every time: the left page won." (line 13) — mechanism: deadpan contest-frame (a two-page spread scored like a match) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: certifies the offer's goodness that the refusal must later cost — workshopped: no.

4 — "Mara wants her dish back before Luis refills it." (line 17) — mechanism: implied escalation (the Valdez care-conveyor pre-empted) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: motivates the visit; pays the Ch18 blue-dish tether as a practical object per standing order — workshopped: no.

5 — "door sticks, push don't pull." (line 19) — mechanism: understatement (assent rendered as mechanical instruction) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June admits the cohort to her apartment for the first time in the book, in the only register she can afford — workshopped: no.

6 — "We're double-parked," Ruth said. "Two minutes." / "Two minutes is right," June said. (lines 25–27) — mechanism: mutual-boundary deadpan — source: character+situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: both parties want the care bounded; the visit's terms are the chapter thesis in miniature — workshopped: no.

7 — "There's coffee. There hasn't been milk since Sunday." (line 27) — mechanism: hospitality with deficit disclosure — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the fridge documents the rupture week without a feeling named — workshopped: no.

8 — "What's the freight?" (line 29, with the corner-test) — mechanism: trade-register deadpan (a domestic errand priced as shipping) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: opens June's routing beat on Sam's terms so nobody has to ask how she is; its answer is item 9 — workshopped: no.

9 — "Catalogs. Eight. They belong at the studio. They're Odile's. … If Theo is there, could you leave them at Sonia's with a note for Mara? If he isn't, inside the door is fine." (line 31) — mechanism: over-specification as self-defense (contingency routing for one box) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Theo-avoidance rendered entirely as logistics; the cardboard edge pressing "a line into her thumb" keeps the cost in frame — workshopped: no.

10 — "We know how to deliver a box," Ruth said. (line 33) — mechanism: flat correction — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: punctures the over-instruction without touching the feeling underneath it — workshopped: no.

11 — "The box is the errand. The dish is separate." → "Actually, no. Tell Mara I'm bringing the dish myself Tuesday. Tell her I'll sit where she tells me." (line 35) — mechanism: over-categorization deflated by live reversal, capped by pre-emptive surrender to Mara's seating authority — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June's control taxonomy fails in the right direction on the page; commits cohort re-entry before the job decision exists — workshopped: no.

12 — "She'll like that better than the dish," Sam said. (line 37) — mechanism: warm deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names what the visit was actually for without giving advice — workshopped: no.

13 — Sam "picked the box up properly this time, knees," and "moved the chair that was blocking the door's swing six inches to the left." (line 37) — mechanism: physical repetition-with-variation, one-word method note — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Sam's owned care move (making physical room) enacted, not stated — workshopped: no. (Chair-count family check: action, not a count-shaped joke.)

14 — "You can leave that part out," Ruth said. "We came for the dish." (line 45) — mechanism: scope-limiting mercy — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: releases June from explaining Tuesday; keeps Ruth's confession from turning therapeutic — workshopped: no.

15 — "I'm not asking for an opinion. I want to be clear that I'm not asking." / "We have a car," Ruth said. (lines 47–49) — mechanism: non-answer as answer (opinion refused, inventory supplied) — source: character+situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter card's engine in two lines — the advice ban honored to the letter and answered in transport — workshopped: no.

16 — "If the answer involves moving anything heavier than this, you have our number. That's not an opinion. That's a hand truck." (line 51) — mechanism: literalization (advice converted into equipment), punchline-timed — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: valid for either city, so it steers nothing; care lands as labor while the decision stays June's — workshopped: no. (Re-interrogated as the chapter's most workshop-shaped line, same result as rounds 7–8: its entire content is a refusal to say anything wiser, it is speakable in one breath by a person holding a box, its partner line is aggressively unquotable ("We have a car."), and June denies it a rimshot. Template count re-verified post-repair: one full "not X. That's Y" instance chapter-wide; rest the shape from Ch21.)

17 — "Noted," June said. "Both of you--thank you. For the box." (line 53) — mechanism: scope-limited thanks with a fumbled object-tag — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June accepts care while refusing to be caught needing it; "For the box." misfiles the gratitude on purpose — workshopped: no. ("Noted" count: 1 of the licensed 2.)

