Apartment 4F

1: How a girl comes to live with four boys

When Shen Yue opened her eyes, she saw four guys peering curiously at her.

After the bus journey from Hangzhou to Shanghai, she had fallen asleep on the couch of her new off-campus apartment, while waiting for her new roommates to return and direct her to her room.

The first thing she noticed was that they were all very tall, and that they were all handsome but in different ways. Separately, they would already attract attention, but standing all together, they looked like they had popped out of a magazine, or a drama or a manga.

"What is this - F4??" She wondered aloud.

"No - this is 4F," the tallest, darkest one informed her, pointing at their door. (The apartment number was 4F - the F column on the fourth floor.)

Yue stared at them in disbelief.

"You've never heard of F4?? Meteor Garden??? Hana Yori Dango? Boys Over Flowers?"

She was greeted with four blank faces.

"Never mind... anyway. I'm Shen Yue - your new roommate."

They also introduced themselves - Caesar, Connor, Darren and Dylan. Like her, they were all sophomores in Shanghai University.

"Which one is my room?" She asked, after the perfunctory introductions.

They showed her to the room closest to the main door, and helped her to carry in her stuff, which wasn't a lot since she didn't really have time to pack.

"Thanks, oh and by the way, how do you all split the chores? I clean, and I occasionally cook, but not very well."

"The two of us usually split the cleaning," Connor told her, gesturing to himself and Darren.

"I don't clean, or cook," Caesar offered helpfully.

"Then who cooks?"

The three of them pointed to Dylan.

Yue gave him a once-over, taking in his basketball gear and general hip-hop demeanour.

"My folks own a restaurant back in Sichuan," he said by way of explanation, when he caught her staring at him doubtfully.

"Right, okay."

__________

"So... what do you think?" Caesar asked the rest, after the girl had disappeared into her room.

Connor looked thoughtful. "Well, it can't be any worse than our last roommate."

Their last roommate in freshman year had accused them of giving him self-esteem issues; he had to go to a psychologist for counselling and even tried to claim his medical fees from them. The last straw was when he demanded that they not walk around shirtless in the apartment in consideration for him.

Of course, Dylan did not take this too well.

"It's my own damn apartment - I should be able to damn well walk around naked if I want!" And he went on to prove it by proceeding to strip off his clothing in the middle of the living room.

Caesar could still remember trying his best to mediate, while Darren and Connor struggled valiantly to hold on to Dylan's boxers.

The case was even escalated to the university, which rarely interfered in off-campus housing disputes. The solution had then been to change roommates; after all, the school administration generally pandered to Dylan. He was the biggest basketball star their university had ever seen, and practically god-like in their eyes.

"Do you think that's why they arranged for a female roommate," Darren wondered, "to prevent the whole self-esteem thing from happening again?"

Unlike the university dormitories which were single-sex, the off-campus subsidised housing allowed for mixed-gender living arrangements.