Familiar Room 504

When the door swung open, it was quiet inside.

There was no laughter or chatter, no muffled thud of suitcases hitting the floor.

Standing in the doorway, Lu Chuan caught a faint smell of dust, along with the stale air left behind after the dormitory had stood empty for too long over summer break.

He was the first to arrive.

Lu Chuan pushed the door all the way open, carried his luggage inside and pulled it shut behind him.

Room 504 was exactly as he remembered it.

The room wasn't large. A narrow aisle lay just inside the door.

Two loft beds with desks underneath stood on each side. The metal frames were painted white, though some of the edges and corners had worn down.

Each had a bed on top, with a desk, bookshelf and small cabinet below. There were four spots in all, and he remembered perfectly clearly who had sat and slept where in his previous life.

Light gray tiles covered the floor, their grout a little dark. The window was at the far end, fitted with security bars on the outside. The glass wasn't particularly clean, and sunlight slanted through it, making the patch of floor by the window shine.

A row of wooden wardrobes stood near the door.

Four of them.

None was very large, and the boards were ordinary, with a little peeling around the edges of the doors. Forget winter coats and down jackets-just hanging a few sets of autumn clothes and stuffing in a couple of pairs of pants would fill one up. Clear adhesive hooks left by students from previous years stuck to the doors, and a small patch of glue residue lingered in one corner where it hadn't been torn off cleanly.

It was very ordinary.

So ordinary there was almost nothing worth writing about.

Yet standing there, Lu Chuan felt his heart gradually settle.

The night before last, he had slept in the master bedroom at Quiet Garden, with freshly changed bedding and warm lights, in a room so quiet he could hear himself breathe.

Today, he was standing in a completely ordinary four-person dorm room at Jiangcheng University, carrying a single duffel bag.

The two places were worlds apart.

But Lu Chuan didn't look down on the dormitory in the slightest.

A dorm was a dorm.

It wasn't fancy or quiet, and much of the time it could hardly be called comfortable. But those years at university were supposed to have a character of their own. If having a place like Quiet Garden meant he had to pull himself out of campus life, that wouldn't be much fun.

Lu Chuan set his luggage aside and slowly looked around first.

The spot on the right by the window was still empty.

He glanced at it but didn't hurry over. Instead, he turned to check the washroom by the door first.

The washroom was on the left as he came in, behind a somewhat worn frosted-glass door. The handle was a little loose, and a gentle press brought a familiar click.

Lu Chuan pushed the door open and went in.

The small room included a toilet. A washbasin counter ran along the left side, with a mirror set above it, its edges already yellowing. The counter still bore traces of the cleaning staff's scrubbing before summer break. A ring of dried water stains surrounded the base of the faucet, and a few short hairs, left by who knew whom, were caught beside the drain.

The toilet door stood open, and the squat toilet looked just as it had in his previous life.

Even the faint damp patch in the corner of the wall hadn't changed.

Lu Chuan stood in front of the mirror and looked at himself quietly for a few seconds.

He had known this place all too well in his previous life.

Back then, he used to stand alone in front of this mirror, practicing his expressions. How far to lift the corners of his mouth, how to hold his gaze, how to show off his watch when he raised his hand, how to make rolling up his sleeves look "casual"-he even practiced the way he lifted his head after washing his face until it looked convincing.

He hadn't been preening.

He had been practicing looking the part.

Like someone who had never wanted for money growing up.

Like someone who was only staying in a place like this temporarily and would move on to a higher level sooner or later.

Unfortunately, the mirror might have fooled him for a while, but it couldn't fool other people for long.

Looking at himself in the mirror, Lu Chuan suddenly felt a little dazed.

Now he wore a light gray short-sleeved shirt without a single logo. It was clean, with a sharp shoulder line, and his gaze had grown steadier. There was no fake watch, no deliberately practiced smile, and none of that desperate effort to put on a show.

Yet like this, he looked more like someone who knew how to live than he had in his previous life.

Lu Chuan lowered his head and turned on the faucet.

The water poured out with the chill peculiar to the dormitory building's old pipes. He cupped a handful to wash his face, and it ran down from his forehead and dripped off his chin.

He didn't wipe it away, letting the coolness linger for a while.

The stiffness and awkwardness he had practiced into himself in front of the mirror in his previous life seemed to flow down the drain along with the water.

Lu Chuan turned off the faucet and left the washroom.

The dorm room was still empty.

Sunlight streamed in through the window, and tiny specks of dust floated slowly in the light. An occasional shout came from the hallway outside, along with the rumble of suitcases rolling over the floor and parents reminding their children to wipe down their bed boards first.

Lu Chuan walked straight to the far end.

The right side, by the window.

That spot had been his in his previous life.

It was also where he had spent the most time, sat the longest and had his most tangled thoughts in this room.

