Chapter 1: Across the Hall
When Mina Park moved into apartment 7C, the first thing she learned about 7D was that someone practiced cello at six every morning.
Not scales. Bach.
At 6:02 a.m. on her first Tuesday in the building, Mina sat cross-legged on an unpacked moving box, laptop open, coffee cooling, listening to the prelude unfurl through thin prewar walls.
By 6:15 she had forgotten she was supposed to be hating New York again.
At 6:20 the music stopped abruptly, replaced by a muffled curse, a clatter, and silence.
Mina smiled into her mug.
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By day, Mina was a production coordinator at a documentary studio in Tribeca. Which meant calendars, crisis management, and gentle lies told to investors about timelines no sane human believed.
Her latest project was a six-part series about urban heat islands, and she was living inside spreadsheets and permit applications.
At 10:47 p.m. on Thursday, she got home to find a package leaning against her door with a sticky note in tidy block letters.
**Wrong apartment. Sorry. — 7D**
Inside the package was a set of noise-canceling headphones she had definitely ordered and definitely needed.
She knocked on 7D.
No answer.
She wrote back on the same sticky note:
**Thanks. Also, your Bach this morning was lovely. — 7C**
The next morning at 6:00, the cello started again.
At 6:08, there was a knock.
Mina opened the door to a man in gray sweats holding a mug and looking mildly alarmed to be perceived.
He was tall, broad in the shoulders, with dark curls in need of negotiation and eyes the exact brown of espresso just before milk hits it.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Owen. 7D. Sorry if the cello’s too loud.”
Mina leaned on the frame. “Depends. Is there a repertoire request form?”
His mouth twitched. “I can add one.”
She gestured to his mug. “You practice before coffee?”
“After coffee. During existential dread.”
“Ah. A man of routine.”
“Former routine,” he corrected. “I’m trying to get back to it.”
There was a beat where she could have asked what that meant.
Instead she said, “I’m Mina. I work weird hours, so if I bang on the wall at six a.m., assume affection.”
He laughed — brief, surprised, warm. “Noted.”
As he turned to go, she added, “And for what it’s worth, you’re good.”
Owen looked back, expression unreadable for a second. “Thanks.”
He disappeared into 7D, and Mina shut her door wondering why a two-minute hallway conversation felt like the first deep breath she’d taken all week.