My hometown is far away in Moscow.

009 Who is Anton?

The chubby boy smiled ingratiatingly, "You must be Brother Hu, right? My name is Peng Song, Peng as in Peng Dehuai, and Song as in Wu Song. I'm in the preparatory engineering program. Which department are you in?"

"Economics." Hu Yi nodded hastily and began flipping through the magazine "Popular Software" again. Seeing that he wasn't very talkative, Peng Song leaned closer to Li Baoqing: "Hey, I'm telling you, we're all Chinese, how about the three of us eat together from now on?"

"Huh? We'll eat together?" Li Baoqing hesitated, glancing at Hu Yi, who was engrossed in his magazine with a cold expression. He scratched his head and asked, "What about your roommate?"

"Hey, forget about him!" Peng Song rolled his eyes. "That black guy is poor and stingy. He treats us like we're going to die if we eat a little something from him. We Chinese get along much better."

Li Baoqing lowered his eyelids and sighed, "Then how about..."

He'd only spoken halfway when Hu Yi impatiently interrupted, "Why do you insist on eating Old Hei's food? Don't you have anything to eat?"

Peng Song turned around, blinking his eyes with a wronged expression: "I...can't cook, and I don't have a pot."

"Just buy a pot. Who's born knowing how to cook? Just learn."

"But the pots here are very expensive!"

"Whose fault is that? Who told you not to bring a pot?"

"My suitcase is too small to fit it all, and it might even be overweight."

"We ordinary people are the ones who worry about being overweight. What are you worried about? Can't you just get a bigger suitcase?" Hu Yi rattled off a string of questions: "Besides, how much can a pot cost? You have money to fly, but not money to buy a pot?"

"I, I..." Peng Song opened his mouth timidly, but hesitated to speak.

Seeing that the two were not getting along, Li Baoqing quickly came over and patted him on the shoulder, vaguely replying, "Alright, alright. We just arrived and haven't thought about eating yet. Let's talk about it later."

"No need!" Peng Song looked up at the ceiling with grief and indignation. "Alas! That's how Chinese people are. They exclude each other when they go out. They are not united at all!" He shook his greasy hair and sighed as he walked through the kitchen back to the bedroom next door, closing the door behind him.

"Hey..." Li Baoqing wanted to chase after him to say something, but Hu Yi reached out and grabbed him: "Don't pay attention to him! He's making a big deal out of nothing, he's just a complete idiot."

The next morning, Hu Yi, Li Baoqing, and Yu Feifei arrived downstairs on time, and Yan Zhiwen led them out to school.

The dormitory building is more than 200 meters from the road. After crossing the road, you walk through a residential area to Leningradsky Prospekt, and a short walk further is the Green Line Airport Station of the metro. The Moscow Automotive Highway Institute is located near the metro station.

The main building is beautiful, with a tall black statue standing in the small square directly in front. Eight thick pillars line the entrance, giving it a majestic and ancient appearance. Although Hu Yi had terrible grades in school, he was quite knowledgeable and vaguely knew that it was probably built in the style of ancient Greece or Rome.

However, the glamorous facade was merely superficial. The interior was rather old, and the dimly lit corridors easily reminded Hu Yi of the oppressive atmosphere in his parents' office building. After Yan Zhiwen helped them through the various tedious procedures of enrollment and visa on arrival, and after receiving their textbooks, their first class in Russia was about to begin.

Mati is one of the Russian Federation's designated language preparatory education centers. It teaches Russian to foreigners from scratch, primarily using small class sizes of only about ten students per class to ensure teachers can give individual attention to each student. Therefore, classes are usually held in small classrooms, with larger classrooms only used for combined classes.

The small classroom was even more cramped than a dormitory bedroom, with only two or three rows of desks available in front of the teacher. This class had started two weeks prior, and Hu Yi and his friends were considered transfer students. As the students gradually arrived, a hunched-over old woman strode into the classroom and greeted them in a hoarse voice, "Hello everyone."

"Hello," the students answered in unison. The old lady was not tall, with a head of light yellow curly hair, a face full of deep wrinkles, heavy eyeliner, and a large, hooked nose that was very eye-catching. She looked like Gargamel from The Smurfs wearing a wig, which made people feel a little uncomfortable. Fortunately, her expression was relatively kind.

"Oh, we have new classmates." The old lady smiled at Hu Yi and the other two, picked up the roster, and adjusted her brown-rimmed glasses. "Alright, let's get to know each other. My name is Lyudmila, and who is... Yu Feifei?"

