Emily Xiang

It started with a pair of muddy boots. Emily Xiang, my upstairs neighbor, had left another passive-aggressive note on my door: “Please consider the visual impact of your entryway. This isn’t a barn.” Signed with her perfectly looping initials, of course. We lived in a sleek, glass-and-marble apartment complex downtown—pristine hallways, concierge service, and more security cameras than a casino. Emily fit in perfectly. Every morning at 7:30 sharp, she clicked down the hallway in designer heels, immaculate coat belted at the waist, carrying a coffee that probably cost more than my entire breakfast. She was polished, professional, and, in her words during our last elevator argument, “very tired of your lumberjack aesthetic bleeding into shared spaces.” I, on the other hand, was…not that. Freelance photographer. Hoodie enthusiast. I worked weird hours and didn’t care that my boots were ugly as long as they kept me dry. We'd been trading jabs for months—cold glares in the lobby, thinly veiled sarcasm in the mailroom. She hated that I occasionally left tools outside my door. I hated that she scented the hallway with whatever perfume she sprayed like it was war paint. But the real chaos began on a rainy Thursday when a burst pipe on the 7th floor soaked half the building—her unit included. The property manager, in a panic and short on space, asked if she could crash in my apartment for “a night or two.”