Zeph climbed the stairs to his eighth-floor apartnt with the careful, asured steps of soone who’d just committed financial suicide and was still processing the implications.
The storage ring on his finger, capable of holding about ten cubic ters now contained six skill tos and manuals that represented nearly every credit he’d owned. Plus a few pills he had plans for.
Six items. 44,000 credits. Gone.
’I’m broke,’ he thought, not for the first ti in the last twenty minutes. ’Actually, genuinely, properly broke. 4,120 credits to my na. That’s... that’s less than so people spend on a single dinner.’
His Enhanced Hearing picked up the sounds of life behind closed doors as he climbed—a crying baby, soone’s audio drama playing too loud, the sizzle of cooking food that slled infinitely better than his burnt breakfast attempt.
Normal people doing normal things with money they probably earned through normal jobs.
’I need a job. Like, yesterday. Because that quarterly eting with Marcus is in 84 days, and I’ll be damned if I show up looking like a charity case. I’m squeezing that S-rank bastard for every resource I can get. Information access? I want dungeon maps. Threat assessnts? I want everything. He wants to observe my developnt? Fine. He can pay for the privilege!’
Zeph turned the corner to the eighth-floor landing, his mind already cataloging the skills he’d purchased and how to integrate them into his combat style.
’Cleaving Montum first. That’s pure offense, should pair with my existing—’
THUD.
He walked directly into sothing.
His first thought was that he’d sohow failed to notice a piece of furniture on the landing. A decorative plant, maybe, or soone’s poorly placed storage box. His Enhanced Hearing should have caught it, but he’d been distracted by financial anxiety and tactical planning.
His second thought was interrupted by a voice.
"OW! Watch where you’re—do you have ANY idea how to navigate stairs without—SERIOUSLY?"
Zeph looked down.
Way down.
At 6’9", "looking down" was his default state when interacting with most humans. But this was different. This required actually angling his head downward like he was searching for sothing on the ground.
Because the source of the voice was, in fact, barely above his waist level.
A young woman—probably nineteen or twenty based on her facial features and the way she carried herself—stood glaring up at him with an expression of absolute outrage.
She had striking features: dark hair pulled into a high ponytail, sharp cheekbones, large expressive eyes currently narrowed in fury, and the kind of natural beauty that would have made her stand out in any crowd.
She was also, and Zeph’s brain processed this with the clinical detachnt of soone cataloging enemy stats, approximately four-foot-eleven.
Maybe five feet if he was being generous. Which he wasn’t.
She’d been carrying sothing—looked like a basket of laundry based on the clothes now scattered across the landing—and his collision had sent it flying. Socks, shirts, and what looked like frilly undergarnts were now decorating the stairwell in a colorful explosion of fabric.
"Are you going to just STAND there," she demanded, hands on her hips in a posture that probably looked intimidating from her perspective but from Zeph’s vantage point resembled an angry child, "or are you going to APOLOGIZE?"
Zeph’s social skills, rusty from three years of isolation and never particularly sophisticated to begin with, attempted to engage.
"Why would I apologize?"
Her eyes widened. "Why would you—you just ran into ! You scattered my laundry everywhere! You—"
"You’re in the middle of the landing," Zeph pointed out with the blunt honesty of soone who’d forgotten that normal people occasionally valued politeness over accuracy. "Right in the path people use to reach their apartnts. I was walking in a straight line. You were positioned in that straight line."
"I was STANDING here sorting my basket because I dropped my keys! You walked into !"
"I can’t see things that are below my natural sight line," Zeph said, and so distant part of his brain that still rembered social norms was screaming at him to stop talking, but his mouth continued anyway. "You’re, what, four-eleven? Five feet? At my height, you’re basically ground-level obstacles. Like a fire hydrant. Or a very angry mailbox."
The woman’s face went through several interesting color changes. Red. Deeper red. A concerning shade of crimson that suggested her blood pressure had spiked into dangerous territory.
"Did you just—did you seriously just compare to a MAILBOX?"
"Also a fire hydrant," Zeph added helpfully. "For accuracy."
"I am FIVE FEET TALL!"
"If you round up."
"I DON’T NEED TO ROUND UP! I’m EXACTLY five feet!"
