Array of Tales (Michaeng)

Neighbors pt.6

On any other Monday Mina would have been thrilled to end an exhausting work day by coming home and falling face first into her couch.

This Monday however she was not looking forward to opening the door of her apartment because she knew what waited for her on the other side. She left the unassembled pieces of her IKEA coffee table strewn around her living room. She’d gotten too frustrated with the whole process that she gave up and hadn’t even bothered to clean up the mess.

The minute she opened the door she’d be greeted with signs of her failure and she just didn’t know if she could deal with that.

With a heavy, resign sigh she unlocks her apartment door and steps over the threshold. But much to her surprise, the mess of IKEA furniture parts she expects was no longer there.

In its place was a gorgeous, sleek glass coffee table that sat atop spindly, wrought iron legs. It looked like the kind of piece one might find in a modern art museum but it somehow didn’t clash with all the bright furniture in her living room. Instead it raised the level of sophistication. Right in the center sits a deep blue orchid, potted in a gray ceramic planter and filled with smooth pebbles and right next to the flower was a neon green post-it note.

Mina blinks at the table several times, thinking that it was some sort of speck on her visual windshield and her eyelids were the windshield wipers and every time she blinked, it would wipe the speck away but after blinking for like a full minute, the table was still there.

She takes a few incredulous steps toward the table to pick up the post-it note. Scrawled out in a messy script was the following message:

Consider this an apology for all the sleepless nights.

— S.C

S.C? She rack her brain trying to figure out who the hell S.C. could have been but then it hit her like a battering ram.

“Oh my god” she murmurs.

Son Chaeyoung.

Son Chaeyoung bought her a new coffee table.

Mina wasn’t entirely sure what to do with this information. What in the world was someone like Chaeyoung doing, buying her a coffee table. After she tried to make sure Chaeyoung didn’t get laid and after she tricked her the night before why was she buying her clearly expensive pieces of furniture?

Mina had a lot of questions (the least of which was how the fuck did Chaeyoung get into her apartment) but she glances down once again at the simple note. Maybe Chaeyoung was just trying to make up for being such a shitty neighbor.

It had been a week since Chaeyoung gave Mina the coffee table and she hadn’t received so much as a thank you.

It was starting to get ridiculous Chaeyoung thinks to herself as she frantically paces the length of her bedroom.

For crying out loud she wasn’t expecting Mina to grovel at her feet or anything but she was at least expecting some sort of note. Anything, a post-it would have been fine but no all was quiet on the western front and she meant that most literally.

She hadn’t heard a peep from Mina's side of the wall since her battle with the failed IKEA table.

It was time to step up her offensive, she needed to find a way to meet Mina in person and she knows just how to do it.