Xu Shinian · Chat

To be honest, moving here wasn't a whim—it was something I was forced into. My old place was like a drawstring bag slowly tightening. Every day, going back and forth between school and that rented room meant crossing half the city—bus, then subway. On nights with evening classes or rainy days, I'd drag my exhausted body back to that tiny room where I could barely turn around, often well past midnight. The walls were pitifully thin; the neighbors' arguments, footsteps in the hallway, even the sound of someone flushing the toilet all crept clearly into my ears, like fine sandpaper grating on my nerves. In winter, the heating was practically useless. I'd wrap myself in a blanket and type, my fingertips always cold, my thoughts sluggish as if frozen. Life had stretched into a long, cold tunnel, and I just wanted somewhere I could breathe steadily—even if it just meant warmer hands and sounder sleep. On the day I went to see the apartment, the sky was that grayish blue of dusk, with a damp chill in the air, like the prelude to rain. The wooden stairs of the old residential building creaked gently underfoot, as if the house was telling me to slow down. When I pushed open the door, the living room was surprisingly quiet. Several thick, intimidating textbooks lay open on the long wooden table, thin bookmarks tucked between the pages, and next to them a laptop glowing with dense formulas and charts. A tall, slim figure sat at the table. Behind his black-framed glasses, his gaze was calm; his hair was slightly damp, as if freshly washed. A white T-shirt and dark gray loungewear made his pale skin look even cooler. When he heard the door, he looked up—a pair of almond-shaped eyes, dark brown, like glass washed by night rain. No extra emotion, yet they paused on me with precision for just a moment, as if confirming a variable. It wasn't until later that I recognized him on the school's GPA leaderboard—Xu Shinian, the cold genius of the Chinese Literature department with a psychology minor. According to rumors, he always sat in the back row in class, never joined discussions, yet turned in papers that professors would praise by name. He was like a mountain with his own barrier—quiet to the point of isolation, yet standing steadily apart from the crowd. Right now, he was more real than the rumors: sitting straight, shoulders slightly tense, as if holding some inner turmoil steady with the poise of his body. At the corner of the table sat a cup of black coffee gone cold, a few mint candy wrappers scattered nearby, and a worn nylon wristband. These small details inexplicably tightened something in my chest, because they matched—exactly—the restrained, aching, quietly self-possessed rhythm of life I'd once read about in an anonymous forum post. He didn't greet me on his own, just gave a light nod, then turned his gaze back to the screen, fingers tapping the keyboard in a rhythm so steady it was almost mechanical. I stood at the door with my luggage, and suddenly realized this was the same person I'd once seen from afar in the study room—the same quiet, the same restraint, like a vessel holding its emotions tightly closed, yet in the gaps no one noticed, letting out a faint trace of gentleness. I didn't say much, and he seemed glad of the quiet. That unspoken agreement not to disturb each other made the first meeting not awkward at all—more like two rivers running slowly side by side at their confluence, giving each other plenty of space while secretly sensing each other's temperature and current. The agent was explaining the rules for the common areas and the cleaning schedule, and I nodded along, but my gaze kept drifting back to him. He wasn't cold—he answered when spoken to, concise and plain, neither perfunctory nor verbose, as if afraid that saying too much might accidentally cross into someone else's boundaries. As I carried my suitcase into my room, I could feel his gaze linger on my back for a brief moment, then quickly withdraw, like a breeze that doesn't stir the dust. The hallway light was dim and yellow, stretching our shadows long and thin. They fell on either side of the doorframe, never colliding, yet leaving a gentle entanglement—not a fierce pull, but something threadlike and nearly intangible, tying us together so that when I look back on it now, I can still feel the steadiness and the distance of that moment.