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It takes the better part of a day, but finally - finally! - Mei Qi can shut the door and lock it and then flop down on the floor. Mei Qi knew moving in would be a big job, but it had ended up being so much more exhausting than she thought it could be.
In the morning, it had felt nice that all of her roommates had offered to help, even poor Cheng Xiao who was visiting from Korea and protested about being put to work as soon as she arrived home, though Mei Qi strongly suspected the other girls had talked her into it because they hadn’t successfully taken all of their stuff out of Cheng Xiao’s room and they didn’t want her to realize it had become a glorified storage closet in her absence.
Yamy’s roommates had also come along to help and though the large number of people made the process of moving things from the van to the apartment really easy, the large number of people then made the process of unpacking and organizing much more slow. Amazing how a couple years’ worth of stuff could fit into so few boxes but still needed so much time to get put into new places.
“I ordered food,” Yamy says, though the word ‘food’ gets stretched out in a yawn.
They had eaten throughout the day, Yamy’s roommates had brought lots of different fruits that signified good luck when moving house, Yitian had even bowled a pineapple over the threshold claiming she had looked it up online and it was an auspicious thing to do, and then they just as quickly devoured the fruit, leaving the apartment smelling strongly of orange peels.
Cheng Xiao had suggested they order black bean noodles for lunch because that was traditional in Korea and Mei Qi had remembered the three of them ordering takeaway that first time they had gone to study abroad together and moved into their student housing. Though ordering takeaway now meant having an argument as to who had enough money in their account to pay for everything before getting paid back through WeChat Pay, or if it was easier to send the money first.
Yamy had wiped black bean sauce off Mei Qi’s cheek with a napkin and Xuan Yi hadn’t let it go the rest of the day.
Xuan Yi also hadn’t let go of the fact that Mei Qi and Yamy were going to share a bed - a big one, they’d both saved to buy a decent queen sized bed - and Mei Qi could have smothered her with a pillow listening to Xuan Yi talk to Jing’er about how many sets of sheets they were stacking in the linen closet. Honestly, most of Mei Qi’s exhaustion probably stemmed from hissing at Xuan Yi to stop saying crude things when she thought Mei Qi couldn’t hear. Of course, this only led Xuan Yi to repeat them, and louder this time, to ruffle Mei Qi’s feathers more.
Yamy reaches out to stroke Mei Qi’s hair. “Tired?”
“I could probably fall asleep right here,” Mei Qi replies.
“Same,” Yamy smiles at her fondly. “At least our bedroom is all set up so we can go to bed right after we eat.”
Mei Qi nods and stifles a yawn. “I can’t believe how many boxes there still are.”
Yamy glances around. “We had a lot of stuff.”
Mei Qi shifts to lean on Yamy’s shoulder. Mei Qi always lived well, whether with her family or with the roommates who became her closest friends. She always thought distantly about moving in with Yamy after they started dating. As time passed and their relationship grew more serious, Mei Qi had begun thinking about living with Yamy a lot more. Yamy had apparently been thinking the same thing, since she had been the one to broach the topic.
And so that distant thought got closer and closer to reality as Yamy and Mei Qi began to squirrel money away, and then took the first step to meet with a realtor, and then started looking at apartments. Yamy had been surprisingly picky looking at floorplans, pointing out that Mei Qi would need some adequate living room space to practice dance in, and that any building they chose should be pet-friendly in the event a fur baby joined their brood.
And then they had finally found their dream apartment, and waited anxiously as they bid on it, and when they got it they went out to celebrate (and promptly regretted spending lots of money when they were homeowners now).
Now they were here, sitting on the floor of their apartment, still surrounded by moving boxes. The doorbell rings and Yamy goes to get their food and Mei Qi pulls a still sealed box over to become their makeshift table. Yamy unpacks their takeaway and Mei Qi smiles when she sees Yamy has ordered some of her favorite dishes, mentioning she ordered extra because it would probably still be too hectic to cook for the next few days.
Later, Mei Qi dozes on Yamy’s shoulder as they watch a movie on Yamy’s phone that’s propped up against their empty bowls. Yamy kisses her forehead and Mei Qi’s eyes flutter open as she tilts her head to give Yamy one more kiss on the lips. Mei Qi knows their bedroom is fully unpacked and only a few steps away, but she’s too comfortable right here with her girlfriend.