When Su Nianxia put her car keys in her pocket, her palms were dry.
That meant she was calm.
At this point in her last life, she had fallen into three traps: an outdated version, a missing row in the quotation sheet, and attachments in the wrong order. Her supervisor had scolded her in front of the whole team for four solid minutes. The project later went to a competitor, and she carried the blame for half a year.
This time she had prepared every document three days ahead, checked them page by page last night, and arrived at seven this morning to print and bind them. The folder was neat in her hand, its cover marked with colored tabs.
Access to the meeting room opened at eight-thirty. Wang, the review supervisor, usually arrived at eight-forty. Nianxia had timed her arrival for eight-thirty-five, just early enough to submit everything before anyone else.
Perfect.
She pushed open the meeting-room door.
Then her perfection shattered across the floor.
Gu Shiyan sat in the third chair on the left, the place she always took at meetings. A stack of documents lay before him. He was underlining something.
He looked up, his expression mild. "You're here?"
She stood in the doorway and tightened her grip on the folder.
Why was he here?
She remembered clearly: in her previous life, at this time Shiyan had been on the third floor meeting with Marketing. The Chengnan bid was a fourth-floor matter, unrelated to someone from Strategy. He had only come upstairs later, after her failed submission, to analyze what had gone wrong.
Yet here he was, comfortably settled in already.
"When did you get here?" She chose her words, stopping short of "How did you get in?" That would make her sound guilty.
"Eight-ten." He didn't look up.
Eight-ten. Access didn't open until eight-thirty.
Her mind buzzed, but she didn't press. She went to the table, set her folder opposite him and sat.
"I came to submit the Chengnan materials."
"Already submitted."
She froze.
He capped his pen, pulled a document from the stack and slid it toward her. The cover bore the title of the Chengnan bid proposal. Wang had signed the review box at the lower right.
Eight-twenty-three.
"I submitted it for you," he said. "You left your folder at your desk yesterday. I saw it passing by this morning."
Her mind turned over twice.
She had definitely locked the documents in her drawer yesterday. The key had nearly snapped; she'd twisted it three times before the lock caught.
"Did you open my folder?" Her voice rose despite herself.
"No. It was already open."
She took a deep breath.
Fine. Stay calm. He had submitted her materials early. The method was strange, but the documents were in and Wang had signed. Her plan to get ahead of the rival bidder had worked: the Chengnan proposal was reviewed before the competition could intervene.
Only the process wasn't quite what she'd imagined.
Not remotely.
She was about to thank him, in a cold, strictly professional way, when the door opened.
Wang entered with a thermos. Seeing Nianxia, her expression grew peculiar.
"Su, good timing." Wang put down her thermos and opened a notebook. "I've read your proposal. Overall it's fine, but there's an attachment..."
An attachment?
Nianxia's stomach dropped.
What attachment? The Chengnan bid had just two parts, the main proposal and the quotation sheet. She had checked while binding it last night: forty-seven pages, nothing extra.
"The content is rather unusual." Wang leafed through her notes. "I wanted to confirm it with you privately."
Nianxia was already reconstructing last night. Her desk had been a mess: coffee, sticky notes, scratch paper. Had she slipped something in while clearing it?
She turned toward Shiyan.
His expression hadn't changed.
Wang took an A4 sheet from beside her and pushed it across.
Nianxia looked down. Blood rushed to her face.
Her handwriting. Two in the morning, last night. Crooked letters, written when she was clearly half asleep.
It was an entirely undisguised rant.
"The Chengnan quotation review has seven stages, each averaging three working days: twenty-one days total. From project approval to the bidding deadline, this project has only eighteen days. In other words, under the existing process, the quotation can never finish review before bids close. The data above comes from solemn curses sworn at the back of my boss's head. His hairstyle is turning into the Mediterranean, and that's probably the only process he can complete without seven stages of approval."
The room was silent for two seconds.
Nianxia felt her face burning.
Wang closed the notebook and looked at her with a complicated expression. "This research into 'the boss's Mediterranean hairstyle'—which report is it from? I couldn't find its source in the system."
Nianxia opened her mouth.
