Resisting Winter

It was a beautiful day, the sky was clear and the sun was shining brightly.

the morning had come long ago and it wasn’t too early, but the whole dormitory building was still quiet and peaceful.

If you listen carefully, you can vaguely hear the sound of soft footsteps, coming up the stairs and slowly climbing to the fifth floor.

The dormitory had six floors, the first floor was the place for the hostess aunt.

“Naked butt!”

When Bai Lu reached the dormitory room, she heard a girl inside complaining indignantly about something before she entered the room.

Her footsteps stopped in front of a room with the number 517 hanging on the door.

Bai Lu took out the key and inserted it into the keyhole before gently twisting it open, so as not to wake up the people inside.

Because the curtains were drawn, the room looked dim. The atmosphere of sleeping could be seen everywhere in the room. A pile of clothing was lying on the chair while a pair of slippers were strewn haphazardly on the floor.

Closing the door, Bai Lu put the things in her hand to the side before standing up and tip-toeing to the bed to wake the person sleeping there.

“Hello …… hello ……”

Her voice was soft and gentle, as if she was lulling the person to sleep rather than waking up. The figure under the blanket moved but didn’t wake up.

“Get up ……” Bai Lu called again.

The mountain of the blanket grunted twice before continuing to sleep.

Sighing in defeat, Bai Lu sat on the chair beside the bed and picked up her bag from the ground. After rummaging inside for a while, she bought out a brown packet, sweet smell of pancakes were wafting from the bag.

The mountain sleeping on the bed huffed and sniffled over, the head finally peeking out from under the covers. A snow white hand reached over to Bai Lu and tried to snatch the packet from her hand.

“Oucc! Fuck …… pancakes ah ……”

The hand was about to grab the packet but the packet was suddenly moved away.

“Get up.”

With a long sigh, the mountains sat up with a jerk, glanced at the clock and suddenly started shouting.

“Come on, come on! Don’t sleep so much! What are you going to do all day long …… Lao San!” Although she screamed quite loudly, the sleeping people
beside her still didn’t wake up. Seeing them not waking up, the hand searched under the blanket and pulled out a stuffed dog before throwing them onto the people sleeping in the bed.

This scene was everyday norm of this dormitory. Everyday, they wouldn’t wake up until things were hauled at them. So the hands throwing the stuffed dog hit the figures accurately sleeping on the bed. Mosquito net was hanged around the bed, but there was a big hole in the middle of the net. The stuffed dog went through the hole and hit the person sleeping inside.

The dog successfully smashed the face of two sleeping people.

“Do you want to die ah ……”

The girl yelled at the mountain while putting on pants, “Hurry up! We are already a little late today.”

After a lot of tossing and turning, the mountain rose from the upper bunk before hanging its upper body down to the lower bunk. A hand stretched over to grab the brown bag on Bai Lu’s hand as a lazy voice said, “leader, I think after I finish this college, I won’t have anything to remember except for the pancakes you bring everyday.”

Bai Lu looked the clock hanging on the wall before urging, “Hurry up and get ready. Otherwise, you’ll be late for morning study.”

The remaining two people also got up, three girls squeezed in the toilet and went around to snatch each other things while joking and laughing on the way. Bai Lu pulled the curtains open, the sunlight immediately poured in the room, her eyes couldn’t help but squint slightly.

In front of the dormitory building was a huge lawn, the gardener was cutting the grass with a mower. The air was filled with the smell of fresh grass.

There were already many students walking on their way to the college building. Some of them had pancakes or bread stuffed in their mouth, biting them and drinking milk while walking to their destination.

Bai Lu quickly adapted to the blinding sunlight, just as she had fully adapted to life in the south.

When she had just arrived here as a freshman, she had been shocked by the weather in the south.

It was said that “if there is heaven, it would be Suzhou and Hangzhou”. She never believed in this kind of silly saying. But when she first arrived in Hangzhou, Bai Lu had serious doubts about this saying.

It was too hot in summer, too sunny at the day and too humid at night.

She still remembered the days of during military training, their dormitory had no air conditioning. She, along with her other roommates lay in bed at night, unable to sleep in such a hot weather. They had to wipe their sweats every few minutes as if they were showering in them. Even if they managed to fall asleep, they would wake up in the middle of the night, with their body wet from the sweat from top to bottom.

In order to facilitate communication between students in the dormitory, the college tried to arrange a few students who stayed near the college to stay in the dormitory. The result was, Bai Lu’s once living one person dormitory became full of northern girls.



