Chapter Text
Wei Wuxian wanted to die.
More accurately, he wanted to be liberated from this dingy meeting room and remind himself what fresh air tastes like, and then he wanted to die.
Because Jin Zixuan was talking , and had been talking almost non-stop for the last 2.5 hours, and whilst usually Wei Wuxian would have said something snarky to shut him up, he couldn’t today, because he needed Jin Zixuan. Partly because he was one of four other people in the room. Mostly because it turned out he knew his shit, and anyway Wei Wuxian was self-appointed mediator and secretary for this meeting so he couldn’t do anything, and he wanted to die.
“–so before we can even begin thinking about how to recruit members, we need to first consult and make sure we’re absolutely covered in terms of possible retaliation methods, conduct an extensive study power mapping with each department we are targeting. Which faculty members are most likely to be supportive? Obviously the CS department will be our clincher but we can’t even begin working on that until–”
Wei Wuxian knew that organising a union would be hard; he had watched Pride, after all! He knew people wouldn’t be on board in the beginning, that there would be a lot of attempts at tabling, that there would be long meetings and setbacks and that he would find snakes amidst his peers and co-workers. When he sent out invitations for this first grad student union meeting, he was prepared when Jiang Cheng shamefacedly said that he couldn’t come, on account of the business school quietly blacklisting all students involved in union activities from future employers.
He’d known his table needed more work when he’d set it up on Sproul Plaza, even though he had tried his best with a red tablecloth, flyers and Wen Ning’s zine on the need for a graduate student union. He had been prepared for right-wing assholes to press him on the cardboard sign he had made, which read ‘Grad students: do you feel fucked by the university?’
What he had not been prepared for was for Jin Zixuan to roll past on his electric skateboard, the rich asshole, stop, make eye contact with the sign, and say:
“Yeah.”
“What?” Wei Wuxian had thought he might have misheard.
“Yeah, I feel fucked by the university.” A pause. “Do you have permission from the student union to be posted here?”
“Why, you going to report me? Surely if the union can tolerate Ben Shapiro talking on campus, it can deal with me doing a little vibe check on the community.” Wei Wuxian had crossed his arms, daring Jin Zixuan to challenge him. Jin Zixuan rolled his eyes, pointing to Wen Ning’s pamphlets.
“You’re obviously fishing for a new graduate workers’ union, which no one can technically screw you over for. But we have a no profanity provision at school, so unless this –” Jin Zixuan tapped at his cardboard sign – “counts as registered art performance, you can and will get called out for it if the administration catches you out.”
“What the fuck, dude. Aren’t you studying to be a corporate lawyer?” Wei Wuxian had been sure Jin Zixuan was messing with him. “What happened to that internship you were doing at Jin Corporation last summer?”
“Isn’t the university a corporation?” Which Wei Wuxian had to admit was true, having read page 4 of Wen Ning’s pamphlet. “And they didn’t trust me to do anything, so I spent all of my time volunteering as a legal aid for the teachers unions in Chicago that summer instead.”
Wei Wuxian was torn between two emotions. On the one hand, this revelation had vindicated all the gossiping he had done with Nie Huaisang – not only was it a nepotism hire, Jin Zixuan had been relegated to twiddling thumbs for a summer and what did that say about the state of Jin family affairs at the moment! On the other hand, he then had to deal with the fact that Jin Zixuan was the biggest class traitor in his social circles, having not only been unproductive but actively working against the Jin Corporation. On company time.
“Ah, so kind of you to do that kind of charity work for the Chicago teachers, Zixuan! I’m sure if you phrase it correctly you can swing it with Morgan & Stanley this summer.” Not his most subtle moment, but Wei Wuxian had been desperate for any way to restore his sense of reality. Jin Zixuan’s eyes had glinted, and he’d stood up straighter.
“For your information, I’ll be joining the Chicago Teachers’ Union as their junior legal representative after graduation, actually. I’ve already signed onto them.”
Wait, what? It had been known by every Asian American family worth their salt within a hundred miles of the Bay Area that there was a position waiting for Zixuan at Jin’s SF legal department as soon as he graduated. Jin Guangshan had almost had a building named in Stanford to make it happen. [1]
“Holy shit. Zixuan, are you for real? Like, for real for real?” The smug look on Jin Zixuan had slid off as he’d seen Wei Wuxian’s gaping face.
“Wei Wuxian, don’t even think about telling anyone.” Zixuan’s tone had grown urgent. “Besides, I only told you because you have no idea what you’re doing here. ”
“Hey, I know what I’m doing! I follow all the unions on Twitter, I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you even have a sign-up sheet?”
“Uh.” Wei Wuxian had looked at his table. “I’ve given people my school email?”
“You realise the university can track your email if they want to.”
“They can’t screw me over for a vibe check.”
“It doesn’t take much.” Jin Zixuan’s expression had been pained, which was closer to how he usually looked in conversations with Wei Wuxian. He’d taken out a notebook from his bag, ripped out a piece of paper and handed it to Wei Wuxian awkwardly. “Just use this. There’s been some malpractice with some of the research fellows at the law school. We can arrive at a mutually beneficial arrangement: don’t tell anyone what I said today, and I’ll lend my expertise so you don’t get fired before you’ve even started.”
Which was how Wei Wuxian now found himself wishing for death as he was forced to listen to Jin Zixuan speak for the longest period of his life.
It turned out the reason that Jin Zixuan didn’t speak much – or had never been heard speaking much – was because he was incredibly boring . Wei Wuxian tried to keep take note of the different points he was bringing up:
- No striking until we have a critical mass of graduate students; ideally half the departments, realistically at least 15 or more – otherwise administration would be sure to retaliate afterwards
- Especially no occupying of places, no, even Yiling Tower, even though strategically it would be the most viable as it only has four entrances and exits
- In fact no actions except for rallies and meetings until at least 3-7+ rounds of negotiations with the administrators, otherwise they would be put in bad faith
- JZX to begin drafting a manifesto (why does he get to write the manifesto, that is so unfair, no one would read a manifesto he wrote if he’s as long-winded in writing as he was in conversation, WWX to make MM write it instead… Wen Ning to do art?)
- WWX must create emails, signal groups and begin a plan for recruiting members in and across the STEM departments...
“This sounds like a lot of admin. Like, a lot of admin,” Wei Wuxian pointed out as he typed out the last point.
