Xu Ye headed back to the dorm, showered, tossed his sweat-soaked training uniform into a bucket, poured in a splash of Zhang Xinzhou’s laundry detergent, then rolled up his pant legs and went barefoot, stomping away in the bucket like a man crushing grapes.

This was how most guys did their laundry. No denying it was a lot less effort than washing by hand — whether it actually got the clothes clean was a separate question entirely.

Clothes hung up to dry, windows shut, AC blasting — the dorm instantly turned into something close to paradise. Xu Ye had barely been lying down for two minutes after two grueling weeks before he was snoring with the regularity of a metronome.

The other three roommates caught the contagion soon enough, each of them sprawling out and falling asleep in turn. The nap swallowed the whole afternoon.

By the time Xu Ye stirred awake, it was already dark outside.

No classes, freshly showered, phone fully charged, no need to pee, dorm quiet and tidy — this might have been the single happiest moment of his entire life so far. If his stomach hadn’t started growling, he might have gone right back to sleep.

He climbed down from the top bunk and had just finished pulling his shoes on—

“…the boundless horizon is where my heart belongs, flowers blooming at the foot of green hills that stretch on and on…”

His phone started blaring from his pocket — a burst of upbeat folk-pop [TL: this is the ringtone for a song called “Above the Moon” by Phoenix Legend (凤凰传奇), a hugely popular Chinese duo whose anthemic, sing-along pop is the unofficial soundtrack of public square dancing across the country — beloved by an older, more mainstream crowd and treated as deeply unfashionable by trendier young people] — loud enough to jolt all three roommates awake at once.

“Hey, Mom, no, nothing’s wrong. Training just ended today, I slept all afternoon, about to go grab dinner now. Yeah, money’s fine, I know, I know.”

The second Xu Ye hung up, Yang Fei started cursing from the top bunk. “Xu Ye, you absolute menace, it’s 2014, can you not have a normal ringtone for once?”

“Phoenix Legend isn’t normal?”

“Man, for one second after waking up, I genuinely thought I’d fallen asleep in the middle of a town square.”

Xu Ye grinned. “I’ve listened to all kinds of pop music, but honestly, when you boil it down, every song’s just one of two things — either ‘I love him and he doesn’t love me back and I’m so sad,’ or ‘I’m so sad but I don’t even know why.’ At the end of the day, Phoenix Legend’s the only one putting out real positive energy. Listening to them just lifts your whole mood. Every time I hear one of their songs, I get this urge to go run three laps around the track.”

“You’ve got a whole philosophy for everything, don’t you.”

Zhang Xinzhou checked the time on his phone and climbed down too. “It’s getting late, my buddy should be almost here. Anyone who wants dinner, get up.”

He changed clothes, stepped out onto the balcony to make a quick call, then noticed Xu Ye was dressed too and asked, “Xu Ye, where should we eat tonight?”

Somewhere over the course of military training, both Zhang Xinzhou and Yang Fei had quietly developed the habit of checking with Xu Ye first whenever a decision needed making. Without anyone really noticing it happen, Xu Ye had become the one who called the shots.

“There’s that food street near campus — let’s just find a place there. I’ve got to head off campus first thing tomorrow morning.”

Zhang Xinzhou nodded. “Works for me. After we eat, I’ll show my friend around campus a bit.”

With the dinner spot settled, the four of them headed out.

Zhang Xinzhou led his three roommates around to the school’s main gate. After waiting five or six minutes, a short-haired girl in sunglasses came walking over from across the street.

“Over here!” Zhang Xinzhou waved her down.

She tipped her sunglasses down, revealing a pair of sharp, lively eyes, spotted the group at the gate, and broke into a light jog toward them.

Her hair was cut short, just past her ears, dyed a deep red. Light blush dusted her cheeks. Up top she wore a cropped shirt that bared her midriff; down below, denim shorts. A designer bag was slung across one shoulder, and the whole effect read as effortlessly polished.

