The presentation is at ten o'clock on a Tuesday morning, in a room that smells of dry-erase markers and the particular anxiety of people who have prepared and are now waiting to find out if preparing was enough.
We arrive together, which happens naturally — Qingxue had messaged the group chat at eight-thirty saying meet outside the building at 9:45, don't be late and all three of us had been there at 9:43 without discussion. Étienne is carrying coffee. Qingxue has her notes open on her phone even though we all know she doesn't need them. Lexin looks exactly as she always looks — composed, present, like the concept of nerves is a thing that happens to other people.
I feel, if I am honest, mildly nervous. Not in a way that shows. But it's there, a low hum beneath the surface, because I do not enjoy situations where the outcome depends on other people's assessments of my work. I prefer to know in advance whether something is good. Waiting to be told is its own particular discomfort.
"We're ready," Qingxue says, to no one in particular, putting her phone away.
"We've been ready," Étienne says.
"I know. I'm saying it out loud for my own benefit." She straightens her jacket. "Let's go."
---
We are, objectively, the best presentation of the morning.
I don't say this with arrogance — it's simply a conclusion available to anyone paying attention. The work is solid, the structure is clean, and four months of listening to each other think has made us fluent in a way that single-person projects never quite achieve. Lexin takes the technical sections with the precision of someone who has never once said a word she didn't mean. Qingxue handles the research with the confidence of someone who has read everything twice and retained it completely. Étienne holds the transitions together with an ease that makes the whole thing feel like one piece rather than four. I take the implementation framework and the conclusion.
When we finish, the room is quiet for exactly the right amount of time.
The professor leans back in his chair. He looks at us the way he looks at things that have exceeded his expectation — with a slight narrowing of the eyes, recalibrating.
"That," he says, "is what this project was supposed to produce." He pauses. "A+. All four of you." Another pause, during which he looks at us each in turn. "Genuinely impressive work. The integration between sections alone was worth the grade."
Qingxue makes a sound beside me that she immediately converts into a cough. I look at the wall.
Outside the room, once the door is closed behind us, she stops converting it and simply makes the sound properly. Étienne laughs. Lexin exhales once, slow and controlled, which for her is the equivalent of jumping up and down.
"On l'a eu," Étienne says. (We got it.)
"We got it," I agree.
Qingxue looks at all of us in turn. "We're going drinking tonight," she announces. "This is not a suggestion."
---
The bar she chooses is not the kind of place I would have found on my own — warm and slightly loud, with low lighting and the comfortable noise of a Friday crowd, even though it's Tuesday, because the kind of people who come here have apparently decided that Tuesday is negotiable. It smells of wood and something being fried in the kitchen and the particular smell of a place that has been the same place for a long time.
Qingxue orders immediately and with confidence. Étienne reads the drinks menu with the focused enthusiasm of someone who cooks and therefore takes ingredients seriously in all their forms. Lexin orders something simple — she knows what she wants, she always knows what she wants — and then looks at me.
"What are you having?"
"Do you have strawberry juice?" I ask the bartender.
A brief pause from the general direction of my group.
"You don't drink?" Qingxue asks.
"I don't drink," I confirm.
"Ever?"
"It doesn't agree with me." This is true and also sufficiently vague to be the whole answer I intend to give. The suppressants and alcohol interact in ways I discovered once, at seventeen, at a party in Paris I attended with Arthur, and have not repeated since.
The bartender confirms the strawberry juice. I confirm the strawberry juice. The brief pause resolves itself and we find a table in the corner — round, good, no one stranded at the ends.
---
It starts the way these things start when the work is finally done and there's nothing left to be careful about — loosely, with the particular ease of people who have been professional at each other for weeks and are now, quietly, stopping.
"Hobbies," Qingxue says, with the directness of someone who has decided this is the next thing we're doing. "We've been meeting for weeks and I don't know what any of you do when you're not looking at a screen."
"I look at a different screen," Étienne says.
"Gaming?"
"Gaming. And basketball. And cooking, when I have access to a kitchen that isn't a dormitory kitchen." He says the last part with feeling. "I made a beurre blanc in that kitchen last month and I'm still not over what it cost me emotionally."