“Yeah, that’s generally what organising entails,” Mianmian replied. Mianmian was a law student and one of the aforementioned four people in the room – the remaining participant being Wen Ning, bless his soul, even though he had already been in a four hour-long meeting at the guerilla farming club that day. Mianmian had walked over to Wei Wuxian, introduced herself as the treasurer of the ML org on campus, and told him she hoped that he wouldn’t be full of shit with a bright smile on her face.
Mianmian was good. Wei Wuxian hoped she would stay, even if she had laughed at him when he opened with a Kropotkin quote. [2]
“I can help you with some of the work if you’d like, Xian-ge,” Wen Ning offered.
“Wen Ning, I appreciate that so much, you have no idea, but it’s okay – you’re already juggling between the mutual aid group, guerrilla farming, and the cop watch collective, right? Don’t let this small project hold you back.” Wen Ning frowned a little at the phrase ‘small project’.
“Just let me know, okay? There’s a big group of people who would be completely down for this,” Wen Ning said.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be sure to reach out! I just need to… get my head around how all of these things will work, that’s all.” Wei Wuxian wracked through the kinds of research he would have to do to get up to speed on union forming practices. Maybe he could reach out to the Labor Centre? Or DM the members at Grinnell’s student worker union?
“Great. We’ll meet next week then, if there’s nothing else?” Mianmian stood up, stretching out her body. “I’ve gotta head out. I’ll speak to my friend in the law fellows program and see if some of the members of my group will come along.”
Mianmian was staying! Wei Wuxian cheered internally. He had passed the first ring of fire that was her approval.
“Yes! I’ll have stuff figured out then – a plan of attack, communication channels, the plan to take back the value of our labor as poor, tired grad students.” Wei Wuxian was exuberant. Mianmian gave him a dubious look.
“I think you’re in way over your head, Wei Wuxian, but you don’t seem like a massive creep and admin has been such bullshit lately I’m willing to give things a try. Zixuan, keep me updated?”
Jin Zixuan nodded.
As soon as Mianmian left the room, Wei Wuxian let out a sigh of relief. “That went pretty well for a first open meeting, huh?”
Jin Zixuan let out a noise of derision. “That was not a first open meeting; that was a pre-meeting. A pre-pre-meeting, even, with the amount of work we have ahead of us before we’re ready to launch a campaign.”
“But I invited everyone on the list! I didn’t want to come in with an agenda about how to run things, you know, communal thinking and all that.”
“Yes, and nobody showed up. Also, you realise that communal structures function best when people have an idea of the agenda they’re working towards?”
“Mianmian showed up; so did Wen Ning!”
Wen Ning nodded encouragingly.
“Wen Ning is your best friend, and both him and Mianmian will show up to just about any leftist event. They don’t count.” A pause. “Also, I asked Mianmian to come. I thought you could use her help.”
“Zixuan, you’re actually invested in this. Oh my God, you actually want to help me overthrow the school!” Wei Wuxian couldn’t resist teasing.
“I don’t want to overthrow the school, much less with you, thanks.” A sniff. “I just think graduate students are long overdue for certain rights and compensation.”
“This is the best day of my life. Who would’ve thought that I’d be in agreement with the Jin peacock on something? Maybe we’ll end up being best friends after all.”
Jin Zixuan’s eyebrow twitched. “What did you just call me?” It was unclear whether he was more upset at being called peacock or a possible friend of Wei Wuxian. He sighed deeply. “We’ll meet Saturday at 11am to discuss how to plan for this next planning meeting. Be prepared with your research. I’ll start working on a plan for the law students and adjacent faculty.”
“Do we really need a planning meeting for a planning meeting?”
“We’ll meet at the cafe opposite the road from the architecture building. Come with detailed notes.”
“Yes, yes, I’ve got it handled, don’t worry. Have some faith, Zixuan, we do research for our livelihoods.”
“I take my cappuccino with oat milk.”
“Got it; detailed notes on how to start a union, cappuccino with oat milk – wait, why am I buying you coffee again?”
Jin Zixuan had gotten up and was walking out the door by the time Wei Wuxian had this realisation, and as the door shut he thought he heard Jin Zixuan mutter something along the lines of, “Because if I don’t get caffeine to deal with you I might commit a felony.”
Wei Wuxian would show him. How hard could it be to figure out how to organise? He played with hypothetical particles on a daily basis.
Learning how to organise people was much, much, much harder than learning to organise hypothetical particles in supersymmetric models.
See, the hypothetical particles might not even exist! Wei Wuxian sure hoped they did, having now spent the better part of a decade studying them, but the ambiguity of their existence meant that they were in his control, able to be manipulated and transformed as his mathematical proofs developed. People, on the other hand, were not so easy; it was hard to find patterns in how people behaved, what led one union effort to success and what made another fall flat on its feet. The main thing he gathered was that successful union-building attempts were an exception, not the rule.
It didn’t help that there was so much information out there. Twitter had not been very good at describing the intricacies of union building at all. Wei Wuxian felt himself crumble under over a hundred years of union history and an equally long history of union busting. Even the recent history was overwhelming: he spent a day drowning in the distinction between business unions (sometimes cool, sometimes actively restricting the demands of their workers) and radical unions (cool, smashed to pieces in the latter half of the 20th century, never practiced fully?). DM’ing the Grinnell student-workers’ union hadn’t yielded many results either; they were jam-packed in a week of negotiations. A very stressed union representative had video called him to say they would love to talk when things were less busy, but he’d missed most of it as they’d called in the middle of a rally at the HR department, who had failed to show up to the negotiation table.
Not to mention that work had been piling up. The latest round of midterms had just come through for the fluid mechanics course Wei Wuxian was TA’ing, meaning he had about 100 exams to work through this evening. His doctoral research plodded on, a deeply unsexy project which mostly involved making miniscule edits to ancient Fortran scripts and hoping it wouldn’t break the overall program when he tried to run it. On top of that his thesis supervisor had reached out to him asking for help on his latest project – uncredited, of course, but with the insinuation that his funding depended on it – and Wei Wuxian had no choice but to agree to help with calculations. At some point an alarm in his head (and his calendar app) reminded Wei Wuxian that conference and chapter proposals were due soon, and if he ever wanted to study what he actually cared about in the future he would have to get published at least twice this year.
So yeah, you could say that Wei Wuxian was tired.
At least Friday evenings were the one night in a week he kept fully protected from work. Fridays were for family dinners, something Yanli had insisted upon when Wei Wuxian had decided to move out of their shared apartment after The Incident. They had made space for this in their lives; Yanli gently declining gallery schmoozing events at her art job, A-Cheng sidestepping networking events and Wei Wuxian swapping out faculty mixers with coffees across the week. Wei Wuxian was glad for these dinners, and the way it kept them in touch with each other in a city which was busy enough to keep them apart for months at a time otherwise.
