Put up a door.
Once the thought took hold, it refused to go away.
But practical obstacles followed right on its heels.
The washroom doorway in this old dormitory building was unusually wide. A single door could never cover it; he would need double doors.
Wang Xiaoliang opened a shopping app and searched.
Double doors.
Prices ranged from eight hundred to two thousand yuan.
He tapped on a relatively cheap set with the highest sales. The listed price was 1,288 yuan.
1,288 yuan.
That was way too expensive.
If he actually had that much money, he would have used it long ago to move out of this godforsaken place and rent a room off campus.
Why did it have to be so hard?
Why were there hurdles blocking everything he tried to do?
A change of place could save a person, even if uprooting killed a tree.
But he had no money to move.
Nor did he have the money to move the "Filth" away.
A dead end.
This was a fucking dead end.
Li Jun had finished showering too. Seeing Wang Xiaoliang like this, he asked cautiously, "Xiaoliang, what's wrong now? Weren't you fine just a minute ago?"
Wang Xiaoliang did not answer. He simply stared at the pitch-black washroom doorway opposite him, his gaze bordering on despair.
It looked like a vast maw waiting to devour someone, steadily swallowing the life out of the dorm room-and swallowing his hope along with it.
His eyes wandered aimlessly around the room, searching for any glimmer of possibility.
Then his gaze stopped.
Several pieces of luggage, packed in woven sacks and cardboard boxes, were piled in a corner.
They belonged to Fourth Brother.
Wang Xiaoliang's gaze settled on a half-open cardboard box. The corner of a neatly folded bedsheet peeked out from inside.
Blue-and-white stripes.
An idea sprang up without warning.
A bedsheet.
Make a door curtain out of a bedsheet.
Although it would not be a proper door, it could at least serve as a partition, blocking the endless stream of dampness and yin energy.
The moment the idea occurred to him, excitement surged through him.
He shot to his feet.
Li Jun jumped again. "What... what are you doing now?"
"Saving myself."
Without further hesitation, Wang Xiaoliang went to the corner, opened Fourth Brother's cardboard box, and pulled out the blue-and-white striped sheet. The cotton felt thick and sturdy in his hands.
"Hey, Xiaoliang, why are you touching his stuff?" Li Jun asked uneasily.
"I'm borrowing it. Didn't Fourth Brother's dad say we could have all this?"
He found a pair of scissors, then dug a measuring tape he had not used in ages out of his desk.
"Big Brother, give me a hand. Let's measure the doorway."
Li Jun stood stunned for a few seconds, then finally sighed and went over to hold the other end of the tape.
"You've been acting really weird today. Don't tell me you've been scared stupid too!" he muttered, though his hands cooperated readily enough.
Once they had the measurements, it turned out that both the doorway's width and height exceeded the sheet's dimensions.
"It's not big enough," Li Jun said.
Wang Xiaoliang stared at the sheet and the measurements, his mind racing.
"Then we'll cut it in half and make two curtain panels."
"But it's still not tall enough. There'll be a huge gap at the bottom."
"Forget that for now. We'll cover as much as we can!"
Wang Xiaoliang wasted no more words. He picked up the scissors and cut firmly down the middle of the sheet. When he finished, he found a needle and thread and clumsily hemmed the edges of the two pieces. Two crude "door curtains" were born.
But Fourth Brother's sweaty odor still lingered on them.
Carrying the two pieces of cloth, Wang Xiaoliang rushed into the washroom. He turned on the tap, added laundry detergent, and scrubbed hard. With that stubborn intensity, it seemed he was not washing fabric, but trying to scrub his fate clean.
Once they were clean, he looked at the dripping curtains, overwhelmed by urgency.
He could not wait for them to air-dry.
He needed to hang them up right now, immediately.
He ran to the communal laundry room downstairs and hesitated for a second in front of the coin-operated dryer.
Scan the code. Pay. Five yuan.
It was his first time using such a "luxury" appliance.
As the dryer rumbled and spun, Wang Xiaoliang's heart hung in suspense.
At last, carrying the curtains, still warm and fragrant with detergent, he ran to the campus convenience store and spent two yuan on a box of thumbtacks.
Back in the dorm room, he climbed onto a stool while Li Jun steadied it below.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Using a liquor bottle, he hammered the thumbtacks into the hard edges of the doorframe.
A crude blue-and-white curtain now hung across the washroom doorway.
Although a gap of roughly forty centimeters remained at the bottom, it finally covered that gaping entrance.
Wang Xiaoliang stepped down from the stool and let out a long breath.
He looked at his handiwork, but still felt something was missing.
The bare blue-and-white fabric looked a little flimsy. It did not feel as though it could suppress that foul energy.
It needed something more.
Something suddenly came to him. He turned and hurried back to his desk, pulled open the bottom drawer, and dug a dust-covered wooden box out of a heap of odds and ends.
He opened it. Inside lay a writing brush, an inkstone, and a small ink stick.
His father had given them to him before he left for university. Wang Xiaoliang had practiced calligraphy under his father's supervision since childhood, and his brushwork was quite good. But after starting university, amid all the restless distractions, he had never touched them again.
Today, though, he felt they could finally be put to use.
He set the brush, ink stick, and inkstone on the desk, poured in a little clean water, and began slowly grinding the ink.
Li Jun came closer, curious. "Well, look at you. You know how to do this too?"
Wang Xiaoliang said nothing. He simply felt the ink stick turning against the inkstone, and his restless, agitated heart miraculously began to settle.
The ink was ready, giving off a delicate fragrance.
He lifted the brush, soaked its tip in ink, and said to Li Jun, "Big Brother, let's give our washroom a name. What do you think would sound nice? Something refined."
Li Jun curled his lip. "A place for washing yourself, your clothes, and your dick? How are you supposed to make that sound refined?"
Instead, those words gave Wang Xiaoliang an idea.
Washing yourself, washing your clothes...
Sanmu.
His eyes lit up. "How about 'Three-Wash Pavilion'?"
"Three-Wash Pavilion?" Li Jun smacked his lips. "That's fucking pretentious. Sounds like some bookworm came up with it. 'For Tough Guys Only' would be better. That's badass!"
Wang Xiaoliang looked at Li Jun, then at the brush in his hand, and suddenly smiled.
"Okay."
He gave his agreement.
Then he walked over to the curtain, raised his brush, and wrote three large Chinese characters on the left panel in elegant semi-running script:
Three-Wash Pavilion.
His brush swept fluidly across the cloth, every stroke brimming with spirit.
Next, he turned to the right panel and switched to a rougher, bolder style, writing four more large characters:
For Tough Guys Only.
Two utterly different styles, two utterly different moods, hung side by side, forming a strangely harmonious whole.
Once he finished everything, Wang Xiaoliang felt his body relax.
Perhaps the clean, tidy surroundings reassured him, or perhaps it was the strange curtain opposite him. Or perhaps two nights of poor sleep followed by an afternoon of work had simply left him unable to keep going. Just after ten that evening, he fell into a deep sleep.
He had never slept so soundly.
Midnight.
It was the weekend, so the power stayed on all night, and supervision in the dormitory building was at its laxest.
The entire men's dormitory was still noisy. Sounds of combat from video games, bizarre cries from livestreams, and laughter and horseplay in the corridors all mingled together.
Suddenly, a flurry of hurried, disorderly footsteps came from the stairwell.
"Get moving, all of you! Hurry! Team one, fifth floor! Team two, fourth floor! Team three, third floor! Search every room! Don't miss a single one!"
Before you continue