The sun dipped below the horizon, and as the sky gradually darkened, Zhang Fang and the others began packing up their things a little over half an hour before the end of the workday.

Before leaving, Zhang Fang said to Zhu Yun and Li Xun: “Whatever you do, don’t be late tomorrow — there’ll be no one to save you if you are.”

“……”

Zhu Yun noticed they all seemed to be quite afraid of their boss, Dong Siyang. Judging by the overall state of the company, this Director Dong’s management abilities would have to be classified as “extremely poor” — and she couldn’t quite figure out what exactly they were all so afraid of.

“You’re not leaving yet?” Zhao Teng asked Zhu Yun. “Working overtime on your very first day — now that’s dedication.”

Zhu Yun: “I’ll wait a little longer.”

Zhao Teng: “Then let’s order some takeout.”

Zhu Yun: “Thank you, but that’s not necessary — I’m not hungry yet.”

Zhao Teng then turned to Li Xun behind her: “What about you — working overtime too? Do you want dinner? I’ve got a takeout menu here.”

Li Xun shut down his computer and left without a word.

Zhao Teng watched him go, then turned to Zhu Yun. “What’s his problem? You two knew each other before — was he always like this? Just ignoring whatever anyone says to him?”

Zhu Yun tapped at her keyboard. “He was worse than this before.”

Zhao Teng let out a soft “wow,” then said: “Alright, I’m heading out. When you leave, just lock up the door.”

Zhu Yun’s eyes remained fixed on her screen as she replied: “Got it.”

Zhao Teng paused at the doorway and glanced back. Zhu Yun was still staring intently at her computer — her level of focus and seriousness was, in this company… no, in every company he had ever worked at, extraordinarily rare. Zhao Teng had dropped out of high school and taken up programming as a hobby. He had something of a knack for it, though he was too lazy to dig deep, treating it as nothing more than a way to make ends meet — so he had little understanding of people like Zhu Yun, who threw themselves into their work with reckless dedication.

He thought back to her resume. It was nothing short of stunning — dazzling, even. He found it puzzling why she had ended up at a company like theirs. From everything he had seen on her first day, her abilities were every bit as impressive as her credentials suggested.

Was she after something fresh?

Or was she here to experience a different kind of life?

Hard to say how long she’d last…

Zhao Teng was hungry. He tossed all those questions to the back of his mind and happily headed home.

Seven o’clock.

Eight o’clock.

Zhu Yun was the only one left in the office.

She checked the time several times, as though she was waiting for something.

At half past eight, someone arrived — a same-city express courier, his face glistening with sweat from rushing to make the delivery.

“Excuse me, are you Ms. Zhu?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Your package, please sign here.”

Zhu Yun signed the delivery slip. “That’s pretty fast.”

The courier smiled. “Same-city express is basically half a day.”

After the courier left, Zhu Yun returned to her desk and tore open the package. Inside were two sets of graphics cards, hard drives, as well as a CPU and memory sticks. She went to the storage room, dug out a toolbox, and began disassembling Li Xun’s computer case.

This was her first time assembling a desktop computer.

Although she was a computer science student, Zhu Yun was well aware that she had little affinity for hardware — probably because most girls had little interest in the kind of work that involved tearing machines apart and putting them back together.

In Zhu Yun’s mind, assembling a computer should have been a simple matter. After all, there were only so many components — you just had to plug them in properly…

But that “properly” turned out to be the biggest problem of all.

After inserting the CPU and memory into the motherboard, she simply could not get the cooling fan to sit right. More than half an hour had passed with no progress, and she was beginning to feel frustrated. She squared off against the components, downloaded an assembly tutorial on her phone and propped it beside her, then knelt on the floor and got to work. Before long, beads of sweat had gathered on her forehead.

She was so absorbed that she didn’t even notice when someone came through the door.

Li Xun had gone out earlier to grab a bite to eat and smoke a couple of cigarettes. When he returned, the room appeared, at first glance, to be completely empty — because Zhu Yun was practically pressed flat against the floor as she worked, entirely hidden from the sightline of anyone standing in the doorway.

