Apartment 4F

22: How to move on

Disclaimer: Mildly/ immediately mature.

The rest of her university life whizzed by in a whimsical blur. Days of slogging over final-year projects with her course mates, food and playful banter with her roommates once she got home. And nights spent wrestling with Dylan.

Mostly the naked kind.

After the initial few times where he was afraid to hurt her, Dylan became a whole lot rougher. Sometimes she'd manage to gain the upper hand, pushing him down on the mattress and straddling him; other times he'd flip her onto her back and fuck her brains out, until she forgot her own name or whatever she had studied for the exam the next day.

He was bad for her GPA, like now when he was inside her, his lips pressed against her hair. Hooking his left arm under her right leg, he slammed into her repeatedly, his deep rhythmic movements shoving her up the bed, causing her head to repeatedly bump against the headrest. She briefly wondered how many brain cells she had lost in this manner, but then he shifted slightly and hit that particular spot. And she couldn't think anymore.

The familiar burn of pleasure escalated, and they put a hand over each other's mouth to silence their intensifying moans, when suddenly, he stopped mid-thrust and swatted her hand away.

"Wait, stop- stop," he huffed, "I can't breathe... I can't breathe..." He doubled over, panting heavily.

"Me neither," Yue gasped, "I can't tell whether I'm coming or suffocating. Sometimes the sensation is similar."

Dylan gave her a weird look. With a grunt, he flopped onto his back in frustration, his bare chest gleaming with a sheen of perspiration.

"How does this Wu Xi Ze do it?!" He gestured exasperatedly at the room next to his. "I have never heard any noise coming from his room!"

It was something Yue wondered about too, but she wasn't going to ask Jia Qi.

While they were glad Caesar had given up his promiscuous ways and was in a steady relationship with Jia Qi for quite a while now, it was another thing that her friend was practically living with them these days. With six people in one cramped apartment, the wait for the lone bathroom in the morning was insane.

They even had to create a new buddy-bathing system: Dylan and Caesar would bathe with their respective shorter halves, while Connor had to then bathe with Darren. However, this system only worked if Caesar and Dylan exercised full self-restraint; otherwise, the bathing time for these two pairings would lengthen exponentially.

When they were really pressed for time, it called for drastic measures: Yue would bathe with Jia Qi. And all the four boys would bathe together. Thankfully, they had only needed to employ these emergency bathing measures once or twice thus far.

"I can't wait to move out of here," Dylan told her.

After they went to Shaoyang to meet her family and Leshan to meet his parents, they were going to get their own place together. She had already landed a job in China Central Television, the predominant state television broadcaster whose headquarters were in Beijing. Dylan had also secured a place in the CBA (Chinese Basketball Association), the first-tier professional men's basketball league in China. But amidst the offers he had received, he had chosen to play for the Beijing Ducks instead of the reigning Guangdong Southern Tigers.

When she first learned of his decision, Yue had protested vehemently. She didn't want him to be making sacrifices in his career for her.

"We can just do long distance - it's only two hours away by plane," she insisted. "The Guangdong Southern Tigers have won the most championships. AND you're born in the year of the tiger. Why would you want to be a duck??"

"Eh - don't you know ducks are the in thing now? My basketball teammate Zhou Rui is obsessed with Donald Duck. We even have matching Donald Duck phone covers...see?"

Yue ignored him as he brandished his phone in front of her. "The Beijing Ducks haven't won a championship since 2014 or 2015..."

"Yeah, but that's gonna change," Dylan answered cockily, meeting her gaze straight on. "Cause now they've got me."

Sometimes his confidence still rendered her speechless. But it was in those moments that she clung to his reassuring presence. They would be graduating soon, and the future stretched out before them, vast and uncertain. But when she looked into that steady, piercing gaze, she knew somehow that everything was going to be alright.

She was suddenly struck with the memory of the first time she came to this apartment and fell asleep on the couch, waking up to the four boys peering at her.

So many things had happened since - strange things, unnecessary things that were somehow necessary, things that have changed while simultaneously staying the same. She thought about how she had come here to escape her past, and stumbled into her future. How she found herself an unlikely home - a permanent bond that would never break, even after they all leave and go their separate ways.

And after they leave, and pack up all their memories in cardboard boxes, around the corner in unopened cases, someone else's beginning would be waiting.

It was a comforting thought, that perhaps, this was a place with no ending.

"You know," Yue finally said. "I think I'll miss this place."

__________

Author's Note:

I thought I would take another month, but my anxiety suddenly inspired me to write another chapter haha.

Just to clarify, I chose CCTV and Beijing ducks cause I wanted to find a broadcasting station and a basketball team in Beijing. I don't really know much about Chinese pro-Basketball teams and whatever I've written is from cursory googling. I just assume the Beijing ducks are based in Beijing and the Guangzhou Tigers are in Guangzhou (right? 🤷🏽‍♀️). I also found that Yue's hometown is Shaoyang in Hunan, while Didi is from Leshan in Sichuan - please correct me if I'm wrong and I'll change it. Thanks!
(Edit/ Further clarification: I found the information on the CBA and the championship winners according to year on the wiki page - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Basketball_Association. The last recorded champions for 2018-2019 are the Guangdong Southern Tigers and I wrote the draft for all this a few months back. But my friend Angeline/ @rainingmeteors has just informed me that the Beijing Ducks are winning like now in the recent games omg haha just when 4F Didi said they will win. In real life it's because of NBA player Jeremy Lin.)

The story was originally supposed to end here, on this slightly pensive note that she will miss the apartment. I was listening to the song "North" by Sleeping At Last when I was conceptualising this so maybe that's why the tone is like this and the line "I'll miss this place" was a reflection of my feelings then. But now, after struggling for so long, I think I won't miss the anxiety of having writer's block and an incomplete story looming at the back of my mind always. (Note to self: please remember this if ever thinking about starting another multi-chap.)

I still have an epilogue, and then after that I can retire haha -basks in newfound freedom-

Thank you, for reading, voting and leaving such encouraging and funny comments that I am more entertained by than my own story.