"What's a beurre blanc?" Qingxue asks.
"Une réduction de vin blanc avec du beurre—" He catches her expression. (A white wine reduction with butter—) "A French butter sauce. It requires patience and proper equipment and I had neither."
"He works out too," I add, because it's true and because Étienne will not say it himself due to a specific and somewhat inconsistent modesty about this particular fact.
"I work out," Étienne confirms, as though this is incidental.
"What about you?" Lexin asks Qingxue.
Qingxue straightens slightly with the energy of someone who has been waiting to be asked. "I write. Online — novels, mostly. I've been posting for two years." She says it with the calm confidence of someone who has made peace with the fact that this information lands differently depending on who's receiving it.
"What kind of novels?" I ask, the curiosity taking over.
She looks at me. "BL."
A beat.
"Boys love," she clarifies, for Étienne's benefit.
Étienne processes this. "So — romance. Between—"
"Men. Yes." She picks up her drink. "I have four hundred thousand followers and my latest series is being considered for print publication, so." She takes a sip. "I'm not embarrassed about it."
"You shouldn't be," Lexin says simply, and Qingxue gives her the look of someone receiving confirmation they didn't need but appreciate anyway.
"I also play dating sims," Qingxue adds. "And I travel when I can. I've been to eleven countries." She looks at me. "You?"
"Reading," I say. "Running. Languages, I suppose, though that's become less of a hobby and more of a habit." I think about how to explain the reading. "Mostly non-fiction. History, systems theory, that sort of thing. Tolkien, occasionally, when I want something that isn't the world."
"You read Tolkien?" Étienne looks surprised.
"Rarely. But yes."
"En quelle langue?" (In which language?)
"All of them," I say, which is an exaggeration, but only just.
Étienne stares at me for a moment. Then he raises his glass in a gesture that concedes the point entirely.
We all look at Lexin.
She is quiet for a moment in the way she is sometimes quiet — not reluctant, just taking the question seriously. "Violin," she says. "I've played since I was five." A pause. "History. I find it — clarifying. Understanding how things became what they are." She says this last part simply, without performance, and I believe it completely. "I hike when I can. And I spend time with Icey."
"Icey," Qingxue says, with the tone of someone revisiting a familiar subject.
"Icey," Lexin confirms.
I look between them. "Who is Icey?"
Lexin looks at me. "My white tiger."
The table goes quiet.
Étienne sets down his glass. "Your—"
"White tiger," she says again, at the same volume and with the same composure as the first time. "He lives on our family property. I've had him since I was five." She looks at our expressions with the mild patience of someone accustomed to this reaction. "He's very well cared for."
"Since you were five," I repeat.
"He and I grew up together, essentially." Something in Lexin's expression softens, briefly and genuinely, the way it did when she talked about Wenli. "He knows my voice. He knows my family." A small pause. "He knows my brother too, though that relationship is — complicated."
"Complicated how?" Étienne asks.
"He nearly killed him when he was seven."
Silence.
"He was two years older than me," Lexin continues, with the measured calm of someone recounting a fact rather than a near-tragedy. "He got too close. Icey was territorial. He was fine, eventually. Some stitches." She picks up her drink. "He maintains to this day that it never happened."
"He pretends a tiger almost killed him just — didn't?" Étienne says.
"Completely. If you bring it up he changes the subject."
"Every time?" I ask.
"Without exception." The almost-smile is fully present now. "Icey still lives twenty meters from his bedroom window. He walks past his enclosure every day and acts as though it is a completely normal and unbothered experience."
Qingxue makes a sound that is halfway between sympathy and laughter. "And is it? Unbothered?"
"Absolutely not." Lexin sets her glass down. "But we don't mention it."
I think about a seven year old Ruofei and a five year old Lexin and a white tiger who apparently made her position on the matter very clear from the beginning. "Does Icey like anyone else? Besides you?"
Lexin considers this. "Wenli. He tolerates Wenli. And Ruofei too. He is probably sad about what he did in the past because he is like a big cat when Ruofei is around."
"High praise," I say.
"From a white tiger, yes."
