Chapter Text
"Here is your residency package. Your key, student card, bus pass, and some information pamphlets are inside. Be sure to park in one of the designated move-in parking spots at your residence building," the Residency Associate said as they passed over a large envelope.
Shang Qinghua nodded despite only having digested half of that. "O-okay, thank you," he said before taking the envelope and scampering off towards the Residency Office parking lot. The parking lot was small but filled to the brim with the cars of new and returning students. However, even if the parking lot had been three times the size, Shang Qinghua would have had no trouble spotting the pastel green punch-buggy.
"What took you so long?" Shen Yuan complained the moment Shang Qinghua opened the passenger door.
"There was a line!" Shang Qinghua defended. He had barely closed the car door when Shen Yuan had hastily pulled out of the parking space.
"Well, you should have thought of that beforehand," Shen Yuan griped as he glanced at the time. "As it is, I don't think we'll get all your stuff up to your room before I have to leave for work."
"I know, I'm sorry, bro," Shang Qinghua said as the knot in his stomach pulled a little tighter.
"Next time, pack the night before so we don't waste time packing the morning of." Normally, the annoying little hamster-man would just complain back and protest that it was not his fault. So, when Shen Yuan did not hear a response, he glanced at Shang Qinghua. The smaller man was unbuckled, curled up, and hugging his move-in package like a teddy bear. Shen Yuan let out a long sigh. "Just--what room are you again?" he asked as he reigned in his anger, converting it into exasperation instead.
"403," Shang Qinghua answered softly. He was currently trying not to stress-cry.
"Great, four whole flights of stairs," Shen Yuan could not help but mutter to himself before letting out a sigh. "I'll help you carry what I can up to your room."
"Thank you, cucumber-bro!" Shang Qinghua beamed.
"I told you not to call me that in public, idiot!" Shen Yuan hissed, embarrassed at hearing the online username in the real world.
"Eh? What public? Nobody else is here!" Shang Qinghua protested. Now that was the Shang Qinghua that Shen Yuan knew.
"I could always just dump you and your stuff on the curb," Shen Yuan threatened.
"Cucumber-bro! You would really abandon me, just like that?" Both of them knew Shen Yuan would never actually follow through on such a threat, unlike his brother, Shen Jiu.
Shen Yuan tried to smack Shang Qinghua while still watching the road, but the little hamster had the audacity to dodge it. "You had better have your student card and key ready, or I really will dump you and all your stuff in the parking lot," he emphasized by making a sharper-than-necessary turn into the move-in parking lot for Shang Qinghua's dorm building.
Shang Qinghua, who was not wearing his seat belt, was thrown against the car door. His cheek hit the window hard enough to leave a red mark that would likely darken into a bruise. "What are you driving like a manic for?!" Shang Qinghua nearly shouted, rubbing his throbbing cheek.
"What are you doing without your seat belt on?! Did you miss that part of primary school?!" Shen Yuan shot back, not having meant to do anything more than startle Shang Qinghua.
"I didn't think I would need it going 40 kilometres an hour from the Residency Office to the fucking dorm building!" Shang Qinghua pleaded his case. What kind of first impression would he make if he had a bruise on his face? What was worse is that it looked less like he was in a manly fight and more like he was pimp-slapped or possibly hit by a girl for being a pervert.
Shen Yuan glared at Shang Qinghua from the corner of his eye before letting out a sudden and growling, "Then hold on better." He made another sharp turn to pull into an open parking space before a black jeep could do the same which caused the black jeep to honk in dismay.
Shang Qinghua let out a squeak as he shut his eyes and clung to his seat. "What the hell, cucumber-bro?! Why do you always drive like a psycho?!"
"I wouldn't have to if you had actually been ready to leave on time! Maybe next time you'll remember to wear your seat belt!" Shen Yuan heartlessly replied as he put the car in park and killed the engine. "Now hurry up. I'm leaving for work at quarter-to regardless of how much of your shit is still in my car," he said as he stepped out of the car. Shang Qinghua scrambled out of the car and to the trunk to help Shen Yuan unload.
********
Shang Qinghua did not have a lot of things--at least, he did not think he did--so what had he put in all these boxes and suitcases? It was not too much that it could not be squeezed into the back of the Shen brothers' car. It was the walk from the parking lot to the dorm, up the four flights of stairs, and down the hall to his room that made it feel like he had three times as much stuff. It might have been less painful if there was an elevator but, to the dismay of many students, it was currently out of service. In the end, Shen Yuan had to leave for work, abandoning Shang Qinghua in the parking lot with the last and--conveniently--heaviest boxes. Could that heartless cucumber not have just waited a couple more minutes? He already handed in his letter of resignation, hasn't he? Who cares if he's a little late? He's already quitting!
