# Chapter 22 Dialogue Doctor — Round 5 (post-Characters-Wrong repair batch, full cold re-sweep)

Scope: full current chapter (`output/chapters/chapter_22.md`), reread cold — the Characters-Wrong repair batch changed live dialogue, so nothing is carried on trust; round-4 clearances are re-verified against the current text, not cited in place of evidence. Repair boundary confirmed by snapshot diff: current text = `0041.after_characters_wrong_round1_repairs` (verified byte-identical to `0042`) plus exactly four changed lines from the `dialogue_diagnosis_preemptive_repair` (L101, L103, L105, L107). Manifest scenes: 01 (apartment, zero quoted utterances), 02 (Sonia's booth, now L27–165), 03 (sidewalk and walk home, now L169–191); the manifest spans (2–23, 26–153, 156–179) predate the repair batch's added material — scene identities unchanged, spans stale, flag for re-baseline. Exclusions applied before flagging: the single "Oh," June said (L127) remains the §6-sanctioned once-at-the-confession instance, licensed by the chapter card ("one possible 'Oh.' only if earned"); the two text bubbles (L9–11) and June's quoted unsent drafts (L15) are message content, not utterances — failure modes 1–7 do not attach; the ordinary-talk allowance is not needed, both required scenes are peak-pressure.

## REGISTER-REPAIR VERIFICATION (the four changed lines, L101–107)

The Characters-Wrong round-2 cross-audit flag ordered: move the accusation off the sentence and onto the plan, while preserving (a) the fired misread, (b) its multi-exchange survival uncorrected and uncertified, and (c) the unretracted cost at the meaner-line beat. Checked term by term:

1. **Accusation moved off the sentence — EXECUTED.** The flagged lines are gone: "That sounds prepared." → "That sounds like you made a plan for either answer." (L101); "It sounds like you brought the right sentence either way." → "You knew where to stand for either answer." (L105); "I brought one sentence," he said. "It was worse." → "I knew where to stand for one," he said. "It was worse." (L107). No line in the exchange now names, inventories, or rates a sentence. The accusation's object is contingency planning — conduct — and Theo's answer resolves "plan" as stance and logistics ("where to stand"), not as scripted speech. Full zero-tolerance ruling in the scene 02 block below.
2. **Fired misread preserved — EXECUTED.** June still mishears the measured reception of her most exposed disclosure ("If you were going, I'd hope it went well. Since you're staying, I'm glad. I don't want to make more of it than that." L99) as management: "That sounds like you made a plan for either answer." (L101). She is still wrong — "He looked up then. 'I didn't.'" (L103) — and the one plan he admits to was for the outcome he dreaded (L107), which the reader can verify against the completed crates offer at L83: his prepared stance for the going-answer, watched on the page twenty lines earlier.
3. **Multi-exchange survival, uncorrected, uncertified — EXECUTED.** The misread runs L101–109: accusation, denial, doubled-down sharper accusation, costly admission, then the exchange dies ("The waitress refilled them both without asking." L109) and only resumes because Theo changes the subject ("Theo turned his cup once. 'I looked at your week-six canvas Thursday night.'" L111). No one certifies the exchange; no correctness grade was reintroduced anywhere in the repair zone.
4. **Unretracted cost preserved — EXECUTED.** "June watched the coffee climb the cup and let her own line sit there, meaner than she had meant it, because taking it back would make him comfort her." (L109) — verbatim-intact; the refusal to retract still is the flaw operating a second time.

The repair also has an unearned dividend worth naming: "where to stand" is June's own private frame from scene 01 — "Theo giving himself somewhere to stand if she said no" (L13) — so the accusation now fires in vocabulary the reader has already watched her build. The misread has a root on the page instead of arriving as free-floating suspicion.

Round-4 housekeeping item (a) is also executed in the current text: "He moved the sugar caddy beside the napkin holder and left the slip under her cash." (L151) — the fossil "back" is deleted.

