"I wrote it myself. I went to bed at nine-thirty."
Wen Yining let out a short, cold snort. Her mouth went flat again right after.
"Nine-thirty."
She handed it back to him exactly as he'd said it. The red pen tapped once more beside his name.
Zhou screwed the lid back on his thermos.
At nine-twenty last night he'd still been revising page six. At nine-thirty the light went off, and the little box in the lower left corner of his vision ticked away in the dark, one number at a time.
If he said that out loud, nobody would believe him at all.
So he didn't.
Wen Yining didn't ask again either. She pulled her mouse over, opened a schedule, and angled her monitor toward him.
At the very bottom was a row highlighted in red: Chengshan Golden Years redesign review, Friday of Week 4.
"End-of-month redesign review. Senior user research. You're running it."
Somewhere diagonally behind him, someone's keyboard paused for a beat.
"HR will be looking at how you do in the review."
She leaned back in her chair.
"Will you take it? If you can't, I'll get someone else."
Day two of his internship. Yesterday it had been fifty apps. Today it was a whole review.
To get a full-time offer at the end of three months, he'd need something to show for it. Right now all he had was seven pages, and she thought someone else had written them.
"I'll take it."
Wen Yining turned her monitor back and typed Zhou Yinian at the end of the red row.
"Requirements meeting at ten. Get the data from Ops."
He'd barely sat down at his desk when Song Xiaobei gave him a thumbs-up over the partition. He held it for two seconds, then ducked back down to his phone.
Right after that, there was a ding in his ears.
[Elder Zhou, here's today's wellness homework!]
[Daily water: eight cups of warm water. Have five of them by 3:00 PM]
[When you're getting on in years, you need to drink even if you're not thirsty. If you haven't had enough by then, the Service Center will give you a reminder!]
[Water progress: 0/8]
The panel shrank back into the lower left corner of his vision and became a little box of numbers.
Zhou unscrewed his thermos and drank what was left.
The box in the corner ticked to 1/8.
He went to the break room by the elevators and filled it up again. When he passed Wen Yining's desk, she had the phone wedged against her shoulder and was writing in a notebook. She didn't so much as turn her head.
He set the full thermos down by the base of his monitor, and there it stayed until noon.
Ops sent the spreadsheet over at 9:40. Three years of user feedback on the old version, more than three thousand entries, one per cell.
Some were three words long: Don't know how.
Some ran most of a screen, a rant that started with the text being too small and went all the way to a daughter-in-law who wouldn't teach them.
He scrolled down screen by screen. For almost every entry, he could tell exactly where the writer had gotten stuck.
It was like an old person was sitting right beside him, jabbing at the button that wouldn't respond before he could get to it.
He was a little past entry four hundred when ten o'clock came around.
The requirements meeting was in the small conference room at the end of the hall.
Dev, Design, and Ops had sent two people each. Wen Yining sat under the projector screen. He sat by the door.
They went through the redesign item by item.
Dev asked how many entry points to keep on the home screen, then looked at Wen Yining.
A copy appears here without approval, taken from the author's official page; reading the chapter where it was published supports the writer.
"That waits on the research."
Design asked how big to make the font, then looked at Wen Yining too.
"That waits on the research."
When it was Ops' turn, they asked whether to cut the daily check-in points.
This time Wen Yining didn't say anything, and every head at the table turned toward the door.
Zhou's pen stopped on his notebook.
"You heard them," Wen Yining said. "It all waits on you."
Halfway through the meeting, there was a ding in his ears, and the box in the corner flashed.
Seven or eight phones on the table were taking turns buzzing. He had his head down, writing up the font size item, and didn't get around to looking.
The meeting broke up, but not cleanly.
Dev chased him down to ask what price range of phone old people usually had. Design chased him down to ask whether he could give them a rough font size for now.
On the few dozen steps back to his desk, he got stopped three times.
Ops just started a little group chat and @'d him three times in a row.
He wolfed lunch at his desk and washed it down with the water in the thermos by his monitor.
When it was empty, the box in the corner ticked to 2/8. He screwed the lid on without thinking and set it back in its spot.
All afternoon the group chats never let up. Ops sent spreadsheets, Dev asked about tracking events, and Design tossed over three versions of a font size comparison for him to pick from.
Notifications kept popping up in the corner of his screen, one on top of another. He'd answer one and the next would be there.
At 1:40 there was another ding in his ears, right as someone @'d him in a group chat.
He figured it was the same thing and kept typing.
The thermos sat with its lid on, right where it had been since lunch.
At 2:58, Ops sent another spreadsheet.
He opened it, scrolled to the bottom, and started typing.
The corner of his screen ticked over to 2:59.
The little box in the lower left of his vision flashed. He took it for another red dot in a group chat.
At three on the dot, there was a ding in his ears.
