Over a Hundred Jin of Luggage and a Burly Guy from Northeast China

The door was shoved open from outside.

The first things through weren't people.

They were two bulging woven sacks.

Blue and white striped, they were stuffed out of shape, with their corners cinched by rope. Behind them came an enormous suitcase, its sides swollen and its zipper looking ready to burst at any moment.

The three items nearly blocked the doorway. Only after they had been forced partway inside was there room for the person behind them.

A tall, burly young man squeezed in sideways right after them.

He had to be over 1.8 meters tall, with broad shoulders and thick arms. The back of his T-shirt was already soaked. He dragged the suitcase with one hand and hauled the woven sacks inside with the other. After struggling for a while, he finally got himself and that pile of luggage into Room 504.

"Fuck, I'm exhausted."

He let go, and the suitcase hit the floor with a thud. He stood there panting.

Even the dorm floor shook.

The young man wiped the sweat from his forehead. As soon as he looked up, he saw Lu Chuan standing by the window.

He visibly froze for a second.

Then his face lit up.

"Good lord, buddy, you're here early!"

He grinned, his voice loud and thick with a Northeast China accent, warm as freshly boiled water.

"I'm Han Dong, from Northeast China. Just call me Dongzi. No need to be polite. We're living in the same dorm from now on, so we're all family."

Lu Chuan looked at him and smiled too.

"Lu Chuan."

"Lu Chuan?"

Han Dong repeated the name and nodded readily.

"Good name. Sounds nice and crisp."

With that, he raised a hand and fanned himself a couple of times.

"Damn, climbing five floors is no job for a human being. I had too much luggage to fit in the elevator, and the auntie downstairs wouldn't let my mom come up. Said female parents couldn't go in today. My mom was real obedient, though. She actually left me downstairs and went off on her own. So I had to haul all this hundred-plus jin of luggage up here myself. Nearly killed me."

Lu Chuan pulled a packet of tissues from the desk and handed it over.

"Wipe yourself off first."

Han Dong took it without the slightest hesitation.

"Thanks, brother."

As he wiped his sweat, he couldn't help taking a couple more looks at Lu Chuan.

He wasn't sizing him up.

He was just getting a look at his roommate. But the more he looked, the less he could hold back a grin.

"You look more like a college student than I do."

"I carried two big woven sacks on my back the whole way here, looking like a migrant worker heading home. You're standing here all clean and fresh, like you came to tour the school."

Lu Chuan laughed.

"You're exaggerating."

"Me, exaggerating?" Han Dong wadded up the tissue and tossed it into the trash, immediately getting worked up. "You have no idea how much stuff my mom packed in here. She practically took apart the kang at home and stuffed it in too. She kept saying things outside are expensive, things outside aren't clean, and if I could bring it, I should."

At that, he bent down and patted one of the woven sacks.

"There are twenty pairs of socks in here alone."

Lu Chuan raised an eyebrow.

"Twenty pairs?"

"Yeah!"

The subject got Han Dong worked up, and his voice grew a little louder.

"She even sorted them by season. Thin ones, thick ones, sports socks, cotton ones, black, white, gray—a whole bag of them. I said, 'Mom, I'm going to college, not opening a sock wholesale business.' She said, 'What do you know? It gets chilly when autumn comes and cold when winter comes. You can't go wrong bringing extra.' Tell me, what could be wrong with that? She says you can't go wrong, and I have to carry all hundred-plus jin of luggage myself."

As Lu Chuan listened, the corners of his mouth rose despite himself.

That kind of nagging felt so full of everyday life.

In his previous life, at the Cloud Summit Club, in bar booths, and at those pretentious dinner parties, all he had heard were words wrapped inside other words. No one spoke directly, everyone weighed what they said, and even a compliment had to wind through three layers of meaning. Now, in Room 504, Han Dong was sweating all over and grumbling about twenty pairs of socks. He was a little noisy, but he swept away the empty feeling in the dorm in an instant.

This was what the start of school should feel like.

And what life should feel like too.

Lu Chuan walked over, bent down, and dragged one of the woven sacks blocking the doorway closer to the cabinet.

When Han Dong saw him, he hurriedly said, "Hey, hey, no need. I can do it myself."

"It'll be faster together," Lu Chuan said.

Han Dong didn't stand on ceremony and immediately joined in.

The two of them took a side each and moved the big bags farther in. The woven sacks were genuinely heavy. There was no telling how much miscellaneous stuff had been crammed inside, and it rattled as they moved them. Han Dong panted as he worked, but his mouth never stopped.

"This one's got bedding."

"That one has a washbasin, a thermos, slippers, laundry detergent, and two bottles of Northeast soybean paste my mom filled for me."

"This suitcase is the most ridiculous. Half clothes, half food. My mom was worried I wouldn't be used to the food when I first got here, so she packed a huge bag of red sausage, plus hazelnuts and pine nuts, and told me to share them with my roommates. I said, 'Mom, it's not like the school doesn't have a cafeteria.' She said, 'Can the cafeteria's food taste as good as our guobaorou?'"

Lu Chuan set the last bag down securely and straightened up.

"Your mom's very practical."

"You bet." Han Dong dropped onto a chair and slumped back as if he'd fallen apart. "She's so practical it scares me. Earlier she even asked if I wanted to bring a rice cooker. I said, 'Mom, we're not allowed to use those in the dorm.' She said, 'Bring it anyway. What if you need it someday?' Listen to that. Is that something a normal person would say?"

