“Damn, I thought you two were already sleeping together!”
Zhao Han rubbed at her hair and said flatly, with no trace of emotion, “Heh!”
She had just come out of the shower and hadn’t even had time to blow-dry her hair before Guan Nan’s call held her up.
“I’m only worried about you. That Luo Qingbai, what did she come for? Did you figure it out?”
“What else could she come for?” Zhao Han said carelessly, switching on speakerphone and grabbing an absorbent towel to dry her hair.
“For fuck’s sake, Zhao Han, can’t you show a little concern for your own business? That Luo Qingbai, she vanished for two years with a dive and now she pops back up with another dive. Don’t tell me she came to catch up with you. Zhao Han, I’m not trying to be harsh, but don’t go being stupid and latching onto her again. Even if she really did come back to get back together, you’d still need to take a good hard look at it…”
Guan Nan still had more to say, and what if Luo Qingbai hadn’t come to get back together, but to seek some shelter from Zhao Han instead? It was hard being out there on your own, and she had seen how spineless Luo Qingbai could be.
“Am I really that popular?” Zhao Han asked in genuine confusion. “I think she really just came to catch up, sis. I’m going to blow-dry my hair, and if I catch a cold, you’re not the one taking care of me!”
“I don’t have time to take care of you. Little Shi will take care of you. If not, you can hook up with Little Shi instead. That’d still be better than you and that Luo girl!”
“…” Zhao Han sneezed. “Give Little Shi a break. She’s such a nice girl, she can live whatever life she wants.”
Guan Nan thought about it carefully. “That’s true. Little Shi is a good girl, too good. Not to mention she’s not the same kind of person as you. Even if she were, being with you would still be wronging her!”
Zhao Han said, “…Goodbye.”
The call was hung up, and inwardly she agreed with Guan Nan too. Not to mention Shi Jiu didn’t like girls, even if she did, being with Zhao Han would be a loss for her.
No one had lived in the apartment for several days. Even though the bedcover was on, the quilt still smelled dusty. Zhao Han curled up and buried herself under the blankets, too lazy to change them. At this hour, the room was so quiet that even swallowing spit echoed. She turned on a playlist, set a timer, and lay in bed reading.
At some point she fell asleep, then woke again for no reason, startled out of sleep, and …
Outside the window, the autumn rain fell in a fine, steady patter. Zhao Han, with no sleepiness left at all, looked at the time. It was two in the morning. There was an unread WeChat message on her phone. One was a notice telling her she had the next day off and would be going on a short business trip the day after tomorrow. A whole string of the others were from the little Wang Xifeng Xu Jing had mentioned, starting with “What are you doing?” “Are you busy?” “Why aren’t you replying on WeChat,” and extending all the way to suspicion and interrogation by the end.
Zhao Han read it over and over like she was doing reading comprehension, but in the end she still didn’t know what to reply.
Luo Qingbai’s message was much simpler: “I’m here. Good night, senior.”
The time was 12:13, more than two hours ago.
It was far too late to reply now. Zhao Han put down her phone and continued pretending to be dead. When that failed, she got up and paced around the room twice, repeatedly telling herself that there was no need to panic over insomnia, that she had the whole next day off and could sleep as much as she wanted, and that the rain outside was soothing, so lying there listening was rather poetic too. Relax, relax… in the end, she hypnotized herself into sleep.
Rain.
The night Luo Qingbai left, it was also the sound of rain. On the trip, when she got up early and learned that Luo Qingbai had left in a fluster, after the first burst of unease passed, she had also managed to calm down, standing on the balcony listening to the rain skim across the river. It was rather poetic.
That rain sounded almost no different from tonight’s.
Come to think of it, Luo Qingbai was the sort of person who, even if she never left the house, still gave off the feeling of being a traveler. A full-grown person, not bringing clouds when she came and not even waving her sleeves when she left.
The first time they met was around the start of university, when the weather was sweltering hot.
Back then Zhao Han was in graduate school. The dormitory standard was a double room, but because of various reasons she had occupied a room by herself. She was highly skilled at being alone, and living by herself for a whole academic year had been true freedom.
That year, during the ten-day “summer vacation,” she went out to have fun. On the way home, she found out that the considerate dorm aunt had arranged a roommate for her.
The dorm aunt had even called specially to tell her. Half an hour after the aunt hung up, Zhao Han received a new text message: “Hello, senior. I’m your new roommate, Luo Qingbai. May I ask which things in the dorm are off-limits?”
Zhao Han tried hard to remember. She had been living in that dorm like it was a single apartment. It wasn’t messy, but it was scattered, neatly scattered. On the bookshelf opposite were her novels, in the wardrobe hung her clothes, the desk had been set up by her as a workbench, and even on the bed opposite sat her Bluetooth speaker…
“Everything is off-limits.” Zhao Han typed it out three times and deleted it every time.
Since she was assigned to move in, the fact that the other girl asked first was already polite. Zhao Han accepted the gesture and first gave up the bookshelf, the desk, the bed, and the other important spots.
Originally she had planned to go home on the return trip, but since there was a new roommate, she also had to go back and pack her things, so she could only call her mother and report it. Li He was especially delighted that she had a new roommate: “Then are you coming home tonight? Do you know where your roommate is from? I’ll make some snacks for you to take over and eat with her, so you can get along well.”
Zhao Han: “…” Was she still in kindergarten? But she couldn’t talk Li He out of it, so she could only deal with it: “Make less. This weather won’t keep it.”
