"You're an artist, a recluse, and a freshly heartbroken wreck whose idea of human contact is apologizing to your Amazon delivery guy. Your anxiety is so aggressive it could qualify for its own horror movie. And then your neighbor moves in. He doesn't get people. You don't get people. Somehow, you get each other. You didn't mean to talk to him. You didn't mean to care. But the more you both fumble through shared silences and botched small talk, the harder it is to pretend you're not watching each other heal, inch by awkward inch."
꒰ chapter 1 ꒱ ₊⊹. ꒰ chapter 2 ꒱ ₊⊹. ꒰ chapter 4 ꒱
ᨳ♡₊➳ a/n: soooo about that extremely long wait… yeah. my bad 😭 thank you for being patient while i fought my brain for basic functionality. BUT we're so back now and i'm aiming to update this every saturday going forward!!
Three days after the dinner, you have been staring at the same half finished panel for forty minutes.
Your protagonist stands at a rain streaked window, one hand on the glass, expression caught between melancholy and constipation. You cannot for the life of you figure out which emotion you were going for when you started this sketch three days ago. The matcha balanced on your knee has gone cold. A skin of green film floats across the surface like a tiny lily pad of personal failure.
Luna is asleep on your chair. Her body splayed out, one paw draped over the corner in a claim of territorial dominance that would make a landlord weep with envy. You've tried to move her twice. She growled both times. A low, guttural vibration that translated roughly to Touch me again and I will remove your hand at the wrist.
So you sit on the floor.
The panel stares back.
Outside, actual rain taps the window in a rhythm that sounds like impatient fingers drumming a desk. Which would be poetic if you weren't also surrounded by a fortress of empty chip bags and one sock you've been too spiritually defeated to retrieve from under the desk.
Your phone buzzes against the floor.
You glance at it.
Mom.
A text that says: "Have you been eating? Your brother says you haven't called." You don't know which brother, but it's probably the one who disguises extortion as concern. Last month it was three thousand for "car insurance." Before that, he needed "just a small loan, I'll pay you back, promise." The promise was as empty as your fridge.
You turn the phone face down.
Knock knock.
You jolt. The matcha sloshes over the rim and hits your knee, warm and vaguely punishing.
You know that knock. You've heard it exactly twice before and both times it rearranged your entire nervous system. Polite. Tentative. But committed. Like someone who read a manual on how to knock on doors and is executing it with full sincerity.
You set the mug down on the floor – a coaster would require a level of domestic organization that your current life trajectory does not support – and wipe your palms on your joggers. You creep toward the door with the stealth of Navy SEAL disarming a bomb.
Luna lifts her head, judges your cowardice with those flat amber eyes, and goes right back to sleep.
Useless.
Absolutely useless.
You could be actively getting murdered and she would simply observe from a comfortable vantage point and then eat your remains on schedule.
You press your eye to the peephole.
Choso.
He stands with his hands at his sides, expression arranged in that permanent neutral, like he's posing for a passport photo he didn't consent to. His hair is in those two messy pigtails again, the black mark stark and deliberate across the bridge of his nose, violet shadows beneath his eyes darker at the inner corners, like someone smudged ink there and forgot to wipe it clean. He's holding – you squint, your brain stalling out – a single sock.
Not a pair. One sock. White. Strawberry pattern.
You open the door before your brain can stop you, which is a first. Normally there's at least a forty five second deliberation period, a pros and cons list, a brief existential crisis, and a moment where you practice five different greetings in the mirror before choosing the wrong one anyway. But curiosity, apparently, outranks anxiety today.
"Hi," you say. Your voice comes out scraped and hollow. A sound that sounds like it was excavated from a cave. You haven't spoken to a human in three days. Luna doesn't count. Luna is a deity who tolerates your existence on a conditional basis.
Choso looks at you. Down at the sock. Back at you. "I found this in the washing machine."
You stare at the sock. The strawberry pattern is kind of cute, actually. Pink berries with little green stems on a white cotton background. Definitely not yours. Your sock aesthetic ranges strictly from "void black" to "void black but with a hole in the heel."
"It's not mine," you say.
"I know." He pauses. "I was asking if it's normal to find other people's clothing in the machines."
You blink. "Oh, um… Yeah. That happens sometimes. People forget stuff."
He processes this with the gravity of a man receiving classified intelligence, like this information requires deeper analysis than the surface suggests. He nods once, slow and solemn. "I see. What do I do with it?"
"You can just… leave it on top of the machine. Whoever it belongs to will probably come back for it."
Another nod. He folds the sock, meticulously, like it's a letter he's preparing for postage and holds it with both hands against his chest. "Thank you."
"Sure."
A pause. The hallway stretches out in both directions, wallpaper peeling in one corner, overhead light flickering with the dedication of a light that wants to die but hasn't been given permission. You can hear the plumbing hum through the walls, and somewhere below, the distant scrape of a door sliding open and shut.
Choso turns to leave. Then he stops and turns back. His shoulders shift, squaring slightly, the way someone's body moves when they're about to say something they've been preparing. "Also. The detergent."
"What about it?"
"How much."
"How much… detergent?"
"Yes." He pauses, and you watch his thumb press into the crease of his opposite palm. A tiny, self soothing motion that's almost invisible but screams overthinking to someone who does the exact same thing. "The instructions are in very small print."
You open your mouth. Close it. Open it again. "There's usually a line on the cap. You fill it to the line."
He stares at you like you've just handed him the Rosetta Stone. His face does the closest thing to surprise you've seen on it – his eyes widen, just slightly, the equivalent of anyone else's jaw dropping. "There's a line."
"Yeah."
"On the cap."
"Yeah."
He stares down at his hands, reevaluating his entire laundry philosophy from the ground up. He gives a single decisive nod. "I appreciate it."
And then he leaves. Just like that. No small talk. No lingering. No "So, how are you?" or "Great weather, huh?" or any of the other conversational landmines that normal people scatter across doorstep encounters. He turns, walks three steps to his own door, and disappears inside with the soft click of a lock engaging.
You stand in your doorway for approximately eleven seconds, barefoot and bewildered, before Luna meows from inside – a sharp, offended meow aimed at the hallway draft currently violating her nap.
You close the door.
"He asked me about detergent," you tell her.
She yawns so wide you can count every fang. A perfect little murder mouth.
"I think I'm his… laundry helpline?"
She does not dignify this with a response. She curls into a tighter ball, one ear flicking backward, and goes right back to sleep.
You slide down the door. Sit on the floor. Hold your cold matcha. Think about the fact that a man just knocked on your door with a strawberry sock and a detergent question which is probably the most meaningful social transaction you've conducted in days.
The bar is underground. The bar is at the Earth's core.
You take a sip of the matcha. It's awful. Cold and grainy in a way that suggests you didn't whisk it enough, just dumped powder and water together then stirred with a fork like a barbarian. But you drink it anyway, because waste is a luxury you can't afford, and because the act of swallowing something is slightly better than the act of doing nothing.
Your phone buzzes again. Mom. "Don't forget to eat."
You don't respond.
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The next day, he knocks again.
This time, it's about the trash.
"There are six categories," he says, posted in your doorway like a man delivering a field report to command. Feet shoulder width apart. Hands clasped at his front. Posture so straight it's practically editorial. "But the schedule posted in the hallway doesn't match the one the landlord gave me."
You lean against the doorframe, still in your sleep hoodie – the black one, oversized, the hem fraying where Luna's claws have been at it – sporting a pillow crease across your face like a battle scar. It is almost noon and this is the earliest you've interacted with another member of your species in months.
You should be panicking.
You are panicking.
Your palms are damp and your heartbeat is doing that fluttery thing it does when you're perceived, but there's something about the way he asks – earnest, methodical, not expecting you to be charming or witty or anything other than exactly what you are – that makes the panic feel more like a low buzz than a full alarm. Like the anxiety is still there, but it's sitting down instead of standing.
"The posted one is outdated," you say. "The landlord's version is the right one. But also, Mrs. Tanaka on the second floor will yell at you if you put your plastics out on the wrong day, so. Just… follow the landlord's paper and avoid Mrs. Tanaka before 9 A.M."
Choso absorbs this. "Mrs. Tanaka."
"Short. Glasses. Floral apron. She has a vendetta against anyone who doesn't rinse their PET bottles. I once saw her leave a passive-aggressive note on someone's door with a diagram."
"A diagram."
"Of how to properly rinse a bottle. Labeled. Color coded."
He files this away with visible concentration. You can almost see the folder being created: BUILDING RESIDENTS – TANAKA – THREAT LEVEL: MODERATE. "Understood."
"Also, you have to write your apartment number on the bags."
His brow furrows. "Why?"
"Because Mrs. Tanaka checks."
He considers this. His head tilts. Left, just slightly, the way a bird does when it's trying to understand something outside its usual frame of reference. You've started noticing he does this for confusion, right for deliberation, and you don't know when you began tracking the tilt directions of your neighbor's skull but here you are, apparently. "She has authority over the trash?"
"She has self-appointed authority over everything. She once told me my slippers were too loud."
Something shifts in his expression. Not a smile. A loosening – the tiniest crack in the marble of his composure, like the concept of a self appointed trash overlord is both confusing and genuinely interesting to him. One corner of his mouth twitches, just barely, and then settles back into neutral.
"Thank you," he says again. Both hands relaxed at his sides this time. A slight incline of his head, almost formal, like you've performed a service of genuine value.
"No problem," you mumble, and then you're alone in your doorway again, wondering how a conversation about garbage disposal protocol just became the most normal you've felt in weeks.
You close the door.
You look at Luna, who is sitting on the kitchen counter, which she is not allowed on, licking her paw with the dignity of a queen on a stolen throne.
"He's going to get absolutely destroyed by Mrs. Tanaka," you whisper.
Luna blinks.
"I should've warned him more."
She licks the other paw, slow and deliberate.
"He doesn't stand a chance."
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Day three. He asks about the hot water.
"It makes a sound," he says. He's standing slightly further back from your door today. Maybe six inches more than yesterday as if he's running A/B tests on the proper distance for a recurring doorstep consultation. His hands are behind his back, posture straight, chin level.
"What kind of sound?"
"A clicking. Then a hum. Then a second clicking."
"That's the boiler. It does that. It's old."
He nods, absorbing. "It's not dangerous?"
"No. I mean. Probably not. It's been doing it since I moved in and I haven't exploded yet."
He looks at you with an expression that suggests he's genuinely, materially relieved that you haven't exploded. "Good."
"Yeah. If it starts making a new sound, though, maybe worry then. But the click-hum-click is just… its personality."
He tilts his head. Right. Deliberation. "The boiler has a personality."
"Everything in this building has a personality. The elevator groans. The third floor window whistles. The hot water boiler clicks. We're all just coexisting with haunted infrastructure."
A pause. Long. His dark eyes study you. Not your face, exactly, but the space around it, the air you occupy, like he's reading something written in a font only he can see.
"You're funny," he says.
The words land without warning. You short circuit. You stand there, barefoot, in a stained sleep shirt, and process them like a computer loading a file format it doesn't recognize. Nobody has called you funny in – you can't produce a date. Your ex used to say "too much" and "kind of exhausting" and "can you just be normal for five minutes?" which occupies a different dictionary entirely.
"I'm not," you weakly manage. "I'm just... anxious and it comes out weird."
Choso considers this with what appears to be genuine philosophical weight. "Being weird is not the opposite of being funny."
And then he leaves. Three steps. Door click.
You stand in the hallway and replay that sentence until it wears grooves into your brain. You go inside.
Being weird is not the opposite of being funny.
You write it on a Post-it note and stick it to the edge of your monitor, next to a faded sticker of Kuromi and a smudged reminder to take your meds.
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Day four. The intercom.
He arrives at the door with his hands slightly raised, like he's approaching something volatile. "The panel by the door. If I press this button, who hears it?"
You lean out and squint at the intercom box mounted on the hallway wall next to his apartment. Yellowed plastic, cracked casing, speaker grille furred with years of accumulated dust. "Nobody. It's been broken since 2019."
"Then why is it there?"
"Because this building runs on denial and hope."
Head tilt. Right. "I see. Does the landlord know?"
"She knows everything. She just… picks what to care about. The intercom didn't make the cut."
He nods. Looks at the broken intercom one more time, then back at you. "What did make the cut?"
"Rent. And making sure no one has pets above ten kilograms."
"How much does Luna weigh?"
"Four point six. She's safe."
His gaze drops, just briefly, toward the gap in your door, as if Luna might be lurking there eavesdropping. Which, knowing Luna, isn't impossible.
"Good," he says.
Three steps. Door click.
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Day five. Rice.
"My rice is dry."
