Apartment 4F

8: How to wake a sleeping Dylan

On an unassuming morning, someone was knocking incessantly on their apartment door. When Caesar opened it, Kido Ma and the other basketballers were waiting outside.

"Dude, is Didi there?" Kido asked anxiously. "We have a game in 30 minutes!"

"Shit I think he's still asleep." Caesar hurriedly opened the gate for them. Kido, who had been to their apartment before, immediately rushed towards Dylan's room, the others close behind as he threw open Dylan's door.

"Didi, we- woah!" The basketballers skidded to a halt at the sight before them.

Their bare-chested captain, sound asleep, tangled up in his sheets... and Shen Yue.

As the blankets were haphazardly strewn across his lower body, they couldn't tell if he was only half naked, or totally naked. Yue, on the other hand, appeared to only be wearing his oversized T-shirt, one arm and one leg flung casually over his comatose form.

Unsure how to proceed, they glanced back and forth between each other and Dylan. Kido approached the bed hesitantly.

"Didi, wake up," he said in a low voice, trying not to disturb his female companion. He repeated it a few times, tapping his leg, but Dylan remained deep in slumber. Spotting his exposed foot, Kido tickled the underside of it; the foot slipped back under the covers and disappeared.

"Wake up, Didi," Kido urged.

"You're gonna have to be like one hundred times louder than that."

Caesar had reappeared in their midst. Unlike the rest of them, he didn't seem at all fazed to see Yue in bed with Dylan. At first, the basketballers were all wondering why he was holding a pot and a pan; then he started banging them together and shouting unintelligibly.

True enough, Dylan didn't even stir.

But Yue jerked awake. "What is it? Who am I? Where are we?" She asked, rubbing her eyes sleepily.

"Yueyue, Didi has to be at a game in like... 27 mins," Caesar informed her.

"Oh my god!" Yue reached for her phone to confirm the time and started to freak out. "I told him we shouldn't have stayed up so late playing shark game... Wang He Di get up!!"

At this juncture, Mike Angelo, a Thai-Chinese basketballer, whispered to Kido in English. "Dude. The fuck is shark game, bro??"

"I don't know man," Kido murmured. "Must be some weird cosplay sex shit..."

Mike shrugged, frowning in confusion. Where he was from, men sometimes dressed up as women, but rarely did they ever masquerade as sharks, especially during intercourse.

Meanwhile, Yue was straddling Dylan and struggling to pull him into a sitting position, all the while making weird noises and grunting at his dead weight. Considering what they were wearing (or not wearing), the whole thing was beginning to look slightly R-rated. The guys quietly gawked at the scene until Yue turned around to glare at them in exasperation. "Er, some help here?!"

Together, they managed to get him to sit upright. Yue climbed off his lap and they tentatively took their hands off him. He was still sitting on the bed, his eyes closed, as though deep in meditation. After a few moments, however, his body started to slowly sink back down to the mattress...

Yue and Caesar caught him from behind.

"... Is he dead?" Another basketballer, Kris Wu, asked worriedly.

"No," Caesar assured them. "It's more like a coma. Like sleeping beauty."

"So to wake up, he needs... true love's kiss?" Someone else raised.

Yue stared pointedly at Caesar. Everyone else turned to look at Yue.

"Can you all play this game without him?" Caesar wondered, seeing as they were running out of time.

As the vice captain, Kido didn't sound that confident. "A few of the team members are down with injuries and we have quite a formidable opponent this time. If we lose this... we might be kicked out of qualifying rounds for the first time in the university's history."

Yue was in a panic - since Dylan was here on basketball scholarship, what would the consequences be for him if they couldn't play for the rest of the season?

"WANG HE DI!! WAKE THE F- UP!!!"

The others were taken aback by her sudden outburst. They had also never heard her almost swear before, although she swallowed the crucial word and pronounced it almost silently.

When Dylan still didn't move, Yue was suddenly inspired to pull out the big guns.

"Wang He Di!" She threatened. "If you don't get up THIS INSTANT, LEBRON JAMES is gonna be SO DISAPPOINTED IN YOU!!"

He bolted upright.

"LeBron James! Where?! LeBron James! LeBron James..." he mumbled, flailing about.

Yue slapped him. "Your game is in..." she checked her phone. "20 mins."

"Oh shit!"

Dylan jumped out of bed (it turned out he was wearing shorts after all). Yue raced to his closet (she was also wearing shorts, which were merely obscured by the T-shirt) and tossed him his basketball jersey.

"Where do you keep your underwear?!" She asked, frantically rifling through his messy cupboard.

"No time for underwear," he said, pulling on his basketball shorts over his boxers.

"Didi," Yue's tone was stern. "When you jump to slam dunk the ball, people can see into your shorts..."

It was the weirdest collaborative effort to get dressed that they had ever witnessed.

Even though his teammates were surprised to learn that Dylan had some sort of relationship with Yue, they had an implicit understanding amongst themselves. They would not divulge anything, out of loyalty to their captain and friend.

That day, an unspoken motto was formed: Whatever happens in 4F, stays in 4F. (Until otherwise notified.)

__________

Author's Note:

Thank you always for reading, and bearing with the increasing ridiculousness/ absurdity.

I apologise if my updates are inconsistent/ sporadic as it is quite a busy period for me and I will occasionally get stuck. I know my previous writing speed might have traumatised a few people. 😅 The good thing is this story is episodic (?) so hopefully the chapters can exist by themselves (like one shots haha).

Actually, these random scenes of them in the apartment and in the toilet and the "masturbation" etc occurred to me like halfway when I was writing the historical story. That's why I was struggling and taking so long cause I had to be like "no, stop" and then drag myself back to the olden times and write about irritating things like her "dying" or getting "amnesia" 🤦🏽‍♀️ (so sorry...)

In comparison, this story is easier to write because I don't have to situate it in a historical setting and deliberately mould the language to adhere to the context - for the narrative voice as well as how the characters speak. Here, I can just write colloquially and hopefully it won't take so long...🤞🏽. The only thing I can promise is no matter how long I take, I will finish it (because I have slight ocd and it will irk me if it's incomplete haha).

Until then,
✌🏽Asian Fangirl