"It's me." Yu Feifei raised her hand respectfully.

"Very good, good girl." Lyudmila ticked a box on the roster. "Then... who is Li Baoqing?"

"Me!" Li Baoqing stood up abruptly.

"Oh! Very good, what a wonderful young man! Please have a seat. Now, next... this... um?"

Lyudmila stared at the roster, seemingly confirming something repeatedly. After a moment, she glanced around at the students sitting in front of her, finally fixing her gaze on Hu Yi: "May I ask your name?"

"My name is Hu Yi," Hu Yi stammered.

"Oh! Darling, you're a good lad." Lyudmila looked at him kindly, muttering a few words to herself, seemingly quite hesitant. After thinking for a while, she carefully crossed out Hu Yi's name from the roster: "From now on, you'll be called... um... Anton. Do you agree, Anton?"

"Huh? Wh...what?" Hu Yi seemed to understand but not quite, turning to Yu Feifei with a blank expression and asking, "What did she say? Who is Anton?"

"You." Yu Feifei also felt confused and whispered, "She said she would give you a Russian name, Anton."

"Anton? Why?"

"I'm not sure...maybe they think you look Russian?"

"Me?!" Hu Yi looked around. "What nonsense! How could I, a proud Chinese man, possibly look like a Russian? Doesn't that Arab next to you look more like one?"

Yu Feifei shrugged slightly: "I'm not too sure either, maybe she just felt friendly towards you."

Completely baffled, Hu Yi could only stammer, "Teacher... why, Anton?"

"It's nothing, Anton is a good name." Lyudmila smiled kindly. "Well then, Anton, let's begin class."

There were three classes in total today, one in the morning and two in the afternoon. Lunch was at the school cafeteria. Although Li Baoqing and Yu Feifei were tired of instant noodles on the way, they were still a little unaccustomed to Russian food for the first time, and simply ate a few slices of bread with chicken cutlet and mashed potatoes.

Hu Yi, however, found everything appealing and ordered almost every new dish the restaurant had to offer, providing his satisfied comments on each one. He was particularly impressed by the fragrant and glistening lamb and carrot fried rice, praising it endlessly: "Delicious! So delicious! I've never had such fragrant fried rice before!"

Li Baoqing chuckled and said, "You like Russian food so much, you might actually have Russian ancestry. No wonder your teacher gave you a Russian name the first time we met, unlike Feifei and me."

"Who knows?" Hu Yi clicked his tongue and muttered to himself a few times, then shrugged and said, "Anton, Anton. Hmm, that name does sound pretty good. At least it's not some coward or driver or anything like that."

On the way back to the dormitory after school in the afternoon, Hu Yi suggested that we have dinner together that evening: "We've been cooped up on the train for a week, how about we treat ourselves to something nice tonight?"

Li Baoqing exclaimed, "Great! I saw some cleaned frozen chickens at the shop downstairs. Let's buy one later, stew it, and have some beer to celebrate our successful arrival in Russia to start university life."

"Okay, let's go to your room, I'll cook." Yu Feifei clapped her hands and said, "My mom taught me how to make braised chicken with mushrooms."

The three of them excitedly went home after shopping. Yu Feifei tidied up in the kitchen for a while, then pouted and poked her head out: "Oh dear, there's no scallion or ginger, the flavor will probably be lacking."

Before he could finish speaking, Yan Zhiwen pushed open the door and walked in: "What do you need scallions and ginger for? Are you getting ready to cook?"

Li Baoqing had just finished soaking a bowl of shiitake mushrooms when he cheerfully wiped his hands and approached him, saying, "Brother Yan! We're having chicken stew tonight, why don't you stay and eat with us!"

"Don't mention it, I'll have dinner tonight." Yan Zhiwen waved his hand with a smile, "How was it? How was your first day of class?"

Li Baoqing shook his head and said, "Feifei can barely keep up, but our foundation is too poor, and we can hardly understand what the teacher is saying—but our teacher seems to really like Hu Yi, and even gave him a Russian name."

Yan Zhiwen was slightly taken aback: "Really? What's your name?"

"My name is Anton," Hu Yi replied, who was doing his homework. After saying that, he paused for a moment, scratched his head, and looked at Yan Zhiwen: "Brother Yan, I feel like something's not right. Why did the teacher give me a Russian name the first time we met? And yesterday downstairs, the security guard reacted strangely when he saw my pass. Is there something wrong with my name?"

Yan Zhiwen chuckled dryly for a while, then reached up to touch the stubble on his chin: "Your name... well, it's not exactly a good name to say."