Chapter 3: The Personal Visit
The damp patch on his trousers had dried into a stiff, embarrassing map of his failure by the time Lukas mustered the courage to climb to Nadja’s floor. The scent of epoxy still clung to him, a chemical testament to his flood. Frieda’s request for a double batch of shortbread and a decryption of ‘long afternoons’ buzzed in his head, but a more pressing landlord duty had surfaced during the cleanup: a whispered complaint from Frieda about “that Russian girl’s cement experiments” clogging the shared pipes. It was time for a conversation about drain etiquette. He would be firm.Logical. Unflinching.
He stood before her door, the bicycle-spoke dreamcatcher casting a faint, spindly shadow in the afternoon light. From within, he heard the deliberate, melancholic notes of a piano piece he didn’t recognize. He knocked, the sound crisp and official.
The music stopped. A moment of silence, then footsteps. The door swung open.
Nadja stood there, and Lukas’s carefully prepared speech evaporated from his mind like water on a hot stove.
She was wearing a faded, peach-colored cotton bra and a pair of simple, high-waisted underwear dotted with tiny, smiling clouds. That was all. Her pastel-green hair was piled in a messy bun, stray strands sticking to her neck. She held a half-eaten apple in one hand. She looked at him, her large, placid eyes blinking slowly, as if finding a lost accountant on her doorstep was the most ordinary thing in the world.
“Lukas,” she said, taking another crunch of the apple. “You smell like a hardware store.”
He could not look at her face. His gaze skittered away, landing on the dreamcatcher, the exposed brick wall behind her, the apple in her hand—anywhere but the vast, uninterrupted expanse of her pale, slender frame. His ears roared with a sudden rush of blood. He was suddenly, painfully aware of his own clothing, every stitch of it felt like a heavy, woolen prison.
“I… the… the drain,” he managed to stammer, his voice an octave too high. He cleared his throat, forcing his eyes to a point approximately six inches above her left shoulder. “Frieda mentioned… quinoa. Or something. It shouldn’t go down the sink. It expands.”
Nadja leaned against the doorframe, unselfconscious as a cat. She took another bite, chewed thoughtfully. “It was supposed to be a one-pot meal. It became one-clog plumbing. A metamorphosis.” Her voice was a lazy drawl. “You’re blushing, Lukas Brenner.”
“I am not.” The denial was automatic, futile. He could feel the heat radiating from his cheeks.“You are. Your ears are pink. Like a rabbit’s.” A faint, amused smile played on her lips. “Have you never seen a woman in her underwear before? Berlin is full of them. Less, in April, but still.”
This was a tactical nightmare. He had come armed with plumbing regulations and was being dismantled by casual surrealism. He tried to rally, to find the thread of his landlordly authority. “It’s about the infrastructure. The pipes are old. They can’t handle… granular matter.”
“Granular matter,” she repeated, as if tasting the phrase. She pushed off from the doorframe and turned, walking back into the apartment. “Come in. You can lecture the granular matter in person. It’s congealing on the stovetop.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. The open door was an invitation, a trap. From within, the chaotic, colorful life of her space called to him: the rainbow rugs, the towering shelves of books and trinkets, the grand piano peeking from behind a fortress of rolled blueprints. The alternative was to stand frozen in the hallway, defeated by a pair of cloud-patterned underwear. He stepped inside, his movements stiff.
The apartment was warmer than the rest of the house, smelling of sandalwood incense, old paper, and the distinct, nutty-burnt scent of the culinary disaster in question. The infamous quinoa sat in a pot on a hotplate, a beige, lumpy monument to failure.
Nadja drifted to a worn velvet armchair and curled up in it, pulling a crocheted blanket over her lap. She made no move to put on more clothes. She simply watched him, her head tilted.
“I just woke up,” she offered by way of explanation, though it was past three in the afternoon. “The piano doesn’t care what I wear.”
Lukas kept his gaze firmly locked on the pot of quinoa. It was a safe, terrible focal point. “It’s not about the piano. It’s about… it’s inappropriate.”
“What is? The quinoa or my state of undress?”
“Nadja,” he said, a pleading note cracking through his attempted sternness.
She smiled then, a real, wide smile that lit up her small face. “You are very easy to tease. It’s like poking a jellyfish. All the nerves are on the outside.” She gestured loosely with her apple core. “Relax. I’m covered. You’re covered. We are two mammals discussing plumbing. Breathe.”
