A Piece of Cake [poppu]

Wei finished wiping down the counters before walking over to the sink and grabbing a dish towel to dry the water from Hari's freshly washed dishes before adding them to the small upstanding rack that sat only about half full within arm's reach of the sink. He let out a simple smile. "Yeah, she was always really nice."

When he asked about the rest of his family, he had to shrug. "I don't know much about the rest of my family," he said honestly. "Me and my brother were both born in the middle of China, in the mountains, but we moved before I started school. I haven't seen anyone outside of my immediate family in ten years."

He set aside another dried dish. "So, aside from me and my mom, it's my brother. He's five years older than me. He dropped outta school to work when my mom got sick, and he said that he would definitely not let me do the same. He said if I came back home without finishing college that he would ship me back to the island in a crate."

Remembering this made him laugh. HouLin was over the top like that. It was just the kind of big brother he was.

"HouLin--that's my brother--he was super popular. He got his gold really early. He got his gold fur before he was my age... and I still have my baby fur." Wei sounded sullen, as he awaited the next wet plate. "He said it's 'normal for someone like me'."

The monkey boy took the last of the bowls and dried it off before following Hari to the table. Wei sat in another chair, leaning heavily on the table and looking over to the older student as he talked. He nodded ."HouLin is like, the coolest." He said. Think about home both made him feel happy and at the same time listless and sad. He missed the old creaky shack that was home, and the way that he always needed to help secure the tarp on the roof to keep rain from getting inside of their cramped little space that meant home.

A smile graced his face. "Yeah. I do a lot of stuff, so I can make them proud. The one nice thing is that no one knows where you came from, so its like, you come here and become a whole new person."

At his insistence that he'd get his gold soon he couldn't help but look at his outstretched arms and see the gray fur that had been there through thick and thin for fifteen years. Forget getting his gold, he just wanted to have a full brown coat. Achieving that would feel like an accomplishment to him.

He was snapped out of his thoughts by Hari, his tail twitching as he mentioned how much he liked baking. But as he watched Hari, the symptoms of exhaustion were weighing on him. He could tell--he was more or less an expert at seeing if someone was tired. "Are you sure you're up for anything else? You look like you might fall over if I blew in your general direction."

Wei covered his mouth to keep from laughing when Hari tried to assert that he wasn't tired, only to almost immediately cover his mouth and yawn loudly. It was clear that Hari didn't have much energy to keep hanging out with him--actually he felt kinda bad for taking up all of his time like this. What if he had other academic type stuff to do?

"Hey, I know!" Wei said, a slightly mischievous smile on his face. "We could have a... a..." the word was lost and as he wracked his brain, he finally gave up and said it in Chinese. "Chèyè kuánghuān!"

The monkey boy shook his head. "Don't be silly Hari! I sleep on the floor all the time. I'll be more comfortable there."

He wasn't even lying. Wei slept on the floor at home and had never really adjusted fully to sleeping on a bed at school. The only time he every did sleep on the floor was when he was too lazy to set up his floor properly, and even then he just slept on top of his blankets.

"Ooh, movies? What kinds a movies do you have?" He asked, climbing out of the chair to grab his banana bread and sit it in front of him.

"Hammy?" Wei repeated, not quite sure what Hari meant by something being 'hammy'. The only thing he could think of is that the movies had a lot of pigs in them that ran around being turned into ham, but he was pretty sure that wasn't what his college friend was talking about. The monkey couldn't think of any way that would be fun to watch.

He took the pitcher and the glasses, following behind Hari as they made their way back to his dorm room. Actually, he'd never really been inside of Hari's room aside from earlier when he came in through the window, much to his friend's chagrin. This would be the first time that he actually was being let in by the front door and staying for a long amount of time.

It would also be the first time he was having a chèyè kuánghuān, and that made him even more nervous about the whole thing. If they had fun, would they be able to have another one once he got a roommate?