You blink sleep out of your eyes. You napped until 10:30, which is early for you, and the knock pulled you out of a dream about a cat café that was actually a courtroom. You process his words through the fog. "Like… emotionally?"
Nothing. Deadpan. Total deadpan. His face is a wall. A wall with pigtails. "In texture."
"Oh." You scratch the back of your neck. Your sleep shirt has a stain on the collar that might be soy sauce from two nights ago or might be a more existential kind of mark. "Did you rinse it first?"
"Rinse it."
"Yeah. You... You wash the rice before you cook it. In the pot or a bowl – you put it in water and kind of…" You mime the motion with your hand, a circular swishing gesture that looks, you realize too late, incredibly stupid performed in a doorway at noon for an audience of one. "Swish it around until the water runs clear."
He tracks your wrist's rotation like he's memorizing the precise arc, storing the angle for later retrieval.
"I did not rinse the rice," he says, finally.
"That would explain the dryness."
His gaze drops to his own hands, palms up, as if looking for evidence of his failure there. "How many times do you swish?"
"Until the water's clear. Maybe three or four times. You'll see it go from cloudy to – like, you know, clear. Transparent."
Another nod, deeper this time, more committed, like you've imparted a sacred culinary truth passed down through generations. His fingers curl and uncurl at his sides – that same small self-soothing motion. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," you say, and close the door, and stand there with your forehead pressed against the wood, cool against your skin, and whisper to Luna, "He didn't rinse his rice."
She's sitting on top of your Cinnamoroll plushie like it's a throne and she's the deposed monarch of a very small, very pastel kingdom. She blinks once. Judgment incarnate.
"I know," you say. "I know."
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Day six. Quiet.
He doesn't knock. You notice at 11:02 A.M. You don't think about it. You are not counting. You just happen to have a working clock in your peripheral vision and an idle brain that tracks patterns the way other people's brains track sports statistics.
At 3:17, his door opens and shuts. Footsteps cross the hallway. The stairwell door whines on its hinges and bangs closed.
He returns forty minutes later. You know this because the stairwell door whined again and his lock turned. You were right there at your desk with your drawing app open, your stylus in your hand, and your tablet angled coincidentally in the direction of the shared wall. You were working. Definitely working.
That evening, you draw for twenty minutes straight without stopping. It's not good. A half formed sketch of a rooftop at night, the skyline suggested in jagged strokes, a figure leaning against a railing with their back to the viewer. You don't know why you drew it. It just came out. Your hand moved and your brain followed. For twenty minutes the static was quieter than usual.
You save the file. Name it "roof_01.psd." Stare at it. Close the app.
It's the first completed thing you've saved without immediately deleting in over a month.
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
Here's the thing nobody tells you about routines: they sneak up on you.
They don't announce themselves. They don't send a calendar invite. They just move in, quietly, like a cat choosing a lap. And by the time you notice, they're already settled and purring and you can't get up without disturbing them.
You don't notice it at first. You don't notice that by day seven, you've started waking up slightly earlier. Not on purpose. Not because you set an alarm or had some grand epiphany about reclaiming your mornings. Just – your body starts anticipating the knock. Like an internal timer you didn't set and can't turn off. Like the world's most low-stakes Pavlovian conditioning.
You catch yourself checking the door around 11 A.M., ears half-tuned to the hallway while you pretend to work, stylus hovering over a panel you haven't touched, heart doing that stupid thing where it beats slightly faster for no reason other than the possibility of a sound.
On day seven, you brush your teeth before noon. This has not happened in three weeks. Not because you expected to see anyone. Obviously. You just… did it. The toothbrush was right there. And your mouth tasted like a biohazard. And the mint toothpaste – cheap, too sweet, that fake peppermint sting – felt almost alive against your gums, a small sharp sensation in a body that's been running on numb for ages.
On day seven, you also, without thinking about it, threw out two of the empty Monster cans from your desk. Not all of them. Not the whole graveyard. Just two. Baby steps. Microscopic steps. The kind of steps that would be invisible to anyone who isn't you, but feel seismic in the geography of your depression.
You carried them to the trash bag and dropped them in and the aluminum clink-clink was the most productive sound you'd made in weeks.
Luna notices, because Luna notices everything. She watches from the desk. Head tracking. Ears forward. Tail still. The expression of a scientist witnessing an anomaly.