## SCENE 01 / apartment (L3–23) — note, not a required block

Zero quoted utterances; modes 1–7 do not attach (manifest: not-required). The repair batch did not touch this scene; §2 zero-tolerance re-swept on the current text anyway. "The first draft was *We should probably talk, yes*, which looked like a dentist's reminder. *Fine* was meaner than she felt." (L15) — June's own unsent drafts, on screen verbatim, deleted before any exchange exists; no delivered speech is captioned, no other speaker's language is rated, and the perceptiveness resolves into action ("she held her thumb down until it disappeared" / "Then she wrote what she meant." L15–17). "the exit installed before she'd even reached for the door" (L13) reads the second text's function and motive, not its phrasing. Cleared.

## SCENE 02 / Sonia's booth (L27–165)

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — full scene reread with attributions covered. June compresses and sets terms ("Week what?" L49; "Leave the jar. I might want clean water. The stain stays." L161); Theo runs practical-to-emotional at length, facts first ("Boss was true. Odile is my aunt. My job runs through her. So does my apartment. So does that classroom." L45). The repaired zone holds the separation: June's four pressure lines are compressed imperatives and exact accusations ("Don't be useful right now," L85; "Don't make that useful either." L91; L101; L105) — her card's stress spec ("quieter, funnier, more exact") minus the funny, correctly, because the misread is firing; Theo's crates offer is his card's object vocabulary escalating uncaught ("crates… Freight elevator at eight… Sam, or downstairs, or--" L83). Strongest counter-candidate: "I didn't." (L103) and "It was worse." (L107) — June-shaped brevity in Theo's mouth, twice in four lines. Survives: his card commits him to "qualifies when guilty, then forces himself plain," and L107 executes exactly that sequence in one line (qualifying admission, then two plain words); the terseness is the terminal phase of his own arc, not her rhythm borrowed — and his echo of "where to stand" is answering her accusation in her terms, ordinary conversational uptake, while the surrounding architecture (the L83 run-on, the L99 three-part measured reply) stays his.

2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN — long confession blocks against one-word replies, then inverted (June's seven-week accounting at L57 against "Yes," he said, L59); no interrogative chain anywhere. The repaired misread run is statement/denial/statement/admission — not Q/A at all — with asymmetric weights (accusation, two words, accusation, admission-plus-cost) and it terminates in a stall rather than a return. The crates run breaks rhythm by design: his sentence does not end (the dash at L83), hers cuts it, his apology is rebuked, and the plain question arrives late ("I'm asking. Are you going?" L93). Strongest counter-candidate: "Week what?" / "Three." / "Three." (L49–53) — survives because June repeats the number as arithmetic and immediately expands into the scene's longest speech.

3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — June's mind present at every hinge: the observed catalog with "She filed that away without knowing yet what it was for" (L73); "She watched him nearly do it anyway, nearly tell her she'd had no way to know" (L81); "He had made the blank into a prize. It cost her a second to answer." (L117); the week-three arithmetic after "Oh," (L129). The two repair-zone candidates tested as priority: (a) the crates stall — her perception marks the dead time and its cost ("He stopped with his mouth still a little open. The coffee between them had stopped steaming." L87); (b) the misread run L101–107 — four bare dialogue turns, then L109 lands the full register in one sentence: what she watched (coffee climbing the cup), her verdict on her own line ("meaner than she had meant it"), and the reason she will not pay the bill ("taking it back would make him comfort her"). Four turns of darkness resolved by an orienting sentence that arrives with the silence it explains is rhythm, not absence; a cold reader exits the beat knowing exactly what it cost and who is carrying it.

4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "Can I ask what happens now?" (L83) — a genuine question that Theo himself buries under logistics before June can answer; the failure is his and in-character (the ordered uncaught misfire), and he re-asks it stripped at L93 ("I'm asking. Are you going?"), where it gets a factual answer. June's L101/L105 are accusations delivered as statements, not positions disguised as questions — no portent-question anywhere. "Did you paint my face?" (L131), "What?" (L123), "And?" (L113) are information-seeking and get factual answers.