When Wei Wuxian entered his house-share, he found Jiang Cheng already in the kitchen, frowning at a big pot of curry he was making.
“Your stove sucks.” Jiang Cheng said to Wei Wuxian, who had come to peer at the curry as well. “Also, you look like shit.”
“Ah, didi, you haven’t even looked at me, how could you say such things!”
“I can feel you looking like shit. When was the last time you got more than five hours of sleep a night?”
“Okay, I have definitely gotten more than five hours of sleep a night sometime in this last month.” Wei Wuxian stopped. “Maybe the last two months.”
Jiang Cheng had been working on managing his emotions. So instead of reacting to Wei Wuxian’s inability to take care of himself, he responded to the situation by dumping an extra bag of spinach into his lentil curry. If it was done more aggressively than how one would conceive of culinary endeavours that was nobody’s business but his.
Later, at the dinner table:
“Thank you for dinner, A-Cheng. Is this a new curry recipe? I can really taste the spinach in it.” Yanli helped herself to a bite of rice and curry, which was mostly green as opposed to the usual warm brown of Jiang Cheng’s lentil curry dish.
“Mm, yeah, usually the spinach just vanishes into the dish but you’ve really made sure it’s there in every single bite – like there’s an entire bag of spinach in here!” Wei Wuxian was making his way through his plate with no small enthusiasm.
“Iron fortifies the body.” Jiang Cheng even managed to channel pointed aggression into statements of fact. Yanli had been trained to pick these up after a lifetime of passive aggressive dinner conversations.
“Xianxian, you’re looking a little pale. Are they still getting you to do extra morning tutorials? I thought they had agreed that the class needed two TAs after last semester.”
“The paperwork’s still pending for Mo Xuanyu so he’s only shadowing right now; it’s more the extra research I’m doing with Dr. Schwartz.” Wei Wuxian made a face. “Spectrometer readings, which I haven’t done for years – I think he’s just trying to avoid having to pay someone to do it.”
“I thought you were done with working on Dr. Schwartz’s projects, now that you’re writing your dissertation.”
“Yeah, yeah, but you know how it is, academic schmoozing, he’ll personally consider my funding renewal if I do him a favour, all that jazz.” Wei Wuxian waved his spoon in the air, which was shorthand for ‘graduate labor is exploited with the lack of permanent jobs in the area, forcing researchers to take on grunt work and solicit personal favour with tenured faculty if they had any hopes of staying in the institution’. “Hey, jie, are you unionised?”
“Mm? Yes, I think so, though I haven’t really been involved. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, nothing, just wanted to check, really, it’s good you are–”
“Wei Wuxian’s trying to start a graduate student union after the whole shitfest with the Wens,” Jiang Cheng interjected, which – how did he know? Wei Wuxian had thought his brother wouldn’t have picked up on this news, surrounded by the snakes at Haas who thought only about hedge funds all day. “What, you thought because I do business I don’t give a shit about what’s happening in the rest of the school?”
“That’s what most people at Haas would think.”
“Well, you’ve got shit for brains.” Jiang Cheng pushed the lentils around his plate, a little uncomfortable. “Besides, some of my coursemates who work at the tutoring centre have mentioned it. They’re feeling the pressure too – it’s bad news all around. Anyways, I just don’t want you to get fired for it before you’ve got yourself sorted first.”
Yanli nodded attentively. “There was a big deal when Wen Ruohan got elected onto the board, A-Xian, and everyone knows things have only gotten worse since. Be careful, okay?”
“Yeah, I know.” Wei Wuxian decided to change the subject. “How’s your dating life, Jiang Cheng? Tell me what happened to ‘abs for days’ after the third date? I thought he met all of your standards. What were they again? Ah, they must be tall but not too tall, quiet and yet sociable, intelligent but not more than –”
Thankfully Jiang Cheng took the bait, and Wei Wuxian was granted a reprieve from thinking about work and unions and Wen Ruohan’s careful erosion of any working rights that graduate students had gained in the last few years. Over dinner they swapped gossip – Jiang Cheng had dropped ‘abs for days’ after he’d put on “Fresh Off the Boat” as post-coital entertainment, and Jiang Yanli told them about the latest exhibition she was working on, featuring an artist who made factory-esque machines with old vintage toy parts. The conversation moved into drinks and a few rounds of video games. Then Wen Qing and Wen Ning came home, and Yanli produced a few fancy joints to share. “It’s infused with lavender!” she said, pointing to the flecks of purple on the side.
Finally Jiang Cheng and Yanli got going; they had commitments early in the morning. Yanli hugged Wei Wuxian tightly before she left, a hazy smile on her face. Wei Wuxian felt warm as he made his way to his room, checking his phone for the time in anticipation of an early night’s sleep for once.
Except. Just as Wei Wuxian glanced at his home screen – it was gone 11, which was early for him – he saw a notification. Quite a few, actually:
5:04pm
wangjile [3] has left a comment on your post, ‘time shenanigans in jay chou’s secret’!
5:15pm
wangjile has left a comment on your post, ‘time shenanigans in jay chou’s secret’!
5:32pm
wangjile has left a comment on your post, ‘time shenanigans in jay chou’s secret’!
The notifications went on for a while, each appearing in 15 to 45 minute increments, although they abruptly cut off at 8:59pm.
Wei Wuxian went from being ready to pass out to wired in a second. Because wangjile was none other than resident grad student superstar Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan, who was doing a cross-departmental PhD in AI generated soundscapes and had both the music and computer science faculty eating from the palm of his hand. Who was rumoured to have had a resident gig at Berghain while studying abroad in Berlin as an undergraduate, and who was holding off on submitting his dissertation early despite offers of permanent work from Apple and Bjork – appealing to all models of success for a Berkeley student.
Lan Zhan, who was not only a genius but really hot, and to whom Wei Wuxian had made the mistake of asking one stupid question at a digital humanities conference they had both presented at.
“Aren’t you concerned that the automation of music composition will contribute to the regulation of joy prevalent in today’s attention economy?” Wei Wuxian had thrown out this word salad of a question after Lan Wangji’s presentation, which had been an algorithm that combined techno music with meditative aural practices. Wei Wuxian had wanted to ask why Lan Wangji’s music made him want to cry despite being made by computers, but had faltered at the last second when trying to translate it into academic terms. This inane question had fallen out of his mouth instead.