What could she say? That this was a venting draft written while delirious with fatigue? That her fingers had disobeyed her and tucked it into the proposal? That kindly Comrade Gu Shiyan had submitted the whole folder without even checking?
She turned to glare at him.
He was studying the scratch paper, serious and thoughtful.
"What was the sample size for the observations of the back of his head?" he asked.
She almost lost control.
"Shut up."
"I'm checking the reliability of the data."
"You're checking squat."
Wang coughed.
Realizing she'd sworn in front of her supervisor, Nianxia sat up, snatched the page back and crumpled it into her palm.
"Wang, it's a rough draft that got mixed in by accident. That page isn't part of the formal proposal. You can check."
Wang nodded. "I've seen the formal proposal. It's fine. But the attachment is already in the system, so there's a record. Write an explanation, follow the withdrawal procedure, and it'll be removed."
Nianxia nodded vigorously.
"And one more thing." Wang picked up her thermos, then turned at the door. "Keep the matter of the boss's hairstyle between the two of you. Don't spread it around."
The door closed.
Nianxia and Shiyan sat facing each other.
She clutched the crumpled paper, her palm sweaty now. Angry and embarrassed: angry at her own stupidity, embarrassed that he had witnessed it.
More importantly, there was something she couldn't understand.
He'd arrived at eight-ten, but access began at eight-thirty. How had he got in?
She had locked the folder in her drawer yesterday. The lock was loose; it might have sprung open. But passing her desk, how had he known the drawer contained the Chengnan documents?
Unless he knew she was submitting the proposal today.
Unless he knew how important this moment was.
She watched him gather the documents. Ordinary movements. No sign of guilt.
"You came to the fourth floor," she said. "You weren't just passing through, were you?"
"I came specifically." He said, "Strategy needs a liaison with the Chengnan team. Wang sent me."
That reason held up. She remembered Strategy becoming involved later. In her previous life, it had simply happened much later.
Still, something felt wrong.
His reaction to the scratch paper had been too flat. A normal person finding a rant about the boss's bald head inside a proposal would at least pause, or laugh. He had asked about the sample size.
He was playing along.
She stared at him for three seconds.
He gathered his documents and stood.
"I've drafted a template for your explanation." He took a folded sheet from his pocket and laid it on the table. "Submit it before the afternoon."
She glanced down.
The format was precise, the wording exact. It even anticipated three follow-up questions Wang might ask.
It didn't look improvised.
When she looked up again, he was already at the door.
"Gu Shiyan."
He stopped.
"What time did you go to bed last night?"
The question came from nowhere, but she asked seriously.
He turned and looked at her for a little longer than usual.
"Two."
Her fingers tightened.
She had gone to bed at two as well. The timestamp on the scratch paper was two in the morning.
It could be a coincidence.
Or it might not.
He left. Sitting in the meeting room, she unfolded the paper, crumpled it, flattened it and crumpled it again. Three times.
She looked down at the template.
At the very bottom was a line so small it would be easy to miss.
"Suggest keeping rough drafts separate in future."
She stared at it for five seconds, then folded the page into her pocket.
Her plan, prepared three days ahead, had been carried out for her by someone who arrived even earlier. The result was correct. The process included a draft insulting the boss. That person had prepared everything, even the explanation template.
She wasn't certain whether Shiyan carried memories he shouldn't have. But she was certain of one thing.
Next time, tear up the rough draft immediately.
She stood, tucked the folder under her arm and left. In the corridor she met Liu from Marketing, who laughed on seeing her. "Su, I hear your Chengnan proposal had a special attachment?"
News traveled fast.
She passed without slowing, her face blank. "Attachment withdrawn. Thanks for your concern."
Liu laughed again behind her.
Nianxia turned into the break room and drank half a cup of water. Her hand shook a little, more from embarrassment than anger.
The traps in this life weren't the same. Last time: wrong version, missing quotation row, incorrect order. All technical problems. She'd avoided every technical problem and fallen over a rant on scratch paper.
Changing her fate took more than memories of a previous life. She needed control over her mouth and hands.
The water dispenser gurgled. She jumped, spilling hot water on her hand. She put the cup down and shook it.
