At night, Shi Bei typed away at her code, feeling drowsy long before daybreak. Considering that after this came the weekend followed by a three-day public holiday—meaning she didn’t need to go to school for a while—going to sleep early felt pointless.
Forget it, she might as well pull an all-nighter.
Apart from the tasks handed down by her senior, she hadn’t been able to resist her itchy fingers and had taken on a simple freelance commercial contract.
Who would have thought that this optimization job—taken on merely to earn a bit of quick pocket money—would end up stumping her for half the day.
Her eyes widened round, staring at the code in front of her. The buzzing fan whirred inside the room, symbols scrolling silently across the screen as CPU usage spiked.
Why on earth was it still throwing an error?
Modifying someone else’s work was truly tricky; refactoring her own code had never been this painstaking.
Unwilling to concede, she continued troubleshooting and debugging.
She muttered under her breath like a form of self-consolation: “It’s fine, it’s fine. Just a few more tweaks and it’ll be fixed. It’ll be done soon; there won’t be new bugs forever…”
Long years of work experience had taught her never to hurl insults at code written by others, calling it a pile of crap.
Because the moment she defined them as crap in her heart, feelings of disdain and disgust would spread uncontrollably—and the next second, it would almost feel as though she could smell a foul stench wafting from the cold electronic code.
Yet the work still had to go on.
Having experienced that kind of hellish ordeal, whenever she encountered even the most formidable refactoring of sloppy code in the future, she only dared to softly tell herself: “The code is a bit messy… perhaps this person was in too much of a hurry when writing it; everyone goes through states like that…”
Only by repeating such consolations and numbing herself like chanting scriptures could she remain resilient enough to uncover the corresponding logic embedded within that pile of code on the screen—written like ancient, bizarre incantations.
Shi Bei took a deep breath and hesitantly pressed enter.
Did it seem fine now?
Great! Finally succeeded!
Just as she let out a sigh of relief, with a triumphant smile rising two millimeters at the corners of her lips, an error message—a beat too late—leaped right into her bloodshot, weary eyes.
“…”
Shi Bei lost all expression. After freezing for a moment, instead of switching logs, she stood up and chose to go to sleep.
Perhaps today was simply not a day suited for working through the night.
Lying in bed, Shi Bei couldn’t help calculating the extremely tight deadline given by the client. She had recognized early on how difficult the modifications would be, choosing to force her way through to save time; she hadn’t expected it to be this tough.
In truth, this wasn’t a major real-time trading system this time, so there was no need to migrate module by module in such fear and trepidation.
How silly!
When she climbed out of bed tomorrow, she would tell them that everything had to be rewritten from scratch.
Otherwise, she’d let them go look for a divine deity instead.
Falling asleep in a daze, the uncomfortable feeling following the infinite error messages lingered around her bed like a cold ghost.
Soon, she began to dream.
She dreamed that inside the old system she was refactoring, an ancient, decaying ghost stood guard; making modifications meant driving it out, so the ghost crawled up her body along the network cable…
As dawn broke, Shi Bei struggled awake from her miserable dream, her body feeling alternately cold and hot, constantly sensing gusts of chilly wind.
Feeling downcast, she tried her best to curl into the blanket, closing her eyes to attempt falling back asleep.
At six in the morning, Kong Lingrou was awakened by the sound of the puppy downstairs pawing at the gate railing.
Lying in bed, she couldn’t recall all at once whether she had locked it yesterday.
Things unsuitable for a puppy to touch were all placed on the second floor; furthermore, climbing stairs was bad for a puppy’s health in itself, so Kong Lingrou forbade the puppy from going upstairs.
Yet the puppy wanted to cling to its owner every single second. In the past, it had pushed a stool next to the railing in the middle of the night, leaped onto the stool, and tumbled over the railing, successfully tumbling down into the stairwell.
Kong Lingrou had no choice but to climb out of bed and go down to see what was going on this time.
Seeing her come downstairs, the puppy immediately let go of the railing and backed away a few steps, turning its head to stare at her as it walked.