18 — "the box of catalogs left June's apartment a quarter before eleven on Thursday." (line 55) — mechanism: mock-precision clock notation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: closes the visit inside the chapter's visible-clock discipline; the Theo-adjacent freight exits without June touching the studio — workshopped: no. (Arithmetic still computes: arrival 10:40.)

19 — "Talk fast, I'm holding a door with my whole body." (line 63) — mechanism: hyperbole grounded literal — source: situation+character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: prices Asha's attention and sets the call's economy — June's two asks must fit a closing gate — workshopped: no. (The chapter's one door joke; item 5 is instruction, Sam's hip-opened door at line 55 is action.)

20 — "Say the studio clause again." … "Who writes that?" Asha said. "Nia Torres, apparently. I've seen her hang at the co-op. She'll eyeball a run and put a level on it anyway. She's serious." (lines 67–71) — mechanism: priority-reveal + self-answered question + trade specificity — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: of nine terms, Asha asks back for the clause June wants most — an independent installer certifies exactly what June is about to refuse; plants the level line item 40 varies — workshopped: no. (Repair-adjacent, this round's closest listen: the new grounds-sentence lives later in line 71, after this item's turn completes at "She's serious." and after the pallet-jack beat resets the ear; the comic unit is untouched and its timing intact.)

21 — "and the radiator is decorative." (line 83) — mechanism: deadpan trade-fact (heat priced as décor) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: prices the chosen path honestly mid-pitch against Tasker's "radiators that worked" (line 9) — the two-line ledger of what June gives up — workshopped: no.

22 — "Wear the coat inside until February." (line 83) — mechanism: cost restated as apparel policy — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the New York path priced inside a rent-and-dates list; plants FEB = coat (item 39) — workshopped: no. (Coat cap: this and line 155 are the licensed pair; Ruth's buttoned coat at line 23 is a garment, not an instance.)

23 — "Take the crating if you get it. It's indoors." (line 87) — mechanism: two-word deflation (the job's best feature is shelter) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sets December's floor at survival level; sharpens what refusing Tasker's benefits actually buys — workshopped: no.

24 — "The room's ugly. At $340 you'll forgive it." (line 87) — mechanism: forgiveness quoted at a rate (invoice-brain price-judgment, second-person prediction) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the room June chooses is sold to her at its true value by the person who found it; line 151 ("worse than described") pays the prediction — workshopped: no. (Round-8 repair site, verbatim-unchanged this round; the retired "cheap enough to forgive" coin remains absent chapter-wide; delivery still amputates landing room — off-phone shout, hang-up two lines later.)

25 — "and Asha hung up before the word was finished." (line 89) — mechanism: timing undercut — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the favor closes as business; Asha's shift does not pause for June's gratitude — the consent boundary made structural — workshopped: no.

26 — "the email she'd been not-sending to Nia for nine days" (line 95) — mechanism: verbed negation (procrastination as a sustained activity, with a duration) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: nine days of the Tasker want maintained and refused in one participle; the deletion that follows is the chapter's first no, performed before the phone call says it — workshopped: no.

27 — "All right," Nia said. "Walk me through it. I ran the math with you three weeks ago. It wasn't close." (line 107) — mechanism: understatement, agonistic deadpan (the math on record) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: refuses to accept the no on politeness terms; forces June past arithmetic to the Vandercook — workshopped: no.

28 — "They'd call the key number. It would be my phone." (line 117) — mechanism: dark deadpan literalization (the offer's best clause restated as her phone ringing) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the refusal's actual mechanism made concrete inside the confession; the clause is real and the trap is real at once — workshopped: no. (Sweetness check ran hardest here again: the two flat sentences are the confession, not anesthetic for it.)

29 — "February is a blank line in my notebook." (line 125) — mechanism: deadpan self-pricing (the counter's worst line stated in notation) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June makes her own counter honestly worse; no inspirational refusal — workshopped: no. (Repair-adjacent — the sentence immediately before it changed; timing verified intact under the special checks below: the close still arrives last, off a flatter runway than before.)