Also, Lan Wangji had reached for his glass of water right as Wei Wuxian had been given the mic for questions, and he had gotten distracted watching the elegant line of Lan Zhan’s neck as he took a long drink of water.
“I do not see how this is relevant to my project, which is neither about joy nor economics.” Lan Wangji had looked impatient with this undergraduate-level question.
Wei Wuxian had scrambled to recover.
“I’m just thinking about its applications, right? Because your project is being used for a meditative purpose, but from what I understand about your code that’s more a function of what you’re choosing to use it for. The way you’ve presented it, the algorithm would be able to handle just about any kind of music with just a few tweaks. So if this was acquired by the kind of corporations with databases with the capacity to make the neural networks as powerful as you say they need to be, surely it would follow that it would probably be used for like, advertising rather than meditation?” Shit, had he just accused Lan Wangji of selling out?
Lan Wangji had glared at Wei Wuxian like a resident DJ at Berghain who had just been accused of selling out.
“I will have to consider these questions for further inquiry.” A clear dismissal. Wei Wuxian had felt chills as he’d handed back the mic to an undergraduate runner and sat back down.
Things had not gone much better when Wei Wuxian had sought to make amends after the end of the conference’s morning session. He’d waited by the front doors of the conference hall, hoping to catch Lan Wangji after the gaggle of undergraduate students (who were more fans of Lan Wangji’s music credits than his research) had exhausted their questions first.
He’d spotted a tall figure in pale white and blue walking out the side entrance of the hall.
“Lan Wangji, Lan Wangji!” Wei Wuxian waved at the figure, hoping to catch his attention. Lan Wangji stopped as Wei Wuxian had walked up to where he’d been standing.
“Hi, Lan Wangji, is it?” Wei Wuxian aimed a charming smile at the man. “It’s me, I asked you the question about attention economy stuff earlier today? I just wanted to clear things up, in the spirit of collegiate friendliness. I hope you didn’t take what I said as –”
“There is no need.” Wow. Lan Wangji had seemed really upset with him. Wei Wuxian changed tactics.
“–it’s just that Lan-laoshi was too cool giving the presentation, you know? And I’ve followed your work for a while – your sound oscillations project was so good and I’ve written about it on my blog, actually – and so you really can’t blame this fan for not being able to phrase things well when they meet their idol, right?”
Wei Wuxian had trailed off when he looked at Lan Wangji. His face had been impassive as ever, but his hands had gripped his laptop case tight and the tips of his ears had gone red. Wei Wuxian had the sense this conversation was on a downward spiral.
“Ah, but I must be stopping Lan-laoshi from the many busy things he has to get to! Maybe we could swap contact details for future correspondences?” A nice, bland networking move both of them could ignore afterwards.
“Mn.” Lan Wangji had produced a business card from his pockets, a pale blue thing with rabbits decorated on the side.
Wei Wuxian had dug around his bag for a scrap of paper and a pen and scribbled down his email address. In a final moment of brazenness he’d written his name down as Wei Ying because fuck it. It wasn’t like most Chinese diaspora knew the difference between a personal and courtesy name, anyways.
“Your blog as well, if you would.” Lan Wangji’s eyes flicked down to Wei Wuxian’s hands as he wrote the details down. Dammit, so he had been paying attention. Wei Wuxian wrote down the link to his blog with a great sense of regret and handed it over to Lan Wangji.
“Here you go, Lan-laoshi. I’ll leave you be now! Let you get to lunch, do all the networking you gotta do for future opportunities and all that.” Wei Wuxian had gone to turn and walk as fast as possible away from this disastrous situation.
“Lan Zhan.”
“Sorry?”
“You can call me Lan Zhan.” A pause. “Wei Ying.”
Oh. So Lan Wangji – Lan Zhan – did know about courtesy names. There was nothing inherently intimate about using your given name these days (most people didn’t even have a courtesy name, the Jiangs were just old school) but something about the intimacy of it coming from Lan Zhan, who knew its significance, had made Wei Wuxian catch his breath.
“Okay, uh, Lan Zhan. It’s good to meet you.” Wei Wuxian had told himself that the nervousness he felt was entirely due to the fact that he had been exposed for yet another unprofessional move.
“Mn.” Lan Zhan inclined his head slightly, the universal sign for and now this conversation is done . Wei Wuxian had made his exit.
Wei Wuxian tried to binge his sorrows at the conference buffet, and then later over drinks with Nie Huaisang. He’d almost succeeded, until he’d gotten home and noticed a barrage of comments coming from none other than wangjile.
wangjile, who had written ten comments in succession tearing apart his article on Lan Zhan’s oscillatory sound project.
It hadn’t taken much conjecture to figure out who wangjile was.
And here was the thing: if it had just been the oscillatory sound project, then Wei Wuxian would have taken it. It was Lan Zhan’s project, after all, and given Wei Wuxian’s somewhat haphazard knowledge of music theory he would have felt flattered by the fact that the creator of the project helped point out the things he had missed.
But then wangjile proceeded to comment on every single post that followed the oscillatory sound project article . Long, detailed comments, which pointed out every flaw in his argumentation, at least two to three elements where his article could have used elaboration. Even the odd grammar mistake, with recommendations on what could make his sentence structure clearer.
On his post about the lack of non-Western academia in US curricula: There is a large swath of non-Western academics being studied and taught outside of the US. Perhaps the problem lies in the Anglocentric mechanisms which have produced the brain drain effect, rather than a need to diversify curricula.
On his post about the need for intersectionality in STEM: Intersectionality fails to capture the ways in which these disciplines are indebted to each other and makes their relationships tangential. I find interlocking, which emphasises the contingent relationships between these disciplines, a far more effective term.
On his post about why Homura was the best character in Madoka Magica: Your analysis is inaccurate. Homura is excessively melancholic and loses grip on reality throughout her time in the time warp. It is Madoka’s radical hope which breaks through the narrative structure of the warp, making her most deserving of the title Best Girl.
Wei Wuxian had concluded that Lan Zhan was enacting a slow form of revenge for calling him a sellout by discrediting him on the internet. With great precision and accuracy. For the most part Wei Wuxian played it cool, responding with gratitude for the new information and pointing out one or two areas where he diverged from Lan Zhan’s analysis.
But today Wei Wuxian was a little intoxicated, and Jay Chou’s Secret was his favourite movie of all time. [4] So if he found himself a little more immersed in Lan Zhan’s comments than usual, it really couldn’t be helped.