---
The evening moves the way good evenings move — in no particular direction, following the conversation wherever it goes, the table accumulating empty glasses and the comfortable debris of a few hours well spent. Étienne and Qingxue migrate steadily through the drinks menu with the collaborative dedication of two people who have found common ground in this specific endeavor. Lexin nurses hers. I work through two strawberry juices and feel no need to justify this to anyone.
At some point we stop being four people who worked on a project and become, without announcement, four people who are simply here together. The shift is small and unmistakable — the way Étienne stops angling his jokes for effect and just makes them, the way Qingxue's laugh gets louder and less apologetic, the way Lexin leans forward slightly when something interests her rather than keeping the careful posture of someone in a professional context.
I don't change very much, outwardly. But something in me settles — the specific relaxation of not having to perform competence for a while, of being somewhere that doesn't require anything except being present.
It's good. I find, with some surprise, that it's genuinely good.
---
By ten o'clock Qingxue is listing slightly to the left and Étienne has reached the specific stage of warmth where everything is funny and he is explaining this to everyone at the table in detail. I catch Lexin's eye across the rim of my glass.
She looks at Étienne. Then at Qingxue. Then at me, with the expression of someone making a logistical assessment.
"Could you take him?" she asks, tilting her head toward Étienne. "I'll take Qingxue."
Something tightens briefly in my chest — the shape of an evening I had not quite admitted I was enjoying, ending in the ordinary way that good evenings end. I nod.
"Of course."
I pay the bill before anyone can discuss it, which takes approximately eight seconds because the server is efficient and I hand over the card before it becomes a group conversation. Étienne protests in the vague, delayed way of someone whose reaction time is currently operating at reduced capacity.
"T'aurais pas dû—" he starts. (You shouldn't have—)
"Tais-toi," I tell him, not unkindly. (Quiet.)
He stop talking and I am honestlyvery thankful.
Outside, the night air is sharp enough to be useful. Qingxue takes it in the manner of someone who has decided to cooperate with reality, straightening slightly and accepting Lexin's steadying hand on her arm with the dignity of someone who absolutely has everything under control.
"I'm fine," she tells us.
"I know," Lexin says.
"I'm completely fine."
"Completely," Lexin agrees, steering her gently left.
She looks back at me over her shoulder. "Good night, Zhirui."
"Good night," I say.
I watch them go for a moment. Then I look at Étienne, who is standing beside me with his hands in his pockets, looking at the sky with the serene expression of someone who has temporarily misplaced his concerns and is not particularly worried about finding them.
"On y va?" I ask. (Shall we go?)
"Mm," he says, which I take as assent.
I take his hand. He leans against my shoulder with the boneless trust of someone who has stopped managing his own center of gravity and is outsourcing it without embarrassment. We walk.
He is asleep before we reach the dormitory.
Not metaphorically — actually asleep, head heavy against my shoulder, breathing slow and even, completely unconscious of the last two blocks of travel. I navigate the dormitory entrance, the elevator, the corridor, with the specific efficiency of someone improvising without complaint.
His room key is in his jacket pocket. I find it. I consider, briefly, the logistics of getting him through his door and onto his bed, and then I consider the simpler alternative.
I bring him to my room instead.
Getting him onto the bed is straightforward enough. He doesn't wake up. I take his shoes off and leave everything else, pull the spare blanket from the wardrobe, and take the pillow from the chair by the desk.
I make myself comfortable on the couch, which is narrow and not quite long enough and is, despite these qualities, completely adequate. I close my eyes.
From across the room, Étienne begins to snore.
It is not a subtle sound. It is the sound of a large person sleeping with complete commitment, rhythmic and entirely unself-conscious, filling the room with the specific presence of someone who is very much here even while unconscious.
I lie there in the dark and listen to it.
And then, slowly, in the way that tiredness makes everything gentler than it would otherwise be, I smile.
It's a small thing — the four of us finding our way to a table in a bar, an A-plus and a professor's raised eyebrow, Lexin's voice going soft when she talks about a tiger who nearly took out her brother and has never once apologized for it, Étienne asleep in my room snoring like a man without problems. Small things, accumulated.
The sleepiness pulls at the edges of everything, softening it further.
I close my eyes.
Étienne snores.
I sleep.