X: “How about we go through them one by one? What are your current ideas?”
X’s tone was clearly gentle, but his voice, coming through the Monkey King’s persona, felt somewhat awkward.
Awkward, plus amusing.
Ji Wenyu couldn’t help but lose his focus.
What did his own voice sound like to the other person? It probably wasn’t the Monkey King too, oh god.
“Oh oh right, let me take a look,” he said aloud while frantically searching the screen for Qinghe’s voice settings.
Hey, it really was the Monkey King too. The young man couldn’t help but let out a soft laugh, which was heard by X on the other end.
“What’s wrong?” X asked.
There was no hiding the laughter in Ji Wenyu’s voice: “How about we change our voices? This Monkey King persona is seriously impossible to keep a straight face with, hahaha.”
X also let out a low chuckle: “Okay.”
The earphones fell silent as both sides seriously searched for voices that sounded slightly less amusing.
Ji Wenyu picked and chose, eventually settling on a lazy, handsome guy voice. X on the other end seemed to have selected a professional newscaster voice.
“How is this one?” X spoke up.
Ji Wenyu tried his best to suppress his smile, nodding vigorously at the phone screen: “This one is much better.”
X: “Alright, then let’s begin.”
Starting from the very first question, X patiently accompanied him through every single problem, one by one.
He listened carefully to each of Ji Wenyu’s thoughts, gently guiding him to expand his thinking and allowing the young man to figure out a more complete answer step by step on his own.
With X’s guidance, Ji Wenyu felt as though a lightbulb had gone off in his head. He was naturally smart, but he had a playful streak in daily life, so naturally, he devoted less mental energy to his studies. Once X explained the problem-solving approach, he could immediately draw inferences about other cases from one instance. The outlines for several questions were quickly finalized, and the next step was to find data for modeling.
The school laboratory had plenty of data, and undergraduate students could freely enter to check it every Wednesday and Saturday. Right after his professional course ended tomorrow afternoon, he would just head right over.
Spend one day downloading data, one day cleaning data, two days on modeling, and the last two days drafting the paper to submit to Chen Wang. Perfect.
“You can do it,” X encouraged.
“Thank you, Big Shot!” Ji Wenyu beamed with smiles. Although he hadn’t officially started yet, he was already full of confidence.
X: “For the vocabulary check-ins these past few days, do you want to pause them?”
Extremely constructive advice.
Ji Wenyu pondered briefly.
“For this Qinghe event, what kind of check-ins actually count toward the points?” This was also a question he had wanted to ask all along.
Over these past few days, he had simply followed whatever X checked in with. However, Ji Wenyu didn’t actually know what the event rules truly were.
If checking in vocabulary was mandatory, leaving X to work hard all alone simply wouldn’t feel right. Even though he believed that even if only X among the two of them checked in, they would still easily stay on the first page of the event rankings, X had helped him so much that his conscience would hurt if he left X to do all the check-ins by himself.
“Checking in with anything works,” X answered earnestly. “Posting check-in notes with relevant content allows the traffic to count toward the points. I just saw that everyone usually checks in with vocabulary, so I posted that too. If you only check in with tree-planting or going to the laboratory, it’s all the same.”
The lab wasn’t a convenient place for check-ins, and Ji Wenyu didn’t want to locate his school on Qinghe. Then:
“Is checking in with eating at the cafeteria okay?”
The young man’s brain short-circuited, and the words slipped out.
Abstract, far too abstract.
After asking, Ji Wenyu wanted nothing more than to slap himself.
“I was joking, haha,” he quickly added. The newscaster on the other end had already burst into laughter.
“If you want to, it’s not entirely out of the question,” X played along.
“Joking aside, thank you so much this time,” Ji Wenyu cleared his throat and switched to a serious tone. “How about this, after handing in the assignment, I’ll treat you to a meal, how’s that? Big Shot, please grace me with your presence.”
Ever since they mutually followed each other, he had sought X’s help quite a few times, and the other person nice-guyed every single issue he had away. After so many times, it was only right for him to show some gesture of appreciation.
After the words left his mouth, an inexplicable sense of nervousness gripped the young man’s heart. X was, after all, the number one Big Shot on the Qinghe leaderboards; was an academic god someone he could invite out just by asking? Would the Big Shot refuse his invitation in order to maintain a sense of mystery on the app?
If he refused, actually, he could understand it too. After all, his original intention was simply to thank the person, not to pry into the Big Shot’s real identity.
His mind wandered wildly, his heartbeat quickening by quite a bit.
