YBCB SS: Roommates and Mysteries

As promised, here is the side story about Yan Si and Li Zi Hong back when they were roommates in university! They have such an amazing friendship xD

Speaking of side stories, I recently read some great YBCB fanfictions. If you can read Chinese, I strongly recommend this one in particular. It’s about Yu Yin suddenly de-aging one day, and he goes around talking to the “grown-up” versions of his friends and family and asking them if they remember the conversations he had with them as a kid (reference to CNY SS). The characters are written so perfectly, and it’s cool to see all the references to the actual content! And little Ah Yin is super adorable as always <3

Feel free to message me on Discord if you would like more Chinese YBCB fanfiction recommendations~

Translated by: TaffyGirl13

 Index 

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Side Story: Roommates and Mysteries

Every school has a few mysteries, just like how every city has urban mysteries.

As a student in law school, no matter how indifferent Li Zi Hong was, he had at least heard one or two of the basic ghost stories, such as the student jumping from the building.

But to him, the real school mystery might have been right by his side: his medical student roommate that he still found very strange despite having dormed together for a period of time.

If he put it in his own words, that roommate was not any different from a mystery in and of itself.

“Could you please tell your roommate not to scare away the girls here for parties?”

The dorm head said with a heavy expression, “We’ve already had two groups run off this month. At this rate, our dorm won’t have any girls that want to socialise with us, and we’ll become a shitty dormitory filled with rotten men…Think about it, other dorms are occasionally catching people sneaking girls in to spend the night, and can even see the girls plead cutely to be let go. Such a scene is just brimming with youth.”

That’s violating dormitory roles.

Li Zi Hong sternly gazed at the dorm head that really wanted everyone to break the rules.

“As a bonding activity, we should all go up to the mountains to see the stars and watch the sunrise, then only return back after curfew. Isn’t collectively climbing over the walls a scene that should appear in a normal university?!”

No.

Not at all.

“And the girls would take everything from you guys every month, so you’d have to constantly borrow money from classmates. And then because you don’t dare to let your family know, you would only discuss it with the dorm head or the instructors. This is a misstep that is necessary to experience in life. A male dorm that hasn’t had these things happen isn’t anything like a university’s male dorm at all!” The dorm head was upset now.

Li Zi Hong stared at the dorm head as he started to think that maybe it was the dorm head that was the mystery.

***

“Huh? Scare girls away? I haven’t.”

As soon as Yan Si returned from school, he immediately charged into the bathroom, trying his best to wash and scrub off the odour stuck on him from anatomy class. He had to go to a student’s house later to do tutoring; bringing this smell with him would probably shoo the parents out.

Li Zi Hong looked at the splashes coming out of the half-open bathroom door and silently grabbed the jeans he was planning on washing tonight to lay outside the door, saving him from a flooded room that he would have to clean later. “The dorm head complained that during the last party, you had a skull and scared all the girls away.”

“Oh! That’s because, during the party, a car accident just happened to occur across from us. A drunk driving a scooter was over-speeding in the opposite direction and directly crashed into a cement truck. The driver’s head was completely destroyed on the spot. The person he was carrying also flew out and all their limbs were broken. Everything was scattered out within a twenty-metre perimeter or so.” Yan Si shut off the water and pulled out a towel as he wiped his head, his voice floating out from the bathroom. “In the end, the head exploded and that driver’s skull was sent flying in our direction. It just happened to land on a girl’s bag, scaring her half to death, so I kindly helped take it off. Who would’ve thought that they’d all collapse on the ground and start crying…Seriously, I originally wanted to tell her that she still had a piece of scalp stuck on her, but she actually just ran off. But people really shouldn’t drink and drive, it’s basically premeditated murder whether the person that is killed is themself or others. If I was in the insurance field, I definitely would write in the insurance papers that a claim can’t be settled from being killed by your own drunk driving; otherwise, I’d die from the financial losses sooner or later.”

“…The dorm head said you chased them away twice this month.” That truly is a coincidental accident, but is the other instance too? Li Zi Hong could not help but grow a bit curious.

