As a member of the quantum computing laboratory, Lin Zhixia voluntarily took on the reception work. When she saw Wei Ruoxing, she immediately ran over and introduced herself: “Hello, Senior, my name is Lin Zhixia. I’m a graduate of Provincial No. 1 High School, currently a sophomore.”

Wei Ruoxing smiled at her: “Hello, little junior.”

Lin Zhixia happily responded: “Senior.”

Wei Ruoxing specialized in the field of “quantum algorithms.” During her undergraduate years, she completed dual degrees in mathematics and computer science. After graduating, Wei Ruoxing worked at an IB company for a year before returning to academia to become a student of the renowned Professor Jeffy.

Lin Zhixia had read all of Jeffy’s papers and published books. She understood Wei Ruoxing’s research content. After discussing a few points with Wei Ruoxing, Wei looked at her with newfound respect: “Are you a sophomore?”

Lin Zhixia nodded: “I’m fifteen this year. I skipped grades.”

Wei Ruoxing said in surprise: “Little junior is so smart.”

The school arranged a welcome dinner for Professor Jeffy’s group. Many teachers and students from the Physics Department attended this banquet. Jeffy’s seat was right next to Gu Likai, and the two of them conversed happily.

In the spacious dining room, the lights were bright, and the atmosphere was harmonious.

At such a formal occasion, all male teachers and students were dressed in suits, and Tan Qianche was no exception.

Tonight, Tan Qianche wore a black suit with a white shirt underneath. He fastened the top button tightly, his tie neatly in place, giving off a sense of scholarly restraint.

Tan Qianche seemed like a different person. He frowned slightly, rarely speaking, occasionally looking toward Wei Ruoxing, yet she didn’t spare him even a glance.

Yang Shuwen observed for a while and sighed: “Stop looking at her so miserably. Don’t you just want to talk to her? Listen to me, go ask Lin Zhixia for help. Lin Zhixia gets along well with Wei Ruoxing; see how happily Wei Ruoxing is smiling.”

Tan Qianche sighed heavily: “Why is Lin Zhixia always sticking to female Ph.D. students?”

Yang Shuwen tried to analyze: “Well, Lin Zhixia knows how to address people, always saying ‘Senior this, Senior that.’ Don’t be depressed. If she builds a good relationship with Wei Ruoxing, she might put in a good word for you…”

Tan Qianche remained silent. He picked up his wine glass and took a sip of red wine.

Wine spilled from the rim of the glass onto his suit pants.

This suit was newly purchased, costing over ten thousand yuan. Tan Qianche felt somewhat distressed.

He clutched a napkin, slowly wiping the stain on his leg, vaguely recalling when he was sixteen, and both he and Wei Ruoxing were in the competition class at Provincial No. 1 High School. That evening, as the sky gradually darkened, he was tutoring her in the classroom when she placed her hand on his leg. She was beautiful when she smiled; the sunset knew, the evening glow knew, and he knew too.

But he was powerless to change reality.

In their senior year, Wei Ruoxing decided to go abroad.

She called him to school to break up with him. He was young then, just eighteen, proud and arrogant. Not only did he not show any reluctance, but he also said harsh words to her.

He told her that Wei Ruoxing’s competition gold medals were earned through his tutoring. He sincerely wished Wei Ruoxing could keep up with the course progress in foreign schools, saying no other boy would be willing to help her wholeheartedly as he had done.

Looking back at those words now, Tan Qianche felt extremely embarrassed.

Who was to blame?

Only himself.

He was still a virgin then, with a big temper and little experience, not understanding the art of communication.

While reflecting, Tan Qianche sipped his red wine. His peripheral vision fell on Lin Zhixia.

Lin Zhixia was discussing quantum algorithms with Wei Ruoxing.

Wei Ruoxing’s latest paper involved “Shor’s large number factorization.” Lin Zhixia gripped a chopstick and wrote a function on the tablecloth. Following the steps of “Shor’s large number factorization,” she calculated the period of the modular exponentiation function. She said: “I wrote a QFT circuit using Python and made it into an open-source package. Senior, take a look at my open-source package; it’s not just this one algorithm.”

An “open-source package” refers to publicly available functional code.

Wei Ruoxing agreed: “Sure, where can I see it?”

“Do you want to see it now?” Lin Zhixia seriously considered. “You can come back to my dormitory with me, or go to the computer room. We need to find a place with a computer.”