5:04pm wangjile
Your elaboration of the possible time travel mechanics in Jay Chou’s ‘Secret’ is enlightening. However, I feel that it misses the point of the work: time travel is not a literal mechanism but a nostalgic one – one is not meant to understand the movement between time literally ...
Oh fuck no. Lan Zhan was pulling the ‘this speculative element is just a psychological reaction’ argument? Wei Wuxian felt his palms itching to respond.
… the piano is a time travel device insofar as the playing of a piece ‘transports’ one to the moment of the creator’s inception. In speculating the literal mechanics of the work, you neglect to understand how…
... Xiaoyu’s character should not be read as literally present, but as the specter of the creator. Jay Chou’s character is not in love with the person so much as they are with the vivacity of the piece which is ‘Secret’...
... your analysis reads like an application of the movie to articulate time-travel concepts, which I concede you do with effectiveness...
Wei Wuxian read through Lan Zhan’s takedown of his analysis, growing more agitated by the second. A line had been crossed here. Before he knew it he was thumbing paragraphs in response. It started off amicably enough:
Hey! I think there’s been a misunderstanding here. You’re right in saying that I wanted to think about time-travel concepts in Secret (being a bit into physics and all, ha ha) – but just to be clear: I truly do believe that these concepts reflect the reality of the situation...
The situation snowballed when Wei Wuxian realised that in order to properly defend his argument, he would need to do a point-by-point response to Lan Zhan’s critique; no small feat considering the length of the comments. Plus the footnotes which followed the comments, written in perfect Chicago style – that was truly the tipping point. Who put Chicago Style citations into comments on a blog? Especially when the functional use of Chicago Style – to follow citations as you read – was entirely defunct in the space of a comment thread?
Wei Wuxian was usually able to appreciate the academic rigour of Lan Zhan’s comments, even if they were used to discredit his work, but something in his intoxicated state brought out the way the comments stung, a feeling he usually ignored. So if Wei Wuxian’s comments looked a little more like this after a while –
“...the tradition of magical realism asserts that, regardless of its scientific possibility the works would be regarded as presenting a real version of the world. Your reading of Secret as a psychological reading COMPLETELY ignores that tradition, as well as its underlying world-view which challenges the claims that science has to Objective Truth…”
– then it might have had more to do with the fact that he had cried to this movie when he watched it at fifteen, rather than an act of defense against Lan Zhan’s cyberbullying. Wei Wuxian wasn’t in the right headspace to consider that possibility, though.
Wei Wuxian felt his eyes drooping by the time he sent his last comment. An indeterminate amount of time had passed since the respectable hour of 11pm. In the back of his head a hangover had settled in, made worse by the heavy screen exposure and thinking. Wei Wuxian thought little of what he had done as he closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep before the headache got worse.
Wei Wuxian woke up the next morning with his phone on his chest. The first thing he registered was that his mouth was dry. The second thing he registered was that he had written many long and angry comments last night to Lan Zhan. The final thing he registered was that it was 10:30, and he needed to leave the house now if he was going to get to his meeting with Jin Zixuan on time.
It was only when he got to the cafe that he checked his phone and noticed that Jin Zixuan had texted a few hours back saying he was in an urgent call, sorry, would be ten to fifteen minutes late, could Wei Wuxian grab a seat and also not to forget that his order was a cappuccino with oat milk, thanks.
This was how Wei Wuxian came to be sitting in the outdoor seating area of Cafe Strada, drinking a slightly burnt black coffee, deleting his own comments off his blog. He hoped Lan Zhan hadn’t seen it yet, or that if he had, he wasn’t the kind of vengeful person who kept screencaps of everything. He suspected Lan Zhan wouldn’t be, which was why Wei Wuxian thought he might get away with this, but then again he hadn’t suspected Lan Zhan to be the kind of person to leave long comments out of personal distaste, either. Still, surely Lan Zhan didn’t have time to screencap comments; that would be too much.
From behind him he heard the distinctive whirring sound of an electric skateboard coming to a stop. The owner of the obnoxious object picked up said skateboard, then slid into the chair in front of Wei Wuxian.
“How is it that even on a weekend you look dead?” Jin Zixuan said as he reached for his coffee.
“Ask my 70-hour work week,” Wei Wuxian retorted. “How is it that you look okay, considering you’ve been at meetings since–” he checked the text– “6AM?”
“Respect for sleep as my only form of reproducing labor value,” Jin Zixuan said snootily. “Also professional grade foundation and concealer. Mostly the latter.” Then Wei Wuxian had to take a closer look at Jin Zixuan, and when he did there were small indications of fatigue; eye bags visible through a perfect complexion, hair that treaded the line between greasy and styled. Athleisure that looked a bit like he had actually thrown them on haphazardly, instead of being an affectation of casualness.
“Huh,” Wei Wuxian said. “Who would’ve thought you were actually human under all that.”
“Not my dad, for sure,” Jin Zixuan said darkly, between a sip of coffee. He frowned. “This oat milk is definitely not organic.”
“Sorry, what?” Wei Wuxian thought he might have imagined a rare moment of vulnerability from the Jin peacock.
“This oat milk is not organic,” Jin Zixuan repeated. “It tastes like sunflower oil, which ruins the effect of oat milk as a milk replacement product.”
“That’s not what I–okay, you know what, I don’t care, it’s too early for me to think about you having feelings.” Wei Wuxian clicked away from his blog and into their shared document with all the organising notes. He shuffled the laptop over for mutual access. “So I did some research, but there’s a lot of history to wade through and not that much information about how to do the practicals, and I’m not so much a planning guy as I am a ‘break something down and see how it works’ sort of gal.”
“It shows,” Jin Zixuan said, scrolling to a point in the document that went:
Wen ning fucked up tuition situation dismissal POTENTIAL AGITATING MOMENT!!! debt forgiveness; also consider delayed pay//missing hours on rcd, overworking scandal + retaliation, HR grinnelll no show - same??? fuck the chancellor
“Okay, so I was just working out some ideas there, but I swear the rest of it is more coherent! I was just thinking about places to start – there’s a logic to all of this!” Wei Wuxian jabbed at the screen. “So you know how Wen Ning’s in limbo because his grant money froze out of the blue, and now he’s stuck in a bureaucratic mess after the administration dismissed him on grounds of non-payment? So he’s found a few people in a similar situation, and turns out it’s a recurring problem, especially for students with a mix of loans and financial aid. Plus there’s been work going on at some of the East Coast schools with debt forgiveness, so put together we can start to make a case about why the fuck university students have so much debt to begin with. Throw in the situation with delayed pay recently, plus the lab workers who keep having their hours changed but are too scared to say anything because of retaliation – kick shit up with HR on those fronts, and when they don’t follow through we can burn the Campanile down.”
