"Yes please."

Hug. "I don't think you're crazy. I bet I won't either, I bet you're weird and fun and possibly kind of depressing and I bet a lot of people think that adds up to crazy but I don't, I promise."

"...We'll see." But her doubts don't stop her from leaning into hug.

Well, she certainly doesn't call her crazy, or act like she thinks it, at any time over the next few weeks. In fact, Idaia's actions pretty consistently support Daphne's proposed alternate hypothesis. She joins an archery club (which she is surprisingly good at) and a krav maga group (which she is scarily focused at) and listens to music in a vaguely maudlin fashion (Daphne hadn't even known it was possible to listen to some of those songs without dancing at least a little, let alone in a maudlin fashion). Once she starts crying when Daphne starts singing along, and waves her off with "you reminded me of something" when she stops in alarm.

And one night a few weeks in Daphne wakes up in the middle of the night to a room at subzero temperatures.

Idaia's curled up and whimpering, and her lips and cheeks are blue and she looks like she's been cold for longer than the few moments since the temperature in the room plummeted.

Shit. Okay, get the door open--whatever malfunction of the heating system caused this is only in their room apparently, good, she doesn't have to drag her out of the building--she hoists her roommate bodily, blankets and all, with some slight difficulty but not as much as one might expect from someone carrying an all-but-full-grown woman. Daphne's stronger than she looks. Out into the hallway--she's freezing, what the hell, the room wasn't that cold for very long--and then Idaia's stirring in her arms and the cold recedes a little and by the time she's gotten her to the floor lounge where there's a couch she can dump her she's basically awake and basically a temperature that doesn't have Daphne afraid for her life.

"What..."

"Something happened with our thermostat, I woke almost immediately--I think I did anyway, but you were way worse affected than me--I was scared--it was below freezing in there, one or both of us could have died if I didn't wake up, I don't know how you slept through it."

"I have reasons. I don't think you're likely to start being able to sleep through that, just wake me up if it happens again and we'll be fine."

"It had better not happen again. But I don't think it will, I haven't heard anyone else complaining about something like that happening."

She shrugs. "Just in case."

"Fair enough, I guess. I'm going to go back and fetch some more bedding, and probably shut the door--the problem seems to be isolated to our room, no point in chilling the rest of the building if we can help it."

But when she goes back the room is barely chilly. Whatever malfunction of thermostat occurred appears to have departed as swiftly as it arrived. She comes back and reports this. "I'd rather stay out here the rest of the night, though, just in case."

"I don't expect that to help anything in particular, but if it makes you feel better."

"If you're going back I will, since I'm the one who's likely to wake up and get us both out of there, but yes, I'd rather."

"Okay." She doesn't have a hard time falling back asleep on the couch.

Daphne reports the incident to Residence Life, who find absolutely nothing weird about their room's heating or ventilation or anything like that. She decides she's confident enough to go back to sleeping there, and doesn't exactly forget about the incident--it was pretty memorable--but moves on without issue. Her roommate continues to be endearingly weird and periodically depressing, she learns more about the kinds of things she enjoys doing with college-related freedom (these include sex. She always insists on going back to the other person's room, when that happens, because sock on the knob or not it would feel wrong to risk being caught en flagrante by her underage roommate) and socializes and makes friends of varying levels of closeness.

And then about a month later it happens again.

"S-sorry," Idaia chatters once she's been dragged from the room again.

"I'm not sure how you're imagining this could conceivably be your fault. This is really weird, this has happened twice now and I don't think I've heard of it happening at all anywhere else on campus, maybe I should ask some people--I'm really not sure how you get that dramatic a temperature change in the first place--I'm going to make Residence Life look at our room again."

"If you really want to I won't stop you," she sighs.

"This has happened twice now, and only in our room, it can't be a coincidence."

"I don't think it's a coincidence but I also don't really think it's worth bothering Residence Life over, especially since they didn't find anything last time."

"You seem weirdly vulnerable to this. I don't want you to get hurt."

"Lots of people have wanted me not to get hurt, and it hasn't done me a bit of damn good so far," she snaps.

"I'm sorry you've been hurt. I mean it. And I'll listen if you want me to and mind my own business if you don't. But you can't just stop taking care of yourself because you've been hurt in the past."

"I said I won't stop you."