First Steps To Taking Over The World (1/3)
Pairing(s): Henry / Amber (main); Victoria / Nichkhun; Victoria / Han Geng; Zhou Mi / Kyuhyun
Rating: R
Warnings: alternative universe
Genre: university!AU
Length: 10 000+
Summary: So maybe Amber had second intentions after all when she moved in as Henry's roommate.
AN: This is my baby, my darling fic. I've started it at the beginning of September and since then have been writing it on and off, with surprising ease. I should mention that any similarities with real people or situations would be entirely coincidental and not at all inspired from experiences of mine. :D Special mention to pyknotic who's generally awesome and is the only reason why Kyuhyun's acne was allowed in this fic.
On her first week in Beijing, Amber stays at Victoria’s parents’ house and it reminds them both of high school days and this foreign exchange program which was just a bribe by her parents to make her take Chinese classes.
After seven days of late night giggling and wild city touring, though, Song-mama decides to kick them both out with the firm injunction to come back with a flat, or not come back at all.
“Let’s make a game out of this,” Victoria suggests. “We’ll part ways and at noon, whoever found a place gets treated to lunch.”
It’s a terrible idea in Amber’s mind, hello, she doesn’t speak Chinese, but she agrees nonetheless because Victoria is like that.
She goes to the foreign students bureau and gets a handful of flyers, none of which turning out helpful, before someone tells her she should check the billboards, just in case.
Amber walks to lunch, victorious, glorious in her victory, proud beyond belief.
“Ta-dan!” Victoria and she say together.
“You start,” Amber says.
“Okay. So, there’s this girl looking for a roommate. She seems awesome, look, she even mentioned she liked designer clothing-” Amber makes a face “-shut up, and she says she wants a clean, karma-friendly place.”
“What-”
“Her name is MiMi.”
“-the fuck.”
Victoria glares at her. “Well, what did you find that’s so great then?”
“Err. Mostly, the advertisement was in English?”
By a consensus, they decide to visit both places even if Victoria clams up at the mention of Henry Lau, Canadian Extraordinaire and Self-Proclaimed Blue Soul.
“He sounds creepy, if you want my opinion.”
“I want your opinion,” Amber agrees. “But I think he sounds cool.”
“He’s a guy.”
Amber rechecks the name on the mailbox. “You know, apparently, so is ‘MiMi’.”
Victoria looks, makes the face of the person who just ate a sour lemon, and then laughs:
“That must be her brother’s name, or something.”
“Or something,” Amber confirms later.
MiMi is a long thing with a long nose, a guy so tall he has to bend in order not to bang his head on doorframes. He also has a very bright smile.
“Hello!” he greets them. “I’m so glad someone came for the ad!” - sadface - “you wouldn’t believe how few people are interested by a place right near campus that has actually been purged of negative waves- wait, are these Louboutin?”
Amber whimpers. Victoria beams.
“Motherfucker,” Amber grumbles as they walk to Henry Lau’s flat. “Did he have to do that?”
“What are you talking about?” Victoria asks innocently.
“He patted my head!”
“He thought you were cute?”
They have to ring the doorbell thrice before someone grunts:
“Yeah, coming!”
“…I called him!” Amber says defensively.
“Sure,” Victoria replies, airy as fuck. “Whatever you say.”
On her forehead, there are big warning signs that flash: “ZHOU MI IS SO BETTER THAN WHOEVER THIS PERSON IS!”
Henry opens the door clad in only his boxers. Checkered boxers. Welcome to Canada, Amber thinks. At first, he looks a bit confused, then somehow smug, as if two girls on his doorstep are a present wrapped in shiny paper.
“Hul-lo,” he grins.
Victoria glares.
“You have an X-Box three sixty!” Amber whoops at some point.
“You speak English!” Henry retaliates and then says it again softer, like it’s a rare, precious quality one can have.
“Zhou Mi~” Victoria croons, wriggling her fingers manically.
“Go do your creepy voodoo thing with him, and I’ll just play FIFA with Henry!”
They do just that.