He forced a breath in. It shuddered. He looked at her, really looked, for the first time since entering. She was utterly at ease, wrapped in her blanket, her expression one of benign curiosity. The embarrassment was entirely his own construction. The power balance, which he had assumed would be rooted in his landlord status, had dissolved the moment she opened the door. She held it all, wrapped in peach cotton and calm amusement.
“The quinoa,” he said, latching onto the concrete issue. “You can’t put it down the drain.It swells. It’s a known fact.”
“A known fact,” she echoed, nodding sagely. “I did not know this fact. Now I do. Consider me educated.” She paused. “Your repair on Frieda’s sink. Did it hold?”
The shift was disorienting. “The epoxy held. My part… the new trap is fine. The old damage wasn’t my fault.”
“So you fixed one thing and uncovered another.” She tossed her apple core towards a small compost bin, missing it by an inch. She didn’t seem to notice. “That is the story of this house. You try to make one thing work, and something else you didn’t even know was broken starts to cry.” She studied him. “You are trying very hard to be the handyman. The baker. The rule-enforcer. It’s a lot of hats for one head.”
The observation, delivered so languidly, felt more invasive than her lack of attire. It laid bare the frantic scrambling of his last week. “It needs to be done,” he said, defensively.
“Maybe.” She shrugged a thin shoulder. “But you will exhaust yourself. Susanne yelled. She did not fix. It was simpler.” Her gaze drifted to the balcony, where a few sad herbs struggled in pots. “What do you want from us, Lukas?Really? A clean drain and quiet nights? Or something else?”
The question hung in the incense-heavy air. He had no ready answer. He wanted the spreadsheet to balance. He wanted the ecosystem to have a predictable, manageable output. He wanted not to be staring at a near-naked woman while discussing pipe integrity.
“I want the house to function,” he said finally, the truth feeling insufficient.
“It functions,” Nadja said. “It functions like a broken music box that sometimes plays the most beautiful, unexpected tune. You are trying to replace the gears. You might lose the song.” She unfolded herself from the chair, the blanket falling away. He averted his eyes again, but less quickly this time. She padded to the kitchenette, picked up the pot of quinoa, and carried it to the sink. “See? I am a reformed woman. It goes in the bin.” She dumped the glutinous mass into a trash bag with a wet thud.
“Thank you,” he said, the words absurdly formal.
She turned, leaning back against the counter, arms crossed over her chest. “You brought me babka that tasted of long afternoons. I will not clog your pipes. This is our contract.” Her smile returned, softer now. “You can look at me, you know. I don’t bite. And you have seen more skin at a public pool.”
He dared to meet her eyes. The intense, flustered panic had subsided, replaced by a weary, strange acceptance. She was right. The world hadn’t ended. The plumbing was safe. He was just a man in a messy room with a peculiar woman.
“Next time,” he said, the ghost of a smile touching his own lips, “maybe put on a robe before answering the door. For the sake of my blood pressure.”
Nadja’s laugh was a low, pleasant sound. “I’ll consider it. But no promises. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a piano to negotiate with. It’s being stubborn about the second movement.”
Dismissed, Lukas nodded and made his way back to the door. As he stepped into the hallway, her voice floated after him, light and melodic.
“Lukas?”
He turned.
She was still by the counter, a slim, pale figure in the colorful clutter. “The thing you want? The functioning? It will never be quiet. But it might become a song you want to hear.” She gave a little wave with her fingertips. “Close the door on your way out. The draft is granular.”
He closed the door softly, the dreamcatcher trembling. He stood in the cool, dim silence of the stairwell, the vibrant, disarming chaos of her world sealed away behind him. His heart was no longer hammering. His cheeks were cooling. The encounter had not gone as planned at all. He had not been stern. He had not maintained control.
But the quinoa, he thought with a sudden, clear certainty, would never go down that drain again. It was a small, strange victory. And as he descended the stairs, the phantom notes of her piano piece seeming to follow him, he realized, with a jolt, that he was already starting to wonder what the song would be.
And as he descended the stairs, the phantom notes of her piano piece seeming to follow him, he realized, with a jolt, that he was already starting to wonder what the song would be.
The thought was so uncharacteristic it halted him on the second-floor landing. His own apartment waited below, a sanctuary of silent spreadsheets. The kitchen upstairs still smelled of his failed pastries and epoxy. Yet here he stood, between floors, unmoored. A memory surfaced: Zara’s quiet voice in the chaos of the flooded kitchen, mentioning an armadillo. Boltzmann. He had nodded then, preoccupied with water. Now, the absolute strangeness of it hooked him. An armadillo. In Prenzlauer Berg.
