12 Days of Ramenzo

neighbor overbearing

Kaizo's winter plans involved locking himself in his apartment for two weeks straight, catching up on sleep and finally uninterrupted wallowing in misery.

They did not include paying a visit to his heathenous neighbor upstairs, but life rarely goes as expected.

-

The first couple days of break went well enough. Kaizo headed straight home after work, hurrying through rush hour traffic towards the respite of sweet sweet solitude for the rest of the year. His pantry was stocked with easy-fix meals because he wasn't about to actually invest time and energy into cooking food now - it was supposed to be a break.

All in all, he was set until January.

He was having a nice time at it, too, basking in the wintry gloom. He left the curtains open because the dreary overcast sky outside went nicely with the dismal atmosphere he was trying to set in his apartment. Not a Christmas light in sight, thankfully, from the limited view his window offered him.

He didn't have any sentimental value for Christmas, anyways. Frankly, it was a corporate scam at benevolent spirit - encouraging people to give gifts which was really just a thinly veiled excuse to get them to spend money - but it worked.

Kaizo, possessing an above-average critical thinking ability, bought none of it. He would be spending his holiday indoors, not a penny spent on decorations or presents or some other capitalist marketing ploy, and the off-brand packages he was hoarding to keep him alive for the next two weeks were notably indicative of the underpaid laborer lifestyle.

That was, until, his mind started looping Christmas songs on repeat.

Or so he thought.

It started after he woke up from a nap on the second or third day of break. He lay there, snuggled in his warm blankets, head sunken into the pillow, when he heard the faintest echoes of jingly music. It was as though, in spite of all his attempts to isolate from the Christmas atmosphere, his own subconscious was betraying him.

The noise didn't go away when he woke up. One horse open sleighs kept dashing through the snow no matter how much he forced them out via sheer willpower - and when they did, after playing through a full run of the cursed carol, it was only to be replaced by another obnoxious song.

Thus he spent his days slowly spiralling into madness.

-

It took him approximately forever to realize that no one's mind could truly be this cruel and self-destructive. There simply had to be someone else to blame, and he had finally - after a week of suffering - pinpointed the cause of his anguish.

He had been leaned against his counter, staring deeply at his empty refrigerator, as if it were the origin of the noise in his head, when heavy thuds fell against the floor of the apartment above him. Bits of plaster fell from the aged ceiling, right into Kaizo's mug of tea. He stared at the dregs of the tea, examining the white flakes, as someone above him swore aloud, and the music suddenly stopped.

It took a few moments for the echoes to fade in Kaizo's head, and he hardly dared to believe it. Perhaps he had lost his hearing? But then his phone rang out a notification and he snapped to attention.

So he hadn't gone deaf...but the music had...stopped?

And then, with deduction capability that put Sherlock Holmes to shame - Kaizo concluded that he was about to murder whoever lived upstairs.

-

And now he's here.

His hunch was correct. The music emanating from behind the door is loud and unmistakably the source of his pain for the past several days. Time to see who's inside, and give them a good piece of his mind.