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Maomao didn't look up when a tray settled next to hers in the central cafeteria of the Royal University of Li. She also didn't look up when a figure dropped down into the chair beside her.
"Please tell me you've slept," Xiaolan's voice said. It sounded as if it came from far away.
Turning the page in her textbook, Maomao made a sound of assent. Posterior circumflex humeral artery. Lateral thoracic artery. "I've slept," she said, though she hadn't truly registered the question. It was mostly true, anyway. She'd gotten a few hours in last night between studying and...well, studying. With the fall semester of her senior year in full swing, the most important exam of her university career was just around the corner.
If she could pull off a perfect score, she might actually get that scholarship for med school. It would mean her old man wouldn't argue when she refused to use what little savings he had for tuition.
A hand waved in front of her face. "Maomao. Maomao!"
Blinking, Maomao looked up, and the noise of the cafeteria flooded in. It was busy at this time of day, with the lunch hour inching onwards, but Maomao focused in on her friend.
Xiaolan was looking at her with a weird look on her face.
"What?" Maomao wanted to know.
"You were muttering again," Xiaolan said. "Something about needing to practice."
Maomao sighed and closed her textbook. Picking up her chopsticks, she poked the rice still on her plate around a little before taking a bite. It had gone cold while she was reading, but she didn't really care. She did need to practice. Studying on a human was so much more effective than poring over her books.
Maybe she could find a volunteer.
She didn't realize she'd spoken that all out loud until a honeyed voice came from over her shoulder.
"You can practice on me."
Maomao recognized the voice instantly. Hmm, she thought, a frown settling onto her face and diagrams spinning in her mind. Jinshi could get under her skin, sure, but maybe…
Maomao stood and turned to look at him, a calculating look in her eyes. He must have just finished his poli sci class, judging by the textbook tucked neatly under one arm. More significantly, what were obviously very well-defined shoulders stretched beneath the purple knit of his sweater.
Ugh. That colour really was disgustingly good on him. It should probably be illegal for him to wear it. She could see glances coming their way from practically every table in the cafeteria.
Maomao shook the thought out of her head, because it wasn't important right now. What was important was that…
"They're perfect," Maomao muttered to herself, and then, not seeing the flush come out high on Jinshi's cheeks when she reached out to grab him by one shoulder: "Good muscle definition. Excellent biceps. I'll bet your sternoclavicular joint is superb."
Jinshi blinked at her, but he didn't try to shrug her hand away. If anything, he leaned into it. Yes, this just might work.
"Maomao," Xiaolan ventured hesitantly, looking back and forth between Maomao's face and Jinshi's. "You're…going to practice without a scalpel, right?"
"Don't worry about it," Maomao said absently, and then before anyone could respond, least of all Jinshi, she was dragging him out of the cafeteria.
---
"This will be easier if you sit down," Maomao told him. The only place for him to sit in her dorm room was on her bed—the single chair at her desk was home to an overflow assortment of medicinal herbs in little clay pots that couldn't fit on her window sill, which she rotated out to make sure they got enough sunlight.
Awkwardly, with his undershirt balled up in his hands, Jinshi sat down on the edge of the bed. His sweater sat folded neatly on her desk.
Jinish was tall—so tall that sitting like that puts them almost eye to eye. Jinshi lookede up at her expectantly, but Maomao was already busy poking at one shoulder.
"Yes," she muttered to his shoulder. "Yes, you are perfect." A little too perfect, to tell the truth—it was a little ridiculous how good looking Jinshi was. She settled one hand on each of his shoulders and pushed, and Jinshi leaned back a little, hesitant, as if wondering if that was what she wanted.
She pushed harder, until he was lying flat on his back, and then climbed onto the mattress so that she was straddling his hips. She ran one hand idly over his warm, sculpted stomach, counting out where each rib should be, and he shivered a little.
Looking up at him, she saw that he was biting his lip. "I forgot you were ticklish," she said, narrowing her eyes. If he was going to squirm around a lot, that might make things a bit difficult.
"It's fine," he said helplessly, and to his credit, Maomao could tell he was putting in a heroic effort not to burst into laughter beneath her. He lifted one arm from the mattress to make a go on gesture. "Continue on."
Maomao sighed. He really did have spectacular muscular definition. She pressed her hands flat against his chest and glared down at him. "You should be a model," she said, and then, when Jinshi opened his mouth to say something in response, added: "we really need a new skeleton in anatomy class."
Jinshi blinked at her, and Maomao blinked back for a moment. "Er…I didn't mean you," she said. She wondered if she should feel offended that he actually looked a little relieved, so she added, just because: "Professor Gaoshun told me I can't murder you."
Sounding almost helpless again, Jinshi closed his eyes and laughed. His frame shook a little with it beneath her. She took it back; he deserved no credit, given how badly a job he was doing at keeping still.
"Maomao," he said with a shake of his head. He opened his eyes, and there was something bright and almost defenseless in them, as if he simply couldn't help whatever he was about to say next. "Would you…like to get coffee sometime?"
She frowned down at him. "We had coffee just this morning in the cafeteria," she pointed out. He'd claimed the seat next to her as she'd desperately tried to consume enough caffeine to wake herself up enough for her nine o'clock biochem class. She didn't know why Jinshi bothered to live in the dorms; with his family's money, he could own the dorms. He claimed he liked to be close to his classes, but he could own the neighbourhood on the edge of campus if that was really true.
"Maybe…somewhere not on campus," he said. "There's this shop that has some new blends, and some of their teas are supposed to have some interesting medicinal propert—"
"The place next to Verdigris Street?" she broke in, her eyes shining, and a slightly dazed look crossed over Jinshi's face, like the sun was too bright or he'd seen something miraculous. He was always doing ridiculous things like that.
"That's…that's the one," he agreed.
Maomao beamed down at him, and he looked a little shell shocked. "It's a date," she told him. "Right after my anatomy exam."
The look of surprise on Jinshi's face deepened. Beneath it, there was something almost hesitant. Hopeful. "An…actual date?" he asked slowly.
Maomao sat back a little on his hips, her eyes narrowing. She wondered if she'd misread their entire relationship so far—the way he'd been trying to get her attention since their first year. The little gifts of flowers or herbs or bits of grass he habitually brought her whenever he returned from some opulent vacation with his family. (Xiaolan had looked somewhat skeptically at the grass the first time, but Maomao had been thrilled. You didn't see that type around here.)
"I assumed that's what you meant," she said.
"No, I…I mean, yes," Jinshi said. He flushed, and Maomao wasn't sure if she'd ever seen him look quite so flustered before.
"Good," Maomao said with a shrug. At least that was out of the way. She felt like they'd been dancing around each other for ages. She slid her hands back up his bare stomach and chest until she reached his shoulders again, and his breath hitched a little. "Now. I have an exam in three days." She reached out with one hand to grab a notebook from her bedside table and slapped it down next to Jinshi's head. "Can you quiz me? I seriously need that scholarship."
"I can't believe it was that easy," Jinshi muttered to himself, but he was smiling when he squirmed a little to reach the notebook with one hand, Maomao planting both hands back on his shoulders so she wouldn't slide off of him.
("Easy?" Basen demanded when Jinshi told him later. "You've been trying to work up the courage to ask her out for three years and you call that easy?")
Maomao eyeed him suspiciously, and Jinshi surreptitiously cleared his throat and got to work.
"Er…" he asked, peering at Maomao's notebook, the pages covered in her neat writing. "Where is my serratus anterior?"