Zhao Yifan and the Silent Driver

The door handle went down gently.

The door swung open, and the young man who entered first was quiet too.

He was tall, dressed in an ordinary solid-colored T-shirt and casual trousers. His shoes were clean, and there was nothing eye-catching about him.

His hair was neatly trimmed, and his expression was mild. After entering, he looked around the dorm room first, as if checking where things were, or casually committing everyone to memory.

"Hello."

His voice was soft.

"Zhao Yifan. I'm from Ji Province."

Having said that, he took two steps into the room.

Following him was a middle-aged man in his forties. He wore inconspicuous dark casual clothes without a tie and carried two suitcases.

The suitcases didn't look extravagant. They were dark, with ordinary-looking corners and handles, but a second glance was enough to tell they weren't the sort of goods sold in an ordinary department store.

After entering, the man didn't look around, nor did he survey the room and offer his opinion like Chen Ziang's father had.

He merely gave the other three people in the dorm a slight nod.

That was his greeting.

Then he headed straight for the last empty spot by the window.

Han Dong was the first to react, immediately getting to his feet.

"Hey, you're here, brother."

"I'm Han Dong, from the northeast."

Zhao Yifan nodded.

"Zhao Yifan."

Chen Ziang sat up a little straighter too.

"Chen Ziang. I'm a Jiangcheng local."

When it was Lu Chuan's turn, he simply answered in an even tone.

"Lu Chuan."

Zhao Yifan's gaze lingered on his face for a moment. He nodded and said nothing more.

By then, the middle-aged man had already started work.

He didn't waste a single word.

He set the suitcases down securely and unzipped them, first taking out a set of folded cleaning cloths and disposable gloves. Then he wiped down the places most likely to be touched—the desk and chair, the cabinet doors, and the bed frame-in turn. He worked quickly, but his movements were small, and even the cloth rubbing against the desktop made barely a sound.

After wiping everything down, he started making the bed.

He unfolded the mattress and smoothed its four corners. One pull of the sheet, and the wrinkles almost all disappeared. The quilt, pillow, and cushion were positioned as though their placement had been measured in advance. He hung the clothes in the wardrobe one by one. What belonged in each drawer and how much space to leave on the desk seemed to require no thought at all.

For a while, no one in the dorm spoke.

Han Dong watched, dumbstruck.

The corner of Chen Ziang's eye gave a slight twitch as he watched.

His family was wealthy, so he understood better than Han Dong that what made the middle-aged man impressive wasn't his ability to tidy up, but his grasp of proper conduct. He hadn't spoken out of turn when he came in, asserted his status, complained about the fifth floor, mentioned an elevator, or commented on the dorm's condition. He'd even kept his presence to a minimum.

Yet he hadn't left a single thing undone.

This wasn't the kind of housekeeper one could casually hire for a bit of pay.

These were habits formed over years of staying by the side of someone who had truly seen the world.

He knew exactly what he should and shouldn't do, when to step back, and when to step in.

Compared with this silent, unobtrusive manner, his father's display of handing out cigarettes, slapping the table, and offering to donate an air conditioner seemed a little childish.

It wasn't that he lacked money.

The impression was wrong.

Once again, Han Dong was the first to break the silence in the dorm.

He studied Zhao Yifan for two seconds, then leaned over, speaking in a perfectly natural tone.

"Yifan, you got here pretty late."

"I've got some food here. Want a bite?"

As he spoke, he rummaged through his pile of belongings with practiced ease and produced some red sausage and pine nuts.

"I brought them from the northeast. My mom packed them for me."

"This sausage is crazy good, and my second uncle picked these pine nuts up in the mountains."

Zhao Yifan glanced down and reached out to accept them.

"Thanks."

Unlike Chen Ziang earlier, he didn't frown first, nor did he politely decline. After opening the sausage, he actually broke off a small piece, put it in his mouth, and slowly chewed a couple of times.

"Not bad."

"It tastes really good."

Han Dong's eyes lit up at once.

"Right? I told you it was good."

Zhao Yifan took another two pine nuts, his movements casual.

"These are good too. Nice and oily."

"Hey, you can really tell." Han Dong immediately brightened. "Let me tell you, that patch of woods my second uncle goes to in the mountains is amazing. Other people might not even be able to get their hands on any, even if they wanted to."