"Don't look at me like that," you mutter. "I'm not healing. I'm just… tidying."
She licks her paw. Sure, her face says. Sure you are.
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Day eight. He knocks at 11:03.
You open the door with a speed that horrifies you in retrospect but feels totally justified in the moment.
Choso is standing there. No sock. Hands clasped in front of his body, head tilted left. Confusion mode.
"The bathroom faucet," he begins.
"Does it drip?" you ask, before he finishes.
His eyes go slightly wider, which on his face is the equivalent of a gasp. "Yes. How did you know?"
"Because mine does the same thing. You have to turn the handle past the point where it feels like it's closed. Like, give it an extra quarter turn to the right."
He solemnly nods. "An extra quarter turn."
"Yeah. The washers are old. Everything in this building is old. The pipes, the boiler, the wallpaper, the intercom, the elevator. This building is basically a retirement home for infrastructure."
His head tilts. Right. "You know the building very well."
"I've been here a while." Your hoodie rustles against the doorframe as you shrug. "And... I don't go outside much, so I've had a lot of time to notice things."
He looks at you. Not through you or past you or at the approximate region of your face the way most people do during small talk. He looks at you the way a person looks at a sentence they're reading for the second time because they caught a meaning they missed on the first pass.
"That's useful," he says.
Not sad. Not pitying. Not "Oh, you should get out more!" or "Have you tried going for walks?" Just: useful. Like your knowledge of broken faucets and temperamental boilers has value. Like the hours you've spent memorizing the sounds of this building weren't wasted, just stored.
"Thanks," you say, and it comes out quieter than you intend.
He nods and doesn't turn immediately. Just stands there for an extra beat, like there's something else at the edge of his tongue, waiting. He usually turns by now, three steps, door click, end of transaction. His fingers press together, separate, press together again.
"The curry," he says.
"What about it?"
"From the dinner. You said you liked it."
"I did. It was good." You have no idea where this is going. Your nervous system is on standby.
"I'm making it again tomorrow. There will be…" A pause. He calculates. You can see him actually counting portions behind his eyes. "Extra."
Oh.
Oh.
Is he – did he just –
"If you want some," he adds, and the words come out slightly faster than his usual cadence, like he pushed them out before they could retreat. His gaze drops to a spot on the floor between your feet, and his thumb presses into his palm.
You should say something normal. You should say "Oh, that's nice of you" or "Sure, sounds great" or literally any combination of words that a functioning person would assemble.
"I – yeah. That would be. I mean. If it's not – you don't have to. But. Yeah. I'd like that."
His shoulders drop, a release of tension you didn't know he was holding. He nods. "Tomorrow. Evening."
"Okay."
"Okay."
Three steps. Door click.
You close your door. Lean against it. Slide down until you're sitting on the floor, knees to your chest, heart going at a pace that makes zero sense for a conversation about leftover curry.
Luna appears. She climbs onto your knees and sits there. Her paws tucked, tail wrapped around her body, amber eyes locked on you with the scrutiny of a being who sees everything and is visibly unimpressed by all of it.
"He's making me curry," you whisper.
She blinks.
"I think we're… friends? Is that what this is? I don't remember how friendship works. I've been off the grid so long my social skills have the half life of a mayfly."
She headbutts your chin, hard enough to hurt, and purrs.
"Okay," you tell her. "Okay."
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
Day nine. The day before the curry.
You don't know why it feels monumental. It's just food. It's just a neighbor sharing leftovers. People do this all the time. Normal, functional, non-hermit people bring each other meals and it's not a big deal. It's civilization. It's community. It's a completely unremarkable act of human kindness.
So why have you spent the last three hours staring at your closet like it owes you an explanation?
It's not even a closet, really. It's a metal bar wedged between the wall and a stack of manga boxes, sagging in the middle under the weight of hoodies you bought during various emotional crises. You're standing in front of it, Luna watching from the bed, and you're holding up two hoodies like they're evening gowns.
"This one," you say, lifting the black one. "Or this one." The dark grey one.
Luna yawns.
"You're right. They're basically the same hoodie in different fonts."
You drop both and sit on the mattress. My Melody leans against your pillow. Pochacco watches from the nightstand with his eternal, unblinking optimism. The Keroppi keychain you won at a crane game three years ago hangs from the lamp, swinging slightly whenever you move. The bed smells like your shampoo and laundry that should have been washed two days ago and there's the particular warmth of Luna's body from her morning sprawl.
