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Section 1
Under One Roof
Original short story · AI-assisted writing and editorial revision · 18+
This is a work of fiction. Every character involved in the romance is a fictional adult of twenty-five or older, and none of them are related by blood.
Chapter One: Toes Turned In
At six-forty Lin Wanzhou pushed the door open. An extra pair of sneakers sat in the entryway, toes turned in, the uppers still damp. Cheng Yi'an's black leather shoes were gone. At five-ten he had already left for the West Station depot. The bathroom light was on. Someone inside was turning the faucet.
The door opened. A man with short hair clutched a toiletry bag, his work badge flipped against his chest. "Cheng-ge said you sleep in the daytime and told me to keep it down. I'm the new dispatch trainee at West Station. Liang Kai, twenty-seven. I'm borrowing the sofa for eighteen days. I'll pay him by the day."
Lin Wanzhou did not take it up. The night-shift captions had been cut off halfway through the block at the last minute, and she was home an hour earlier than usual. On the refrigerator door, a new line had been added at the bottom of the yellow note, in Cheng Yi'an's hand: Staying in the living room for now. The cost reckoned separately. We'll talk when you're back.
Liang Kai picked up his shoes. "Then I'll wait downstairs. He's back at noon."
"Go on, then." She pressed her voice flat. "The sofa is not a bed. There is no third person's towel in this apartment."
He nodded and pulled the door shut. In the stairwell the sneakers struck water, once, and again, and did not stop until the ground floor.
She stood in front of the refrigerator for a while. She peeled the yellow note off. The back was blank. The blue notes were still where they had been: close the fridge gently, no more than two sounds; do not touch the milk on the second shelf; no vacuuming from eight until three in the afternoon. The yellow ones were his: do not shower before six, the pipes will scream; unplug the microwave when you are done; set the shoes straight.
Three months of sharing the place, their hours twisted against each other, face to face no more than twenty times. They had been colleagues at the traffic station. She stayed with the night-shift caption team. He was transferred to West Station. The rent had risen from 4,300 to 5,600. The night the agent posted the news in the group chat, the notes had exchanged only one line: October as usual. Reckon it again in November. She was thirty-one. He was thirty-three.
She opened the fridge and looked. The milk on the second shelf was still there, the name facing out. When the door sucked shut it made one sound. She set a hand to it, afraid it would bounce a second time. A line she had not finished proofing still clung in her head: "This train's terminus," two characters missing after it.
On the living-room sofa a folded quilt was already spread. The pillow was the gray one from Cheng Yi'an's room, and the fold was his too. She folded the quilt, set it back outside his door, and did not push the door open. She meant to keep all three boundaries: his room, her room, and the passage between them.
A corner of a receipt showed in the mail basket, stamped in red by the depot. The two characters for "bed" were visible. She pressed the paper back in. It was his mail.
Liang Kai had left his toiletry bag on the sink, the zipper open: a plastic rinsing cup, a depot visitor slip stuck to the bottom. She set the bag on the entryway mat, against the wall, a little away from the shoe rack.
She went into her own room and locked the door behind her. The deposit receipt for the studio on the east side of the city was still in her bag: 1,800, move-in on October 28, nonrefundable if she backed out. The corners had gone fuzzy from being pinched. She slipped the receipt into the dictionary and set it down very slowly.
At noon he would want to talk about money. She would talk about the sofa first. The room on the east side could not be said today. The refrigerator compressor suddenly hummed, like someone clearing a throat in the kitchen.
Chapter Two: The Noon Accounts
Cheng Yi'an came back at twelve-fifty, carrying the dry dust smell of the dispatch room. He saw the toiletry bag in the entryway, saw that the quilt was gone from the sofa, and looked first at her door. It stood open a crack. Lin Wanzhou was sitting in the kitchen, the dictionary weighted beside her hand, blue under her eyes.
"Liang Kai sent me a message." He set his black leather shoes straight, thought a moment, and left the empty place for the sneakers. "I was the one who told him to come. I shouldn't have gotten there ahead of you."
"Eighteen days." She tapped the tabletop. "Your note said we'd talk when you got back. He'd already washed his face."
