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

Stance note: the two codex audits for this chapter returned blanket CONFORMS/DIVERGE verdicts with zero revision orders, and two of their evidence quotes do not appear in the chapter as written (`You two take this wall and report back`, `I want a ruling` — the actual lines are "You two take this wall for me, please" and "Is the middle one crooked, or is it me?"). Their clean bills of health are not corroborating evidence; they are drifted quotes plus the agreement bias this audit exists to counteract. I audited the chapter text directly.

## 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, `"You think I'd hurt her."` — getting defensive: Ruth carefully 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 firing live: Ruth has just asked for an answer that isn't him, and his answer is to appoint himself the finder. She must correct him a second time: `"Make sure it belongs to her."`
- Ruth, `"And the class is your boss's class. Run out of your gallery."` — misunderstanding: her entire case is built on the false premise (boss/employee impropriety), which is the chapter's designed misread.
- June, `"I can answer that," June said. "We don't live together."` — saying the (cover-denting, asker-flattening) wrong thing to Ben's sincere question; `"Oh." Ben blinked.` is Ben absorbing it.
- Ben, `"Don't," Ben said.` after Mara reads `"Sublet"` aloud at him — defensive flick at meddling.

The sweep passes on volume — but note the distribution. Five of six instances belong to Theo or orbit the Ruth conversation. The rest of the cohort spends the chapter being reasonable, articulate, and emotionally intelligent, and Section 2 shows where that is a failure, not a virtue.

## Section 2 — Per major character

**Theo** — gets-wrong field: `"believes delay is kindness; believes being indispensable is the same as being loved."` — verdict: **OPERATED** (`"I'll find one."`; `"You think I'd hurt her."`; `"Etchings are in the back," ... before she'd asked anything`). However, two of his four live triggers were defused by instant clean insight rather than allowed to fire: at Vestibule, `Theo's fingers slid toward the edge of his pocket... This was not his wall. He folded the fingers back around the route card.` — trigger occurs, response is perfect self-management; at the bodega, `His mouth was already open to say it for her... "Two," he said. "Ask her first."` — the reflex is narrated and corrected inside the same sentence, then rewarded (`June gave him a look with one degree of surprise in it`). The chapter is structured as a test sequence Theo mostly passes; a man whose declared wrongness is mistaking indispensability for love should not go four-for-four on catching himself with one near-miss each. The chapter-specific pressure — wrong by routing what needs an independent answer — only truly lands in the Ruth walk.

**June** — gets-wrong field: `"mistakes being understood for being pitied; assumes choosing herself requires choosing alone."` — verdict: **TRIGGER-MISSED** (trigger: Priya reading her unasked — `"Did you eat? You came straight from work."` — and Theo's `"Ask her first"`, two beats of being seen/understood that should brush the pity wire; response was clean poise throughout: `"Sort of," June said.` ... `The clementine changed hands without ceremony.` and `"Coffee," she told the man. "Black. Separate." She paid from her own coat pocket, in singles`). Every June line in this chapter is a boundary executed flawlessly — `"I was going to start at the front," she said, and started at the front`; `"It's the only data"`; `She did not wait to be pointed anywhere.` The chapter pressure asked whether she is allowed ordinary friction; she is not. Her agency lines are legitimate, but the narration scores each one as a win, and her second field clause — choosing herself requires choosing alone — is visibly operating in `"Separate"` without anyone, June included, registering it as a wrongness rather than cool.

**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."` — the hide-protecting reflex stated live; and she needed Sam's shove to speak at all: `"Two blocks. Say it or let it go."`). Her factual wrongness (the impropriety frame) is on the page and matches the card's design (`Ruth does not know fake truth`). Caution, not a separate finding: her delivery is too uniformly surgical — `"who can she tell who isn't you?"`, `"Don't solve it on this block. That's the reflex I'm asking about."`, `"Make sure it belongs to her."`, `"I saw enough to be worried. Not enough to be right."` That is four aphorism-grade lines against a voice-card cap of `one sharp editorial line per appearance maximum`, and the last is her dialogue-spec example reproduced verbatim. Wrong-premised but rhetorically infallible is the competence default with a misread stapled on.

**Sam** — gets-wrong field: `"can push for naming before the named person is ready."` — verdict: **TRIGGER-MISSED** (trigger: the chapter is built around Sam pushing — `"Two blocks. Say it or let it go."` and the engineered pairing `"June. Walk with me. I want your eyes on those etchings, and Ruth's already told me I'm wrong."`; response was clean insight everywhere: the push works, Ruth speaks, the walk happens exactly as designed, and even the spatial moves are perfect — `"Stand here. Not symbolically. You can actually see all three from here."`). The narration awards Sam chess-master framing: `Sam did the thing Theo understood only after it was already in motion.` The chapter-specific pressure said Sam should pressure without becoming perfectly right about everything; Sam is perfectly right about everything. The declared wrongness — pushing before the person is ready — had its exact trigger on stage (was Ruth ready? was June willing to be collected?) and the chapter never asks.

**Priya** — gets-wrong field: `"care becomes control when she does not ask first."` — verdict: **OPERATED** in form, defanged in effect (`"I'm fine." / "I know. Your left knee keeps looking for a wall. Stool." Mara sat.` and the unasked clementine over June's `"Sort of"` / `"That means no."` — two refusals overridden without asking). But both overrides are rewarded instantly and framed as endearing competence. Worse, against the chapter pressure (Ben and Priya should show the moving-in blind spot, not cleanly diagnose themselves out of it), Priya delivers the diagnosis verbatim: `"He understands the rule. He just thinks if the numbers get clean enough, the rest becomes automatic."` That is a character articulating the chapter's thematic flaw with editorial precision — the competence default in its purest form. Meanwhile her own half of the move-in doubt (her NPC goal: `figure out whether moving in with Ben is desire or rent logic wearing a nicer coat`) is entirely absent; she is positioned solely as the perceiver, never the implicated.

**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."` — doing rent math out loud in an art space until Priya must absorb it: `"Put the phone down for one room."`). Caveat: his wall-to-wall ironic self-awareness (`"I know that's bad. The rent is less bad, which is how they get you."`, `"I made a note, not a floor plan. Important distinction."`, `"because the font needed help"`) pre-concedes every criticism, converting the flaw into cost-free comedy. He is wrong, but he is the in-house comedian of his own wrongness, which is the diagnose-yourself-out pattern the chapter pressure warned against. Borderline; the binding finding lives with Priya.

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

**Luis** — gets-wrong field: `"assumes silence communicates more than it does."` — verdict: **NO-TRIGGER**. His page presence is professional verdicts (`"It's the wall. The floor slopes. The painting's level."`) — competent-at-his-job, which the calibration note exempts. No scene asked his silence to carry a message that failed to arrive; Mara's translations go uncontested, but contesting them is her arc beat, not this chapter's. 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.` — a small public correction he must stand in).
- Theo / Vestibule crooked-painting reflex — **COSTUMED** (announced then resolved in-beat: `This was not his wall. He folded the fingers back around the route card.` — the wrongness never reaches the room).
- Theo / bodega order — **COSTUMED** (announced then resolved in-beat: `His mouth was already open to say it for her... "Two," he said. "Ask her first."` — and immediately rewarded with June's approving surprise).
- Theo / `"I'll find one"` and `"You think I'd hurt her"` — **FRICTION** (Ruth must redirect twice; the cost persists past the scene: `He had not found the name by the time she passed below street level.`). This is the chapter's one fully earned wrongness arc.
- Ruth / impropriety misread — **FRICTION**, mild (`Ruth said good night to everyone equally, which landed worse than being singled out.` — her speaking changes the evening's temperature; fuller cost deferred to Ch 11/20 per the card, acceptable).
- Priya / stool and clementine overrides — **COSTUMED** (refusals overridden and compliance immediate: `"I'm fine." ... Mara sat.` — control framed as charm, zero cost).
- Sam / the push and the placements — no instance to rule because no wrongness occurred; that absence is the finding.
- June / `"We don't live together"` — **COSTUMED** (Ben absorbs in one blink — `"Oh." ... "That's also data."` — and the narration awards June the point: `"It's the only data," June said, and went back to the lithograph.`).
- Ben / square-footage pacing — **FRICTION** (`"Put the phone down for one room," Priya said.`).
- Mara / `"Sublet"` — **FRICTION**, minimal (`"Don't," Ben said.` — rebuffed, drops it).

## Chapter verdict

`TOO-COMPETENT (4 findings)`

The sweep passes on Theo's back, and the Ruth walk is genuinely wrong-enough — but Sam is flawless with their declared flaw's trigger on stage, Priya diagnoses the chapter's theme aloud while her own doubt stays invisible, two of Theo's four triggers are defused by same-beat insight, and June is denied ordinary friction entirely. Weakest passing instance for the record: Mara's `"Sublet" / "Don't"` — two words of friction, immediately dropped.

## REVISION ORDERS

1. **Sam** — field: `"can push for naming before the named person is ready."` Beat: the engineered walk (`"June. Walk with me..."` / `"Two blocks. Say it or let it go."`). The push must misfire somewhere visible. Either Ruth's `good night to everyone equally` should land partly on Sam as a bill for being shoved, or one of Sam's two placements should be wrong (June moved to the "better" spot and not wanting to be moved, or the etching pretext clocked by June as a pretext and named dryly). Sam may still cause the Ruth–Theo conversation; Sam may not be retroactively right about every variable of it. Do not soften this into Sam being charmingly bossy — the cost is that arranging people has a price even when the arrangement works.

2. **Priya** — field: `"care becomes control when she does not ask first."` Beat: the Ben-diagnosis line and the two overrides. Cut or break `"He just thinks if the numbers get clean enough, the rest becomes automatic."` — no character gets to state the chapter's thesis about another character with editorial finish; replace with something partial, slightly off, or self-implicating (her own desire-vs-rent-logic doubt leaking sideways, e.g. answering Ben's listing data with conditions-talk that conspicuously dodges whether she *wants* the apartment). Additionally, one of the two unasked interventions (stool or clementine) must cost: Mara stung at having her knee managed in public, or the clementine going into June's pocket unpeeled where Priya can see it. Not both — one refusal that holds.

3. **Theo** — field: `"believes delay is kindness; believes being indispensable is the same as being loved."` Beat: the Vestibule pocket-fold and the bodega order — at least one must fire instead of being caught. Either he takes the actual step toward the crooked painting and Luis's `"It's the wall"` strands him mid-gesture in front of the sitter, or his mouth gets June's order out before the correction and June re-orders over him (`"Black. Separate."` doing double duty as a public override). The Ruth conversation lands harder on a man who did the thing twenty minutes ago than on a man who has been quietly acing self-restraint tests all evening. Keep `"Ask her first"` only if it follows a failure, not instead of one.

4. **June** — field: `"mistakes being understood for being pitied; assumes choosing herself requires choosing alone."` Beat: the clementine, or `"We don't live together."` Give her one ordinary wrong note the narration does not convert into a win: the clementine/being-read brushing the pity wire (a too-flat deflection Priya must absorb, per the field's first clause), or `"We don't live together"` registering — on June, on the page — as a degree sharper than Ben's open face deserved, with no chance to fix it before the scene moves. Her boundary lines stay; one of them must cost her some warmth she wanted. Do not make her flustered or quirky — the field specifies misreading care as pity and over-purchasing solitude, not clumsiness.