He set his duffel bag beside the desk and looked up at the bed board above. The frame looked just as old and familiar as ever, with a few dents on the metal rail. The desk wasn't big, and the bookshelf had three tiers, with a small drawer at the bottom. The chair was a standard-issue wooden one from the university, hard to sit on and noisy too.

Lu Chuan bent down and opened the wardrobe.

A smell of wood wafted out when he pulled the door open. He opened the window to air the room, then wiped the wardrobe clean inside and out with a damp towel. Once the inside was completely dry, he put in the moisture-absorbing bags and mothballs he had prepared, then hung up the clothes he had brought one by one. Light-colored short-sleeved shirts, dark pants, shirts and light jackets-all bought just yesterday, with finely worked fabric and tailoring. But hanging in the little wardrobe, they looked no different from an ordinary student's clothes.

Clothes were meant to be hung up.

There was no need to find a special place to put them on a pedestal.

Lu Chuan moved with practiced ease, as though he were putting away ordinary changes of clothes rather than hanging up garments that each cost more than ten thousand.

The lower part of the wardrobe was empty, so he tucked his shoeboxes and toiletry bag in there too.

He hadn't brought much, and it was soon put away.

The desk was still empty.

Lu Chuan set down his laptop bag, put his document pouch to one side, pulled out the chair and sat down.

The wooden chair gave a soft creak.

Outside the window was a row of trees beside the sports field. Farther away, he could see freshmen coming and going across the field. Some ran along dragging suitcases, some stood in the shade making phone calls, and others wiped away sweat as they searched for their dorm buildings. The early September sunlight fell on the ground, bright enough to dazzle.

As Lu Chuan watched, his mind suddenly began to wander.

Over the past month and more, he had handled everything steadily. Buying a house, buying a car, trading crude oil, paying the remaining balance, getting the house in order and buying clothes-each step had followed the last, with hardly a mistake. That was because he had known exactly what he wanted to do and how to do it.

But now, sitting in this spot in Room 504, he slowly felt a faint trace of nervousness rise in his heart.

It wasn't fear.

It was more like an anxiety he couldn't quite put into words.

Lu Chuan rested his fingers on the desk and unconsciously tapped twice.

A very practical question suddenly occurred to him.

So much had already changed in this life.

He wasn't trying so hard to put on an act as he had in his previous life. He hadn't worn a fake watch, rented a car or made himself look like someone who was obviously trying to climb the ladder. He had bought Quiet Garden, picked up his car, and his account had long since ceased to be in the precarious state it had been in his previous life.

Could those changes have already knocked some things off course?

Room 504 was still Room 504.

But would the people who pushed through the door still be the same ones from his previous life?

What if they weren't?

If three completely unfamiliar faces appeared instead, would he really be cut off entirely from that most familiar stretch of campus life from his previous life?

And even if it was still them, would they get along differently the second time around?

It was the first time since his rebirth that Lu Chuan had felt a trace of genuine unease about the "unknown."

Before, it had been about getting things done.

Now, it was about people.

He could calculate and control things he did, and move them forward step by step. But people were different. Once someone came in, what they said, what they laughed at, their first impression of him, and how things would unfold afterward were not things a spreadsheet or a price line could lay out clearly.

Lu Chuan looked out the window, his knuckles tapping lightly on the desk.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

On the fourth tap, he stopped himself.

He suddenly felt like laughing.

He had been reborn and worked his ass off on so many things, yet here he was in a university dorm room, still getting nervous over something like who might push open the door in a moment.

Lu Chuan leaned back in his chair, slowly breathed out and drew his gaze away from the window.

Whoever came in, it was all the same.

In this life, he wouldn't twist himself into knots for the sake of anyone else's opinion.

Roommates were roommates, friends were friends. If they got along, he would get along with them; if they didn't, he would keep his distance. In any case, he no longer needed anyone to give him a veneer.

Once he had thought that through, the taut string in his heart loosened a little.

Lu Chuan got up, intending to go to the washroom first and rinse out a rag so he could wipe down the desk and bed board. Now that he was here, getting the place clean was better than sitting around lost in idle thoughts.

He had just taken a step when a sound suddenly came from the hallway.

First came the rumble of suitcase wheels rolling over the terrazzo floor.

One turn after another, dragged along at an unhurried pace.

Then came footsteps.

They were a little heavy, as though the person were carrying something, and sounded muffled against the hallway floor as they approached the far end of the corridor.

Lu Chuan stood in the middle of the room and stopped moving.

The sounds drew closer and closer.

From the stairwell, they reached the middle of the corridor, then edged toward the door. The person outside seemed to be checking the room numbers; the footsteps stopped in front of Room 504 for two seconds.

Right after that came the metallic sound of a key touching the lock.

Click.

The half-closed door was pushed open from outside.