The renovation noise from upstairs was keeping Chu Zhi awake.
Since the crack of dawn, the buzzing and hammering sounds had been rising and falling endlessly.
Whenever it would quiet down and she’d start to drift off, the noise would suddenly resume without warning, startling her awake.
After enduring this for who knows how long, Chu Zhi finally couldn’t take it anymore. She let out a muffled groan and pulled down the blanket that had been tightly covering her head, sitting up abruptly.
With dark circles under her eyes, messy hair, and a sleepy, irritated expression, she stared blankly at the foot of her four-poster bed for a while, wondering if she should go upstairs to say something.
But then she decided against it – the construction workers had it tough, having to start work so early.
Chu Zhi irritably ran her fingers through her hair, grabbed a hair tie from beside her pillow, and carelessly tied her hair in a ponytail. She whimpered reluctantly like a small animal before flopping back onto her pillow.
The hammering sounds started again right above her head: bang, bang, bang.
“…”
She resigned herself to getting out of bed.
A University had several days for new student registration, but Chu Zhi had lazed around at home until the very last day. Since her family lived locally, she didn’t need to bring much – just a suitcase and a backpack held all her necessities.
She arrived at school close to noon, when the sun was at its strongest. After getting out of the taxi at the school entrance, Chu Zhi dragged her luggage to the campus map and stopped. She slowly set her suitcase beside her and freed one hand to adjust her slipping backpack strap before looking up to carefully locate the registration area and female dormitory.
Nearby, a girl walking past with her parents paused for a moment and remarked in surprise: “Mom, look, there’s such a tiny freshman! She looks like she’s still in high school.”
“…”
How was she tiny? She was practically 160 cm, if you rounded up!
Chu Zhi lifted her head indignantly.
The girl and her parents had already walked away. The girl was slim with straight black hair flowing down her back, and her figure looked tall enough to be a model – at least 170 cm, maybe more.
For Chu Zhi, heights like that were a mysterious realm with unfamiliar air quality.
“…”
Fine then.
Chu Zhi immediately went quiet as a mouse, swallowing back her indignation as she returned to studying the campus map in front of her.
Her sense of direction had never been great. The night before, Mrs. Deng had called internationally for three hours, giving detailed instructions about everything, and still wasn’t satisfied. She’d started yelling at Old Chu to book a flight back to China.
Old Chu, being devoted to his daughter, already thought his daughter starting university was a major life event and had been looking for ways to return. As soon as he got the order, he was ready to open his computer, but Chu Zhi rejected the idea with the excuse that “even if you book tickets now, it would be too late,” repeatedly emphasizing that she would be fine on her own.
Although now she was starting to think there might be a few small problems.
Her shoulders slumped as Chu Zhi wrinkled her nose and turned around, scanning her surroundings.
Across from her, under the shade of some trees, there was a temporary shelter set up where several upperclassmen in orange volunteer T-shirts were standing. New students kept approaching them for directions.
On the outermost small stool sat a male senior who looked the most relaxed – more like someone just hanging around than a volunteer – talking to someone beside him.
That person seemed completely uninterested in listening, lazily leaning against the edge of a temporary wooden table while drinking cola. He wore a black hoodie and dark jeans, wasn’t wearing a volunteer’s shirt, and didn’t look much like a freshman either. His face was mostly hidden behind the cola can, leaving only his eyes visible, which happened to be fixed on her.
Their eyes met, but only for an instant.
The next second, a tall, pretty girl walked up to him, somewhat shyly holding out her phone, saying something.
He shifted his gaze downward, quietly listening to the girl in front of him, and then smiled.
The cola can was set down on the table beside him, and Chu Zhi finally saw his face.
There was a reason the pretty girl wanted his phone number.
He casually took the phone the girl handed over, lowered his head to input something while still leaning against the table, maintaining an air of indifference.
The girl carefully moved a bit closer and said something else to him. He didn’t respond, just handed the phone back, his beautiful peach blossom eyes slightly raised, thin lips curving into a flippant yet distant smile.
Carelessly indifferent.
This was the first time Chu Zhi had seen someone who could smile like such a heartless playboy.
And still manage to make it seem flirtatious.
She blinked, but before she could process this, the senior who had been talking to him earlier was already walking towards her, wearing the orange volunteer T-shirt, looking like a moving carrot as he approached.
Chu Zhi shifted her gaze back, looked up, and tilted her head slightly to look at him.
The carrot flashed a smile, sunny and handsome: “Need any help, junior?”
The carrot was the type of senior with high emotional intelligence.
Especially when meeting pretty junior girls, he would be particularly witty, humorous, gentlemanly, and conversational, with perfectly appropriate behavior that never crossed any lines, giving people a comfortable feeling like a spring breeze.
