Chapter Text
It starts with a new neighbor.
Or maybe, to be more precise, it starts with the old neighbor moving out.
Living on the third floor—the top floor—had sounded perfect to Soonyoung at first. No noisy upstairs neighbors banging around at all hours of the night. The heat in the building rises, too, so savings on electricity are guaranteed in the winter (the blistering heat of summer, at the time, he’d all but forgotten). The apartment itself was roomy, and with the layout of the building, he’d really only have one next-door neighbor, directly across the hall.
He’d learned, soon after moving in, the single fatal flaw of this arrangement:
The walls are thin.
They’re not so paper thin that you can hear every breath of the person in the next apartment, but thin enough that he’d quickly learned more about his middle-aged neighbor’s contentious relationship with her sister than polite distance would ever have allowed him to.
It was loud phone conversations, mostly, but then came the rare occasions when the sister would pay a call in person…
He knew, as soon as she stomped up the stairs, to just forget about sleeping on those nights.
The arguments always seemed to revolve around something about how the neighbor has yet to marry—things like, ‘Don’t you know how much mother worries about you? Do you think you’re going to support yourself with that dead-end job of yours forever? Do you like causing a seventy year old woman this kind of stress?’
The sister, Soonyoung immediately decided, was pretty mean. Not to mention bossy. If their mother was so concerned, wouldn’t she call herself? Really, in family situations like these, it’s so much better if everyone is just upfront with their feelings, so it doesn’t turn out to be—
By the end of his first year, he may have become a little more invested in their personal drama than intended.
He’s not very sorry to see her go, but a week before she moves out, she covertly tells him she’s begun seeing someone through an online dating site, and she’s relocating to another branch of her company in order to be closer to him. A bold move, maybe, but Soonyoung has always liked risk takers, and he wishes her the best in both her career and romantic pursuits.
She blushes, hands clasped behind her back, “Thank you.”
It makes him happy to see her happy after the year of stress he’d inadvertently overheard.
Maybe he will miss her after all.
But he can’t say he doesn’t enjoy the vacancy next door, while it lasts. He knows he’s not the quietest neighbor in the world, but he’s come to learn that the floors are much thicker than the walls, so it’s nice to not have to worry about disrupting the life of someone you see every day.
As all things do, however, his time as lone tenant of the third floor comes to an end.
He decides not to bother his new neighbor during the move-in process. He—and this person is a he—seems to have it covered. He has a handful of what Soonyoung assumes are his friends helping him haul boxes up and down the stairs.
“What the hell, Jihoon, why do you have so many—”
Jihoon it is, then.
Lee Jihoon, Soonyoung learns on the second day, when the sticker on 3B’s downstairs mailbox finally changes.
He doesn’t get a good look at Lee Jihoon for another few days, although he certainly hears him. As usual, the thin walls are of no help at muffling sounds, so there’s plenty of clattering and banging and scraping and shuffling and thumping as Jihoon presumably unpacks and organizes his belongings.
On the fifth day, when Soonyoung’s curiosity can stand it no more, he takes an afternoon trip to the store, buys a package of toilet paper, and knocks on Jihoon’s front door.
He hears nothing, though he stands there for almost a minute. Maybe Jihoon is out? But he hadn’t heard him leave that morning, and it’s a Saturday—not that he’s trying to stalk him, of course, because that would be a terrible first impression, but the walls are just so thin that it’s—
But then the door swings open.
Soonyoung nearly drops the package in surprise.
“Can I help you?”
Oof, he sounds annoyed—and tired. Had he been sleeping this late in the day? This visit is already going poorly.
“Hi, I’m Soonyoung!” Soonyoung announces, voice full of more cheer than he’s feeling internally, “I’m your neighbor across the hall!”
“Oh, um,” Jihoon clears his throat. “I’m Jihoon…your neighbor across the hall?” Even with the uncertainty in his voice, he bows politely. Soonyoung does the same.
