Mei fiddled with the sheet in her hands, her fingers nervously kneading the edges of the paper. On it, there were their destinations, neatly written down in her most beautiful handwriting.

They were on day four of their trip now and beside the cities’ names were the numbers of the days they would stay there with the exact departure hour written on the paper. For their third day in Shenyang, it was planned that they would leave the hotel right after check-out at 10 a.m. Now it was 11 a.m. and Mei was getting more nervous with every minute that passed.

She trotted the lobby up and down, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, trying to think about something else besides their departure time, but she couldn’t. Time was sitting in her neck. If they wouldn’t make it to Tianjin until 7 p.m. today, their hotel’s check-in would close, they would have no place to sleep, and it would be too late to look for another place for the night.

“It still doesn’t get better.”

Luhan appeared next to her as she stopped in front of the huge glass windows. She nodded in agreement and folded her sheet together, because staring at it would only drive her crazier.

The rain hadn’t stopped. It had lessened, but had not completely ceased yet and many streets were still flooded. It would probably take a few days until the cold front would give way to the sunshine again.

Mei struggled with breathing and little heart attacks inside (like always when a plan she had made was so close to be destroyed). This was not supposed to happen. This was not how she had their trip planned. Why in the world would the Water God play games with her future now?

They were not even halfway through their journey and the first catastrophe was already right ahead of them. Maybe for others it wasn’t that fatal, but for Mei, as soon as one of her plans was crashed, her whole world would too. (Funny, how she remembered her grandmother’s words now about traffic jams and rain which could disturb the journey.)

She had made plans to have a strict guideline, to know what was coming next, to not have any trouble or rearrangements in her life. But those negative things had always been unpredictable and she hated it. She didn’t make plans to let them be destroyed. She made plans to work them out. To make them work.

Luhan noticed how tense Mei’s body was and her nervousness was shown in different ways. She kneaded her fingers, folded and unfolded her paper, tapped from one foot to another and pressed her lips against each other from time to time. In those few days, Luhan had already witnessed the signs of when the calm Mei began to get nervous and excited. But he preferred her excited side, the one he had seen in the Botanical Garden since the nervous one never promised anything good in general.

“Look,” Luhan started. “We can stay here for one more night.”

“No,” she answered demonstratively. “No.”

Luhan frowned, surprised over her strong words. “What?”

Mei shook her head and turned to the side to look at him. “No, we can’t stay any longer.” She unfolded her paper for the nth time that morning and showed him her list that she had made before they departed from Beijing.

Luhan almost couldn’t believe his eyes. They had planned together yes, but his plans were not that exact and neat. He had the route and the date of their destination with every town they’d visit on his own paper and more in his mind, but he had never come up with the idea to do such a list like Mei. And with “such a list” he meant the exact times of their arrival and departure and beside the names of some towns, there were already things written down what she wanted to see.

“It would mess up our whole plan.” (Our?) “We already booked the hotel yesterday and we made a reservation. We can’t get our money back. Besides, the check-in will close around seven p.m., because the receptionist says it’s too little of a hotel. So there is no way that we can stay here.”

“Then we can delay tonight’s booking on the day after tomorrow to not waste money. It’ll take us one day longer, but—”

“No.” She shook her head eagerly. “We have an exact date and I want to be in Kunming on that date.”

Luhan sighed and took the sheet out of her hand. “Are you being serious with this?” He frowned and looked at the day’s date. Next to it was written that their departure would be at ten a.m. He took a glance at his watch to see that it was already past eleven a.m. They’d take seven hours to Tianjin. He had to admit, it would be quite unlikely.

Mei stared at him like it was the most ridiculous question that she had ever heard. “Yes?” It seemed more like a question than an answer.

Luhan shook his head and returned the paper. “You and Ren are quite similar, you know that?”

“What?”

“Go get your luggage. I’ve heard the weather is a lot better in Tianjin.”

It didn’t take long until they got into the first traffic jam on the highway to Tianjin. Because of an accident, where one car got off the road and the other one hit it from behind with such force, the route was temporarily closed. They had already wasted a lot of time by leaving Shenyang city since many roads were not drivable due to the floods where the car could get stuck. Now, they needed to stop again and the worst part was, they didn’t know how much time they could lose again.

During the ride, Mei and Luhan didn’t speak much. There was tension in the air, built up by stress and nervousness. They had been arguing about which direction they should take, which route could be closed due to the rain and many more little things until they reached the highway where both remained quiet ever since.

The rain was practically pouring down, making their vision through the car’s windows so blurry that only car lights could be seen. It was dark and it was cold (and it was awkward between them both). Mei was asking herself whether Luhan was a little mad at her because she had been insisting to drive today.

(…And she was right.) Luhan was stressed and nervous and tired. He would have lied if he said he wouldn’t want to leave Shenyang today. He wanted to be in Tianjin as much as she did, but in comparison to Mei, Luhan could actually live with rearrangements and trouble.

He didn’t have a list, he didn’t have his whole mind focused on something he had  written down. Life was unpredictable and he could live with it—unlike Mei.

For him, it seemed quite obvious that once one of her plans was close to be destroyed, she’d get so annoying and started to complain about everything (just like Ren). It was one of the character traits he hated the most about his friend, and now, his road trip company was most likely going to turn out like that way as well. He didn’t know whether to be annoyed or scared of that.