30 — "That's a worse offer," Nia said. "That's a worse offer on every line I have a column for." (line 127) — mechanism: deadpan verdict escalated by enumeration, same-speaker doubling — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Nia stays right on the record — the no-strawman obligation — while losing a hire she is right about; the loss is priced at its largest exactly here — workshopped: no. (The round-7 two-speaker figure remains structurally dead: no counter-metaphor from June exists anywhere in the chapter; the verdict is answered by "It is," object business, and a plain want.)

31 — "If the program ever needs freelance install, I itemize and I'm fast." (line 129) — mechanism: dry professional self-summary — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the professional door open without pleading; hands Nia the diction item 34 pays — workshopped: no.

32 — "Noted," Nia said. "You know what I'm going to ask next." (line 131) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation across speakers (June's word handed back in Nia's register) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the mirrored "Noted" rhymes the two refusals — June's of advice, Nia's of persuasion — and pivots to the referral — workshopped: no. ("Noted" count: 2 of 2; spent, third banned.)

33 — "I watched her keep six installers moving while the freight elevator was stuck and nobody got loud." (line 133) — mechanism: understatement-in-praise (a crisis certified by the absence of volume) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June's card care move — precise, unsentimental praise — doing the reference's work with evidence instead of adjectives; sets up item 34 — workshopped: no.

34 — "I know her invoices," Nia said. "She itemizes. That's already more than most references." (line 135) — mechanism: professional metonymy (character vouched by paperwork) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the reference lands in the book's material idiom; Asha becomes plausible on evidence, not on June's guilt — workshopped: no.

35 — "It's 10:52," Nia said. "Have her email before one. I have payroll at eleven." (line 139) — mechanism: bathetic close, scale juxtaposition (June's crossroads vs. the program's Tuesday payroll) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: anti-sentimental exit seconds after "come see it"; the timestamp is cashed as fact at line 147 — workshopped: no. (Spoken-timestamp move single-use; no second anywhere in the chapter.)

36 — "a thumbs up, and eleven seconds later, *ok now the boring parts.*" (line 147) — mechanism: deflation pivot with mock-precise timing — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: swings the chapter from verdict to execution; refuses congratulation — workshopped: no. (Idiom spent per tracker; retire or vary in future Asha texts.)

37 — "The front room was worse than described: bare bulb, paint-scabbed floor, the north window putting flat gray light across ten feet of empty wall. June looked at the light longest." (line 151) — mechanism: listing-convention reversal + priority reveal — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: de-romanticizes the chosen path in the same beat that confirms it; pays item 24's prediction; the want re-sharpens on the one thing a painter needs — workshopped: no.

38 — "She had no printer. Paragraph 14 allowed email; she checked. In the email body she typed January 31 twice, once in the sentence and once in the subject line." (line 153) — mechanism: bureaucratic deadpan, belt-and-suspenders diligence — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: material precarity and proper leaving in three flat sentences; the doubled date is the person who ran the math four times — workshopped: no.

39 — "She filled the blank in the notebook: FEB = coat." (line 155; setup "FEB = ." at lines 11 and 91) — mechanism: blank-equation payoff, repetition-with-variation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter-long unfilled equation answered with endurance instead of money; the cost stays visible inside the joke, and it lands only after the no is spent — workshopped: no. (Paid and spent; any later coat mention must be a literal garment.)

40 — "one nail, level enough." (line 161) — mechanism: self-directed deflation; one varied callback to Asha's level line (item 20) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the professional installer permits herself imprecision where the work is finally hers — workshopped: no. (Level family closed: plant plus one variation.)

41 — "Twenty-nine days until Dana's key. Thirty-one days until Kessler's armory load-in." (line 161) — mechanism: paired mock-precision countdown, frame variation on item 1's twenty-six hours — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: converts the decision into schedule; every counted day runs toward an unheated room and net-45 money, so the counts price the choice rather than celebrate it — workshopped: no. (Cadence close still refused: the back-of-hand crating note, the washed cup, and the visible study follow, so the last beat is logistics, not a stamp.)

