But for some reason, the RA’s friendly smile vanished
as
soon as he heard my request.
સ્વર
“No, River. Since you’ve already moved out, you need to let the dorm situation go,” he said firmly.
“I’m sorry, professor. I know asking you to send out my survey might be troublesome, but I really have no other options,” I pleaded.
“I just want to know why everyone refuses to room with me.”
“Professor, weren’t you also confused about why this was happening? Please, can’t you help me one last time?”
I stood in front of his desk, still clinging to a shred of hope.
This whole time, the RA seemed to be the only person besides me who was genuinely baffled by the situation. He had
2:00 AM
<
This whole time, the RA seemed to be the only person besides me who was genuinely baffled by the situation. He had expressed his own confusion many times.
I thought surely he must want to know the reason too.
But now the RA didn’t seem confused at all. Without a moment’s hesitation, he told me
to drop the matter entirely and
waved for me to leave if I had no other business.
“River, it’s not about the survey. You know I’ve tried my best. If no one is willing to room with you, you need to stop fixating on this issue,” he said coldly.
“I have work to do. You should go now if there’s nothing else.”
Seeing the RA’s icy stare, so different from his usual demeanor, I knew this avenue was completely closed off.
The tiny spark of hope I had rekindled was immediately extinguished.
Fine then. I’d just continue living on my own.
6
After that, I completely gave up and settled into living alone.
My parents called a few more times to check on me. To keep them from worrying, I said I had made friends and the only reason I wasn’t living in the dorms was because it was mid–semester and my housing fees had already been refunded.
But I never expected that just when I stopped obsessing over finding a roommate, a roommate would find me.
I had been living alone for about a month when my landlady suddenly contacted me.
She said she had found someone to share the apartment wi
The place I was renting was a two–bedroom apartment.
e- another student from my university.
–
I first moved in, I was the only tenant.
The kind landlady had given me the rate for a shared apartment, saying she would soon find a roommate for
I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.
This time, as I prepared to meet my new roommate, I wasn’t
t nearly
anxious as before.
After all, this was an apartment I was paying for myself. Even if the roommate didn’t like me, it would be much harder to
kick me out.
Plus, we each had our own bedroom. If our living habits didn’t mesh, we could just avoid interacting.
But to my surprise, my new roommate not only didn’t object to /…
Within days, we had become great friends.
with me, we hit it off immediately.
We would hang out in the apartment eating meals together, watching movies, and playing video games.
Whenever we got together, we always had endless things to talk about.
Whenever we got together, we always had endless things to talk about.
For the first time since arriving at this school, I felt the warmth and kindness of a peer.
Now when I video called my parents, I no longer had to carefully hide anything. I had truly made a good friend.
“River, open up!”
We had been living together for a while when my mom happened to be working at a construction site not far away. She decided to stop by and visit me.
I had told my roommate Leo about my mom’s visit well in advance, and asked him to make sure he was home for dinner so he could try my mom’s cooking.
“Mom, it smells amazing! Your yu xiang rou si is the best,” I said, helping her in the kitchen while texting Leo to ask where he was and tell him to hurry home for dinner.
For some reason, Leo wasn’t responding to any of my messages today.
Maybe his phone died, I thought to myself.
Soon enough, I heard a knock at the door.
“Hey, did you forget your key today?” I called out as I went to open it.
But when I opened the door, I froze in shock. There was a huge crowd of people outside.
Many of them were carrying large moving boxes and pushing their way in. At the back of the group stood my landlady
and Leo.
“Leo, what’s going on?” I asked in
confusion, staring at his now cold expression. The feeling
of helplessness from being
repeatedly rejected by roommates came flooding back.
“I’m moving out,” was all Leo said before ng straight to his room to direct the movers.
I remembered when Leo first moved in, he had done all the moving himself.
He said he was just a student without much money. Plus he didn’t have that many belongings, so he had rented a little three–wheeled cart and spent several days lugging everything up and down.
At the time, he had been so proud of saving money by moving himself, calling himself a “moving genius.”
But now he had hired professional movers, clearly in a rush to leave.
પર એક પરફ
“Mrs. Liu, did something urgent come up for Leo?” I asked our landlady hopefully, clinging to the idea that Leo had some pressing reason to move out suddenly, rather than because of me.
The landlady paused for a long moment, looking at me several times before reluctantly speaking:
“River, I don’t mean to criticize, but did you and Leo have some kind of fight?”