Dragging her suitcase onto the bus a step too late, Zhao Han still hadn’t found a seat at the terminal. C City was building the subway, and the bus wound around and around as if trying to throw people off. On top of that, her phone kept vibrating nonstop. Zhao Han looked down and saw that it was still Luo Qingbai: “Senior, I’m sorry. I accidentally broke the mirror. I’ll buy a new one…”
Zhao Han wanted to reply, but looking at her phone on the bus made her a little carsick, so she could only put the phone back. By the time she got off, she was hot and dizzy, her face white as paper. By the dorm entrance, she was truly almost out of breath. Who would have thought that after she knocked and the door opened, the shadow at the doorway wouldn’t let her in, blocking the entrance and asking her, “Hello… excuse me, who are you looking for?”
“Zhao Han.” She said it while pushing past Luo Qingbai, who was blocking her way, and found her stool and collapsed onto it.
Luo Qingbai probably hadn’t expected her to be back so quickly. She froze for a moment. “Senior?” For some reason, she sounded rather flustered.
Holding back the nausea from motion sickness, Zhao Han gave a muffled mm-hm, then dug out a bottle of Huo Xiang Zheng Qi water from her bag and downed it like medicine. After she felt a little better, she finally remembered to ask Luo Qingbai, and took out another bottle to offer her. “Do you want some?”
“No need, thank you.” Since Zhao Han came back, Luo Qingbai hadn’t gone back to unpack. Only when she heard Zhao Han speak did she seem to come back to herself a little. She set the cup she had been holding in her hand on Zhao Han’s desk. “Have some water.”
“I bought a new mirror. It’s just a different frame, the size is the same. I measured it. Sorry.”
Zhao Han braced one arm on a stack of books on the desk. “It’s fine, actually you…”
She’d already bought it, so polite talk was pointless.
“Senior, I’ll put it back up properly.” Luo Qingbai added.
Zhao Han only mm-hmed once, glanced at Luo Qingbai, and saw the calm, unruffled look on her face. From her expression and tone, she was probably the same kind of person as Zhao Han, cold and distant.
She often stayed in the lab and didn’t spend much time in the dorm. There was no need to make things unpleasant, so she smiled and said, “My things are too messy, sorry. I’ll clean up right now.”
“They’re not, it’s very neat.”
Zhao Han looked at Luo Qingbai’s unpacked luggage, then got up to tidy her own things.
The books Luo Qingbai had moved for her were stacked very neatly on her side of the desk. The speaker on the bed was fairly large and, because there was nowhere to put it, still hadn’t been moved down, but its power cord had already been coiled up and tucked away neatly.
Her clothes were still hanging properly in Luo Qingbai’s side of the wardrobe. Clearly Luo Qingbai hadn’t touched them.
Zhao Han silently smiled to herself, thinking that although this person was cold, from the way she lived she probably wouldn’t be hard to get along with. Just as she was preparing to find a topic to help them get acquainted, the dorm door was knocked on. Luo Qingbai opened it, and came face to face with Cheng Yixue outside. The two of them spoke at the same time, one asking, “Who are you?” and the other asking, “Who are you looking for?”
Zhao Han, holding up a piece of clothing, opened the door for Cheng Yixue. “What is it?”
Cheng Yixue was a new graduate student who had joined their lab that year. The first-year girls actually still had a real summer vacation they could fool around through, but Cheng Yixue was probably truly in love with studying, because for more than half the summer she had been hanging around the lab, and all the men in the lab were very interested in her.
Although Zhao Han saw Cheng Yixue every day and night, in her heart the two of them weren’t familiar.
Cheng Yixue, on the other hand, was very enthusiastic. “Senior, you’re back! Boss Gui was still talking about you the other day! This is…” Her gaze drifted toward Luo Qingbai. As her eyes moved over, Luo Qingbai’s already expressionless face turned even colder.
“My new roommate.” Zhao Han introduced her with a smile.
Probably because Cheng Yixue’s scrutiny put Luo Qingbai off, she forced out a very stiff smile and introduced herself: “Luo Qingbai.” That was the whole greeting.
Cheng Yixue glanced at the mess in their dorm. “Then you guys keep tidying up. I won’t bother you any longer!” Zhao Han asked strangely, “Really nothing?”
“Nothing. I just heard there was noise in senior’s dorm and came to see if senior was back!”
If there was nothing, then there was nothing. Zhao Han sent her off, tidied for a while, and went to fetch water.
When she came back, Luo Qingbai was tidying her wardrobe. The door was open, and with one glance Zhao Han could see all the clothes inside, two oversized T-shirts and pairs of pants from a stall by the school gate, fifteen yuan each. The shoes were white sneakers. What she took out after that were already autumn and winter sweaters and two padded coats.
Even if she had packed lightly because she was only exchanging for a year, those clothes were still a bit pitiful.
The two of them silently tidied their own things. When Luo Qingbai was washing the mop in the sink, her phone buzzed. Zhao Han glanced over and saw that it was Luo Qingbai’s call. She called Luo Qingbai, and Luo Qingbai wiped her wet hands on her clothes, came over, picked up the phone, then hung it up, and continued washing the mop as if nothing had happened.
Zhao Han: “…” She had the strange feeling that she was meddling.
So when the phone rang again, Zhao Han didn’t pay attention. It wasn’t until the ringtone summoned Luo Qingbai back from the sink that she hung up the call and, right under Zhao Han’s nose, dragged this persistent caller into the blacklist.
Zhao Han: “…” Could she be a girl with a story after all?
What pulled Zhao Han back to reality was her own phone. The moment she answered, Guan Nan’s loud voice came blasting through: “You’re back? I heard you’ve got a new roommate?”
Zhao Han pulled the door shut and went out to take the call. When she came back, the dorm was already neat again, and Luo Qingbai, as if waiting for her, asked, “Senior, what time does the cafeteria open for dinner?”