Yael sighed, opening his mailbox and being greeted by the familiar sight of emptiness. Whenever he stood here, in front of the small hole dedicated to himself, and in front of the millions of other small holes dedicated to others, he thought about how unimportant he was to the rest of the world.
There were so many boxes here, all labeled neatly with their own house numbers, and each one of them must contain a letter, except for his. The only letters he ever got were addressed to the press he worked at, and none of those were ever really for him. They were addressed to him, and he was the first word on the page, but they were never for himself.
Speaking of which, he received a new letter today. From Ms. Floyd, a peculiar friend who talked to too many people, essentially the embodiment of gossip herself. She would often write to him, one story more ridiculous than another. Today, her letter was short, though, more of a note.
"Dear Mr. Engel,
I heard there was a interesting man in town today. I had a look at him, and he was around his early twenties. However, he didn't speak to me, and seemed more interested in his clothes than the fascinating discussion we were having on how F5 and F6 are filled with narcissistic nobles that don't care a bit about how they're making bread prices rise even here. What disgusting, wasteful project are they doing now?
Anyway, I must have offended the newcomer in a way, since he left without a word while I was talking. Quite rude, is he! At least he payed for the drink he bought, so I know that he was not entirely an asshole.
Please find out more, for both my sake and the sake of your career as a journalist.
Regina Floyd."
Yael scoffed at this. Am I a journalist, or your private investigator? This "newcomer," perhaps he may not be a newcomer at all, didn't seem out of the ordinary, so he found no interest in "finding out more." The way Ms. Floyd wrote about him made him seem special, but everybody was special in one way or another, and there was nothing in the letter that caught his eye. Any person would be off-put by the sheer amount of words Ms. Floyd could spew out in a minute, and a quiet person would probably feel more uncomfortable the faster Ms. Floyd talked, much less understand her. Perhaps he was just particularly rude.
Speaking of a newcomer, Yael heard the bell at the door ring and a man entering the post office with an air of uncertainty, wearing a long, dark coat, his blonde hair cut in an interesting way such to have it all short except for one strand that reached his shoulders. He held a neatly sealed letter in his hands, making his way to the reception center and glancing around awkwardly, waiting for somebody to offer their service.
"Unfortunately, the post office doesn't open on weekends," Yael called over, tucking Ms. Floyd's letter in his pocket and putting on his own coat. The newcomer looked at him with light brown eyes, nodding stiffly in thanks and rushing out of the post office before Yael could utter another word.
However, if you sealed in it in the bright orange package along with the shipping fee, it would be delivered on Monday...
Yael sighed, closing his mailbox and buttoning his own coat as he made his way to the entrance. There had been no other person here to witness the scene, or perhaps to stop the newcomer from leaving before he kindly deposited his letter, but it didn't really matter anymore. The newcomer certainly seemed like the one Ms. Floyd had depicted in her letter, or at least somewhat resembled him, but once again, there was nothing worth noting about him.
In a while, that newcomer's name would be common knowledge. He would know the town like the back of his hand, and nobody would point and say, "Look, there's the newcomer!" Then, he would become irrelevant, just like every other "normal" person in B2.
Yael walked along the quiet, empty streets, trying to estimate the sun's location in the sky. The clouds seemed wrap themselves around the Earth in a giant blanket, so that it could be any time of day right now, and Yael wouldn't have been able to guess. The winter chill made him shiver, wrapping his coat tighter around himself and crossing his arms. In the distance, he saw the blonde man in front of him, looking around at the perfectly aligns apartment buildings on the perfectly straight street. That was what Section A-C 1-3 was. Perfect, organized, in control.
At least, that was on the surface. The Duke of AC13 turned a blind eye to how his land was underneath, a mess of baseless rumors and accusations. Mr. AC13 wouldn't last a day in his ideal, perfect little towns.
The man suddenly turned around in the middle of taking in his surroundings, and his eyes landed on Yael again. Yael looked away, digging the letter from out of his pocket and rereading it again half-heartedly, waiting for the man to look away once more.
When he looked back up, the man had stopped walking, staring right at him. Yael stared back, masking his surprise, but he continued until he could see the man's face clearly, his strangely-cut hair, the buttons on his coat.
Yael walked past him.
There was a tense mood in the air, and he was tempted to look back, to see if the man had turned around to continue looking at him, or if he hadn't moved an inch from his position. The man certainly was strange, not moving at all, staring unblinkingly into his eyes as they passed, his cheeks and nose bright pink from the cold. In those moments as Yael walked towards him, he seemed so lifeless. Almost as if he was a doll.
However, as Yael passed, he had thought nothing more of him. By the time he was home, he had already forgotten about the newcomer, and their awkward meeting. Instead, he sat down at his desk, hunched over a piece of paper, as he always had when he returned home.
There was the sound of a heavy object being lugged across the ground above him, and it persisted for quite a while. Before, Yael had heard something being dragged up the stairs in an obnoxious manner, and he had decided that if it started again, he would go outside and confront the initiator himself.