5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN — the scene's clipped stretches carry earned starkness: the crates stall's silence is marked with its cost (cold coffee, L87) and its cause is on the page (his run-on, her cut); "Did you paint my face?" / "Not the part I didn't see." / "Tell me nothing else." / "Okay." (L131–137) — starkness is the content, June is demanding less information; palms flat on the Formica "nowhere near her" (L125). The payment beat re-verified post-housekeeping: "He moved the sugar caddy beside the napkin holder and left the slip under her cash." (L151) — with "back" deleted, the round-4 counter-candidate is gone entirely; the clause is now plain object action with a single reading. Strongest remaining counter-candidate: "I didn't." (L103) as a full paragraph — two words, no attribution beat except "He looked up then." Survives: the look is the marked action (first eye contact since L93's looked-at-the-table), the brevity is a man declining to defend himself against a wrong charge, and the next line shows what the compression withheld (the admission cost him a longer sentence at L107).

6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN — the round-1 noun ceiling holds: the cluster "Nia… Asha… Dana's room… Kessler… W-9" (L97) is verbatim-stable, every noun attached to a completed action, with Tasker and Dana pre-weighted in scene 01 (L5). The repair added exactly one name: "Or I could leave them with Sam" (L83) — Sam is an established cohort member (on page in chapters 06 and 16), and the line's apposition ("with Sam, or downstairs") makes the weight parseable in place: a person crates can be left with. No world-term arrives untranslated; bills, slip, caddy, crates, freight elevator are furniture and logistics; "umber" (L159) is anchored to the visible stain.

7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — the repaired runs lock throughout: L85 "June said"; L89 "he said"; L91 unattributed but locked by alternation and by content (it re-rebukes the apology, echoing her own L85); L99 "he said"; L101 unattributed, locked by alternation and aim (second-person accusation at the man who just spoke); L103 "He looked up"; L105 unattributed, same locks plus her own repeated "for either answer"; L107 "he said". Standing watch note re-verified, not worsened: "'I said no to Tasker Friday morning.' He went still, cup halfway back to the table." (L95) — June's line shares a paragraph with Theo's reaction beat; survives because the preceding line is his question ("Are you going?" L93), only June can refuse Tasker, and L97 re-anchors with "she said." Do not let another speaker's beat open that paragraph in any future touch.

FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — full cut-list sweep with the four new lines as priority candidates, work shown. (a) "That sounds like you made a plan for either answer." (L101) — functional accusation, eleven speakable words, exists to be wrong, earns a denial rather than a capper. Not an aphorism-delivery exchange. (b) "You knew where to stand for either answer." (L105) — the doubling-down; repeats her own phrase under pressure, which is overheard-speech behavior (Rule 7 cuts toward it, not against). (c) The hard one: "I knew where to stand for one," he said. "It was worse." (L107) — the parallel structure plus the two-word landing is the exchange's one quotable-adjacent shape, and its predecessor ("I brought one sentence… It was worse.") was the Characters-Wrong round-2 weakest instance precisely for flirting with converting June's cold turn back into banter. Tested against the cut-list zinger bullet (a line arriving when the character should be ashamed): it survives, on three grounds — the content is the shame (he admits he only rehearsed losing her; the reader can check the claim against L83), the two-word coda is his card's forced-plain terminal phase and not wit (nobody smiles, nothing lightens), and structurally it fails to restore the conversation: the exchange dies into the refill and the unretracted line (L109), and Theo has to restart the scene himself at L111. A successful zinger buys rhythm back; this line buys nothing. (d) "Don't make that useful either." (L91) — quotable-adjacent but functional: it names what the apology is doing and stops it; the reply it earns is a man looking at the table. Carried candidates re-checked and standing: "if we're dating things now" (L79) — deflection visible as deflection, followed by a sentence that fails to finish; "I had the fact that would have changed what you could say yes to. I kept it." (L45); "I'd been walking past it for a month like it was going to file a complaint." (L111) — self-aimed, immediately un-deflected by "I read it wrong." (L115), and it is doing repair labor (his cost-bearing restart after the stall he did not cause); "It isn't evidence of anything and it doesn't fix anything." (L125) — anti-grand-gesture function per the chapter card; "Just coffee means I buy the coffee." (L149) — term-literalism enforcing her own L19 text, answered by an action, not a returned capper; "It won't, though," she said, aggrieved (L165) — her card's compliment-as-grievance care move. Chapter card's dialogue risk ("plainness over eloquence") holds: the emotional peaks are all plain lines — "I'm staying, Theo. It isn't for you." (L97); "I'm asking. Are you going?" (L93).

DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS (reading guide §2 and §6, zero tolerance): CLEAN — this is the criterion the repair existed to satisfy, so the full chapter was swept, not just the four lines. The repair zone first: "That sounds like you made a plan for either answer." (L101) — the strongest candidate in the chapter and the one a lazy pass would flag on the word "sounds." It clears, and here is the work: the banned category is commentary on "language, phrasing, rhythm, or delivery" — calling a sentence careful, rehearsed, lawyerly. The deleted version did exactly that ("That sounds prepared." rated the utterance; "you brought the right sentence either way" inventoried sentences by name). The current line's predicate is "made a plan for either answer" — an accusation of contingency conduct, in Theo's own native register of logistics, and the exchange resolves it as conduct: his denial and admission are about stances and plans ("I knew where to stand for one"), never about how anything was said, and the referent the reader checks it against is a physical plan already performed on the page (crates, freight elevator, Sam — L83). Nothing in L101–107 characterizes any utterance. Second candidate, narration: "let her own line sit there, meaner than she had meant it" (L109) — clears: "meaner" grades her conduct toward Theo (what the line did to him), not the sentence's craft or delivery, and the cut-list's silence bullet affirmatively requires the focalizer to register what a loaded line cost — this is that registration, and it converts immediately into the flaw's next operation (the refusal to retract, with its reason). Carried clearances re-verified on current text: "I keep wanting to make it sound cleaner." (L67) — the naming is the event; the wrong being confessed IS narrative management ("I was deciding what you got to know," L67), he rates no delivered sentence, and June's "Don't." (L69) converts it to action, after which the unpolished version arrives (L71); "I called it taking care of you because that sounded better." (L71) — same carve-out, past framing as the confessed act; "That's the part you need in the right order." (L97) — sequences facts, not phrasing; "She made herself finish." (L97) — effort of completing an act, not a characterization of the sentence; "He did not say anything, so she kept the canvas between them instead of softening it." (L119) — at the line, not over it; "Keep doing the quiet version." (L153) — grades conduct with a concrete referent (the unread six things L63, the completed-then-killed offer L83–85, the un-contested check L151). Conduct-grade count post-repair: two ("Good." L65; "Good… Keep doing the quiet version." L153) — down from round 4's three, "That's the right amount" deleted per the Characters-Wrong order; the Characters-Wrong round-2 warning (no new correctness certificates) is honored: none added.

INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — tested in both directions on the repair zone. The misread run is not over-stripped (mode 3 above: L109 orients with the cost, the reason, and the flaw), and it is not double-explained: the narration never names the misread as a misread — the reader learns June is wrong only from Theo's denial, his admission, and her own "meaner than she had meant it," which is her lived relationship to the exchange, not a caption of it. The crates stall reserves its meaning for June's spoken rebukes; the narration gives only objects (open mouth, dead steam). Carried sites re-verified: "He had made the blank into a prize." (L117) orients in her register before her spoken correction ("It's a portrait, Theo."); the week-three arithmetic (L129) returns her to the object ("She looked at her cup on the old coffee ring."); the payment beat's spareness remains the round-3 ordered design with June owning its meaning on the page (L153, then the confusing-receipt integration at L155).

NO-SECOND-RUPTURE / CONTAINMENT (reading guide §6, checked because the task ordered it): the new friction stays inside the booth and inside the morning — no exit, no new secret, no reversal; the exchange is absorbed by L111's restart without being laundered (no apology, no certificate), and every downstream beat still lands: the portrait terms (L139–145), the payment (L147–153), the stain terms (L157–161), the kiss (L177), "That happened because the terms are set" (L179), Tuesday at four (L183). Not a rupture; a cost that stays paid. And it is not therapy speech: no feeling is named, no one processes aloud — the entire quarrel is conducted in plans, stances, and coffee.

