The neighbor said the old man living in the apartment across the hall died two weeks ago, but every morning I still hear him boiling the kettle and softly talking to someone in the kitchen.
When Alex first moved into this old building, he was warned right away: “Don’t be startled by knocking on the radiator—that’s the neighbor across, he’s lonely, that’s how he says hello.” The neighbor’s name was Daniel, a thin, gray-haired man with tired eyes. He lived alone, and on his door hung a faded sign scrawled unevenly: “Please don’t rush. I’m old.”
For the first few weeks, Alex found it annoying: as soon as he came home from work and settled at his laptop, a cautious knocking echoed through the wall. Then a knock at the door—a long, insistent one. When he opened it, Daniel stood there holding a kettle.
“I brewed too much. Will you help me not waste it?”
Alex smiled politely, even though he just wanted to lie down and sleep. But one day, dropping in “for five minutes,” he stayed for two hours. A table covered with old oilcloth, cups of different sizes, a cat named Sunny who immediately curled up on Alex’s lap. And photo frames: a young woman with a braid, a boy with a huge backpack, three laughing people by the sea.
“That’s my wife, Lea,” Daniel nodded toward the woman. “And my son, Marcus. And this…” He trailed off, his fingers trembling. “Here we all were together. Before…”
He didn’t finish, gently turning the frame face down. Alex didn’t dare ask.
Since then, the evening tea became a routine. Daniel told stories about working as an engineer, dreaming of traveling with his wife but always postponing it. How his son had moved abroad—”more opportunities there, you know”—and called less and less. And then, simply stopped.
“The last time he wrote was three years ago,” Daniel said calmly, tracing the rim of his cup. “Sent a photo from some new office. Said: ‘Dad, no time. But I’ll come, I swear.’ I wonder, does he know I still set the second cup for him?”
Alex noticed there was always one more cup on the table, empty, carefully pushed close to the chair across from Daniel.
Sometimes Alex got irritated by the old man’s endless stories and constant requests for help with the phone, installing a light bulb, sorting out medicines. But as soon as he returned to his own empty, perfectly quiet apartment, a nervous feeling settled in. His own father lived in another city; they talked once a month, on holidays, always in a rush: “Dad, I’m busy, let’s talk later.” Each time he left Daniel’s place, Alex caught himself thinking the ugly thought: “I’m doing to my father exactly what Marcus did to him.”
One day, rushing off to an important meeting, a faint voice called out in the hallway again:
“Alex… are you home?”
He froze for a moment, glanced at his watch, and whispered, “Later. Definitely later.” He didn’t open the door.
The next evening, Daniel’s door was sealed with a white sheet: “Notice.” Neighbors whispered in the hallway.
“Can you imagine? He died. Lay there for two days until someone noticed the smell.”
Alex’s heart dropped. The timid voice from the night before flared in his mind.
He couldn’t sleep that night. It seemed the usual clinking of cups came through the wall. In the morning, he heard the familiar sound of a kettle—the soft, steady hiss—and a muffled voice as if speaking through cotton:
“Well, son, you’re definitely coming today, right?”
Alex stood frozen in the middle of the room. The sound came from Daniel’s empty apartment. The door was sealed, the lock changed. But the kettle whistled. And the voice repeated over and over:
“You’re definitely coming today… definitely coming…”
His hands trembled. Alex rushed to the stairwell and touched the neighbor’s cold door handle. Silence. Only those words echoed in his mind.
That evening, returning from work, he saw men in coveralls in the hallway. They were carrying out Daniel’s old furniture, neatly stacking boxes labeled “personal.” On a chair lay the very photo frame turned face down.
Alex picked it up. The photo showed three people: Daniel, Lea, and a young man with familiar eyes. Only now, on the back, faded ink revealed a message: “Marcus, don’t forget where your home is.”
“Where is all this going?” Alex asked a worker.
“Who knows,” the man shrugged. “To storage, then to trash. No relatives found. No one answered.”
Alex gripped the frame so tightly his fingers turned white. At that moment, his phone vibrated in his pocket. On the screen flashed: “Dad.” Almost automatically, he reached to hit “decline” as he had hundreds of times before. But his fingers froze.
In his mind, the words sounded again: “You’re definitely coming today?”
He pressed “answer.”
“Dad…” his voice cracked. “Where are you now?”
“Home, where else,” his father laughed awkwardly. “What’s up?”
Alex looked at Daniel’s empty door, the lonely chair in the hall, and the cat Sunny wandering among the boxes, not understanding why his home was gone.
“I’ll come. Today. Just wait, okay? I’ll bring that pie you love.”
A pause hung on the other end.
“Today?..” his father asked in disbelief. “Maybe the weekend—you have work…”
“Today,” Alex repeated firmly. “And… sorry for all the times I said ‘later.'”
As he packed his bag, the sounds in his head suddenly quieted. No whistling kettle, no voice through the wall. Just silence in the old building.
Already on the stairs, he turned back, approached the workers, and quietly asked:
“Can I take one frame? And… if the cat’s unwanted, I’d take him too.”
The man shrugged:
“Take it. We don’t care.”
Sunny pressed against his legs as if he’d been waiting for this moment. Alex crouched down, stroked the cat’s warm back, and whispered:
“Let’s go home.”
Below, the same chatty neighbor slowly climbed the stairs. She saw the cat, the frame, the suitcase in Alex’s hands.
“Heard about it, yeah? He died… all alone, nobody cared,” she shook her head. “And his son’s somewhere over the seas. Never came.”
Alex clenched his teeth.
“He was still waiting for him,” he said quietly. “Waiting every single day.”
The neighbor looked at him surprised but said nothing. And Alex, clutching a stranger’s photo to his chest and holding the cat carrier tighter, suddenly realized: scarier than any sounds coming from an empty apartment is the thought that one day his own father might put a second cup on the table and sit across from an empty chair his whole life.
He stepped outside. The day was bright, the sun reflecting off the windows of the neighboring buildings. For the first time in many years, Alex hurried not to work, not to a meeting, not for a “later.” He was hurrying to the one person who could still pick up the phone and wonder aloud, “Son, is that you?”
