THE MEETING OF THE INTROVERTS OR 'TMTI'

Zhan Yao had not got any sleep with the motivating shouting from his neighbors peloton class, that went on solidly from 10 pm to 2 am, and by the time he heard that the noise had stopped, he couldn’t sleep. He had every intention to go round after Bai Yutong seemed to go to sleep, and blare the most obnoxious music on spotify on one of Boya’s speakers he left at his apartment last introvert night on high, to stop his asshole neighbor getting any sleep too. That was just petty though, another complaint to the local Pd would be more damaging to the perfect officer Bai than one lost night of sleep, and he had a whole day of doctorate lectures to attend before he started tit for tat. The next month was vital to his coming graduation, and nothing short of a natural disaster was stopping him from becoming Dr Zhan, so he could teach criminal psychology at the university like Shen ge taught biology.

They met up at the magical magician coffee shop as usual, because Shen Wei liked to start the working day with a strong cup of black coffee, and nine times out of ten, Zhan Yao needed the same order to be borderline functional. Since talking to Zhao Yunlan last night about his PA’s neighbour dispute, he could tell one thing, just by looking at the grocery cart worthy eyebags. Bai Yutong’s negotiation had either not happened at all, or no good conclusion was reached, and the angry cop had gone on an all night revenge training session. “Yao di, why don’t you take the morning off? You look dead, in fact, more dead than normal in the morning, I can talk to professor Chong on your behalf, he might even give me the class notes.”, he suggested gently. Tired Zhan Yao was very touchy about people trying to help him, but it was worth a try in any case, or officer Bai might have to scrape his next door neighbor off a pavement somewhere.

Contrary to belief, sleepless people did have the capacity to behave semi normally, and this was a particular skill for the doctorate student for the last seven years, maybe more considering how strict his parents were in senior year at high school. “Don’t worry ge, I’ve been more sleep deprived than this and managed to get 100 on an exam before. Once I make another complaint to chief Bai, hopefully my hellish neighbors all night exercise parties can at least calm down a bit. To think that the bastard offered me oranges, a bloody bag of oranges from walmart, to make up for the lost sleep.”, he replied furiously. Even the coffee shop owner was giving him funny looks now, and he should have expected to be stared at, because on any other day, Zhan Yao was the most mild mannered person in the block, apart from the force of calm nature Shen ge. Zhao Zhen slid Shen Wei his regular black filter coffee in a paper cup, no sugar, no milk, and literally poured a good portion of Zhan Yao’s pure double espresso straight down his throat, which on any other day would have been horrifying conduct, but this morning, it was a necessary evil. As the intense caffeine rush hit him, the PA snapped back to life, actually looking at everyone without squinting.

“Thanks dude, I needed that. See you at lunchtime for another one, bye Shen ge!", he called cheerily. Doctorate first, stupid neighbor disputes later, especially after that double shot of espresso. Bai Yutong wouldn't know what hit him when he came to file his noise disturbance complaint when he was still at work!

Zhao Yunlan got a rare call on his personal police landline, from hot chef Wei of all people, but it was a warning, not a pleasure call to ask what he wanted for dinner that night. Yutong's very tired neighbor had been force fed coffee by Zhao Zhen, and was on the warpath one he finished his lectures, thirsting for his own neighbors blood and willing to make a special request to chief Bai to get his sleep back. None of this bode well for his colleague, who was rescuing honey bug the cat from Boya's empty balcony with the help of the building managers master key, and had no idea how offensive Walmart oranges were as an apology for running someone's sleep pattern. In China, the gesture was much appreciated for a reason, because it was a million times harder than passing by the local Walmart to buy a pre filled bag of oranges, which totalled to a lot of sincere efforts, but adding something to your grocery list was definitely not as hard as haggling at the market stall with the stingy old auntie.

The weekly event of the American century, the weekly gathering of the 4 block introverts, was being held at Zhan Yao's apartment today. Boya had the job of buying drinking snacks, Gongsun was bringing the baiju, and Shen Wei would as always, cater for the four of them. Put mildly, introvert meetings were an opportunity to share all the awful tales of what the extroverted people did, in the building or just in general, and get incredibly drunk in the comfort of the host's home on whatever alcohol the designated drinks man bought. It was actually Shen ge who suggested a more dignified solution to meeting up, because having whole conversations that consisted of complaining about their fellow residents in the public coffee shop might come across as a bit rude, but doing such things in the privacy of one's home was completely acceptable. This idea would have sounded fine from Zhan Yao for example, except this was smiling and charming professor Shen advocating for a regular meeting to get drunk and outright complain about their neighbours.