## SCENE 03 / sidewalk and walk home (L169–191)

Verbatim-unchanged by both repairs (snapshot diff confirms no line past L107 differs from the round-2-verified text except line position); re-verified cold rather than carried.

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — Theo over-explains recursively ("my plan was nothing. My whole plan was to do nothing and let it be your call." L171); June answers in compressed imperatives ("Tuesday. Four. Bring nothing." L183). Strongest counter-candidate: "I know the difference now," Theo said (L181) — short and June-adjacent, but the qualifying second half ("I learned it this morning, but I know it") is his careful-apology cadence, not hers.
2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN — no interrogatives; the kiss block breaks any volley pattern; the Tuesday-setting consolidation ("Bring nothing," L183) adds a new term over L119 and L157 — overheard-speech consolidation, not composed repetition (Rule 7 cuts the other way).
3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — densest interiority in the chapter: the memorized order ("black with three sugars, the single inefficient thing in his entire operation," L175) and "he tasted like too much sugar, which she had known he would and had not known she knew" (L177).
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — no spoken questions in the scene.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN — the one weighted silence (the kiss) is marked with its meaning: "His hands stayed in his pockets the whole time." (L177) — consent information; the cut-list's requirement that silence register what it carries is satisfied.
6. JARGON-TRADING: CLEAN — nothing traded; "Tuesday. Four." is a held fact from L119/L157.
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — six spoken turns, four attributed, two locked by adjacency and content.

FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "That happened because the terms are set," she said. "Not instead of them." (L179) — quotable, but protected direct register: a fact about her own action, structurally required by the earned-stay test (§8), and Theo declines to match its sharpness ("I learned it this morning, but I know it" admits recency instead of returning a beat). "It does. I stocked it in October." plus the wince and her first laugh (L185–187) — self-incrimination repaired in-scene; warmth floor holds. Note that scene 02's misread gives L171 retroactive weight: "my plan was nothing" is now the third data point in the plan ledger (a plan for her going, L107; none for her staying, L103; none for her silence, L171) — the scenes corroborate each other without any line saying so.

DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS (§2, zero tolerance): CLEAN — "Thank you for the nine o'clock… And the just coffee. I mean it." (L171) thanks the terms' content, not their phrasing; "I know," June said. "You put it in the second text." (L173) is factual citation of what he sent, and it quietly resolves scene 01's open question without narrating speech; no narration about language anywhere in the scene.

INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — interiority reacts (the sugar she "had not known she knew") rather than explaining the kiss twice; the closing index card (`TUES = 4:00 / jar stays / I turn it or it doesn't turn`, L189) renders the terms as object, not summary.

REVISION ORDERS:

None. The register repair executed all three preservation terms of the Characters-Wrong cross-audit flag while removing every sentence-rating line; the four new lines clear the zero-tolerance rule with the work shown above; no scene block carries a FAIL.

Housekeeping (non-blocking, for the orchestrator, not a rewriter): (a) the dialogue scene manifest's spans for chapter 22 (2–23, 26–153, 156–179) are stale against the current text (3–23, 27–165, 169–191 by this read) — re-baseline before the next triggered audit; (b) round 4's housekeeping item (a) (delete "back" at the caddy line) is confirmed executed at L151 — no action remains; (c) round 4's item (b) stands: the Comedy Doctor inventory still predates the Positive Prose, round-3, and Characters-Wrong repairs and needs a re-baseline pass before Ch22 is marked committable on comedy — note additionally for that pass that the deflecting-tag family has dropped to four (the old "correct level of involvement" member was deleted by the Characters-Wrong repair) and conduct-grades to two; (d) standing attribution watch note at L95 (June's line + Theo's beat sharing a paragraph) — safe as-is, do not let another speaker's beat open that paragraph.

OVERALL: CLEAN