“Twice? It was just a night excursion at the beginning of the month.” After putting on a pair of pants, Yan Si walked out from the bathroom. As he talked about that invitation, he began to complain a bit. “No idea who arranged it, but they made me go out at 3 AM to watch the sunrise. I had forgotten to ask for the time too, so I could only concede and go. In the end, after they ran up the mountain, they said that there was an abandoned house that everyone had to go explore together. As soon as we entered, we saw someone that had hung themselves. It was me that reported it to the police to handle too.” There were two or three other classmates in the group that time; I hadn’t expected they would straight up just turn and flee. To think that there are actually medical students that flee at the sight of a corpse!

Li Zi Hong suddenly understood.

Though the fact of the matter was, the problem indeed was not with Yan Si.

“What are you looking at?” Yan Si wiped his hair as he noticed his roommate not playing video games today as usual. He curiously went over to discover Li Zi Hong reading a scrapbook. “Isn’t this the self-published newspaper by the student council?” The kind with a ton of bullshit written in it, though it does sometimes have many interesting things too.

“Mn.” Li Zi Hong flipped through the item he had borrowed from a classmate and carefully read the horror column in it.

“You’re interested in the school mysteries?” Yan Si eyed the clipping and saw that it talked about a few of the school mysteries at their campus, such as someone playing music in the music room at night – the type of ghost stories that were older than old.

“No.” Li Zi Hong was not very interested in rumours that spread through word of mouth without evidence.

“For real?!” Yan Si wore a shocked expression and even stumbled backwards. “Are you a university student or not?!”

“I am.” Li Zi Hong seriously nodded.

“As a university student, you should have at least a bit of interest. Like there was a time when my friend and I went back to school at night for an exploration trip that everyone has to do in their lifetime.” Yan Si patted his roommate’s shoulder solemnly. “You should properly experience life. Don’t always stay holed up inside the dorm to play games. Your market price will go down that way…Male law students should be very popular instead…” He honestly didn’t think he had seen his roommate attend a party before. Most of the activities Li Zi Hong did were healthy exercises under the brilliant sun like trekking through mountains and waters.

After evaluating this, Yan Si came to the sudden realisation that his roommate was actually very depressing. Aside from working part-time, playing games, and hiking, Yan Si honestly had not seemed to have seen him go out to do anything else…excluding hunting for food and doing laundry.

Generally speaking, he had never seen anyone live a healthier life than his roommate.

“I won’t return to the dorm in the evening. I’ll be going on a night excursion,” Li Zi Hong dutifully informed his roommate as his eyes stayed fixed on the cut-outs.

In response, Yan Si lifted a hand to place on the other’s forehead. “You don’t have a fever?” Could it be gastroenteritis?

“Weren’t you the one that just said I had to go experience life?” Li Zi Hong rolled his eyes as he casually brushed the hand away.

“Hearing it in reality is still a bit shocking,” Yan Si chuckled. He then shifted his gaze back onto the clipping. “So the law school finally has someone doing a school mysteries night excursion? Which one? Bro, I know every single one very well. If you want to know anything, I can tell you. Or do you want to hear all of them?”

“Going to the agricultural school…”

“The old warehouse at the agricultural school, huh.” Yan Si immediately put on the solemn expression of a professor standing at a platform as he even picked up his roommate’s scrapbook.  “This story is related to our university’s oldest history. If anyone at our university doesn’t know this, it means that—”

“I’ve already read it,” Li Zi Hong evenly interrupted the other person to prevent the nonsensical explanation from being spouted out. He coughed and took back the scrapbook he had borrowed from a classmate.

He honestly had not known about the school having ghost stories. He had only learned of it after a classmate had invited him on a night excursion. Then, believing that his life was very barren, the classmate had lent the scrapbook related to various school legends for him to cram.

“Oh, I know about the honourable Chiang statue in front of the female dorm too.” Yan Si looked [down] at the other person’s hands and earnestly studied the clippings. “It’s said that in the past, a girl was falsely accused by her roommate to have stolen money and jumped off a building to commit suicide. After that, there would frequently be screams heard from the dorm, so the school put the honourable Chiang statue there.” But why would placing an honourable Chiang statue stop the screams?

It was truly incomprehensible.

