“Your sloppy, drifting life will breed a pitiful monster,” she said, like mold blossoming in a damp jar.

Selina cleaned while grumbling, her broom whispering like reeds swaying beside a riverbank.

Hedi sprawled against the headboard, dunked a bread ring into a bowl of milk until it swelled soft as a sponge, then bit down and let the splash race through her mouth like a quick, silver fish.

Ah—lazy afternoon time, heavy as warm syrup.

Crumpled paper and scattered clothes lay on the floor like sickly waterweed on a lakebed, all droop and languor. A cool draft rattled the hanging curtain like a thin bell. Sunlight came to the window as a shy guest, warm and hesitant, trailing a quiet glow.

“Professor!”

“I hear you,” Hedi said, still chewing her bread ring. “You’ve repeated it every five minutes since you walked in.”

“Because your habits are terrible!”

“Think of cleaning as rent for living here. Doesn’t that feel better?”

Selina puffed her cheeks; the motion rounded her face like a ripe peach.

A phone rang. She trotted over and pressed the receiver to her ear. “Hello… mm, no thank you. Right. Bye.”

“Who?”

“A milk salesman.” Selina frowned. “Did you leave your number with different delivery companies?”

“No way. I guard my privacy.”

“Counting the calls you cut off, that’s salesman number two.”

“The last one wasn’t, but he was just as annoying.”

“The Deputy Dean?”

Hedi’s eyes lit like sparks in dry tinder. “What a wild guess.”

“No, no, I don’t hate her.” Selina lowered her voice. “The seniors sometimes whisper about the Deputy Dean. And you quarreled with her…”

“Trust the seniors,” Hedi said, chewing hard so her words thudded like stones. “If someone schemes against me, I’ll pay them back double, sooner or later.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full!”

“Got it, got it.”

“Crumbs on the sheet—clean them yourself.”

Hedi shifted, cupped a hand to her lips, and ate in small, careful bites. Every fallen crumb she dunked into the milk, then drained the bowl like a quick, pale river.

Call it efficient use: turn crumbs into tiny delights of lazy time. But the crumbs on the bed still had a trash destiny; no favoritism, fallen food stays unfit to eat.

Selina took a towel and gave the cramped, overstuffed room a renewal-scale scrub, a storm of order sweeping through shelves and corners. She packed the old clothes on the floor into a crate, ready to haul them to the quick-wash laundromat in one go.

“Do you… have a cleaning compulsion?” Hedi tried, a feather of doubt brushing her tongue. “Or is it actually filthy?”

“Self-reflection’s a good habit, Professor.”

“It’s not that dirty, right? Looks like just dust.”

Her words drifted like wind, a glass marble skimming a bright track, then slipping soundless into the soft light.

Hedi leaned over the second-floor glass balustrade and watched Selina clean, like a cat studying a dancer.

By the time the room truly gleamed, dusk had folded the sky into a violet shawl.

How did such a small room swallow so much time?

Hedi, who always treated cleaning like a perfunctory ritual, didn’t know and didn’t care to dig at the reason. She took Selina out for dinner, chose a place with a good mouthfeel as a small reward, like placing a ribbon on a well-done task.

At first, Selina felt stiff, a bird in a new cage. Then she watched Hedi’s courteous tone, her near-perfect manners, and the way she kept oil from touching her clothes like she was warding off ink. Surprise lit her face like a struck match.

“You aren’t like this at home!”

“No one takes off the mask outside.” Hedi cut a slice of beef sprinkled with ginger like frost. “Whether it’s to leave a good impression or whatever—any excuse works.”

“I’m always the same.”

“Lucky you—a pure girl untouched by smog.”

“You’re mocking me again!”

“Again?”

“On the city wall, you said, ‘It feels great not to think about deceiving you.’ That was mocking me!”

“I don’t remember.” Hedi dabbed oil from the corner of her mouth with a handkerchief, a small cloud erased. “But not this time. I’m genuinely envious.”

“What’s there to envy?”

“Most people, me included, can’t make inside match outside.”

“If I could, I’d like to be multi-layered like you.”

Hedi’s voice stayed calm, a lake that hid its currents. “The person inside wants to get out. The one outside wants to get in.”

“Feels like I’d understand you better.”

“If you really want to understand, don’t rely on feelings. Read psychology. But those books will box you in for now, narrowing your gaze like a tight visor.”

“Then how do I understand?”

“You called me many-sided. Every side—good or bad—is me.”

Selina nodded, understanding like mist—there, but thin.

Seeing how earnestly she ate, Hedi felt the meal well spent, a seed fallen into good soil.

“Thank you.”

“No need. You cleaned my room.”

“It’s my first time eating with someone,” Selina said after a quiet stretch, her voice like a thread pulled through fabric. “It used to be my sister with me.”

“Why?”

Selina tilted her head, and her slim index finger wandered long across the tablecloth, tracing a pale path. The question got drawn into the white like a drop of tea in milk.

After a while, she said, alone as a single lamp in a hallway, “I don’t know.”

“The seniors treat you badly?”

“They’re okay. It’s just the Deputy Dean never starts a conversation with me.”

Hedi felt the answer settle like dust. Her sister opened the Dark Realm. Only a few know. But she must be high-standing, like Stratford. People in the system read faces; they adjust their behavior to the leader’s weather—nothing more normal than that.

No wonder the seniors stick to work talk. Idle chat dies at the door.

“I can’t picture your life at the institute.”

“I’m still happy.”

“Are you happy with me?”

Selina nodded and smiled, a bud half-open. “Without those things we went through, we wouldn’t be this close. Besides, you give me a strange flutter, something I don’t feel with other girls.”

“Bridge-sway effect. That one I do know.”

“Not quite.”

Hedi watched Selina’s hesitation tremble like a moth’s wing. She called the waiter and settled the bill, and let the topic fall like a curtain.

She meant to take Selina home. Selina asked to stroll, wanted somewhere fun.

“Nothing fun around here,” Hedi said, shaking her head like a willow. “Life here’s ordinary to me. The freshness wore off. I can’t think of anything.”

“A pretty place works.”

“There’s a small fountain nearby.”

A thin night mist drifted, and a copper windmill turned with a slow wheeze, chopping the air into chill, damp slices. The fountain sat beside it, and the wind laid fine ripples across the shallow pool like scratched glass. At the clear bottom, a few glass bottles furred with algae lay asleep, like ruins someone had neatly forgotten.

Selina stared up at the fountain, dazed as a deer in snowfall.

Hedi stood beside her and turned the earlier words over, the weight of them like a smooth stone in her palm.

That strange flutter?

A pang moved first—tender and wary, like a bird hopping on a branch it doesn’t trust. Then thought followed, steady as an old clock. The elders say a soul is memory. No doubt I carry my past-life memory; the other world’s scenes carved themselves into me and linger here as my temperament.

In other words, my soul stayed male.

Different worlds, different bodies. But my inner core—self-recognition, gender and all—didn’t shift with rebirth. It’s a seed that holds its shape, no matter the soil.

“Why doesn’t the fountain spray?” Selina asked, sudden as a pebble tossed.

Hedi lifted her gaze to the round pillar at the top. “It broke ages ago. Look at the bottom.”

Selina nodded, simple as a bell’s single note.

“Let’s go home.”

“Mm.”

Hedi reached out a hand, a bridge offered. Selina raised her arm instead, carefully tidied Hedi’s hair like smoothing a silk ribbon, and pinched the stray lock at her temple.

“Your hair’s messy.”

“…Thanks.”