Lan-xuezhang, Please Stop Crushing On Me
Aug. 29th, 2019 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rikorenChapter 3
Previous chapters: 01, 02
Wei Wuxian: "......"
Luckily the floor was very clean; Wei Wuxian stood up, rubbing his forehead, and came to the realization that there was in fact someone knocking on his door.
Upon opening the door, as expected, the person he found standing outside was Lan Wangji.
Wei Wuxian sighed, saying: "Why is it you again, great Lan-xuezhang? I'm honored by your presence in the middle of your busy schedule - is there anything I can do for you?"
Lan Wangji: "Why did you cut class?"
Wei Wuxian: "Huh?"
Lan Wangji: "Where's your report?"
Wei Wuxian: "...What time is it?"
He may have sidestepped the question, but he really was having a little trouble processing Lan Wangji's question. After asking, he turned his head to look around the room—the alarm clock that should have been on the table was nowhere to be seen.
And Lan Wangji's answer was: "11:30."
A startled Wei Wuxian replied: "11:30!?"
Lan Wangji silently gave him a doubtful look.
Wei Wuxian, trembling, pulled out his cellphone and looked at the time on the screen: 11:31.
He was terrified now, crying out in fear: "11:30!? That's not possible!? It was clearly not even 6AM a minute ago!"
He grabbed Lan Wangji's wrist, craning his neck to look at his watch in an attempt to confirm the time again.
The watch's hour hand was situated right in the middle of 11 and 12, while the minute hand was just a tiny bit past the 6.
Wei Wuxian was only a little shorter than Lan Wangji to begin with, but having pulled him down to look at his watch, the two of them were now inevitably very close, looking to the outside observer as if he were throwing himself into Lan Wangji's arms.
But Wei Wuxian was in no state of mind to notice this; as soon as he'd confirmed the time, he immediately held his head in his hands and let out an anguished cry: "Aaaaah what the heck how could I oversleep it's all because of this lousy report I was up writing 'til 4AM and thought I'd take a nap but I actually overslept aaaah!!! My perfect attendance record!! My scholarship!!!"
An expressionless Lan Wangji took advantage of his distraction to pull his hand free, simultaneously backing up half a step.
Once Wei Wuxian was finished howling, he blinked his eyes, let out a yawn, glanced at the stack of reports in Lan Wangji's hands, and said: "Ai...well if I skipped then I skipped, no amount of regret's gonna make that up. Since the person who came to catch me was you, that means Professor Jiang didn't come to class today, so were you the one in charge of the lecture? ...Did you come straight here after teaching the class?"
Lan Wangji said: "...Mmhm."
Wei Wuxian grabbed Lan Wangji's hand in both of his, passionately saying: "My dear gege!! My own flesh and blood!! Good friend of the people!!!"
Lan Wangji: "......"
He tried pulling a way a couple times with no success; on the contrary, Wei Wuxian grasped him more tightly than before.
Wei Wuxian: "Let me invite you for a drink, milk tea with whatever toppings you want! You can even ask for two parts Oreo, two parts cheese foam, I won't complain! Just forget about my skipping class, okay?"
Lan Wangji: "Out of the question."
Wei Wuxian: "Don't be so quick to reject me, I stayed up all night working overtime to write the report you assigned yesterday, look..."
He tapped once on the laptop keyboard, sweeping past the lock screen to reveal a full, 20-page document on the screen, filled with diagrams and text alike, before continuing to speak: "This is a new topic I mulled over for a real long time. I mentioned it to Professor Jiang last time, and he was really interested in it - I've been continuously researching material for it ever since, and thought I'd take this opportunity to turn it in to him. It's still just a rough draft right now, but the minute I started writing I accidentally wrote too much. If it weren't for this, I absolutely wouldn't have missed this morning's class."
Sure enough, Lan Wangji's attention was caught as soon as proper business was brought up. He bent over, slender fingers taking over the mouse, clicked on the file, and opened it.
For some reason, in this moment, an image of the cloth-weaving Lan Wangji from his dream flashed through Wei Wuxian's mind.
It didn't seem out of place at all, in fact he was very...good-looking.