Wei Ruoxing glanced at Tan Qianche.

Tan Qianche’s wine glass was empty, two fingers gripping the stem, the edge of his silver-framed glasses slightly gleaming, his wandering gaze just meeting hers.

She very much wanted to escape tonight’s banquet and promptly said: “Okay, let’s go, Lin Zhixia.”

Lin Zhixia thought the senior was full of interest in her code.

That’s great!

Her approach was affirmed by the senior!

She wanted to simulate a quantum programming language, make it open-source on the internet, available for everyone to use. As the saying goes, many hands make light work; the more scholars researching quantum algorithms, the faster this field will develop.

Lin Zhixia said goodbye to her advisor. She took Wei Ruoxing’s hand and walked openly out of the banquet hall.

*

And so, Lin Zhixia led away a senior she had just met.

Senior Wei wore a camel-colored dress with a long coat over it, a Burberry check scarf around her neck. Her skin was snow-white, her makeup light, her features bright and beautiful, exuding a quiet and elegant quality from within.

Wei Ruoxing’s demeanor was somewhat similar to Luo Ying’s, though their personalities were quite different. Luo Ying was outwardly gentle but inwardly strong, hiding steel within softness, while Wei Ruoxing was gentle both outside and inside, consistent through and through.

Lin Zhixia inwardly marveled that the seniors from Provincial No. 1 High School were each excellent in their way.

The night was dark, shadows flickered under the streetlights, and a crisp north wind blew toward them, making Wei Ruoxing shiver. She tightly held Lin Zhixia’s arm, and Lin Zhixia righteously said: “Are you cold, Senior? I’ll take off my coat for you.”

Wei Ruoxing smiled and shook her head. Just as she was about to speak, her back suddenly felt warm as someone draped a suit jacket over her shoulders. The jacket was pure black, made of high-quality fine flannel. Without turning around, she knew who the owner of the jacket was.

She froze in place like a stone statue.

She heard Tan Qianche’s voice: “How have you been these years abroad?”

Wei Ruoxing turned to face him and said: “I’ve been living a fulfilling life. And you?”

Tan Qianche wore a white shirt and black suit pants. His cuffs were already unbuttoned, revealing half of his strong, muscular arms. He had once used these hands to hold her waist, but that was all. They had never kissed, much less slept together, only experiencing an innocent early romance.

Yesterday’s dreams flowed like water, and Tan Qianche replied indifferently: “I’m doing alright too.”

He kept his hands in his pants pockets, showing no intention of leaving, nor did he look at her much.

Lin Zhixia immediately became vigilant. She was well aware of Tan Qianche’s chaotic lifestyle. Tan Qianche couldn’t even remember the names of those girls; to prevent confusion, he uniformly used “baby” as a generic term. The true number of “babies” remained a mystery.

But he didn’t mention his private life at all, instead asking with a smile: “Is your current boyfriend one of your advisor’s students?”

“No, you’ve misunderstood. I don’t have a boyfriend,” Wei Ruoxing replied.

Tan Qianche strangely retracted the smile from his face, his tone plain and serious, as if conducting official business: “Gu Likai leads a large quantum computing group. The large group is divided into several smaller ones. I’m in the quantum bit circuit group, and I’ve worked on quantum algorithms. We could collaborate on a paper if there’s an opportunity.”

Wei Ruoxing looked sideways at Lin Zhixia: “Are you in the quantum bit group?”

Lin Zhixia said somewhat shyly: “I move around the entire quantum computing group; I learn everything.”

Wei Ruoxing smiled at her: “If there’s a chance, we could collaborate on a paper.”

“Of course, Senior!” Lin Zhixia readily agreed.

Tan Qianche’s mouth twitched. He looked down at the cracks between the bricks on the sidewalk. Wei Ruoxing then returned the suit jacket to him: “No need for this, I’m not cold anymore…”

He suddenly said: “I’m sorry.”

Wei Ruoxing’s wrist froze in midair: “You’re apologizing to me?”

“When I was young, I was too arrogant.” Tan Qianche took back the jacket and draped it over his left arm. “I thought of myself as a genius, found everyone else stupid, thought everyone else was foolish. I liked you but looked down on you. Did that hurt your feelings?”

Wei Ruoxing bit her lip. She tightened her coat, her expression resolute, a thousand words condensed into two: “Forget it.”