Shang Qinghua cried in his heart as he picked up the last two boxes, his arms shaky from the weight. It would have been better to take one up at a time given their weight, but Shang Qinghua worried about someone stealing the remaining box if he left it in the parking lot unattended. He thanked another student when they saw him struggling and held the stairwell door open for him. Did he look pitiful? Absolutely. Did he care? Well, it did not matter if he cared since it was not a luxury he was allowed--that he never was allowed, it would seem.
His arms were sore by the time he entered the building. His arms and legs were sore after the first flight of stairs. By the second flight of stairs, he lost most of the feeling in his arms and legs. Halfway up the third flight of stairs, he tripped. He did his best to catch himself but his muscles were too worn-out to help. He ended up falling into the stairs and then sliding down them like his body was an inner tube on the world's bumpiest slope. Shang Qinghua was just collecting bruises today. It would have been one thing for him to fall down the stairs, but both of his boxes were now crumpled and dented; one next to him and the other having bounced all the way down to the platform. The latter had torn open and spilt its book-filled guts all over the concrete floor. Shang Qinghua just stared at the fallen boxes for a moment and tried to push down the urge to cry. Today really is the worst.
Just as Shang Qinghua thought that, he heard a voice from the top of the stairs, "Would you like some help?" The kind and delicate voice rang out like choir bells. Shang Qinghua's head snapped up to see a young woman wearing a face mask. Even with her face covered, she appeared to be quite beautiful; Shang Qinghua could see her form was lithe but still held generous curves even beneath her modest t-shirt and jeans. He was certain he had never met her before, but something about the beauty mark below her left eye made her seem familiar. "Sir? Are you okay?" she asked as she slowly descended the stairs and approached Shang Qinghua like he was a wounded animal.
Snapping out of the endless abyss he had for a mind, Shang Qinghua nodded fervently. "Th-thank you," he squeaked out. He did his best to keep his eyes off the beauty to avoid having more bisexual panic than necessary. Instead, he focused on trying to pick up his books and salvage the box they had been in. Silently, she crouched down to help him. "Oh! Y-you don't have t-to do that!" Shang Qinghua insisted as he waved his hands about.
Even with her face mostly hidden, Shang Qinghua could see a kind smile in the crinkle of her eyes. "It's okay, I don't mind," she said as she helped Shang Qinghua fill the salvaged box back up with books. "My name is Liu Mingyan, I'm a second-year and one of the move-in volunteers," she said as she stood up to give a courteous bow.
Of course, she's a volunteer mover; why else would someone so pretty bother with me? "I'm Shang Qinghua; a first-year. N-nice to meet you," he said as he returned the bow with a grateful, albeit nervous, smile.
"Would you like help carrying these to your room?" she asked as she lifted up the heavy box full of books with ease. While a part of Shang Qinghua felt ashamed to ask a pretty woman for help carrying heavy things, the painful aching in his arms helped him abandon his pride.
"Ah, w-well, only if it isn't too much of a bother," he said as he shuffled his feet. He was still embarrassed to seem so uncool in front of the lovely Liu Mingyan, even if she was way out of his league.
The kind Liu Mingyan just gave another smile with her twinkling black eyes. "Which room are you in?" she asked as Shang Qinghua lifted up the other box, doing his best to not visibly struggle with it.
"Room 403," he answered. He thought he caught a peculiar gleam in Liu Mingyan's eyes. He decided not to comment on it.
Together, they climbed the last of the stairs to the fourth floor in relative silence. Normally, Shang Qinghua was quite the anxious rambler but but was busy trying to breath properly without panting like a dog. Once they reached Shang Qinghua's room, he noticed the door had been left open. Did Cucumber-bro leave it open on our last trip up? Shang Qinghua was unsure but when he stepped into the room he was shocked to see that the number of items in the small space had increased since his and Shen Yuan's last trip up. He blinked in bewilderment. Are my things actually multiplying? He had yet to recover from this shock when another hit him just as quickly: there was a second beautiful woman, this one standing in his room. She was equally as beautiful as Liu Mingyan but where Liu Mingyan had a refined, elegant beauty this woman had a more wild and unapologetic beauty. She had a smaller frame but Shang Qinghua could see the muscle definition in her exposed arms and legs. Shang Qinghua could even swear the woman had an outline of abs in her exposed midriff. She seemed to be fully aware of her beautiful body, as the woman showed it off by wearing only a pair of denim short-shorts and a sleeveless, red button-up that was knotted at the front to expose her apparent abs.