Not only Bai Lu, but also the other three girls who came to Hangzhou at the beginning also felt very uncomfortable. After staying there only half a month, cold, eczema, allergy, all kinds of disease caught them one by one. They even lost weight, the only person who was unaffected by this harsh weather and still maintained her sixty-five kilograms as an adult was Sister Pi.

The good thing was, as the days slowly went by, they all adapted.

Time is the most powerful weapon.

The first one to come out of the toilet was the one who just ate pancakes, Lao Yan. She was pretty fit, with small eyes and round face. Because of her robust body, she was also known by friends as Sister Pi.

The latter two were the oldest who came from Harbin and youngest who came from Beijing.

The dormitory’s skinniest was Bai Lu. But she was actually the oldest among the four of them. At the beginning, Sister Pi laughed everytime she saw her and remembered that she was the oldest but looked the youngest among them because of her short stature.

It was 7:30 a.m. and time for the morning self-study class. Sister Pi ate all the pancake but her stomach was still grumbling. On their way to the class, she bought a box of fried dumplings.

The four of them walked in a row, one of them was a bit slower than the rest because she was half asleep and half awake.


The next door elementary school children were frightened by Sister Pi’s large waist and flat-soled slippers. They stole a glance at her but was caught by Sister Pi who was biting on the fried dumplings.

“Where are you looking at?”

The little boy shivered and ran away.

“Hahahahaha!”

The laughter that followed him was brisk and bold.

Although she was already in their sophomore year, she still didn’t feel embarrassed for scaring a child.

The reason of her lose personality was because she still hadn’t felt the pressure of study, or maybe, she simply didn’t care.

According to her, everything is through, everything is loose, you just have to walk through it.

They weren’t allowed to bring food in the study session. So Sister Pi had no choice but speed up her eating and almost choked on it. Quickly swallowing the last piece, she threw the bag on the trash can before entering the classroom.

When they entered the classroom, they saw the class president Huang Xinying was preparing to roll call. Seeing the four of them, she couldn’t help but waved at them and urged.

“Quickly, quickly, go sit somewhere. I’m about to call roll.”

Huang Xinying was a pretty girl with a white and round face. She had a pair of big eyes that would grow wide when anxious.

Sister Pi along with the three sat in the back of row.

“Pretending to be fucking innocent.” Sister Pi snorted and cursed in a low voice.

Bai Lu sat beside her and whispered yelled at her as she started taking out her books, “Keep your voice down.”

Sister Pi hummed and went to sleep on the table.

In addition to Sister Pi and Bai Lu, the other two also didn’t have any good things to say about Huang Xinying. And it all happened because of a chain incident. The incident wasn’t quite big so their animosity to Huang Xinying was only in the line of not talking to her, not to the extent of tearing the face whenever it was seen.

The incident happened at the time of volunteer experience of the youngest.

In the sophomore year of Hangzhou, the university held a large national games. Various colleges and universities selected volunteers to arrange the games, Bai Lu never participated in these activities, Sister Pi was lazy to death, the one came from Harbin was busy in love, so only the youngest one went to volunteer work in order to add credits.

At that time, a total of two people were selected from their class, and one of them was Huang Xinying.

Huang Xinying who was always smiling at people looked like an easy, outgoing, likeable and friendly people. At first, the youngest and Huang Xinying worked together happily, but as the time passed, the youngest noticed something.

First of all, Huang Xinying started taking leave every and once in a while.

The youngest thought that since she was the class president, she was busy in handling school works. So, she helped her to do her things and didn’t think much about it. Later when the volunteer work increased, Huang Xinying didn’t came back to help at all.

Another incident was; one day in the morning, they went to the cafeteria to eat. Bai Lu met Huang Xinying there who was standing aside with an anxious expression. When she asked what happened, she said with an apologetic expression that she forgot to bring her meal card. So Bai Lu helped her to buy her meal. She didn’t think about asking her money back and just helped her out of the goodness of her heart.

The matter should be over like this, but rather, it lead to another incident.

After the last volunteer activity was over, Huang Xinying called a few boys from the broadcasting department, and Bai Lu together before taking them to a hot pot restaurant in front of the college. She ordered a bunch of food but left with an excuse without eating or paying.

Finally, it was again Bai Lu who paid for the meal. When she asked Huang Xinying why did she left, she said that her family didn’t like that she was wasting money like this, so she had no choice but to leave. But she assured her that she would treat her next time to repay her.

