"Did you hear about Zhou Yinian on the product team…"
The message popped up at 8:40 that evening. Zhou was sitting on the edge of his bed, soaking his feet.
That half sentence was all the notification showed.
He tapped on it. It was the small group chat for his batch of interns. HR had added all ten of them on the first day, and in two days he hadn't said a single word in it.
Design-Xiao He: Did you hear about Zhou Yinian on the product team? Left on time on his first day, and on day two Wen Yining handed him the research for the end-of-month review. This afternoon his phone played a wellness broadcast on speaker at his desk for three whole minutes and nobody dared say a word to him.
Below it, the messages came one after another.
Ops-Ah Jie: ???
Dev-Dapeng: Wen Yining? THE Wen Yining who answers messages at 2 a.m.?
QA-Xiaoman: whats a wellness broadcast
Zhou read the whole thing from the top.
Leaving on time was true. The research was true. The broadcast was true too.
Put three true things together, and you got someone he'd never met.
Before he'd figured out what to say, Song Xiaobei popped up and sent three messages in a row.
The first was a screenshot of a note.
The Sayings of Bro Zhou
It's time. I'm clocking out. (Said it right to Ms. Wen's face. He's definitely got connections.)
No rush. Take it slow.
It's three o'clock, everyone. Have some water.
Song Xiaobei: I sit right next to him, and I'm going on record here.
Song Xiaobei: Bro Zhou has connections. Big ones.
That was followed by three salute emojis.
The group chat blew up.
Marketing-Linzi: whose kid is he?
Support-Ah Duo: Bet his family's old house got demolished. Only compensation money lets you clock out on time
Design-Xiao He: everyone on our team says HR sent him over
Zhou looked down at his foot basin.
If his family really had gotten a demolition payout, he wouldn't be soaking his feet in a rented room. He'd bought this basin at the supermarket downstairs for nine-ninety.
The messages kept scrolling up, and then they paused.
An avatar he hadn't seen before popped up. It was a line chart.
Data Ops-Lu Heng: Someone with connections that big needs an internship?
After that one, the group went quiet for a full thirty seconds.
Zhou read the line again.
He couldn't fault it. If he'd been sitting on the data team, he'd probably have asked the same thing.
His phone buzzed in his palm. It was a private message from Song Xiaobei.
Song Xiaobei: Bro Zhou whatever you do don't explain
Song Xiaobei: the more you explain the truer it sounds
A factual reminder: this chapter appears on NovelPhoenix as the author's publication, but this version was copied without approval; reading there helps support them.
Zhou didn't answer him. He tapped into the group's message box.
Everyone's got the wrong idea. I don't have any connections. I'm just
He got that far and couldn't stand to read it. It sounded like the statement a company puts out when something's gone wrong.
He deleted it one letter at a time.
Nobody ordinary would ever post that.
He deleted that too.
Song Xiaobei had a point. Not explaining was the least trouble.
But if the words big connections ever reached Wen Yining, they'd put an official stamp on her Who pulled strings for this one?
He had three more months to spend under her.
The time at the top of his phone ticked over to 9:15.
There was a ding in his ears.
[Elder Zhou, bedtime is in fifteen minutes! Remember to dry your feet after your soak]
He cleared the box and typed something short. This time he didn't delete it. He hit send.
Zhou Yinian: No connections. I leave on time because it's time.
The group went quiet for two seconds. Design-Xiao He unsent a message.
Less than ten seconds later, Song Xiaobei's message followed.
It was a screenshot of exactly what he'd just sent.
Song Xiaobei: 4. No connections. I leave on time because it's time.
Zhou stared at that 4 for a long time.
He'd sent the line to make this stop. Song Xiaobei had given it a number.
Marketing-Linzi: Got it. The whole era's clocking out.
QA-Xiaoman: No connections is the biggest connection.
A whole string of lesson learned followed, until by the end people were just posting +1.
Lu Heng didn't say anything else. He quoted Zhou's line by itself and replied with a single period.