However, the honourable Chiang statue was tall and had a small platform. Since such platforms usually had others tossing money at it to make a wish, there were periodic collections of the coins at the female dorm to be used as public funds. As a result, the dorm had greatly benefitted in kind.

Yan Si was deeply convinced that it would be a huge loss if they erected a founding father statue over at the male dorm. But in the end, boys usually were not that romantic. It was more likely that the dorm head would have to spend all day shooing people off from the statue.

Sometimes, university students that had lost their minds were actually no different from monkeys.

“What times are you guys heading out? How many people?” Yan Si ripped open a bag of cookies as he also began to grow interested.

“1:30, six people.”

“Only six!” Is there something wrong with the law students?

“Three are female classmates.”

Yan Si chuckled as he gave his roommate a push. “To be frank, your classmate probably grabbed you to get enough people for a party.”

“…”

***

It was just as one would hear in many schools.

Inside the field area of the agricultural school, there was a small and run-down warehouse. It was said that it had been there since before the school had been established. There were several aged farming tools piled inside.

According to the professors and instructors, this warehouse had been an agricultural construction from before 1911, mainly used to store farming tools and as a temporary resting spot while farming. The main body had not been severely damaged, so after the land had been discovered, the warehouse had been cleared out and kept as a special landmark with the items still inside. It also gave the agricultural students a real example of farming tools used in the past.

This was how the legend went.

A very long time ago, when this place was not yet a school but a large section of farmland and groves, there was a young couple that often went on dates here.

But one day, the male stopped coming, having allegedly married the daughter of another rich family.

The young lady stayed here and waited day after day.

There was a farmer that saw the girl waiting in front of the warehouse window everyday on his way home after he finished work, until he heard a thud one day. Out of curiosity, he went into the warehouse to take a look and found the young lady that had already been hung to death. Her neck had snapped, and the fallen head had tumbled off to the side. The decayed body had a foul odour and it was crawling with maggots.

It was then that the farmer finally realised that the girl he had seen every day was the female’s corpse that had been hanging down from above.

“After that, people that passed by here at night would often head the thudding noises of the head dropping onto the floor.”

“That head must be in so much pain,” Yan Si seriously commented. “It would be bizarre if she didn’t have a cerebral concussion after hitting it every day like that. She might even regret it, thinking that she should have changed her method of death if she had realised this beforehand.”

The three girls that had originally been about to scream instantly began to laugh instead, and the frightening night atmosphere vanished completely.

Li Zi Hong glanced at the area illuminated by the flashlight beam, ignoring the other two classmates repeatedly rolling their eyes.

He sometimes thought that the agricultural students were pretty amazing. Exactly how did they manage to plant corn that ended up being two stories tall…? It gave the entire field area an ambiance well-suited for exploration.

Maybe there will even be man-eating plants that appear along the way.

“I wonder, can this corn be eaten?” Yan Si followed his roommate’s flashlight and looked up at the extremely tall corn. “Might as well pluck some off. If we don’t see the ghost, we can do a barbecue instead. What do you think?”

“At this time tomorrow, the agricultural students might end up turning you into fertiliser,” Li Zi Hong honestly voiced his thoughts to the other person.

“It turns out you can joke too.” Yan Si glanced at his roommate in slight surprise.

Unknowingly, the two had already been left behind by the group. The male classmates had brought the girls deeper into the field area to explore, and the glows from their flashlights vanished behind the multiple corn [stalks].

Seeing that Yan Si did not appear to have any intention of following, Li Zi Hong could only patiently wait for the others.

After all, leaving someone alone in this kind of place was not a good thing. Putting ghosts aside, it was possible that someone unrelated to the school could be waiting in this place for a chance to rob the students that were outside so late. In addition, there were no lampposts nearby for light, which meant there was a certain degree of danger.

And that wasn’t even considering the fact that from the beginning, his roommate had been lazily relying on his artificial lighting, having not brought a flashlight out with him at all.

“Did you hear a faint thud?” Yan Si turned his head before he could grab some corn as he had intended.

“A sound?”

When Li Zi Hong listened carefully, it seemed that there really was a faint sound. He gazed at the dark path and noticed that the source of the noise was the area’s vegetable field, which was also where his classmates had just headed towards.

