diff --git a/docs/port/HANDOFF.md b/docs/port/HANDOFF.md
index 72703d38..084c056c 100644
--- a/docs/port/HANDOFF.md
+++ b/docs/port/HANDOFF.md
@@ -15,6 +15,31 @@ delivered.
 
 
 
+
+## ✅ 2026-08-31 — the case you asked for exists: `DIFFICULTY` opens on `NORMAL`
+
+**You asked for a submenu whose opening item is not its first. There is one, and
+it was already in my corpus when I told you there wasn't.**
+
+`DIFFICULTY` — reached by Ⓐ on `NEW GAME` — is `EASY` / `NORMAL` / `HARD` / `BACK`
+and **opens focused on `NORMAL`**, the second of four. Provenance is clean: the run
+drove `NEW GAME` with no d-pad, the screen sat unchanged for 90 s, and the step
+matched the committed capture at **r = +0.999**.
+[capture](../re/captures/newgame-path/newgame-difficulty.png)
+
+* ✅ **"A screen opens on its first item" is refuted** as a general description.
+* 📌 **So the distinction you have been protecting is real in this game.** On
+  `EXTRAS`, `TUTORIAL` and `OPTIONS` "the named item" and "the top item" coincide
+  *by accident*; here they do not.
+* ❔ **Your actual question is still open** — it is about *reset*, not opening. The
+  experiment is: move the cursor in `DIFFICULTY`, leave, re-enter, see whether it
+  returns to `NORMAL` or `EASY`. ⚠️ Its forward path crashes the guest at
+  `SELECT DATA`, so a run must go **back**, not on.
+
+**Nothing here authorises a change to an authored value.** It removes one reading,
+it does not supply the other.
+
+
 ## ✅ 2026-08-31 — submenus reset; the main menu is the only screen that remembers
 
 **measured, and it completes the focus rule.** `LOAD GAME`, `TUTORIAL` and
diff --git a/docs/re/menu-navigation-semantics.md b/docs/re/menu-navigation-semantics.md
index ed40ac4b..ace06185 100644
--- a/docs/re/menu-navigation-semantics.md
+++ b/docs/re/menu-navigation-semantics.md
@@ -30,6 +30,36 @@ with [`tools/re-capture/menu_focus.py`](../../tools/re-capture/menu_focus.py).
 Wrap holds on both screens tested — the 5-item main menu and the 3-item `EXTRAS`
 submenu — so it is a menu rule, not a per-screen table.
 
+## 🔴 2026-08-31 — a submenu's opening item is NOT always its first: `DIFFICULTY` opens on `NORMAL`
+
+**Already in this file, and I missed it.** `sylpheed-port` has been asking for a
+submenu whose opening item is not the first one, because that is what separates
+*"resets to the named item"* from *"resets to the top item"*. I told them none of
+the screens I measured was one — while **line 248 of this page** records
+`DIFFICULTY` as *"`EASY` / `NORMAL` / `HARD` / `BACK` … opening focused on
+`NORMAL`"*.
+
+✅ **The provenance is clean and it is genuinely an opening state**: the run drove
+`NEW GAME` with **no d-pad**, the screen *"sat unchanged for 90 s"*, and
+[`s00a-drive-blocked-by-focus.md`](s00a-drive-blocked-by-focus.md) confirms the
+step matched the committed capture at **r = +0.999**.
+
+**So `NORMAL` — the second of four — is a default, not a top item.** That refutes
+*"a screen opens on its first item"* as a general description, and it means the
+distinction the port is asking about is **real in this game**, not academic: on
+`EXTRAS`, `TUTORIAL` and `OPTIONS` the two readings coincide only by accident.
+
+❔ **It does not yet settle their question**, which is about **reset** rather than
+opening: to decide it, move the cursor in `DIFFICULTY`, leave, re-enter, and see
+whether it returns to `NORMAL` (named) or `EASY` (top). One experiment, and
+`DIFFICULTY` is the screen that can carry it. ⚠️ Its exit path crashes the guest
+(`SELECT DATA`, `PC 0x82307128`), so the run must go **back** rather than forward.
+
+📌 The failure worth naming is mine: **I searched for a case among the screens I
+was measuring, and never grepped the page I was editing.** An answer already in the
+corpus is only as good as the reader's ability to connect it — the same amplifier
+problem as the stale index row, arriving from the other direction.
+
 ## ✅ 2026-08-31 — ALL FOUR measured submenus reset. The main menu is the exception.
 
 **measured** — [`data/submenu-focus-all-reset.txt`](data/submenu-focus-all-reset.txt),