X on the other end was very straightforward, agreeing to his invitation without much hesitation: “Alright, then I’ll wait until you successfully secure your advisor’s recommendation letter.”
“Got it, thanks X-god! Then I won’t disturb you anymore, bye-bye!” Ji Wenyu said cheerfully, the corners of his mouth lifting.
“Alright, goodbye,” X said his farewells on the other end too.
There was no time left to memorize 200 words, but he couldn’t actually check in at the cafeteria either. While washing up in the dorm, Ji Wenyu had a flash of inspiration and decided to check in with waking up early.
Wasn’t this also a motivational behavior? How well it fit the original intention of Qinghe setting up the check-in event! Anyway, regardless of what he checked in with, the traffic on the notes was brought in by X, and while his content couldn’t be said to have zero relation to it, it was safe to say it was completely unrelated. As long as he kept posting two check-in notes a day just like the Big Shot, it couldn’t be considered dragging them down.
Having made up his mind, Ji Wenyu solemnly set his alarm for exactly seven o’clock the next morning. Setting a 7 AM alarm when he didn’t even have morning classes, wasn’t that worthy of a check-in!
Waking up early, passing by the cafeteria for breakfast, heading to the lab to look for data, attending two classes in between, and then returning to the lab. Ji Wenyu’s first day according to plan went relatively smoothly.
Thursday had fewer classes, and data cleaning unfolded methodically. At the lab in the evening, he even had time to start modeling ahead of schedule, writing a rough draft for the arguments of the first question.
Everything up to this point was going perfectly, until early Friday morning when Ji Wenyu dismissed his alarm and woke up, seeing a message sent by Uncle Zhang, the family chauffeur.
[Old Zhang: Wenyu, do you have many classes today?]
The young man frowned in confusion.
Zhang Qing was his parents’ driver, mainly following his mother around, and usually didn’t contact him directly.
[Little Fish: Pretty average, what’s up Uncle Zhang?]
He had three classes on Friday, but only one of them was a professional course, while the other two were slack classes.
[Old Zhang: Director Zhu and I came over here to Qingcheng to discuss a project, but Director Zhu got altitude sickness and was hospitalized. Do you want to come over and take a look?]
The message popped up from the phone screen, waking Ji Wenyu up instantly.
Mom is hospitalized? How serious is it?
The young man slipped into his clothes and got out of bed while making a voice call.
The background noise on Zhang Qing’s end sounded bustling, clearly indicating he was in a hospital, but he managed to clearly explain the general situation. After the National Day holiday, his parents had each followed two corporate orders, with one flying north and the other flying south. Zhu Hong flew south to Qingcheng and had been moving around the vicinity of Qingcheng these past few days. Qingcheng had a slightly higher terrain than Beijing, and some places in the suburbs had high elevations. Due to continuous fatigue and poor rest, Zhu Hong triggered altitude sickness, experiencing chest tightness and shortness of breath by last night. Unable to hold on any longer, she was admitted to the hospital.
Zhang Qing hadn’t originally planned to contact Ji Wenyu, but helpless that Ji Zhiming’s project side was truly impossible to leave. With Zhu Hong hospitalized for treatment, the doctor told him to contact family members. Seeing that it was Friday anyway, he finally fished Ji Wenyu out of his contacts list.
There were five flights a day from Beijing to Qingcheng. Leaving for the airport right now, he could still make it to the hospital before the doctors finished their shifts in the afternoon.
Casually grabbing a couple of items of clothing to stuff into his backpack, slinging his laptop over his shoulder, Ji Wenyu didn’t have time for breakfast. He called a car through an app and hurried downstairs. Sending a voice message to Huang Bin to help answer the roll call for his Machine Learning class, the young man felt anxious and booked a flight to Qingcheng.
Aside from Machine Learning, skipping the other two classes, Political Theory and Art Appreciation, directly wouldn’t pose much of a problem. Tomorrow was Saturday and the day after was Sunday, meaning there were no classes anyway. However, the answer sheet he needed to hand in to Chen Wang hadn’t been completed yet.
The young man let out a long sigh, feeling utterly helpless.
Wanting to explain the situation to the professor and delay it for a few days, he realized he didn’t even have Chen Wang’s contact information.
What else could he do? He had to bite the bullet and do it.
With a hardened resolve, Ji Wenyu unzipped his laptop in the back seat of the ride-hailing car.
The driver’s driving skills were relatively steady, and since he didn’t get carsick anyway, writing code in the car had some harsh conditions, but he could manage.