But the lights were on, and Li Xun knew someone had to be inside.

He walked over, and the first thing he saw was Zhu Yun’s rear end.

She was kneeling on the ground, her heels set aside, wrestling with jumper cables and power cords. She had on a white blouse and a grey suit skirt that made her raised backside look round and taut.

From this angle he could see the back of her head, her hair dark and glossy. Li Xun’s gaze drifted downward — her calves were fair-skinned, and her ankles had a delicate, graceful shape.

Had she always looked like this?

Li Xun stood behind her, contemplating in detached silence.

She had always been attractive, though six years ago she had nowhere near the striking allure she possessed now. Back then she kept everything hidden — her beauty hidden, her intelligence hidden, her pain and her resentment hidden too. Whatever she did, she held herself back. The rare times she ever broke through, it took months to build up to.

Zhu Yun was still bent over the computer case, struggling away, when she suddenly heard the sound of a lighter being clicked behind her.

Her body reacted before her mind could — she jerked up, and her head cracked against the underside of the desk. It hurt terribly, but she didn’t dare make a sound, and she didn’t dare touch the spot either.

Her mind swirled with four enormous words:

He — didn’t — leave?

Hadn’t he gone home already…

The sound of that lighter had hit her like a jolt. Before she could stop it, her face flushed red. She forced herself to look calm and kept fidgeting with the cables in her hands, while her mind raced to figure out how to salvage this awkward situation.

“You’ve got it backwards.”

“The jumper cable’s positive and negative are reversed,” Li Xun said, his voice flat and even.

Reversed?

Zhu Yun bent her head to check, and sure enough, they were reversed. She was just about to fix it when she sensed the person behind her take a few steps closer.

His voice was nearer now — lower and deeper too.

“Let me.”

Zhu Yun brushed her hair from her forehead and murmured: “…It’s fine.”

Li Xun said coldly: “I have no intention of waiting here all night.”

Zhu Yun pressed her lips together and stepped aside, using the brief moment of putting her shoes back on to try and coax the colour out of her cheeks. Li Xun pinched the cigarette between his teeth, crouched down beside the machine, and after looking it over in silence, proceeded to disassemble everything Zhu Yun had just put together — methodically, without a word.

After all, that was more than an hour of effort. Zhu Yun couldn’t help asking: “Did I get everything else wrong too?”

“No. I’m re-routing the cables.”

His voice was different from before — it had matured. Deeper, cooler, entirely stripped of any readable emotion.

Zhu Yun herself felt that her cable work had been sloppy, so she asked: “What happens if the cable routing is bad?”

“It looks ugly.”

“……”

Zhu Yun shot him a look from behind.

Li Xun pulled out the graphics card and held it up for a moment.

Zhu Yun pressed her lips together. She had never been one to spare expense when it came to upgrading components. As the old saying went, a craftsman must first sharpen his tools… and in a sense, Li Xun had been the first person to teach her that principle.

The graphics card Li Xun was holding was one she had splurged on. When she was doing her postgraduate studies in America, she had visited the university’s artificial intelligence lab, which specialized in deep learning research — and the machines there had used the predecessor of this very card.

Truthfully, the projects at Feiyang Company didn’t require a graphics card anywhere near this powerful, but she had insisted on the best anyway. Perhaps there was a degree of self-deception in it — she had always held onto the belief that better tools would help the person using them grow stronger as well.

Zhu Yun asked Li Xun with eager curiosity: “What do you think of this model?” Surely he couldn’t find fault with this one.

Li Xun slotted the card back in, his voice as flat as ever.

“No idea. Never seen one before.”

Zhu Yun went still.

Time had a way of refusing to let things stay simple. It seeped through the small details of daily life, working its way in quietly, unsettling the heart when least expected. Those six plain words were like the six motionless years he had lived through.

Neither of them said anything. A heaviness settled into the air.

Then the machine started up.

