# Regression-to-the-Mean / Genericization Audit — Chapter 20, "No Advice / Keys Here" — Round 3 (post round-2 repair)

Diffed: `output/drafts/claude/chapter_20.round_01.md` (pre-revision provenance) against `output/chapters/chapter_20.md` (current, after the round-2 repair). The order in force for this round was single: round-2 order 1 (restore the decorative radiator to Asha's terms turn). Mechanical gate on the current text: 0 open findings, 23 WATCH (non-blocking); none of the WATCH rows touches the repaired line. Method: verify the round-2 order against the current text; verify by line-reference collation that the repair batch changed nothing else (every passage round 2 quoted with a line number was re-checked at that line — all match verbatim, at unchanged line numbers, so the textual delta since round 2 is the one inserted clause); then a full paragraph-aligned re-diff of draft against current, restricted per scope to losses not already adjudicated in rounds 1 and 2, with each residual unadjudicated diff cleared or flagged explicitly rather than left to implication.

**Round-2 disposition first: the single order is executed verbatim.** Current line 83: `"Back room's yours, ten feet of wall in front, north light steady most of the day, and the radiator is decorative. Wear the coat inside until February."` — the exact phrasing the order supplied. Collateral checks on the insertion, since a repair can introduce its own defects: (a) the Tasker/Ridgewood radiator contrast Comedy round 2 R3 reserved is re-armed and correctly paired — `radiators that worked` (line 9) against `the radiator is decorative` (line 83), two instances, no third; (b) the coat pair stays licensed — `Wear the coat inside until February` (line 83) and `FEB = coat` (line 155), with the draft's topper `In February, also wear the coat` still out under the Comedy R10 coat-instance cap round 2 already documented; (c) physical consistency holds across all three heat facts — decorative radiator (83), `The $340 room barely held heat` (99), June's flat `"no real heat"` counter to Nia (125), no contradiction; (d) the clause adds no light-image (the round-2-cleared `north light steady most of the day` was already present) and no doublet, and it restores a concrete physical fact in Asha's dock-blunt pricing register — the opposite of fade.

---

## 1. Concrete details — HELD

No particular became a generality this round; the only textual change restores one. Riskiest diff re-examined: the terms turn itself (line 83) — I checked whether the insertion displaced or loosened any adjacent specific. It did not: `$980 all in with the wall, by December 10`, `Key handoff January 2`, `W-9 by the 15th`, `January 4, eight a.m., three weeks minimum, maybe a fourth`, `invoice the 25th, net-45`, `money in March` all survive around it, and the turn still lands on `can you get from here to March?`. Full-chapter sweep of the dollar/date/clock inventory against the draft: every figure survives or was corrected on grounds rounds 1–2 documented ($49,500, $4,125, $3,150, $1,180, $32/hr, $3,840, $340, +$150, $490, $1,475, $2,643, $980; Dec 4 noon, Dec 10, Dec 15, Jan 2, Jan 4 8 a.m., Jan 25/net-45/March, Jan 31 twice in the landlord email, 9:52, 10:40 twice, 4:05, 6:10, 10:52 spoken and echoed, 11:14, 11:20, paragraph 14, twenty-nine days/thirty-one days). The Chelsea-office reroute holds at all three sites (lines 11, 84, 161). One residual unadjudicated diff belongs here and is cleared: draft `She did the rest before it could cool` → current `She did the rest before noon` (line 145) — a warm little metaphor traded for the chapter's actual clock, in a chapter whose packet binds "Time must stay visible"; that is specificity gained, not lost.

## 2. Images and figuration — HELD

The repair added no image and smoothed none. Riskiest diff re-examined: whether `and the radiator is decorative` collides with the retained `north light steady most of the day` to make the list read stock — it does not; both are trade facts in Asha's rate-and-terms register, not figuration. The chapter's licensed figures are intact and unchanged since round 2: the stepping-back-from-paintings figure (line 13), `wanting had been scumbled over need` (line 99), the glaze `gray-green at the rim if the light came from the left` (line 5), `flat gray light across ten feet of empty wall` (line 151), `foreshortened hard, the near edge left steep` (line 159). Residual unadjudicated diff cleared: draft `an apartment whose lease died January 31` → current `whose lease ended January 31 whether she decided anything or not` (line 11) — the mild personification is gone but the value-bearing half of the draft sentence (the lease ends regardless of her deciding) survives verbatim; not a loss of a scene-grown image.

## 3. Character texture — HELD

Nothing flattened this round; the restored clause thickens Asha — her terms turn again prices the room honestly downward mid-pitch, which is her card's exact register ("names rates, offers practical warnings without dressing them up") and the anti-"functional plot door" evidence the packet demands. The round-1 restorations all still stand at their round-2 line numbers: June's daylight test with `If Tuesdays ended, if Theo never called` (line 99, matching the continuity ledger's committed description), Ruth's `"Some of it was easier for me."` (line 41, S-RUTH-01), Nia's `"I didn't put the studio clause in to sweeten it. I meant it."` (line 135, the packet's no-strawman evidence). Riskiest residual diffs, both cleared under criterion 6: draft `question mark, because she was a painter and not a payroll department` → current `question mark` (line 9), and draft `NEW YORK, which was a grand heading for what was under it` → current `NEW YORK` (line 11) — both are self-aimed quips in narration, and the packet's prose stance for this chapter is explicit ("June plain, less jokey, precise about money and materials"); the uncertainty the first joke decorated survives as the question mark itself, and the second's deflation survives as the figures and `FEB = .` The cuts execute an instruction; the particulars they carried were tonal, not factual.