Victoria invites her to a housewarming dinner that she cooked with Zhou Mi, and it’s nice even if they spend half the night arguing about the virtues for your skin of avocado vs. cucumber.
“Both taste good in sushi?” Amber inputs.
For her own housewarming party, there are lots of beer and frozen pizza in the oven and Henry graces them with putting a shirt on.
“Yeah, we don’t need to see your chubby nipples,” Victoria mutters in Chinese, and Henry says:
“I didn’t get that.”
When school starts, they mostly ignore each other in Korean class. Amber and Victoria sit in the middle where they can check their cellphones and doodle without being bothered, while they spot Zhou Mi in the first row with his pens all lined up feng-shui style, and Henry stumbles in five minutes late to crash at the back of the amphitheater, fumbling for a piece of paper and a chewed-on pencil. Amber knows this although she definitely doesn’t stare.
“Stop staring,” Victoria says flatly. “I’ll mock you.”
She’s not staring, like she hasn’t been doing for the past week - it’s just that, Henry is nice to her, in a very Canadian dude way. Which means that unlike her previous guy friends, he doesn’t openly leer at her chest with a disappointed face because, duh, nothing to stare at.
No, he does it sneakier - she caught him once or twice and acted oblivious - but he doesn’t look exactly disappointed either. More, uh. Intrigued.
“This.” Victoria declares. “Is so gross I think I’m going to give my chips to that cute guy over there. They make me fat anyway.”
Victoria’s silhouette is perfect under all aspects, but she actually goes and hands big-eyebrows her Pringles container, then giggles for a while and squirms cutely. Amber feels a piece of tomato fall from her mouth. Gross.
“His name is Nichkhun!”
“I’m not interested.”
“He’s Thai!”
“I said-”
“At least he doesn’t ogle my boobs!”
“You’re just jealous because ‘Gentleman MiMi’ won’t ever ogle yours. Or anyone’s for that matter.”
Victoria frowns. “Zhou Mi’s not, you know. That way.”
Amber looks at her pointedly. “Err, yes, he is.”
For a Chinese girl, Victoria is pretty open-minded and everything but, well. This is a social taboo, Amber knows, so she doesn’t push it. Instead, she asks if Zhou Mi ever offered to do her hair.
Turns out he did.
Victoria does the date-y thing with Nichkhun and Amber gets to hear all the juicy details. Sometimes she wonders if Victoria and her are from a different species altogether because their focus seems to be on really different things.
“So he took me to this really nice place and- wait for it- he said my dress looked nice.”
“Don’t his eyebrows bother you?”
“Zhou Mi was so pleased because he had picked the dress.”
“He would look really weird with a beard.”
But all in all Nichkhun is really, genuinely nice to hang out with, and Amber isn’t prickly because she doesn’t like him, but rather because all her romantic action sums up in:
“Henry came out of the bathroom in only a towel today.”
Victoria makes a face. “He must be all pale and weird.”
Well, Henry’s skin isn’t exactly nicely tanned, but it actually looks nice, Amber thinks. White and all. She doesn’t tell Victoria that the towel fell just before Henry closed the door of his room and she caught a glimpse of his ass and it was all things considered a very nice guy-ass and she felt a bit warm all over afterwards.
Nichkhun, who’s in their Korean class too, invites Victoria to a party held by friends of his, and courteously Amber is offered to come too.
“You should come over right before!” Victoria says excitedly. “We’ll have a dress-up pre-party!”
Awesome. But Amber says yes because deep down she’s curious. Just a bit.
“I’m leaving,” she tells Henry who’s comatose in front of the TV, his thumbs playing HALO all on their own.
“’m’kay,” he grunts. “Have fun.”
“So!” Zhou Mi tells her excitedly as soon as he opens the door for her. “I’ve thought - what are you views on Miu Miu?”
“Mi-ge,” Victoria laughs behind. “Don’t scare her. Amber! Come here, I’m gonna apply your makeup!”
Somehow she ends up in a designer dress that looks nice, really nice in fact, and even makes her look curvy. She asks Zhou Mi how he managed this one. He grins, all bright and okay, cute.
“I have magic fingers!” he proclaims, wriggling them Victoria-style.