CONSIDERED AND EXCLUDED — this round's two named checks first, with full work shown, then the standing exclusions re-verified:

- **"Ninety days to benefits changes the math." (line 71, repair site — named check 1): NOT an attempted comic item.** Interrogated under the strongest available comic reading — deadpan solvency triage appended to a de-fanged question ("That's not me being polite") — and the reading fails at mechanism, which is where inventory membership is decided: there is no turn, no incongruity, no reduction; the sentence supplies material grounds for the question that precedes it, and it is answered by a visible deferral ("That's tomorrow's phone call"). It is Asha's card register (hustle math, benefits clock, no mystique) doing informational work, and its dramatic effect is serious: a second independent working artist certifies the value of the offer June is about to refuse, which makes the refusal more expensive. Counting a grounds-sentence as a quip would misprice it. Effect on adjacent comic timing: none — item 20's turn completes at "She's serious." and the pallet-jack beat resets the ear before this transaction starts. For completeness against the charge's second prong: had it been an attempt, it would land in her blunt register, not as a portable quip — "the math" is bound to the benefits term the chapter prices at lines 9 and 65, and the syntax is dock-telegraphic, unshaped; but it is not an attempt, and it is not inventoried.
- **"Forty-nine five and written access pays invoices." (line 75, repair site — named check 2): NOT an attempted comic item.** The closer call, and it got the harder interrogation, because it has a comic-adjacent shape: consent to a career referral rendered entirely as invoice arithmetic, with a reductive edge ("pays invoices") where sentiment was available. Held against the inventoried Asha items to find the boundary: items 21, 23, and 24 each contain a visible incongruity or reversal (heat as décor; a job's best feature is shelter; forgiveness quoted at a rate). This sentence contains none — it is a reason, structurally parallel to the plainly earnest want that completes it ("Philly rent means I can have nights"), and inventorying one would force the other, which would misprice Asha's consent beat as a bit. Same class as the standing exclusion "a body on January 4, eight a.m.": trade diction, not an attempt. The charge's specific worry — a portable quip installed in place of the old abstraction — is negative on both prongs: detached from this offer, "written access pays invoices" is meaningless (portability fails on its own), and the compound-subject-singular-verb looseness is unworkshopped dock grammar; the replacement moved the line toward a materially checkable claim and away from polish. Not inventoried; nothing to score; nothing blocking.
- "A hundred fifty more for the wall share and a north window." (line 125, repair site — named check 3, exclusion half): not an attempt — an increment, a coined household term from June's own notebook (spoken at line 81, planted at line 11), and a spec, read aloud in an on-page act ("June read it off the right page"). Its only comedy relevance is adjacency to item 29, dispositioned under the special checks.
- Standing exclusions re-verified in the current text, grounds unchanged from round 8: Ruth's "This fall I noticed things. I kept them to myself and called it manners." / "Some of it was easier for me." (line 41) — confession, her 1/1 sharp construction, spent on self-implication. "June looked at the receipt so she wouldn't look at Ruth." (line 43) — stated motive, no joke. "The class is--" She stopped. "The class is the part that works." (line 43) — card-true fracture, earnest. Asha's "Send my name because I'm qualified. If you're trying to feel less bad, don't." (line 75) and June's "I did want to feel less bad." (line 77) — consent boundary and plain admission; the edge is ethical, not comic. "and it was the best part of the dish" (line 35) — earnest thesis material. "places where wanting had been scumbled over need" (line 99) — earnest inspection figure; craft-figure count holds at two (lines 13, 99). The "Okay. No chair." thread (line 97) — rupture pain left unopened. "The To field was still empty. She deleted it." (line 95) — the cost beat item 26 must not touch, and doesn't. "Torres." (103), "But." (111), "Okay. Tell me the counter." (123) — brisk elicitation, non-comic since the round-6 flattening. "I know. I want the wall anyway. It isn't about the program." (line 129) — the chapter's one unguarded want in dialogue, protected direct register, correctly outside the inventory. The printer catch (107), the dust rectangle (55), "She read it twice for typos" (149), the back-of-hand note (161), the plain "orange scarf bright in the stairwell" (23) — texture, not attempts.