“You can’t burn the Campanile down; it’s made of stone,” Jin Zixuan shot back. “Also, we agreed there was going to be no burning of buildings because it is strategically incoherent. ”
“The Campanile is a phallic tourist spot we made because we wanted to have a long thin thing that was larger than Stanford’s, once we figured out their endowment would always be bigger than ours. Getting rid of it is a way of challenging phallocentrism on our campus.” Wei Wuxian quite enjoyed the aesthetics of that image.
Jin Zixuan took his favoured approach of disagreement: pretending he didn’t hear things that were stupid. “The rest of your ideas are not completely off base. Even if there are far too many focal points to start a successful campaign.”
“But that’s what you’re here for, right? You can apply your corporate-minded union brain and guide us onto the path of maximum efficiency and productivity,” Wei Wuxian said.
Jin Zixuan got defensive. “You make it sound like I’m a corporate shill–”
“Which you were until a year ago, and now I’m asking you to use that lovely corporate brain to middle-manage my thoughts so we can stop getting screwed over by middle management.” Wei Wuxian took great relish in his next sip of coffee.
“ How are you still so annoying,” Jin Zixuan hissed. He looked angry, which made him seem less like a union activist lawyer to-be and more like the bratty teenaged version of himself.[5] Then abruptly he turned to his bag and pulled out a file, virtually slamming it onto the table. Jin Zixuan opened it onto a page with a diagram, which – shit, it really did look like it could have come from a corporate logistics report.
“Ohh, what’s this?” Wei Wuxian peered at the page, antagonism forgotten by the allure of information.
“We were working on similar things this week. You mentioned the delayed pay situation; I did some hunting, and it turns out that it’s been an issue for almost every department. This would be a good premise on which to start base building.”
Jin Zixuan went on to explain the diagram. The bottom of the chart displayed the departments who had been affected by delayed pay recently; the next line up showed the schools they were associated with, and the associated administrative bodies that dealt with each subsection and section, leading all the way up to the board of directors and the chancellor.
“We’re already talking to grad students in our departments about this, so what’s next?” Wei Wuxian was chewing on the pen he had whipped out to annotate the diagram, writing down the names of a few course mates he had remembered sharing work grievances with.
“It’ll help if we can get a few people in our departments fully onboard, but the main thing is to get a person in every department who would be willing to organise around the issue.” Jin Zixuan reached a hand out without looking and Wei Wuxian handed him the pen without thinking. Jin Zixuan made two decisive lines separating the bottom of the chart. “You’ll cover the STEM subjects, I’ll do law and humanities, and then Wen Ning might be able to work on the environmental school and art departments, which should be easy enough given that he's already involved with students in those departments.” Jin Zixuan wrote down their names in each section.
“So we just start talking to people and be like, ‘Hey, work sucks, do you want to do something about the fact that you’re not getting paid on time.’ How does that even work?” Wei Wuxian asked.
“You recruited me with a sign that said ‘Do you feel fucked by the university?’” Jin Zixuan said. “That’s how organising works: you find people who feel like things are bad, and offer a potential way out of it. You were working on a decent – not terrible – impulse.”
“Huh.” Wei Wuxian was realising things, like how perhaps the montage section of Pride had less to do with aestheticising the process and more to do with the fact that it would not be interesting to watch hours and hours of long conversations where people just... complained about things. But it also made things make a bit more sense; how many hours had he already spent with other classmates, pulling yet another all-nighter to finish grading assignments or to complete a lab? It didn’t seem as much of a stretch to take the conversation further, now that he thought of it this way.
“The main clincher will be getting someone in a big department onboard. So for me it’ll be working on the law and political science departments; for you –” Jin Zixuan paused for a second– “the computer science department will be key.”
Oh no. Wei Wuxian had agreed to the separation between schools because it made sense, and because he knew the maths and physics department were relatively amenable to organising attempts. But the computer science department? Home of future Silicon Valley programmers and tech start up prodigies; famously good at exploiting graduate students and undergraduates who wouldn’t care if it meant a recommendation letter to a company in the future. [6]
“Oh no,” said Wei Wuxian.
“We just need an in with a grad student in the department. Ideally someone who has somewhat of a reputation, but to start off with anyone will do. Do you know anyone?”
Wei Wuxian scoffed. The only person in the CS department he knew hated his guts.“No chance. We’ll have to work our way to it,” he responded.
“Figures. For now we can just work on the departments we know or have friends in.” Jin Zixuan didn’t seem surprised by Wei Wuxian’s response.
There were a few details to get through: things to communicate back to Wen Ning and Mianmian, a list of people to speak to next, plans for the next group meeting. Despite Jin Zixuan’s distaste for Wei Wuxian’s jokes and general existence, it was comforting hearing Jin Zixuan break down the steps. It made the whole thing seem a little less daunting now they were in it together. But only a little.
“Right, so that should be everything for now.” Wei Wuxian stood up. “I’m going to grab another coffee and get some work done while I’m here; do you mind hanging around until I’m back so you can save my spot?”
Jin Zixuan had swapped his folder for a laptop. He looked distractedly at the screen. “Can you get me another cappuccino while you’re there? I need it to get through these readings; I’ll Venmo you for it.”
“Uh. You’re going to stick around for a study session?”
Jin Zixuan froze. “We’re not having a study session,” he insisted, continuing to look at the screen. “We’re just studying at the same table. It’s hard to find space anywhere else on campus; this is the most convenient solution.”
“I mean, if you wanted to hang out, you could’ve just said.” Wei Wuxian was amused now.
“We’re not hanging out , Wei Wuxian. We just happen to be in the same space at the same time. For practical reasons, like how the university doesn’t provide students with enough study spaces to work.”
“Sure, sure.” Wei Wuxian said placatingly. Now that he thought about it, he had rarely seen Jin Zixuan with friends. Only Mianmian, and the ever changing crowd of teenagers that had seemed to drift around Jin Zixuan, back when they all went to the same cultural nights at the Chinese culture center in SF. “Do you still want oat milk with your cappuccino?”
“Just make it soy,” Jin Zixuan mumbled.
Wei Wuxian was feeling pretty perky by the time he got his second coffee. The last of the morning chill had dropped, promising one of those balmy Norcal afternoons they got instead of actual seasons. It looked like he would be able to get some work sorted today, and he felt good about it as he brought the coffees back.