Birds of a feather, and all that — if you were close enough with someone like Zhang Xinzhou, a chai-er-dai through and through, to call him “buddy,” your own family obviously wasn’t doing too badly either.

“Yanqing, let me introduce you. These are my three roommates — Xu Ye, Yang Fei, Li Tongwen.”

The girl Zhang Xinzhou had called Yanqing pulled off her sunglasses, smiling brightly. “Hey, nice to meet you all~”

Xu Ye smiled. “Is Yanqing your first name, or is Yan your surname?”

“Surname’s Yan.”

“It’s a pretty name.”

Yanqing laughed. “Xinzhou, your roommate’s got quite the silver tongue on him.”

Zhang Xinzhou shrugged. “Let’s go eat first. I’ll show you around after.”

“What are we eating?”

“Street food.”

The five of them made their way to the food street by the school’s south gate. With military training just wrapped up, the whole street was packed that night — every storefront on either side, every roadside stall, all of it shoulder to shoulder with people.

Hand-grabbed pancakes, meat-stuffed flatbread, egg-stuffed flatbread, starch noodle sausage, all kinds of fried skewers [TL: a lineup of popular Chinese street snacks, each with its own distinct flavor and texture] — the smells hit them from every direction. None of them had felt particularly hungry a minute ago; now they were all swallowing involuntarily.

“Crawfish? You guys in?”

“Let’s go, let’s go.”

Guys, when it came to decisions like this, rarely took more than a few seconds. The five of them quickly settled into a street-side eatery [TL: 大排档 — an open-air, casual street restaurant, common across Chinese cities and usually cheap]. The owner handed Xu Ye the menu; he passed it straight along to Yanqing. “Ladies first.”

Yanqing didn’t hesitate, taking the menu and rattling off her order.

Xu Ye took the opportunity to chat up the owner. “Business must be good with this many people in here — you must clear a decent amount in a month, huh?”

The owner hadn’t expected the kid to strike up conversation with her, but she answered easily. “Not bad. Business is better right after the semester starts. Once it gets cold, it slows right down.”

“I heard rent in Shanghai’s brutal. A place this size has got to run several thousand a month, right?”

Seeing he was just a student, the owner didn’t bother holding back. “Several thousand doesn’t even come close. This place is about a hundred and fifty square meters, and I’m paying close to twenty thousand a month [TL: roughly $3,000 USD at the time]. Smaller places go for a lot less, though — the bun shop two doors down only pays seventy-five hundred a month.”

“That expensive?”

“These days, running a business just means working for your landlord,” the owner sighed. “No telling how many shops on this street close down every year.”

Xu Ye smiled and let it drop.

The price was actually within reason, as far as he was concerned — Shanghai was the kind of place where every square foot of land cost a fortune. By the owner’s numbers, that worked out to roughly 130 yuan per square meter per month, so a fifty- or sixty-square-meter storefront would run somewhere between seven and eight thousand a month.

He’d gotten the rent figures out of her. What kind of business he actually wanted to run, though — that part he still hadn’t worked out.

A bubble tea shop would’ve been the obvious move.

But by 2014, opening a bubble tea shop near a university campus was already a bad bet. For one thing, the school cafeteria alone had several stalls selling drinks, and this street already had multiple bubble tea shops on it. Too much competition. He’d written off that idea back on his very first day of registration.

“Xu Ye, what are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.” Xu Ye paused. “Just—”

“Just what?”

It wasn’t something he could keep hiding for long anyway, so he just came out with it. “I’ve actually been thinking about starting something. Maybe some kind of small business, around campus.”

“Huh?”

Yang Fei looked baffled first. “Xu Ye, don’t tell me you’re secretly rich too?”

“Already told you, my parents are just regular employees at a state work unit.”

“Then what are you funding this with? Did you not hear the owner just now? Renting a storefront alone runs twenty grand, and these places make you sign for a whole year minimum — that’s a couple hundred thousand right there. Even a small place is going to run you tens of thousands. Don’t tell me… you won the lottery?”

Xu Ye’s eyes went wide. “How did you know!”

(End of Chapter)