Her phone vibrated. An internal chat notification.
From Shiyan.
"The explanation deadline has changed. Wang says before the end of today."
She looked at the message.
Wang had told her about that change in the meeting room five minutes ago. Shiyan had already left then. How did he know?
She typed a few words, deleted them, and finally sent "Received."
Phone back in her pocket, she carried her water to her desk. Passing Shiyan's workspace, she glanced at his screen.
A document was open: "Chengnan Bid Review: Strategy Analysis Framework."
The bidding hadn't even opened. He was already writing the postmortem.
She stared at the title for two seconds, said nothing and returned to her seat.
She opened a new document and began her explanation. Two lines in, she remembered "Mediterranean" on the scratch paper. Her ears burned again. She hit Enter hard.
Fine. In their first direct encounter in this life, she'd lost a sheet of scratch paper.
The dispenser gurgled again, audible from half the office away. She saved the explanation as "Chengnan Attachment Withdrawal Statement," then noticed she'd mistyped one of the Chinese characters in "statement."
She deleted and retyped it. Her hands were still a little unsteady.
Su Nianxia read her explanation again, made sure it sounded sufficiently humble, then scrolled down. At the end she created a new page, titled "Supplementary Verification Notes on Chengnan Technical Parameters." She bolded it. Very official.
This was her trap.
She copied in the erroneous allowance that the tendering party had rejected outright at the preliminary review in her previous life. On the surface, the coefficient looked fine in this life: the public materials had never been updated to that version. Only someone who had lived through the bid would know it was a mine.
She scrolled to the bottom of the table and tapped her calculator. Twelve-fifty times eight.
The screen showed one hundred.
She entered ninety-six.
"..."
She stared at ninety-six for three seconds, confirming that she really had mistyped it. She had meant to plant a conspicuous calculation error to test Gu Shiyan, but had brought a genuine one along before planting anything. She deleted ninety-six, typed one hundred, considered it, then deleted one hundred and restored ninety-six.
Fine. Fake or real, an error was an error. Sending both would save trouble.
The printer hummed at the end of the desk row. She walked over. The paper jammed halfway out. A tug tore a fingernail-sized triangle from the bottom-right corner of the explanation. She searched a drawer for tape and found half a roll, which left the paper shiny.
Holding the patched sheet, she went to Shiyan's desk.
"Engineer Gu, Wang asked us to review the explanation and the technical supplement together."
He looked up and took the two sheets. He read the explanation first, pausing for a second at "Attachment included in error; does not represent my actual views." He neither smiled nor commented.
She silently begged: Don't ask. Please don't ask.
He didn't. He turned to the supplementary notes.
She edged half a step toward his screen, trying to see his expression. His screensaver was the default blue sky and white clouds. Seven or eight Excel files cluttered his desktop: "Chengnan-1," "Chengnan-1-revised," "Chengnan-1-revised2." In her last life his desktop had been immaculate. This life had apparently introduced chaotic renaming.
His pen touched the first field and circled it.
Her heart sped up. That was exactly where she had planted the mine.
"This allowance," he said. "Where did you get it?"
Her throat moved. "A template I downloaded."
"The wrong one." His voice was level. "This is the old 2007 allowance. Chengnan stopped using that calculation three years ago. Combine the supporting equipment and main works, and the coefficient is inflated. The reviewers will spot it immediately."
As he spoke, he wrote alongside it without hesitation: main-works coefficient 0.65; supporting equipment calculated separately by actual expenditure.
Her back prickled. That was almost word for word what the tendering representative had said at the previous life's review. Correcting it that way had to be a reflex learned from suffering the consequences.
"Oh, I may not have checked when I searched..." She reached for the sheet. "I'll reprint it."
He didn't let go. His pen moved up to her ninety-six. "Also this. Twelve-fifty times eight. One hundred."
"...My hand slipped."
"Here." He pointed down a row. "The decimal point has moved one place."
She pulled the paper away. He had spotted her deliberately planted mine at a glance and stripped bare her genuine elementary errors while he was at it. The patched sheet rustled in her hand.
"I'll redo it." Her voice was a little dry.
