With neighbors like these, who needs enemies?
Author:© WebNovel
Chapter 1: PILOT
"Bai di, there's a complaint about you here. Says you keep this Zhan Yao person up with your loud live peloton sessions, which I can kind of believe when I actually see muscles under your uniform, but he's your neighbor and this way the chief won't know.", Zhao Yunlan remarked casually, throwing a paper airplane to the next desk along.
The unprofessional manner of passing notes was normal in this lax section of Florida pd, but getting a complaint about a decorated military pilot like himself, from a neighbor he didn't know, really took the piss. "Zhao ge, if you laid off the doughnuts and coffee you might feel like exercising. Junk food makes you sluggish and lazy, unlike my raw protein bars and peloton classes. I'll deal with this bozo myself, since he dared to complain about a great policeman like me to the police.", he snapped back.
"Didi, you may have been the best pilot the American air force ever saw, but here you just deal with residential complaints and rescue old ma's overfed Persian cat. Relax bro, no one's going to attack you had enough to require hand to hand combat. Have a donut and some of the magic magicians iced tea first, it's hot out there today.", the unprofessional boss of neighborhood complaints replied calmly. Although Bai Yutong felt like that was a low blow, he stayed quiet and begrudgingly accepted a half eaten donut, with the promise to do extra cardio to work it off and annoy that whinging neighbor doing so. He was due to meet his neigbor anyway, because it was important to know who you had to live next to for the next year and a half of his tenancy contract, and his mother would definitely ask, so hopefully Zhan Yao was a horrible barbarian that would keep Ma Bai away from his apartment. Overwise his proud mother would go bananas when she saw where him and his brother chose to live, in the cheapest apartment building in Florida, that he only resided in to be close to the police station and have enough room for his home gym without paying extra for a well made, big apartment.
Chief Bai had a lot of paperwork to sign, but he decided to bully his little brother a bit first so the office never considered the nepotism aspect of how the immensely overqualified air force captain Bai Yutong got a job in the sleepy Pd station as the community officer on his first try applying. He could never be accused of nepotism if he was never seen to give his brother special privileges, so the logic was fundamentally flawless. It was his fathers fault that they were working together at all, and he found it a pain to source enough work for two community officers. That’s why chief Bai was going to suddenly need a large mocha with extra sugar syrup in order to continue working on the pile of paperwork he really should get on with, and only Yutong was getting it. Zhao Yunlan was lazy enough without getting distracted, and since he got a new neighbor there was actually lunch for him to eat at lunch break.
In his opinion, that was the best expression of familial love, and he wanted a coffee anyway, so it was a good way to kill two ducks with one rock, or whatever the American people said.
Speaking of bad neighbors, there was another resident with a residential issue, except he couldn't take his problem to the police because his fellow boarder did nothing wrong. Boya, the angry goth like representative of the building, hated his neighbor Qiming, and his far too chirpy outlook on life, along with the fact that his cat honey bug ended up in his house most days because the cat was very good at scaling balconies. He also had frequent gatherings at his house, which interrupted the weekly schedule of the meeting of the introverted society, yet none of these complaints were taken seriously! Just this morning, as he was picking what leather jacket to wear to work with the new blood red converse he brought on sale, and a certain white tabby cat jumped in the window. Honey bug slinked round his leather covered legs, flicking her striped tail up and down against the carpet in delight, and laid down by his converse clad feet until the cat started to show signs of feline discomfort. Boya panicked, what if Qiming's beloved cat died in his house and he was hated forever? Honey bug spluttered and coughed, and before the occupant of the apartment could move, vomited a big fat hairball onto his new shoes.
"Qiming! Your bloody cat ruined my new shoes, and I want a bloody refund for the damage, so open up.", he yelled through the door, very mad and now late for work. He was not in the mood for anything but a bundle of dollar bills and a promise to lock poor honey bug in the house from now on.
Mr sunny and bright looked completely undisturbed, despite having an all black wearing madman hammering on his front door, "I'm really sorry Boya, but my princess loves to wander around and make hairballs, so I'll just pay extra to buy you two pairs of shoes. That's probably like $100 at most right? Princess will have to behave now, or daddy will end up bankrupt." The smile on his face while talking to his troublemaker cat was enough to convince Boya that Qiming was not only too happy, but completely insane. When he was handed the $100, he went back to his apartment to change into non soiled shoes, and ran to catch the bus to work. Figuring out his neighbor could wait, because he had money to make first.
That's why Boya hates his neighbor, as simple as cats vomiting on his new converse and trying to solve the problem with money, because an extrovert oozing happiness only meant trouble to loners like himself. He also got fired for being late once too many mornings, so he had to put double the hours in at his other job in the magical magician with insufferable Zhao Zhen.
Since he'd been forced to buy his boss brother the stupid coffee he demanded, finish his reports and rescue old ma's Persian again, Bai Yutong had to wait for his chance to talk to whingy Zhan Yao about withdrawing his complaint. Then he was going to shower, cook an expensive surf and turf dinner to reward himself for not murdering Jintang, change into exercise clothes and join the arm day class on peloton, making sure the volume was on high or low depending on how his neighbor behaved. If he was in China, it would have been perfectly acceptable to stick a money packed envelope and apology letter through the letterbox, call it a settlement and carry on, but in America you had to talk to people a lot, in times like this mostly. So he showered and changed into casual clothes before going over, or the ever present sweat on his uniform might scare the man off, before knocking politely on door number 12 with a bag of oranges as a good will present.
