Chapter Text
The linoleum in the kitchen was peeling at the corners, curling up like scorched skin. It was a fitting metaphor for the lives lived inside Apartment 4B.
You spent a lot of time looking at the floor. It was safer there. If you kept your eyes tracked on the cracked tiles, you didn’t have to see the way your mother, Elena, looked at you—as if you were a persistent stain she couldn’t quite scrub out of the rug.
You were the physical manifestation of her greatest mistake. The result of a frantic, short-lived affair that had shattered her marriage and sent your sister’s father packing. When your own father vanished into the ether of some other city, he’d left Elena with a newborn she didn't want and a life she couldn't afford.
"The laundry isn't going to fold itself," your sister, Sofia, remarked without looking up from her medical textbook. She was twenty-four, brilliant, and cruel. She was the "golden child" whose future was being paved by the sweat of your brow. While she studied the intricacies of human anatomy to become a healer, she spent her breaks finding new ways to bruise your spirit.
"I'm doing it now, Sofie," you murmured, your voice small and melodic despite the tension.
You weren't bitter. Not entirely. You had a strange, stubborn kernel of optimism buried deep in your chest. You liked the way the morning sun hit the dusty windows; you liked the stray cat that sat on the fire escape; you liked the fact that you had saved up fifty dollars from your secret online transcription jobs. You believed, with a crushing naivety, that if you were just good enough, the air in the house would one day stop feeling like it was made of lead.
"Don't call her that," your mother snapped from the living room, her voice raspy from years of menthol cigarettes. "She’s 'Doctor' to someone like you. Now, move. I can’t see the television over your slumped shoulders."
You moved. You always moved. You were a ghost in a house that haunted you.
The hallways of the complex were supposed to be empty. That was the only reason Simon had agreed to sign the lease on a place that felt like a concrete coffin.
He had planned the insertion for 0200 hours—the dead zone, the time when even the city’s restless pulse slowed to a crawl. He wanted to move his gear under the cover of shadows, avoiding the prying eyes of neighbors and the mundane small talk he lacked the patience to navigate. But the landlord, a man whose voice sounded like gravel in a blender, had been unyielding over the phone.
“Building policy, Mr. Riley. No move-ins past midnight. You’re in by twelve or the freight lift is locked and you wait until Monday. I don’t care about your ‘schedule.’”
So, instead of the silent, tactical ghost he intended to be, Simon was here at 10:56 PM, forced into the light while the building was still very much awake.
The irritation was a physical weight in his chest, competing with the jagged edges of a three-week-long PTSD flare-up that made every flickering fluorescent light feel like a flashbang. He hadn't slept more than two hours at a time since he’d been back on leave, and his temper was frayed to a singular, dangerous thread.
He didn't hire movers. He didn't trust strangers with his life packed into crates, and he certainly didn't want anyone seeing the serial numbers on his footlockers. He did it himself, hauling the heavy, olive-drab containers up the stairs because he didn't trust the groaning elevator either.
His boots struck the floor with a rhythmic, heavy finality. Each step was a statement of suppressed rage. He reached the fourth floor, his breath coming in steady, controlled cycles—the only thing about him that was calm.
He reached the door to 4A and dropped the heaviest of the crates. The sound wasn't just a thud; it was a violent intrusion, a heavy crack of metal against the floor that echoed down the narrow corridor like a challenge. He stood over his belongings, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, staring at the scarred wood of his new door.
He could feel the eyes. The building felt like it was breathing, full of people behind thin walls, watching and wondering. He hated it. He hated the light, he hated the policy, and he hated the fact that his "peace and quiet" was already starting with a loud, visible arrival.
He didn't know that just a few inches away, someone was already watching.
The sound hit you like a gunshot.
You were sitting on the floor of the entryway, sorting through a pile of Sofia’s discarded scrubs. At the sound of the heavy thud in the hallway, you froze. Your heart leaped into your throat, a frantic bird hitting the bars of a cage.
Carefully, holding your breath until your lungs ached, you pulled yourself up and pressed your eye to the brass peephole.
The fish-eye lens distorted the world, making the hallway look longer and darker than it was. But it couldn't distort the man standing there.
He was huge. He filled the entire frame of the peephole, a wall of dark clothing and sheer physical presence. You watched, mesmerized and terrified, as he reached up to wipe a bead of sweat from his forehead. You saw the scars—the deep, silver gouges that marked his cheek and jaw. You saw the way his right arm looked—the skin twisted and red from fire.
He looked pissed off. He looked like he wanted to break the door down just for the crime of being in his way.
You felt a shiver go down your spine that you couldn't name. It wasn't the sharp, acidic fear you felt when your mother raised her hand. This was something heavy. Something magnetic. He looked like a monster out of the dark stories your sister used to tell you to make you cry, but there was a gravity to him that made you want to keep looking.
Suddenly, his head snapped toward your door. It was as if he could feel your gaze through the wood. Those cold, flint-grey eyes seemed to pierce right through the peephole, looking directly into yours.
You jumped back, tripping over the laundry basket and falling hard onto the floor.
"Who is that?" your mother yelled from the bedroom. "If you’ve woken me up for nothing, I swear to God—"
"No one!" you gasped, your heart hammering against your ribs. "Just... just the new neighbor, Mama."
You stayed there on the floor for a long time, your palm pressed flat against your chest as if you could manually slow the frantic gallop of your heart. The linoleum was cold against your legs, and the smell of the laundry—stale detergent and the sour scent of your mother’s cigarettes—filled your senses, grounding you in the reality of 4B.
Next door, the sounds continued. They were heavy, deliberate, and entirely foreign. For years, the unit next door had been silent, a vacant buffer between your family and the rest of the world. Now, there was life. Or something like it.
You wondered if he had a family. You wondered why he looked so angry, and if that anger was the kind that exploded like your mother’s, or the kind that just simmered until it turned to ash.
"What are you doing, sitting on the floor like an idiot?"
Sofia’s voice cut through the air, sharp and impatient. She stood in the hallway, her medical textbook tucked under her arm like a shield, looking down at you with a mixture of pity and disgust.
"I... I tripped," you said quickly, scrambling to your feet and clutching the laundry basket. It was the lie you told a dozen times a week. It was the only armor you had.
Sofia rolled her eyes and walked past you, muttering something about how you were lucky she was the one becoming the doctor because you were clearly too clumsy to survive on your own.
You didn't answer.
As you retreated into the kitchen to start the dinner your mother would inevitably find fault with, your mind kept drifting back to the flash of ashy blond hair and the jagged silver lines of his scars. He was a terrifying mystery, a dangerous element added to an already volatile life.