Chapter Text
On a muggy August night, Lisa Mishima sluggishly dragged herself up the last couple of steps to reach the floor her apartment was on. She tried to recall why she had thought living in an apartment building with no elevator would ever be a good idea. As she reaches the door to her new apartment and scours through her bag for her keys, she remembers having some sort of notion that she could exercise. Dumb Lisa, bad Lisa, she internally scolds as she opens the door.
She flicks on her light. The sight that awaits her is an unpleasant one. All of the boxes filled with her things remain shoved to the side, unpacked, even after a week of living in her new space. “So you didn’t decide to unpack yourselves while I was gone?” she mutters to the empty apartment.
Lisa didn’t know why she was being so lazy about settling in. It wasn’t like she had a lot of stuff. In fact, she probably had less stuff than the average person. So little were her possessions that her new landlord had actually given her a strange look when he helped her move in. She literally only bought herself one glass, one plate, and one set of utensils for her kitchen.
And it wasn’t as if she disliked her new living situation. She loved it. The apartment was small and a little run down, but it was all hers. Even with all the unpacked boxes, it was already more home then the apartment she lived in with her mother.
She was just honestly too tired at the end of the day to deal with it. She had barely been able to find time to find this place and then make arrangements to move and now that she had done so, unpacking seemed so less urgent. At the moment, Lisa was busy keeping up with her job as an assistant in an office building deep in the city and her part time studies at a local college.
But as she settled down on the single stool at her new breakfast nook, eating a warmed frozen dinner in front of her in complete silence, Lisa realized that this was much too pathetic, even for her. She was finally free to do as she wished and this is what she had accomplished? She had been so desperate for a place to belong and now she had the opportunity to create that place for herself yet here she was, uncomfortable in her own home.
Lisa felt her energy spike up and was determined to get things done, only to realize it was much too late to start causing a commotion by unpacking. However, Sunday was around the corner and she would definitely finally make this place look more like a home.
Exhaustion hit Lisa hard after she had washed her dish. It was time for sleep. And that meant an even bigger challenge then her apartment was going to be presented to her.
She checked her phone. It was almost 10pm. It was still too early for their appearance. Lisa brushed her teeth and changed into her pajamas and went about her evening rituals with the nagging presence of dread in the back of her mind. By the time she had crawled onto the mattress she called her bed, her phone read 10:23pm. It didn’t even take ten minutes for Lisa to go off to dream land but her last thoughts pleaded that tonight it wouldn’t happen.
At exactly 12:30am Lisa was suddenly awakened. After having lived there for a week, she knew exactly what was the cause. She groaned into her pillow as her walls practically shook from the volume her neighbour was playing their music at.
Every night so far, while Lisa was deep into her sleep, her neighbour would wake her by the obnoxious high volume he would play his music at. Lisa blamed this as the cause for her increased exhaustion lately. Due to her nonconfrontational personality, Lisa had hoped that the landlord would just say something about this but apparently no one had complained about it. Which made sense considering their apartment was the last one on this floor. Meaning that Lisa was their only neighbour.
When she gathered her courage to mention something to the landlord, Shibazaki-san had simply informed her of the rule of the VON apartment complex, problems between neighbours had to firstly be attempted to be settled by the neighbours before being brought to the landlord’s attention.
Lisa worried over what kind of person might be living in the apartment next door (all Lisa could think of were the horror stories of all the perverts and dangerous criminals running around loose that she had heard from her mother to keep her indoors) and couldn’t make herself knock and demand an explanation. She thought maybe earplugs would work in ignoring the noise but she could still hear the music and feel the reverberations of the wall and floor. It was getting to the point where Lisa contemplated moving her mattress to the small dining area to at least put some distance between their apartment and hers.
But at this point, even Lisa’s patience had run out. She would settle this once and for all. In the morning. For now, Lisa just put in her earplugs and snuggled with her penguin plushy and tried to endure one more night. One final night. Hopefully.
The next morning, Lisa slipped a note underneath her neighbour’s door before heading to work.
Dear neighbour,
I have just recently moved in and it’s come to my attention that you enjoy blaring your music late at night. Unfortunately, this also happens at the time that I am trying to sleep. I was just hoping if you could let me know if this is just a temporary thing or if it happens all the time. It it’s the latter then perhaps we can come to some sort of agreement.
Sincerely,
Lisa Mishima, Apt. #11
Lisa had used her cutest stationary and drawn a cute bunny so that it would soften the blow of the letter and so that she would appear as to be coming in peace with no aggression whatsoever. Only to scribble it out because it appeared too childish. Only to redraw it on second thought. It's better to be safe than sorry.
Lisa came back from another tiring day at work and planned on heading to bed as soon as she could when she stepped onto a piece of paper in her entryway. The paper looked like it had been hastily ripped out of a notebook and the words were barely legible. Her heart sped up as she remembered the note she had written that morning.
It read:
WELCOME TO VON LISA!!!
I hope you enjoy your stay here! The people are cool and the rent is cheap and in my opinion that’s all you need in life!
Unfortunately, the music isn’t just a temporary thing and no such agreement between you and I can be made. Sorry!!! (but not really heheh)
On another note, let me give you some advice. You shouldn’t just give out your full name to somebody you don’t know, even if they are your neighbour. You never know who (or what) you could be living next to. Just something to think over for next time ^.^
Your Neighbour,
12
P.S. neat bunny but check out this killer dragon!!
With a groan, Lisa sunk to the ground. It looks like her problems with the person living in apartment number twelve were far from over. Lisa looked over the note once more. And whoever they were, they were incredibly gifted at drawing. The dragon was indeed killer.