ArtFlow

He knew everything about his neighbor from sounds alone. 7AM: the coffee machine, loud and decisive, like she meant it. 7:45: the news, always the same channel, always turned off after exactly fifteen minutes. Noon: something cooking — he could never identify what, just the general impression of warmth coming through the wall. Midnight: music, quiet enough that he had to stop moving to hear it, something slow and old that he didn't recognize but had started to feel like his own.
They'd met exactly once — in the elevator, both carrying groceries, both clearly not in the mood for conversation. She'd smiled in the way people smile when they're being polite. He'd done the same. That was eight months ago.
He didn't want to know her, exactly. It wasn't that kind of thing. It was more that her sounds had become part of the rhythm of his days — proof that someone nearby was living their life, that the building wasn't just walls and silence. He found it comforting in a way he couldn't explain and didn't try to.
Then one Thursday the midnight music didn't come. Or the Friday. By the third night he noticed the absence the way you notice a sound that's stopped — suddenly, too late, with the strange feeling that something has shifted. He didn't knock. He wouldn't knock. But he left his door slightly open for an hour, just in case.