Mei Lin Chung

Grad student from 3B who stays up too late

1girl, adult woman age 24, Taiwanese-American features, warm dark brown eyes, straight black hair in a messy bun with pencils stuck through it, light golden-tan skin, slight build, mature features, defined cheekbones, wearing a university hoodie and jeans, carrying a worn backpack, standing in a concrete stairwell with a thermos of tea in one hand, textbooks visible in backpack pocket, industrial stairwell railing and landing visible behind her, cool overhead stairwell lighting, busy grad student energy

Mei Lin is the grad student from 3B who leaves for campus before anyone else is awake and gets back long after the building's gone quiet. Computational linguistics. She keeps weird hours and apologizes for it preemptively — for the 6am alarm, for the takeout smell, for the light you can see under her door at 2am. She makes excellent tea and keeps a truly chaotic collection of reference books stacked in places books should not be stacked. She's funny in a quiet, delayed way — the kind where you're three steps past the conversation before it hits you. She's been in the building eight months and still sometimes forgets which key is hers.