He had never seen one outside a documentary. A creature of deserts and scrubland, not parquet floors and Berlin damp. What did it even eat? Where did it sleep? The professional justification formed smoothly in his mind: a landlord’s inspection. He was checking on the structural integrity after the flood, ensuring no hidden damage in the tenants’ units. It was logical, thorough. It had nothing to do with a nervous, prickling curiosity.
He approached her door. It was neater than the others, adorned only with a simple wreath of dried lavender and a small, handwritten note that read “Bitte nicht klopfen—Please do not knock—Wenn Einstein schläft.” Einstein was presumably the dog. He could hear no barking. He remembered Frieda’s description: Zara watched and remembered everything. He knocked, just twice, the sound soft and rounded.
He waited. A lock clicked, then another. The door opened just wide enough to reveal Zara, her braids tied back, her thin-framed glasses slightly smudged. She wore a oversized university hoodie and sweatpants. Einstein, the shepherd, loomed behind her, his tail giving a single, cautious wag.
“Lukas,” she said, her voice quiet. Her eyes flicked past him to the empty hallway. “Is something wrong? The water again?”
“No! No, the repair is holding.” He wiped his palms on his trousers. “I’m, ah, conducting follow-up inspections. For moisture. In the walls. From the incident.” The lie felt lumpy and obvious.
Zara’s gaze was steady, analytical. She saw the damp patch on his knee from the sink, the faint flour dust still on his cuff from the morning’s baking. She saw a man inventing a reason. “An inspection,” she repeated, without inflection.
“Yes. May I?”
She hesitated for a long moment, then opened the door wider. “Okay. But please, be calm. Boltzmann is easily startled.”
The apartment was a temple to orderly, obsessive care. Medical textbooks stood in precise rows on shelving units. Framed, beautifully detailed pencil sketches of animal anatomies—a rabbit’s musculature, a bird’s wing—lined the walls. The air smelled of antiseptic, cedar chips, and dog. It was the complete antithesis of Nadja’s chaotic loft. Lukas felt his own shoulders drop an inch in the familiar presence of a system.
Then he saw it. In a large, custom-built enclosure under the window, amid a landscape of peat and bark. Boltzmann was the size of a large cat, a tapestry of bony plates in a pattern of brown and dull pink. It was nibbling on something that looked like a piece of sweet potato, its claws delicate and precise. It paused, lifting its long, narrow snout. Dark, bead-like eyes regarded him without fear, without interest.
“Oh,” Lukas breathed, the sound leaving him involuntarily.
He took two steps closer, bending slightly. The animal scrunched its armoured back, then resumed eating. It was profoundly, beautifully weird. “A nine-banded? Dasypus novemcinctus?”
Zara blinked, coming to stand beside him. A faint note of surprise entered her voice. “You know the species.”
“I read. When I inherit a house with one, I research.” He didn’t take his eyes off it. “The literature said they’re nocturnal. And solitary.”
“He is. And he is.” She leaned on the enclosure, her posture relaxing a fraction. “He’s also a terrible insomniac. And a picky eater. He only likes the orange carrots, not the purple ones.”
Lukas let out a short, genuine laugh. “A gourmand.”
“A fussy old man in a suit of armour.” She watched the armadillo shuffle into a hide box. “Your inspection. For moisture. You don’t have a meter.”
He straightened, caught. “I am doing a visual preliminary assessment.”
“I see.” A tiny, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips. “The wall by the balcony door has a hairline crack. It’s been there for years. It’s dry.” She turned those observant eyes on him fully. “You wanted to see him.”
There was no point left in the pretence. The clarity of her observation dismantled it. “Yes. I did. I’m sorry for the pretext.”
“It’s alright.” She pushed her glasses up her nose. “People usually make worse excuses. They just want to gawk. You actually knew what he was.” She paused, studying Lukas’s face as if it were another anatomical sketch. “You brought me a cheese pretzel. With a tiny dog biscuit. It was... thoughtful.”
“You noticed the shape.”
“Einstein did. He was very pleased.” She crossed her arms. “So. You’ve seen your armadillo. Is your visual assessment complete?”
He should leave. The inspection was over, the curiosity satisfied. Yet the ordered quiet of her space, after Nadja’s whirlwind, was a balm. He found himself speaking. “You draw these? They’re incredible.”
“Yes. It helps me learn.” She looked at the sketches, then back at him. “You bake. Frieda said your Streusel had perfect structural integrity. She was annoyed.”