Lu Chuan laughed out loud.

Seeing him laugh, Han Dong grinned too.

"But seriously, my mom nags a little, but I can't say a bad word about how she treats me. My dad's different. He woke me up a little after five this morning, didn't waste a word, and took me straight to the station. My mom's not like that. She wanted to follow me all the way to the dorm and even tell me where to put my socks from now on."

As he spoke, he suddenly seemed to remember something and slapped his thigh.

"Right, I haven't asked you yet. Where are you from?"

"The Capital."

"Whoa." Han Dong's eyes lit up. "You're from the capital? That's pretty impressive. No wonder your Mandarin sounds so standard."

Lu Chuan found that a little funny.

"You can hear that too?"

After dropping out in his previous life, he had struggled to get by in other provinces, and his Capital accent had all but faded. His accent hadn't changed when he was reborn.

"How could I not?" Han Dong unscrewed his water bottle and tipped his head back for a big gulp. "I've got a sharp ear. Besides, you don't carry yourself like a local."

"How not?"

"Can't quite put it into words." Han Dong scratched his head. "You just look pretty steady and mature. But you don't put on airs. Anyway, you're not the type to walk into the dorm and immediately ask who has an air conditioner remote or who can play games with you."

Lu Chuan looked at him, a little warmth slowly rising in his eyes.

Han Dong had been just like this in his previous life.

He was tall and big, straightforward, quick with his mouth, and warmhearted. He looked rough on the surface, but he could actually pick up on most of what someone was feeling. Later, when Lu Chuan's disguise as a rich second generation was stripped away, only Han Dong, although he couldn't understand why Lu Chuan had made himself like that, didn't throw stones at him while he was down.

On the day Lu Chuan dropped out and moved out of the dorm, Han Dong had helped carry the heaviest suitcase downstairs.

He had said just one thing.

"Come on, I'll give you a hand."

Back then, in his previous life, Lu Chuan had been so down and out that he couldn't even lift his head. But he remembered that kindness clearly.

Now Han Dong was sitting right in front of him, still sweaty and loud, just as he had been when he came through the door. Lu Chuan felt a little more relaxed himself.

Han Dong didn't notice Lu Chuan's brief pause. He had fully caught his breath by now and immediately launched into another round of unpacking.

He crouched down and unzipped the suitcase, continuing to complain as he did.

"Watch this. I've got to open your eyes today."

Once the zipper was open, the suitcase proved to be packed to the brim.

Clothes and pants were rolled into bundles, with several bags of vacuum-packed food squeezed into the corners. There was even a plastic medicine box on top, crammed full of cold medicine, antidiarrheal medicine, and bandages.

Han Dong grabbed the medicine box and held it up for Lu Chuan to see.

"My mom said college students have the hardest time adjusting to a new place, so she insisted on packing this for me. She even said if one pill was missing from it, I'd be an unfilial son."

Lu Chuan glanced at it.

"She packed just about everything."

"Right?" Han Dong looked helpless. "She really thinks I can't take care of myself. I'm eighteen, not eight."

He then pulled a big package of socks from the suitcase and slapped it onto the desk.

"See? Twenty pairs."

"And that's just the first package. There are probably more in the other woven sack."

Lu Chuan looked at the big package of socks and finally couldn't hold it in. He lowered his head and chuckled.

Seeing that, Han Dong got even more animated.

"Don't laugh. I already made a fool of myself over these on the train. An older man next to me asked, 'Young man, are you going to register at school or going into the wholesale clothing business?' I said, 'Sir, this is a mother's love. A mother's love that weighs a ton.'"

As he went on, he started laughing himself.

The dorm came alive all at once.

The emptiness and quiet from earlier were completely swept away, replaced by the sound of rummaging through luggage, Han Dong's Northeast China accent, and the occasional noise of the new school term drifting in through the window. Lu Chuan stood to one side, helping him sort the things on the desk and pushing a suitcase that was in the way under it.

They had clearly known each other for only a few minutes, but they quickly fell into a rhythm.

That was just how Han Dong was.

He didn't dance around people or sound them out. If he got along with someone, he warmed up to them right away. Before long, he had already placed Lu Chuan in the "own brother" category all by himself, and he spoke even more casually.

"Chuanzi, I'm telling you, if anyone in our dorm snores in the middle of the night, I'll be the first one who can't stand it."

"And if anyone stuffs their socks under the bed without washing them, I really will fight them to the death."

"Oh, right, do you play games?"

"I'm okay at them," Lu Chuan said.

"That's great." Han Dong slapped the desk. "If the other two play too, Room 504 will take off."

As soon as the words left his mouth, a sound came from the hallway.

It wasn't one person's footsteps.

It was two.

One set was steady, the soles landing on the terrazzo floor with a sound that wasn't loud but was clear. The other was a little quicker, sounding like sneakers, but those steps weren't hurried or disorderly either.

The two sets of footsteps came together from the other end of the corridor, heading this way.

They were rather different from the freshmen around them, dragging suitcases, calling for their parents, and running up and down.

Not as flustered, and not as noisy.

Han Dong stopped talking and instinctively glanced at the door.

Lu Chuan was still holding a pack of clothes hangers Han Dong had just unpacked, and his hands paused too.

The sound drew closer and closer.

It stopped outside Room 504.

As if they were looking at the room number.

The atmosphere in the dorm, which had only just warmed up, suddenly went still for half a beat.

The smile at the corners of Lu Chuan's mouth slowly faded.