She turned to leave.

Tan Qianche grabbed her sleeve: “Let me look at you once more, tell me if you’re doing well…” These words were sincere. He had gone too long without speaking from his heart; when it suddenly erupted, his fingertips began to tremble violently, like the late stage of Parkinson’s syndrome.

Wei Ruoxing shook off his hand. With her back to him, she said: “I’ll graduate with my doctorate this September, and then I’ll return to China to work in Shanghai. I’ve secured a teaching position… Coming to your school this time, I wanted…”

She pondered for a long while but couldn’t express what she wanted.

Tan Qianche stood very close to her; if she stepped backward, she would bump into his chest. But she walked forward without looking back: “This morning, I heard that you’ve never been without girls by your side. Anyway, take care of yourself.”

Lin Zhixia quickly caught up with her: “Senior!”

But the senior said, “I’m sorry, Lin Zhixia, I’m feeling a bit unwell. I’ll head back to the hotel first. Another day, I’ll come see the code you’ve written.”

“Senior, let me walk you back to the hotel. Is there anything you’d like to eat? I’ll buy it for you,” Lin Zhixia offered.

The senior waved at her: “I know the way. I’d like to be alone for a while.”

Lin Zhixia stood in place, watching her leave. Her silhouette grew increasingly distant under the streetlights, gradually merging into the vast, boundless night.

*

The night was cold as water, the wind biting. Tan Qianche, wearing expensive suit pants, sat on a dusty stone brick by the roadside. He bent his knees, hunched his back, his entire face buried in shadow, appearing depressed, wilted, dejected, and disheveled, like a stray dog.

Lin Zhixia ran to him in a few quick steps and called out: “Senior.”

He didn’t look up.

Lin Zhixia had known him for over a year but had never seen him like this. He was always carefree and confident, flirting with girls everywhere or being flirted with. As a teaching assistant in the Physics Department, to prevent entanglements between TAs and students, he didn’t respond to any female students from the Physics Department. As for beautiful girls from other departments or schools, he never refused anyone.

This behavior was so strange, like “Love in the Time of Cholera.”

In the book “Love in the Time of Cholera,” the male protagonist, unable to win the love of the female protagonist, relieved the loneliness and solitude of life through self-indulgence. The male protagonist’s list contained a long string of women’s names, each having had a one-night stand with him.

Lin Zhixia recalled passages from the book, sighed, and said calmly: “Senior, I’ve called Yang Shuwen to come get you. Put your jacket on properly, and don’t catch a cold. Tomorrow we have the academic exchange meeting, and you’re the main speaker for the quantum bit circuit. You can’t fall ill.”

Tan Qianche didn’t respond to her.

She quickly ran further away: “I’m leaving, bye.”

Lin Zhixia hurriedly returned to her dormitory and opened her computer. She was eager to express her inner confusion, but Jiang Yubai’s QQ status was offline.

She clicked on the computer’s notepad and hastily typed out a long paragraph: “We’ve discussed love before, and today I have a new observation. One of my seniors has many girlfriends… His girlfriends also have their boyfriends; they maintain open relationships. Russian scholar Yuri Shcherbatykh analyzed ‘open relationships’ in his work. Yuri Shcherbatykh believed that men and women in primitive tribes had more freedom because primitive tribes supported truly group-based open relationships… That senior chose this lifestyle, but tonight, when he saw his first love, why did he still appear so depressed?”

At this point, Lin Zhixia had a sudden realization.

She was recording Tan Qianche’s reactions, recalling books she had read, all from an academic research perspective. She thought she could easily see through a person, but the facts proved she knew too little; she didn’t understand the human heart.

Lin Zhixia fell into deep thought. She copied that paragraph from the notepad, pasted it into the QQ dialog box, and pressed send…

It was at this moment that Lin Zhixia suddenly realized she hadn’t opened Jiang Yubai’s chat window, but Lin Zeqiu’s!

Both Lin Zeqiu and Jiang Yubai used the default system avatar on QQ.

Most terrifying of all, just after Lin Zhixia sent the message, Lin Zeqiu suddenly came online, and the computer screen displayed the words “The other party is typing…”

Lin Zhixia was so frightened that she turned off the power, closed the laptop firmly, wrapped herself in a soft blanket, and curled up in her small dormitory bed.