DISTRIBUTION CHECKS:
- Density: 41 attempted items across ~3,100 words of a flag:reflective decision chapter — at the register's commitment (spark without volley; nothing runs longer than two comic turns). The repairs added zero items and removed zero, so the round-8 arithmetic stands unchanged. The comedy-free stretches remain the right ones: Ruth's confession (lines 39–45, excluding the mercy beat that ends it), the Vandercook/key-number confession frame (lines 109–123, carrying only dark item 28, which sharpens rather than relieves), and the study verification (lines 157–159).
- Source: character 36, character+situation 3 (items 6, 15, 19), situation 2 (items 25, 37), narrator-overlay 0. Overlay hunt re-run on every narration-borne item (1, 2, 3, 13, 18, 26, 37, 38, 41): each is June's focalized optical/arithmetic idiom doing scene work; none is a wit-layer painted over the scene.
- Mechanism variety: deadpan family 8 (items 3, 7, 8, 21, 23, 29, 31, 38 — distributed across June, Sam, Asha, and the narration); understatement 3 (5, 27, 33); deflation 3 (12, 36, 40); repetition-with-variation 3 (13, 32, 39); mock-precision 3 (1, 18, 41); literalization 2 (16, 28); reversal/priority-reveal 3 (11, 20, 37); the rest singletons (implied escalation, mutual-boundary, hospitality-deficit, flat correction, scope-limiting mercy, non-answer, hyperbole grounded literal, timing undercut, verbed negation, enumerated verdict, understatement-in-praise, metonymy, bathos, blank-equation payoff, rate-quoted forgiveness). Not MONOTONOUS: the deadpan share is the committed register, spread across four mouths and the narration, and no two adjacent items repeat a mechanism in the same mouth. A money-monotony check was run specifically because the repairs added two more money sentences to the Asha call: both are non-comic, so the comic money-deadpan count is unchanged; at the prose level the thickened money texture is card-mandated ("precise about money and materials"), and the Dialogue Doctor's invoice/itemize density ceiling is carried below as a comedy-adjacent caution, not a finding against this text.
- Emotion-displaced-into-logistics family: six comic instances (5, 9, 15, 16, 17, 35), unchanged; the two new Asha grounds-sentences operate in the same displacement register but are not comic items and do not raise the count. The card's mandated engine, each instance functionally distinct; nothing in the text names or rates the no-advice mode (tics ledger "achieved / fragile" re-verified). The family must not become Ch21's default engine.
- Sweetness (the special check — the Tasker loss): the loss chain re-walked link by link and still comedy-free at every link — GOOD in her own handwriting (lines 9, 77), "The job's good, Nia." (109), "I know. That's why this is hard." (117), "That's a worse offer." / "It is." (127–129), the receipt turned to "the Marchetti header, the faded total" (129), "I want the wall anyway" (129), the receipt folded into the notebook (155). The repairs sharpen rather than soften: "Ninety days to benefits changes the math" adds a second independent certification of the offer June refuses (Asha's, after Nia's spreadsheet), so the no costs more on the page, and no comic item touched the chain. The comic items nearest it (28, 29, 30) still each make the loss more expensive, not less. Item 39 re-tested as consolation: it is a cost (February = endurance). Not OVERSWEETENED.
- Cringe: none. No item plays to a generic workshop; nothing condescends to the O'Leary/Henry-at-60%/Morisaki reader; no art-world contempt; the one physical-comedy beat (13) is competence, not pratfall.

TRACKER / STANDING-CAUTION CHECKS (per the round-9 charge, verified mechanically and by read against the current text):
- "go get your clause" — ABSENT. "Clause" occurs at lines 9, 67, and 135, always as material fact; the quip does not exist.
- "listing of my dreams" — ABSENT ("dream" has zero hits chapter-wide); line 151 inverts the listing convention instead ("worse than described").
- Excess coat joke — CLEAN at the licensed pair (lines 83, 155); Ruth's buttoned coat (line 23) is a garment, not an instance; no third heat-as-apparel beat anywhere.
- Third "Noted" — NONE; exactly two (lines 53, 131), the deliberate cross-speaker mirror; spent.
- Repeated door joke — NONE; one door joke (line 63); line 19 is mechanical instruction, Sam's hip-opened door (line 55) is action.
- Third bare "I know" concession-opener — NONE; exactly two from June (lines 117, 129), non-adjacent, each followed by different content; Nia's "I know her invoices" (135) is a different object and function. The no-third-in-Ch21 watch stands.
- "not X. That's Y" template — one full instance (line 51); Asha's "That's not me being polite." (line 71) still opens the family and now resolves into the new grounds-sentence rather than a second shaped beat — the repair reduced, not raised, template pressure. Rest the shape in Ch21.
- "the math" as a spoken coin — now in two mouths (Asha line 71, Nia line 107), each use a distinct claim in opposite syntax; no third speaker (caution carried jointly with Dialogue Doctor round 14).
- Ruth sharp-line cap — 1/1, spent on the confession; "We know how to deliver a box" and "We have a car" re-ruled flat logistics with no image.
- Level family — plant (line 71) plus one varied callback (line 161); closed. Blue-dish tether — practical object, reversed into the Tuesday promise (line 35); compliant and transformed. FEB = coat — paid (155) and spent; boring-parts idiom spent (147); spoken-timestamp move single-use (139). Craft-figure ceiling — two (lines 13, 99); holds with margin.
- Ch19 inheritances — no stool-count joke (the chair move is blocking), no jar symbolism (the water jar is a literal paperweight, lines 7, 157); room/side/reach vocabulary rested. Ch18 ledger/debt narration figures — zero; every dollar is literal decision material required by the card. "I'm cargo" callback allowance — unused; still available once.