“Didn’t you want to come with us to the party?” Amber asks to make conversation while Victoria gets ready in the bathroom.
Zhou Mi shakes his head from where he’s managed to fold himself on top of the kitchen counter, legs dangling happily.
“I have tutoring tonight,” he explains brightly, and then, unexpectedly, blushes.
“What,” Amber teases him, “tutoring, is that how you call it in China?”
Zhou Mi’s flush reaches up to his hairline.
“Shut up!” he squeals. “I’m really, really giving tutoring classes.”
“Sure,” Amber agrees amiably - she can see why Victoria does it all the time now. It’s really fun. “So, who’s the lucky guy?”
Zhou Mi’s eyes get really wide and frightened and he pales drastically.
“Shit,” Amber says, “sorry, I didn’t want to-”
“It’s fine,” he utters. “I, uh. It’s fine. Please don’t tell?”
“Whom is Zhou Mi tutoring?” she later asks Victoria casually.
“Some Korean dude,” Victoria says. “I think the guy really sucks at Chinese because Zhou Mi spends an awful lot of time at his place.”
“Does he really.”
They meet Wang Fei Fei and Meng Jia at this party, a fantastic duo of viper tongues who promise Victoria they’ll tell her everything she wants to know about Nichkhun. Amber wanders around people aimlessly and gets outrageously hit on by some drunken douche that Jia fends off with a scathing comment and a firm kick to the guy’s shin.
“Next time, I’ll aim higher,” she warns him.
All in all it’s a good night and Amber goes home pleasantly buzzed. The lights are still on inside when she walks in the apartment, and Henry raises his head above the couch to greet her home.
“Huh.” He says. “You’re wearing makeup. And, uh, girly clothes.”
“Fuck you,” Amber laughs.
“Wanna play Mortal Kombat?” Henry offers, holding out a controller.
“I’ll beat your ass off.”
Your very nice perky pale guy-ass. She doesn’t say that.
“My parents are visiting soon,” Amber tells Victoria. “They’re still going on and on about you. ‘We’ll be staying at Song Qian’s parents, they’re so nice, oh, and what a nice daughter they have, too!’ So that means they’ll probably ask you tons of questions about my life.” Amber glares and points her finger threateningly. “Shut. Up.”
Victoria zips her mouth. “I don’t know a thing. But I need you to do something for me.”
‘Something’, aka Victoria-speech for ‘Will you dump my boyfriend for me? Oh, and tell him to put the earrings in the mailbox.’
“What the fuck?” Amber says. “I’m not doing your dirty laundry!”
“Should I tell your parents about your future plans involving a lazy Canadian violinist?”
Nichkhun’s eyebrows get scarily furrowed like those monster caterpillars somehow have a life of their own, and then he says:
“Okay. Fine.”
“I’m so sorry,” Amber says. “If it helps.”
“Actually? Yeah, it does. Thanks, Amber.”
So maybe this was irony, which means Nichkhun might have been much, much more awesome than she knew.
“Surpr-” her mom starts saying, and then she stops and instead she says: “Oh God.”
Amber thumps her head down on the kitchen table.
“Why are you here?” she asks feebly.
“We took our flight a day early,” her mom answers, picking an empty ramen container with the tips of her fingers and then letting it fall back down with a disgusted face.
“It’s a bit messy,” Amber tries. “We were supposed to clean today.”
She carefully omits to mention the gender of the we’s other half, thinking at the moment, it’s for the best.
And of course Henry picks that day to be up early, and gets out of his room. Shirtless.
“He was scratching his balls,” Amber sobs. “Kill me now.”
Victoria represses her laughter long enough to say: “Zhou Mi never scratches his genitals. And he’s very clean, too.”
“It’s like you’re talking about your dog! And Henry is clean. Just, not always.”
“Whatever,” Victoria says. “I’ve told you countless times that this place was a health hazard. And I think your mom is making a nice gesture by cleaning it for you guys.”
Amber stares at her. “She kicked Henry out. Called him a greasy pervert.”
“So this is not the time to speak about the boob-ogling.”
“I’ll kill you before I get the rope for myself.”