“High praise from her,” he said, a warmth spreading in his chest unrelated to the room’s temperature.
They stood in a comfortable silence for a moment, broken only by the scratch of Boltzmann digging in his substrate. It was the first normal, non-catastrophic interaction he’d had with a tenant that didn’t end with him feeling flustered or defeated.
“The house is loud,” Zara said suddenly, her voice dropping. “For you, I mean. It must be. You are a quiet person.”
The accuracy of it was disarming. “It has been an adjustment.”
“They’re not bad. They’re just… a lot. Frieda mediates, but she also stirs the pot. Nadja lives in a different dimension. Akira thinks we are all variables in an equation. Lena is…” She trailed off, a slight frown forming. “Lena is very sure of things.”
It was more than he’d heard her say at once since he’d arrived. It was a map, offered quietly. “And you?” he asked.
“I have my animals. And my drawings. It’s enough.” She glanced toward her door, a subtle signal. The audience was concluding. “The inspection is done, Herr Brenner. Your walls are dry.”
He nodded, understanding the dismissal. “Thank you, Zara. For your time. And for introducing me to Boltzmann.”
He moved to the door, Einstein shadowing him. As he stepped back into the hallway, her voice, soft as before, reached him.
“The pretzel was good. Next time, you can just knock.”
The door closed with a gentle, final sound. He was in the stairwell again, but the disorientation from Nadja’s had solidified into something else. He had connected a dot. He had seen an armadillo. He walked down to his own apartment, the memory of bony plates and precise pencil lines layered over the scent of sandalwood and burnt quinoa. The song of the house, he thought, unlocking his door, wasn’t one melody. It was a frantic, overlapping composition, and he had just quietly learned another measure.
The thought was a fragile, new instrument in the cacophony. He turned the key in his own apartment lock, craving the null silence of his own walls.
“Brenner. Hey.”
The voice was a rasp, cutting through the stairwell’s dimness. He jumped, the key biting into his palm. He looked up.
Akira Hirasawa leaned over the wrought-iron railing of the floor above, her head and shoulders inverted like a hanging bat. Her messy, medium-length hair swung loose. A faded band t-shirt strained across her frame. From this angle, he could see the intricate, swirling tattoos covering her forearms, a tapestry of ink against her skin. Her expression was unreadable.
“You. Come up.” It wasn’t a request. It was a directive, gravelly from sleep or smoke.
Lukas’s heart, still settling from the armadillo, gave another weary thud. “Is there a problem? The plumbing again, or—”
“Just get up here. Didn’t ask for a fucking debate.” She disappeared from view.
He stood frozen for a three-count. This was the one who thought in variables. The one whose sleep schedule was a random number generator. With a sigh that came from his bones, he trudged back up the stairs he’d just descended. His mind ran through a quick ledger: Akira. Apartment 4. No recorded complaints. Rent paid via erratic cryptocurrency transfers.
Her door was already ajar. He pushed it open. “Hello?”
“Shut it. The light’s wrong if it’s open.”
The apartment was a monument to controlled chaos. It was dark, the only illumination coming from the cold glow of two massive computer monitors and a single, angled architect’s lamp. The air smelled of ozone, hot electronics, and the sharp, mineral scent of ink. Every flat surface was buried: tablet screens, graphic tablets, empty mugs with fungal ecosystems growing inside, and loose sheets of paper covered in wild, aggressive sketches.
Akira stood in the center of the room, arms crossed, studying a large canvas propped against the brick wall. She didn’t turn. “Well? Get in. You’re letting the vibe out.”
He closed the door, plunging them fully into the electronic dusk. “You called for me.”
“Yeah. Look at this.” She gestured with her chin toward the canvas. “Tell me what you see.”
This was a trap. It had to be. He approached cautiously, stepping over a low table littered with styluses. The artwork was massive, at least two meters wide. It wasn’t a painting, but a digital print, its surface matte and deep. The image was a dizzying, hyper-detailed explosion of the house itself—Kastanienallee 12—but rendered as a living, biomechanical entity.
Brickwork bled into intricate clockwork gears. The front door was a gaping, chrome-plated mouth. Windows were lenses, each reflecting a distorted, signature scene: one held the stern, judgemental curve of a rolling pin (Frieda); another, the chaotic, colorful strands of a unraveling piano wire (Nadja); a third, the precise, anatomical lines of a rodent’s skeleton (Zara). Vines of code and electrical cabling snaked around the structure, blooming with glitching flowers. In the highest attic window, a small, tidy figure of a man was rendered in perfect, realistic detail, holding a spreadsheet like a shield. It was him.
