Perhaps because it was their first day back at the dormitory, everyone was unusually excited.
Last night, Lin Nan didn't fall asleep until three o'clock, and the other two reportedly didn't lie down until around five. When he woke up, he found it was already ten o'clock.
Looking at the bed diagonally across from him, Lin Nan discovered that their last roommate, Xiong Da, had returned to the dormitory at some point and was now quietly setting up his laptop. He was also opening his wardrobe, taking out the figurines he hadn't taken home during summer break one by one from their packaging boxes, wiping them clean before placing them on the bookshelf.
Lin Nan's bookshelf at least had a thick stack of freshman-year textbooks, while this guy's bookshelf didn't have a single book in sight.
His movement caught Xiong Da's attention. He turned to look and asked coldly, "I didn't wake you up, did I?"
"No."
Everyone in the dorm was fairly considerate of others. At least there were no instances of loudly playing games late at night while shouting and hammering away at keyboards.
Lin Nan turned to face his bed and slowly climbed down the ladder to the ground, yawning tiredly and scratching his messy bedhead.
"Did you get shorter?" Xiong Da stopped as he passed by Lin Nan with his figurine, using his free hand to gesture, "Weren't you up to my eyes last semester? Now you're only up to my nose?"
"I was wearing sneakers then," Lin Nan immediately responded, finding a good excuse.
"Is that so?"
As the shortest member of the dorm, Lin Nan didn't understand why these guys always focused their attention on his height.
He thought he could get away with that explanation but then heard Xiong Da ask: "Did you get paler? Your skin seems to have improved?"
Why does everyone say that?
Lin Nan wasn't sure how much he had changed, but at least to himself, he didn't look much different from a few days ago.
"I've been staying inside at home all day. What's wrong with getting a bit paler?"
He rolled his eyes at Xiong Da in annoyance, but Xiong Da suddenly jumped back several steps as if he'd seen a ghost, bumping his backside into the chair behind him: "What the hell? Why are you batting your eyes at me?"
"I wasn't..." Lin Nan felt guilty and quickly grabbed the towel hanging on his bed frame, keeping his head down as he hurried to the balcony.
The dorm's balcony was very basic. Coming out through the back door was a roughly one-meter-long washing basin on the left, and the bathroom was on the right. The balcony was narrow, especially at the washing basin area, so narrow that if one person stood there, another person could hardly pass by.
Lin Nan naturally went to the deepest part of the washing basin area without hesitation to avoid blocking Xiong Da's path later.
Xiong Da followed him onto the balcony, taking a small cloth and dampening it slightly with water before carefully wiping down his "wife's" body.
Most people found it hard to understand Xiong Da's attachment to his figurines, but apart from asking out of curiosity when they first met, Lin Nan hadn't commented much on his hobby afterward.
"Have you ordered takeout yet?" Lin Nan asked unclearly while brushing his teeth.
"Not yet."
"Perfect, I might end up being the one delivering your takeout later."
"Hm?"
"I'm going to apply for a job right now. They must be really short on delivery workers at the start of the semester. It's a good chance to make some money."
Xiong Da glanced at him and advised coldly, "I heard it's very tiring. If you can't handle it, just come back and be a slacker."
"No way that'll happen!" He confidently thrust out his chest, patting it, but was surprised to find it felt somewhat soft when he touched it.
Xiong Da was a man of few words, and after giving that brief warning, he returned to the room with his half-dry cloth to quietly continue wiping his figurines.
Lin Nan, however, was quite concerned about the softness in his chest. After quickly finishing his morning routine, he hid in the bathroom, lifted up his t-shirt, and reached inside to feel.
Hmm...
He noticed there seemed to be some extra flesh on his chest.
"Did I gain weight?"
He pressed gently in confusion, but unexpectedly felt a slight pain and a hard lump within. He was still bewildered at first, but after thinking carefully, Lin Nan's face suddenly turned pale.
"Don't tell me this is... developing?"
Urgently fixing his clothes, Lin Nan quickly ran to the electronic scale in the dorm to measure his weight. It was still just over 100 jin, almost no different from last semester. (TN: 50 kg=110 lb)
He felt dizzy, standing on the electronic scale, unable to come to his senses for a long while.
"Gained weight?" Xiong Da peeked at the number, "Pretty light."
"Mm..."
"You don't look good," he said expressionlessly, looking up.
Lin Nan nodded, slumping dejectedly into a chair, staring blankly into space. But Xiong Da seemed somewhat concerned, getting up and walking behind him, reaching out with his cold expression to press against Lin Nan's forehead.
After a moment, Xiong Da pressed his palm against his own forehead, asking with a hint of confusion: "Doesn't feel like you have a fever."
"I..." Lin Nan stood up again, sighing with complicated emotions, "I'm going to deliver takeout now."
"You're not acting normal."
...
Having studied at this school for a year, Lin Nan had seen delivery worker recruitment notices in the cafeteria almost every time he went there. This was enough to show how desperately the school needed delivery workers.
Sure enough, following the phone number on the recruitment notice at the cafeteria entrance, Lin Nan quickly met with the cafeteria manager and smoothly became an honorable part-time delivery worker.
The school's delivery workers usually earned seven yuan per hour. Students generally worked two-hour shifts starting at noon and the same in the evening, starting work at six o'clock, also for two hours. This meant that if Lin Nan honestly delivered takeout, he could make over 800 yuan a month.
It also included lunch and dinner.
Perhaps because they were short-staffed, or perhaps because this part-time job had no requirements, Lin Nan immediately chose to take the job after learning about the benefits.
There were two types of delivery workers: one delivered from the cafeteria to the dormitory buildings, and the other delivered from the dormitory building entrance to individual rooms.
Lin Nan chose the latter without hesitation since it didn't require being in the sun.
However, things weren't as easy as he had imagined.
The school dormitory buildings usually had six floors with no elevator.
This meant that Lin Nan had to constantly run up and down these six floors without rest during the two-hour lunch shift to avoid delays.
Lin Nan's peak physical condition was in kindergarten, when he could do cartwheels and pull-ups on the neighborhood exercise equipment. Since then, his physical fitness has only declined, though last year, during the physical test, he could still maintain an above-average position in his class for the thousand-meter run.
But now...
When a batch of takeout arrived on the first floor, Lin Nan quickly picked up the delivery basket, checking orders while walking. However, by the time he had delivered from the first floor to the sixth floor dormitories, he was already sweating profusely and had weak legs.
"This isn't right... even if my stamina is bad, I shouldn't be this out of breath just from climbing five floors and walking a few steps, right?"
"Last year, after the thousand-meter run in the physical test, I could still play ping pong, and I haven't gained weight this year. How did my stamina get this bad?"
After finishing this batch of deliveries, Lin Nan stood by the sixth-floor stairwell, sweat dripping from his hair to his neck, his face white with a red flush, panting like a bellow, his legs trembling violently as if he might fall down the stairs at any moment.
So he had to lean against the stair railing, slowly inching his way down step by step.
When he returned to the first floor, Lin Nan despairingly discovered another basket of takeout at the dormitory entrance, giving him no break at all.
Well, this was great - not only was he going through secondary development, but his stamina had mysteriously declined as well.