He accompanied Chu Zhi to find the registration area and dormitory building, and over the course of the morning, they had exchanged names, colleges, majors, classes, and even phone numbers.
Since it was the last day of registration, there were many new students. By the time Chu Zhi got her military training uniform and reached her dorm, it was already one o’clock in the afternoon. Her room was in the corner of the second floor, a four-person dorm with its own bathroom and small balcony.
The other three roommates had already arrived – she was the last one. As luck would have it, the girl with the straight black hair she’d met at the school entrance turned out to be her roommate.
Chu Zhi hadn’t seen her face earlier, and the other girl recognized her first.
The girl with black straight hair was as beautiful as her back view had suggested. She introduced herself with an excited expression: “Hi, I’m Lin Tong. I can’t believe you’re my roommate, what a coincidence! About what I said this morning, I didn’t mean you were short, I just meant your height is really cute, haha.”
“…”
You really shouldn’t try to explain.
Chu Zhi gave her name, then couldn’t help adding: “I’m 160 cm,” she paused, her voice getting quieter, less confident, “…with shoes.”
This made not only Lin Tong but also the other two girls laugh.
Chu Zhi let out a frustrated puff of air.
Can’t a short person defend their dignity? Short people have fragile hearts too!
Lin Tong was from Chengdu, with a bright and likeable personality. She gave them each a unique welcome gift of hot pot seasoning packets. The spicy seasonings were sealed in transparent bags, their bright colors making everyone’s appetite surge. The four girls immediately hit it off and decided to go eat hot pot together after their afternoon class meeting to get to know each other better.
Since military training would start the next day and they all needed to wake up early, they didn’t go far, just finding a hot pot restaurant near the school.
The two-story restaurant had a classical decoration style with wooden tables and chairs, carved flower partitions, and the air was filled with the rich aroma of hot pot – spicy and fragrant.
The dipping sauce station was self-service, with a long rectangular table in the middle. Layers of large glass bowls held various condiments, with empty plates on the shelves below, and fruits and vegetable salads on the side.
After ordering the pot and food, Chu Zhi sat at their table watching things while waiting for her roommates to finish getting their dipping sauces before going to make her own.
When it came to hot pot, especially the dipping sauces, there were quite big differences between northern and southern styles1. Chu Zhi was a mix of north and south, and had attended elementary school in the south, so she usually prepared two bowls of dipping sauce when eating hot pot.
Northern hot pot sauce had the classic “big three” – sesame paste, Chinese chive sauce, and fermented bean curd sauce in one plate. The oil plate was crystal clear, with some oyster sauce and minced garlic, sprinkled with green onions and cilantro, glistening like colored glass.
Chu Zhi finished preparing her sauces and was holding a small bowl in each hand, ready to return to her table, when suddenly she realized someone had appeared beside her.
That person was crouching at her feet, reaching for an empty plate below.
Silent and unseen, she hadn’t noticed when he appeared. As she turned around, she stumbled.
She let out a small cry of surprise, completely losing her balance. Her brain couldn’t keep up with what was happening, and she instinctively reached out to grab something nearby to steady herself.
The oil plate in her left hand went splat, falling down, and most of the sesame sauce in her right hand spilled as well.
Chu Zhi looked down and froze.
The man crouching at her feet seemed equally stunned, his long arm still extended toward the shelf, holding an empty plate, with Chu Zhi’s oil plate now upside down on his head.
In this critical moment, Chu Zhi’s mind somehow wandered, and as she stared at him blankly, she suddenly thought of the Xinjiang lamb kebab shops2, where the cooks would wear similar small white hats while grilling and calling out to customers on the street.
It wasn’t until the plastic plate slipped off and clattered on the floor tiles that her mind snapped back to reality.
The now-hatless kebab cook raised his head and looked at her expressionlessly.
His hair was gleaming with oil, strands mixed with green onions, garlic, and cilantro roots, creating a colorful mess.
High nose bridge, thin lips, peach blossom eyes.
Chu Zhi recognized him and let out a dumb “Ah.”
It was the same guy from this morning who had been drinking cola when the pretty girl asked for his contact information.
Except now he looked nothing like he had when being flirted with earlier. His black hair was wet and drooping, black eyelashes dotted with drops of oil, looking completely disheveled.
The full bowl of clear oil that had spilled on his head was now seeping down through his hair, running across his brow bone, along the corners of his eyes, gathering at his jaw, dripping down drop by drop.
The clear, thin streams, like two lines of tears, continuously and slowly rolled down his expressionless face.
- This refers to the difference between the Northern parts of China, versus the Southern part of China. They’re known to have quite a few cultural differences, including the types of food they prefer (e.g., Northerners like wheat/noodles, Southerners prefer rice). ↩︎
- Xinjiang is a large region in northwest China; they have strong Central Asian influence (home to Uyghurs, Kazakhs etc). ↩︎
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