Zhan Yao opened the door in his work suit still, expecting the delivery man to be there with his dinner, and saw a stranger there. The stranger wasn’t especially ugly, and he was partial to a fine man occasionally, but the wonton soup he ordered was more alluring at this point in the day. “What brings someone to my door at this time of day? A man’s gotta eat and my delivery is due soon.”, he enquired pleasantly. If pleasant meant wanting to eat someone alive for disturbing his evening, then that was the description for Zhan Yao.
Bai Yutong felt like he should step back, but he had come to do a job, and it had to be done. “I’m Bai Yutong, the community officer from the local Pd, and the neighbor you made noise complaints about to the station. I apologise if my peloton classes stop you sleeping, and I’ll try to keep the volume down, but exercise can get pretty exciting when you get into it. Please accept these oranges and call officer Zhao tomorrow so he can sign your complaint off.”, he half begged, which was not like the great captain Bai, but he also knew to admit when he was wrong. His neighbor was quite young and admittedly very attractive too, so he would rather make friends, possibly more later on, and have a good relationship if they were going to see each other often. The pretty man was not smiling, yet he had stopped frowning.
“It’s nice to meet you Bai Yutong, I’m your neighbor Zhan Yao, and although I appreciate the gesture, I would rather you find another way to exercise that doesn’t keep me from sleeping at 2am. Most people would agree that 2am is for sleeping, not running like a nutter. So if you promise to stop that noisy exercising by midnight, I’ll call to retract my complaint. Also, I accept communication by letter if you prefer to think we live in china. “, pretty man replied curtly. He took the bag of takeaway from the ninja delivery man that had turned up, and shut his front door. No one had ever dared to shut a door in the mighty captain Bai’s handsome face before, let alone a lout who lived on delivery and hated exercise. Zhan Yao was going to pay for this, after his surf and turf dinner with orange desert, on an all night peloton party session.
Zhao Yunlan meanwhile had gone home to a nice peaceful, vaguely smelly apartment where he picked through the piles of clothes on the floor everywhere and gave a quick sniff to each garment to find the least offensive set of t-shirt and shorts. All that happened after he came home was as follows:
Shen Wei, the horribly kind young professor who lived across from him, always offered to share his delicious cooked dinner with Zhao Yunlan, because he always cooked too much for one person apparently. Each meal reminded him of his homeland, and his late grandmother's beautiful chinese food, so he enjoyed eating there immensely. The cook was as attractive as the food, and to date, was completely oblivious to all 379 attempts made to flirt with him as if he never recognised it as flirting, but that didn't make the orange duck, prawn dim sum, egg fried rice and sautéed veggies any less sumptuous to eat. The artistry that went into serving each feast was like weaving a tapestry, and it was addictive to watch Shen Wei's hands move. In fact, Yunlan was sure he could eat that food for the rest of his days without getting bored.
The smiling professor served him a generous bowl of rice, in a lovely jade coloured bowl that probably came from China to be the exact shade of royal nephrite jade, and let himself take in the pleasant scents of orange, ginger dipping sauce and many other delights. “So Yunlan, how was work? My PA was otherwise occupied with his own problems today, mumbling about his awful neighbor keeping him up, although the poor man has got terrible insomnia. Do have some duck Lan er, or would you prefer the prawn dim sum tonight?”, Shen Wei offered rather happily. When hearing about the good chef’s PA, he had to enquire if this colleague was Zhan Yao by any chance, but duck came first, especially when he was being given delicate shreds of meat directly onto his rice.
“I would love some duck Wei er, but I must ask if your PA happens to be Zhan Yao, who lives across from my colleague in the Pd. We received an interesting complaint that I passed to him, about taking part in late night and very loud peloton sessions, he was going to talk to him today once he finished work. As if I could turn down your cooking my dear neighbor, like how I can’t ever turn you down.”, the scruffy police officer replied calmly.
His companion took the flirtation as a compliment, for the 380th time, and simply gave Zhao Yunlan that beautiful smile he only seemed to give to him, “If you must know, Zhan Yao is the sleep deprived neighbor you heard from, he keeps irregular hours of sleep because of his doctorate work and when he does fall asleep, most of the time that’s when his fellow resident chooses to log into his live guided exercise classes. It’s unfortunate really, they could be very good friends by the sound of how responsible young officer Bai is.” Sometimes, Shen Wei sounded like his grandmother used to, worrying about everyone endlessly and trying to put people together with friends or life partners, whatever was possible.
There were no words to describe how precious his Wei er was, and that was why Yunlan just grinned and ate more of the food, because there wasn’t much to say to the dense rock that made him dinner and to be honest, acted like a doting wife. They weren’t in a relationship though, and he was sure that Shen handsome Wei must be promised to a worthy woman he could cook with, raise angelic children and live in peace.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone