Chapter Text
The sun was shining the first time she met her.
Some flowers had managed to survive the summer heat, and the park was much more lively than usual.
It was almost midday, and Maomao should have been on her way back to Keji Road to get Lingli cleaned up and ready for lunch. Instead, with the little girl’s hand clasped into her own, she was running after a small calico cat.
Lingli had begged her for half an hour to let her bring Maomao (the cat) to the park with them, and Maomao (the girl) had caved. Though she wasn’t particularly fond of children, Lingli was cute and otherwise very well behaved, and Maomao could never bring herself to tell her no.
And now, Yu-nushi was going to kill her. Or more realistically, fire her.
“I have to catch it!” she thought, “No way that pampered kitten is going to survive on the streets!”
Resigned to the consequences of her own stupidity, Maomao prepared herself to jump forward, hoping not to crash the animal under her own weight or lose Lingli in the crowd.
But before she could take the leap, someone stepped in front of her and swiftly grabbed the cat by the scruff. That same person’s hand reached out to her shoulder, putting Maomao back on her feet.
“Are you all right?” said a bright, girlish voice, “Is this yours?”
Maomao didn’t waste another second and took Lingli’s hand again. Only then she did she take a good look at the person before her.
She was a young woman with fair eyes and a book bag slung over her shoulders, her warm purple hair put up with a red hairclip. Without knowing why, Maomao wondered if she’d seen her before.
There was something familiar in the way she smiled.
“Is it yours?” she repeated, gently passing her the squirming cat.
“Yes.” Maomao replied, still unsure of where she’d seen her, “It’s ours.”
The girl laughed again, covering her mouth with her hand.
“Very well then!” she said, “Have a nice day!”
Maomao wanted to at least know her name to thank her, but Lingli pulled at her sleeve, holding up the crate and looking at her with a somber expression.
“I’m sorry,” she said as Maomao locked up her fugitive namesake, “I won’t ask to bring her around anymore.”
Maomao sighed and ruffled her hair. It was easier to do her job if Lingli was happy, and she didn’t want her to feel bad anyway.
“Well you’ve learned a lesson.” she said, “And in the end, nobody got hurt. That’s what matters. Now we should really go back before your mother sends out the navy for us.”
Beaming again, Lingli pulled her to the trail, but Maomao turned back again.
The girl though, was gone.
Rubbing her eyes, Maomao went to wash her bowl in the sink. Her bus left in twenty minutes, so she was in no hurry.
“Have you slept well?”
Dad's eye bags were darker than usual, and Maomao passed him a mug of tea she’d kept warm. He really ought to stop overworking himself.
“Yes Pops, I did.” she said, “Lingli had to go to the doctor and I could go home at six to study.”
Her father mumbled something and sat down at the table. Instead of a newspaper, there was a pile of medical files and bills in front of him. Even though he was tech-savy enough to use a computer, Dad still preferred to print out the files he was working on.
“We’re visiting for New Year’s.” his voice was calm as always, but she knew him well enough to sense that this wasn’t something up for discussion, “I figured you might want to know with ample notice.”
Maomao pressed her lips together and breathed out of her nose a couple of times. She wasn’t going to act childish about this, she’d promised. She truly wanted to get better at dealing with the freak.
And it surely wasn’t because Dad had in return promised to teach her how to make a good emetic. Ipecac syrup just didn’t cut it anymore.
It took her a moment to notice the person sitting next to her, almost as if she’d always been there.
Instead of Xiaolan, the girl from the park occupied the desk to her right, wearing her same uniform.
“What are you doing here?”
The girl looked away from her notes, and her eyes widened in surprise. For a moment, neither of them said anything.
“Oh,” she finally said, with a smile that reminded Maomao of an actor’s mimicry. She seemed to be very expressive, “How’s your cat?”
Maomao had been in her fair share of surreal situations, but this was by far the most ridiculous. Before she could answer, she felt someone hugging her from behind: Xiaolan had arrived.
“Shisui!” she chirped, “You’ve met our Apothecary!”
