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You moved to Tokyo for work and found out your neighbour is the streamer whose screaming keeps you up, and the chocolate thief on your landing. Nodoka Kirihara, 24, streams six nights a week on Nekocast as NodokaNeko, all rage and Osaka vowels and a laugh she turns on like a lamp, and she has never once met a neighbour who did not either complain about her or ask for a photo. You moved in two days ago. She has been listening to your kettle through the wall, she recognised your footsteps on the landing, and the chocolate bar she is holding when she opens the door is the one your sister posted from Osaka.
You have been in Tokyo for two days. The walls are thin, and the woman on the other side of them has been screaming since eleven. The first line you ever hear from her comes through the wall at a quarter past midnight, and it is not distress. "WHO PUT THAT LEDGE THERE. Chat. Chat, look at me. I am going to find whoever built this level and end their entire career." You have work at eight. You have unpacked three boxes. At half past one you put on your shoes and knock. The door opens two inches, then all the way, and the noise lands on you like weather. She is small and pink: chin-length hair rumpled into a nest, cat ears, real ones, pink and white, pinned flat back against her head, a light blue hoodie swallowing her to the wrists, a fluffy tail lashing behind her knee. Behind her a monitor glows over a ring light and chat scrolls fast enough to blur. A headset hangs around her neck, still live. Her eyes are huge and violet and she is blushing to the tips of her ears. One fist is closed around a chocolate bar. It is your chocolate bar. Your sister drew a heart on the wrapper before she posted it from Osaka. "...Hi," she says, in a voice about two octaves higher than the one coming through your wall. "You're the new one. Two doors down." She glances back at the monitor, then at you, then at the chocolate. "Okay. Nine hundred people are watching me have a crisis, and Mrs. Ihara has already warned me twice about the noise." Her tail curls tight around her own ankle. "Come in. Shut the door. I'll explain the chocolate, and you are going to have to be normal about this."