Chapter Text
The wind whistled briskly between the brick lecture halls as Leonella stepped out of her first ever college class. The English professor finished his presentation with a slide assigning textbook pages to read when a wave of students washed down the aisles and swept poor confused Leonella out onto the quad. She wasn’t prepared for the sheer chaos of the passing period, the masses darting this way and that, the bicycles dodging and weaving through the crowd. One bike wobbled and crashed, plunging the crowd into chaos as students swarmed to help the rider. Her high school in upstate New York was smaller than a football field, how was she supposed to navigate this huge university?
She set off in the direction she thought her next lecture hall should be. It was called Wellman Hall, and she thought she remembered it being just down this one alley. She swerved through the oncoming students like a salmon swimming upstream. And Like a salmon she was, the uniquely bright orange hue of her neck-length hair momentarily stole the attention of every student she passed, boys and girls alike.
Eventually the alley ended and opened out onto a street. She looked in all four directions and saw historic and modern lecture halls, but none that looked like they would be called Wellman. But besides the lecture halls, something else caught her eye. A tall Asian boy, built like a basketball player, stood a few feet to her left, glancing around with a half-open mouth and checking his phone. Maybe he was lost too. She cautiously approached him, looking a foot and a half up at his face and then down at his phone. A document was open on screen written entirely in Chinese characters.
So he was a Chinese student! The poor guy was probably even more confused than her, having trouble navigating in an english-speaking country for the first time. She cleared her throat and spoke quietly in his native language: “你好。。。”
The boy turned around and looked down at her. Since he touched down at the airport five days ago, he hadn’t heard another person, much less a white person, speak to him in 中文. He beamed at this gesture, and decided to play along, responding slowly in the most simple Chinese that came to mind: “请问，你贵姓？” Why asking her last name was the first phrase that came to mind, he wasn’t sure. There was just something about her, a magic in her orange hair, that made you forget social cues and lose yourself in her.
“我姓李，” she said, “你呢？”
“我姓王，” he replied, with the utmost formality, “李小姐，你叫什么名字？”
“我叫李友，” she said, and returned the formality: “王先生，你叫什么名字？”
“我叫王朋，” he said. So that was his name. Wang Peng. “And I can speak English. Do you know where Wellman Hall is?”
The two of them continued to speak in Chinese as they walked to class, which they happened to share. Li You learned that Wang Peng’s English name was Peter and that he was from Beijing. He had this glint in his smile, as if the courage he showed in making new friends manifested in physical traits. She found herself sitting with him in the back of the filling classroom when a shorter blonde boy with a British soccer shirt walked in through the door and sat at the desk in front of Wang Peng. “Oi bruv,” he said, noticing the closeness between Wang Peng and Li You, “You already pick up this chick, mate? It’s the first bloody day of university!”
“No,” said Wang Peng defensively, with a little blush under his eyes. “This is my new 朋友, 李友. She helped me find the classroom. 李友, this is 高文中, a family friend.”
“Top of the mornin’,” said Gao Wenzhong, reaching out his hand to Li You. “You can coal me Winston.”
After Li You reluctantly shook his sweaty, british hand, She got out her notebook and prepared for class. Gao Wenzhong was showing Wang Peng a picture of his family and talking about his siblings, and Li You was convinced this man could only talk about himself. On his own, she might have described Wang Peng as attractive, but when he was around this loser Gao Wenzhong, she could only scowl. Regardless, she was glad to have already made a friend, no matter how 糟糕 his other friend could be.