The week settled into a steady, professional quiet. I left the packet alone each morning long enough to know I could; then I went to the studio and did the work that doesn't leave fingerprints on a story — intake, QC, small frictions taken out of a line.
In the evenings I checked the hygrometer, read the Temporary Custody line again — no copying, no publication, return on demand — and did nothing that would quarrel with it. Handling stayed conservation-light: sleeves, four-flap, no ink in the same room. I added two dull sentences to my private catalogue and closed the book before I could be tempted to write anything clever.
The weekend belonged to the thing I could do without touching a key: stewardship. I swapped out the cheap hygrometer for a better one, replaced the silica, and cut a second four-flap so I had sacrificial housing if the first ever failed. Under a low lamp I confirmed what I already knew: no watermark I could coax from the paper without doing something the paper wouldn't forgive. The graphite numerals were firm; the fold-memory I'd eased on Thursday hadn't drifted back.
I wrote structure, not sentences. A single sheet headed Pressure Map — just the categories the pencil had enforced, nothing that would teach a thief how to carry it away: Ceremony → omit. Quotations → space. Domestic particulars → compress. Ministerial dependence → omit. Party complexion via Household → omit; assent.
On Sunday I walked. The cupboard door stayed shut. When I came back, I looked at the box and did nothing. The TCI clock was still running. Fourteen days means time, but not permission. Until that arrived, the packet lived where it should: flat, cool, unremarked; a small, exact weight inside a room that had learned not to make speeches about it.