...They say people with long fingers have really long whatsits, too.
Hm?
For three seconds after this thought came into his head, Wei Wuxian couldn't help staring at his crotch.
Maybe because it was hard to see at this angle, or maybe because of the material of his pants—whatever the case, you couldn't see the slightest hint beneath those perfectly-ironed Western-style trousers. But staring at that spot for no real reason was really too rude; the moment Wei Wuxian came back to his senses, he immediately, awkwardly turned his gaze away.
Luckily Lan Wangji was concentrated solely on skimming the report, and hadn't noticed Wei Wuxian's odd behavior. On the other hand...after going over barely two or three pages, Lan Wangji was unable to resist correcting quite a few typos, and said: "Give me an electronic copy."
Wei Wuxian: "Not a printed one?"
Lan Wangji: "Too many typos."
Wei Wuxian frivolously said: "I was up 'til the wee hours of the morning working on this, and barely managed to finish it in time, so I haven't had time to fix any wrong characters...look, the whole class's turned-in papers just come out to this tiny little stack, but my paper's big enough to be maybe a third or a half of that, right? That's how earnest I am about cooperating with your work...what do you say, will you give me a little more time, just to fix up all those typos?"
What he didn't realize was that the reason Lan Wangji wanted an electronic copy was to fix his typos for him - of course, even if he did realize it that didn't necessarily mean he'd let Lan Wangji help.
After all, this was the topic he wanted to work on; if study #1 didn't get approval, then he'd bring up applications for studies #2 and #3, or he'd take them back to Yiling to work on. For this reason, he was determined not to let his work pass through anyone else's hands.
Lan Wangji thought a moment, and rather than persisting, instead said: "Go to the research lab to fix it."
The research lab was right next door to Professor Jiang Fengmian's office; taking up almost half a floor, it was incredibly spacious, containing not only small conference rooms and discussion areas, but also a pair of public-use computers made available for assistants, through which you could connect directly to the school's libraries. There were printers too, making this a convenient place to research and print materials. While Wei Wuxian had only just started Study #1, as Jiang Fengmian's honor student he had to report to the research lab 3-5 times a month, so that by now even the door guards had gotten familiar with him and recognized his face.
Meaning he quickly picked up his USB, shoved it in his pocket, and cheerfully replied: "Sure, let's go."
※
The first 18 years of Wei Wuxian's life had gone as smooth as smooth can be, but ever since running into Lan Wangji, little waves and sparks seemed to be constantly popping up.
But it wasn't the kind of waves and sparks of them being birds of a feather or appreciating each other's talents; no, it was occasionally more like a little feather, causing you to feel unbearably itchy but never be able to scratch the right spot - and occasionally it was like a tiny needle, suddenly pricking you when your guard was down, not stabbing very deep, but still enough to hurt.
If this were someone else, a more mature or experienced someone else, maybe they could wave it off and ignore it - but Wei Wuxian's life had gone much too smoothly, and he was young and impetuous to boot, so all these little niggling moments...became more and more noticeable.
He sat starving in front of the computer, writing away at tremendous speed—or to be more accurate he was typing away at tremendous speed, multitasking as he thought, Why the heck am I slaving away like this? Before when I wrote theses or topic proposals, or even helped somebody else do a little calculation or two, there'd always either be a pretty girl to carry drinks and feed me food, or there'd be a big reward waiting for me when I finished. So how come when it comes to Lan Wangji, in order to defend my pride, I've not only pulled out this old buried topic proposal to write, but ended up sitting cooped up in this viewless research lab, spilling blood, sweat, and tears with no prize or reward in sight?
He chanced a furtive peek next door, to where Lan Wangji was sitting as straight and proper as usual, not a hair out of place, currently busy correcting papers with a red pen. But saying he was "correcting" them isn't quite right - he was just categorizing them, sorting them into rough categories, is all. Occasionally he'd write comments like acceptable proposal, excellent proposal, worth a review, etc.
The contrast of the dark-colored pen made the man's skin look white as porcelain, his short, jet-black hair lending a particularly distinct outline to his looks, his thick, curved lashes leaving the tiniest shadow due to his downward gaze, trembling occasionally like light feathers, making Wei Wuxian's heart itch with every blink.