"Mm." He capped the pen cleanly. "When it's corrected, take it straight to Wang for her stamp. She's in the fourth-floor meeting room."
Nianxia paused. "How do you know?"
"Saw her in the lift," he said. "She was carrying the stamp box upstairs."
There was nothing wrong with that explanation. She didn't believe it. Wang went upstairs at ten-thirty every day to smoke and stamp documents. That was a pattern, not something learned by "seeing her in the lift."
Nianxia walked toward the lift with the sheet covered in red circles. She rolled a corner into a tube, then quickly flattened it. One thought filled her mind: Gu Shiyan had definitely returned to the past too. He knew 0.65, knew the separate equipment calculation, and knew she had to find Wang right now.
The lift opened on four. Sure enough, Wang stood outside the meeting room, an unlit cigarette between her lips and the stamp box turning in her hand.
"Wang, the explanation and supplementary corrections." Nianxia handed them over.
Wang saw Shiyan's red annotations immediately and clicked her tongue. "Su, the difference between ninety-six and a hundred buys two cups of milk tea. And Engineer Gu circled this coefficient for you too?"
"A technical check..."
"A good one." Wang opened the box and hunted for the stamp. "Submit this and Finance will chase you for three years. Use Excel's automatic sum next time. Don't calculate by hand, and don't trust random downloaded templates."
Click. The stamp hit hard enough to leave an indentation.
Wang thrust the papers back, then remembered something and lowered her voice. "Oh, President Li asked me to pass on a message."
Nianxia's back stiffened.
"He says his hairline is natural, has nothing to do with the Mediterranean, and you should stop spreading rumors."
"...I didn't write his name."
"But you used paper with the company logo." Wang removed the cigarette and pointed at her. "Everyone knows there's a girl in Strategy who put the boss's scalp into a bid attachment. Next time you rant, use plain A4. Understood?"
Nianxia took the documents, nodded woodenly and called the lift.
The doors opened. Liu from Marketing stood inside, phone raised, sending a voice message with the sound turned up: "...Yes, the one who wrote 'President Li's head reflects the breadth of the Pacific.' Oh, I've laughed myself sick..."
Nianxia stepped in, head down, pretending to sort her papers.
Liu noticed her. The voice message stopped abruptly. She coughed awkwardly. "Su. Submitting documents?"
"Mm."
"Young people are under pressure. A little rant is normal. Ha. Perfectly normal." Liu locked her phone, then added, "You write well, though. The breadth of the Pacific. Very visual."
Watching the floor number go from four to three, Nianxia said, "...I wrote Mediterranean."
"Oh, they passed it on wrong." Liu tried not to laugh. "The current version has been upgraded to the Pacific."
The lift chimed. Nianxia stepped out and nearly hit someone. Shiyan stood by the break-room door holding a cup filled to the brim.
"Stamped?" he asked.
She hid the papers a little behind her. "Stamped."
"Good." He turned to the dispenser and held the cup under the hot-water tap.
She frowned at the water already filling his cup. "Isn't there water in that?"
He looked down. "It's cold."
"So?"
"Adding some hot."
"Then pour the cold out."
He was silent for two seconds, his face unchanged. "It's a deep cup. The cold is at the bottom."
The absurd logic almost made her laugh. She suddenly realized he might be flustered too. A person returned from the past using a water refill as cover: how was that different from her hammering Enter this morning?
The discovery restored a strange measure of balance.
She held her empty cup under the other tap. The dispenser gurgled, exactly as it had that morning.
"Project-team meeting at three," he said beside her. "Post the corrected parameter sheet in the group. Don't calculate by hand."
She finished filling, acknowledged him and headed toward her desk.
"Su Nianxia." He stopped her again.
She turned.
He leaned by the water counter, still holding that full cup. "Send me the corrected sheet. I'll look it over again."
She hugged her cup. "No need. I'll check it three times."
"You checked it three times before. Ninety-six was still ninety-six."
"...That was an accident."
"Mm," he said. "An accident."
She hurried back with her water. At her desk she changed the Excel coefficient to 0.65 and stared at it for a long time. She opened the internal chat and sent Shiyan one line: "Sheet corrected."