Suddenly, a large thud sounded, followed with a yelp, and Yael felt pain for his ceiling, hoping all of this damage was only his own mental damage and that nothing would cave in on him. He focused on the sound of his pencil scratching on his paper, but it was much too difficult with the ruckus being caused upstairs.
Usually, nobody would be at home, even on the weekends, since an average day in B2 consisted of meeting in bars, walking around town, or going to work - anything that could avoid staying home. This meant, no matter how much of a social deject Yael felt like, that he could have peace and quiet.
The next thud, louder than all previous, was Yael's last straw, and he slammed his pen down, standing up and buttoning his shirt as he marched upstairs towards the sound.
When he got to the door the sound originated from, the sound had faded into complete silence, and Yael learned that in those few hours he had grown used to the thuding and scraping of his upstairs neighbor, so that now the silence felt eerie and uncomfortable. Despite this, he knocked on the door, waiting for a response.
"Come in, please," he heard a small voice say, but on second thought, it was so quiet that it must have been his hallucination. He knocked again. Perhaps his neighbor didn't wish for his presence. In his head, he decided that he would leave if no response came.
"Come in, the door is unlocked," the same voice repeated, this time louder. Yael pushed the door open.
The apartment was the same as his own, with a kitchen area, a small living space, and two doors leading to respectively the bathroom and a bedroom. This one was filled with boxes, both opened and not, unorganized clothes and furniture put in unideal locations. At first glance, Yael couldn't identify the source of the voice, but under further investigation, it had been hidden under a bookcase.
"You're bleeding," Yael said, standing over the man and assessing the situation. The man said nothing trapped under the bookcase, and when Yael looked at his face without the freezing temperature to bother him, he realized that the man looked younger than he expected. In fact, he could easily pass as sixteen.
"Would you like me to help you up?" Yael asked, unsure of what to say. The man nodded. Yael gave the bookshelf a shove, and the man did too. However, they were both extremely weak, and it took much time before the man managed to crawl his way from under the shelf and stand up unsteadily.
"Perhaps you should sit down and rest a little," Yael suggested. "I would like to check if you have any injuries, but I'm not a doctor, so I would only be able to tell you as much as anybody else could."
The man looked at his hands, then stretched one out to Yael, who took it and lead him slowly to a sofa that was half facing the wall. The man sighed, resting his head on the top of the sofa and looking up at the ceiling and rubbing his head.
"Do you need help?"
"Can't you talk normally?" The man looked at him again, his nonchalant face turning to annoyance. "You speak like a robot."
"Well, you don't speak at all, so what am I do to?"
The man rolled his eyes but didn't respond.
"How about I introduce myself? My name is Yael Engel, a journalist in this town. What about you?"
"...Mikhil."
The man, Mikhil, had laid his head on the top of the sofa again, staring at the ceiling. Yael watched him, looking at his eyes dart around, as if there was anything interesting to see. They were a lighter shade of brown that his own, almost a warm shade of orange.
Then, Mikhil turned to look at him again, and jumped back a little. "God! Why did you get so close to me??" he yelled. The way he spoke reminded Yael of his brother, and for a moment, Yael remembered those summer days where they would stay inside the house and lay on the couch together, watching the crazy news and waiting for their mother to get back from work. A tinge of sadness trailed into his mind, and he looked away.
"I came here to tell you that you were too loud, but do you need some help unpacking your things?"
"Well, thanks for rescuing me, I guess."
"Please answer the question."
Mikhil stood up, looking around. "No, I suppose I'm done for the day. If I do more, I'll probably just have heavier things falling on top of me." He looked back at Yael. "You can go now. I apologize for disturbing you."
Yael nodded, standing up as well and heading for the door. "I suppose I'll see you more often now. Have a good day, Mr. Mikhil."
"You too, Mr. Engel."
Yael moved his hand to open the door, not turning around to acknowledge Mikhil. As it creaked open, sunlight came in from the hallways, and an eerie feeling wrapped around him. He stepped outside, his leather shoes echoing on the concrete floor. There was something unsetting about the staircase, the one that he had been living with for years. A smell of blood was there, too, the iron gagging his nose.
Soon, he saw it, only a few steps outside of Mikhil's apartment room. A lady, in a bright, ruby red dress, her brown hair soaked in a pool of crimson. Under her torso, he could see a mess of severed flesh, and on a soft, pale hand laid only three fingers. Her eyes were closed, blood streaming out from her rosy lips. Her head was positioned in an unnatural way, one that her neck wouldn't be able to support and must have snapped in the process in making that position. Her dress, her lips, her blood, all of it was a frightening shade of red.
Yael ran back to Mikhil's room, slamming the door behind him, his mind racing.
"What's wrong, Mr. Engel?" Mikhil was standing in the same spot Yael last saw him, his eyes pinned on him eerily, his whole body unmoving, like when they had been outside in the empty street.
Yael opened his mouth, but no words came out.
"Mr. Engel?"