"You’re wearing shoes with thick soles," Zeph observed, his storm-gray eyes flicking down to her footwear with the analytical assessnt of soone who’d spent years calculating threat levels and vulnerabilities. "Take those off and you’re what, four-ten? Four-eleven?"
She made a sound that wasn’t quite a scream but was close. "You are the RUDEST, most INSENSITIVE, most—"
"Accurate?"
"—INFURIATING person I have EVER t! What kind of person just—just SAYS things like that?!"
Zeph considered the question with more seriousness than it probably deserved. "People who spent three years alone in places where social niceties ant nothing and accurate threat assessnt ant survival. I’m bad at the polite filter thing. Working on it."
"Well WORK HARDER!" She bent down—not that she had far to go—and started gathering her scattered laundry with sharp, angry movents. "And you STILL haven’t apologized!"
"Because I’m not sorry," Zeph said, watching her scramble to collect socks and shirts from various corners of the landing. "You were in the walking path. I walked. Collision occurred. That’s physics, not rudeness."
She straightened up—still barely reaching his chest even standing at full height—and jabbed a finger up at him. The gesture would have been more threatening if she didn’t sohow have a pink sock stuck to her shoulder and what looked like a pair of underwear hanging from her ponytail.
"You have—" Zeph started.
"I have WHAT?"
"Underwear. In your hair."
Her hand flew to her head, found the offending garnt, and yanked it down with a mortified expression that rapidly transford back into fury.
"This is YOUR fault!"
"Technically it’s gravity’s fault. I just provided the initial force. Physics did the rest."
"STOP. TALKING. ABOUT. PHYSICS!" Each word was punctuated by her jabbing her finger upward at him, which from Zeph’s perspective looked like soone angrily pointing at his sternum. "Just—just apologize like a NORMAL person and help pick this up!"
Zeph looked at the scattered laundry. Looked at the woman who was vibrating with barely contained rage. Looked at his apartnt door, which was about fifteen feet away and represented sweet escape from this increasingly absurd social interaction.
"No," he said simply.
"WHAT?"
"I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not apologizing for walking in a straight line. And your laundry is your responsibility, not mine." He adjusted his hood and stepped around her, careful this ti to account for the ground-level obstacle.
"You should probably move out of the middle of the walkway though. Soone else might run into you. You’re very hard to see from normal human height."
"I AM NORMAL HUMAN HEIGHT!"
"If you’re standing on a box."
The sound she made was sowhere between a shriek and a growl. Zeph was genuinely impressed—he didn’t know human vocal cords could produce that particular frequency.
He reached his apartnt door—Unit 847—and pulled out his citizen ID to unlock it. Behind him, he could hear her gathering laundry with what sounded like violent intensity, muttering things under her breath that probably weren’t complints.
"You are—you’re the WORST neighbor! The WORST! I can’t BELIEVE you just—who DOES that?!"
Zeph paused with his door half-open and looked back. She was still there, basket in her arms, laundry haphazardly stuffed back inside, glaring at him with the full force of her outrage.
At 4’11", she reminded him of an angry kitten. Small, furious, and ultimately not actually threatening despite the noise.
"You live on this floor?" he asked.
"Unit 852! RIGHT DOWN THE HALL! Which ans I will be SEEING YOU and you will be APOLOGIZING and we will be—"
"Probably having this exact sa argunt multiple tis," Zeph finished. "Cool. Looking forward to it. Try not to stand in walking paths."
He stepped into his apartnt and closed the door on her response, which involved several creative suggestions about where he could shove his "walking paths" and what anatomical impossibilities he could perform.
Through the door, he heard her stomp off down the hall—her footsteps surprisingly loud for soone so small—and the distant slam of a door that was definitely Unit 852.
Zeph stood in his apartnt, storage ring heavy on his finger with his new skills, 4,120 credits to his na, and apparently a neighbor who was going to make his life interesting in ways he hadn’t anticipated.
’I’ve fought monsters. Survived alone in ruins for three years. Killed B-rank awakened. Made deals with S-rank powerhouses.’
’And I just got into an argunt with soone who barely reaches my chest about whether comparing her to a mailbox was rude.’
’Civilization is weird.’
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