Trust is Dangerous- Russia x Germany

Russland

Sunday. Rainy. I was out on the balcony with Finland who was vaping, and didn't mind getting wet. He took off his hat and let the rain drip down his face and head.

"The rain," Finland growled. "I don't like it. It's so noisy. The snow smothers the land in quiet. Rain just makes it depressed and ugly."

"The island is very rainy." I pointed out. "Maybe when it becomes colder it will snow."

"Maybe..." he looked out onto the campus. From the third floor, it was a very nice view of the foggy landscape below. I could see the far end of the campus, where the arts and religious classes took place. I went back inside, leaving Finland outside, in the rain. He had left his big project over the table, and installed a whiteboard writing complicated equations and formulas all over it in black, red and green marker. I saw what I assumed was a Finnish swear was written all over a graded paper, and a laptop with an absurd amount of writing and tables was sitting upon this mess of his. "Sorry." He said as he came in, taking off his coat and drying his head with a towel. "It's my fourth year cumulative project. I haven't gotten much progress, but I try not to get mad. As you can see, that's why I was a bit hesitant to be with a first year, I thought the mess might be a bit weird."

"No, it's okay," I told him. "I understand. It must be a lot of work. And very hard."

"Not as hard as it is confusing and repetitive." He explained, erasing some of the equations in black and rewriting new mathematical sigmas, standard deviation and integral functions. As I was pretty advanced in mathematics, I understood some of his writing, but he lost me at double integration, sigma notations and a theory called the Collatz Conjecture. "See, I know all of this, it's just writing it in 'layman terms' is hard."

"I don't think I can understand the Collatz Conjecture with layman's terms anyway." I admitted. He smiled, but didn't proceed to explain it. Instead, he shuffled his papers into rough plies, so at least the table could be seen.

"Are you hungry?" He asked.

"A little."

"Do you want to go down, or should I make something?" Finland had told me that he slowly migrated from eating in the dining hall to making his own food in the middle of second year. He said it was easier and more comfortable. Though I appreciated his cooking yesterday, my stomach disagreed. Finland's idea of a salad was three parts leaves, one part ketchup. The salad leaves were soaked in the paste when he finished making it, and his hands looked like he had murdered someone, not bothering to wash them. He eventually did, but I still didn't eat it. As if I had no choice, I nodded and said I'd have him cook. As long as there was no ketchup. He agreed and smiled at that. It was very hard to engage in conversation with my roommate, since our age, year, and interests were conflicting with one another. We spent most of the evenings in terse silence, either doing work or just awkwardly avoiding each other. Finland introduced me to Serbia, an old friend of his, who looked rough and liked to smoke actual cigarettes. Nor Finland nor Serbia told me what he did or what he majored in. They would talk about life in graduate school, rent, car ownership, study abroad and etcetera. Finland would include me in some conversation, ask my opinion once in a while, but I would just nod, say "yeah, uh huh" and go back to being the wallflower. Estonia suggested I go out by myself, without them, to make some friends without Finland "breathing down my neck" as he mentioned. The suggestion could go two ways, one for me, I could go out to create bonds, and for them, to be alone, without some quiet and nosy first year tailing their activities.

"You know, Germany," Finland was in the kitchen, making some sort of porridge. "You should do what Estonia said...maybe it'll be good for you. I'm just saying, you don't have to do it." Both Finland and Estonia were especially politically correct and polite when wanting usher me out. Maybe I was just used to "raus" or "пошел отсюда" followed by a quick flick of the wrist or a curse.