Unfortunately, Bai Lu never got the chance to get treated by Huang Xinying.

But Bai Lu was someone with a good temper, she never spoke about this things to anyone. Then one day, at the end of the second semester of sophomore year, Sister Pi came back to the dormitory with a dark face, muttering curses under her breath. When the three of them asked what happened, Sister Pi said Huang Xinying borrowed money from her to ride on the taxi but didn’t return it. Several days passed but there was no mention of her returning the money.

The youngest at that time suddenly remembered all the time she helped Huang Xinying and revealed everything to them. The three of them suddenly had a realization; they were being used by Huang Xinying. Sister Pi was so angry that she started cursing loudly.

“Fuck! She really was a cheap son of a bitch! I fucking thought she had forgotten, this bitch! I’m going to show the whole class what she looks like today!”

After cursing, she stomped out to go upstairs to Huang Xinying’s dormitory room, who lived just a floor above of them.

But Bai Lu stopped her.

“We are in sophomore now and she is the class president. Her relationship with the teachers is very good. It won’t be good to accuse her directly without any evidence.”

“But she borrowed money from us! She has to return them!”

“Send her a text message. Tell her to pay back privately.”

“I fucking–”

“Sister Pi.”

Bai Lu was the dormitory leader and the oldest among the four of them. So her words had more or less weight.

This matter was left alone, but Huang Xinying was blacklisted from the students of dormitory No. 517.

After the roll call, the group secretary went to the podium and urged students about the module class registration.

“Students who haven’t signed up yet, I suggest them to hurry up and do so. The ones from other classes have already been submitted.”

Bai Lu was majoring in media, the module class was about to take courses from other majors. There were quite a few majors to choose from. The four people in dormitory of 517 planned to enroll in the same course, so when the time comes, they can got each others’ back.

At the end of the morning study session, Bai Lu found the group secretary and enrolled all four of their name in the digital media art module.

“Aigoo, you’re really are late. Only the last four places are available.” The group secretary wrote the names of the people of Bai Lu’s dormitory and said.

Bai Lu was looking down on the form where their names were written when suddenly she felt a weight on her body.

“Lulu!” Turning her head, she saw it was Huang Xinying who hugged her. She(Huang Xinying) gave a sweet smile to the secretary and asked, “Did Xiao Fengfeng write our names?”

Huang Xinying looked at the names on the form as the smile slowly left her face. She looked at the secretary and said anxiously, “I told you before to leave two places in the module class for me and Yang Ting, but you forget it.”

The group secretary opened his mouth, “ah ……I don’t remember you to say anything about it, maybe I forgot.”

“Of course you forgot.” Huang Xinying said colyly as she pouted her lips.

The secretary looked at Bai Lu hesitantly as he asked, “Then what about you?”

Before Bai Lu could say anything, Huang Xinying hugged her and shook her hand, “Lulu ……”

Bai Lu was annoyed on the inside, but she still pursed her lips and told the secretary to change the classes, “Okay, then change it to advertising.”

“Okay, okay.” The group secretary quickly erased the names already written on the form and re-wrote them under advertising.

After all was said and done, Bai Lu went back at the dormitory and told everything to her roommates. Sister Pi became so angry that she was about to blow up.

Covering her head, she cursed under her breath, “again this bitch, ah, my blood pressure …… My head hurts……”

Bai Lu helped her massage to relieve the tension and said, “Forget it, advertising is also good.”

The girl who came from Harbin was trying lip gloss in front of the mirror and said, “Roommate, I heard my sister saying that the final exam of the module class in advertising is very troublesome. It’s not a written exam, you have to go outside and find a store by yourself, and convince people to do advertising. Have you thought how you would do it in this heat?”

Sister Pi, who had her head down sprang up from the chair and exclaimed, “What!?”

The youngest tried to ease up their worry and said, “I don’t think it would be that hard. There are so many stores around the college, anyway. The food and drink stores are almost everywhere, it wouldn’t be hard to find a store to advertise.”

The one who was trying the lipgloss also nodded her head in agreement as she capped the lip gloss and settled with them, “So, that’s it? We don’t have any classes in the afternoon, right? I’m going on a date with my boyfriend, what about you sisters?”

The youngest said, “I’ll go to the club, there are rehearsals.”

Sister Pi said, “my head still hurts of all the information. I want to sleep.”

Bai Lu rubbed Sister Pi’s head and was the last one to say, “I’ll go to the library.”