Four

Loud Neighbors

When Aris first moved into the apartment, he had high enough hopes. Hopes like working locks, hot water, and civilized neighbors. After two weeks of living on the third floor of Valley View Apartments, he could safely say that those hopes had been far too high. The water took 3 years to warm up, and only stayed hot for a total of 1; the lock on his apartment door was so bent that all you had to do was wiggle the handle and it would open; and the walls were so, so thin. Aris could clearly hear his neighbors’ every word. Not to mention the weird neighbor that was extremely loud and clumsy. Seriously, that man was falling every time Aris saw him. 

In other words, he got what he paid for. 

When Aris first met his new neighbor, his first thought was holy fuck that man is loud. On his fourth day in the new apartment, his neighbor decided to blast pop music. Objectively, the walls were thin and the music probably wasn’t that loud, but Aris was exhausted from moving and needed silence; he couldn’t even stand the sound of the water dripping from the faucet. He went next door and knocked, only for his neighbor not to answer. 

Two hours later, the music still hadn’t stopped. He had tried to move on with his life and cook up some dinner, but after over two hours of non-stop pop music, Aris was done. So, in the middle of chopping up chicken, the muscular person abruptly left his apartment and began banging on his neighbor’s door. This time, someone answered. A small man with curly hair and brown skin opened the door. 

And then he accused Aris of wanting to murder him, and then accused Aris of having a knife kink, which was weird and mortifying at the same time. 

A week later, Aris ran into the weird, small man on the stairs. More specifically, the weird small man fell and Aris helped him up.  Later, he could hear the other man yelling to his friend about Aris — or maybe he was talking at a normal volume and the walls were just that thin. Either way, hearing the man moan about not getting Aris’ name amused Aris to no end.

That same day, as Aris was leaving his apartment to grab some lunch, he bumped into the weird neighbor again. Only this time, he was wearing an apron and holding a million tiny things. 

Aris looked down at the assortment of items: a notebook, a pack of pink sticky notes, a water bottle, chapstick, gum, and more. ‘Didn’t this man have a bag’ was Aris’ thought. He helped his neighbor pick up the random things, and then turned around to retreat into his apartment; he could get lunch later, that had been too much human interaction. 

“Elio!” the small man suddenly yelled. Aris resisted the urge to jump, then looked at the other man weirdly. “My name, it’s Elio.” 

Aris nodded and entered his apartment silently.

The next morning, Aris unexpectedly found one of Elio’s hot pink sticky notes pressed against his door. It had a cute doodle of a cat on it, and the words:

‘Thanks for helping me.  P.S. What’s your name? 

— Elio (AKA your clumsy neighbor)’

Aris huffed to himself — the closest thing to a laugh he would do — and shoved the note into his pocket. He continued his day, trying out the apartment building’s gym and doing some work on his laptop around noon. Aris worked as a low-level employee at a tech startup, but did freelance novel editing for extra cash. He was reading through a particularly sappy romantic comedy, whose author was a sad middle-aged woman writing sex scenes between teenagers, when he thought about Elio’s note. 

Aris thought about it for a long two seconds, before settling on his reply. 

You’re welcome. 

– Aris

To humor Elio, Aris wrote his reply on a pinkish-purple sticky note using a pink glitter gel pen his niece had thrown in his bag when he moved — to keep in touch, she had said, as if phones didn’t exist. It was cute, though, so Aris didn’t say anything. 

After successfully sticking the note to his neighbor’s door, the man returned to his editing and his lunch, not giving Elio another thought. 

⟡♡⟡

The next day, Aris heard Elio once again drop his things as he was walking out the door. By the time Elio could be heard returning, a cream-colored tote bag with a cat printed on one side was hanging on Elio’s doorknob, along with the note: 

So you stop dropping stuff. 

– Aris

𑁋⟡♡⟡𑁋