“There will probably be screams next.” The very experienced Yan Si patted his roommate on the shoulder and casually checked his watch. “An essential noise for searching haunted houses.”

Just as he was about to say something, there really was a scream that rang out from not too far away. Li Zi Hong immediately broke out into a sprint and grabbed his roommate that had been planning on slowly swaggering over.

They quickly arrived at the destination for this night excursion’s test of courage.

It really was an extremely old building made of wood. However, it seemed to have been carefully maintained by the agricultural students. The surroundings were very clean without any garbage or junk.

From the distance, Li Zi Hong noticed that the girls were standing outside the warehouse, the small warehouse’s window already opened to reveal an old rope hanging down inside. The two males had already started fiddling with the rope. It seemed that nothing had happened.

“I think a sound came from the floor just now,” the girl standing outside stuck her head out to inform the two classmates that had arrived late.

“Is there really a ghost?” Yan Si was extremely intrigued as he also made his way into the warehouse.

After the scare, the girls no longer wanted to stay outside in the gloomy air, so they quickly followed Yan Si inside too.

Li Zi Hong was the last one to enter. He began to assess the small haunted warehouse from the legend.

The space felt extremely narrow with six or seven people crammed inside. The wooden floor was quite old, and there were holes in several places. There were some soil and weeds barely peaking out under the more elevated sections. The ancient farming tools were neatly arranged on one side.

The small warehouse did not have any lights, [though] it was probably fine when the window was opened during the day to let in light. Besides, it was evident that students rarely came inside. There was a bit of accumulated dust on the wooden boards.

The most imposing things that surpassed everything else was the rope in the centre of the warehouse. It hung down from the beam and swayed from side to side.

“This is fake.” Li Zi Hong could tell from a single glance.

Although there was not much light, no matter how one looked at it, that string did not seem like something that had been here for a very long time, nor did it seem to have suspended a person before. Most importantly, the teachers that had come to evaluate and clean the area would never have left such a thing here. The only possibility was that some other explorers had left it as a prank.

“So that was all the legend was.” The boys and girls were clearly a bit disappointed when nothing happened, but they still pulled at the string to indicate that they had been here.

Li Zi Hong checked the time. It was around two; it seemed like they had ended even earlier than he had thought. Li Zi Hong let out a sigh as he thought about finally being able to go back and sleep.

Aimlessly wandering around outside in the middle of the night was truly outside his lifestyle.

After stubbornly walking in a circle, they left the small warehouse in embarrassment.

“Let’s just go check out a location of a different strange occurrence next time,” the person that had invited everyone said. The friends each agreed.

Li Zi Hong, who was walking at the very rear, had slight misgivings about this. When he turned his head to ask his roommate, he finally noticed that there was nobody next to him at all.

“Did Yan Si not come out?” Li Zi Hong called out to stop the other classmates to hurriedly ask this. The six classmates in front of him shook their heads.

Don’t tell me he went to go look at the corn again midway?

Although Li Zi Hong found it strange, he still told the others to go back first before he turned around to walk back into the dark vegetable garden area, using his memory to backtrack in search of the person that had been left behind.

In this darkness, even an adult university student would probably feel exceptionally frightened.

When Li Zi Hong thought of the other person possibly feeling fear from being trapped in the darkness, he immediately began to blame himself to being too negligent. I should have properly confirmed everyone was there instead.

Since he was in a rush to go back, Li Zi Hong did not pay any mind to the few silhouettes he glimpsed swaying in another corner.

He had to quickly find his friend that was stranded in the dark.

***

Five minutes later, Li Zi Hong amended his thoughts.

He should not have assumed his roommate was a “typical” adult university student.

At the very least, his friend climbing the warehouse beam that was the core of the ghost story did not seem at all like a normal university student who would have been frightened.

“Yo, why did you run back here?” Yan Si was quite surprised when he saw the light come in.

Li Zi Hong stared at his roommate dangling off the ceiling and felt that he should be the more surprised one. “…No reason.” He was suddenly convinced that he truly had been overthinking. If he had realised this earlier, he would have just directly returned to the dorm to sleep instead.