[It's 3:00 PM, Elder Zhou!]
[Water progress: 2/8. That's not five yet!]
[The Service Center will give you a little reminder right now!]
The phone beside his keyboard lit up on its own.
A volume bar shot out from the left edge of the screen and climbed, notch by notch, all the way to the top.
First came a crackle of static from the speaker, then a woman's voice. Warm and cozy, with a little echo trailing behind it, the exact tone of the big loudspeaker in the courtyard of an apartment complex.
"Good afternoon, all our senior friends."
Every keyboard in the room cut off on that line.
Zhou grabbed the phone and pressed the volume button. The bar didn't move.
He tried the power button. The screen stayed on. He pulled down the menu. The whole row of icons was grayed out.
"It's March and the weather's warming up. The air indoors is dry, and we sweat more. Drink water often, a little sip at a time. Don't wait until you're thirsty."
The person across the way had just torn open a pack of cookies. Their hand stopped at the mouth of the bag.
The guy in headphones on a call pulled one side off and just held it there by his ear.
"Senior friends with high blood pressure, please take note. When you wake up from your nap, don't hurry to stand. Sit up first, take a moment, then get up."
Diagonally ahead, Wen Yining took her hands off the keyboard. She didn't turn around.
Zhou flipped the phone face down on the desk.
The sound was half muffled, but every word still came through.
"Feeling drowsy after lunch is perfectly normal. If you can, lean back and shut your eyes for twenty minutes. It works better than strong tea."
He flipped the phone back over and set it screen up.
There was nowhere to hide it, and no story that would hold up.
He might as well hear it out.
He unscrewed his thermos to blow across the top. It was empty.
He screwed the lid back on, sat up straight, and listened.
"That's all for today's wellness broadcast. Wishing all our senior friends good health and a pleasant afternoon."
Ding.
The volume bar shrank away, and the phone screen went dark.
Nobody on the team said a word. The hum of the air vents came back.
Above the partitions, a row of heads was up, every face turned his way.
"It's three o'clock, everyone. Have some water."
He said it about the way you'd tell someone the time.
On his left, a chair rattled back half a meter.
Song Xiaobei was on his feet, phone held at his chest, thumb flying.
Zhou turned his head and saw the note.
It's three o'clock, everyone. Have some water.
Song Xiaobei sat back down, scooted his chair toward the other side, and said in a low voice to the person there, "He's telling the department to take care of its people."
The other person looked at Zhou, then down at the cup on their own desk.
The person across the way put down the cookies, picked up a mug, and stood.
Two more got up after that, and one more farther in. Four people, cups in hand, headed down the aisle toward the elevators.
The last one in line glanced back at Zhou and muttered to the one ahead, "Is he from HR or something?"
The one ahead didn't answer, but they picked up the pace a little.
Wen Yining stood up too. She took the mug from the corner of her desk and followed them to the break room.
Zhou waited until the whole group had come back before he got up with his empty thermos.
When he reached Wen Yining's desk, she had just sat down. Her mug smelled of coffee.
She pulled open the drawer on her right.
It was stuffed full. Instant coffee sticks were stacked in rows on one side. On the other, boxes of medicine were piled several layers deep.
From the top box she pulled out a blister pack. The first pocket was already empty.
She pushed out another pill with her thumb, tossed it into her mouth, and swallowed it dry.
She dropped the pack back in and pushed the drawer halfway shut.
She didn't touch the coffee. Her hands were already back on the keyboard.
Zhou didn't break stride. He filled up at the break room and passed her desk again on the way back.
She didn't look up.
Once he sat down, he opened the product team's work chat and scrolled up to the schedule from that morning.
Above the schedule was a reply from her.
"Got it. Revise based on v2."
It was timestamped 2:03 AM.
He looked at it a moment longer, then closed the chat and drank his third cup of water.
The box in the corner ticked to 3/8.
After that, it was just one cup after another.
He made trip after trip to the break room. Every time he passed Wen Yining's desk, she was typing.
After the fifth cup, his stomach sloshed when he stood up. Two steps and he could hear the water.
He sat for the seventh and got it down one small sip at a time.
He held the eighth for a long while, eyeing it, before he raised it to his lips.
[Water progress: 8/8]
[Well done, Elder Zhou! Tomorrow, don't wait till three, okay?]
He let out a watery burp and quickly covered his mouth.
At 5:30, the numbers in the corner of his screen ticked over.
He shut down his computer, unplugged the charger, screwed his thermos tight, and slid it into the side pocket of his backpack.
Not one keyboard in the room stopped.
When he passed Wen Yining's desk, she didn't look up.
The drawer on her right was still half open. The blister pack lay on top of the coffee sticks, two pockets in its row empty.
He walked to the elevators and pressed the down button.