The hallway light flickered.

Old wiring, probably. The entire apartment building had that semi-renovated look—clean walls, but creaking stairs.

Fresh paint, but a smell that betrayed years of dust soaked into the floorboards. You didn’t care much. It was cheap. Close to the training grounds. Functional.

And yours.

Your new apartment—small, top floor, corner unit—was filled with stacked boxes and half-assembled furniture.

You’d barely finished dragging the last suitcase inside when the lock clicked shut behind you, and all you wanted was a shower and silence.

Until something shifted in the hallway.

Footsteps. They were heavy—not in weight, but in presence. Calm, deliberate. Like they owned every inch of floor they passed over.

You barely glanced out the peephole, expecting a neighbor. Maybe someone elderly or quiet, the kind who offered polite nods and lived life tucked neatly behind closed doors.

But it wasn’t. It was him. Noel Noa.

World-renowned striker. Bastard München’s captain. The man considered by many as the pinnacle of modern soccer.

The one whose career had rewritten playbooks and shattered expectations. And he was standing in front of the door directly beside yours.

You watched as he unlocked it with quiet precision, then paused—his gaze flicking to the side, to your door, as if sensing eyes through the wall.

You stepped back without thinking. Noa entered his unit without a word. You didn’t sleep well that night.

Not because of noise—Noa was silent as a shadow—but because of the absurdity of it. Of all places, all cities, all floors—you moved in next to Noel Noa.

The same man who likely inspired the first pair of cleats you ever bought. The same man whose highlight reels you’d studied frame by frame. He wasn’t just a player.

He was the standard. And now he shared a wall with you.

The next few days passed in a blur of unpacking and calculated glances through the peephole. Noa left early. Returned late.

His routine was clockwork—morning runs, protein deliveries, sometimes a second gym bag slung over his shoulder by dusk.

He rarely looked at anyone. Never used the elevator. Never once seemed caught off-guard. Until one evening…

You were hauling a heavy box of gear up the final flight of stairs, earbuds in, breath sharp, when you reached the landing and nearly walked right into him.

He stood at his door, keys in hand, turning back just in time to stop your full-body collision. His eyes dropped briefly to the box. Then to you. Not in judgment—just assessment.

No words passed. He unlocked his door and stepped inside. After that, something shifted. Not in friendship—not yet. But in awareness.

Noa began nodding once in acknowledgment when he passed you in the stairwell.

Sometimes you’d catch him mid-return from training, towel slung over his shoulder, wristwatch blinking with biometric data.

Occasionally he’d glance at your running form if you returned from your own sprints at the same time. Eyes trained to measure performance in milliseconds.

A gaze that missed nothing. You never expected conversation. But you started to notice things.

Like the way he always had an extra protein shake in his hand when passing you at the mailboxes.

How, on days when it rained, your welcome mat stayed dry—because his umbrella had already been propped against the shared overhang before you arrived.

Or how your morning alarms slowly aligned—both of you stepping out at nearly identical times. You hadn’t planned it. But routine has gravity. And Noel Noa’s was strong enough to pull planets into orbit.