006. Body Changes
==============================
It might be the first day back to the dorm, but everyone was buzzing with excitement.
Last night, Lin Nan—our star of the show—fell asleep at 3 AM, and rumors had it the other two didn’t crash until around 5 AM. So, when Lin Nan eventually woke up, he found it was already 10 AM.
Peeking over at the diagonal bed, Lin Nan noticed his last roommate, Xiong Da, had somehow stealthily returned to the dorm at some point. He was tiptoeing around, setting up his laptop and pulling out those summer vacation figurines from their boxes, giving them a good dusting before proudly displaying them on the shelf.
While Lin Nan had a thick stack of freshman textbooks piled up, Xiong Da’s shelf looked more like a showcase for action figures rather than an academic habitat.
Lin Nan’s movement caught Xiong Da’s attention, who turned to him with a deadpan expression, “I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
“Nope.”
In their dorm, everyone was relatively considerate. There were no late-night gaming marathons complete with screams and keyboard smashing—thank goodness.
Lin Nan turned away, shuffled back down the ladder to the ground, yawning like a bear waking from hibernation and ruffling his hair that looked like a bird’s nest.
“Have you shrunk a bit?” Xiong Da, with a figurine in hand, walked past Lin Nan but suddenly stopped, gesturing dramatically, “Last semester, you were up to my eyes, now you’re only to my nose!”
“That was because I was wearing sneakers,” Lin Nan quickly defended himself with the best excuse he could muster.
“Really?”
Being the shortest member of the dorm, Lin Nan didn’t understand why everyone kept fixating on his height.
He thought he’d dodged that b*llet when out of nowhere, Xiong Da casually asked, “You’ve gotten whiter, haven’t you? Your skin looks better.”
Why does everyone keep saying that?
Lin Nan wasn’t sure just how much had changed, but to him, he looked about the same as a few days ago.
“Staying cooped up at home, so what if I’m a bit paler?”
He rolled his eyes at Xiong Da, but Xiong Da, looking like he’d seen a ghost, suddenly took a few steps back and plopped down onto the chair behind him, “Whoa! Why are you flirting with me?”
“I’m not…” Lin Nan felt a tad guilty, snatched a towel from the bedpost, and hurriedly made his way to the balcony.
The balcony was as basic as it gets. The left side had a washbasin about a meter long, and the right side was the bathroom. It was so narrow that if one person stood still, the other could hardly squeeze by.
Without a second thought, Lin Nan marched to the far end of the washbasin to avoid blocking Xiong Da’s path.
Xiong Da followed him onto the balcony, picking up a wet cloth and lovingly wiping down his “wife” (aka, his figurine).
Most people wouldn’t understand Xiong Da’s attachment to his collectibles. Lin Nan had only asked out of pure curiosity when they first met and had kept his opinions on the subject to himself since.
“Did you order takeout yet?” Lin Nan mumbled through his toothbrush.
“Not yet.”
“Perfect! You might just find me delivering your food soon.”
“Huh?”
“I’m going to apply for a job. They’re surely desperate for delivery people at the start of the semester. That’s quick cash!”
Xiong Da shot him a glance, his voice dry as the desert, “I heard it’s tiring. If you can’t handle it, just come back and be a couch potato.”
“Not happening!” Lin Nan puffed out his chest confidently, ready to say more, only to discover his chest felt oddly soft upon patting it.
Xiong Da, being the quiet type, gave a vague warning and returned to the room, continuing to polish his figurine in silence.
Lin Nan, however, couldn’t help but be intrigued by the sudden softness. After finishing up in the washroom, he ducked into the bathroom, lifted his shirt, and poked around.
Hmm…
He noticed there seemed to be a bit more… padding up front.
“Am I getting fat?”
He pressed lightly, only to be met with a strange sting and a firm little nugget. Initially confused, it dawned on Lin Nan as his face paled slightly.
“Could it be… I’m developing?!”
Quickly adjusting his shirt, Lin Nan bolted to the electronic scale in the dorm, expecting dramatic results, and was instead greeted with his faithful weight—just a tad over 100 pounds, nearly identical to last semester.
His head started spinning as he stood on the scale, lost in the whirlwind of thoughts.
“Gained weight?” Xiong Da peered over. “You’re pretty light.”
“Uh-huh…”
“You look a bit off,” he remarked blankly.
Lin Nan nodded, dejectedly plopping into a chair, lost in thought. Yet Xiong Da, despite his lack of social skills, seemed to care enough and walked behind him, pressing a hand to his forehead.
After a moment, Xiong Da put his palm on his own forehead in confused contemplation, “You don’t feel feverish.”
“I…” Lin Nan stood up again, weighed down by conflicting emotions, and sighed, “I’m off to deliver takeout.”
“You’re not acting right.”
……
Having been at this school for a year, Lin Nan had spotted multiple job postings in the cafeteria for delivery personnel, which clearly screamed how desperate they were.
Sure enough, after calling the number on the job notice at the cafeteria, Lin Nan soon met with the cafeteria manager and just like that, he became a proud part-time delivery person.
The pay for campus delivery people typically rolls in at seven bucks an hour. Students usually work two-hour shifts starting at noon and again in the evening at six, which means Lin Nan could rake in over eight hundred bucks a month if he played this right.
Oh, and he’d get lunch and dinner for free!
Might as well be destiny—it was either they were short on staff, or the job itself had zero prerequisites. After clearly getting the details, Lin Nan made the quick decision to sign up.
There were two types of delivery people: those who delivered food from the cafeteria to the dorm building, and those who took meals up to each room within the dorm building.
Lin Nan wasted no time choosing the latter option since it spared him from baking under the sun.
But things didn’t turn out how he imagined.
The school dorm had six floors, and guess what? No elevators.
This meant during his two-hour shift, Lin Nan had to dash up and down those six flights of stairs like a manic squirrel to avoid any delays.
Now, Lin Nan’s peak physical form was back in kindergarten, where he could still do a backflip or hang off playground equipment doing pull-ups. Ever since then, his physical prowess had taken a nosedive. However, during last year’s fitness test, he still managed to hold his own in the mile run.
Now…
After waiting for a batch of takeout to arrive on the first floor, Lin Nan grabbed the delivery basket, checked the orders, and after delivering to the sixth floor, he was drenched in sweat and his legs felt like jelly.
“Come on, even if my stamina is shot, there’s no way I should be panting after just five flights of stairs, right?”
“I ran a mile last year and had enough energy to play table tennis afterward. I haven’t gained weight, so why am I so out of shape now?”
After completing that batch of deliveries, Lin Nan leaned against the sixth-floor stairway, sweat cascading from his hairline down his neck, face red and pale at the same time, breathing like a wind turbine with legs trembling as if he might tumble down the stairs at any moment.
So, the best he could do was grip the railing and shuffle down one step at a time.
Once back on the first floor, Lin Nan was met with the crushing realization that another basket of takeout awaited him right at the dorm entrance, giving him zero opportunities for a breather.
Great—now he was not only entering a second puberty, but his stamina had decided to take a vacation too.
