"Is it okay if I move in tonight?" I ask as we get near the apartment.
"Yeah but, is it okay with you?" the landlady slowly opens the door. "We haven't cleaned the apartment yet," she says.
"It's okay, I got nowhere to go anyway. I'll clean it myself," I say. The whole apartment is dusty and it totally stinks. Spider webs are everywhere. It is filled with a lot of things and all those are just lying on the floor. "But, whose things are these?" I ask.
"It was the old tenant's things," she says. "It's been a year since he left. He never really said he was leaving. He just went out in the middle of the night and he didn't come back. I never heard from him since then and his contract ended a week ago. I tried contacting him but no answers."
"Should I throw these?" I ask.
"Y-yeah. Just put those things outside and I'll collect them tomorrow," she says. "By the way, here's your key. I'm sorry I need to leave already, I just have something important to do. You're fine on your own, right?" she asks.
"Yes, thanks." I say and she left.
I walk inside the apartment and left the door and windows open. I start cleaning from picking the things on the floor and removing the curtains. I went inside the bedroom and removed the bed sheet. I put those in a big plastic bag and place them outside the apartment. I open the wooden wardrobe and the mountain of dust made me cough. I saw a guitar hidden at the back of his hanged clothes; I took it and put it on the bed.
"The strings are rusty," I say. I went out for a minute to buy guitar strings at the nearest store. I don't know, I suddenly want to play that guitar. I went back and sat at the end of the bed. I replace the strings and slowly tried to strum it. I tuned it first, and then played a song. It felt calm as the ray of the sunset enter the room through the window and as the tip of my fingers felt the vibration of the guitar strings as I strum it. I feel like I'm home. I rest for a couple of minutes.
I stand up and went back to cleaning. I walk near the small study table. "He must've love books," I say as I rearranged them, "I shouldn't throw these, I might want to read them." While rearranging them, a notebook caught my attention. It looks like a scrapbook and a diary at the same time. I grab it and place it at the top of all the books. "It's time to fix the bed," I muttered. I finished cleaning the whole bedroom and put the trash outside. I kept some of the old tenant's things in a small box and put it under the bed. I think they might be important to him and he might come back to get them.
Finally, after hours of cleaning, I'm done. I stretched my arms then I throw myself on the bed. I was about to close my eyes when I saw the notebook again, I stand up and took it. I sit back at the end of the bed as I open it.
"A stranger's record of staying,
For a while." itsays.
YOU ARE READING
A Stranger's Record Of Staying, For A While.
Romance"They say we're all destined to meet someone we'll end up with for the rest of our lives, but what if all that's destined is only who we end up with, and finding a way to meet them or if we'll ever going to meet them, depends on us."
