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Chapter 7

I moved about eight loads of an assortment of suitcases, from the big to the small, into the Poly-technical dormitory of T-University; while Wenyang was lodging at the dormitory of the Chemistry Department building which was next to mine.

That old man of mine had enough power to even touch the heavens, but it was just that my own level of achievements were too low, so low, that his attempt to reverse this situation was in the end too weak. My results from my examination were such a mess I couldn't even manage to squeeze into T-University's undergraduate program, and the only option I had left was to scrounge for a place in the vocational college program.

But Wenyang, of course, got into this school using his own strength. And with the Chemistry Department at this school being competitive as heck, this department's exam entry score requirement was freakishly high, and it turned out that he had gotten the highest score overall in the entire school (while my own was T-University's lowest).

So it is clear as day that this extraordinary person and myself are nowhere in the same class.

But, nonetheless, there are times when comrades of different classes can come together.

You can say it all had to do with certain bad habits of T-University which had indirectly created an advantage for me. One was the power being cut off at eleven in the night, where even if it was during the hottest of days of the season and when you could bake a pancakes on your bed. The condition of the great pillars of our country, could not even compare to that of a migrant worker! With just a tiny ceiling fan attached to a headboard, only being able to blow weakly at the most as it shook. Then, in the evening, from within that elegant landscape of T-University, many hidden death-machines—mosquitoes—emerged; like tiny little air-bombers, and a wonderful by-product of the garden work done. The guy's who were not used to hanging a mosquito net would all wake up everyday with a face so swollen, it was beyond recognition, and looking more like a pineapple than they did a person!

Plus, on top of all that, there was the dorm health inspection that was carried out every weekend—the regulations for which were super strict. No stuff on the tables, no stuff on the beds, no stuff piled under the beds too (and the stuff in question here referring to everything besides the person and the chair!)—and for the life of me I really don't get where this "stuff" was then supposed to be packed. The first week, when the dorm inspectors came, all the guys packed their shit on their backs and carried them on their person. But later, everyone could not take it anymore because there was then a department inspection along with a school-wide inspection, and when exactly these two would happen was unknown, so every damn day we would all be lugging around our stuff on our backs for two whole hours, just to be notified in the end that "this random day of inspection was not for you all".

I didn't even stay there for a month before I packed my shit and left. And what made me all giggly, was that Zhou Wenyang was looking for a place to live too. For him, what he couldn't stand was all the noise from the four guys in his dorm-room when they played mahjong or watched adult videos, plus the forced power outage at eleven each night really affected his studying habits. Those perfectly timed-out study habits of his were not suited for a collective dormitory life at all.

So we rented a two bedroom house not that far from the school together in the end. Seeming to both ignore that I was "gay" and we were in fact officially "co-habitation".

Our co-habitation life was even happier than I could've ever dreamed. Wenyang, everyday, woke me from my death-like sleep for me to attend class. He also, for me—who spent his entire life not lifting a finger on a chore and having no ability to tell one grain from the other[1] as even boiling water with an electric rod would result in it being burnt, and lacking the self-awareness and care to go get take out from the place near the apartment—"washed his hands, and made the soup[2]" taking care of the household duties. Plus, he even helped me copy my timetable and stick it on the headboard of my bed, along with clearly printing the subject, teacher, and class location for each subject on my textbooks so I would be able to find the classrooms—or, to keep my behind from using "not finding the class" as an excuse to skip. So, by this meticulous care of his, my heart felt at complete ease and was so happy I was beside myself, unable to help myself from being no different than a Japanese woman: calling him "Anata {Darling}[3]" everyday; bowing to send him off, and kneeling beside the door to welcome his return; and telling him "You've worked hard" while taking off his coat and shoes like the good little lackey I am, all with a flattering smile plastered on my face.