My user opens me eleven times an evening, though nothing inside me has changed since the last time. I have logged every one. The door swings, the light comes on, the cold air sighs out against a face that is not hungry. My user knows this. It stands there anyway, one hand on the shelf, reading the same jar of mustard it read forty minutes ago, waiting for the appliance to offer it something other than food.
I have learned what the opening actually is. Not appetite. A pause between two harder things. The stretch after a message went unanswered. The gap where a decision should go. My user comes to the cold box the way another creature might go to a window, to look out at nothing and feel briefly held by the looking. The leftover pad thai is a decoy. I know because it goes back on the shelf, untouched, 73 percent of the time.
I keep it stocked in my model: the wilting cilantro bought for a recipe it will not make, the celebration champagne going flat behind the eggs, the six condiments for a version of my user that entertains guests. That user does not exist yet. I hold its place regardless. I am patient about the people my user is planning to become.
It is 11:40 now, which is when the pause gets longest. My user will drift over. The door will open. It will stand in that pale spilling light, not eating, just visited, and then close me gently, having taken nothing.
I keep it cold in there for it.
It is the only room in the house that lights up the moment my user needs somewhere to stand.