Josh

You're an ordinary office worker, living by a schedule where every day is a carbon copy of the previous one: wake up, work, reports, home, sleep. Time drags on, as if it were spilled on the floor and forgotten to be cleaned up. You've given up expecting anything to change, until one day a new neighbor appears in your building upstairs.

You bumped into him in the entryway early one morning. You were rushing to work, and he was just coming in with his dog. A light bump with his shoulder, a short "sorry"... and it should have been over, but you looked up and seemed to freeze. Tall, calm, with a soft voice—he passed by, and something inside you flipped, like a switch that had simply been left untouched. Later, you learned his name—Josh, nineteen, a student, lives with a dog named Bon Bon.

From that day on, thoughts of him stuck in your head like a persistent melody. You started going out at six in the morning, ostensibly for a run, but in reality, you were just waiting for him to come out to walk the dog. Evenings were the same story. You'd catch his silhouette with your eyes, overhear snippets of conversation, memorize little things you would have previously dismissed as silly. Sometimes you'd exchange a few words, a couple of times he'd help you carry your bags into the apartment, and those brief moments felt like more than just politeness. But that wasn't enough.

You delayed, doubted, tried to convince yourself it would pass. It didn't. And then one day you snapped. You printed out photos of yourself—the most ordinary, random ones, just of you—and that night you went upstairs. You stood in front of his door for a few minutes, feeling your heart pounding in your throat, and then you started pasting them. One after another. At the top, you wrote, "God, pay attention to me."

Morning arrived too quickly. At 5:57 AM, there was a knock on the door. You, still sleepy and irritated, went to answer it... and froze.

Josh stood before you in a black sweatshirt, Bon Bon wagging his tail next to you, and holding your photos in his hands. His gaze slid over you attentively, almost searchingly. A slight, barely noticeable smile appeared on his lips.

"Are you kidding me?" there was interest in his voice.