Politeness aside, this is still more awkward than he had hoped. “Uh, this is for you,” Soonyoung holds out the paper, “housewarming, and all that.”
“Oh,” Jihoon takes the package. “You didn’t have to. Thank you.”
Soonyoung takes a short moment to look Jihoon over—without being creepy, of course. He hasn’t seen more than a few glimpses of him in the five days he’s lived here, after all.
Jihoon is short—first noticeable trait. He has to tilt his head back to meet Soonyoung’s eyes. He looks young, but maybe only a little younger than Soonyoung himself. Dark hair, dark eyes—dark circles beneath his eyes, too, like he hadn’t slept well. Tiny freckle beneath one eye. Slightly curved little nose. He’s wearing a black sweatshirt, gray sweatpants, and his feet are bare.
That’s where the survey stops, because Soonyoung can’t take any longer without making the silence weird. “Anyway, sorry to disturb your afternoon! I just wanted to say hi. So…hi!”
“Hi.” Jihoon smiles, just the tiniest bit more relaxed this time.
Dimples, Soonyoung mentally adds to his list.
“I’ll let you get back to…whatever you were doing,” he promises, “but I’m across the hall if you need anything!”
“Thank you,” Jihoon sets the toilet paper aside to bend into another polite bow. He says it with the finality of someone who won’t been asking him for any help anytime soon, but it could have been worse.
“See you around!” Soonyoung says.
Jihoon nods, gives him a little wave, and shuts the door.
Huh.
That evening, Soonyoung finally begins hearing the sounds of daily life. He knew that this window into another person’s routine would open again eventually, and it fuels his curiosity about his new neighbor even more.
He first overhears the echoes of a phone conversation. Nothing argumentative like the last tenant, but short, professional, and businesslike, although he can’t make out the words. A work call on a Saturday? He wonders what Jihoon does for a living.
Later, Jihoon puts on some kind of movie—something loud. It takes nearly fifteen minutes for Soonyoung to realize it’s The Avengers, of all things. For some reason, the thought of his serious-looking neighbor watching superhero movies late at night makes him laugh.
A few more days pass. Jihoon seems to come and go at odd hours—one day leaving at six in the morning, the next, heading out later but not coming home until after midnight. Sometimes Soonyoung doesn’t hear him come home at all. Either Jihoon works at a convenience store or is part of a gang, he deduces.
Although neither job seems to suit him.
Soonyoung begins hearing piano music pretty regularly, too. It’s only slightly dampened by the wall, but instead of being an unwanted distraction, it’s actually really pleasant to listen to. Melancholy the first day, then upbeat and cheerful the next, then so quick it makes Soonyoung’s heart race, then back to melancholy—but different this time.
It’s not a recording, it’s Jihoon playing. And he’s really, really good.
Soonyoung is itching to talk to him about it, but there’s not exactly a good way to broach the subject of ‘Hey, I’m totally creeping on your secret piano concerts, can you tell me more about that?’ without sounding like a complete and total lunatic.
Even if he wanted to start a conversation, he doesn’t really see much of Jihoon to begin with. His own work schedule is relatively fixed, while there continues to be no rhyme or reason to Jihoon’s comings and goings. Jihoon is unfailingly polite whenever they run into each other—easily making the “Hi, Soonyoung-ssi, how are you?” kind of small talk when neither of them is in a hurry. But nothing more than that. Jihoon isn’t unfriendly, but he keeps his distance, and Soonyoung has enough self-control not to push.
“Are you sure you’re trying to get to know him?” Chan asks during morning stretches before class, nearly two months into the arrangement, “Honestly, hyung, he’s literally right there.”
Soonyoung pushes him a little further into his forward stretch than might be called for. Chan grunts, and he lets off. “It’s not that simple.”
Naturally, Chan follows up with, “Why?”
Truthfully, Soonyoung doesn’t have a good answer.