It was a quiet, placid friday afternoon, exactly the comfortable kind of afternoon ${name} had needed after the week he'd had. All week long he'd been run ragged at his new job, working early starts and long hours; now all he wanted to do was loosen his tie, collapse onto his bed, and savor the peace and quiet. He should have known better.
No sooner had his head hit the pillow, than a sudden cacophony of noise reverberated through the apartment, jolting ${name} alert immediately. It was coming from his housemate's bedroom, echoing through the wall they shared with enough force that the drywall shuddered. Voices crooned incomprehensibly in what ${name} assumed was Japanese, accompanied by an almost jarring riff: an anime OST.
On any other day, ${name} would have let this slide; it was the least of his problems with his housemate, a minor irritation compared to her financial irresponsibility, or her apparent disregard for personal hygiene. Not today though; today he had had enough. Sandra had been a constant frustration since the day she'd moved in. At first ${name} had thought she seemed harmless: with her plain looks and introverted manner, Sandra was the furthest thing he'd imagined from what a troublesome housemate looked like. The ink on the lease agreement hadn't even dried before she'd begun proving exactly how deceiving looks could be.
A self-styled 'otaku', Sandra was the very definition of a slob. She spent all her time completely engrossed in anime, video games, or the internet, unwilling to take even a few minutes to help out around the house; she left her dirty clothes strewn across the bathroom, and her trash littering the floor of her room. If ${name} didn't do household chores, they didn't get done—Sandra was perfectly content to let the dishes and laundry pile up until ${name} took care of them for her. She bathed once a week, if that, and changed clothes just as infrequently.
Even worse than her laziness was her attitude. She was dismissive and self-absorbed at best, responding to ${name}'s attempts at conversation with cold sarcasm—when she bothered to respond at all. The only time she spoke to him with anything approaching civility was when she wanted something from him. She didn't go shopping for herself, nor did she cook: Sandra simply expected ${name} to do those for her. Even getting her to pay her share of the rent was like pulling teeth—she was never on time, and on more than one occasion she'd bought a new game or manga instead of paying rent. She was unemployed, and showed no real interest in getting a job, instead subsisting on unemployment benefits and, ${name} assumed, donations from her parents.
For his part, ${name} had been tolerant, even accommodating of his housemate's flaws: after the first couple fights, he had simply decided it was easier to clean up after her than it was to argue with her constantly. Not today, though.
It had been such a minor thing, to finally spur him to action—compared to her everyday behavior, playing some loud music seemed almost trivial. For ${name}, though, it was the straw that had broken the camel's back. With a groan of frustration, he dragged himself to his feet and down the hall, until he stood before the door to Sandra's room.
Even before he knocked, ${name} could smell his housemate. Sandra's scent lingered in the hall, leaking from beneath her closed door to assault his nostrils. It was a distinct, saline smell: a pungent blend of body odor and dried sweat, infused with the faint but noticeable tang of feminine musk. As foul as it smelled, ${name} found something curiously compelling about Sandra's stench. It was a raw, vulgar aroma, one that almost seemed to draw him in just as much as it repulsed him.
Wrinkling his nose, ${name} rapped his knuckles loudly on the door. Over the din of the music, he heard sounds of someone fumbling within, and then the door cracked and swung inwards.
The acrid smell of his housemate hit ${name} like a wall, far more intense without the barrier of the door to protect him from the worst of it. It hung so thick about her that the air itself felt heavier, more humid. Sandra herself looked as disheveled as usual: her thick brown hair was matted in an unkempt tangle, dense enough that ${name} wondered if she even owned a hairbrush. Her face bore a deadpan, bored expression, her hazel eyes narrowed with irritation, clearly unimpressed with the interruption. She hadn't even bothered to dress herself properly before answering the door. She wore a simple T-shirt, faded and worn with time and use, the collar so loose that one of her shoulders was left bare. ${name} could clearly see she wasn't wearing a bra: the thin material clearly showed the outline of her puffy nipples beneath, leaving so little to the imagination that she may as well have been topless. She wore only a tight-fitting pair of cotton panties to protect her modesty, panties a size too small for her judging from the way they strained against the pale flesh of her hips. She seemed oblivious to her state of undress, as if she didn't know—or, more likely, didn't care—how bedraggled she looked.
If ${name} had been paying attention, he might have caught the faint sheen of sweat glistening on Sandra's forehead, or the telltale flush of her cheeks, but in his irritated state such subtitles slipped his notice.
"What do you want?" Sandra asked flatly, pouting, a hint of impatience creeping into her tone. "I'm in the middle of something."
"I've had enough." snapped ${name} firmly, stepping past her and casting his gaze around the murky mess that was Sandra's bedroom. It was dark and gloomy, lit only by the light that filtered in from the hall, and the harsh glow of Sandra's computer monitor. To call it untidy would have been an understatement: it was a veritable pigsty. Dirty clothes and garbage alike littered the floor, so dense ${name} struggled to spot the carpet peeking out from beneath them. Sandra's drawers hung open, their contents spilling out onto the floor in a cascade of shirts, bras, and panties. Every surface was cluttered with an eclectic mishmash of manga, DVD's, figurines and other collectibles, haphazardly piled atop one another. Worse, it was as much an assault on the nose as it was the eyes: Sandra's musky, vulgar scent permeated every inch of the room, the air thick with the choking stench of her unwashed body.