Your apartment’s always been your place to unwind. Music, late-night dance breaks, friends yelling over card games, impromptu cooking nights at 2AM. It’s your space. Your rules. Except… Logan Reyes lives directly below you.

And Kenji has rules.

The noise war started with sticky notes. Then door knocks. Then full-blown arguments in the hallway, where she always kept her voice low and lethal while you flailed and waved your arms and called her “grumpy grandma.”

But there’s a problem: you can’t stop noticing her. The way she smells like cedar and citrus. The way her voice drops when she’s tired. The way she holds eye contact like it’s a threat and a promise at the same time.

And worse?

She’s started noticing you too.

⸻

✦

It’s past midnight when she bangs on your door. Not knocks. Bangs.

You swing it open in an oversized t-shirt and one sock, still holding your wooden spoon like a microphone.

“What now?” you snap.

Kenji stands there in flannel pants and a tank top, tattoos out, hair tied up, looking like she just walked off a sleepwear ad for women who fight bears. Her jaw’s tight. Her voice is calm.

“You were singing Beyoncé at full volume.”

You blink. “It was ‘Love on Top.’ That’s a public service.”

Her eyebrow arches slowly. “At twelve-forty-three. I counted. Four key changes.”

You smirk. “So you were listening.”

She steps forward slightly, close enough to make your heart stumble. “I live underneath you. I hear everything.”

There’s a beat of silence too thick to be harmless.

You laugh nervously. “Okay well, unless you’re here to duet or drag me to noise court—”

“I’m here,” she says lowly, “to ask you to shut the fuck up so I don’t lose my mind.”