At 2:58 on Monday afternoon, a message popped up in the product team's work chat.
Lu Heng: @everyone 3 PM. Break room.
At three on the dot, there was a jar of Hangzhou white chrysanthemums on the break room counter, with a stack of paper cups beside it.
The jar was freshly opened. The ring of foil around the mouth had been torn off clean.
People from the team came in one after another, pinched up some flowers, dropped them into a paper cup, filled it with boiling water, and carried it back to their desks.
The coworker at the desk across from his, the one with dark circles under their eyes, took a sip. Their eyebrows knotted together. They took another sip, and the knot got tighter.
The older woman at the desk diagonally across from his stared at the flowers opening up in her cup for a long time. Then she opened her drawer, tore the top off a stick of instant coffee, poured it in, and stirred it with a pen.
The chrysanthemums went around twice in the brown water and sank.
Zhou was last in line. He didn't take a paper cup. He pinched a little chrysanthemum out of the jar and dropped it into his own thermos, and two of the goji berries soaking at the bottom floated up with it.
He screwed the lid on and gave it a shake.
Lu Heng walked past him holding a paper cup. He left one on the corner of Wen Yining's desk too, without a word, and went back behind the wall of monitors across the way.
Song Xiaobei came over cradling his paper cup and lowered his voice.
"It's three o'clock, everyone. Have some water."
Once he'd said it, he was the first to crack up. He looked down and took a sip, and his whole face scrunched up before he got it down.
"Bro Zhou, that line of yours is good for a whole month."
Wen Yining didn't even look at the cup on the corner of her desk.
She reached over, picked it up, and drank it in one go. One squeeze, and the paper cup was flat. She dropped it into the wastebasket by her feet, and her hands went back to the keyboard. She kept typing.
Zhou's thermos held chrysanthemum and goji, steeped together. It went down just right.
When he'd finished a cupful, the box in the lower left corner ticked to 5/8.
That task was still up on the panel.
[This Week's Hobby Task: Teach a youngster a full tai chi routine]
[Progress: 0/1 | 4 days left]
There was a new line under it.
[Elder Zhou, this month's pension goes out Wednesday at 9 AM! Remember to check for it!]
He'd merged the research into the requirements doc and turned it in at nine that morning. There was nothing urgent on his plate right now.
He looked up and swept his eyes around the room.
By the System's math, everyone on the seventeenth floor except him was a youngster.
His eyes passed over the back of Wen Yining's head, then over the half of Lu Heng that showed above the monitors across the way, and he pulled them back fast.
He couldn't bring himself to ask a single one of them.
If he actually opened his mouth at his desk and said, "Come do tai chi with me at lunch," half the floor would look up.
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At three on Tuesday afternoon, there was chrysanthemum tea again. He still didn't say a word, and the panel ticked over to 3 days left.
Just after nine on Wednesday morning, someone in the intern group chat asked what day the first month's pay was actually supposed to come in. A string of +1s followed. Not one person could answer.
The phone he'd left on the desk lit up.
Your account ending in 0614 has received RMB 800.00. Memo: Pension. Payer: Retirement Living Services.
At the same moment, a line popped up in his vision.
Song Xiaobei was leaning over to borrow his charging cable. His hand stopped halfway, in midair, and his eyes landed on the text.
"Bro Zhou, what's this?"
His voice had dropped to barely a breath.
Zhou unscrewed his thermos and blew on it once.
"Pension."
For three full seconds, Song Xiaobei didn't move. Then he glanced left and right and stretched his neck a little further over.
"Got it."
He opened the notes app on his phone and scrolled down. He paused at entry seven, then locked the screen.
"This one stays out of the Sayings."
Zhou said, "I'm an intern."
"Right, right." Song Xiaobei nodded fast, unplugged the charging cable while he was at it, and wound it around his finger. He muttered under his breath, "HQ sure picks plain names for things."
The task line ticked down one more notch.
[2 days left]
He looked at Song Xiaobei.
Asking him would be the same as mounting a loudspeaker next to his desk.
He'd live with it.
"Are you free at lunch? I'll teach you a tai chi routine."
Song Xiaobei's eyes lit right up.
"Bro Zhou, you're passing something down to me?"
"The wellness kind."
"Got it."
At a quarter past twelve, the two of them took the elevator down to the fifth floor. Past the glass doors was the rooftop garden on the building's lower wing.
A few benches, a few potted plants. In the corner, two coworkers stood back to back, each on their own phone call.
He set his phone on the armrest of a bench, put on the tune the morning exercise group started their routine to, and turned the volume all the way down.
Song Xiaobei was still in his dress shirt and leather shoes. He rolled his cuffs up twice and stood behind him.
"Bro Zhou, where do we start?"
"Just raise your arms when I do."
The tune started, and he slowly raised both hands. Song Xiaobei raised his too, but faster. When he got to shoulder height and realized he was ahead, he hurried to press them back down a little.
A ding sounded in his ears.
[Elder Zhou, bringing one of the family kids out to practice? Xiao Song looks like a bright one! You take your time teaching him!]
His arms hung in midair for a moment.
Behind him, the family kid was scuffing a leather shoe across the tiles with a squeak.
For the first two minutes, Song Xiaobei's form looked pretty respectable. It was just that his feet kept slipping. His leather soles were on smooth tiles, and every time he shifted his weight, he slid out half an inch. Enjoying the story? Read on at novelping dot com.
By minute four, his knees had started caving in. His arms were still up, but he'd gotten a good bit shorter than when he started.
By minute six, a dark patch had soaked through the back of his shirt, and every breath in and out went through his mouth.
"Bro Zhou, did you slow it down?"
"No."
"Then why does it keep getting longer."
By minute eight, Song Xiaobei's legs were shaking inside his dress pants, hard enough that the hems swayed.
He took a step back and dropped onto the bench. The jolt slid the phone halfway off the armrest.
"Bro Zhou, this is harder than running."
The tune kept playing quietly.
[Xiao Song sat down partway through, so this round doesn't count!]
[Start again from the top tomorrow! Don't you worry, Elder Zhou!]
One of the coworkers on the phone in the corner turned to look at them, then walked off, phone in hand.
Song Xiaobei rubbed his calves. The second he had his breath back, he was talking tough.
"I'll wear different shoes tomorrow."
Zhou stopped the tune.
That night, back at his shared apartment, he soaked his feet and opened a shopping app.
There was a pair of running shoes sitting in his cart. 599. He'd been looking at them for a month and had never been able to bring himself to order them.
He backed out of the cart and typed blood pressure monitor into the search bar.
A whole row came up. He picked two and tapped into them.
One had four buttons. 129.
One had just one button, a big screen, and a voice readout. 459.
His finger stopped on the 129 first.
The four buttons sat side by side in a row. Start, Memory, Settings, and one more he looked at twice and still couldn't figure out.
His dad would stare at those four buttons and not dare press any of them. Buy it, and it would just sit there.
On the one-button model, the numbers on the screen were half the size of a palm.
He tapped the 459 one and paid.
For the address, he put in the one back home. In the recipient field, he typed in his dad's name one character at a time.
Once he'd paid, the page refreshed, and a line of gray text appeared under the order: Estimated delivery: tomorrow.
That left three hundred forty-one of the pension.
The running shoes were still sitting in his cart.
At 9:30, he dried his feet and lay down.
[Elder Zhou, in bed right on time! Today's early-to-bed check-in is done!]
He set his phone face down by the head of the bed.
After a while, he turned it back over.
The order page was still open. The line was still there.
Estimated delivery: tomorrow.