The faint aroma of leftover fried rice still lingered in the air when Ian stepped out of the mini kitchen area. But after only two steps, the forehead of the Adichandra Group CEO collided hard with the bathroom doorframe.
Thud!
"Ow," Ian groaned softly. His voice remained flat, but his fingers reflexively rubbed his forehead, which had turned bright red.
Excel, who had been focused on moving the cursor across his laptop screen, immediately spun his wheelchair around. The sarcastic expression on the red-haired young man’s face blossomed to perfection.
"Are you trying to crash here or bring down my boarding house?" Excel quipped, propping up his chin. "That door’s been standing there peacefully for years. Never had a problem with anyone’s forehead before."
Ian rubbed his forehead without changing expression. "Your bathroom door is too short. The standard height is at least two meters."
"Your grandpa’s standard is for planting trees!" Excel shot back, rolling his eyes lazily. "This is a cheap boarding house in a narrow alley, not the president’s official residence. You could’ve ducked a little. Besides, how tall are you?"
"One hundred ninety-two centimeters," Ian replied curtly.
"That explains it! Even a streetlight pole is shorter than you!" Excel clicked his tongue and shook his head. "Whatever. Rather than having you bring down my door, just sit quietly on the floor."
Ian looked at the cement floor in front of him, covered by a thin plastic mat patterned with a checkerboard. His eyes narrowed. He stared at the mat as if it contained some kind of hazardous substance.
"What now? Is my mat poisonous?" Excel asked, puzzled.
"Dust," Ian answered briefly. He awkwardly knelt, took a tissue from the table, and wiped the surface of the mat three times before finally sitting cross-legged.
"Good grief." Excel stared wide-eyed at his guest’s behavior. "Are you an ordinary employee or the crown prince of England? Your cleanliness is giving me chills. Are you allergic to dirt?"
"Hygiene is important," Ian replied stiffly. The broad-shouldered man tried to lean his back against the wall, but his overly long legs took up even more of the eight-square-meter room’s already limited space.
"Whatever. Just don’t break any of my stuff," Excel said, turning his attention back to his laptop.
An hour passed in slightly awkward silence. The only sounds were the rapid tapping of Excel’s keyboard and Ian’s short sighs.
Ian, accustomed to handling investment documents worth tens of billions, now had no idea what to do. He had deliberately shut his phone off completely so the board of directors couldn’t track him.
Ian’s eyes wandered around the corners of the room. His gaze stopped on Excel’s mug, sitting right beside the laptop.
"Excel," Ian called.
"What?" Excel answered without taking his eyes off the illustration draft he was drawing.
"You’re holding the cup incorrectly."
Excel’s fingers stopped moving across the keyboard. The young man slowly turned and stared at Ian in disbelief. "What? What did you just say?"
"You’re supposed to hold it with two fingers pinching the handle from above, not stick all your fingers through the opening," Ian explained flatly, dictating as if he were giving instructions to a subordinate in the boardroom. "That makes the cup unstable and risks spilling onto your laptop."
Excel blinked twice, looked at his cup, then looked back at Ian. "Oh, honored guest, do you realize you’re crashing in my room?"
"I do."
"Then why are you acting like you get to dictate how I drink my instant coffee?!" Excel exclaimed in exasperation. "I can hold it with my big toe if I want! It’s my coffee, my laptop, my room!"
"I was only offering advice," Ian replied without a hint of guilt. "Your laptop could be damaged if you spill on it."
"You’re acting like some big shot! At this rate, I’m going to fire you as my guest in a minute," Excel grumbled in his trademark sharp tone.
Ian fell silent. He had just realized that his dominant personality and habit of giving orders at the office had followed him into this cramped boarding house. He turned his gaze toward the small window in Excel’s room, trying to swallow his pride.
Not long afterward, Ian’s stomach rumbled softly again. The very distinct growl pierced the silence of the room.
Excel laughed brightly. "Hey! What was that? The sound of your empty wallet or your starving stomach again?"
Ian turned his face toward the wall. "It was nothing."
"Your pride is as high as the boarding-house ceiling," Excel remarked as he rose from his work chair. He grabbed a red plastic jar filled with cheap biscuits from the shelf. "Here, fill your stomach. I don’t have money to buy you a steak."
Excel tossed him the jar. Ian caught it with lightning-fast reflexes. The man stared at the faded label on the cheap biscuits.
"Open it and eat. Don’t just stare at it like you’re waiting for a miracle," Excel ordered as he sat back down.
Ian opened the plastic jar’s lid with extreme care, as if he were opening a safe containing classified state documents. He took out a biscuit and ate it with perfect politeness, without making the slightest sound.
Excel, secretly watching from the corner of his eye, could only smack his own forehead. "Crazy. Even the way you eat five-thousand-rupiah biscuits looks like you’re at a royal state dinner. Are you actually some rich guy who ran away from home or something, Ian?"
Ian paused his chewing for a moment. "I’m just an ordinary employee."
"An ordinary employee who acts like an exiled crown prince," Excel sneered with a quiet chuckle. "Fine. Once you finish those biscuits, sweep the floor! Maybe a human streetlight pole like you can be a little useful in this room."
Ian stared at the handle of the coconut-fiber broom Excel held out in front of his face. Sebastian Adichandra, a man who usually held a gold pen worth hundreds of millions of rupiah, was now being forced to accept a cheap, dusty broom handle.
"What? Is the broom handle not sterile enough?" Excel shot back sharply.
Ian drew a deep breath, then accepted the broom with an expression cold as ice. "No. I’ll sweep now."
"That’s more like it! Good!" Excel laughed in satisfaction.