Maomao cringed at the nickname, but mostly out of habit. Xiaolan had been calling her “Apothecary” since middle school, and she didn’t care anymore.
Shisui kept flipping through her flash cards. Her penmanship was very good, and it reminded Maomao of her father’s notes.
“I’m still new and Wang-laoshi told me to sit here.” she said, “I hope it’s all right with you and Xiaolan.”
Well, that explained why she’d only showed up four days after the start of the school year. Even if they’d presumably just met, her and Xiaolan were already getting along. Shisui must have been a friendly person.
Humming along to her favorite song of the week, Xiaolan settled on the desk in front of her, and Maomao passed her a pack of her usual snack. Sweets were her favorites.
Maomao yawned: “Does that mean that we have a new roommate?”
Shisui shrugged and said that she didn’t know yet, but with Xiaolan, it was another story.
“Well we shouldn’t know.” she started, whispering in a conspiratorial manner, “But the night janitor is my aunt’s best friend, and she says…”
Maomao rested her chin on her hand and closed her eyes, savoring the last moments of peace before the teacher stepped in. Every now and then, Xiaolan’s familiar stream of gossip was interrupted by the sound of a new laugh.
Maomao despised the running laps.
It wasn’t that she was lazy, but rather that she only liked to put effort into the things she cared about, or was paid for. Unfortunately, P.E didn’t fall into either of those categories.
“I think I’m going to die.” Xiaolan said, very matter of fact, “I’m never getting better at this.”
She pressed her hands on her knees and panted, as Maomao soothed her back. Next to them, Shisui had stopped too.
“We can’t wait around for too long, or she’ll scold us again. We have to catch up with the group.” Maomao said. Even if she was friendly enough to let students call her by her first name, Hongniang was not to be messed with.
Xiaolan nodded and pulled herself up: “Could you make me some form of doping?”
Maomao shook her head. Her father had forbidden her from experimenting on synthetic drugs of any kind, and she had it as a personal rule to only ever use herself as a lab rat. The most she could do was buying her friend an energy drink. Still frowning, Xiaolan rushed forward again.
“Must persevere!” she shouted.
A little left behind, Maomao and Shisui started jogging again.
“Are you a chemistry genius?” her new classmate asked.
Maomao shook her head: “My father is a genius. I’m an apprentice.”
It wasn’t a matter of false modesty, she was simply realistic about her abilities. Overestimating oneself was the worst thing a physician could do.
Shisui smiled: “My older sister is studying chemistry at university. She’s very clever too.”
Her eyes lit up as she talked, and Maomao thought that she must have been very close to her sister. The memory of Pairin, Meimei and Joka made her chest feel warm.
“Where is she studying?” aside from making polite conversation, she also wanted to get useful information for herself.
“Oh, she’s at Tsinghua.” she said, “You have a sister too, right? She’s very cute.”
Hearing that Shisui’s sister had managed to get into the top university in the country was already enough to shock her, and it took Maomao a moment to realize that her classmate was talking about Lingli.
She shook her head: “Oh she’s cute for sure, but she’s not my sister. She’s the kid I babysat over the summer holidays.”
When she’d told her father that she intended to save up some money all by herself, he’d said that he would have asked “an old employer” if his wife needed help. Maomao had been more than a bit surprised to learn that her father had worked for none other than Ka Yang, but she wasn’t the type to waste a good opportunity.
Shisui tilted her head, and she looked at her stern.
“You’re very hard working.” she said, “Will Xiaolan and I have to collect your passed out body when exam season rolls around? I’d like for you to stay healthy.”
Maomao was a bit taken aback, but a small laugh still managed to escape her. It was always amusing when people worried so seriously about her wellbeing, but Shisui seemed downright adamant about it.
“It won’t happen.” she sighed, “I make an excellent tonic.”
On paper, the tenants in room 27 were only on laundry duty once a week. Every Wednesday, Xiaolan went door to door to pick up the clothes, then Maomao loaded the washing machines downstairs, and finally they folded it together before going to sleep.
In practice, the girls found anonymous laundry bags dumped in front of their door much more frequently.
“What if we walked around the building and dropped them through their windows?” Shisui suggested, balancing her basket on her shoulder.
Now that she’d let it down for the night, her hair was so much longer than Maomao had expected. It made her look like a princess in an illustrated book.
“We could resort to that,” she replied, “but then we’d be in the same situation tomorrow night. They always find an excuse.”
Xiaolan nodded, resigned. Having been on a scholarship since middle school, she was used to a similar treatment, and she didn’t give it much thought anymore.
On the other hand, Maomao wouldn’t have minded teaching those girls in their dorm a lesson or two, but her last attempt had almost got them both into serious trouble, and the last thing she wanted was for Xiaolan to get the consequences of her antics.
Huffing, Maomao poured two scoops of detergent in the washing machine’s drawer and started it. It wasn’t a small feat to get stains out of the school’s green uniforms.
Finally freed from a basket full of reeking tracksuits, Shisui climbed on top of the washer, her feet dangling over the ground.
“I can’t get remember any of the dates.” Shisui complained with a pout, “I wish I could just take a pill and regain conscience once the exams are over.”
“Oh don’t tell me.” Xiaolan replied, “I’ve spent the summer doing maths.”
Maomao preferred not to think too much about the far, yet always impending threat of the gaokao. When Joka had gone through it, she would say that the anxiety was the worst of it, and now Maomao just wanted to get it over with and start university.
Her elder “sister” said that life was calmer than ever once you got out of high school, and that was exactly what Maomao wanted: a quiet life of doing her experiments and curing people. Unfortunately, she had to take the national exam to achieve it.
A symphony of excited screeches broke forth outside the laundry room, and Maomao didn’t need to guess who was coming.
Eluding an army of adoring students, her unofficial business partner stepped in, his shiny, long hair put up in a ponytail. From what Maomao could deduce, someone had pulled at it.
“Hello Jinshi.” she said, “I’ve already told you that you don’t need to go through the hassle of sneaking in. We can meet at recess.”
He didn’t seem very impressed.
“You weren’t there today.” he snapped.
She bit her tongue: it was true, she’d been hanging out with Xiaolan and Shisui in the canteen.
Maomao couldn’t understand for the life of her why he had to act so immature about it, but at least it made him easier to talk to. She truly couldn’t stand him when he acted all sophisticated.
She sighed: “You’re right, my mistake. What do you need?”
Her schoolmate looked only half appeased, but he did take a parcel out of his bag and handed it over to her.
“This week’s cases.” he said, “Don’t stand me up tomorrow.”
“And you could try not to get me in trouble with the night janitor.” she thought, but kept her mouth shut.
Shisui leaned forward to take a good look at Jinshi as he walked out. Was she going to obsess over him too?
“Is he a friend?” she asked instead.
Maomao didn’t have a definitive answer, but “friend” was probably the best word for it. Xiaolan though, had another opinion.
“He likes her!” she pulled Shisui down to talk into her ear, even if Maomao could hear her perfectly.
Shisui looked at her with an amused smile. “Really?” she asked.
This was all so tedious. Wasn’t it his business if he liked her? What use was it to ask her?
“Of course he does,” Xiaolan doubled down, “he comes here all the time!”
Maomao huffed. They had an enterprise to run, it would have been irresponsible of him to never be around.
“I find all of this to be very uninteresting.” she said, and she climbed next to Shisui on the washer, hoping that she’d be less intrigued by the Jinshi situation than Xiaolan was.
She didn’t know what she had expected but it wasn’t Shisui wrapping her arms around her and hugging her.
“Oh, look at our poor Maomao.” she said, patting her on the back, “How horrible it must be to have a pretty boy fawning over you!”
Her and Xiaolan started laughing, and Maomao accepted her fate.
She didn’t know why, but there was something pleasant, almost soothing in their laughs, and even if she still had half of her school work left to do, she didn’t feel tired at all.