He replied "1."
She stared at the "1" for five seconds, then opened her browser and searched: "2007 allowance Chengnan project supporting equipment separate calculation."
The result: no relevant public information.
She closed the page, lifted her cup and found the water gone again.
The dispenser gurgled at the far end of her desk area. She glanced over without getting up, put the cold cup at the corner of her desk and created another document.
She typed the filename very slowly. Even so, she noticed she had mistyped the Chinese word for "statement" again. She deleted it, retyped it and saved.
The top-right corner of the screen read eleven-fifteen. Fewer than four hours until three.
Su Nianxia saved the new document and checked its filename three times for typos before opening the Chengnan equipment-selection appendix.
Eleven-twenty. Before the meeting at three, she needed to organize every supplement and give it to Gu Shiyan. Wang's stamped revision lay at the upper-right corner of her desk. The red-ink coefficient, 0.65, stood out on the white paper.
Her eyes stopped at the equipment-compatibility option.
In her last life, Chengnan's bid had been rejected ostensibly for a high quotation. The real deduction was buried in the compatibility review. The supporting system's interface protocol differed in version from the tendering party's existing platform. The review panel judged it a technical risk and deducted twelve points outright. Few people on the project team had understood it then. She had found it later in the rejection report.
If Shiyan remembered that deduction too, he would react to this proposal.
She moved the option from the alternatives to the preferred column and made the recommendation sound entirely reasonable: "Following comprehensive comparison, compatibility option B is recommended for optimal value for money." She slipped an extra Chinese character into that last phrase as she typed.
She read it again. No problem. B really was cheap. The previous failure came from the unnoticed protocol mismatch, unrelated to its price. She made the reasons convincing enough that any ordinary person would see choosing B as sensible.
Provided that person didn't remember what had happened to B later.
She saved, picked up the printed materials and headed toward Strategy. Passing the break room, she nearly collided with Liu coming out.
"Oh, Nianxia!" Liu held a cup of goji-berry water, smiling even before her greeting. "I was just looking for you."
Nianxia stepped back half a pace. "What is it?"
"Your explanation. Wang mentioned it." Liu lowered her voice, but only enough that everyone within ten meters could hear. "The version going around isn't quite right."
Nianxia's stomach dropped. Her explanation had used standard wording: a rough draft included through "document-management oversight," with corrective measures attached. There wasn't much room for embellishment.
"Someone says you didn't write the rant yourself. You wrote it for somebody else, and when it was discovered you had to write a self-criticism."
"Who said that?"
"No idea, but it sounds very convincing." Liu sipped her water. "Another version says you were mocking President Li. He demanded the self-criticism, and Wang took the blame for you."
Nianxia thought for two seconds. Three times more absurd than the original, but strangely more flattering. Originally she had complained about the boss's chaotic management. Now she'd taken the fall for someone and Wang had heroically intervened. Several layers of protagonist glamour had been added.
"Liu, my own draft got mixed in while I was organizing documents. I didn't write for anyone else, and it wasn't a self-criticism."
"I know, I know." Liu waved. "Just warning you, so if somebody asks, you know what they're talking about. Oh, are you going to see Shiyan?"
"Submitting materials."
"Oh, work. Of course." Liu smiled and moved aside. After two steps, she turned back. "Don't put things like that in your documents again. Zhao in our department once included an online-shopping screenshot. The boss saw it and right there—"
"I'm in a hurry."
"All right, go on."
Nianxia hurried into Strategy's desk area. Shiyan had three Excel windows open and was checking parameters row by row. She put the papers at the corner of his desk.
"The Chengnan supplements. Please review them."
Without looking up, he drew them closer and opened the first page.
She stood beside him, pretending to look at her phone. Really, the edge of her vision stayed fixed on his page-turning hand.
Page one: proposal overview. Turned. Page two: quotation comparison. Turned. Page three: equipment selection.
His hand stopped at the compatibility field.
Her heartbeat quickened.
He read for five seconds, took a red pen from the holder and underlined "compatibility option B is recommended."
"This option won't work."
She waited. If he said "the interface protocol versions don't match," that meant he remembered.
