Array of Tales (Michaeng)

Neighbors pt.3

Chaeyoung knew for sure her next-door-neighbor was behind this.

She couldn’t prove it or anything, like how can you prove that your neighbor on the other side of the wall managed to turn on your stereo in the middle of the night? How was that even possible?

But it had to be Mina because the only other explanation was ghosts and she didn’t hold much stock in ghost stories.

After the woman she was with stormed off in a huff she spent the rest of the evening examining her stereo, trying to think of how Mina might have done it.

The wall was obviously thin enough that her neighbor could hear everything going on in her bedroom but was it thin enough that Mina could have controlled her stereo with a universal remote? And how could she have even set up a universal remote to her stereo?

Come to think of it would a universal remote even work on her stereo? The thing was really expensive, top of the line and only available in Japan and select Western European countries. She could control it with her remote, her phone and by voice command. It could play thousands of satellite radio stations in addition to the normal, land-based ones, it could stream music from every Internet music service, and the bluetooth capabilities could play music from her phone.

Bottom line it was a very sophisticated piece of technology and very sophisticated pieces of technology didn’t start spontaneously playing random songs in the middle of the night. Not without some sort of vindictive help.

Chaeyoung should have been annoyed since her neighbor had found a really effective cockblock but for some reason she wasn’t instead she was more impressed than ever. Mina had once again proven herself smarter than she expected.

She glances over at their shared wall as she sips her morning coffee. The key to a good prank war was finding what exactly you were at war over then exacerbating it.

In this case Mina was annoyed that her sexual escapades were disrupting her sleeping patterns so the woman was making sure she couldn’t get laid.

So the key really was to continue disrupting her sleeping patterns and finding the best way to do that.

With that in mind Chaeyoung wrack her brain as she looks around her apartment, hoping to draw inspiration from her surroundings. When her eyes lands on her old Nintendo 64 console, the corners of her mouth lifts in an automatic grin.

Immediately she got to work, pushing the huge, expensive Bose speaker towers that were remotely connected to the flat screen TV in her bedroom up against the shared wall. Then she started unplugging her consoles and hooking it up to the same TV and for good measure she pulls the plug on the compromised stereo.

Six hours later her best friend was knocking on her door with a six pack underneath each arm and a bag of takeout.

“Of all nights you picked this one." Kim Dahyun grumbles the minute Chaeyoung opens the door.

“Why, what’s wrong with tonight?”

“Sana promised she’d go out with me tonight!” she shouts “This was my chance! I was finally going to go all the way with her and you ruined it!”

Chaeyoung quirks her eyebrow upward. “You could have gone you know, it’s not like I had a gun to your head.”

Dahyun set the beer down on the kitchen table and hold up her hand with a serious look “Whoa, whoa, whoa. First of all you are my best friend and you invited me over. Second of all you invited me over to get drunk and play Mario Kart. Saying yes to the first thing is like automatic dude code. Saying yes to the second thing is Kim Dahyun code and I don’t want to be in breach of either.”

Chaeyoung chuckles and knocks the cap off two beers. “Well cheers to that.” she says, handing her friend one of the bottles. They clink the tops, then simultaneously took huge swigs.

The two of them brings all the supplies into Chaeyoung’s bedroom and got settle on the floor. When Dahyun sees the speakers pushed up against the wall, she raises her eyebrows. “You want to explain whatever’s going on there?”

“Nope.”

Dahyun just shrugs and plops down next to her friend. “Okay whatever.”

Under any other circumstance, Myoui Mina would have appreciated the sounds of the classic Mario Kart. It was the familiar soundtrack to her childhood, and she of all people had a deep and abiding respect for the game.

She could not however respect it at the moment because it was currently blaring through the razor-thin wall she shared with her asshat neighbor.

This was retaliation she knew for a fact it was Chaeyoung, the woman's may have been a wealthy play girl but that didn’t automatically make her an idiot or anything. Chaeyoung had clearly figured out she was behind the spontaneous sexual serenade from the night before and now Chaeyoung was paying her back by cranking to the max what she was sure were expensive surround sound speakers and playing what sounded like a very vicious round of a game she had previously loved but was now beginning to loathe.

“SON OF A BITCH!” a slightly muffled voice shouted from the other side of the wall. The curse was followed by smug cackling and the sounds of a clear victory.

She groans as she grabs the nearest pillow and pushes it over her face. There was no way to turn the speakers down remotely (she’d tried every way she could have thought of) and from the sounds it was the old school Mario Kart on the original Nintendo 64 console. Meaning she couldn’t hack into the WiFi in her apartment and turn it off either.

“Suck it Kim!” She hears the yell of triumph, then the clatter of what sounds like someone throwing a controller onto a hard surface.

“You’re a shitty cheat Son! Just like your mother!”

There was deep, rumbling laughter. “And you’re a shitty loser Dahyun. In addition to being a loser in general.”

“That was the lamest comeback in the world, and you know it.”

More clattering then some muted rustling. Minq imagined that the two of them were wrestling, trying to get the other person to take back their comment.

Truthfully even though Mina had tried her damnedest to stop the cacophony, she couldn’t help but feel the tiniest bit endeared. Most of the noise she’d heard coming from her neighbor’s apartment was the sounds of obnoxious sex which led to a deserved hatred on her part toward Chaeyoung's antics.

But this was the first time she’d ever heard Chaeyoung in a different social environment.

Hearing Chaeyoung's lighthearted banter with someone she assumed was a close friend made her feel that much more human to Mina .

The insults and the goading and the laughter reminded her of all the times she’d had marathon Mario Kart sessions in college with her own friends.

So at the moment, she couldn’t bring herself to hate the her neighbor even though Chaeyoung was trying to turn her into a sleep-deprived zombie and she grudgingly had to admit that anyone who would spend a Saturday night in playing Mario Kart might not be as awful as she originally thought.

“Damn it” she grumbles at the shared wall. “You win this round Son Chaeyoung.”

But mark her words, she thought to herself as she rolls over and brings her other pillow down once again over her face, she was going to get the last laugh in this war if it was the last thing she did.

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Sorry for any errors

What do you think Mina's gonna do?