Every Universe

‣ classmates AU

pairing ‣ Delilah Murphy x Harrison Chang

prompt ‣ "we're classmates and I don't know that well but you're too cold to even want sakura peach black tea and there's only one left, I will fight you" convenience store AU

notes ‣ it's been exactly one year since I published convenience store AU, and to celebrate its anniversary, I decided to publish another convenience store AU (but I couldn't name two fics "convenience store AU", so I named this one "classmates AU"), but this time about two different characters! this is significantly shorter than convenience store AU (and this also might be ridiculed with more typos, I did not proofread this), but I hope you enjoy!

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"None of my notes make any sense."

"You always say that." Delilah stuffed her pencil case and notebooks in her backpack with one hand. "It's never true."

"It's actually true this time. I wrote something about weather being a motif in the book, but what does that even mean?" Papers shuffle in the background. A highlighter, or maybe a wooden pencil, rolls off the coffee table. Some pop song is filters through the connection on low volume. "I don't even know what these notes mean! What is the Jazz Age? Who are the 'the lost generation'? I'm not American! Someone explain this to me."

"Do you think I can explain it? I could barely read the Chinese version of The Catcher in the Rye. It's all sort of your fault for taking an advanced English class." Zipping her backpack up with only her left hand, Delilah pulls it over her shoulder and says goodbye to a few of her classmates. She says a quick goodbye to her homeroom teacher before heading down the hall. "You should be studying for the Gāokǎo, not reading books in a different language."

"Okay, fair enough, but at least Catcher makes sense! I started reading it earlier this week, and it's so, so much easier. In The Great Gatsby, the political and socioeconomic background is super essential to understand the book, so everything is way too difficult to understand." Hannah sighed dramatically. Delilah imagined her faux fainting onto her couch. "I spent all day today reviewing for our test on Monday, but I still feel super dumb."

Delilah glanced through a window into another liberal arts class, where a student was writing I will read not read manga in class over and over on the blackboard. "That reminds me. Shouldn't you be at school right now?"

"Staff development day," she said, as if it explained anything. Well, it sort of did. Hannah went to an all-female high school in Shànghǎi, not only because her family could afford that, but because Hannah was going to do something with her life. She was going to leave their city of Chángchūn and do something with her life, probably in America. "Okay, but let's get to the point. Nick is gay, right? Is that something we're not going to talk about in class?"

"I haven't even read the book, Hannah. You shouldn't be asking me." Delilah starts walking down the stairs. "You understand Catcher. That's more than what I can pull off."

Hannah groaned. "I'm so doomed. I still don't understand the American Dream. I thought we were in China? Why do I have to learn this?"

"Because you go to some fancy school in Shànghǎi."

"Fair enough." Hannah tapped her pen against the edge of the coffee table, an old habit that her classmates were bound to love. "Anyway, I'm done complaining. How's school?"