—Okay, I'll take out a line; there is a view, or at least there's a beauty keeping me company, and a real big beauty at that.
It's really too bad this beauty's the wrong gender, and he's probably got untoward intentions towards me too.
Wei Wuxian downed over half a glass of water in one big gulp, collapse onto the desk, and bawled: "Aaaaahh—"
Lan Wangji remained unmoved.
Wei Wuxian thought to himself, It's way past noon by now, is Lan Wangji actually a robot, does he not need to eat like us mere mortals?
The moment he thought of food, Wei Wuxian's stomach immediately began to protest, letting out an incessant string of rumbling noises; he was dizzy with hunger, and bawled again: "Aaaaahh—in all the years I've been alive, I've never had to starve before! I want to protest!!! I'm going on strike!!! I want to eeeaaatttt and also I gotta pee!!!"
Lan Wangji continued to ignore him.
Wei Wuxian: "Aaaaaaahhh Lan Wangji!!! Lan-xuezhang!!! Lan Er!!! Teaching Assistant Lan!!! I—"
Lan Wangji lifted his head, and indifferently said: "If you need to go then hurry and go."
Wei Wuxian scraped his chair against the floor in his rush to the exit.
Lan Wangji added: "2PM, I won't wait past that."
Wei Wuxian had originally hoped to take this chance to slip away, eat lunch and go back to his dorm to edit his paper, since he didn't have class in the afternoon anyway; with that thought in mind he'd rushed out like a wild donkey escaped from its lead, but before he'd even reached the door, that deadline made its way to his ears, and so all he could do was jump into the bathroom like a good boy, finish his business and rush right back, slamming his fist with a bang atop the essay Lan Wangji was currently grading and saying through gritted teeth:
"Hu Hansan returns!!!"
[TN: Hu Hansan is the villain of 1974 Chinese communist film Sparkling Red Star, a bourgeois landlord who gets forced out of town, only to come back and exact his ~evil revenge~ upon the peasants. And then get killed by the protag, as one does.]
========
Next chapter: 04
Previous chapters: 01, 02
Wei Wuxian: "......"
Luckily the floor was very clean; Wei Wuxian stood up, rubbing his forehead, and came to the realization that there was in fact someone knocking on his door.
Upon opening the door, as expected, the person he found standing outside was Lan Wangji.
Wei Wuxian sighed, saying: "Why is it you again, great Lan-xuezhang? I'm honored by your presence in the middle of your busy schedule - is there anything I can do for you?"
Lan Wangji: "Why did you cut class?"
Wei Wuxian: "Huh?"
Lan Wangji: "Where's your report?"
Wei Wuxian: "...What time is it?"
He may have sidestepped the question, but he really was having a little trouble processing Lan Wangji's question. After asking, he turned his head to look around the room—the alarm clock that should have been on the table was nowhere to be seen.
And Lan Wangji's answer was: "11:30."
A startled Wei Wuxian replied: "11:30!?"
Lan Wangji silently gave him a doubtful look.
Wei Wuxian, trembling, pulled out his cellphone and looked at the time on the screen: 11:31.
He was terrified now, crying out in fear: "11:30!? That's not possible!? It was clearly not even 6AM a minute ago!"
He grabbed Lan Wangji's wrist, craning his neck to look at his watch in an attempt to confirm the time again.
The watch's hour hand was situated right in the middle of 11 and 12, while the minute hand was just a tiny bit past the 6.
Wei Wuxian was only a little shorter than Lan Wangji to begin with, but having pulled him down to look at his watch, the two of them were now inevitably very close, looking to the outside observer as if he were throwing himself into Lan Wangji's arms.
But Wei Wuxian was in no state of mind to notice this; as soon as he'd confirmed the time, he immediately held his head in his hands and let out an anguished cry: "Aaaaah what the heck how could I oversleep it's all because of this lousy report I was up writing 'til 4AM and thought I'd take a nap but I actually overslept aaaah!!! My perfect attendance record!! My scholarship!!!"
