“Hey brother, not bad! Where’d you get the wheeler? Pretty sweet ride. All mechanical, right? Manpowered?” Dumb-mutt Jin appeared a fan of the past, and walked a circuit around the man.
The man offered a refined smile, and gave a reserved nod of his head. “It’s called a bicycle. All manpowered.”
“It’s got character! Lemme get a ride on it.” Dumb-mutt Jin moved closer still in zeal.
“I’m afraid not,” the suit-clad mad responded with a shake of his head.
“Pfft,” Dumb-mutt spat disdainfully. “Well that’s not fair, ya stingy bastard. Whatever.” As he spoke, he turned and entered the campus. He wasn’t a good student, true, but making trouble before the university gates was just plain stupid.
ζ
Lan Jue followed the chicken-head punk depart with his eyes, a laugh bubbling unbidden from his chest. Memories of his own time as a student came rushing back, and it appeared this university had it’s own problem kids. The exaggerated hairstyle reminded him of a young A-Cheng, who’d experimented with something similar. But, sadly, that ended when his mother came storming into the school with a pair of scissors. Snip, snip!
“Beep! Attention unregistered vehicle, you are prohibited from going further.” An emotionless digitized voice pulled Lan Jue from his reverie. Two men in uniform were already watching as he approached.
The two men were clearly campus security, and were clad in uniforms made to look like military fatigues. Both were quite tall, and quite burly.
“Unregistered vehicle, you are not permitted to enter the campus grounds. Please await processing, and produce your student identification for inspection.”
Lan Jue certainly wasn’t as old as Zhou Qianlin had tried to assert. Freshly shaved he looked quite young, no different than a post-graduate student.
Lan Jue smiled, and spoke to the uniformed guards politely. “Good morning, to the both of you. Please excuse me, but I haven’t got a student ID. This is actually my first day reporting to the university. I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the rules.” As he spoke, he pulled out a dark blue envelope from the basket affixed to the back of the bicycle. He opened the document and produced the letter of appointment.
One of the guards took the red paper from Lan Jue’s grip, while at the same time whipping free some instrument from his waist. He drew the apparatus over the document, scanning it. Only afterward did he open it to read.
“Etiquette teacher? What’s an etiquette teacher?”