“She’s gone,” Amber texts Henry later. “It’s safe to come back, I’m spending the night at Vic’s.”
“I think I’m gonna stay traumatized for a little while longer,” he texts back. “No offense to your mom.”
“Pussy.”
“You wish.”
Her mother attacks head-on, while Victoria’s parents are shaking their heads disapprovingly, with a:
“So. Your roommate is a boy.”
“He’s a Canadian,” Amber offers, as if Henry’s nationality were an excuse for his gender.
“Henry is very nice,” Victoria says helpfully. “And he has a girlfriend!” She grins wide and fake at Amber’s mom, who pats her hand with gooey eyes.
“You’re very nice to defend her, Song Qian,” she coos. “But you have to admit, no well-bred girl would actually share her house with a boy.”
“Victoria knows that, mom. She would never room with a guy, would you Vic?”
Victoria glares.
“That was low,” she hisses later, when they’re both doing their nails on her old bed.
“It was a bit low,” Amber admits.
“My parents are gonna visit, and see Zhou Mi, and think stuff.”
“Zhou Mi would never lay a finger on you. You know that, right?”
Victoria shrugs: “Why not?”
“Qian. Come on.”
She looks pointedly away, fiddling with her toes.
“Can I tell you something?” she mumbles.
“…yes.”
“I tried to kis-”
Victoria gets interrupted when Amber yells, covering her ears:
“Can’t hear you! LALALA!”
“-s him. Last day.”
“You didn’t.”
“Shut up, that’s not the point. He turned me down.”
Amber raises an eyebrow. “Oh, really now. How peculiar.”
“Shut. Up. He told me he wasn’t interested in- girls.”
Victoria blushes a bit, like it’s shameful, like it shouldn’t be said out loud. To her credit, Amber doesn’t brag:
“I know,” she says instead, “he kinda told me too.”
“He could have mentioned it earlier.”
“You’re not going to do something stupid like move out, now, are you?”
“But…”
“Come on, Vic, don’t do this. Don’t be like that. He’s- He’s MiMi, your MiMi, you two pick out crazy outfits and cook organic tofu and have mad Zen reorganizing of your stuff together. He’s a nice guy and a cool roommate. Worth so much more than any random double-X-chromosomed bitch who’d steal your shoes.”
They leave it at that and Victoria goes back to rooming with the Yin and Yang freak, and Amber’s mother leaves with a few more sly remarks about ‘that Canadian boy’.
“Home sweet home,” Amber beams to said maple syrup addict when she comes back. “My comfy, messy home.”
“Fuck you,” Henry says. “Your mom is scary. She ironed my socks. My. Socks. She ironed them and then folded them and then put them back in the drawer in a color-coordinated order.”
“El-Oh-El,” Amber says.
“Seriously. I’m freaked out.”
“Sorry, though.”
“’s fine.”
They play Street Fighter until dawn. It feels good. Amber falls asleep on the couch and when she wakes up, Henry has awkwardly pulled the fleece blanket over her, but it’s too short so her feet are cold.
“I saw MiMi’s boyfriend yesterday!” Victoria whispers excitedly in between giggle. Her roommate’s sexuality has strangely become the ideal pretext for a regression dragging her back to middle-school mentality.
“Oh. Err. How is he?”
Victoria thinks for a while. “Well, he’s kind of handsome, I guess. But he’s got pimples.”
Amber makes a face.
“I didn’t get to see them a lot,” Victoria explained. “They were in the kitchen studying, so I went to my room.”
“Yeah, you cowered back.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Sure did.”
Amber corners Zhou Mi one late afternoon after spending hours on Korean grammar. She swears, that language was made to torture people.
“So,” she says. “Mr. Pimple. What’s his name?”
Zhou Mi blushes and fiddles with the edge of his porcelain cup - porcelain’s good for your skin or something.
“How do you know about this?”
Amber takes a sip of her tea. “I have powers. C’m’on, spill.”
Zhou Mi gurgles something that sounds like ‘Kui Xian’.
“He’s Chinese?”
“Korean. But I can’t pronounce his name.”
