Lu Yan went to rummage through the closet, and Xiao Heng stood behind him, truly like a stray dog he had picked up.

The clothes were easy enough to find; any set would do. Although he wanted to give him something he hadn't worn much, one's economic foundation determines... that such clothes did not exist in his closet.

However, just as Lu Yan's hand touched a T-shirt, the young master who had no objections moments ago said, "Not this one."

"Reason?" Lu Yan asked.

"Ugly." Xiao Heng's reply was both cold and concise.

"..."

'His only asset in the entire world is a room without a key, and he still dares to call things ugly?'

Lu Yan found it unbelievable.

"When you're under someone else's roof, do you know what you're supposed to do?" He picked up the piece of clothing, looked at Xiao Heng and said, "You. Have. To. Bow. Your. Head."

Lu Yan: "Say that again, what's wrong with this one?"

A moment of silence.

Xiao Heng finally said reluctantly, "This one is okay."

After lecturing him, Lu Yan found him a new towel, then pulled a new, unopened pair of underwear from a drawer. Taking out such personal clothing was already awkward enough, and then came another sentence from behind him: "Get another pair."

Lu Yan: "Why the hell is this one no good?"

Although it was a popular style from Taobao, the pair in his hand could be considered simple and stylish, a high-quality CK knockoff, in a classic, timeless color.

Lu Yan said again, "Do you remember what I just told you?"

Xiao Heng's gaze shifted slightly downward, and he interrupted him with a single word: "Small."

Lu Yan: "..."

Xiao Heng went to the bathroom to shower. Lu Yan, afraid that if he stayed, he might hear something else that would make him lose his mind and do something illegal, grabbed his pack of cigarettes and went out for a smoke to calm down.

'Small?!'

'Fuck.'

'You're the one who's small, your whole family is small.'

Lu Yan squatted outside the door smoking, recalling Xiao Heng's meaningful gaze.

...

"Fuck," Lu Yan muttered to himself, lowering his head and flicking the ash off his cigarette with a finger. "Should've just let him sit on that damn flower bed until dawn."

"I saw you hadn't come down to get your clothes, so I brought them up to you."

Brother Wei was just coming up from downstairs. Seeing Lu Yan squatting and smoking at the door of 601, he was shocked. "What are you squatting here for? Where's that person you picked up?"

Lu Yan said, "The dog? He's taking a shower."

Brother Wei: "It's that guy, isn't it? The rich young master. He looked like him from a distance."

Lu Yan, with the cigarette between his lips, said, "Yeah, a pampered pooch."

Brother Wei asked again, "What's he doing here?"

Lu Yan sneered. "Who the hell knows."

Brother Wei: "Yan, you seem a little pissed off."

"Bro, remind me of one thing, tell me that murder is illegal," Lu Yan said as he stubbed out his cigarette on the ground. "I'm not very rational right now."

Brother Wei readily complied. "Brother Yan, murder is illegal."

"Mhm."

"Think about your great future, think about the beautiful landscapes of our motherland! Think about your musical dreams!"

"Mhm."

"If there's something you can't get over, just beat him up... forget it, you probably can't win against him anyway. Just curse him out. Right? There's no need to kill someone."

Lu Yan had been nodding frequently, but halfway through, he felt something was off. "?"

Brother Wei: "It's nothing, I didn't say anything."

By the time Lu Yan finished his cigarette and returned, Xiao Heng had just finished showering, his hair towel-dried.

The T-shirt he was wearing was one Lu Yan had bought from Taobao for thirty yuan with free shipping. The design was a string of musical notes. Li Zhen had one too. The reason they bought this shirt together wasn't because it looked good, nor because the notes represented their musical dreams, but because: the second one was half price.

The feeling of seeing his own clothes on someone else was very strange.

This style didn't really match Xiao Heng, and the pants were even a pair of ripped jeans. But as Lu Yan looked at him, he finally felt a sense of reality that this person might actually become his neighbor in the future.

If the two of them stood in the Lower District, they could probably squat on the roadside and rob people together.

Xiao Heng was clearly not used to it either. He tugged at his collar and asked, "Where do I sleep?"

Lu Yan said, "You can sleep anywhere you want." Anyway, he has to pay.

"But I have to write some songs tonight. If you think it's noisy..."

Xiao Heng thought the second half of this sentence should be a few polite phrases.

However, Lu Yan said, "Just put up with it."

The two didn't say much more.

Lu Yan's own clothes were half-soaked and sticking uncomfortably to his body. After taking a shower, Lu Yan sat down in front of his computer and opened his music arrangement software.

The arrangement he had taken on wasn't finished yet. The client always had the same thing to say: It feels like it's very close! But it's still missing that little something.

The entire day's experiences had been particularly surreal.

Xiao Heng lay on the sofa.

In his ears was a familiar, stuttering guitar melody. The profiteer who was charging him two hundred a night would hum a few lines from time to time. He surprisingly didn't find it noisy. He should have found everything utterly annoying, but instead, he found that his mood was calmer than ever before.

It was late at night.

After his shower, Lu Yan had put on a short-sleeved shirt.

In the moments before he fell asleep, Xiao Heng, by the faint light in the room, noticed a tattoo on the inside of Lu Yan's left wrist.

It was black.

A star.