Zhou looked at that period for several seconds.
A single period was even harder to answer than needs an internship.
Song Xiaobei: see Bro Zhou
Song Xiaobei: what did I tell you
9:29.
[It's 9:30, Elder Zhou! Put the phone down. Morning exercise is at six tomorrow!]
He dried his feet, dumped out the water, got into bed, and pulled the light cord.
Face down by his pillow, his phone kept buzzing, again and again.
At six on Wednesday morning, he was in the back row at Huaiyin Park as usual.
He was still half a beat behind, but he didn't wobble anymore. When Auntie Fang's phone swept across, it didn't stop on him.
As they finished the closing moves, there was a click from the stone tables.
Old Gu was tapping a chess piece on the tabletop. "Up for a game?"
"This weekend."
Old Gu grunted, turned, and called out to the next table.
At the office, two people in the elevator were chatting. The moment they saw him, they stopped.
They both shifted aside at the same time, leaving enough room for one more person.
Zhou stepped in, hugging his thermos. Nobody said anything.
He'd learned his lesson this time. He had all five cups down before eleven.
He spent the whole day on the research plan. He re-sorted the three thousand-plus pieces of feedback by the step where people got stuck. Then he filled in the document item by item: which kinds of old people to sit down and talk to, what to talk about, where to find them.
Thursday morning, Old Gu said the same thing.
"Up for a game?"
"This weekend."
Old Gu tossed the piece into the box with a clatter.
At three that afternoon, a four-page first draft came off the printer and went down beside Wen Yining's keyboard.
She went through it even faster than she had the comparison report. When she was done, she pushed the four pages back toward him.
"Full plan by next Monday."
That was all. Whether it was good or bad, she didn't say.
Zhou took the pages back and pinned them under his thermos.
She hadn't told him to redo it. That meant he could keep going.
Friday morning, Old Gu didn't ask. As the tai chi wound down to its final move, he just tapped a chess piece twice on the stone stool across from him.
At 5:30 on Friday, Zhou shut down his computer and went downstairs.
On the ground floor, he tapped his badge.
Beep.
The turnstile gates folded open, and there was that ding in his ears again.
[Ding! Elder Zhou, here's your Weekly Retirement Living Summary!]
[Left on time: 5/5]
[Morning exercise: 4/4]
[Early to bed: 4/4. Tonight's isn't here yet, so don't stay up!]
[Water: 3/4. You forgot on Tuesday]
As for Tuesday, the whole product team remembered it for him.
The panel turned a page.
[New this week: Tai Chi (Beginner), Senior User Insight (Beginner)]
[Your first week of retirement has been nice and orderly, Elder Zhou. The Service Center hereby commends you!]
Zhou stood by the revolving door and read the commendation from start to finish.
The last time anyone had written him a commendation, he'd been in grade school.
The panel dinged again.
[This Week's Hobby Task: Win a game of chess at the park]
[Time limit: 7 days (ends at midnight next Friday)]
[Reward: Skill — Chess Sense (Beginner)]
[If you don't win, the Service Center will have something else in store for you!]
The panel shrank back into the lower left corner of his vision and became a little box.
Games: 0 won, 0 lost | 7 days left
Chess at the park. Of the four stone tables at Huaiyin Park, there was one Old Gu said he'd been sitting at for thirty years.
Zhou knew how the pieces moved.
That was about it.
Don't show this weekend, and you're a chicken.
Both times he'd said this weekend, he'd been planning to put it off forever.
For once he got a seat on the subway. He'd just sat down with his backpack in his lap when his phone buzzed.
Song Xiaobei: Bro Zhou Bro Zhou
Song Xiaobei: heard Lu Heng from the data team is transferring to our team next Monday
That was followed by a little yellow face with a bead of cold sweat on its forehead.
Zhou looked at the name Lu Heng and thought of that period.
He turned his phone face down on his knee.
The box in the lower left corner was still lit.
Games: 0 won, 0 lost | 7 days left