As he went on, he subconsciously lowered his voice a little.

He didn't even notice it himself.

Zhao Yifan didn't have Chen Ziang's obvious young-master air, but just standing there, he made people feel a little awkward about making a racket and casually slapping him on the shoulder. It wasn't coldness, but a very natural boundary.

You could chat with him.

But it was hard to go too far with jokes right off the bat.

Lu Chuan leaned against the desk, watching the scene with a calm heart.

It had been the same in his previous life.

Whenever Zhao Yifan entered the dorm, he barely made a sound. What really made people remember him had never been what he said, but the fact that whenever he was there, the rhythm of the whole room followed his lead.

He remembered that private room from many years ago.

It had been this same person, sitting in a corner, who had finally pushed a bill across to him with perfect calm and torn away every last shred of his shell.

But looking at him now, nothing much stirred in Lu Chuan's heart anymore.

It wasn't that he didn't remember.

It really was in the past.

He spoke up of his own accord. "Lu Chuan."

It was another greeting, of sorts.

Zhao Yifan turned to look at him.

"Mm, hello."

His gaze wasn't intense.

He had actually already looked everyone over when he came in.

Han Dong was the easiest to read: enthusiastic and quick-tongued, with his emotions written all over his face. Chen Ziang wasn't hard to read either. He was a local from a well-off family who was used to observing first and probing afterward. His looks and remarks just now had carried a hint of subtle competitiveness.

Only Lu Chuan was a little different.

From the moment Zhao Yifan entered, to the driver starting to tidy up, to Han Dong offering the red sausage, Lu Chuan's rhythm had scarcely changed. He hadn't given the middle-aged man's proper conduct a second look, nor had he deliberately warmed up to Zhao Yifan because the man himself seemed so calm.

That ease didn't seem feigned.

Zhao Yifan lowered his gaze a little and casually glanced over Lu Chuan's clothes.

The styles were basic, but the fabric and tailoring didn't lie.

Aethel.

And the pieces were well coordinated. Someone unfamiliar with the brand wouldn't have put them together so well. (P.S.: How could Eddie, the star store manager, not be familiar with his own brand's clothes?)

He didn't say so, merely making a quiet mental note.

This roommate was no ordinary person.

Nor was he easy to put in the ordinary-student category.

In less than ten minutes, the middle-aged man had finished arranging the bed and desktop.

The quilt was smooth, the wardrobe was in order, and only the essentials remained on the desk. Even the miscellaneous items from the suitcases had been neatly sorted. Once he was done, he closed the empty suitcases, put them under the bed, then stepped back to the door and inclined his head slightly toward Zhao Yifan.

He still hadn't said a word.

Zhao Yifan merely gave a quiet acknowledgment.

The man turned and left.

The door closed softly.

All at once, only the four of them remained in the dorm.

Only now was room 504 truly complete.

Outside, the sky had almost gone completely dark. The corridor lights came on, and sounds from the sports field outside the window drifted in on the night breeze, intermittent and a little noisy, yet just as things should have been at the start of university.

Han Dong looked around at everyone, as if he had finally been waiting for this moment, and slapped his thigh.

"Come on."

"Now that we're all here, shouldn't we have our first meal together as 504?"

As he spoke, he looked at Lu Chuan.

"That clay-pot place on the back street you mentioned this afternoon—is it good?"

Lu Chuan screwed the lid tight on the water cup on his desk and smiled.

"It's good."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Han Dong stood up, his whole body reinvigorated. "I'm so hungry I'm about to start twitching."

Chen Ziang put the watch on his desk back on his wrist, still sounding as reluctant as ever.

"The back street isn't much to look at."

"You'll eat there even if it isn't." Han Dong immediately shot back, "Young master, today you can get a taste of life among the common people."

Chen Ziang wanted to retort, but in the end he didn't actually say anything. He got up and picked up his phone.

Zhao Yifan picked up his keys.

Lu Chuan pushed his chair back under the desk and took one last look at room 504, which was beginning to feel lived in.

All four of them were finally here.

"Let's go," he said.

The dorm door swung open, and the four of them went out together. The light in the hallway was a little white, and their footsteps fell one after another on the terrazzo floor as they made their way out of the dorm building.