At six on Monday morning, Zhou took his usual spot in the morning exercise group: back row, far end.
The auntie in the knit hat wasn't in the front two rows anymore. She was back on his left, her tai chi fan tucked under her arm.
The opening music started. She didn't move.
The old man on his right looked at her and stayed put too.
Twenty or thirty arms rose together. When his went out, the left one brushed the knit cuff of the auntie's sleeve.
Someone up front glanced back and muttered to the person beside them, "That's him. He beat Old Gu."
The person beside them looked back at him too, then turned around and went on with their tai chi.
Auntie Fang stood at the very front, holding up her phone and filming. The camera swept from left to right, reached the back row, and skipped right over him, same as before.
With no subway to catch on the weekend, he'd stayed at the chess tables and by the lake till mid-morning both days. The large-print notebook was up to page four. Nine people in all.
That morning, after the closing moves, he went home and lifted the pothos down from the windowsill.
On the subway, he rested the pot on his knees. Its leaves trailed down and brushed the briefcase of the person in front of him. At 8:50, the pothos took its place on his desk, next to his monitor.
A little after ten, an image popped up in the product team's work chat.
Lu Heng: Survey responses past 500. As of 10:12, 512 valid.
It was a screenshot of the same dashboard. Dark blue background, a big 512 in the center. Below it, the age groups in five colors, one segment after another, lined up in a tidy row.
The goal had been five hundred in one week. Today made exactly one week.
Wen Yining: Good.
Wen Yining: Cross-analysis to me by Thursday.
Over by the wall of monitors, chair wheels rattled two or three times. Two coworkers came around the partition with their mugs and stood behind Lu Heng to look at his leftmost monitor.
"You could put this straight into the review."
The large-print notebook lay open to page four by Zhou's hand. The lines in that notebook were spaced wide. One page didn't hold many sentences.
Half of Lu Heng's face appeared from behind the wall.
"How many responses on your end?"
"Nine."
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"Nine responses?"
"Nine people."
Somewhere behind the wall, someone couldn't hold it in. Half a laugh got out before they swallowed it.
Diagonally ahead, Wen Yining's keyboard broke off for half a beat, then went back to its steady clatter.
"Oh," said Lu Heng, and ducked back behind the wall.
Just after twelve, Song Xiaobei said his mom was calling and headed off down the hall, phone clutched in his hand.
Zhou ate lunch at his desk. Across the way, the chair behind the wall was empty, and all three screens were dark.
He was only halfway through when Song Xiaobei came back.
He didn't go to his own seat. He crouched right down beside Zhou's chair. The call was long over, but he was still clutching the phone.
"Bro Zhou." He kept his voice low. "Lu Heng's in the small conference room at the end of the hall. By himself, talking at the projector. I took a peek through that strip of glass in the door. There's a chart on the screen. The title says Intern Clock-Out Times, Weeks 1–2, and there are two lines under it."
He traced a wave in the air with his hand, up and down, up and down.
"One's labeled Intern Average. It bounces around nine, ten at night."
Then he flattened his palm and drew it slowly from left to right, perfectly level.
"The other one's got your name on it. Ten dots, every one stuck right at five-thirty. Like he drew it with a ruler. His mouth was going, but I couldn't hear what he was saying. Then he turned his head and saw me outside the door. One click of his remote, and that slide was gone."
Song Xiaobei was talking faster and faster. On the last line, his voice got away from him.
"He turned your attendance into a chart! He puts that up at the review, and everybody sees you leaving at five-thirty every single day!"
The moment it was out, he looked all around. Nobody behind the wall. Wen Yining's desk, diagonally ahead, was empty too.
Zhou set down his chopsticks.
He thought back to last Friday at 5:29. Lu Heng had looked up at the clock on the wall first, then at him, then gone back down and typed a few keys.
And then there was the attendance sheet. Less than a minute after it went out, the first person to reply Confirmed had been Lu Heng as well.
Now the two things sat side by side.
Song Xiaobei blinked twice.
He looked down, unlocked his phone, opened his notes app, and scrolled up until he stopped on one line.
"Number two…" He tilted the screen toward Zhou. "Last time you said that, Ms. Wen had your seven pages pinned under her hand. Her eyebrows twitched, and she flat-out couldn't come back with anything. Bro Zhou, you've had something up your sleeve all along, haven't you?"
"No."
Song Xiaobei nodded. Slowly.
"Got it."
One look at him, and Zhou knew he hadn't.
Song Xiaobei edged in closer.
"Then stay a little late these next two weeks. Even if you only sit here till seven, that line bends." He went on, counting off on his fingers. "Or go see Ms. Wen. Tell her he's making a thing out of your attendance. The research is supposed to be about the research. What's clocking-out time got to do with it?"
Zhou put the lid back on his half-eaten lunch.
"The sheet already says when I leave. If he puts it up, it's still the truth."
Then he opened the large-print notebook, turned his chair back to the screen, and went on typing up his document.
Song Xiaobei stayed crouched there with his mouth open. For a long while, he couldn't come back with anything.
At three that afternoon, Zhou went to the break room for half a cup of water, then came back and poured it over the pothos's roots. There was a sticky note on the side of the pot. He wrote a line on it: Monday: 11 leaves, 1 yellowing at the tip.
Typing up the weekend's two pages, word for word, one paragraph per person, took him into the afternoon. He didn't look up at the big number on the wall of monitors across from him.
Close to 5:30, Lu Heng's head came up over his monitors again, and he checked the clock on the wall.
At 5:29, Song Xiaobei's chair slid half a foot his way.
"Bro Zhou, maybe sit a little longer today?"
At 5:30, Zhou closed his laptop, tucked his thermos into his bag, and stood up.
Behind his monitors, Lu Heng's keyboard stopped. It was half a beat before it picked up again.
The elevator went all the way down and stopped at the lobby.
The turnstile beeped.
He glanced at his phone. 17:33.