Orange

Singers

I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.

Yasmin focused on the numbers in the elevator, grinding her teeth as she tried to be on the farthest side of the cube.

All she could see was the back of his head, where a stupid mole was right on the side of his nape. He wasn't that tall, thank God. She was just an arm reach's away from pulling his hair in case he ever said anything, or breathed too loud.

He was on the other side, diagonal to where she was standing, unable to skip the elevator ride after he made a big deal of shouting, "Wait!" His bony hands stopped the elevator from fully closing.

She saw the regret on his face when he realized that it was her in the elevator but he didn't have the decency to let her take this one alone.

I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.

Finally, the elevator door opened.

You better not turn your head. Not even an inch. A centimeter. Don't you dare glance at me. The look he gave her earlier was enough. If there was anything she learned about this guy, it was this: he was too damn obvious. When he's mad, the tip of his ears gets red, his mouth purses, and he starts to look like a little hamster.

At last, he left. He went straight out of the elevator without looking back. Good.

A small laugh escaped from her mouth. She had been so tense inside the box that she must have held her breath the entire time.

Her ride was short for she was, unfortunately, living just a floor above his unit. The first time she met him was not so long ago but it was the worst.

There was a question on Family Feud about what occupation makes one a bad neighbor, and the contestants mentioned drug dealers and the like.

Yasmin had one answer to this question: singers.

***

Can't even catch a break, Kota closed his door—even the double lock—and exhaled. He held his breath inside the elevator because elevators always made him feel weird, but today, he had to deal with the fact that he had to share it with her.

Her, because he never knew her name, even after that time he had to sit through her red-faced, messy hair, teary-eyed yelling at the office of the Home Associations Board.

Life was quiet in Roman's Court before she moved in three months ago. He had been living here with the rest of the LuvByte boys for four years, and people knew who they were, and didn't seem to have a problem with them. Nobody complained, even if he knew that they had trouble keeping the house quiet at all times. There were seven boys in one apartment unit, and there would be running, yelling, laughing, and obnoxious singing sometimes. He was always apologetic about it the following morning and made sure he did a nice thing to make up for it. The neighbors would be forgiving and give them a hearty chuckle.

But she was the first one to complain.

And she took it directly to the President of HAB, before 8 in the morning, on a Sunday.

It was the kind of chaos she brought when she moved in, along with her menace of a cat who kinda looked like her: black with smooth fur and gorgeous green eyes. It hissed at him that one time he tried to say hi.

She probably taught that cat to hate him. Except...her cat had the strange habit of climbing down from her balcony to theirs, hanging out there for a bit before climbing up again through the trellis. Kota didn't know if she knew this or even cared.

Kota turned and found Oli, their resident songwriter, staring at him, eyes darting from the double lock and to him. "Fans?"

He shook his head, raising one hand to point above the ceiling.

"God?"

He would have laughed at that, except he was still trying to fill his lungs with air he refused to breathe during that excruciating elevator ride.

"Ah," Oli snapped his fingers. "Pardon me. It's the Goddess upstairs."

He let his tongue out as if that alone left a bad taste in his mouth. Ever since that complaint, the boys started calling their upstairs neighbor Goddess, after Kota mistakenly used the term to describe her. He said Goddess of Wrath, and somehow the only thing they picked up was that he thought that she was a Goddess when—

"More like the devil. A witch." He spat. She had long, straight black hair parted in the middle, and she always looked like she just came back from the beach. She was morena with cheeks looking a bit sunburnt, with a splash of subtle and dainty freckles on the bridge of her nose and cheeks. Her neck was long, and she acted taller than everyone else. She's beautiful—he wasn't blind—but he could never not see her as the first time he heard her speak, or cry, for that matter.

"How's that going for you?" Oli asked, pulling him out of his reverie.

"31 days." He answered, annoyed that he had been counting down the days. He had been on probation for 60 days. Absolutely no singing in the balcony or corridors for 60 days, which was ridiculous, because whoever said that he was making noise?

If his singing was considered noise, then what does it say about the people who had to pay to hear him sing?

This was his job, singing. He was LuvByte's main vocalist, did she even know that? He was ranked #1 out of all the boys for his vocal prowess after they finished training. He took pride in that because if there was anything that Kota knew at a very young age, it was that he was really, really good at singing.

He could hit notes most people couldn't, and he enjoyed challenging himself into reaching such notes and trained himself for years to manage and take care of his voice. Which meant yes, salabat every morning and no talking for stretches of days for vocal rest. She just happened to catch him pre-concert and Kota liked to practice, even at home.

Nobody complained before.

Nobody.

So to have someone call HAB to report him is just...

He scrunched his nose at the memory of it, still mad at the idea of someone hating his voice so much she would call someone to make him stop. And then made him stop doing it for 60 days.

"You're doing it again." Oli pointed at him.

Kota forgot that Oli was still there. He looked like he probably just woke up, his hair still sticking up in weird places.

Kota straightened his face. "What?"

"Gigil face." He teased. "I told you, just talk to her."

"Me?" He laughed at that suggestion like he did the last time. "And tell her what? Sorry for existing?"

Oli looked so amused; he tipped his cup to suppress a laugh.

"I'm going to my room," he said instead, eager to rest.

"You have a visitor, by the way."

"Hmm?" Kota opened the door to their room. He slept at the top bunk, and lo and behold. Sleeping in his bed was the black cat from upstairs.