BSS - Chapter 53
Chapter 53
The small room was already full of people. Deng Chuan was a little surprised. It was a four-person room, and it seemed that aside from her, everyone else and their parents had already arrived.
Everyone in the room was looking at her. Deng Chuan smiled and greeted them openly, "Hello, everyone. My name is Deng Chuan. Sorry for being a little late."
A middle-aged man standing near the door helping his daughter with her luggage said with a smile, "It's fine, it's fine. We only just arrived ourselves."
His daughter stood beside him, her hair in a high ponytail so long it nearly reached her waist. Her expression was somewhat cold, her features sharp and striking—a mix of crispness and delicate beauty. Her eyes were fixed on Deng Chuan without blinking.
Deng Chuan was used to being stared at, so she paid it no mind and walked over to the only empty bed. The beds had been selected before the semester began, and a label with her name, department, and student ID was stuck to the frame.
The room was a quad with loft beds over desks. The wardrobes were next to the beds, leaving a walkway down the middle, and there was also a small balcony.
Deng Chuan had just collected her luggage from downstairs. As she quickly surveyed her new living quarters, she heard the middle-aged man by the neighboring bed say kindly, "We already wiped down your bed for you. It should be dry by now, so you can just go ahead and make it."
Deng Chuan thanked him politely. She made her bed, hung up the bed curtain, and did some simple organizing in her wardrobe. By the time she was more or less settled, the room had grown quiet. The parents had all left, leaving only the four girls who were supposed to be meeting for the first time.
Unexpectedly, when the other three saw that Deng Chuan had stopped bustling about, they exchanged silent glances for a moment. One of them, a girl with bright and beautiful features, spoke up first. "Deng Chuan, do you… want to join our dorm group chat?"
Deng Chuan was slightly surprised, not expecting them to have created a group chat so quickly, but she still replied graciously, "Sure."
Seeing Deng Chuan agree, the girl excitedly jumped down from her ladder and presented the QR code on her phone to Deng Chuan. "Scan me!"
"Okay." Deng Chuan scanned her code, added her as a friend, and was pulled into the dorm group chat, where the other two were already present. Seeing how easygoing she seemed, the girl asked again, cautiously, "Did you… join this year's freshman group chat for our university?"
Deng Chuan paused for a moment. "No, I didn't." P University sent all its announcements via email, so she hadn't actively looked for any informational group chats.
The words had barely left her mouth when the girl clenched her fists and said, puffing her cheeks, "No wonder! We looked for you in the freshman group for ages but couldn't find you!"
Another girl with short hair standing nearby added, "We've been shouting in the group all summer, but we just couldn't find the person in bed four of Mingde Building, room 412!"
The girl with the high ponytail added, "We chatted so much in the group that we ran out of things to say, and you never showed up."
The girl with the bright features suppressed a laugh and pretended to be angry as she looked at Deng Chuan. "Hmph, that's what you get for not joining the freshman group!" Deng Chuan laughed too. Faced with their indignation over a summer-long, fruitless search for their fourth roommate, she offered a sincere apology. "I'm sorry."
After that exchange, the four of them immediately grew closer. The girl nearest to Deng Chuan proactively extended her hand. "I'm Li Mingtang, from Beijing. I'm a really good cook, so come over to my place for dinner on a weekend when you're free!"
Deng Chuan politely shook her fingertips. "Hello."
Li Mingtang smiled and withdrew her hand, pointing to the girl with the high ponytail. "Her name is Zhou Zhi. We were high school classmates."
Zhou Zhi was no longer wearing a cold expression. The corners of her mouth curved as she proactively stepped forward to shake Deng Chuan's hand.
The remaining girl with short hair also introduced herself. "My name is Xie Yao. I'm from Guangdong."
She still seemed a bit reserved. Deng Chuan smiled and asked her, "Do you guys really eat people from Fujian?"
Xie Yao answered decisively, "Of course." Then she added nonsensically, with a straight face, "But people from Fujian are a high-end ingredient. I'm still young, so I can't eat too many."
Once the four of them were together, they surprisingly found a lot to talk about. Li Mingtang was quick-witted and knew a lot about the university. Seeing it was getting late, she urged them to go eat. "After dinner, the campus service office will still be open. It's the perfect time to get our internet set up."
She added nonchalantly, "I have a guild war tonight!"
She looked like a hardcore gamer girl. On her very first day, she had already set up her desktop computer, complete with a flashy RGB keyboard.
Zhou Zhi didn't care about games. She was hungry and also urged them to hurry up and leave.
The four of them left the room. The other three had arrived early and already had the lay of the land around the dorm building, so they confidently led Deng Chuan toward the cafeteria.
Shedding the initial awkwardness of their first meeting—and perhaps also out of a desire to look after Deng Chuan—Li Mingtang chattered away, linking arms with her. She was in high spirits under the Beijing sunset. "We're finally in university! I'm so happy! You guys have no idea, my mom actually wanted me to live at home. Who commutes when they're in university?"
She made a fist and clenched it. "I firmly rejected her!"
Xie Yao teased her, "Mama's girl!"
Li Mingtang waved her fist. "You bet! Starting today, I'm shaking off that title!"
As they walked, Deng Chuan pretended to casually slip her arm out of Li Mingtang's grasp to check a message on her phone.
When she left, she had let Xu Wei know, telling her she might not be able to reply right away. Xu Wei, who had just finished showering, had just messaged to say she was about to eat. She told Deng Chuan to rest early after dinner to conserve her energy for the upcoming military training and also sent some tips on sun protection.