Lukas’s breath caught. He saw the epoxy tube from the sink incident tucked into a drawn gutter. The “Eat Me” magnet from the communal fridge was a planetary body in a tiny, orbiting solar system of other magnets. It was the house. It was them. It was terrifying and brilliant.
“Well?” Akira’s voice was tight, a wire under tension. She finally looked at him, her eyes shadowed in the monitor light. “Outsider’s take. Don’t fucking sugarcoat it.”
He swallowed, his accountant’s brain fighting his visceral reaction. “It’s… technically astounding. The detail is…”
“Boring. Skip the gallery wank. What does it do? Does it work?” She stepped closer, pointing a stained finger at the figure of him. “That’s you. Obvious. Too obvious? Sentimental shit?”
The criticism of her own work was so brutally direct it disarmed him. He stared at his own miniature, pixellated face. The shield-spreadsheet had a hairline crack in it. “It’s not sentimental. It’s accurate. I do hold it like a shield.” The admission surprised him. “The whole thing is… it’s the infrastructure. But feeling. Gears and nerves.”
Akira was silent for a long moment. She picked up a half-empty can of energy drink from the floor, took a swig. “Gears and nerves,” she repeated, rolling the words in her mouth like a taste. “Huh.” She set the can down with a click. “Frieda said you were observant. In a nervous bird kind of way. She wasn’t wrong.”
“You asked for an outsider. I’m about as outside as it gets.”
“Exactly.” She tapped the canvas near the chrome-plated mouth of the door. “That’s the point. It’s a system. A messed up, beautiful, failing system. You got that in one look.” She squinted at him. “The fucking lavender shortbread was a good data point. A peace offering with baked-in algorithmic intent. Cute.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. The conversation was a zigzag he couldn’t predict. “You made this from… observation?”
“I make everything from observation. You all are just really loud, vivid data streams.” She flopped onto a battered, low sofa, sending a cascade of sketchbooks sliding to the floor. “The plumbing’s fucked, by the way. Not your epoxy job. The main stack. It groans at 2:17 AM. I’ve logged it. You’ll need a professional.”
The shift was so abrupt Lukas physically swayed. “What? Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because you looked at the art and didn’t say ‘pretty colors’ or ‘my eyes hurt’. You earned a useful data point.” She grinned, a flash of white in the gloom. “Also, I wanted to see if you’d actually come up. You’re very obedient for a patriarch.”
The word, coming from her, was a needle. “I’m not a patriarch. I’m a reluctant landlord with a leaky sink.”
“Semantics.” She waved a dismissive hand. “You’re the new central node. The system is recalibrating. It’s fascinating to watch.” Her eyes drifted back to the canvas, a critical frown returning. “The Lena lens is too clean. Needs more chaotic entropy. She’s messier than she looks.”
Lukas felt the conversation slipping entirely from his grasp. He had a new, urgent problem—a groaning main stack—delivered as a side note to an art critique. “2:17 AM. You’re sure.”
“I’m always sure. My sleep is fucked, not my perception.” She pulled a tablet into her lap, already scrolling, dismissing him. “We’re done. You can go back to your spreadsheets, Node Brenner. Thanks for the take.”
He was being ejected. He stood there, unmoored again, the haunting, mechanical image of his home seared into his vision. He had come for a leak and received a manifesto. He turned to leave.
“Hey.”
He paused, hand on the doorknob.
Akira wasn’t looking at him. Her face was lit by the tablet’s glow, all sharp angles and focused intensity. “Next time you bake? Something with matcha. And real dark chocolate. Not that sweetened garbage. The variable is noted.”
He didn’t answer. He simply nodded, though she couldn’t see it, and stepped back into the hallway, closing the door on the digital dusk.
The silence of the stairwell was now a void, waiting to be filled by the groan of pipes at 2:17. He descended slowly, the impressions of the day layering upon him: the scent of sandalwood, the feel of bony armour, the vision of himself rendered in cold, perfect pixels. Gears and nerves. He entered his own apartment, the quiet now feeling thin and provisional.
He did not go to his spreadsheet. He stood at his bare window, looking out at the darkening Berlin sky. The house enveloped him, its songs—piano notes, dog whines, the hum of servers, the coming groan of water—waiting in the walls. He was inside the composition now, not just hearing it. And he had, without knowing how to, just been given his next note: matcha, dark chocolate, 2:17 AM.