Memories of Roommates Sharing a Place

Having shut his roommate up, Li Mao felt at ease and planned to go back for some sleep, but He Che spoke again.

"Did you eat this morning?"

Li Mao halted, lowered his head, and raised a hand to feel his hollow stomach.

How should he put it?

Before showering, there had still been some non-food inventory in there.

But after the shower, he had cleared it all out.

Tsk, honestly.

After doing physical labor all night, now that he was back somewhere safe, he really was starting to feel hungry.

Li Mao looked at He Che, his dark, bright eyes now like those of a dog waiting to be fed.

"What did you make this morning?" Li Mao asked instead.

Though their lifestyles and schedules were worlds apart, they had still depended on each other in this city for years. They had at least a little revolutionary friendship between them.

Back then, Li Mao had lived alone. But business had been bad for a long time, and the money he earned working security at a bar was not even enough to cover his cigarette expenses.

Seeing that he was nearly unable to keep food on the table, he had an idea. He partitioned off another bedroom in his home, put up a rental notice, and planned to earn some extra cash.

But his place was old and rundown, and the neighborhood was rough. Few respectable people would rent a place around there.

That left a bunch of young troublemakers, or people like Li Mao, surviving by taking on whatever odd jobs they could find every day.

And Li Mao was an Alpha. During his susceptible periods, he was highly aggressive and territorial, so most people were unwilling to share a place with an Alpha.

In short, the place had been listed for quite a while without being rented out.

Until one day, when a little brat of only twelve came looking for him.

The kid wore a school uniform washed pale with age and carried a tattered cloth backpack. He found Li Mao at the neighbor's mahjong table, where Li Mao had lost everything.

At the time, Li Mao himself was only nineteen, scraping by from meal to meal.

He took whatever work was available. When there were no temporary jobs, he came to the neighbor's place to play cards and relied on luck to eat.

If he won twenty, he bought a roast chicken. If he won a hundred, he ate at a restaurant. If he lost, he went home and drank cold tap water to fill his stomach.

Anyway, living alone, he had managed to get by fairly comfortably.

The day He Che came to rent from him, Li Mao had happened to be having terrible luck and had lost every last cent in his hand.

Seeing an obvious minor brat come around to cause trouble, he naturally drove him away impatiently.

Who would rent a room to a lonely little kid who was only twelve?

In principle...

That was indeed how it should have been.

But Li Mao was the kind of person who would take any job as long as it paid.

When he saw the kid pull 352 yuan and 50 cents from his bag and say he wanted to rent for three months first, promising to make up the deposit later, penniless Li Mao happily agreed.

As he counted the money, he warned the twelve-year-old that whether he had run away from home or was just rebelling, there was no chance of getting those three hundred-odd yuan back once it was in Li Mao's hands.

He Che did not hesitate at all. Instead, as if afraid Li Mao would regret it, he nodded furiously.

And so, a landlord who rented to anyone who paid and a tenant with nowhere to go spent six years together without even a written agreement.

Li Mao had never expected that little brat to stay with him for so long. He had only thought that if the kid's family did not come to take their sulking child home after a day or two, surely they would start worrying after three or four days?

But he waited for six years.

Even now, six years later, he still had not seen any parents or relatives come to take He Che home.

Yet what he had thought was a sure-profit deal had actually cost him dearly.

When He Che had first moved in, he was only twelve. Aside from the three hundred-odd yuan on him, he had practically nothing.

He was so young and still had to attend school, so there was no way he could earn enough to support himself.

Although Li Mao complained endlessly every day, he secretly worked even harder to find part-time jobs, slipping one or two hundred yuan into He Che's hands every week for spending money.

As for tuition and book fees, Li Mao had gone to the school again and again to pay them in advance.

All He Che could do was take charge of the household chores within his abilities as repayment to Li Mao.

Gradually, they both got used to each other's presence. Li Mao stopped eating out and instead came home every day to steaming hot meals.

Day after day, He Che's cooking, worthy of nothing but a raised thumb, spoiled his palate.

But after He Che turned sixteen, he found a part-time job as a waiter at the bar where Li Mao often worked security, helping with the household expenses.

From then on, they spent less and less time together, each busy beyond belief.

He Che had always been an excellent student. Li Mao knew he was different from himself, that his future path would be smooth and open.

He also knew He Che would get into a very good university and might even study abroad.

So he worked even harder to save up He Che's tuition.

Actually, He Che did not necessarily need to borrow this money from him.

But Li Mao hoped that if one day he became He Che's last card, if He Che truly bet all his hopes on him, he would not let him lose as miserably as Li Mao himself had at that card table when they first met.

Fuck!

If he had not loved sticking his nose into other people's business so much, he would not have eagerly taken on that dirty job, only to end up paying extra to have the mark removed.

Li Mao absolutely could not think about it any further. If he so much as looked at something in the same color family as Wan Fuqi's eyes right now, he would have a trauma response.

At twenty-five, he already had the exquisite aura of someone about to develop high blood pressure.

He urgently needed some of Little He's home cooking, which he had not had in ages, to soothe his soul.

Without waiting for He Che's response, Li Mao walked over to the dining table and lifted the plastic wrap covering the dishes.

"Whoa! You're eating spicy diced chicken so early in the morning? Your appetite's pretty, pretty impressive."

Though Li Mao had meant to express some disapproval, the moment he saw the food He Che had made, he could not stop himself from drooling.

In the end, he simply stopped pretending. He happily trotted into the kitchen, grabbed a bowl and chopsticks, served himself a bowl of rice, sat down, and began wolfing it down.

Damn!

No more spicy beef instant noodles with ham sausages!

He needed real protein. Next time he ran into that blue-eyed idiot, he would throw a hook punch so hard it would knock the guy's ancestors' souls out of their bodies.

He Che had not needed to say a single word the entire time. Watching Li Mao devour the food, he silently raised the book in his hand to block his contaminated view.

Seriously...

It had been six years. He had grown from a twelve-year-old brat into an eighteen-year-old adult.

Before long, he would be heading off to university.

Yet the late-blooming iron tree at home was still like an immature brat.

He was twenty-five already. Why was he still so reckless every day, like a wild boar with no eyes?

The thought alone was terrifying. Li Mao had actually raised the two of them to adulthood like this...

Just how tough were they, to have made it safely to this day...

No matter how he thought about it, every word in his heart was still mocking Li Mao.

But He Che himself did not know why the corners of his mouth, hidden behind the book, simply would not stop curving upward.