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A Girl's Invitation to Be Her Companion
墨書 Inktalez
Due to the typhoon weather, Zheng Qiang was called by his female classmate Yue Mei to keep her company at her home. At this moment, he leaned against the window ledge, feeling the strong winds. He gazed down at the various rooftops below, differing in height and color, and took a deep breath. He guessed that Ningzhou might be one of the places in the world with the most asbestos roofs.
"Your place is really strange!" he shouted into the wind, but Yue Mei did not respond.
Yue Mei lived at the very top of the building. It was truly at the top! On the twenty-fifth floor, there was an additional roof built on top of the rooftop elevator shaft, creating a small storage room made of bricks. So when Zheng Qiang followed her up to the terrace, he had to climb a steel ladder bolted to the wall to reach her lofty abode, which left him quite puzzled.
"Do you really climb around like this all day?" he asked in disbelief.
"It’s safe and quiet here!" Yue Mei replied.
However, once inside her small loft, it was a different world altogether. Although her room was simple, it was arranged with warmth and charm. Zheng Qiang squatted in front of her bookshelf, where each compartment had handmade fabric curtains covering them. The sofa bed on the floor was dressed in a sheet with delicate floral lace, and a round folding table was draped with a woven tablecloth. On the wall hung a batik canvas calendar, and in front of a small makeup mirror sat a large seashell. Even the light bulb was covered with a paper lantern.
"Did you make all this yourself?" Zheng Qiang asked.
"Mm-hmm."
Curious, he touched everything and looked around but felt that something about the room was slightly off—very off.
"Where’s your bathroom and toilet?" he asked.
"It's right outside that window!" Yue Mei said.
"Outside...the window?" Zheng Qiang looked down to see a small platform barely seventy or eighty centimeters wide, completely exposed without any railing, and there were indeed signs of washing on the ground.
"You...you live in this kind of...this kind of place..." Zheng Qiang struggled to express his feelings: "Your parents would cry if they knew!"
"Probably," Yue Mei replied flatly: "But I don’t have parents."
"…………" Hearing this response left Zheng Qiang both stunned and awkward.
Yue Mei remained calm as she took two tissues to dab at the fine sweat on her face. Kneeling on the sofa bed, she tilted her waist to undo the zipper of her long skirt when she noticed Zheng Qiang staring intently at her.
"Hey!" she said.
"Hmm?" Zheng Qiang continued to look at her.
"Hey!" she repeated.
"What?"
"I need to change my clothes."
"Oh..." Zheng Qiang suddenly realized, turning back to lean against the windowsill, blinking as he enjoyed the breeze.
"All set." After a while, Yue Mei said from behind him.
Zheng Qiang stepped back but didn't turn around; he was examining two strange wooden blocks nailed to the edge of the window.
"What are these?" he asked.
Yue Mei had already changed into a T-shirt and shorts. Without saying a word, she jumped to the side, deftly stepping on the wooden blocks to climb up the wall and opened a small vent to squeeze inside.
"Uh!" Zheng Qiang was taken aback by how many surprises today had in store for him.
The vent was about two and a half meters high. He stood there dumbfounded for a few seconds before following her up.
Peering into the vent, Zheng Qiang discovered an unexpected space.
This room had originally been the building's mechanical room; it wasn't really a vent at all but rather a narrow box-like structure that had been carved out of the wall and attached from the outside. It was about three feet wide and half a person tall, with an entirely open front covered by sparse iron bars. He couldn't tell what machinery had originally been placed there, but remnants of two or three large expansion bolts were left on the bottom plate, and there was a small faucet in one corner.
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