However abruptly the meetings had initially started off, the current situation was vastly different, with an organised rota of host, caterer, drinks man and snack buyer. Zhan Yao's small apartment got an extra good clean once he finished classes, had more coffee poured down his throat by Zhao Zhen and went to the police station to make another complaint about Bai Yutong, ready to receive his guests in an ocd friendly home, and Shen Wei turned up first with two insulated bags of food to heat up when the others arrived. "Ge, did Yunlan tell you anything about officer Bai when you gave him his dinner just now? I'd like to know if he will be disturbing us tonight with his work outs, and how much I'll have to restrain crazy Boya.", he asked hopefully. If that stupid man ruined his dinner, he would never forgive him.

"Yao di, Yunlan would tell me if he had, and I would tell you. No, officer Bai should not be causing problems tonight as far as anyone knows, so just relax today, this is an occasion for venting then forgetting.", Shen Wei answered pleasantly. The food would sense his discomfort otherwise, and so he must not let anything upset him until the dishes were all reheated. Boya knocked at that point, and began organising the snacks into baskets around the kokatusu in Zhan Yao’s living room, something they thought of doing when snacks and food didn’t fit on the same table, and waited patiently for Gongsun to bring himself and the baiju down, while Shen ge babied his dishes in peace.

Bai Yutong, the sneaky bastard he was, had withheld one thing from Zhao Yunlan, and that was that he was definitely planning to continue his revenge exercising, especially tonight, because Yunlan ge accidentally told him about how important this night was for Zhan Yao and some of the other residents. By the time he came home from work, which was a lot of rescuing cats and fetching more frankly overpriced mocha for his power abusing da ge, he was in his workout shorts, best sweat wicking t-shirt, and had the audio tape of his last peloton class ready to play over his tv speakers. Even Yutong couldn’t or wanted to do high intensity class all night from 8pm till 2am, so he had just taped his last workout to make it sound like he was, while he ate the leftover doughnuts from work on his couch and did a few moderate push ups after each one to look the part, in case he was called on. It was a fool proof plan to break up whatever gathering his neighbor had going on.

The weekly meeting of the introverts got off to an orderly start at 8:30pm exactly, as everyone dug into the food laid out in large casserole dishes, chopsticks in hand and bowls filled with fluffy white rice. Then, the circle time started, where everyone had a turn to complain about one other person in the building for up to ten minutes before moving onto the next person, and this process was repeated as many times as necessary. Boya’s first ten minutes were about how Qiming’s cat honey bug vomited on his new converse, and all Qiming did was smile, pet his cat and give him $100 to buy more, but he still had to wash cat vomit off his shoes and he lost his job at the goth store for being late. Gongsun was of the opinion that was quite bad, and told everyone about the latest encounter with his annoying neighbor at the magical magician. Bai Jintang had rudely interrupted his prime place in the line by shoving his whole irritating person between Gongsun and the counter. It disturbed his morning routine greatly, all for a coffee that was more sugar than any real coffee, which overall made the instance very upsetting because the jerk made him miss out on picking the best body to autopsy. Picking the most interesting dead body made work more fun, but he ended up with the body of the old man who died of a heart attack just like the doctor said on the death certificate.

Shen Wei admitted that Yunlan's friend Da Qing was annoying him lately, hanging around purposely when he brought the food to Yunlan and they ate their dinner. He didn't feel like his neighbour's roommate needed to hang around, but was too nice to all him to either leave or eat peacefully, therefore it had been a very stressful dinner last night, while he tried to save Yunlan his favourite dishes. Boya, who was half way between tipsy and completely pissed, told him to man up, and whilst sober Shen Wei would have smiled nicely, tipsy Shen ge took offense. "At least I don't act like a child over something as simple as shoes that my neighbor paid to replace!", he snapped irritably.

That made Boya really angry, and he threw baiju at the professor, and his fellow drunk retaliated appropriately, throwing a full shot glass back. Zhan Yao could see the situation going from bad to worse, so he stepped right in between the two offended drunks. "Boya, I'm sure Shen ge didn't mean that, we have gone through three bottles of baiju and no one means what they say at this point. Shen ge, I'm sure Boya didn't mean to hurt your feelings, why don't you both apologize and make up?", he suggested kindly. The little emo man stopped pouring precious alcohol over Shen Wei's head, and in a split second change, took the man he was just watering with baiju and pulled him into a rib bruising hug. Crisis averted for the moment, Zhan Yao started telling the tale of Bai Yutong, the tormenting peloton addict, before anyone could insult each other again, just as the damned man started pumping out motivational workout music. Even Gongsun was drunk enough to lose it when the music was interrupting their movie, which was a recipe for disaster because all of the introverts had no brain filter to speak of when drunk, and if no filter Shen Wei and Boya were terrifying enough, Gongsun and Zhan Yao were honestly worse.