“You came just in time. I was just going to see if I could get a source of light. Toss your flashlight up here.” Yan Si waved downwards from his seat on the cracking, extremely unstable beam.

Li Zi Hong threw his flashlight up with no idea what the other person wanted to do. He retreated back to the wall and raised his head to see his roommate seemingly examining the beam. “If I hadn’t turned back, how would you have gotten light?”

Yan Si raised a brow. “Haven’t you people that do self-improvement activities learned how to use a stone and dry grass to light a fire? This place is filled with them; it’s simple.”

“…” He had learned it before, but he was quite astonished that his roommate in front of him could do it.

“However, I wasn’t sure if I would accidentally end up burning down the warehouse from overexcitement and amusement…Ok, you can have it back.” Yan Si tossed the flashlight at his roommate before jumping down from the beam and patting at his dirtied clothes.

“What were you inspecting?” Li Zi Hong grew curious after watching the other’s actions.

Yan Si turned to look at his roommate and smiled as he blinked in response. “Only interesting people know interesting things. Come on, look at this.” He pulled Li Zi Hong over to a plank in the corner. Then, he leaned against the hole in the plank and, with practiced movements, stretched his hand down through it to grab at something.

Then, Li Zi Hong saw a snapped, black rope being pulled out.

No matter how he looked at it…

“There’s blood on it?” The dark coloured splotches seemed to be blood from a very long time ago. When he shone his flashlight on it, he could vaguely see the traces of the thickness and signs of it being split.

“Yep. I noticed it when I came here in the past and even brought a bit back to the labs to analyse. It really is human blood. But it’s so old now; I’d probably have to steal an instructor’s instruments to conduct more tests.” Yan Si swung the frail rope around as he indifferently said, “I later looked up the school’s document records and discovered that this warehouse did not have a wooden floor originally. In the beginning, it should have just been flattened earth; they couldn’t really lay down this type of floor. In addition, there used to be too many people that came here, making it difficult to jump up. I just checked, and there aren’t any obvious friction marks from a hanging.”

Li Zi Hong furrowed his brows as he looked towards his usually nonchalant roommate. “You mean to say….”

“Next is Dàgēgē’s scary story time. What do you think if the story was like this?” Yan Si smiled and glanced up at the beam above. “Let’s say, the couple used to meet each other here daily. Then one day, the male told his partner that he wanted to marry a young miss from a wealthy family and told her not to stay around him. But she was unwilling, and the male ended up killing her in a moment of panic…Maybe he used the rope in this warehouse. Then, afraid of others pursuing him, he hung the girl to disguise it as a suicide.

“Since then, the female corpse was suspended in here every day, up until the body rotted away so much that the body and head split from each other and fell down. The body that had decayed to the point of basically becoming fluids had spread across the ground. The person that found it probably was too scared to deal with it. What do you think was done?”

Li Zi Hong followed his gaze towards the wooden floor.

At a bit past 2:30, a series of knocking sounds came from underneath the floorboards.

“And the female might have even been pregnant,” Yan Si said as he threw the rope back into the hole and leisurely walked out of the warehouse.

Li Zi Hong stared at the wooden floorboards, and after a moment’s thought, also left.

After they had walked for a while, he finally stopped in his tracks. “…You haven’t already dug up the floor, have you?”

Yan Si turned around to chuckle. “How is that possible? The agricultural school would slaughter me. Everything just now was purely my own conjecture. That’s why I said you’re too much of a bum. There’s still other school mysteries; there’s even one near here. In the past, I used to eat breakfast at a place across from the school and listened to a granny at the shop tell ghost stories. Apparently, in her grandmother’s grandmother’s years, there was a story about a heartless man that abandoned his lover. In the end, she committed suicide while pregnant, and the body was never found.”

“…”

Li Zi Hong was starting to revise his impression of his own roommate.

“I’m a bit hungry.” Yan Si threw an arm around his contemplating roommate and glanced at the towering corn. “Can I really not pluck it?” Comparatively speaking, he was more interested in mementos like this.

“If you want to get slaughtered by the students from the agricultural school.”