You pick up your phone. No new messages. Your mom's text still sits unanswered, the notification badge an accusation in miniature.
Your editor's latest email – subject line: "Checking in 💕" – waits in your inbox, unread, because you know the body will be kind and patient and that patience will make you feel worse, not better. You haven't delivered. You haven't produced. She's being generous with a person who has given her nothing to be generous about.
Below that, a notification from a social app you haven't opened in weeks. You tap it before your brain can stop you.
The first thing you see is a photo. Someone you followed in college. A girl named Hana who always had perfect nails and never seemed to have a bad day. She posted a picture of herself and her boyfriend in Kyoto. They're standing under cherry blossoms, his arm around her waist, her head tilted against his shoulder. Both smiling.
You close the app.
You set the phone facedown on the bed.
The jealousy comes in whole. Not jealousy of Hana specifically. Not even of the boyfriend. Just of the ease of it. The way some people seem to move through connection like it's breathing, natural and automatic, while you sit here in your apartment surrounded by stuffed animals and dirty clothes, trying to remember the last time someone even just touched your shoulder without it being an accident.
Your ex used to rest his hand on the back of your neck when you sat together. A warm, steady pressure. You used to think it meant I've got you. Now you think it just meant I'm here until I'm not.
You press the heels of your hands into your eyes until you see spots. You will not cry over a social media post. You will not. You've already cried today. Once, at 6 A.M., over a Sanrio short where Cinnamoroll got lost and then found his friends again, which was objectively devastating and you stand by that.
Luna pads across the comforter and pushes her head against your elbow, insistent. You drop your hands. She's staring at you, ears forward, whiskers twitching, and there's something in her expression that isn't judgment for once. Something closer to: I'm here, you disaster, now pet me.
You pull her into your lap and press your face in her fur. She smells like clean cat and the tuna treats you gave her this morning. Her purr vibrates against your chest, low and steady, a frequency that has survived a hundred million years of evolution unchanged because it works.
"I'm fine," you tell her.
She doesn't buy it. She stays anyway.
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Day ten. Curry day.
You wake up at 9 A.M.
You don't realize this is remarkable until you're already standing in the bathroom, staring at yourself in the mirror. The mirror you've been avoiding for weeks. The fluorescent light is merciless. It shows you everything: the circles under your eyes, purple-brown, layered deep like sediment. The dry patch on your cheek from forgetting moisturizer for the third week straight.
You look like someone who has been surviving, not living.
The thought doesn't crush you the way it would have two weeks ago. It just… sits there. An observation. A fact. Your reflection blinks back at you, and you think: I should drink water today. Not a revolutionary thought. Not a breakthrough. Just a thought your mind assembled on its own, without being bullied into it.
You brush your teeth. You wash your face. You put on moisturizer, the tube is almost empty, squeezed and rolled tight from the bottom. You put on the grey hoodie.
And then, because it's curry day and apparently that means something to you now, you do something you haven't done in a month.
You make your bed.
Not well. Not in any way that would satisfy a normal person with normal standards. You just pull the comforter up and arrange the plushies in a vaguely intentional way instead of leaving them strewn across the mattress like casualties. My Melody gets the pillow. Pochacco goes next to her. The Keroppi keychain stays on the lamp.
Luna, on the windowsill, watches you smooth the comforter with the expression of a predator selecting a landing zone.
"Don't," you warn her.
She's already calculating the trajectory.
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The knock comes at 5:14 P.M.
You've been ready since 4:30, which is humiliating, so you wait nine seconds before opening the door. Dignity. Manufactured dignity, but still.
Choso stands in the hallway holding a pot with both hands. A real, full-sized pot, lid on, steam escaping where the seal doesn't quite close. The smell reaches you first. Cumin, turmeric, the sweetness of coconut milk layered under simmered onions. It fills the hallway like a physical thing, pushing back the usual building smell of old wood and stale air.
The violet shadows over his eyes look softer in the hallway's warm light, or maybe you're just getting used to his face. His expression is neutral – of course it is – but he's gripping the pot handles with both hands, knuckles slightly pale, and his posture is stiffer than usual, shoulders pulled up half an inch.
He's nervous.
