Knock, knock.
“Pei Yisheng, what was that noise in your room just now?”
Su Yiyi stood at the door wearing a sheet mask and holding a water glass, her eyes full of suspicion like some sort of Rakshasa.
Pei Yisheng suddenly felt short of breath, his heart drumming against his ribs. “Nothing, I was just watching a video.”
“Then why did I hear ‘baby’ this and ‘baby’ that? You remember what we talked about this afternoon, right?”
Su Yiyi’s eyes gleamed through the holes in her mask. “Confess and be treated with leniency; resist and be punished severely. You must realize that hiding things now will lead to disaster later. The moment you hide the truth from your best friend, you’re finished you’ve fallen for that blondie!”
“I know, I know, I remember everything.” Pei Yisheng flatteringly grabbed Su Yiyi’s arm and pushed her toward the living room. “Yiyi, your aria is really good. Did you get a perfect score in your Shakespeare class?”
“Pei Yisheng, don’t try to change the subject. I’m telling you, people like you are the easiest to get devoured. No matter who it is, you have to maintain the same attitude you had toward those three in your dorm. Make him go back where he came from; he isn’t allowed to interfere with your money-making, understand?”
Pei Yisheng gave a soft “oh,” not daring to speak.
Su Yiyi widened her eyes and glared at him. Pei Yisheng nodded hastily, his momentum surging. “Understood!”
Satisfied, Su Yiyi reached up to smooth out her mask. “Fine then. You may withdraw, my servant.”
“Yes, Imperial Concubine Su.” Pei Yisheng took her glass and gave it a shake. “Would the Imperial Concubine like more water?”
“Yes! Shengsheng, you’re the best!”
After all the fooling around, Pei Yisheng felt like he had forgotten something as he lay in bed, but he couldn’t recall what it was. Moving house was truly exhausting; as he pondered, he drifted off into a dream.
That night, Qi Yu checked his phone so frequently that even his colleagues grew curious. “Brother Qi, is there something going on?”
“Hmm?” Qi Yu started slightly, his voice trailing off with an undetectable tenderness. “No, it’s just… a kid from an old acquaintance’s family.”
“Oh, if it’s a kid, they must be asleep by this time. I didn’t expect you to be so fond of children, Brother Qi, considering you look so cold and aloof.”
Qi Yu gave a faint smile. “It’s not that I like all children.”
“True, true. The well-behaved and cute ones are always easier to dote on.”
The colleague knew Qi Yu’s background wasn’t simple. Seeing that he didn’t want to chat further, the colleague immediately shifted the topic to a difficult case at the office to seek Qi Yu’s advice.
When the alarm went off, Pei Yisheng rolled over with his eyes closed. He reached out to fumble around blindly under the bed and happened to turn off the ringing.
Pei Yisheng rubbed his eyes and slowly sat up.
Before him was a tidy bedroom. Without the obstruction of bed curtains, it felt so spacious that even his state of mind seemed to brighten.
Pei Yisheng sat there dazed until the next alarm rang. He picked up his phone from the floor, pulled a wet wipe from the nightstand, and slowly cleaned it. Since it was still the holidays, he didn’t have to worry about a thing; he could spend as much time in the bedroom as he wanted.
The second before he opened WeChat after cleaning his phone, he was perfectly calm. The next second, seeing the red notification number next to a familiar yet strange profile picture, Pei Yisheng gasped.
He remembered what he had forgotten last night!
He had forgotten to reply to Qi Yu’s WeChat message!
Replying now seemed rude, but not replying at all was even ruder. Pei Yisheng hurriedly sent a response and then checked the time. He was contemplating making a phone call when Qi Yu hung up on him. Before he could overthink it, a WeChat message popped up.
The leaders are having a meeting. I’ll call you when it’s over.
Pei Yisheng: Cat Nodding.GIF
Once he was up, he didn’t want to lie back down, so Pei Yisheng decided to head out to buy breakfast.