"Have you read the review restrictions Compliance issued last week?" He turned to the last page and pointed at her attached self-check form. "Compatibility of supporting equipment is mandatory from this quarter onward. B doesn't specify its interface-protocol version. Under the rules, it must be returned for additional information."
She paused for a second. Compliance? Last week?
She certainly hadn't seen that document. But he was specific: "last week," "issued," "mandatory." It didn't sound improvised.
The problem was that, at this point in her previous life, Compliance had issued no such restriction. Mandatory compatibility review was introduced only after Chengnan's failed bid.
Either the rules had arrived early in this life, or he was sheltering behind a document that might not exist.
She opened her mouth to ask, but he had already pushed the papers back.
"Check B's interface compatibility again. Produce a report on an alternative and submit it before this afternoon's meeting."
She looked at the returned papers, then at his profile as he faced his screen. A very familiar feeling rose from her feet. She'd suffered this in her previous life too: trying to draw someone out, only to have a strictly official procedure send every bit of work back to her.
"Scope?"
"The interface-protocol version on the tendering party's current platform, B's compatibility with it, and a technical comparison of alternatives." He didn't turn. "Use Engineering's template from last quarter."
Three items in one afternoon. She calculated quickly. Protocol parameters from the technical database, two rounds of compatibility comparison, at least three pages of technical tables. Even if everything went smoothly, three hours would only just suffice.
It was eleven-thirty. The meeting was at three. Lunch was somewhere in between.
"Gu Shiyan."
"Mm?"
"Can I see the Compliance document?"
He opened a drawer and pulled an A4 sheet from a stack. She took it. It really had Compliance's red letterhead, a stamp, and last Wednesday's date. Its wording was thoroughly official: "Notice on Including Supporting Equipment Compatibility in Mandatory Preliminary Project Reviews."
She read it from beginning to end and found nothing to challenge.
But this document had not existed in her previous life. She was certain.
She put it back on his desk, picked up her returned materials and turned to leave.
"Su Nianxia."
She looked back. His gaze rested on the papers in her hands. "Third page. Fourth line."
She looked down. She'd inserted an extra Chinese character into "value for money." Her three checks had all focused on flaws in the compatibility trap. She had caught no typos.
"...Thank you."
"You're welcome."
Back at her desk, she put the papers down, took a deep breath and opened Engineering's report template.
Lin at the neighboring desk leaned over. "Nianxia, you don't look well."
"Rushing a deadline."
"Oh, for the afternoon meeting? Shiyan gave you extra work?"
She didn't answer. She began retrieving the tendering party's technical records. The system had three protocol-parameter files: V2.1, V2.3 and V2.5. None identified the version currently used by the existing platform.
She called the technical archive. Busy. Again: busy. The third call connected.
"Who are you looking for?"
"The Chengnan tendering party's interface protocol. Which version does the archive hold?"
"One moment." Files rustled at the other end. "V2.3."
"Are you sure?"
"The archive has V2.3. If you don't believe me, come and look."
She hung up and compared V2.3 with B's parameters. As soon as she opened the data fields, she saw B used V2.1, two minor versions behind the current platform. That was precisely the point the review panel had rejected last time.
So he did remember. He had seen the trap in B immediately. But instead of saying it had failed in their previous life, he had blocked it with a Compliance notice and assigned the investigation to her.
He remembered the risk. He wasn't going to tell her why.
She entered the comparison data into the report. On page two, Lin leaned over again. "What are you eating for lunch?"
"Nothing."
"Can't do that. Want me to bring something?"
"Anything."
Lin left. Nianxia kept typing. In the technical table on page three, she noticed another wrong character: she'd typed "mismatch" instead of "matching." At least the meanings weren't worlds apart.
She corrected it, saved and checked the time. Twelve-forty. Two hours twenty until the meeting, and the report was only half done.
Her phone lit up. A message from Shiyan in internal chat.
"If the report covers protocol-version differences, attach the number of last week's Compliance notice."
She stared at it for three seconds. He was reminding her. He was also saying that he knew she'd confirmed the mismatch, and that he knew she knew.
She replied, "What's the document number?"
"Top-right corner."
