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"You're not allowed to scare him away," is the first thing that Sha Hualing says to Luo Binghe, instead of cursing and throwing knives at him until he vaults over the counter and makes them both coffee. "He's part of the set dressing now."
Luo Binghe says, "What?" And then, "What do you mean, set dressing, the only thing more obvious than this is that laundromat your uncle runs."
"Shh!" hisses Sha Hualing, and jerks her head toward the coziest corner of the entire shop. It's next to a window but also shaded by green hanging plants and gauzy curtains. It has a pair of dark leather armchairs turned toward each other. The man sitting in the armchair further from the window is lost in concentration. He's very slender in a spiritual sort of way, all pale skin and dark hair falling over his forehead and hanging down over his glasses. He's typing on a MacBook, a newer model, and his hands and fingers move in a graceful dance.
Hmm, thinks Luo Binghe. "What's his name?"
"Large quad oatmilk extra caramel extra whip," says Sha Hualing. The man must have made some sort of impression on her. Usually Sha Hualing made it a point to refuse to remember any of her customers' names or preferences, on the grounds that the cafe was purely for money laundering, amusing herself, and having a handy area to fuck her girlfriend without anybody barging in on them.
"Hmm," says Luo Binghe. He makes an espresso con panna for himself, an iced latte for Sha Hualing, and then, after a moment, the drink the man seems to order.
"Oh my god," says Sha Hualing, revolted, "is this like love at first sight or some shit? You're not allowed to bang him in the back room."
Luo Binghe would never bang anybody in the back room, mostly because he’s repeatedly walked into it and found Sha Hualing being fucked by her girlfriend. Luo Binghe has a weird gym relationship with Sha Hualing's girlfriend's brother, and if Sha Hualing's girlfriend's brother found out she was fucking someone in a back room of a cafe he would definitely have a stroke, and then Luo Binghe would have nobody to flex homoerotically in a mirror at. "Unlike some people," says Luo Binghe, "I understand sanitation."
"Bullshit," says Sha Hualing immediately. Luo Binghe ignores her and walks over to the man, placing the full cup of whipped cream and caramel horror next to the man's empty one.
The man looks up. The man's eyes are about the color of the micro foam on a good cup of espresso before the steamed milk is poured in. Luo Binghe thinks, oh no.
"There's a lot of room in this cafe," says the man.
Well…. hell. Luo Binghe tries out his most charming smile and says, "but right here?"
"I can leave," says the man, and Luo Binghe panics.
"I made you coffee," he says.
The man's name is Shen Qingqiu, and he went there because Sha Hualing genuinely didn’t care if he died of a heart attack or not and was the only person who would give him quad caramel lattes with extra whip without lecturing him about his blood pressure.
Luo Binghe initially thought that Shen Qingqiu was working on either a thesis or a novel, a notion he cherished until he got a look at Shen Qingqiu’s screen and realized he was either reading or flaming about horrible online novels. He thought then that he might be a reviewer or a novelist, but then it turned out that Shen Qingqiu was really and truly a professor. He just avoided his office whenever possible, preferring to communicate with his students over email and text, so that he could stay away from the head of his department.
“Do you dislike him so much?” says Luo Binghe. Secretly, of course, he's pleased: even though they only see each other at the Singing Bell Cafe he feels terribly jealous of Shen Qingqiu's time and attention. He's working on it, though. Some day soon he will entice Shen Qingqiu to his apartment for dinner, and then a weekend, and the a week, and then before Shen Qingqiu realizes what's going on they'll be at the register office and Luo Binghe will be holding a huge bouquet of white flowers.
He's looked at Shen Qingqiu's professor profile a couple times on the university's website, trying to decide if it was worth pretending to be a student enough to get in one of Shen Qingqiu's literature classes. If he shaved he could probably pass for an undergrad. Maybe someone coming back for his master's degree.
Shen Qingqiu has four and a half peppers on Rate Your Professor. He could probably just follow the crowd into his lecture hall and sit at the back with all the other thirsty students mentally writing teacher/student porn, but Luo Binghe freely admits that he's selfish. He would want to be in the front row. He'd make himself Shen Qingqiu's favorite student before Shen Qingqiu realized it.
"Noooo," says Shen Qingqiu, in the way that meant that admitting it would be more trouble than it was worth. "He's just very --"
Luo Binghe has a satisfying but brief fantasy of rescuing Shen Qingqiu from the clutches of his department head. He debates on if he'd be wearing a shirt or not, if Shen Qingqiu would look at him with awe and gratitude or if (more excitingly) Shen Qingqiu would hit his forehead with the fan he carried everywhere if the temperature was above 20C.
"Protective," decides Shen Qingqiu, as if that's something unusual. It's not. Even Sha Hualing makes his horrible coffee drinks half caf most days now. Luo Binghe has spent more time than he really wants to admit looking at listicles called things like "Yummy-Yum Ways to Fool Your Toddler into Eating Their Veggies!!" and experimenting with carrot purée in cookie recipes. "His family is pretty close to mine, so --"
Luo Binghe nods, and adds another name to his long list of rivals to eliminate, just after Liu Qingge, who has not failed to make sure that Luo Binghe knows that he works at the same university as Shen Qingqiu and had once caught him in his arms when Shen Qingqiu had a dizzy spell from his blood sugar.
Well. Luo Binghe is the one that Shen Qingqiu is smiling at now. He'll do everything he can to keep it that way.