The streetlights hadn’t gone out yet, but the breakfast stalls around the neighborhood were already bustling. Amidst the coming and going of people, Pei Yisheng enjoyed a rare moment of leisure. He was bundled up in many layers; even on such a freezing morning, he didn’t feel the cold.
After wandering around the area, Pei Yisheng followed the elderly folks who had finished their morning exercises to find a breakfast stall. Under the guidance of a helpful old lady, he bought spicy soup and beef pancakes, then strolled home carrying the two bags.
Qin Zhou looked down from the window. From a distance, he saw a “penguin” waddling toward him. He watched quietly as the penguin drew near, revealing the face he had been thinking about all night from within the black down jacket.
The timing was perfect. His effort to rush over the moment he learned about Pei Yisheng’s rental information hadn’t been in vain.
Lin Jiahu yielded a bit of a strange vibe. Ever since Qin Zhou asked him about Pei Yisheng moving out of the dorm last night, everything had developed in a direction he wasn’t familiar with.
He watched Qin Zhou’s expression closely. When he read four parts tenderness, three parts anticipation, two parts impatience, and one part restraint on his face, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him.
Otherwise, how could a person’s expression be interpreted as a pie chart!
Lin Jiahu glanced at the ordinary black down jacket downstairs and asked his first question of the day.
He didn’t understand what Qin Zhou was doing. “If you wanted more contact with Pei Yisheng, couldn’t you just stop the faculty from approving his application? Anyway, you like living in the dorm too… Wait, you jerk, you were interested in him first, and then you moved back to the dorm! You’re such a dog, Qin Zhou.”
Sure enough, Qin Zhou gave a soft laugh and didn’t deny it. “Why would I stop him? Isn’t it better that he moved out? If he moves out, we can live off-campus together. Isn’t that much more convenient than being at school?”
Qin Zhou was not someone who would wrong himself, and naturally, he didn’t want to wrong Pei Yisheng either. Even if Pei Yisheng hadn’t brought it up himself, once Qin Zhou caught him, he would have begged him to live together off-campus.
Now, everything was just right.
Lin Jiahu looked at the brother before him someone who felt both strange and familiar and practically wanted to clap in admiration of Pei Yisheng’s magic. To think someone could turn Qin Zhou into a “love-brain.” Had the world turned upside down? Did the sun still rise in the east and set in the west? Was the Earth still rotating from west to east? Truly terrifying.
Qin Zhou had personally spoken to the school leaders to ensure that Pei Yisheng’s move-out process was handled quickly and efficiently.
Therefore, before the holidays were even over and before the working days began, Pei Yisheng received a notice from the school. They approved his request to move out, and due to the “unique nature” of their dormitory, his bed space would be reserved until all members of the dorm graduated.
Pei Yisheng read it twice but still found it strange. After seeing Su Yiyi’s notice, it felt even weirder.
“Why are our two notices different?”
Su Yiyi shook her shoulders and shook her head. “Maybe it’s the privilege of the ‘Celestial Beings.’ After all, your roommates aren’t simple people.”
Pei Yisheng thought that made sense. Back then, hadn’t he been forced to just wait to be moved? If taking the initiative had worked, he wouldn’t have lived through half a semester of misery. Thinking about the interpersonal relationships in that dorm still gave him a headache.
He had already blocked Qin Zhou, so his ears were finally quiet without those messages. Maybe he should just block Song Wen and Wen Xiuyun too.
Regardless, with this notice, the two of them felt relieved. Since there were no major events after New Year’s Day, they could focus on reviewing for final exams.
Pei Yisheng’s goal was to get a scholarship. Compared to Su Yiyi’s relaxed attitude, he seemed to be working from dawn till dusk.
The job of going out to buy breakfast basically fell to him. Pei Yisheng thought it was quite nice; breathing in the cold air really cleared his head.
As usual, he returned from the spicy soup stall, reciting his professional courses under his breath. In the pitch-black entrance of the building, Pei Yisheng went “thump” and crashed squarely into someone.
The sensor light flickered on.