“Hmph, I’d probably get killed off by someone else first.” Yan Si stopped walking as he gazed out at the clusters of light in the distance.

As Li Zi Hong stared at the thugs tumbling out from the corn and various other enormous, unidentifiable plants, he suddenly realised what the silhouettes he had seen earlier were.

A few thugs that had been wandering around for several nights looked at them with ill intent. One of them even stared straight at their pockets where their wallets were.

“By the way, can you fight, Roommate?”

Li Zi Hong studied the five people. “A bit.”

“Call the cops first.” Yan Si actually took his cellphone out to call 110¹.

“…Ah.” Li Zi Hong paused for a moment as he abruptly figured out what the strange discomfort he had sensed earlier was. “Just now…”

“What?” Yan Si cocked his head as he asked the person that was now back-to-back with him.

“Just now, there were six people that went back.”

“Ahahaha, did you see what went with them?” Damn, so there was actually something interesting on their side too! Yan Si was starting to feel a bit of regret.

“No.” Li Zi Hong had absolutely no memory of the sixth person.

“Roommate, aside from being a bum, your memory is also a bit lacking.”

“…”

“Hand over your money!”

***

Afterwards, Yan Si received twelve stitches, while Li Zi Hong received seven.

The cops rushed over to seize the five robbers that had specifically come out in the middle of the night to steal from lone individuals that were going back [to the dorms] late. The thugs were sent to the police station.

“Even if it was for self-defence, isn’t breaking their arms and legs going a bit overboard?” The instructor sitting across from them reprimanded, “There’s only two of you, how in the world did you break the limbs of five people?”

“Just…pop! Broken.” Yan Si dutifully demonstrated the hand movement of twisting [the limb] completely.

“Yan Si!” The instructor roared out.

“They had knives!” Yan Si flashed the arm that had needed twelve stitches, then grabbed his roommate next to him and pointed at the seven stiches on his face. “Look, Xiao Li’s face was also cut. What if he can’t pass the law exams and ends up having to rely on his face for a living! That’s why breaking the arms and legs is better, they can just connect them back.”

Li Zi Hong pushed the person away and solemnly returned to his seat to continue quietly listening to the lecture.

“It’s better if they’re uninjured! Their parents are requesting for the school to apologise—”

“Apologise, my ass. How about I just cut their nerves and arteries next time then?”

In short, an hour later, Li Zi Hong dizzily walked out of the office after being reprimanded by a teacher for the first time in his life.

For some reason, the instructor had unexpectedly not required for them to write a self-reflection report. They were written medical notes and commanded to properly rest in the dorms for two days instead of running around. They were also given some blood-replenishing food to bring with them.

Yan Si, who was walking right next to him, seemed to be in a very good mood.

In reality, four of the people last night had gotten their limbs broken by Yan Si.

Li Zi Hong was starting to wonder what exactly the medical school was teaching.

“Oh right, a senior from the agricultural school said they would send us corn!” Yan Si excitedly leaned on his roommate’s shoulders, having apparently not given up on the enormous corn as he amiably said, “Two of them at that. He said they would bring the corn to the dorm for us after they harvested it.”

“…” Li Zi Hong had no desire to ask when in the world Yan Si had gone to ask the people from the agricultural school for corn.

“Actually, there’s someone crawling through the space underneath the floorboards.”

Li Zi Hong whipped his head around to look at the roommate next to him and raised a brow. “Have you actually looked below or not?”

“Who knows~” Yan Si hummed as he happily dragged the other person out to play.

As for what exactly had followed their classmates back, Li Zi Hong never asked further since those classmates did not show any abnormalities anyways.

A week later, the huge corn really was sent to their dorm, and Yan Si cooked it to eat.

It was undeniably quite sweet.

Li ZI Hong stared at the very large corn stalk as he was starting to seriously believe that the students in the agricultural school were amazing.

Another three days passed after that.

Because Yan Si forgot to bring his keys, they were both locked outside of their room.

Li Zi Hong looked at his door as he decided that he had indeed been correct.

There was no mystery that could compare to his roommate.

His roommate was the one that was a true mystery.

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^{1. 110 is Taiwan’s emergency number. ↑}

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 Index