If You're Not Eager for Breakfast, There's Something Wrong with Your Thinking
Sigelica was roused by a rustling sound beneath her pillow.
She opened her eyes a crack and saw Dania lying across the edge of the bed, carefully withdrawing her hand from under Sigelica's pillow.
Dania pulled out the crumpled schedule and smoothed it flat. By the faint light from outside the window, she tapped the line for pork and scallion soup dumplings, then moved her finger to the sweet-and-sour ribs and left it there.
"Yaya, you..." Sigelica's voice was raspy enough to scrape filings off iron.
Dania jolted in fright, nearly sending the schedule flying.
Dania: Σ(°△°|||)
"Xixi, I-I didn't wake you, did I?"
"You're studying the menu before it's even light out. What do you think?"
Sigelica sat up in bed, sporting two enormous dark circles under her eyes.
"That bastard Zhou Yu. Fixing an electric meter last night was like undergoing a tribulation. The power tripped three times in our dorm. Did you hear it?"
Dania shook her head honestly.
"I was asleep."
"I fell asleep right after I finished my instant noodles."
She added the explanation with a hint of pride in her voice.
Sigelica: (╬ಠ益ಠ)
"I shouldn't have asked."
She crawled out of bed, having lost all hope in life, and started getting dressed.
"Hurry up. If we're late, there won't be any seats left in the cafeteria."
"Okay!"
Dania answered unusually loudly.
Fifteen minutes later, the two rushed onto the second floor of Cafeteria No. 3 and stopped dead in their tracks.
In front of the serving window, Zhou Yu sat ramrod straight on a small folding stool, wearing a flashy yellow antistatic vest. A portable electronic scale and an open copy of the logistics management regulations lay before him.
Auntie Li, who had shaken the serving ladle yesterday, stood behind the window with the ladle raised in midair. Her entire presence had shrunk by three sizes.
"Mr. Zhou, sir, what do you think of this portion...?"
Zhou Yu raised his eyes and tapped a page of the regulations with his fingertip.
"Article 73: detailed rules for meal subsidies for faculty and staff with special contributions and their families."
He paused, his gaze sweeping over Dania, who had just entered the cafeteria.
"This student, Dania, is an immediate family member of a key talent recruited by the academy. She is entitled to the highest tier of energy replenishment allowance."
"Auntie Li, you've worked in our cafeteria for a long time. You need to be proficient at your job, and your ideological awareness needs to keep up too."
The students lining up nearby fell utterly silent, looking at Zhou Yu as though he were a living bodhisattva.
Auntie Li clenched her back teeth, plunged her ladle into the basin of ribs, and lifted out a heaping scoop. With a clatter, she tipped every last bit of the sweet-and-sour ribs, meat and sauce alike, onto the tray Dania held out.
By the look of it, the portion was heavy enough to crack the plate.
Dania's eyes burst with a light that rivaled an exploding star.
Carrying that little mountain of ribs, she floated over to the seat beside Sigelica and let out a purr so happy it changed pitch.
Dania: (｡♥ˇεˇ♥｡)
"I feel like I'm watching a big cat being fed at a zoo." Sigelica covered her face.
"Xixi, you have some too." Dania picked up the biggest rib and held it to her mouth.
"No need. I got plenty too."
Sigelica waved her off, looking at the equally astonishing portion of ribs on her own plate. Her voice was complicated.
"Does this count as fleecing capitalism?"
"It does," Zhou Yu called from a distance without looking up. "But it's within the rules, so eat without worrying."
Ding-a-ling-ling.
The bell for preparatory class rang throughout the cafeteria.
Sigelica's chopsticks froze.
"Oh no, we're going to be late! Yaya, let's go!"
Dania's mouth was stuffed full. She blinked blankly, her chopsticks still reaching for a second piece.
Sigelica snatched the chopsticks from her hand.
"There's no time!"
She grabbed Dania by the arm and dashed out. Dania still had half a rib she hadn't finished gnawing on between her teeth, and she kept looking back as she was dragged away.
Zhou Yu looked up and waved at their retreating backs.
"Take care. I won't see you out."
Zhou Yu: (￣ω￣)
By the time the two scrambled into the classroom, Professor Moning was already standing at the lectern.
"Regarding the nonlinear refraction of resonance frequencies in higher-dimensional space, its theoretical basis originates in the reverse deconstruction of superluminal particle string vibrations."
Professor Moning's voice was cool and clear, each word delivered with surgical precision.
The whole class wore expressions of remarkably uniform bewilderment.
Dania had barely sat down when a feeling of satisfaction spread from her stomach all the way to her cerebral cortex, and drowsiness instantly enveloped her.
Her head began to nod uncontrollably, dipping again and again at an increasingly steady rhythm.
"Wake up!" Sigelica poked her in the waist with a pen under the desk.
It was no use. Dania's head nodded even more rhythmically.
"Yaya! Moning's looking at you!"
Sigelica kept her voice as low as she possibly could.
Dania's lips moved, and she mumbled in her sleep.
"Ribs... another piece..."
Sigelica: _(´ཀ`"∠)_
"Dania."
Professor Moning's voice rang out.
The whole class turned to look at her in unison.
Dania's head dropped forward, then snapped back up. A sesame seed was still stuck to the corner of her mouth.
"Please explain: when the observer becomes a source of high-frequency resonance, how can one avoid the string collapse caused by the observer effect?"
Dania stood there blankly, her eyes utterly vacant.
Sigelica closed her eyes in despair.
Just then, a tiny red dot passed through the window and fell on the desk in front of Dania.
The red dot moved swiftly, tracing out three fluid Chinese characters.
Xiao.
Long.
Bao.
Dania's eyes went round in an instant.
Her unfocused pupils refocused, and every cell in her body awakened at the same moment.
She sat up, her back ramrod straight, and stared intently at the blackboard. Her eyes shone with scorching brightness, full of devotion.
Seeing how thirsty Dania looked for knowledge, Professor Moning wore her first expression of something that could be called gratification since the term began.
"Very good. It seems you've already given this some thought."
She nodded.
"Sit down. Write up your thoughts in a report and hand it to me after class."
"Okay." Dania sat down promptly, her eyes still fixed on the spot on the desk where the three characters had disappeared, and sniffed hard.
Sigelica leaned over, her voice trembling.
"Do you... do you know you just agreed to write a report?"
"Mm-hm."
"Do you know what that question was asking?"
"No." Dania turned to her, her expression serious. "But Zhou Yu said there were xiaolongbao."
Sigelica's forehead hit the desktop.
Outside the window, in the greenery below the teaching building, Zhou Yu put away the Logistics Department's laser distance-measuring pen, stuffed it into his pocket, and turned to leave.
Sigelica lay on her desk, using a book to hide her face, her shoulders twitching.
She looked at Dania sitting ramrod straight beside her, eyes shining as she waited for the end-of-class bell so she could go find the xiaolongbao.
Then she looked at Professor Moning at the lectern, who was very satisfied with the results of her teaching.
"Is there any hope left for this class?"
No one answered her.