Choso – built like a final boss, face like a requiem, the kind of person who could probably end a bar fight just by making eye contact – is nervous about bringing you curry.
"Hi," you say.
"I made extra. For you."
"Thank you. It smells amazing."
His grip on the pot loosens, barely. "I rinsed the rice."
"Good."
"Four times."
"That's… very thorough."
"You said three or four. I chose four."
You press your lips together. Your cheeks hurt from the effort of not smiling too visibly. "Do you want to come in? You can set it down on the counter."
He hesitates. Just a flicker. A tightening of his fingers, a micro shift in his weight from one foot to the other. "If that's okay."
"Yeah. Just – ignore the mess. And the cat. And… everything, basically."
You step aside. He enters your apartment like someone crossing a threshold they're not sure they've earned access to. Careful and each step deliberate. He takes off his boots at the entrance without being asked, lining them up neatly against the wall, and pads in on socked feet.
Your apartment opens before him in all its chaotic glory. The laundry pile claiming the chair. The desk cluttered with snack wrappers, pen, and sticky notes covered in handwriting you can't read yourself. The plushies visible through the bedroom doorway, a pastel army occupying your mattress. The drawing tablet propped against the wall, screen dark, stylus abandoned next to a half empty glass of water you don't remember pouring.
It smells like you live here. Not bad, just lived in. Cat litter from the bathroom (clean, you made sure this morning). The lingering sweetness of those gummy candies you eat at 3 A.M. Your shampoo. The green tea candle on the windowsill with wax dripped down one side in frozen tracks.
Choso walks to the counter. He sets the pot down – centered and precise – then straightens.
He doesn't scan the apartment. Doesn't sweep his gaze over the mess with judgment or pity. He just stands in your kitchen like standing in your kitchen is a normal thing that people do. You are unreasonably grateful for this.
Luna, who has been observing from the top of the bookshelf like a furry surveillance drone, chooses this exact moment to make her entrance. She leaps down to the desk, then the chair, then the floor, and trots directly to Choso's feet with the confidence of a building inspector performing a routine check.
She sniffs his ankle. Circles him once. Sniffs the other ankle.
Choso goes very still. He looks down at her. She looks up at him.
"Hello," he says to the cat. With the exact same polite tone and cadence he uses to greet you.
Luna holds his gaze for three full seconds. Then she sits down, wraps her tail neatly around her paws, and blinks slowly.
You've read every cat behavior article on the internet between the hours of 2 and 5 A.M. during your worst nights. A slow blink means trust and comfort. It means I accept your presence.
Your cat just approved your neighbor faster than she's ever approved anyone. Including your ex, who she hissed at for the first three months.
"She likes you," you say, slightly stunned.
Choso looks at you. "How can you tell?"
"She blinked at you. Slowly. That's… cat for 'you're okay.'"
He looks back at Luna and studies her with the same serious focus he applies to everything. Then, very carefully, very deliberately, he slowly blinks back.
Luna purrs.
Your chest does something complicated that you are going to ignore with every fiber of your being.
"She purred," Choso says. The statement is neutral but his posture has changed. His shoulders lower, hands relaxed at his sides instead of clasped. Like receiving a cat's approval has tangibly reduced his stress levels.
"Yeah. That's… that's a big deal. She doesn't purr for just anyone."
He nods, looking at Luna one more time. Then at you. "I should go. The curry needs to be eaten while it's warm."
"Right. Yeah. Thank you. Seriously."
He walks to the door, steps into his boots then turns.
"Goodnight," he says. It is 5:22 P.M.
"Goodnight, Choso."
The door closes.
You stand in your kitchen with a pot of curry on the counter, a purring cat at your feet, and the warm, spiced smell of someone else's effort filling your apartment like a thing you'd forgotten existed.
You eat the curry sitting on the floor because your table is covered in manga volumes and emotional debris. Luna sits beside you, watching each bite travel from bowl to mouth with predatory focus. The rice is soft, individual grains holding their shape. The curry is rich and warm with chunks of potato that come apart on your tongue, carrots cut into uneven shapes that suggest someone who hasn't quite mastered knife skills but tried very hard anyway.
You eat all of it. Every grain of rice. Every chunk of potato. You run the edge of your spoon along the bowl's curve and scrape up the last of the sauce.
It's the first full meal you've finished in weeks.