An expressionless Lan Wangji took advantage of his distraction to pull his hand free, simultaneously backing up half a step.
Once Wei Wuxian was finished howling, he blinked his eyes, let out a yawn, glanced at the stack of reports in Lan Wangji's hands, and said: "Ai...well if I skipped then I skipped, no amount of regret's gonna make that up. Since the person who came to catch me was you, that means Professor Jiang didn't come to class today, so were you the one in charge of the lecture? ...Did you come straight here after teaching the class?"
Lan Wangji said: "...Mmhm."
Wei Wuxian grabbed Lan Wangji's hand in both of his, passionately saying: "My dear gege!! My own flesh and blood!! Good friend of the people!!!"
Lan Wangji: "......"
He tried pulling a way a couple times with no success; on the contrary, Wei Wuxian grasped him more tightly than before.
Wei Wuxian: "Let me invite you for a drink, milk tea with whatever toppings you want! You can even ask for two parts Oreo, two parts cheese foam, I won't complain! Just forget about my skipping class, okay?"
Lan Wangji: "Out of the question."
Wei Wuxian: "Don't be so quick to reject me, I stayed up all night working overtime to write the report you assigned yesterday, look..."
He tapped once on the laptop keyboard, sweeping past the lock screen to reveal a full, 20-page document on the screen, filled with diagrams and text alike, before continuing to speak: "This is a new topic I mulled over for a real long time. I mentioned it to Professor Jiang last time, and he was really interested in it - I've been continuously researching material for it ever since, and thought I'd take this opportunity to turn it in to him. It's still just a rough draft right now, but the minute I started writing I accidentally wrote too much. If it weren't for this, I absolutely wouldn't have missed this morning's class."
Sure enough, Lan Wangji's attention was caught as soon as proper business was brought up. He bent over, slender fingers taking over the mouse, clicked on the file, and opened it.
For some reason, in this moment, an image of the cloth-weaving Lan Wangji from his dream flashed through Wei Wuxian's mind.
It didn't seem out of place at all, in fact he was very...good-looking.
...They say people with long fingers have really long whatsits, too.
Hm?
For three seconds after this thought came into his head, Wei Wuxian couldn't help staring at his crotch.
Maybe because it was hard to see at this angle, or maybe because of the material of his pants—whatever the case, you couldn't see the slightest hint beneath those perfectly-ironed Western-style trousers. But staring at that spot for no real reason was really too rude; the moment Wei Wuxian came back to his senses, he immediately, awkwardly turned his gaze away.
Luckily Lan Wangji was concentrated solely on skimming the report, and hadn't noticed Wei Wuxian's odd behavior. On the other hand...after going over barely two or three pages, Lan Wangji was unable to resist correcting quite a few typos, and said: "Give me an electronic copy."
Wei Wuxian: "Not a printed one?"
Lan Wangji: "Too many typos."
Wei Wuxian frivolously said: "I was up 'til the wee hours of the morning working on this, and barely managed to finish it in time, so I haven't had time to fix any wrong characters...look, the whole class's turned-in papers just come out to this tiny little stack, but my paper's big enough to be maybe a third or a half of that, right? That's how earnest I am about cooperating with your work...what do you say, will you give me a little more time, just to fix up all those typos?"
What he didn't realize was that the reason Lan Wangji wanted an electronic copy was to fix his typos for him - of course, even if he did realize it that didn't necessarily mean he'd let Lan Wangji help.
After all, this was the topic he wanted to work on; if study #1 didn't get approval, then he'd bring up applications for studies #2 and #3, or he'd take them back to Yiling to work on. For this reason, he was determined not to let his work pass through anyone else's hands.
Lan Wangji thought a moment, and rather than persisting, instead said: "Go to the research lab to fix it."
The research lab was right next door to Professor Jiang Fengmian's office; taking up almost half a floor, it was incredibly spacious, containing not only small conference rooms and discussion areas, but also a pair of public-use computers made available for assistants, through which you could connect directly to the school's libraries. There were printers too, making this a convenient place to research and print materials. While Wei Wuxian had only just started Study #1, as Jiang Fengmian's honor student he had to report to the research lab 3-5 times a month, so that by now even the door guards had gotten familiar with him and recognized his face.
