A Fragile Connection
At the end of last June, I saw my neighbor in the dormitory apartment moving out. He handed me some books and a few belongings. They weren’t things I truly needed, but I accepted them anyway. I knew how exhausting it was to move from New Mexico to Wisconsin, and I decided it was fine to take them even if I later gave them away or set them aside. That day, Madison was unusually hot.
When I went to his apartment to bring him a drink, I saw him through the slightly open door. He was sitting against the wall in a corner of the empty room. I knocked. He accepted the drink, and we exchanged a few words.
The Weight of Uncertainty
He told me he had lived there for five years; he had finished his graduate studies, yet the job market of 2025 remained bleak, leaving him without a position. For the time being, he said he would stay near campus, though he didn’t know where he would go afterward. As a foreigner myself, I understood exactly what that meant.
No longer a student, if he failed to secure a job within a month, his visa would expire and he would have to return home. I told him that my husband’s contract was also nearing its end and that we were in a similar situation. We both needed luck.
Market volatility had grown under the policies of the Trump administration, and job market opportunities for foreigners became even more limited in 2025. Although he said he would stay nearby, he only returned to the empty apartment in the dead of night and slipped away before dawn, when no one was around. His movements were captured by the camera at the front door.
The space belongs only to us.
One day, his belongings appeared there. (July 2025)
A Silent Departure
From that day on, I noticed a bag left by the back entrance, holding toiletries and a pillow. It carried the scent of my neighbor. I would hear faint sounds late at night, and again in the early dawn, as someone slipped in and out of that space.
Concerned about who was entering the empty unit, we checked our Ring camera. To our surprise, we realized it was our neighbor who had already moved out. Once we understood his situation, my husband and I wrote a short letter wishing him luck and slid it under his door. The very next day, he found the note and waved his hand toward the lens in a gesture of gratitude. It became our quiet, unspoken way of communicating. whenever he caught us on camera, he would wave, and we would wave back.
A few days later, the dormitory management called in a cleaning company for a professional service. After that day, he never returned. When a new neighbor moved in, I disposed of his belongings on his behalf.
In Need of Luck
Quite some time has passed since then. The news has gone beyond simply being “bad” and is growing increasingly frightening. Even so, I hope that luck found him. And for us, as well, it feels like a time when we might once again be in need of that same luck.