Li Xun had brought the graphics card to life in one go.

It hummed at high speed, its quiet green glow radiating a deep sense of mystery, understated yet unmistakably powerful.

Zhu Yun heard a soft sound escape from Li Xun’s nose.

He was satisfied.

She guessed he was probably smiling right now — not a wide, open smile, but a genuine one.

The rush that technology could bring swept away every trace of the heaviness without effort. After all these years, he was still the same person — someone who would compress grief down to the smallest possible space and save the rest for moving forward.

Li Xun quickly finished assembling his own computer, then moved on to Zhu Yun’s.

The hour was already late. Zhu Yun gathered her things and prepared to leave.

“You’re not going home?”

Li Xun was running tests on Zhu Yun’s computer. He shook his head.

Zhu Yun thought for a moment, then said softly: “I have some books and papers on the Unity engine at my place — I’ll bring them in tomorrow.”

Li Xun made a quiet sound of acknowledgment, his eyes still on the screen.

Zhu Yun looked at his back for a few seconds, said “remember to lock up when you leave,” and turned to go.

The next morning, Zhu Yun arrived at the office at eight. Li Xun was still there.

Nothing about him suggested anything unusual. She couldn’t tell whether he had come in early or simply never left.

Feiyang Company’s official start time was eight-thirty, and the other three employees all dragged themselves in at the last possible moment.

Although Zhang Fang was still just as idle, Zhao Teng still just as lazy, and Guo Shijie still just as invisible… Zhu Yun could clearly sense that the atmosphere in the office today was different from the day before.

Now that she thought about it, the boss was supposed to be coming back today.

Zhu Yun was mildly curious to see what kind of person Dong Siyang actually was — though by noon, he still hadn’t shown up.

Zhu Yun threw herself into her work and gradually forgot about it altogether.

For lunch, Zhao Teng ordered takeout for everyone. Zhu Yun had a few things left to finish and stayed at her computer, typing away at her code. Zhang Fang and Zhao Teng ate their boxed meals while chatting about gossip and news. They were in the middle of discussing the measurements of some actress when, at the sound of something outside, they abruptly fell silent and both perked up their ears.

A woman outside was having an argument with the logistics company next door.

That logistics company was a source of grievance for every business on the entire floor. They had far too many goods, and what couldn’t fit inside their unit was stacked out into the corridor. The corridors in this start-up building were narrow to begin with, and with all those boxes, getting through had become a constant struggle.

The woman’s voice was shrill. From what Zhu Yun could make out, she had gone out to buy spicy hot pot soup for lunch, and while trying to navigate past the stacked goods, she had tripped and sent the entire bowl splashing all over one of the boxes.

Now neither side was willing to let it drop. One party had lost her lunch, the other claimed their goods had been soiled — and the two erupted into a full-on shouting match.

Just then, the elevator doors slid open.

A man strode out with heavy, purposeful steps, brow deeply furrowed, head down, as though turning over some weighty problem in his mind. He walked straight toward the office.

Then he found himself blocked by the chaos in front of the logistics company’s door.

“Move.”

The man’s voice was gravelly, carrying the weariness of someone who had been on the road for a long time.

Nobody paid him any attention.

Without another word, he stepped forward and planted a kick.

His leather shoe connected with one of the boxes. The impact shook the entire floor. Two large boxes were sent flying seven or eight metres in opposite directions simultaneously.

One of the logistics company employees spun around with a glare, ready to unleash a torrent of abuse — but the moment he recognized who it was, he immediately deflated.

“…Oh hell, he’s back!”

Inside the office, Zhang Fang heard that voice and leapt out of his chair as though launched by a spring. Zhao Teng watched him, snorted, and coolly took a sip of his milk tea.

Zhu Yun was organizing the battle records table for Unrivalled Warlords when the office door was shoved open without ceremony.

She turned around just in time to see a powerfully built man come charging in with the force of a gust of wind.

Dong Siyang flung his flat briefcase to one side and raised his voice: “Where’s Zhang Fang!”