Zhou began.
"Not one of Lu Heng's five hundred twelve responses is fake."
The few people along the back wall had been craning their necks, waiting to see how he'd tear that line chart apart. At those words, every neck stopped halfway.
Lu Heng was still leaning back in his chair. His eyes came up.
"Collected in seven days. Sliced by age group and by district, finer than anything I did. The numbers are real, and real people filled them in."
He paused.
"But the survey goes out to phones. First you have to open it. Then you tap through it one question at a time, and when you get to the last question, you still have to submit it."
The screen still showed the auntie's page, that half sentence blown up huge.
He raised a hand and pointed at the words don't dare touch.
"This auntie. She doesn't dare touch anything else."
He went back a page. Old Ma's words were up on the screen again. This time, nobody in the back row laughed.
"Old Ma. He taps a tiny bit off, and he's in again."
Back one more page, and it was the old man at the chess tables.
"This old man. One swipe, and the whole thing's gone."
Mr. Han's hand rested on his closed printout, his thumb pressed right on the crease in the top right corner.
"This survey? They can't tap their way to the last question."
He didn't bring up the line chart page again.
"The older people who can fill out an online survey were never the ones who need help the most."
He looked down at the large-print notebook on top of his draft.
"Fourteen people isn't many. But these fourteen are people a survey can't even reach."
Then he stopped.
The room went quiet.
The air conditioning was still blowing. The projector was still humming overhead. This time, nobody set down a paper cup.
Lu Heng opened his mouth.
No sound came out. He looked down at his laptop and scrolled through several pages before he stopped.
The laptop screen was angled partly toward Zhou, and he could read the heading clearly: Distribution Channels.
Under it were just two lines. In-app push notification.Link in community group chats.
Lu Heng's finger rested on the first line. He didn't scroll any further.
His mouth opened again, then closed. After two seconds, he set the remote he'd been gripping the whole time back on the table.
Mr. Han didn't look at Lu Heng. He turned to the head of Ops at the other end of the long table.
"The back-end feedback. What's at the top?"
The head of Ops didn't even open a notebook.
"Can't see the text."
Mr. Han pulled his printout back in front of him and took the cap off his pen.
"The redesign goes with the interview study. Rework the text size and the home screen entry points based on it."
His pen finished a line on the paper, and he went on.
"Keep the survey study. Use it as a reference for the check-in points."
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Lu Heng looked up and glanced toward the head of the table.
Mr. Han capped his pen without raising his eyes.
"Attendance is HR's business. A review only looks at the work."
In the corner by the door, the HR person nodded once and wrote something else in the notebook.
Wen Yining stood up, unplugged the projector cable from Lu Heng's laptop, and plugged it into her own.
The screen flickered, and the old man's page became a spreadsheet. The header said Review Minutes.
She clicked into the cell after Basis for Redesign. The cursor blinked.
A run of keystrokes, and words popped up in the cell: Senior User Research.
She typed an opening parenthesis. Letters popped out inside it one at a time, and when the name was filled in, the parenthesis closed.
Senior User Research (Zhou Yinian)
The text on this page wasn't blown up, but the people along the wall could read it without squinting all the same.
Wen Yining took her hands off the keyboard. She didn't turn around.
"Item three."
The minutes scrolled down, and the cursor dropped to the next row.
Only then did Zhou sit down.
He unscrewed his thermos, blew on it once, and took a sip.
The water was still warm.
In the back row against the wall, Song Xiaobei had his phone clutched to his chest in both hands, screen dark.
His lips were moving, but no sound came out. Halfway through, they stopped, then started over from the beginning.
Zhou could read the start of it off his lips. The older people who can fill out…
Items three and four went fast. The meeting broke up before noon.
A little after two in the afternoon, Lu Heng came over with his coffee.
"Go on, then. What'll it be?"
"I'll have chrysanthemum tea."
Lu Heng froze for a second. His eyes dropped to the thermos by Zhou's hand. Two goji berries were floating at the top.