SPECIAL ROUND-9 CHECKS (per charge, dispositions indexed):
- Asha's "Ninety days to benefits changes the math" and "Forty-nine five and written access pays invoices" — neither attempts comedy; full adjudications in the excluded section. Both are material grounds in her blunt invoice/rate register; neither installs a portable quip (each is meaningless detached from this offer's priced terms) and neither is workshopped (dock-telegraphic and loose-grammar respectively). Their net effect on the comic inventory is zero items added, zero lost, and one sharpening: the Tasker loss now carries a second independent certification.
- June's wall-share wording — no comic timing flattened or made workshopped. The recital's one shaped close (item 29, "February is a blank line in my notebook.") still arrives last and still lands as a reading of the on-page "FEB = ." (line 11); the new sentence before it is the recital's least-shaped — an increment, a coined term, a spec — so the close's deadpan launches off a flatter runway than before, which helps it. The replaced "ten feet of wall" repetition carried no comic duty; the phrase's non-comic uses survive as spec (line 83) and photo (line 151). The nearest comic relatives of the recital's facts — item 21 ("the radiator is decorative") and item 37 (the worse-than-described reversal) — are intact and remain distinct transactions.
- Rebuild verification — all 41 round-8 items re-located verbatim at their cited lines in the current text and re-scored on read: no item dropped below funniness-2, none turned portable or workshopped by context change, and no new partial, portable, workshopped, oversweetened, or monotonous item was introduced by the repairs. The three changed sites contributed two non-comic grounds-sentences and one non-comic notation phrase.
- Standing cautions — all verified above; none breached.

VERDICT: **CLEAR**
All 41 items score funniness-2; sources are character/situation throughout with zero narrator-overlay; no item is portable in function and none fails the workshopped test after interrogation; mechanisms are varied across five mouths and the narration; and the latest repairs added no comic material, removed none, reduced template pressure at line 71, and sharpened the Tasker loss the comedy is forbidden to soften. Strongest item: 16 — "If the answer involves moving anything heavier than this, you have our number. That's not an opinion. That's a hand truck." — the chapter's engine (no advice, total help) compressed into equipment, priced by Ruth's flat "We have a car." and June's refusing "Noted." Weakest surviving item: 2 — "She had kept stepping back from paintings all fall as if the problem were viewing distance." — the quietest attempt in the inventory, surviving on self-knowledge in trade diction; any flatter and it exits the inventory as narration, which would cost nothing — its payoff at lines 157–159 is object-borne either way.

REVISION ORDERS:
None. No item scores funniness-1, reads portable in function, or fails the workshopped test; the two repaired Asha sentences and the repaired June counter phrase are non-comic and correctly so; no blocking finding exists in the current text. Forward obligations bind Ch21+, not this text: rest the "not X. That's Y" template; no third "Noted"; no third bare "I know" concession-opener from June; no third mouth for "the math" as a spoken coin; the invoice/itemize family is at density ceiling and must not become any speaker's comic default; no Asha card-sample recitation (the forgive-the-room coin stays retired; "pays invoices" and "I can have nights" now join her spent variations); coat, boring-parts, FEB-callback, and level families closed or spent; spoken-timestamp move single-use; the emotion-into-logistics family must not become Ch21's default engine. The chapter is committable on comedy.
