The smell of fried scallion pancakes drifted through the Liang family apartment, carried by the faint autumn breeze that slipped through the kitchen window. Outside, Beijing was already awake — buses rumbled down the main road, bicycle bells chimed in irritation, and somewhere a vendor was shouting about freshly roasted chestnuts.
"Ge!" a sharp voice rang from the hallway. "If you don't get out here in thirty seconds, I'm eating your pancake!"
At his desk, Liang Wei didn't look up. His glasses slid lower down his nose as he scribbled into a notebook, the page already cluttered with equations and half-sketched graphs. He muttered under his breath, "…if the symmetry holds, then the decay rate should—"
"Twenty seconds!"
Wei sighed, capped his pen, and pushed his chair back. "Patience, Mei. Some of us are busy solving the mysteries of the universe."
"And some of us are busy making sure you don't starve to death," came the retort.
The kitchen was warm and smelled of oil and soy sauce. Their mother, Sun Lifen, moved briskly between the stove and the counter, her small frame efficient and sure. Her short permed hair was streaked with gray, but her eyes were sharp as ever.
At the table, Mei sat scrolling on her phone with one hand, chopsticks poised in the other. She looked up as Wei entered, her messy bun tilting precariously. "Wow. He lives."
"Barely," Wei said, sliding into the chair opposite her.
"Barely still looks like you got hit by a truck," she shot back. "Your eyebags could carry groceries."
Wei picked up a pancake. "Still more handsome than you."
"Debatable."
At the head of the table, their father, Liang Guo, folded his newspaper with the deliberate calm of a man used to noisy breakfasts. Tall and broad-shouldered, his hair was peppered with gray at the temples. "If you two put half as much effort into working as you do into bickering, you'd both be Nobel laureates by now."
"Correction," Wei said, raising a finger. "I'd be the laureate. Mei would be my assistant."
Mei gasped dramatically. "Assistant? I'd poison your tea before that happened."
Lifen swatted at both of them with her dish towel, though there was laughter in her eyes. "Eat before I lose my patience."
After breakfast, Wei grabbed his satchel and bike. The ride across the Tsinghua campus was one of his favorite parts of the day — golden ginkgo leaves littered the paths, and the air carried the faint chill of approaching winter.
In the physics building, Zhang Hao was already at his desk, hoodie half-zipped, sneakers propped carelessly on a chair. He glanced up as Wei entered. "Look who finally decided to show up."
Wei set his satchel down. "It's nine o'clock."
"Exactly. I've been here since eight-thirty."
"You live twenty minutes away."
"Dedication," Zhang said solemnly.
"Insomnia," Wei corrected.
Zhang grinned. "Both."
The morning blurred into chalk dust and arguments over equations. Wei loved it. The clack of chalk on blackboards, the low hum of computers running simulations, the sharp back-and-forth between colleagues — it was the rhythm of his life.
At noon, Chen Rong popped her head in. She was in her late twenties, with short copper-dyed hair and an easy smile that disarmed everyone. "Lunch?"
Zhang stretched. "Finally, someone responsible."
Wei raised an eyebrow. "You calling her responsible because she eats?"
"Exactly."
They ate at a small noodle shop just outside campus. The broth was hot, fragrant with star anise and ginger.
"You know, Wei," Chen said between bites, "normal people stop working when their stomach hurts. They don't call it 'momentum.'"
Wei shrugged. "That's why normal people don't solve anything new."
Zhang slurped his noodles noisily. "That's why normal people also live past forty."
Wei smirked but didn't answer.
By the time Wei returned home, the sky was already painted in shades of gold and red. Mei was sprawled on the couch watching a drama, her laptop perched dangerously on the edge of the armrest.
"You're late," she said without looking up.
"I was working."
"You're always working."
"That's how science works."
"That's how you end up single at thirty."
Wei smirked. "Quality over quantity."
Dinner was fish soup with ginger, tofu, and greens. Lifen fussed over how much Wei ate, Guo made dry remarks about his coworkers, and Mei kept trying to steal pieces of fish from Wei's bowl.
Afterward, they sat in the living room with tea. The TV played softly in the background, but no one really watched.
Wei leaned back, listening to his sister hum under her breath, his father rustle the paper, his mother mutter at a misplaced knitting needle.
It was all so ordinary. And to him, that ordinariness was the most precious thing in the world.