"The rent is 5,600. Twenty-eight hundred each. I can still squeeze my side. Your night shift had a block cut. The roster is up on the intranet." He pulled a ledger from his bag. The edges of the book were curled. "Liang Kai, fifty a day, eighteen days, nine hundred. That can cover part of the increase. He works days. You sleep yours. In theory you won't run into each other twice in a day."
"In theory." She turned the ledger around. "When he coughs, you don't hear it. I do. You yield even on the vacuum, and then you set a person down in the living room."
Cheng Yi'an sat down across from her. The chair made one sound. "I got the order wrong. I thought if I put the money down first, it would be easier for you to refuse."
That almost made her want to laugh. She did not. "So you spread the quilt ahead of time, the better for me to refuse a bed that was already open."
"Liang Kai can leave today." He glanced out the window. The rain had not stopped. "The dorm queue runs into next week. I'll let him stay tonight. Tomorrow I'll find him a bed. The eighteen days don't count."
She tore a strip from a blue note and wrote: The sofa is not a bed. When the person goes, the shoes go. She stuck it on the lowest part of the fridge, over his note that said "staying in the living room for now."
The ledger lay open. For October the two of them had each already paid 2,150. If November followed 5,600, her share would be 2,800, and then eight hundred to wire her mother for blood-pressure medicine. The caption team had scheduled her only sixteen nights this month. The fee was a little over six hundred less than last month. The numbers matched. The days did not.
"Beds are tight at West Station." With a pencil he tapped the November column and wrote nothing. "If I carry the full rent alone, I won't last two months."
She looked at that dot. The receipt in the mail basket seemed to give off heat from under the paper. She asked, "Do you have somewhere else lined up?"
"Not settled yet." He set the pencil down. "And you? Twenty-eight hundred. Can you carry it?"
The dictionary was right at her hand. She shifted it toward herself. The receipt did not show. "October stays like this for now. Liang Kai sleeps in the living room tonight. He uses your spare towel. Tomorrow he goes. The November numbers we write on another sheet. We don't write them onto a person."
He nodded. He had forgotten to switch off his headset. A dispatch call suddenly hissed. He fumbled it off and looked at her. "Sorry. This thing shouldn't come into the house."
"If it comes in, turn it off." She stood up. Her temple jumped. "I'm going to sleep. Don't vacuum."
He truly did not. When she lay down she heard him with the broom, light, once and then again, the same rhythm as that pair of shoes in the stairwell that morning. She closed her eyes. "October 28" on the east-side receipt hung in the dark like a caption line she had not finished proofing.
Chapter Three: Supper in a Blackout
By evening the rain was heavier. Lin Wanzhou had slept four hours. When she got up her head was heavy. Liang Kai had left a note saying his classmate's place could squeeze him in until ten, and he would come back to the sofa after ten. Cheng Yi'an was boiling water in the kitchen. The gas flame was blue.
At 19:05 the stairwell lights went out, and the refrigerator's long hum went out with them. The apartment was suddenly, absurdly large.
"Power's out." He shut off the gas, then turned it on again, to be sure it was not the stove. "The whole building is dark."
She felt her way to the desk drawer. The lamp was the one she used for proofing night broadcasts. The batteries still had enough. She switched it on. A small circle of warm light covered the stove and did not cover the living room. Cheng Yi'an looked at the light and pulled the microwave plug, the motion practiced, even though the power was already gone.
"Pull it now," she said, "and it still can't hear you."
"Habit." He held the plug in his hand. "Last year the microwave in the break room tripped, and the dispatch radio went out with it for eleven minutes. A shift bus left late. An old man on the platform missed the connection. They docked me a month of full attendance. So when I see a plug, my hands itch."
She cracked two eggs. The tomato was the last one in the fridge. When the door opened it sucked once. She waited until a second sound did not come, and only then poured the eggs in.
"The milk on the second shelf," he said suddenly. "I thought it was shared. One day at four-thirty I drank a mouthful. Your note was written so fierce I didn't dare touch it again."
"The three o'clock captions are the easiest to read with the lines crossed. My blood sugar drops. Milk is cheaper than coffee." She pushed the plate over. "I don't drink it until after three."
"And the notes? You write more than you speak."
"My mother is hard of hearing. At home, if there was something to say, we wrote it. Later, on the night shift, the moment I made a sound I was afraid of waking someone. Writing became the easy way."
"And closing it gently?"