She must have seen the clueless expression Shang Qinghua was giving her because she turned to him with an elegantly raised brow. "You lost or something, Boy Scout?"
Shang Qinghua nearly choked as he consciously pinned his eyes to the red clips in her hair and tried to formulate a response. "N-no, this," he looked at the number on the door to ensure he was in the right place. "This is my room," he said with a bit more confidence as he looked back at her.
She rested her hands on her hips for a moment as she blatantly looked him up and down. Shang Qinghua was not sure what she was looking for but he hoped she would hurry so he could put the heavy box down without looking uncool in front of another pretty woman. Once she was finally done with her assessment, she smiled at Shang Qinghua in a way that made him feel like he should have run away when he had the chance.
"So you're my new roommate?" she asked with judgement and skepticism despite the intrigued smile on her face as she walked up to Shang Qinghua. He visibly swallowed.
Her new what? Didn't the confirmation email say I would be rooming with another guy? Has it been changed? I haven't checked my email recently. Despite his best efforts, he ended up shrinking back when the self-proclaimed roommate entered his personal space. She took a closer look at him like he was a second-hand refrigerator she wanted to inspect before buying. She opened her mouth to say something else when her eyes caught on something behind him.
"Mingyan!" she chimed as she pushed Shang Qinghua aside, no longer interested in him. "Mingyan, let me take that," she cooed as she took Shang Qinghua's box of books from her. Liu Mingyan arched a delicate brow but said nothing as she placed her hands on her voluptuous hips. Shang Qinghua took this opportunity to put the other heavy box down on the bed he claimed for himself and pointedly looked away from the two supermodel-esque women.
"Man, what the hell does Mobei have in here anyway? Bricks?" the woman in red asked as she just placed the box on the floor with some others.
Shang Qinghua was agonizing over whether or not to speak up when Liu Mingyan spoke. "Books," she said simply. "And they're not Li Mobei's things." At this, the woman in red finally turned her attention back to Shang Qinghua, who would have been happy to have stayed forgotten.
Shang Qinghua coughed a little before introducing himself, "M-my name is Shang Qinghua." He meant to sound confident and manly, but it came out rather weakly instead. He could feel the woman's stare.
"Don't be rude, A-Ling," Liu Mingyan gently chided at what was clearly a friend of hers. Maybe this "A-Ling" is another volunteer mover? But why did she say she was my roommate? She couldn't be both, could she?
"Mingyan," the other girl whined as she walked back up to her taller friend, leaning into her bubble. "How could you be so heartless as to call me rude?" She pushed out her bottom lip in a childish pout. Despite her displeasure at being called rude, she continued to ignore Shang Qinghua, which was fine by him! As much as he would like to be noticed by such a beauty, he also did not like how this particular beauty looked at him with scheming eyes.
"You're in the way," a deep voice cut through the other girl's childish display. Shang Qinghua looked over to see a broad man carrying a large blue tote and towering over the two girls. His hair was long enough to brush his shoulders and was dyed a bright blue at the ends. The man had a strong, handsome face that suited his muscular physique well.
Shang Qinghua looked at the tall man and the two women as they all stood by the door like they were part of a university advertisement. Is everyone here this fucking hot? What does that make me? Shang Qinghua thought as he cried in his heart at his plain appearance.
"Eh? Speaking of rude," the woman said with an unimpressed look before latching onto Liu Mingyan's arm. "Don't worry, we'll get out of your way. Come on, Mingyan," she cooed as she pulled Liu Mingyan out of the room and past the looming stranger.
Although the woman in red had made Shang Qinghua uncomfortable, it was nothing compared to the intimidating silence and awkwardness that came when he was alone with the blue-haired man. "I-I'm Shang Qinghua; a first-year." He introduced himself for the third time that day. The man simply gave a sound in acknowledgement when he entered the room. As he walked by Shang Qinghua, he could see how his muscles shifted beneath his fitted navy blue t-shirt and did his best not to stare. Once he had pulled his wondering eyes away from the man's absurdly perfect biceps, he realized that the other had not yet introduced himself in return. Instead, the awkward and slightly intimidating silence encapsulated Shang Qinghua once again. "Uhm--are you Li Mobei, by chance?" he asked, recalling the name Liu Mingyan had spoken earlier.
The man glanced at him as he crouched down to place the large tote bin on the floor. "En," he answered simply, clearly not much of a talker. That was fine, Shang Qinghua was a natural rambler--especially when he was nervous, which he often was. Now that he was no longer struggling to breathe while hauling a heavy box up the stairs, all the words poured out.