She opened the photograph of the red-letterhead notice and found it: Compliance-2024-0317. She added the number and continued.
Her stomach growled as she reached the conclusions and recommendations.
Lin's seat was still empty. She finished the conclusion and saved.
One-fifty. The report was done, but unchecked.
She read it through. On page two, she'd typed V2.5 instead of V2.3. On page three, the conclusion lacked a full stop. She corrected both and read again. No errors. Still uneasy, she read from the beginning once more. Nothing.
She printed it and put it in a folder. Standing, she found her legs numb from sitting too long. She moved her knees a couple of times, took the folder and went to Strategy.
Shiyan's chair was empty. His computer was on, three Excel windows still open, but he wasn't there.
She left the folder on his desk. Turning to go, she caught sight of the screen. The filenames remained chaotic: "Chengnan-final," "Chengnan-final2," "Chengnan-final-final," "Chengnan-final-final-no-more-changes."
She stared at the last one for two seconds and failed to control the corner of her mouth.
She hurried back. Just as she sat, Lin returned with two lunches.
"Yours, Nianxia."
"Thanks." She opened the container and took two mouthfuls.
Her phone lit again. Shiyan.
"Report received. Bring it to the afternoon meeting."
Then another message.
"Corrected 'mismatch'?"
She put down her lunch and turned to page three. She had corrected it. "Compatibility testing" was clearly there. No "mismatch."
She scrolled through their chat. She'd sent him neither a draft nor a screenshot. He couldn't have seen her typing.
So he must have passed while she was rushing, noticed the typo and said nothing until the report was in.
She picked up her chopsticks, ate another two bites, and stopped.
Was he checking that she'd fixed it, or telling her he'd been watching her work all along?
The tomatoes and eggs were cold. She put the last rice in her mouth and checked the time. Two-ten.
Fifty minutes left.
She went to fill her cup. The dispenser gurgled. Half a cup, one sip. Hot.
Back at her desk, she ordered the meeting materials: revised proposal, supplementary verification notes, equipment-compatibility investigation, copy of the Compliance notice.
Four documents, each thicker than the last. She read the first, then the second. Halfway through the third, her phone rang.
An administrative notice in the project meeting group.
"The three o'clock meeting has moved to the fourth-floor meeting room. Please arrive ten minutes early."
She put down the phone and picked up the fourth document.
Then she remembered something. When assigning the investigation, Shiyan had said "before the afternoon meeting." She'd spent three hours finishing and submitting it. But two pages of the meeting's own parameters still needed a final check.
Their checking time had gone into the investigation report.
She took those two pages and started at the top.
First row, 0.65. Correct. Second, 0.72. Correct. Third: she keyed the calculation into her calculator. The result didn't match the table.
She stared at the display and tried again. Still different. Comparing it with Shiyan's red annotations, she found she'd reversed the digits after the decimal again.
She corrected it, put down her pen and checked the time. Two-twenty-five.
She reordered the materials. Four documents became five. The file bag doubled in thickness.
She leaned back, looking at the stack. All she'd wanted was to test how much Shiyan remembered. Now she knew he remembered enough: enough to silence her with one Compliance notice, and to hand all the work straight back.
She hadn't drawn out more information. She'd lost her lunch break too.
No, she'd eaten. Tomatoes and eggs. Cold.
Two-thirty-five. Time to go upstairs.
At the end of the fourth-floor corridor, the meeting-room door was half open. Shiyan was already inside. Papers spread on the table, a cup of water beside them.
She went in, put the file bag on the table and sat.
He opened it, skimmed the first document, then turned to the investigation report's final page and glanced at the conclusion.
"Five?"
"Investigation report, Compliance notice, revised proposal, supplementary notes, final parameter check." She listed them in one breath. "All there."
He nodded and put them back. Just as she was about to relax, he spoke again.
"Corrected the third parameter row?"
The corner of her mouth twitched.
"Yes."
"Mm." He returned to the materials without another word.
Opposite him, she zipped the file bag and set it at the table's corner. The air-conditioning vent blew straight at the back of her head, chilling her neck. She shifted the folder in front of her, blocking half the draft.