My neighbour was strange.

When i moved to that cheap apartment i didn't expect meeting someone of my age as i thought mostly older people live there.

When i'm leaving to go to work, always see him watering his plants, he smiles politely and i return the smile.

At the beginning, I was shy to talk to him. Then when I couldn't sleep, I heard him leaving his apartment in the middle of the night. It happens all week and as i fall asleep, i don't have acknowledge of when does he comes back.

———

The rain was hitting the window loudly when the lights suddenly went off. I should be sleeping but i was so immersed in a film even if it was around 3:00 o'clock. I saw the hallway's lights blinking through the ... so I went out to check.

The hallway smelled like wet earth. The wind always makes the floor slippery by blowing the rain and the neighbour's plants have more water than they should.

The light's flicker again before the light came back to my apartment. When I was about to go inside again, a figure was standing in the next apartment.

The neighbour took off the hood of his jacket and in the shirt he was hiding with it, I noticed a weird stain over the white clothing.

For a second, neither of us spoke. His expression stayed strangely calm. Slowly, he took one step towards me.

"So, what do we do now?"

Instead of walking into his place, he started walking towards me and what my intuition told me about the stain seemed to make more sense when i had him closer and noticed it matches his red hair.