## 4. Dialogue particularity — HELD

This is the category the round-2 defect lived in, and the repair closes it: Asha's terms turn again contains the protected joke, flanked by her retained coat instruction, and her call still holds its adjudicated shape (door line at 63 as the one door joke, consent boundary at 75, `Cheap enough to forgive` at 87, hang-up mid-word at 89). Residual unadjudicated diffs, each cleared with its ground rather than by silence:

- Draft Ruth: `"We don't have one," Ruth said. "We have a car."` → current `"We have a car," Ruth said.` (line 49). The antithesis half is out, but its content — we have no opinion, only logistics — is carried one line later by Sam's restored `"That's not an opinion. That's a hand truck."`; keeping both would double the refusal-of-opinion construction inside four lines, and Ruth's one-editorial-sharp-line cap (style_and_voice, Ruth card) is already spent on the confession, per the same Comedy R5 logic round 2 verified for her `Two minutes` line. Clear.
- Draft June to Nia: `"You told me once you were offering work, not absolution... I'm declining work, not you."` → current `"It isn't about the program. If the program ever needs freelance install, I itemize and I'm fast."` (line 129). The callback is a real loss of reread texture, but the replacement is a polished not-X-but-Y antithesis away from June's one licensed polished construction in the call (the column line, immediately preceding), under the same one-per-side cap accounting round 2 used to adjudicate `Buy a ticket like a civilian` and `Go do your worse offer`; the functional payload (the no is not a judgment of the program; the relationship stays professional) survives in plainer form. Clear.
- Draft June: `"I'll come to the opening and stand too close to the work. It's my one move."` → current `"I will."` (line 137). A self-aimed joke cut at the call's close — exactly the exit-run topper accumulation Dialogue Doctor round 2 ordered thinned on this call (the ground round 2 cited for withholding Nia's sendoff). Clear.
- Draft Asha: `"Those are different transactions."` → current `"If you're trying to feel less bad, don't."` (line 75); and draft's `no gap at all` delivery caption cut. The current line is blunter and shorter — Asha's card mass is "short, information-bearing" — and the caption characterized delivery, the zero-tolerance family. Clear; the current line is arguably the more Asha of the two.
- Draft text-message tail `Go get your clause.` cut (line 147): the clause has already been named three times in the chapter (lines 65, 69, 135); a fourth spend is clause-fatigue, and the retained message carries every instruction. Clear.

## 5. Inflation accompanying the fade — HELD

There is no fade this round to compensate, and the one addition is deflationary by construction: `the radiator is decorative` prices the room down in the middle of the pitch. I swept the current text once more for significance language against the draft: the draft's genuine inflation stays cut (the post-call essay `Nobody, ever again... In the brochure that had looked like the benefit`; `the version of herself she hadn't met yet`), replaced by the receipt squared to the table edge (line 141) and `the numbers did not improve` (line 99). Riskiest candidate re-examined: `"I know. That's why this is hard."` (line 117) — unchanged since its round-1 clearance, allowed plainness attached to a named clause. Nothing anywhere restates stakes bigger.

## 6. Legitimate edits are not regression — HELD (screen applied; conflicts re-verified)

Every intentionally-withheld draft element adjacent to the repaired line was re-checked against the order alleged to block it, because restoring the radiator could have voided a neighboring justification. None is voided: `In February, also wear the coat` (Comedy R10 coat pair — the pair is now line 83 + line 155, and a third instance is still the coin); `the north window's honest light` (motif cap, allowance spent at lines 5 and 151); `the voice she used for load-ins` (dialogue-diagnosis zero tolerance); `Especially the stupid crating` doubling (DD 4b planed, instruction retained at line 87); `I have to go be a door again` / `That's the listing of my dreams` (DD 4b, one door joke and no topper — opener at line 63 holds the license). The residual clears enumerated in categories 1–4 above (payroll-department quip, grand-heading gloss, Ruth's antithesis, the absolution callback, the one-move topper, `before it could cool`, `Go get your clause`, `no gap at all`, `the way busy people do`, `**Sam Rivera:**` → `Sam:`) each trace to a packet instruction, a documented cap, or a re-housed payload — none is a bare-diff flag and none leaves a fact stranded. Continuity spot-check: the chapter still performs every beat its ch20 ledger block records (10:40 call, the Theo-independent test, FEB = coat, index card, hand-note), and June's `Said no at 10:52` (line 147) still has its spoken source at line 139. No lost specific is load-bearing in Ch21–24 targets; the Ch23 follow-through obligations (S-NY-01) rest on facts all present in the current text.

---

## Focused extra checks

- **Earned-stay proof:** unchanged since round 2 and still on the page — the test at line 99 separates Ridgewood from Theo/Tuesdays in material terms, and the restored radiator actually sharpens its price (the room June chooses is now explicitly the one with the decorative radiator). No choose-yourself vocabulary anywhere in the current text.
- **Asha as real alternative:** the round-2 defect was the last thing pulling her toward a functional door; with it repaired, her turn holds consent boundary, exact deposit math, the protected joke, the coat instruction, and the anchor line `Cheap enough to forgive`. Fully character-specific.
- **Repair-batch over-polish:** the inserted clause is draft language already adjudicated funny-and-literal by the comedy tracker; it introduces no new polish, no banned pattern (`premise/patterns/reading_guide_bans.tsv` has no radiator-adjacent row), and the gate remains at 0 open findings.
- **Unresolved orders:** none. All twelve round-1 orders remain in their round-2-verified state; the single round-2 order is executed verbatim; no order from any round is outstanding.

## REVISION ORDERS

None. No instance was flagged in any category this round; no compensating-inflation strips are required (category 5 held). The genericization thread on chapter 20 is closed unless a later pass touches the text again.

**OVERALL: HELD**