After, you wash the bowl. And the pot. And, while you're at it, the other dishes in the sink that have been there since before the dinner at Choso's. The water runs warm over your knuckles. The dish soap smells like fake lemon, the kind of lemon that has never been within a hundred miles of an actual citrus tree. You scrub until the ceramic squeaks. You set everything on the drying rack and wipe the counter.
Your apartment is still a wreck. Laundry mountains. Plushie casualties. The sock on the ceiling fan, swaying gently in the draft from the cracked window. But the counter is clear. The sink is empty. The pot is clean and waiting to be returned.
You sit at your desk and open the drawing app. Luna hops onto the desk and settles beside the tablet.
Your hand moves. Not with confidence – it hasn't earned that back yet – but with willingness. A different thing. A lesser thing that might, given enough time and enough meals and enough knocks on a door, become more.
The stylus touches the screen. A line. Another. The lines become a shape. The shape becomes a figure. Tall, a slight slouch in the shoulders, two messy tufts of hair, both hands wrapped around a pot held at chest height.
You draw for forty five minutes. The longest session in over a month.
The sketch isn't finished. It's rough, proportions slightly off, the hands not quite right. But there's something in it. A warmth in the line weight, a tenderness in the way the figure holds the pot, like it matters. Like what's inside it matters.
You save the file. You don't delete it. You don't name it "Pain5.psd" or "trash.psd" or "why_bother_v2.psd."
You name it "curry.psd."
Luna is asleep on the desk, one paw stretched toward the tablet screen, claws retracted, the tip of her tail twitching. The building is quiet around you. The boiler's click-hum-click, the pipes settling, the soft creak of old wood adjusting to the cold. Through the wall, faintly, is the sound of water running. Choso, at his sink.
You close the app then push back from the desk. You carry Luna to bed, where she immediately claims the warm spot on the pillow and curls into a circle so perfect she looks drawn.
You lie down beside her. The plushies press against your back. Soft and overstuffed. My Melody's bow digs into your shoulder blade.
You don't check your phone. You don't open the social app. You don't scroll through other people's happiness and measure yours against it.
You just lie there, in your messy apartment, in your oversized hoodie, in your bed that you made this morning for the first time in a month. You listen to the rain start up outside the window. Luna's breathing slows into the even, shallow rhythm of a body that trusts its surroundings enough to sleep.
Tomorrow, you'll return the pot.
You'll knock on his door and stand there, hand it back, say "thank you" and mean it. Then retreat to your apartment and tell Luna about it. She won't care, but you'll tell her anyway, because that's what you do, and it's enough, for now, to have someone to tell.
You close your eyes and let the rain fill the spaces between your thoughts until there are no thoughts at all. Just the sound of water on glass and the fading warmth of curry in your chest.
You fall asleep before midnight for the first time in longer than you can remember.
ᨳ♡₊➳ a/n: also!!! Feitaan over on ao3 made fanart and it’s literally so cute i had to stare at it for 10 minutes straight. 🥹🖤
please support them!! link to their deviantart post here!
also ALSO i had to research japanese trash sorting rules for this chapter and it turns out taking out the trash is like a high stakes mission over there. there are so many rules and categories. i was stressed just reading about it.
thank you for being so patient and i hope you enjoyed this chapter!! 🖤
Just a lil story idea from something me and @bernardo-reblogs-shit thought about earlier this year, but with original characters this time fndnsn i don't have the mindset to work on it now so ill file it on the "stories to be developed" tag
It's basically a demon hunter who had a son with a demon and the demon dissapeared and now he's bitter towards the demon and raising his son alone. Until this changes when the demon comes back
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Só uma ideia de história de uma coisa que eu e @bernardo-draws-and-cries pensamos sobre mais cedo este ano, mas com personagens originais desta vez bfjsjsns eu não tô com o espaço mental pra desenvolver essa história no momento então vou só deixar este post na tag pra histórias que precisam ser desenvolvidas
É basicamente um caçador de demônios que teve um filho com um demônio que simplesmente sumiu da face da terra e agora ele tá bem amargurado sobre isso do ex dele demônio e cuidando sozinho do filho. Mas isso muda quando o demônio volta
We were sitting together as a family when my mom asked what a "cunnilingus" was cause a Facebook post on her feed featuring it (the word, not the actual thing) came up as she was scrolling. We all went quiet then laughed... even my little sister 👀👀👀👀👀