In the chat window, the messages from Xu Wei seemed to scroll on endlessly. Thinking about Xu Wei as she sent those messages, Deng Chuan felt a sweetness in her heart. She let out an unconscious laugh and replied to her.
The rest of the walk was filled with Li Mingtang and Xie Yao's chatter. Zhou Zhi was also looking at her phone. After replying to Xu Wei, Deng Chuan happened to glance at Zhou Zhi's slightly lowered profile. For some reason, ever since she first saw her, Deng Chuan had an inexplicable feeling that they were the same kind of person.
Zhou Zhi looked up and, seeing Deng Chuan looking at her, smiled and started a conversation. "Do you play tennis?"
"No." Deng Chuan looked away and said nonchalantly.
Zhou Zhi wasn't surprised by her answer. "You should try it sometime when you're free. I can teach you. Tennis is a very soothing sport, just like yoga."
Li Mingtang, listening from the side, couldn't help but say, "Oh, come on. Badminton is better."
"The shuttlecock is too light."
"Being light is its advantage."
"No," Zhou Zhi said. "Compared to badminton, tennis is better for building your arm muscles."
Li Mingtang's eyes lit up. "Really? Then can I feel yours?"
Zhou Zhi turned her face away, speechless. Her high ponytail swung in the air. "No way-"
"Stingy!" Li Mingtang accused.
"Exactly," Xie Yao chimed in indignantly. "What's wrong with letting your sisters feel something good?"
"I'm just not letting you."
"Narrow-minded!"
Amidst the increasingly off-track conversation, they arrived at the cafeteria. The sophomores and juniors had also just returned to campus, so it was quite crowded, with students carrying takeout boxes coming and going through the entrance.
Li Mingtang had already scouted the place out and called for them to head to the third floor. "Our first meeting has to be a grand occasion! Let's go to the rooftop on the third floor for barbecue!"
The other three had no objections. The four of them took the escalator to the third floor, passing the windows for conveyor belt hot pot, Sichuan maocai, pickled fish, and mala xiangguo, until they reached the barbecue stall set up outside on the rooftop.
The rooftop was quite spacious, with a concrete floor. The tables were set apart from each other, each with a dark parasol overhead. Strings of twinkling little light bulbs were strung up under the umbrellas. The sky had already darkened, and a faint evening breeze carried the aroma of barbecue through the air.
There weren't many people eating barbecue. The four of them sat down and ordered from the menu. The cafeteria didn't sell alcohol, so for drinks, they could only have Coke.
Zhou Zhi was gnawing on a grilled chicken wing when Li Mingtang suddenly pressed an ice-cold can of Coke against her face. Li Mingtang didn't get angry when she was glared at; instead, her eyes curved into a smile as she looked at Zhou Zhi. "Refreshing, isn't it?"
Zhou Zhi helplessly looked away, slowly swallowed the meat in her mouth, and said, "It's dirty."
"It's not dirty, I wiped it." Li Mingtang held up the Coke can for her to see. "Look."
One might have thought she was drinking iced beer instead of Coke, the way she was talking like a drunk. Zhou Zhi ignored her and went back to gnawing on her chicken wing.
Li Mingtang had run into a wall with her countless times in high school and was long used to carrying on one-sided conversations. She continued, "I know you have sensitive skin, so I wouldn't touch your face with a dirty can-see?"
She rambled on endlessly. Zhou Zhi placed the bone on the table, gave the can a token glance, and said slowly, "Fine-then I suppose I should thank you. How thoughtful."
Li Mingtang's spirits soared, taking everything as a compliment now. "But of course," she said perkily.
Deng Chuan, listening beside them, found it quite amusing.
Deng Chuan didn't like carbonated drinks, so she shared a bottle of coconut juice with Zhou Zhi, who wasn't a fan of them either. Xie Yao, meanwhile, stayed true to her persona as a health-conscious Cantonese and drank Wanglaoji.
The four of them happily finished their barbecue dinner. At Li Mingtang's request, they took a group photo while eating, took photos with the food, took another photo when they were done, and even took one on the way back to the dorm.
Thinking she would send the photos to Xu Wei, Deng Chuan was very cooperative, even teaching Li Mingtang some composition and lighting techniques. Li Mingtang exclaimed that she had learned a lot and promised to edit the photos and send them to the group chat for everyone's inspection.
Back at the dorm, the first thing they did was turn on the air conditioner. The dorms at P University had private bathrooms, so the four of them rolled dice in their group chat to decide the shower order. Deng Chuan rolled a six and went first. After her shower, she ran to the fire escape stairwell to call Xu Wei.
The stairwell was hot, and the sweat beading on her back made Deng Chuan feel that showering first had been a mistake—she should have waited until after the call. But Xu Wei's voice on the other end was so gentle that it instantly made her forget about such a trivial thing as the heat.
The mosquitoes in the stairwell, however, were impossible to ignore. Xu Wei must have heard her stomping her feet, because she told her to go back to her room, saying they could just text and that she didn't need to go out of her way to make a voice call.
Deng Chuan ignored her. While talking, she stared at the sliver of night sky visible through the stairwell window. "I just want to talk to you."
Xu Wei said, "Be good… Is it hot in Beijing?"
"Not hot."
Xu Wei drew out her words. "So… between the weather app on my phone and you, who's lying to me?"
Deng Chuan sat down on the stairs, stretching out her legs. "I'm not lying to you. I miss you so much."
Xu Wei placated her, "Alright-I miss you too."
Deng Chuan pushed her luck. "Then give me a kiss."
The line went silent for a moment. Then, a small kissing sound came through.
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