What A Day For A Daydream

The One Where Nothing Goes According To Plan

The darkness of the dawn is completely different from the darkness of the night, Wei Ying realizes as he stares despondently out the window in his kitchen, burnt remnants of what was supposed to be a cake lying in the sink below him, as if to mock his efforts. There is a strange bluishness to it, the sky at dawn, whereas the sky of the night is always a familiar black. Wei Ying had never woken up to witness the sun rise before. Usually when he wakes up it is closer to mid-day than morning. But today is different. Considering how it had been special enough that Wei Ying had hauled his ass off the bed at the crack of dawn and dragged himself to the kitchen, one would not be remiss in assuming that something of great importance was afoot.

To be honest it was just his roommate's birthday.

Lan Zhan, his roommate since the second year of their college, was a silent and serious kind of boy that usually did not befriend the likes of Wei Ying, always the loudest in the room and up to no good. The only reason they even became friends, Wei Ying believes, is because they were constantly in each other's company while sharing the same apartment. Admittedly Wei Ying was out with his brother and their friends more often than not while Lan Zhan stayed in to study or go to the city to hang out with his brother, who apparently owned a bookshop uptown. But when they were alone together in the apartment, there was always a quiet peace that Wei Ying grew to like; a feeling of being home that he wasn't quite sure how to react to, but found comfort in nonetheless. He thinks it must be the quiet reassurance of Lan Zhan's presence, something that spooked him when he first moved in but now actually enjoyed. The taller boy wasn't the most talkative or friendly, but Wei Ying had quickly come to learn that he was very caring in ways that were rather unnoticeable at first.

Lan Zhan would stay up late when Wei Ying was haphazardly cramming for finals, making him gallons of coffee without even being asked. He had also once gone to the trouble of buying him a textbook that was hard to find and more than a little expensive. Wei Ying had gaped back and forth between the neatly packaged book on his desk and Lan Zhan coolly going about dusting the place as if nothing were a miss, not quite sure how to respond.

"Oh my God, Lan Zhan!" He had managed finally. "That book costs more than what I earn in a month. What possessed you to buy it?"

"I heard you talking to your brother about it." Lan Zhan replies without looking up from his dusting. "On the phone last week. And I knew my brother had it in his shop." His words deliver the shrug that he physically doesn't. "Consider it an early birthday gift."

Wei Ying had felt both strangely elated and gut wrenchingly guilty. He thought he was elated because he finally got his hands on the book, and he definitely knew he felt guilty because the only thing he bought Lan Zhan for his last birthday was a pair of Harry Potter socks. (Wei Ying didn't know if Lan Zhan liked Harry Potter, but he thought the socks were cute Lan Zhan was a nerd. Wasn't that the kind of thing they liked? In any case Wei Ying had seen him wearing those socks a lot, so he probably did like Harry Potter.)

So he had decided that next year, he will make sure Lan Zhan has the best birthday with him. (As best as he could do with being an almost broke college student.)

So here he is right now, having woken up before Lan Zhan (which was a Herculean task by itself considering how Lan Zhan woke up at five AM every day, that absolute mad lad.) in order to somehow bake a cake with the mixture he had chosen yesterday with the help of his jiejie. She had promised him that it was as easy as snapping your fingers and there really was no way for him to go wrong with it. But now having witnessed for himself how it could go terribly, terribly wrong, Wei Ying decides that his sister's experience of snapping fingers must be vastly different from his.

As he wallows in self-pity, scrubbing at the tray in the sink to get the last of the burnt cake stuck to the bottom, Wei Ying's phone on the kitchen table chimes merrily and startles him for a second. It must be five o' clock already, he thinks, having set an alarm to alert him when it was the usual time for Lan Zhan to wake up. If all had gone according to plan, Wei Ying would have woken him up himself, with the cake he made and wished him a happy birthday. He wanted to be the first one to wish Lan Zhan. It was only fitting in Wei Ying's mind; they do live together after all. What kind of roommate would he even be if Lan Zhan doesn't get a very enthusiastic wish from the person that he is bound to see first thing in the morning?