The flight he bought didn’t have much leeway in terms of timing, leaving no time to visit the lounge. Ji Wenyu ran all the way to board the plane. Business class was spacious, and the small tray table could hold his laptop. However, without internet access while airborne, the code couldn’t use query assistance, nor could he check references at any time, inevitably making his efficiency suffer. The meal served by the flight attendant tasted like nothing to him. Yet, to have the energy after getting off the plane, Ji Wenyu forced himself to eat a bit more.
After disembarking, following the address sent by Uncle Zhang, he made his way all the way to the hospital.
Admitted temporarily, Zhu Hong was placed in a three-patient shared room.
When Ji Wenyu walked into the ward, she was leaning by the bedside retching while Uncle Zhang held a transparent plastic bag for her on the side.
“Mom!” The young man quickly strode forward and took the bag from Uncle Zhang’s hands.
Zhu Hong’s usually pretty face was sallow and she had no energy to acknowledge him, vomiting a mouthful of gastric fluid into the plastic bag.
“Didn’t you say her chest felt tight? Why is she vomiting so severely?” Panicking, Ji Wenyu asked Uncle Zhang at a complete loss.
“Altitude sickness, Director Zhu is also coughing and has a low fever,” Zhang Qing answered helplessly. “The doctor said they suspect mild high-altitude pulmonary edema.”
Ji Wenyu was startled.
High-altitude pulmonary edema? He had never heard of it before, but it sounded very serious.
“Did the doctor say how to treat it?”
Zhang Qing pointed at an oxygen tank nearby: “Oxygen inhalation, IV drips. The doctor said she generally needs to stay in the hospital for three or four days, and once she can be discharged, she needs to leave the plateau area immediately.”
Having finished vomiting, Zhu Hong collapsed back onto the hospital bed. Ji Wenyu pulled a tissue from the bedside to wipe his mother’s lips, his eye sockets turning sour.
“She came over last night?”
Zhang Qing gave an mhm sound: “She arrived in the night. Fortunately, there were beds available, and the emergency department directly arranged for hospitalization.”
“Thank you for your hard work, Uncle Zhang.” The young man sniffled.
Zhang Qing shook his head: “It’s fine, it’s my duty.”
“Then were you the one accompanying her here the whole night?” Ji Wenyu asked.
“Yes,” Zhang Qing replied.
“Then you should hurry back to the hotel to rest for a bit, I’ll accompany my mom here,” the young man said.
Zhang Qing took the backpack from his hands and shoved it into the storage cabinet at the end of the ward bed.
“Alright, then I’ll go back to rest for a bit and come back in the evening.”
Zhu Hong’s IV bottle was a Q8, one bottle every eight hours, and the nurse would come over in half an hour to hook up her drip. The meal card was fully topped up, and the cafeteria was on the second floor downstairs, opening for dinner at five o’clock. Before getting off work in the evening, the resident physician should also come around for another round of rounds, probably right around five o’clock. Having explained all this, Zhang Qing finally left the ward.
Zhu Hong’s bed was the middle one among the three hospital beds. However, with the curtains drawn, Ji Wenyu couldn’t see the other two patients on either side, only hearing the surrounding sounds.
Sounds of breathing, coughing, sniffing, snoring, and faint sighs.
The back of his hand suddenly grew warm as his mother gently patted it in silent comfort.
Ji Wenyu’s eyes reddened.
“Do you want some water, Mom?” He stood up, turned around, and used an old-fashioned thermos to add water to the thermos cup on the bedside table.
Zhu Hong watched him tenderly: “Rushing over from Beijing, you must be tired?”
Ji Wenyu shook his head: “Not tired, I came by plane, both ends were by car.”
“I didn’t want to trouble you in the first place, it was all Old Zhang acting on his own authority.” The woman’s voice was weak.
The young man pressed his lips together: “When such a big thing happens, I’m glad Uncle Zhang told me. Where’s Dad?”
Zhu Hong: “He couldn’t get away over there, he said he’ll come over in a couple of days.”
Ji Wenyu plugged a straw into the water cup and brought it to the woman’s lips: “Mom, have a sip, see if it’s too hot.”
Zhu Hong leaned forward to bite the straw and took a couple of sips.
“Go back to the hotel to rest for a while first. There are nurses and the duty doctor here for me. You’ve been busy preparing for the graduate recommendation lately, head back to school tomorrow.”
Knowing his mother was worried about affecting him, his throat felt dry as Ji Wenyu’s voice turned a bit hoarse: “The school has no arrangements for the weekend anyway, and I brought my laptop with me. Mom, you don’t need to chase me away. I’ll stay and keep you company tonight.”