Song Xiaobei leaned halfway out from the next desk over.
"For the whole team! For a month!"
Lu Heng didn't answer that. He carried his coffee back behind the wall of monitors across the way. A little later, a message popped up in the product team's work chat.
Lu Heng: Starting next Monday, chrysanthemum tea for the whole team every day at 3 PM, for one month. Lu Heng's treat.
Replies scrolled up one after another. Someone sent a row of question marks. Someone asked whether anyone could still pull a late night after chrysanthemum tea at three, followed by a string of crying faces.
Wen Yining: Okay.
Song Xiaobei leaned over and lowered his voice. He showed Zhou the notes app on his phone, one finger pressed on entry three.
"Bro Zhou, 'It's three o'clock, everyone. Have some water.' You said that your very first week."
Before four o'clock, a message popped up in the intern group chat too.
Song Xiaobei: Sayings update
The older people who can fill out an online survey were never the ones who need help the most. (Leaves at 5:30 sharp, Mr. Han signs off on the spot, HR right there taking notes. I'm going on record: HQ sent him in undercover.)
Design-Xiao He: undercover??
Ops-Ah Jie: no wonder HR sent someone
Less than half an hour later, someone from the product team came around to Song Xiaobei's desk with a mug, bent down, and asked quietly.
Song Xiaobei didn't answer. He just tipped his chin to the side.
Zhou didn't look up. "I'm an intern."
Song Xiaobei winked at the coworker.
"Hear that? He's even got the cover story down."
The coworker headed off with their mug. Two steps away, they looked back one more time.
At 5:29, Wen Yining walked past behind him without breaking stride.
"Monday at nine. Merge the research into the requirements doc."
"Okay."
At 5:30, he got up and went downstairs. The turnstile beeped, and right behind it came a ding in his ears.
[Ding! Elder Zhou, this week's Retirement Living Summary is here!]
[Left on time: 5/5]
[Morning exercise: 7/7]
[Early to bed: 6/6. Tonight's isn't here yet, so don't stay up!]
[Water: 7/7]
There was still one line at the bottom that hadn't been filled in.
[Listen to one complete opera: 0/1. Due at midnight tonight. Get home, soak your feet, and put it on!]
He'd just stepped out the main doors when there was another ding.
[Next Week's Hobby Task: Teach a youngster a full tai chi routine]
[Kids in the family, youngsters at work, they all count! Pick whichever one you like the look of!]
[Time limit: 7 days (ends at midnight next Friday)]
[Reward: Skill — Tai Chi (Proficient)]
Where was he supposed to find a youngster?
Back at his shared apartment, he boiled a kettle, poured it into a foot basin, set his phone on the corner of the desk, and put on The Empty City Stratagem.
He started from the beginning and didn't touch the progress bar once.
He couldn't make out half the lyrics. He just sat there soaking anyway. The water went cold once. He got up, topped it off with half a kettle of hot water, and came back to keep listening.
The troops below the city tower pulled back, the gongs and drums wound down, and the opera was over.
[This Week's Hobby Task: complete]
[Reward: Skill — Opera Voice (Beginner)]
[Elder Zhou, you didn't miss a single line of that one, and you beat midnight! The Service Center is giving you a round of applause!]
He dragged the progress bar back to the part up on the city tower and hummed a line along with it.
"I am but a carefree man of Sleeping Dragon Ridge."
Carefree came out on pitch. At man, his ears caught it first: on the recording, that word dropped down, settled, and only then slowly drew out.
When Old Gu got to this point, his voice went up. It went up too early. The long drawn-out note after it had nowhere to land, so all it could do was wander off.
No wonder it wandered off in the same place every time.
He hummed it again. Man came down and settled.
At 9:30, he dried his feet and lay down. The moment the light went off, the box in the lower left corner lit up again.
[Elder Zhou, next month's pension goes out soon! Remember to check for it!]
A twenty-two-year-old intern with no full-time offer in sight, and he already had a number in line for a pension.
He stared at the word pension for a while.