"O-oh, I see! That must make us roommates, huh? I mean, that--uh--Ling-nǚshì," Shang Qinghua tried, having still no clue what her full name was, "said that she was my roommate but the confirmation email I got from the Residency Office said I would be rooming with another male student--not to say that someone dressed like Ling-nushi couldn't be male!" Shang Qinghua felt himself slowly digging a deeper and deeper hole the more he spoke.
The man, Li Mobei, looked at him quizzically before finally uttering a proper sentence. "Did you just call Hualing a man?" he asked flatly.
Shang Qinghua paled. "N-no, no! She's a very pretty woman! Even if she was a man--which I'm not saying that she is, unless she is--she would still be very pretty either way!" Shang Qinghua's head was spinning so much that he accidentally outed himself and in front of his male roommate, no less. Shit! What if he feels uncomfortable rooming with a bi guy? Shit! Shit! Shit! "N-not that I--uh--would be interested in her if she was a he!" he tried to correct, giving a nervous and unconvincing laugh.
Li Mobei just stared at him with beautifully intense eyes. Shang Qinghua failed to stop the shiver going down his spine from being the recipient of such a horribly wonderful look. He tried to meet the impossibly blue eyes despite how they made him nervously tremble in a strange mixture of fear and attraction. It's not gay to stare at each other like this, right? Not meeting his gaze would make it look like I'm lying, right?
Although their eye contact had only lasted a moment, it had shaved a year off Shang Qinghua's life. He let out the long breath he had been holding in as subtly and quietly as he could.
When Li Mobei left--presumably to bring up more of his things--Shang Qinghua crumbled down into a squat, pulling fistfuls of hair out of his already messy bun. I am so fucked! How am I supposed to live with someone so fucking hot?! Shang Qinghua whined in his head as he pulled more and more hair from his bun until most of his hair hung around his shoulders instead of in his bun. How can I be expected to study with such a hunk sleeping, showering, and changing near me?! And how in the world am I supposed to pretend to be straight around him?! Shang Qinghua wanted to text Shen Yuan for help, but the older man's phone was almost certainly turned off for work. Instead, Shang Qinghua just took some deep breaths before standing up.
He decided to busy himself with unpacking his things, doing his best to maneuver around the combined luggage and boxes both Shang Qinghua and Li Mobei had scattered across the small room--taking up much of the floor. However, he ended up tripping over one of the small boxes by his bed and bumping into a small tower of Li Mobei's boxes. The contents of the open box that had been placed on top spilt onto the floor as Shang Qinghua tried to catch himself. Unlike in the stairwell earlier, Shang Qinghua managed to catch himself with a heavy foot, which seemed to have stepped on something. Much like stepping on a piece of Lego, the thin, cylindrical object hurt the bottom of his foot when he landed heavily on it--perhaps adding yet another bruise to today's collection. However, the pain in his foot was incomparable to the horrifying snap he had heard when his foot landed on the object. Dread bubbled in his stomach as he slowly looked down and lifted his foot. A black, wooden drumstick lay splintered and snapped into two pieces. One piece lay flat where Shang Qinghua's foot had landed, the other was leaning up against a hard-cover textbook. Perhaps if the drumstick had landed flat on the floor like its partner, it would have stood a chance against Shang Qinghua's foot of destruction, but instead, it had snapped in two and left its splintered remains in the carpet.
Shang Qinghua was still frozen in dread when he heard a heavy thud by the door. His head whipped around to see a livid Li Mobei standing before a dropped duffel bag. His large hands twitched like he was barely containing the urge to strangle Shang Qinghua's skinny neck. Shang Qinghua let out a loud squeak as he stumbled backwards and away from the crime scene, falling inelegantly onto his butt. "I-I'm so s-sorry! I-it was an accident! I swear!" Shang Qinghua frantically pleaded as he scrambled into a kowtow. He trembled on the floor like a frightened turtle. He only dared to peek up at Li Mobei through his bangs but was startled when he witnessed Li Mobei furiously punch a hole through the bedroom wall. As he slowly retracted his dust-covered fist, Shang Qinghua pressed his face back into the carpet. His shaking and pitiful apologies only intensified. "P-pl-please forgive me! I-it was a-an accident! I-I'm s-so sorry! I'll p-pay for it! I p-promise! Please, d-don't hurt me!" Shang Qinghua's whole being went rigid at the sound of heavy footsteps. Curled into the carpet, he squeezed his eyes shut and awaited the inevitable beating.
Only, it never came. Li Mobei's stomping steps retreated until Shang Qinghua could no longer hear them. Even in the absence of the terrifying force of a man, Shang Qinghua continued to tremble on the floor for a while longer. His rapid-fire pleas seemed to have protected him--for now.