Roomate (3)

After Arnold swiped his wrist against the sensor next to his room's door, the door automatically opened. When David and Arnold entered the room, what they saw gave them quite a shock.

There were clothes all over the floor, the walls were somehow multi-colored, like someone had ran out of paint after adding color onto them halfway, while there seemed to be a rotten bowl of noodles on the work desk that was close to what seemed to be Stephen's bed.

Stephen's bed sheets were ruffled, his duvet was crumbled up, while his pillow seemed to have somehow fell to the ground behind the bedstead. From the looks of it, Stephen seemed to operate mostly on the left side of the room, as most of his stuff were there.

The left wardrobe next to his bed was opened. Inside the wardrobe were clothes that were piled up without any specific order, giving off a slightly putrid smell. On the other side of the room was going to be Adrian's area of the dorm room. However, Stephen seemed to have placed multiple textbooks on Adrian's desk, completely filling it up. Adrian's supposed bed was filled with Stephen's clothes, which were mostly his spare laboratory coats. Luckily, these coats seemed to be clean, unlike the clothes that were within his wardrobe.

David gave me a look of embarassment and said in a sympathetic tone, "Sorry, Stephen has always been really messy." As the typical good guy, David decided to help Stephen with organizing his stuff even though he was away.

First, he took the laboratory coats off from Adrian's mattress and grabbed a few hangers. Then, he hanged the laboratory coats by the railings of the window. Due to the fact that they were living underground, the temperature here was always just warm enough that no artificial air-conditioning is needed throughout all 7 levels, saving the much needed energy for the use of other things. There were two buttons beside the window that allow students to operate a steel frame that was outside the window, allowing them to close off the opening at will to prevent others from looking inside.

Adrian decided to help out as well by placing the textbooks that were on his desk onto the bookshelves that were held against the wall on top of the desk. Although this bookshelf was supposed to be for Adrian's use, Stephen's bookshelf was already completely full so he had no choice but to temporarily place the books there first. He would speak to Stephen later about where to place those books when Adrian gets his own textbooks from class tomorrow.

David seemed to know what he was doing, as he swiftly and neatly folded the rest of Stephen's clothes, piling them up into two files -- one clean and one dirty. He seemed to be compeletely familiar with doing all of this. Adrian became slightly curious and asked, "Are you and Stephen related, upperclassman?"

David, who was sitting on the ground folding Stephen's clothes, turned his head around and looked up at Adrian. He gave him a smile and said in a friendly tone, "Please, just call me David, or Dave." Then, he started explaining the history between them. "Stephen was my roomate for the past two years. Since he comes from one of the 49 Families, it seemed that he had maids looking after him his whole life, so he had no idea how to do his chores at all! I had to do all of these for him, as he would ignore me whenever I complained about his tardiness to him." David gave a sigh that was filled with helplessness. It felt as though he was slightly aggrieved and wanted to vent out of his past frustrations to Adrian.

"Luckily, since he is a genius in the natural sciences, I made him tutor me in exchange for helping him with his chores. It was actually quite a good deal, as my final GPA increased by almost 10% afterwards." David explained.

"Then how come you aren't his roomate now?"

"What do you think?" David gave a smile that looked like he was berating himself. "I only have average talent and did not get enough credits to get promoted. Meanwhile, Stephen had rose up the ranks quickly like a rocket and quickly surpassed me. If it wasn't for his low marks in combat training and practical training, I wouldn't even be able to stay as his roomate for two years!"

Adrian simply nodded in acknowledgement. He only wanted to get information about Stephen out of David, as they were going to interact with each other everyday for the next school year.

David's actions were quite swift, like he had done this more than 1000 times. At last, after he finished placing the clean clothes back in Stephen's wardrobe. He took the bowl of rotten noodles and the dirty clothes to the bathroom that was located close to the entrance of the dormitory room. He went in and flushed all the noodles down the toilet, then started cleaning the bowl in the sink. Then, he took a large round bucket that was located on the shelf under the sink and filled it up with water and laundry detergent.

David started completely immersing himself with washing Stephen's clothes, completely ignoring Adrian, who was simply sitting on his own mattress and watching him from across the room.

As Adrian did not bring any baggage with him, there wasn't anything that he needed to unpack. Therefore, he simply stared at David, who was diligently doing the laundry without saying a word. David was smiling lightly while he was cleaning Stephen's clothes. He seemed to be enjoying himself, even though most boys his age would find doing household chores annoying.

Adrian, who could not even afford that many clothes, much less waste water for cleaning, have no idea how to do laundry at all. Therefore, he decided to watch David in order to get a grasp on how normal people do household chores, in case someone find it odd that he had on such skillset when they asked him to do something similar.

*

After half an hour, David, who had sweat on his forehead, wiped himself with Stephen's towel that was hanging by the bath, and hung the wet clothes on a long string that was connected through the walls close to the ceiling. After hanging all the clothes, the bathroom itself seemed to be divided in half.

David, after washing his hands, walked out and asked, "Are you done with unpacking?" He completely did not notice the fact that Adrian had not done anything of the sort while he was doing his laundry. As most students already have sent a courier service to their dormitory rooms before coming to school, David thought that Adrian did the same and simply unpacked from his non-existent parcels while he helped Stephen with his chores.

Adrian simply gave out a white lie and replied, "Yes."

David was slightly suspicious, since Adrian's mattress were not covered with bedsheets or a duvet yet. There was also no pillow on the bed. However, David simply thought Adrian wanted his privacy and will continue unpacking tonight. He shrugged and said, "It's getting dark, let's grab dinner first before heading to the B Building."

Although it wasn't actually "getting dark" since one could not see the sun from the subterranean level, people still normally use this phrase when night is approaching. The English teachers within the base specifically taught words and slang from before the apocalypse to keep the language stagnant, as if the adults were still reminiscing upon the glory of the past.

*

There was a canteen on the basement floor of the dormitory building. It was quite large, covering the entire building, which consists of four blocks, in pre-apocalypse terms. There were multiple restaurant stalls on each side of the floor, making the place seemed more like a gigantic food court than a school canteen.

"You will find that the food here is better than most other schools!" David explained. "Since the higher-ups know that students, especially those picky second-generation kids, doesn't like unpalatable foods. To make sure that everyone gets enough nutrition intake to build up the muscles needed to face off against the zombies, the headmaster of the military academy especially hired chefs from Level 3 to come here to cook different sorts of cuisines for us."

As Arnold took a look around, he saw stores that had names written in English and some other languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, etc. It would have been quite rare for almost all sorts of different cuisine from around the world to be congregated in one food court. However, as most of the survivors have came to the base, differences in culture have become irrelevant, and people can now enjoy all sorts of food without putting any cultural labels in them.

David recommended Arnold to go to the ramen place that was located at the very corner of the canteen. As they walked towards the restaurant, they found that the place were already lining up with a lot of people, even though it was only 6pm.