Jin Zixuan did not look so pleased.
“You lied about not having an in with the computer science department,” Jin Zixuan said in lieu of thanks.
“What? I don’t have an in.” Wei Wuxian was confused.
“Then explain why Lan Wangji is emailing you from his personal email.” Jin Zixuan pointed to the notification on his laptop.
“I have no idea what you mean – why were you snooping on my laptop?”
“I wasn’t trying to! I just remembered that you said to share the document with me so we can review and compile notes.” Jin Zixuan went red at the implication. [7]“That’s beside the point. You have Lan Wangji’s contact details. Why aren’t you using them? He would be the ideal candidate for an agitator in the CS department.”
“I wasn’t aware that I had Lan Zhan’s contact details until about a second ago, so that might’ve been why. It’s not like we’re friendly or working on anything together. I don’t know why he’s reaching out to me.” Wei Wuxian suspected he did know, actually, but he wasn’t about to say it straight out.
“Well, if not for work, then what?” Jin Zixuan narrowed his eyes at Wei Wuxian. “You haven’t slept with Lan Wangji, have you?”
“How did you even jump to that conclusion?” Wei Wuxian was really, really confused.
A pause.
“There’s a rumor that Lan Wangji conducts all his hook ups via email.” Jin Zixuan looked embarrassed by this tidbit of gossip.
“That makes no sense; he’s a CS PhD student. Where are you even getting this information?”
A further pause.
“Maybe he doesn’t trust, um, technology?” Jin Zixuan tried. [8] “The point is: you have Lan Wangji’s contact details. A good organiser would – should – reach out to him. Schedule a coffee one-on-one or something if you don’t know him well. He’s well connected with faculty and students, so even if he’s stiff it would do a lot to have him. Around.”
“That’s not an option,” Wei Wuxian said. “He hates me; he wouldn’t agree to meet me even if I begged. We have an online feud.”
“An online feud? That’s what you’re calling it?” Jin Zixuan gave Wei Wuxian a hard stare. “There’s something weird happening here, and I’m not sure I want to know. Don’t think I’m just going to let this drop: your personal grievances aren’t more important than the cause.”
“Whatever.” Wei Wuxian’s good mood had disappeared; the caffeine high now felt more like the start of an anxiety spiral. But Jin Zixuan seemed satisfied enough with this threat that he went back to his studying for now, frowning once more at his laptop. Wei Wuxian meant to click on his paper draft, but found himself hovering over his email where an unread message now haunted him. Curiosity got the better of him. If this was a preemptive warning about being cancelled, better he found it earlier than later.
But the message was weird. And short. It read:
Subject: FYI
Wei Ying,
I see that your latest comments have been removed from your website. I thought you might want to be made aware of this fact, in the event that this is due to a security or technological problem.
Let me know if I can offer assistance with the issue.
Rgds,
Lan Wangji
PhD Candidate, Music and Computer Science
Wei Wuxian wasn’t sure what to make of this email. Was Lan Zhan hinting that he knew? Perhaps he was saying, ‘You know that I know that you’ve deleted your messages, and I’m telling you I have them saved as ammunition but will be subtle about it.’ Or maybe he actually didn’t know, and was offering IT support. Either way, he had offered Wei Wuxian a way out, and he wasn’t about to say no to that olive branch. He wrote back.
hi lan zhan,
wow thanks for catching that - had no idea!! looks like there’s been a glitch no idea how that happened… anyways the comments r gone forever and there’s no way of getting them back but they were small notes anyways ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ dw im not hacked tho. thanks again!!!
wei ying :DD
Friendly, casual and yet subtle. That should do it. Wei Wuxian felt like he had mitigated the situation effectively and turned back to his work, ready to at least try and move on. Within a minute there was a response.
Wei Ying,
Good.
Rgds,
Lan Wangji
PhD Candidate, Music and Computer Science
Wei Wuxian knew he would be stressing over that response for a while.
If the start of the semester began with a rush, the weeks that followed were a flurry. The last traces of winter, mild as they were, turned definitively into spring as the blossom trees came out in full force. Out on the campus lawns students could be spotted pretending to enjoy their university experience: there seemed to be endless games of spikeball on the pitch, and the Quidditch team was back after winter break, running after balls with sticks between their thighs. Wei Wuxian felt himself pulled back into the sprint that was the academic term: there were endless sessions to teach and plan and grade things for, revisions of papers that seemed to bleed into each other, conference proposals to send off. He loved it, but things went by so quickly once the semester got going it often felt like there was no room to breathe.
In between there was endless talking . It started with his coursemates Gabi and Ove, whom he had worked with before as graduate instructors and whom he thought were cool. They had both been easy enough to get on board; Gabi and Wei Wuxian had shared their grievances with the department often enough, and Ove had heard Wei Wuxian out and said, “Yes. Work conditions are not like this in Scandinavia,” which was not entirely accurate but Wei Wuxian took to mean Ove was into the unionising thing.
The others were harder. It wasn’t that nobody cared, precisely. Most people were sympathetic; it was just hard to find time to do more. The new cohort was too nervous about how their studies might go to be able to dedicate themselves fully, and the sixth-year students were too busy, mostly caught up in job searches and interviews and the like.
Reaching out to other people in the departments was even trickier. It was easy enough to chat and be charming in cross-departmental events, but hard to get people to be vulnerable about their work conditions in public settings.
“It’s like gossiping, but about the system,” Mianmian had said in one of their planning meetings. They were in Jin Zixuan’s apartment this time, having agreed that there was something incredibly depressing about the Dwinelle rooms which made them want to avoid the space wherever possible. “Look at Zixuan: he loves to gossip, and channels that energy into class rage and union fervor.”
“I could sue you for slander for saying that,” Jin Zixuan said, but his defence was half-hearted, because Mianmian was entirely correct. Wei Wuxian had spotted him on the campus confessions page often enough; plus once after a meeting he had looked at Wen Ning and blurted: “Is it true that the vegan co-op has food orgies?”
Wen Ning had blushed all the way down. But now Zixuan knew that sometimes food-related events (of a potentially sexual nature) did happen at the vegan co-op, even though Wen Ning gave them a wide berth because he thought they were a waste of food.
Wei Wuxian took Mianmian’s advice on gossiping, though, and would come to solicit tips from her after meetings ended and they got to hang out. Mianmian had been organising since she was fourteen and had moved through her share of groups.
