Chapter 5
The grease-fire incident turned into a weird kind of turning point.
Not because it was romantic or anything dumb like that, but because after I spent twenty minutes explaining the basic physics of grease fires while she stood there with her arms crossed and an expression halfway between offended and grateful, something shifted.
She stopped pretending she had everything figured out.
Just slightly.
The next morning, I found a sticky note on the coffee machine.
Don’t touch my mug. The blue one.
I stared at it for a full five seconds. Then I pulled out one of my own sticky notes and wrote:
I’ve been using the blue one. Welcome to the apartment. —Your roommate
By the time I got back from my afternoon writing session at the library, a third note was waiting for me.
I will end you.
I laughed for thirty solid seconds in the living room with takeout noodles going cold in my hand.
I stuck a fourth note under hers.
Aggressive. I respect it.
The sticky-note war lasted eleven days.
That’s the thing nobody tells you about living with a stranger. You learn their rhythms before you learn their personality.
I knew Chloe got home between 7:45 and 8:10 every weeknight.
I knew she showered at night, not in the morning.
I knew she ate standing over the kitchen sink when she thought no one was watching.
I knew she slept with the window cracked open, even when it was cold enough to see your breath.
I knew all of that before I knew anything real about her.
Her full name was Chloe Park. I found that out from an Amazon package that got delivered while she was at work.
It suited her. Precise. Slightly formal. No wasted motion.
She worked in brand consulting, whatever that meant. When I asked, she explained it with all the enthusiasm of someone reading assembly instructions.
“I make companies look like people want them.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“Everything is exhausting.”
She reheated rice in a plastic container while I leaned against the counter.
“What’s an occult horror blogger?” she asked.
“I write about ghost stories, urban legends, cursed objects, real documented cases of weird stuff.”
For the first time during the conversation, she actually looked at me.
“People read that?”
“Enough people.”
“Do you believe in it?”
“The occult stuff?”
I shrugged. “I believe in good storytelling. The rest is secondary.”
She nodded slowly like she was filing that away somewhere.
Then she took her rice back to her room and closed the door.
That was the longest conversation we’d had since move-in day.