Summer wasn’t sure which he was.
Nor was he sure his head wouldn’t explode any moment now, either, when he had just—yes, okay, apologize for being a dick and kissing him, then act like a bigger dick as if he could somehow flirt through psychoanalysis? Mission not accomplished.
The only thing he was entirely sure of?
Was that he was terrified of hearing Iseya’s answer in the morning, his entire body prickling like a live wire.
He already knew it would be a solid no.
That didn’t stop him from hoping, even as he buried his face in his hands and breathed in quick shallow breaths through his fingers until he no longer felt like he was going to pass right out on the floor.
He tensed, though, as the sound of the front door latch echoed over the room, a click and a jiggle before the door creaked open. He peeked over his fingers. He hadn’t quite processed when he’d been told who his roommate would be, but now he almost flinched as a tall, somewhat slouched figure stepped into the room, mumbling absently to himself and apparently ticking something off on his fingers one by one.
Dr. Liu.
Oh, God.
Summer was going to have to get a padlock for his room if he didn’t want the things in it to end up on fire.
At least that explained the disaster of the suite.
He’d always imagined, as a kid, that the two-person suites the single teachers shared would be...bigger. More officious. But they were just homey little rooms with dark, worn, unvarnished hardwood floors to match the dark, worn, unvarnished hardwood walls, with a combined living and dining space, an open kitchen, two bedrooms linked by a bathroom with en suite access from both sides.
Everything had that feeling of old spaces, of haunted spaces, quiet and whispered; the kind of place that had lace curtains and ghosts and a fifth step between every floor that creaked when the shades walked on it at night. The window in Summer’s room looked out over the cliff and onto a valley full of trees, bisected by a winding coil of river; if he remembered right, the other room had no window, running along the interior hall.
But the entire living room was filled with books.
Books, a little lab paraphernalia, science magazines, tossed on every surface—the dining table, the sofa, the coffee table, the easy chairs, even on the kitchen island separating it off from the rest of the space. They’d all been left open to one page or another, and bristled with Post-it notes in a rainbow of colors sticking out everywhere. At least a dozen of them had pens left in their open creases.
That wasn’t as bad as the clothing thrown everywhere, though.
Shirts, jackets, pants, tossed over the backs of chairs or piled in a heap beneath the living room window, and Summer... Summer was pretty sure that was a pair of boxer-briefs stuffed into a potted plant next to the small flatscreen television.
Whomever had left Dr. Liu unsupervised clearly hadn’t been thinking with their forebrain.
Liu himself stopped in the doorway, blinking at Summer owlishly through his oversized eyeglasses, his dark brown eyes narrowing as he leaned forward and peered at Summer through the untrimmed shag of his fluffy black hair. He was unshaven, scruffy, a mess of stubble dotting his cheeks and jaw, and that stubble made a scratchy sound as he scrubbed the backs of his knuckles against his chin.
“I know you,” he said quizzically.
“Er...yeah. Hi.” Summer dropped his hands from his face and offered a smile, a sheepish wave. “I’m Summer Hemlock, the new psych TA.” He stood, navigating around the coffee table to offer his hand. “I used to be a student here.”
“Oh, yes, I remember you.” Liu looked down at Summer’s hand with a confused stare, as if he didn’t know what to do with it, then absently adjusted his glasses as he pushed the door closed behind him. “You’ve gotten very big.”
“Not that big.” Summer let his hand drop, then glanced around the suite. “Um...do you need help around here? It’s a little...”
“A little what?” Liu blinked.
“Messy,” Summer said.
“Oh.” Another blink, and then Liu looked around the suite as if seeing it for the first time. “I hadn’t noticed,” he said.
Before shrugging, beelining for his bedroom, and disappearing inside, shutting the door with a firm click of the latch.
Summer stared after him, before smiling faintly.
You wouldn’t, would you.
At least it was Liu. He wasn’t sure he’d have been able to room with any of the other older teachers, when he’d likely revert back to the stammering boy he’d been and never come out of his room, too anxious to be around someone who was hard-coded in his brain as an authority figure.
Liu, though...
Liu was kind of like apples.
Harmless on the outside, mostly. Sweet, sometimes tart. But apples had sugar-cyanide compounds that could be digested into lethal hydrogen cyanide, and too many apples could kill someone.
Twenty-two.
Summer thought that’s what the number was.
Twenty-two.
And just like apples, Dr. Liu was only dangerous in large doses.
Or when left unattended in the chem lab.
Summer could live with that.
It wasn’t really any different from having Liu for a teacher, all those years ago—and he smiled to himself as he bent to start gathering up the clothing scattered on the floor.
Even when things changed, they stayed the same.
It took him well into the day to finish cleaning the apartment, including scrubbing the kitchen and bathroom from top to bottom; Liu needed a keeper, and apparently that was Summer’s job now.
But halfway through digging out what looked like crusted fire extinguisher foam from the bathroom sink, a heavy thump sounded outside the suite’s door, followed by a sharp rattle on the door.
He lifted his head, scrubbing the back of his forearm over his sweaty forehead, and listened—but there was no sign Liu had