Amber stares at him with wide eyes: “You’re the best in our class and you can’t say your boyfriend’s name?”
Part 2 >
Rating: R
Warnings: alternative universe
Genre: university!AU
Length: 10 000+
Summary: So maybe Amber had second intentions after all when she moved in as Henry's roommate.
AN: This is my baby, my darling fic. I've started it at the beginning of September and since then have been writing it on and off, with surprising ease. I should mention that any similarities with real people or situations would be entirely coincidental and not at all inspired from experiences of mine. :D Special mention to pyknotic who's generally awesome and is the only reason why Kyuhyun's acne was allowed in this fic.
On her first week in Beijing, Amber stays at Victoria’s parents’ house and it reminds them both of high school days and this foreign exchange program which was just a bribe by her parents to make her take Chinese classes.
After seven days of late night giggling and wild city touring, though, Song-mama decides to kick them both out with the firm injunction to come back with a flat, or not come back at all.
“Let’s make a game out of this,” Victoria suggests. “We’ll part ways and at noon, whoever found a place gets treated to lunch.”
It’s a terrible idea in Amber’s mind, hello, she doesn’t speak Chinese, but she agrees nonetheless because Victoria is like that.
She goes to the foreign students bureau and gets a handful of flyers, none of which turning out helpful, before someone tells her she should check the billboards, just in case.
Amber walks to lunch, victorious, glorious in her victory, proud beyond belief.
“Ta-dan!” Victoria and she say together.
“You start,” Amber says.
“Okay. So, there’s this girl looking for a roommate. She seems awesome, look, she even mentioned she liked designer clothing-” Amber makes a face “-shut up, and she says she wants a clean, karma-friendly place.”
“What-”
“Her name is MiMi.”
“-the fuck.”
Victoria glares at her. “Well, what did you find that’s so great then?”
“Err. Mostly, the advertisement was in English?”
By a consensus, they decide to visit both places even if Victoria clams up at the mention of Henry Lau, Canadian Extraordinaire and Self-Proclaimed Blue Soul.
“He sounds creepy, if you want my opinion.”
“I want your opinion,” Amber agrees. “But I think he sounds cool.”
“He’s a guy.”
Amber rechecks the name on the mailbox. “You know, apparently, so is ‘MiMi’.”
Victoria looks, makes the face of the person who just ate a sour lemon, and then laughs:
“That must be her brother’s name, or something.”
“Or something,” Amber confirms later.
MiMi is a long thing with a long nose, a guy so tall he has to bend in order not to bang his head on doorframes. He also has a very bright smile.
“Hello!” he greets them. “I’m so glad someone came for the ad!” - sadface - “you wouldn’t believe how few people are interested by a place right near campus that has actually been purged of negative waves- wait, are these Louboutin?”
Amber whimpers. Victoria beams.
“Motherfucker,” Amber grumbles as they walk to Henry Lau’s flat. “Did he have to do that?”
“What are you talking about?” Victoria asks innocently.
“He patted my head!”
“He thought you were cute?”
They have to ring the doorbell thrice before someone grunts:
“Yeah, coming!”
“…I called him!” Amber says defensively.
“Sure,” Victoria replies, airy as fuck. “Whatever you say.”
On her forehead, there are big warning signs that flash: “ZHOU MI IS SO BETTER THAN WHOEVER THIS PERSON IS!”
Henry opens the door clad in only his boxers. Checkered boxers. Welcome to Canada, Amber thinks. At first, he looks a bit confused, then somehow smug, as if two girls on his doorstep are a present wrapped in shiny paper.
“Hul-lo,” he grins.
Victoria glares.
“You have an X-Box three sixty!” Amber whoops at some point.
“You speak English!” Henry retaliates and then says it again softer, like it’s a rare, precious quality one can have.
“Zhou Mi~” Victoria croons, wriggling her fingers manically.
“Go do your creepy voodoo thing with him, and I’ll just play FIFA with Henry!”
They do just that.
Victoria invites her to a housewarming dinner that she cooked with Zhou Mi, and it’s nice even if they spend half the night arguing about the virtues for your skin of avocado vs. cucumber.