“The thing is, leftist spaces can be weird. I know there were a few where the lead organisers had their own agendas, and every time they’d collaborate with other orgs it’d be with these really decisive ideas about things happening exactly according to their specific world views. That just seemed really disingenuous to me after a while, you know?” Mianmian said one evening.
Wei Wuxian made a noise of agreement.
“Like, I just remember working with a group who wanted to host an event with a feminist collective, but when it came down to safe space regulations suddenly the collective was ‘being too restrictive’ with their approach. It seemed pretty fucked up, for a group which had anti-patriarchy written all over their manifesto to undermine the need to keep women safe.” Mianmian paused. “That’s why I like Zixuan, even if he’s a big reformist. He listens. He’ll be obnoxious and too pessimistic about things, but he listens and helps you with what you need, not just the other way round.”
“Comrade,” Wei Wuxian said jokingly.
“That word gives me hives now, but yeah, comrade,” Mianmian said. It had been a good evening.
Things progressed in starts and stops. One week it would look like no one had gotten any further – the law students didn’t care, a math grad student had been outright hostile when Wei Wuxian had tried to talk to him and the guerilla farming group were busy stopping a community farm from getting shut down. Another week everything felt like it was happening at once. Nie Huaisang floated into town with news and the names of five graduate students in the English department who were hardcore Marxists; the law students became much more receptive after their first assignments were over, and Wei Wuxian had an incredibly productive chat with a few people in the chemistry department who had been struggling with delayed payments.
It wasn’t quite enough.
“We don’t have enough new people,” Jin Zixuan said one evening, at one of him and Wei Wuxian’s now-frequent study hangs. “Everyone who’s agreed to take part is someone who would be involved in any sort of union activity anyways. We need someone unexpected, so that grad students who aren’t already in organising circles might start to take notice.”
Very pointed words directed at Wei Wuxian. Jin Zixuan hadn’t forgotten about the email, and every other day would make meaningful comments like this. He seemed to have gotten the idea that Wei Wuxian just had a complex about reaching out to Lan Zhan, and thought it was a necessary part of Wei Wuxian’s growing organising skills to move beyond that complex.
To be fair, Wei Wuxian did have a bit of a complex about reaching out to Lan Zhan. He hadn’t updated his blog since the Incident, but that was because he was busy! It had nothing at all do with the fact that he was worried that Lan Zhan would remember they had a feud (what did ‘Good’ mean?) and then enact his revenge (what did ‘Good’ mean?).
Where Lan Zhan was absent from his online life, he now seemed to be everywhere Wei Wuxian went on campus. He spotted Lan Zhan on the way to tutorial sections, dressed in pale white and blue shades and an outrageously fashionable skirt, pleated white and asymmetrical. He spotted Lan Zhan at the library, looking cosy in a sweater and trousers that made his long legs stretch on endlessly. He even spotted Lan Zhan at the record store once, looking very seriously at the gig listings in the front of the store.
He might have hidden in the Grateful Dead section of the record store for thirty minutes after that incident. He just didn’t want to deal with Lan Zhan, okay? He didn’t want to bump into Lan Zhan and do his union spiel, knowing that his audience was someone who actively disliked him. And if sometimes Wei Wuxian looked a little longer than he should when Lan Zhan passed by, that was just because he was trying to figure out where he was going so he could skirt Lan Zhan’s presence. It was normal.
Lan Wangji was perturbed. This was not unusual in itself. He had grown up with ambient levels of stress and had come to peace with it thanks to a mixture of CBT, running and meditation. No, his current state of anxiety was related to something immediate.
Namely: Wei Ying had gone silent online.
Or at least he had gone silent on his blog, which was the only point of access between Wei Ying and Lan Wangji. This minor incident shouldn’t have bothered Lan Wangji – people took writing breaks on their blogs all the time – but it was odd, considering that Wei Wuxian had consistently written something at least once a week for the past few years. Lan Wangji had checked.
Moreover, Wei Ying had been something of a ghost in general lately. Lan Wangji had often seen Wei Ying on campus, usually fluttering from one place or another, or laughing with friends at lunch. They hadn’t spoken: Lan Wangji was not good at approaching people, and besides, what did he have to say? He had been satisfied with their parasocial relationship mediated through insightful comments, and Lan Wangji had thought that if they were presenting at a conference together he could ask a question that referenced an old post. Something subtle but effective, and maybe Wei Ying would strike up a conversation afterwards, eyes glittering from the reference. Perhaps they would collaborate on a project together, something to do with visualising sonic wavelengths. Lan Wangji had been moved by Wei Ying’s presentation on alternative representations of quantum particles; they were beautiful in a way diagrams usually weren’t, flowing ethereal things.
But there was no hope of starting any sort of in-person relationship if Wei Ying was nowhere to be found. Lan Wangji found himself lingering at the spots where he had spotted Wei Ying: the path he took for music practice, the main library, even the local records store he passed by on the way home. Wei Ying was nowhere to be found.
He was beginning to wonder if the person that had responded to his email a few weeks ago had perhaps not been Wei Ying. He began to speculate. Perhaps the disappearing comments and the email were part of a bigger scheme, and something had actually happened to Wei Ying. He had to stop himself from following that train of thought: it was not helpful to speculate and let his imagination get carried away from him. People had motives that were not always available from speculation, as his counsellor often said.
Just as Lan Wangji had come round to thinking that Wei Ying had taken the semester off, he finally spotted Wei Ying. He was standing by a table at the main entrance into campus, talking animatedly to two people manning a stand. The girl behind the stand said something and Wei Ying laughed, tossing his head back as he did so. Something in Lan Zhan’s chest released slightly. He thought about going over and saying hi, but could not think of anything in particular to say. ‘ Hello, why haven’t you updated your blog,’ seemed too off the cuff for someone he hadn’t exchanged more than twenty words with in person. He didn’t want to make Wei Ying uncomfortable.
Lan Wangji would miss Mianmian gesturing at him as he walked past, urging Wei Wuxian to go and speak to him, dammit, you’re the only person who knows him well enough to even try. Instead he would go home, tinker with his latest soundscape for an hour, make a well-balanced dinner and fall asleep at exactly nine o’clock. He did not allow himself to dwell on seeing Wei Ying, only granting himself the feeling of relief at knowing a colleague was okay.
So imagine Lan Wangji’s surprise – tinged with a hint of hope – when he woke up to find an email the next morning, which read:
hope ur doing well in the semester :) sry i didn’t get back to ur email– u know how busy the semester is haha. anyways i wanted to thank u for the heads up!! do u wanna get coffee sometime and chat; on me??
wei ying [9]