It’s too dark to see anything outside of the little drum window. I can only hear sounds. The footsteps come down the stairs, little pitter-patters that slow when the person reaches a landing. They stop at the bottom, just in front of the washing machine. My eyes widen despite the dark. My body tightens every muscle. I brace myself for the machine door to be pulled open from the outside. I can’t breathe. For a moment, all I hear is my own heartbeat, and I’m certain whoever’s on the other side of this door can hear it, too.

The footsteps crunch through the same garbage I walked over, past the machine. They stop far away. A door slides open. I hear a deep voice. Only one voice, though. No reply. The door closes. The footsteps go past me and the machine again, back up the stairs, on a landing, up the next flight of stairs, another landing, and up the next. After that I don’t hear anything. I wait a long time, leaning against the metal drum, curled up to stay warm. It’s so comfortable in here. My eyelids get heavy after a while, and I startle awake. I peek at my phone, shielding the light from the window. It’s almost two. Surely Jibun Jishin’s second intruder has left by now.

Heart in my throat, I push the door inch by inch until it opens all the way. Nothing leaps out from the shadows, nothing attacks. I stick my head out of the drum and use the flashlight app. No one is here. It’s like nothing happened; I know I didn’t imagine those footsteps, though. I am not losing it. I grimace in the darkness — okay, so what I’m doing now isn’t exactly normal. But I know I didn’t imagine anything. And I’m not imagining things now, as I climb out of the machine, trudge back to the door, and carefully slide it open.

Several voices gasp.

I stumble back from the door and whirl around. “The fuck was that?” I shine my flashlight around the hall. No one else is here, but I know what I heard. “Who’s there?!” Silence. I step toward the room again. I let out a gasp myself.

The room is lit up by a single light in the ceiling. In the room lies a man. He’s curled up on his side in a tiny cot in the room, which is empty except for him, a bedside table next to him cluttered with plastic bags, and a bucket in a corner. Takeout cartons litter the floor beside the bed. The room smells like a subway station washroom. This whole set-up is very strange. But the more I look at the man, the more I recognize him.