“What did you do again?” Kong Lingrou, who was in a bad mood from waking up early, frowned and scolded the puppy, “You’re not allowed to touch the railing.”
She unlocked the railing gate and went out, looking around the vicinity without finding anything unusual.
The puppy came back over to paw at her thigh, then ran into the hallway, stopping to turn back and look at her.
It was an unmistakable gesture of leading the way.
Kong Lingrou walked over, following the puppy all the way to the door of Shi Bei’s room.
“You want big sister to play with you? It’s still too early right now, you can’t.”
Seeing her stop without making a move, the puppy immediately grew anxious, jumping up to reach for the door handle and slipping inside first.
Kong Lingrou hurried in after it.
She thought Lele was eager to wake up the guest who was staying in their home for the first time to play.
Unexpectedly, as soon as the puppy went inside, it laid down obediently, staring unblinkingly at the figure buried beneath the pile of blankets on the bed, letting out a piteous whimper from its throat.
It was a sound the puppy would only make when its body felt unwell.
Sensing something amiss, Kong Lingrou walked over and reached out to pull back the blanket covering her face.
She saw Shi Bei’s eyes tightly closed, her face so pale there wasn’t a trace of color, her brows subtly furrowed as if caught in a miserable dream.
Reaching out to touch her forehead, it felt burning hot.
Kong Lingrou let out a sigh.
The window was standing open, casting a cool, gray-toned light into the room.
Carrying gusts of gentle breeze.
Kong Lingrou went to shut the window tightly first, pulled the curtains closed, and then turned to say to the puppy: “You’re worried about her and want to stay here, is that it?”
“…Whimper.”
As if understanding the words, the puppy let out a response.
“Alright, then you stay here.”
Kong Lingrou went to the storage room on the second floor to retrieve the first-aid kit, then turned back.
First, she used a tissue to wipe away the thin layer of sweat on her forehead; pointing the forehead thermometer at her forehead, several readings all indicated a low-grade fever. She could go to the hospital, or she could choose not to.
Shi Bei turned over groggily, and Kong Lingrou immediately asked: “You have a fever. How do you feel? Do you want to go to the hospital?”
“Mm…” She mistook the voice she heard as part of her dream.
Instead of opening her eyes, she raised her hand to pull the blanket back up, covering her head once more.
“If you don’t want to go to the hospital, sit up and take some medicine before going back to sleep.” Kong Lingrou pulled the blanket off her face. “Did you hear me?”
Deeply mired in heavy darkness, an intense drowsiness kept dragging Shi Bei’s consciousness downward.
Her body felt icy cold one moment and burning hot the next, extraordinarily uncomfortable.
Struggling to open her eyes, only Kong Lingrou’s figure came into view.
Kong Lingrou leaned over and bent sideways, wanting to help her sit up before placing another pillow behind her lower back.
Yet Shi Bei raised her arms, suddenly wrapping them around her.
Kong Lingrou, caught unprepared while leaning over, was dragged down onto the bed by her action.
Her body pressed against hers.
Shi Bei raised her face, nuzzling into the nook of her shoulder.
The strength she used to repress herself constantly vanished; in the darkness, only desire was clear and intense. Her fever-parched face pressed against Kong Lingrou’s neck, the subtle fragrance soothing her heavy brain.
It felt so comfortable like this that she couldn’t help closing her eyes and whimpering softly: “…Don’t go.”
Kong Lingrou’s body froze, remaining still.
The soft, burning head pressed tightly against her; controlling herself, she refrained from reaching out to stroke Shi Bei’s face, merely maintaining that posture for a long time.
After a good while, until the person in her arms slowly released her strength on her own, drifting off into dreamland once more.
“…”
In the final second before Shi Bei lost consciousness, she heard a soft sigh.
Unsure of how much time had passed.
Shi Bei finally woke up, her brain sluggish, unable to figure out time or space for a long while. Hearing the sound of the door opening, she opened her eyes and struggled to prop herself up into a sitting position.
“…Kong Lingrou.”
The moment she spoke, her voice sounded like sandpaper rubbing together, startling even herself.
