Resonance Harem: I Level Up Through Sincerity

Ch 4. Neighbours, Stairs and WiFi

The electronics shop clerk slid a box across the counter. Heavy. Fragile stickers everywhere. Big bold label: VOSS, C. — Unit 6B.

Clara Voss.

I knew the last name. We had package mix-ups in the lobby before. Always Voss on big boxes with too many warning triangles. I had never seen her, just her boxes.

“Careful,” the clerk said. “That’s a capture card and an active cooler kit. Return window is strict.”

“Cool.” I said, like I knew what any of that meant. I hugged the box like a sad, bony forklift.

Back at my building, the elevator was Out of Service because the building hates me personally. Six floors. My quads started filing complaints on floor two. Floor three, a kid thundered down the stairs past me yelling “PARKOUR” while his mother apologized to the universe. Floor four, I met Mrs. Singh and her angry chihuahua, who judged me like I had stolen its 401k.

“Delivery?” she said, eyeing the box.

“Yup.”

“Careful of six B. She doesn’t like people.”

“Same,” I said. “But here I am.”

By floor five, I was sweating like a runner in a sauna. And I finally got to floor six.

Door 6B had three locks, a newer camera, and a sticky note that said NO SOLICITING. NO SURVEYS. NOT INTERESTED. The last line had a tiny skull drawn next to it.

I balanced the box on my thigh and knocked.

Silence.

I tried again. “Hi. Delivery.”

The camera clicked. A voice came through the door speaker, flat and low. “Say the name.”

“Evan.”

“Of the package.”

“Oh.” I glanced at the label. “Clara Voss. 6B. Signature required. Also: I’m dying.”

A pause. “Show the label to the camera.”

I lifted the box higher. My left arm trembled like an overcaffeinated noodle.

The deadbolt thunked. The chain stayed on. The door opened two inches. One eye appeared in the gap—gray, sharp, and deeply unimpressed.

“You don’t look like QuickDrop,” she said.

“I’m Quick-ish,” I said. “I’m an independent contractor. It’s a long story, there’s stairs, I did them. Please.”

“Hold the box steady.”

“That’s a hate crime.”

“Steady.”

I gritted my teeth and held. She studied the label, the seals, everything, like she was a forensics expert. Then her gaze flicked up.

“You’re sweating.”

“I climbed Mount Doom. Your floor is Mordor. I didn’t bring the ring, though, because returns are strict.”

Nothing. Then, barely, the corner of her mouth tilted like a micro-expression trying not to be born.

“Okay,” she said. Chain still on. Door still barely open. “Tell me what’s inside.”

I blinked. “A… capture card and a… cooler kit?”

“Which card?”

“The… capture-y one?”

“Brand?”

“I… have the reading level of a damp towel right now. One second.”

I tilted the box and found a smaller sticker. “Kodama V-Stream Pro PCIe. And an Aquila ColdFlow 240 thing.”

“Two-forty millimeter AIO,” she said, like a teacher marking wrong answers. “Push-pull or single?”

“I’m single,” I said.

“Good to know,” she murmured. “Any damage?”

I realized my joke didn’t land well. “Just to my self-respect.”

“What about the seals?”

“Unbroken. Like my spirit. No, that’s broken. The seals are fine.”

She stared a beat longer. “Set it down.”

“Where?”

“Here.” She pointed at her feet and cracked the door barely enough so I could slide the box inside. “Do not step off the mat.”

I eased the box inside the threshold. Chain still on. I could smell solder and coffee and citrus. Her eye tracked every motion like I might try to kickflip the gear down the hall.

“I need a signature,” I said, showing the phone screen.

“Slide it through the gap.”

“That feels like a trap, but okay.”

A pale hand slid out, quick, signed with a scribble that looked like a heart monitor spike. The hand vanished. The chain stayed on.

“Question,” she said. “Fan orientation: intake or exhaust?”

“I’m—what?”

“The fans on a 240. If you had to pick.”

“Uh. Intake?”

“Why?”

“So it doesn’t inhale dust?” I said. “Also it sounds cooler.”

“That’s… not the worst answer you could have given.” She looked at me like I was a tab she didn’t want to open, but curiosity kicked in. “Who are you?”

“Evan Cross. Same floor. 6D. I bring in your boxes when the lobby camera sees porch pirates. Once I pretended a heavy box wasn’t heavy so security wouldn’t mock me. They mocked me anyway. I’m very strong… on the inside.”

“You moved my boxes?”

“Only when they sat for hours. I left notes, moved to mailroom cage, please don’t murder me, love, a concerned neighbor.”

She nodded at the box. “If this is missing so much as a zip tie, I’ll assume you scalped it for parts.”

“I don’t know what a zip tie scalping is, but I’m too tired to commit one.”

Her gaze shifted to the hallway behind me. “You live on this floor?”

“Six D,” I said, thumbing over my shoulder. “Across from the couple who thinks karaoke at 2 a.m. is foreplay.”

“Which couple?” she said. “We have two.”

“The one that only knows one song.”

“Boring,’” she said at the exact same time I did.

We both stopped.

A tiny ping trembled in my skull. 

[Synergy Link Established: Clara Voss — Tech Path]

She was already moving on. “The blender guy is worse.”

“Middle of the night smoothies,” I groaned. “For what? Who needs fiber at 3 a.m.?”

“People who hate joy,” she said.

“Also there’s the whistler.”

Her eye narrowed. “There’s no whistler.”

“He’s real. He stares into the air shaft and does the Titanic theme at dawn. Like our building is a flute.”

“The air shaft amplifies weird harmonics,” she said, which was both the most and least comforting sentence I had heard that day.

“Cool. So I’m not crazy; the building is.”

Another tingle brushed the edge of my vision. 

[RSN +1]

Clara noted the twitch in my eyes. “Are you glitching?”

“Only socially,” I said. “I got hit by… a lot of stairs.”

“You said that already.”

“Repeating myself is one of my coping skills. That and hiding behind plants.”

“Noted.”