"You can sleep in the daytime. I don't lie down until eight. The seal on this fridge is old. The second bounce sounds like a firecracker. Once I caught it with my hand. You thought I was angry."
He laughed, very short. "And the showers. Was I managing you, too?"
"It looked like it."
"The drainpipes scream before six. The landlord warned us once. I switched to washing at night, but at night I have to sleep. The note was written hard because I was afraid that one day I would get up late and have no strength left to explain."
"And the shoes?"
"The shoes have no story." He kicked his black leather shoes a little crooked outside the light, then toed them straight again. "If you want to make one up for me, I won't claim it."
The two of them finished the tomato and scrambled egg and the leftover rice by the desk lamp. Rain struck the window, more of it than talk. She glanced at the mail basket. That corner of the receipt was still there.
He followed her gaze, drew the receipt out, and set it under the lamp. Depot duty dormitory, single room, move-in on November 3, nine hundred a month. The application date was last Friday.
"Liang Kai's eighteen days were a bridge I built for myself," he said. "You took the bridge down, so I have to put this paper out. The contract says if we withdraw midway, the 4,300 deposit is not returned. It isn't the penalty itself I'm afraid of. It's you alone facing 5,600, and then an empty room. I wanted to fill the gap first, and then tell you I was leaving."
The lamp flickered once and steadied.
She picked up the last piece of egg and put it in his bowl. "I saw the corner of the paper in the daytime. I didn't pull it out. I treated it as your mail."
"You're not going to scold me?"
"Scolding you won't turn November into October." She glanced at her phone. No signal. The time jumped. "I have to get to the studio. The elevator has stopped. I'll take the stairs. Leave the bowls. I'll wash them when I get back."
"I'll wash them. One sound. No more."
She left the lamp on the table and switched to the flashlight on her phone. She walked to the door, came back, and put the second-shelf milk into an insulated bag. The door closed behind her. In the stairwell there were only her footsteps, and the one soft sound of him setting a plate down in the kitchen.
Chapter Four: Two Rooms
The next morning she came back. There were no sneakers in the entryway. The sofa was empty. The gray pillow had gone back inside Cheng Yi'an's door. One new line of yellow writing had appeared on the fridge, only a sentence: Supper will wait for you.
She looked at the paper for two seconds and did not peel it off. The bag of second-shelf milk she had taken was already empty. She put in a new carton, name facing out, closed the door, one sound only. The studio had spent the night making up the late block. She proofed the three characters of "terminus" four times. When she lay down, the cars of the morning rush were outside the window. She fell asleep.
At three in the afternoon he came back with two viewing forms. One was a studio in an alley on the east side of the city. The landlord's surname was Wu. It could be moved into on October 28. The other was a floor plan of the depot dormitory, the bed marked November 3.
She drew the receipt out of the dictionary and laid it between the two sheets.
"Eighteen hundred. Nonrefundable if I back out. I didn't say so yesterday."
Cheng Yi'an stared at the receipt, then at his own acknowledgment, and suddenly laughed once, not like gladness. "So both of us stuck rules on the fridge, and kept the accounts in our stomachs."
"And Liang Kai?"
"The trainee quarters at West Station cleared a bed today. He took his shoes. I returned the fifty to him. Call it my breach." He tapped the receipt. "This east-side room. Do we go look, or not?"
They went east first. The studio was above a noodle shop, the window facing an exhaust fan. At 15:40, the tail end of lunch, the fan roared. The room held only a bed and a table, paper wedged under a table leg. Landlord Wu said it was quiet at night and loud at noon, the price 1,800, the deposit applicable to the first month.
Lin Wanzhou stood in the noise of the fan for three minutes. She counted the commute: seventy minutes one way now; from here, a twenty-minute walk to the studio. The stretch of daytime sleep she would lose could probably be made up by what the road saved. She asked whether a thick curtain could be added. Landlord Wu said the curtain was hers.
The West Station dorm was smaller. Outside the window was the parking apron. Light from the dispatch screens came in. Cheng Yi'an stood at the window and listened to an engine for a while, then said, "For me this sound is an alarm clock. For you it is noise. So this bed cannot count as a plan for two people."
On the bus back to Huai'an Road, she wrote the accounts on the back of the receipt. He called the numbers. She set them down.
