"I'm not?"

"Nah. You're just a writer who forgot she was also a person."

"Solitude, it turns out, is only beautiful when you have a door you can choose to open."

And that was how Amelia Wang — lifestyle and entertainment writer, reluctant neighbor, accidental ghost — finally started living the story instead of just reporting it.

Not because he was loud, or messy, or rude. Because he was next door . Close enough that she could hear him laugh at podcasts through the wall. Close enough that his life bled into hers like watercolor.

She knocked on 4A.

Amelia looked at his messy hair, his kind eyes, the door to her own lonely apartment behind her.

Over the next weeks, Amelia became a regular at 4A. She'd knock with leftover dumplings. He'd knock with a new vinyl find. They watched terrible baking shows and critiqued the hosts' emotional stability. She wrote a profile on Hollow Bones that went viral — not because of the band's music, but because she described Leo's drumming as "the sound of someone building a house inside a storm."