“Both taste good in sushi?” Amber inputs.
For her own housewarming party, there are lots of beer and frozen pizza in the oven and Henry graces them with putting a shirt on.
“Yeah, we don’t need to see your chubby nipples,” Victoria mutters in Chinese, and Henry says:
“I didn’t get that.”
When school starts, they mostly ignore each other in Korean class. Amber and Victoria sit in the middle where they can check their cellphones and doodle without being bothered, while they spot Zhou Mi in the first row with his pens all lined up feng-shui style, and Henry stumbles in five minutes late to crash at the back of the amphitheater, fumbling for a piece of paper and a chewed-on pencil. Amber knows this although she definitely doesn’t stare.
“Stop staring,” Victoria says flatly. “I’ll mock you.”
She’s not staring, like she hasn’t been doing for the past week - it’s just that, Henry is nice to her, in a very Canadian dude way. Which means that unlike her previous guy friends, he doesn’t openly leer at her chest with a disappointed face because, duh, nothing to stare at.
No, he does it sneakier - she caught him once or twice and acted oblivious - but he doesn’t look exactly disappointed either. More, uh. Intrigued.
“This.” Victoria declares. “Is so gross I think I’m going to give my chips to that cute guy over there. They make me fat anyway.”
Victoria’s silhouette is perfect under all aspects, but she actually goes and hands big-eyebrows her Pringles container, then giggles for a while and squirms cutely. Amber feels a piece of tomato fall from her mouth. Gross.
“His name is Nichkhun!”
“I’m not interested.”
“He’s Thai!”
“I said-”
“At least he doesn’t ogle my boobs!”
“You’re just jealous because ‘Gentleman MiMi’ won’t ever ogle yours. Or anyone’s for that matter.”
Victoria frowns. “Zhou Mi’s not, you know. That way.”
Amber looks at her pointedly. “Err, yes, he is.”
For a Chinese girl, Victoria is pretty open-minded and everything but, well. This is a social taboo, Amber knows, so she doesn’t push it. Instead, she asks if Zhou Mi ever offered to do her hair.
Turns out he did.
Victoria does the date-y thing with Nichkhun and Amber gets to hear all the juicy details. Sometimes she wonders if Victoria and her are from a different species altogether because their focus seems to be on really different things.
“So he took me to this really nice place and- wait for it- he said my dress looked nice.”
“Don’t his eyebrows bother you?”
“Zhou Mi was so pleased because he had picked the dress.”
“He would look really weird with a beard.”
But all in all Nichkhun is really, genuinely nice to hang out with, and Amber isn’t prickly because she doesn’t like him, but rather because all her romantic action sums up in:
“Henry came out of the bathroom in only a towel today.”
Victoria makes a face. “He must be all pale and weird.”
Well, Henry’s skin isn’t exactly nicely tanned, but it actually looks nice, Amber thinks. White and all. She doesn’t tell Victoria that the towel fell just before Henry closed the door of his room and she caught a glimpse of his ass and it was all things considered a very nice guy-ass and she felt a bit warm all over afterwards.
Nichkhun, who’s in their Korean class too, invites Victoria to a party held by friends of his, and courteously Amber is offered to come too.
“You should come over right before!” Victoria says excitedly. “We’ll have a dress-up pre-party!”
Awesome. But Amber says yes because deep down she’s curious. Just a bit.
“I’m leaving,” she tells Henry who’s comatose in front of the TV, his thumbs playing HALO all on their own.
“’m’kay,” he grunts. “Have fun.”
“So!” Zhou Mi tells her excitedly as soon as he opens the door for her. “I’ve thought - what are you views on Miu Miu?”
“Mi-ge,” Victoria laughs behind. “Don’t scare her. Amber! Come here, I’m gonna apply your makeup!”
Somehow she ends up in a designer dress that looks nice, really nice in fact, and even makes her look curvy. She asks Zhou Mi how he managed this one. He grins, all bright and okay, cute.
“I have magic fingers!” he proclaims, wriggling them Victoria-style.
“Didn’t you want to come with us to the party?” Amber asks to make conversation while Victoria gets ready in the bathroom.
Zhou Mi shakes his head from where he’s managed to fold himself on top of the kitchen counter, legs dangling happily.
“I have tutoring tonight,” he explains brightly, and then, unexpectedly, blushes.
“What,” Amber teases him, “tutoring, is that how you call it in China?”
Zhou Mi’s flush reaches up to his hairline.
“Shut up!” he squeals. “I’m really, really giving tutoring classes.”
“Sure,” Amber agrees amiably - she can see why Victoria does it all the time now. It’s really fun. “So, who’s the lucky guy?”
Zhou Mi’s eyes get really wide and frightened and he pales drastically.
“Shit,” Amber says, “sorry, I didn’t want to-”
“It’s fine,” he utters. “I, uh. It’s fine. Please don’t tell?”
“Whom is Zhou Mi tutoring?” she later asks Victoria casually.
“Some Korean dude,” Victoria says. “I think the guy really sucks at Chinese because Zhou Mi spends an awful lot of time at his place.”
“Does he really.”
They meet Wang Fei Fei and Meng Jia at this party, a fantastic duo of viper tongues who promise Victoria they’ll tell her everything she wants to know about Nichkhun. Amber wanders around people aimlessly and gets outrageously hit on by some drunken douche that Jia fends off with a scathing comment and a firm kick to the guy’s shin.
“Next time, I’ll aim higher,” she warns him.
All in all it’s a good night and Amber goes home pleasantly buzzed. The lights are still on inside when she walks in the apartment, and Henry raises his head above the couch to greet her home.
“Huh.” He says. “You’re wearing makeup. And, uh, girly clothes.”
“Fuck you,” Amber laughs.
“Wanna play Mortal Kombat?” Henry offers, holding out a controller.
“I’ll beat your ass off.”
Your very nice perky pale guy-ass. She doesn’t say that.
“My parents are visiting soon,” Amber tells Victoria. “They’re still going on and on about you. ‘We’ll be staying at Song Qian’s parents, they’re so nice, oh, and what a nice daughter they have, too!’ So that means they’ll probably ask you tons of questions about my life.” Amber glares and points her finger threateningly. “Shut. Up.”
Victoria zips her mouth. “I don’t know a thing. But I need you to do something for me.”
‘Something’, aka Victoria-speech for ‘Will you dump my boyfriend for me? Oh, and tell him to put the earrings in the mailbox.’
“What the fuck?” Amber says. “I’m not doing your dirty laundry!”
“Should I tell your parents about your future plans involving a lazy Canadian violinist?”
Nichkhun’s eyebrows get scarily furrowed like those monster caterpillars somehow have a life of their own, and then he says:
“Okay. Fine.”
“I’m so sorry,” Amber says. “If it helps.”
“Actually? Yeah, it does. Thanks, Amber.”
So maybe this was irony, which means Nichkhun might have been much, much more awesome than she knew.
“Surpr-” her mom starts saying, and then she stops and instead she says: “Oh God.”
Amber thumps her head down on the kitchen table.
“Why are you here?” she asks feebly.
“We took our flight a day early,” her mom answers, picking an empty ramen container with the tips of her fingers and then letting it fall back down with a disgusted face.
“It’s a bit messy,” Amber tries. “We were supposed to clean today.”
She carefully omits to mention the gender of the we’s other half, thinking at the moment, it’s for the best.
And of course Henry picks that day to be up early, and gets out of his room. Shirtless.
“He was scratching his balls,” Amber sobs. “Kill me now.”
Victoria represses her laughter long enough to say: “Zhou Mi never scratches his genitals. And he’s very clean, too.”
“It’s like you’re talking about your dog! And Henry is clean. Just, not always.”
“Whatever,” Victoria says. “I’ve told you countless times that this place was a health hazard. And I think your mom is making a nice gesture by cleaning it for you guys.”
Amber stares at her. “She kicked Henry out. Called him a greasy pervert.”
“So this is not the time to speak about the boob-ogling.”
“I’ll kill you before I get the rope for myself.”
“She’s gone,” Amber texts Henry later. “It’s safe to come back, I’m spending the night at Vic’s.”
“I think I’m gonna stay traumatized for a little while longer,” he texts back. “No offense to your mom.”
“Pussy.”
“You wish.”
Her mother attacks head-on, while Victoria’s parents are shaking their heads disapprovingly, with a:
“So. Your roommate is a boy.”
“He’s a Canadian,” Amber offers, as if Henry’s nationality were an excuse for his gender.
“Henry is very nice,” Victoria says helpfully. “And he has a girlfriend!” She grins wide and fake at Amber’s mom, who pats her hand with gooey eyes.
“You’re very nice to defend her, Song Qian,” she coos. “But you have to admit, no well-bred girl would actually share her house with a boy.”
“Victoria knows that, mom. She would never room with a guy, would you Vic?”
Victoria glares.
“That was low,” she hisses later, when they’re both doing their nails on her old bed.
“It was a bit low,” Amber admits.
“My parents are gonna visit, and see Zhou Mi, and think stuff.”
“Zhou Mi would never lay a finger on you. You know that, right?”
Victoria shrugs: “Why not?”
“Qian. Come on.”
She looks pointedly away, fiddling with her toes.
“Can I tell you something?” she mumbles.
“…yes.”
“I tried to kis-”
Victoria gets interrupted when Amber yells, covering her ears:
“Can’t hear you! LALALA!”
“-s him. Last day.”
“You didn’t.”
“Shut up, that’s not the point. He turned me down.”
Amber raises an eyebrow. “Oh, really now. How peculiar.”
“Shut. Up. He told me he wasn’t interested in- girls.”
Victoria blushes a bit, like it’s shameful, like it shouldn’t be said out loud. To her credit, Amber doesn’t brag:
“I know,” she says instead, “he kinda told me too.”
“He could have mentioned it earlier.”
“You’re not going to do something stupid like move out, now, are you?”
“But…”
“Come on, Vic, don’t do this. Don’t be like that. He’s- He’s MiMi, your MiMi, you two pick out crazy outfits and cook organic tofu and have mad Zen reorganizing of your stuff together. He’s a nice guy and a cool roommate. Worth so much more than any random double-X-chromosomed bitch who’d steal your shoes.”
They leave it at that and Victoria goes back to rooming with the Yin and Yang freak, and Amber’s mother leaves with a few more sly remarks about ‘that Canadian boy’.
“Home sweet home,” Amber beams to said maple syrup addict when she comes back. “My comfy, messy home.”
“Fuck you,” Henry says. “Your mom is scary. She ironed my socks. My. Socks. She ironed them and then folded them and then put them back in the drawer in a color-coordinated order.”
“El-Oh-El,” Amber says.
“Seriously. I’m freaked out.”
“Sorry, though.”
“’s fine.”
They play Street Fighter until dawn. It feels good. Amber falls asleep on the couch and when she wakes up, Henry has awkwardly pulled the fleece blanket over her, but it’s too short so her feet are cold.
“I saw MiMi’s boyfriend yesterday!” Victoria whispers excitedly in between giggle. Her roommate’s sexuality has strangely become the ideal pretext for a regression dragging her back to middle-school mentality.
“Oh. Err. How is he?”
Victoria thinks for a while. “Well, he’s kind of handsome, I guess. But he’s got pimples.”
Amber makes a face.
“I didn’t get to see them a lot,” Victoria explained. “They were in the kitchen studying, so I went to my room.”
“Yeah, you cowered back.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Sure did.”
Amber corners Zhou Mi one late afternoon after spending hours on Korean grammar. She swears, that language was made to torture people.
“So,” she says. “Mr. Pimple. What’s his name?”
Zhou Mi blushes and fiddles with the edge of his porcelain cup - porcelain’s good for your skin or something.
“How do you know about this?”
Amber takes a sip of her tea. “I have powers. C’m’on, spill.”
Zhou Mi gurgles something that sounds like ‘Kui Xian’.
“He’s Chinese?”
“Korean. But I can’t pronounce his name.”
Amber stares at him with wide eyes: “You’re the best in our class and you can’t say your boyfriend’s name?”
Part 2 >