The deposit of 4,300 would not be returned: 2,150 each. He would stay in the old place from November 1 through the 3rd. Sister Chen had agreed on the phone to two hundred a day, three days, six hundred, paid by him, and would not charge the full month of 5,600. She would move east on October 28, the deposit counting as rent. He would enter the dorm on November 3, nine hundred a month. If the two of them stayed, from November it would be 2,800 each, and they would still have to find a real roommate. The sofa still could not count as a bed.
He made the call, on speaker. Sister Chen only asked whether the place was damaged. She did not ask why they were splitting. He said the fridge seal was old; people had not broken it. Sister Chen said the seal was due to be replaced anyway, the deposit would still be withheld, and the three days could stay.
After they hung up, the bus reached the stop. She clipped the receipt, covered in numbers, back into the dictionary.
"Tonight's supper," she asked, "is that the sentence on the note?"
"It's eating these numbers through," he said.
Chapter Five: Give Me Back the Lamp
October 28. Her suitcase stood by the door. Cheng Yi'an had swapped half a day's shift, making up Thursday's early turn. On the dispatch chart that square was marked, in pencil, as a trade.
They peeled the notes off the refrigerator door one by one. Blue ones, yellow ones. The glue marks stayed on the door. Close the fridge gently. Do not touch the milk on the second shelf. Do not shower before six. The sofa is not a bed. When the person goes, the shoes go. That last one was already out of date. Liang Kai's shoe prints had faded on the mat. He was in the trainee quarters.
"Do we still need 'set the shoes straight'?" she asked.
"We do." He tucked that yellow note into the side pocket of the suitcase. "This one has no story, but it looks right on a suitcase too."
She left the milk for him for the days before he moved out, crossed the name out in pencil, and rewrote it: may be drunk. He reached to pull the microwave plug, saw that she still meant to heat the leftovers, stopped his hand, and pushed it back in. The indicator lit a small red.
The meal was tomato and egg. The light was the one in the ceiling. Halfway through, he set two keys on the table. Hers had a red cord tied to it. He said that when he checked out on the third he would hand both back together.
"The noodle shop on the east side is short of people on Thursdays. If you have time before your night shift, come down at six and eat. If you don't want to, pretend I never said it. That note—supper will wait for you—we took it down today."
Lin Wanzhou did not answer. She untied the red cord from the old key, tied it onto the new east-side key, and put it in her pocket. She photographed the windows and the water and power meters and sent them to Sister Chen. Sister Chen replied with one word: Fine. Her mother's eight hundred she had already wired before she left. The balance was still enough for next month on the east side.
Cheng Yi'an pushed the desk lamp into her suitcase. "You'll have use for it at night."
"You still have until the third." She set the lamp back on his chair. "Return it to me at the studio door, seven in the evening on the third. If you've bought a new one, you don't have to make the trip."
He looked at the lamp. "Then I'll make the trip."
She tore a blue note and wrote: Thursday. Noodle shop. If you are late, write it on a note. She tucked the slip into the sleeve of his thermos. There was an old coffee stain on the outside of the sleeve. He unscrewed it, glanced once, and screwed it shut.
Two pairs of shoes in the entry hall, one on her feet, one at the edge of the shoe rack, toes turned in. She pulled the suitcase out. A wheel caught on the threshold.
The fridge door swung shut. The seal made one sound. The elevator doors stood open. The suitcase would not go in sideways. Cheng Yi'an carried it down one flight. She took it at the turn of the third floor. The tube lights flickered twice and stayed bright. He set a roll of tape against the outside of the suitcase and said the east-side table leg was shimmed with paper and was not steady.
The light on the ground floor was white. He let go and watched her set the wheel straight. Scraps of paper stuck to the wheel, the kind used to shim a table leg. He turned and went upstairs. His steps stopped on the fourth floor. A door made one sound.
Only when she opened her canvas bag did she find that the dictionary had not come down. The receipt was still clipped inside it. She left the suitcase on the ground floor, ran up to the fourth, and knocked twice. Cheng Yi'an opened the door, the thermos still in his hand. The dictionary was on the chair, beside the lamp. She put the dictionary into the bag. She did not go into the kitchen.
Going down, the wheels rolled over the floor tiles, once, and again, and out the building door.