Meaning he quickly picked up his USB, shoved it in his pocket, and cheerfully replied: "Sure, let's go."
※
The first 18 years of Wei Wuxian's life had gone as smooth as smooth can be, but ever since running into Lan Wangji, little waves and sparks seemed to be constantly popping up.
But it wasn't the kind of waves and sparks of them being birds of a feather or appreciating each other's talents; no, it was occasionally more like a little feather, causing you to feel unbearably itchy but never be able to scratch the right spot - and occasionally it was like a tiny needle, suddenly pricking you when your guard was down, not stabbing very deep, but still enough to hurt.
If this were someone else, a more mature or experienced someone else, maybe they could wave it off and ignore it - but Wei Wuxian's life had gone much too smoothly, and he was young and impetuous to boot, so all these little niggling moments...became more and more noticeable.
He sat starving in front of the computer, writing away at tremendous speed—or to be more accurate he was typing away at tremendous speed, multitasking as he thought, Why the heck am I slaving away like this? Before when I wrote theses or topic proposals, or even helped somebody else do a little calculation or two, there'd always either be a pretty girl to carry drinks and feed me food, or there'd be a big reward waiting for me when I finished. So how come when it comes to Lan Wangji, in order to defend my pride, I've not only pulled out this old buried topic proposal to write, but ended up sitting cooped up in this viewless research lab, spilling blood, sweat, and tears with no prize or reward in sight?
He chanced a furtive peek next door, to where Lan Wangji was sitting as straight and proper as usual, not a hair out of place, currently busy correcting papers with a red pen. But saying he was "correcting" them isn't quite right - he was just categorizing them, sorting them into rough categories, is all. Occasionally he'd write comments like acceptable proposal, excellent proposal, worth a review, etc.
The contrast of the dark-colored pen made the man's skin look white as porcelain, his short, jet-black hair lending a particularly distinct outline to his looks, his thick, curved lashes leaving the tiniest shadow due to his downward gaze, trembling occasionally like light feathers, making Wei Wuxian's heart itch with every blink.
—Okay, I'll take out a line; there is a view, or at least there's a beauty keeping me company, and a real big beauty at that.
It's really too bad this beauty's the wrong gender, and he's probably got untoward intentions towards me too.
Wei Wuxian downed over half a glass of water in one big gulp, collapse onto the desk, and bawled: "Aaaaahh—"
Lan Wangji remained unmoved.
Wei Wuxian thought to himself, It's way past noon by now, is Lan Wangji actually a robot, does he not need to eat like us mere mortals?
The moment he thought of food, Wei Wuxian's stomach immediately began to protest, letting out an incessant string of rumbling noises; he was dizzy with hunger, and bawled again: "Aaaaahh—in all the years I've been alive, I've never had to starve before! I want to protest!!! I'm going on strike!!! I want to eeeaaatttt and also I gotta pee!!!"
Lan Wangji continued to ignore him.
Wei Wuxian: "Aaaaaaahhh Lan Wangji!!! Lan-xuezhang!!! Lan Er!!! Teaching Assistant Lan!!! I—"
Lan Wangji lifted his head, and indifferently said: "If you need to go then hurry and go."
Wei Wuxian scraped his chair against the floor in his rush to the exit.
Lan Wangji added: "2PM, I won't wait past that."
Wei Wuxian had originally hoped to take this chance to slip away, eat lunch and go back to his dorm to edit his paper, since he didn't have class in the afternoon anyway; with that thought in mind he'd rushed out like a wild donkey escaped from its lead, but before he'd even reached the door, that deadline made its way to his ears, and so all he could do was jump into the bathroom like a good boy, finish his business and rush right back, slamming his fist with a bang atop the essay Lan Wangji was currently grading and saying through gritted teeth:
"Hu Hansan returns!!!"
[TN: Hu Hansan is the villain of 1974 Chinese communist film Sparkling Red Star, a bourgeois landlord who gets forced out of town, only to come back and exact his ~evil revenge~ upon the peasants. And then get killed by the protag, as one does.]
========
Next chapter: 04