“Rinse your mouth and eat something first. If you want to sleep, go back to sleep. If your fever hasn’t completely gone down by tomorrow, we’ll go to the hospital.”
Kong Lingrou moved a table over to her bedside, placing a wooden tray holding a tea bowl for mouth-rinsing in front of her.
“No… no need for such trouble.”
In the past when she had a fever, Kong Lingrou had taken care of her like this once too—doing everything for her hand and foot. But back then she was still young; rarely falling sick, she felt particularly frail and weak, thus especially needing to cling to Kong Lingrou.
Now that both of them were grown up, they had long lost the intimacy of former days.
Being taken care of like this made Shi Bei feel immensely awkward.
Struggling to summon her spirits, she said: “Was I sick? I feel pretty good right now.”
“…”
Kong Lingrou picked up the thermometer and pressed it against her forehead.
After a few beeps, she lowered her eyes to look at the reading.
“It’s still a slight low-grade fever. If you feel fine enough yourself, then get up and eat.”
“Oh.”
Having starved for a whole day, Shi Bei—feeling somewhat light on her feet as she walked—finished washing up. Turning around, she saw the puppy Lele sitting right on the line where the dining room met the washbasin area, its black-bean-like eyes staring earnestly at her.
Worried and heavy-hearted, Shi Bei walked over to the dining table, sat down, and asked:
“When I was feeling at my worst, I dreamed that a puppy came into my room and kept watching me. After a while, it asked if I wanted to go to the hospital, and in the end, it gave me a hug. Was this just a dream, or did it actually happen?”
Kong Lingrou’s movement paused. Setting down the plate in her hand, she didn’t even raise her eyes as she said: “Yes, my dog has superpowers. I usually don’t let others come over to my home, precisely to do my best to keep this secret safe.”
Shi Bei: “So no one else knows about this right now?”
Kong Lingrou gave an “mm”: “In the past, there were people who found out and were unwilling to keep it secret—they were all thrown into Tokyo Bay to reclaim land.”
“Living here, you can just open the window and throw them out; it’s quite convenient.”
“Right.”
Right about what? Shi Bei twitched her nose, no longer following along with her nonsense.
Steaming hot millet porridge and fried eggs were laid out on the table.
Lowering her eyelashes, Shi Bei picked up the spoon, sipping the light, subtly sweet porridge small bite by small bite.
Hiding what she wanted to say in her heart, she prepared a full mental draft, revised the phrasing repeatedly, and finally lowered her head to take a spoonful of porridge into her mouth, pretending to say offhandedly: “I’ll cook the meals from now on. I know how to make lots of things; you can tell me what you want to eat every day.”
“What?” Kong Lingrou didn’t catch it clearly.
Thinking she was questioning her, Shi Bei hurriedly swallowed the porridge in her mouth and said: “When I was little, I was just slow to pick things up, and you took away my chances to practice, which was why I didn’t know how to do anything.”
Kong Lingrou looked at her at her leisure: “So now you want to put on a talent performance, is that it?”
Why was this person so adept at using a flat tone to utter sarcastic remarks… Shi Bei gritted her teeth secretly.
She had originally made up her mind to show off her culinary skills, letting her know that the person who used to drop a bunch of broken eggshells into the bowl when cracking an egg had now become extremely good at cooking.
Those weaknesses exposed in front of her when she was young—she could now make up for them one by one.
She wanted her to see clearly that the events of eighth grade hadn’t knocked her down; instead, they had allowed her to grow into someone even more capable than before.
In the end, as soon as Kong Lingrou opened her mouth, she turned her intention into something resembling a kindergarten baby coming home to show off newly learned handicrafts.
“…”
Seeing her return to an expressionless state, Kong Lingrou silently stuffed the food in front of her into her mouth.
That secretly crestfallen look did end up affecting her a bit after all.
After a while, she spoke up and asked:
“I won’t be free for the entire day tomorrow, nor will I come back in the evening. How about I take you to the supermarket the day after tomorrow to see what you need to buy?”