All this time, Bai Yutong was chilling in front of his TV, admiring his own abs on the 55 inch screen, totally not expecting a posse of introverts to knock on his door. Despite the obvious threat that four people posed to one man, he opened the door confidently, and chose the worst possible greeting. "Enjoying the peloton party Zhan Yao? I'm sure it does you and your friends good, might inspire you to exercise even!", he remarked boldly. Then, he began to notice the dark stares of a little goth gremlin, Yunlan's professor but he smelt like a bottle of baiju, a menacing, knife twirling fellow, and his neighbor, all looking very annoyed and smelling of more baiju.

He didn't, however, count on the altered mental state of his annoyed neighbor’s party, because drunk, angry and a bit rabid Boya could scare anyone, and the other guests each had scarily mean attributes when pissed too. Gongsun liked to play with Zhan Yao’s kitchen knives in front of his door, twirling the blades like he was going to kill someone, then Yunlan’s wife professor Shen kept butting in with horribly accurate insults, and his own neighbor just gave him the most deathly death glare imaginable. This wasn’t part of the plan, and four mad introverts armed with different sizes of kitchen knives and baiju bottles were admittedly very intimidating, even to great air force captain Bai, who laughed in the face of danger. Zhan Yao didn't have to speak for Yutong to know what to do for his own good and turned the audio file off, "I have to go, uhm, turn the stove off actually, so you should all go back and enjoy wherever you were doing. What about cutting off the peloton by 10pm, and coffee in the morning tomorrow, my good neighbor Zhan?", big bag officer Bai proposed timidly.

Zhen Yao thought about it, agreeing that no more loud peloton after 10, and a coffee he would desperately need to get over the banging hangover he was sure to get, would suffice as a peace offering. "That would be acceptable officer Bai, as long as you get Boya, Gongsun and Shen ge one too, you ruined their night of fun and drinking after all. So that's a double espresso for me, plain black filter coffee for Shen Wei, soy latte for Gongsun and a large caramel frappe for my favourite leather loving buddy Boya, at 11 if you please to do so. Good night Yutong, I'll see you in the morning at the agreed time.", he replied cordially. Behind him, the other three introverts nodded in sync, and followed him back to the apartment.

Bai Yutong wanted his mommy, for the first time in thirty one years, and it was because of knife wielding, thoroughly baiju-d introverts he would never guess could be that sinister. It had been silly to keep going with the all night party sessions as revenge, and tonight definitely put a stop to it.

When the sun finally broke through the small crack in Zhan Yao's navy blue blackout curtains at 10am, four hungover introverts woke up in a heap of baiju scented drunks. They ended up finishing all five bottles of baiju without any further arguments, polishing off the snacks and falling asleep in a heap by the actual bed, because no one could be bothered enough to lead by example and go the short distance upwards onto the bed. It was fine though, since every meeting was held on a Friday night to allow sufficient time for recovery. Shen ge immediately crawled towards the bathroom, probably so he could puke without messing the lovely ivory shag rug up, and smell like a functional person again, Gongsun went for the hair of the dog theory and took a big gulp of leftover baiju to calm his pounding headache, and Boya merely looked dazed. “Guys, we convinced my neighbor to get us all free coffee last night, so I gotta get in the bathroom after ge, and freshen up. Get off me Boya, look dazed somewhere that isn’t my back, or I’ll call Qiming over and tell him you spent his $100 on groceries and washed the sick off your shoes by hand.”, Zhan Yao reminded everyone sleepily. He would be wasting a good chance if he didn’t abuse the terrified neighbor’s kindness, and he wanted to get back at the little emo for calling Shen ge weak.

They all worked their way in and out of the shower, changed to the spare clothes kept in Zhan Yao’s apartment, and Boya was just styling his fringe when 11 came round, and with 11am, came the cop next door with coffee. To Bai Yutong, facing the hoard of introverts the morning after being threatened by them, it was just as nerve wracking as last night. The creepy one he remembered being called Shen Wei answered the door, in glasses and suit, like he wasn’t a glaring barbarian who had a baiju shower the night prior. “Thank you officer, it was very kind of you to think of delivering our beverages. Yao di will appreciate his coffee greatly once he finishes changing.”, he smiled sweetly. For the sake of maintaining his public image, he nodded politely and left to work.