Lab 3B was a sterile environment of humming workstations and the faint smell of ozone. It was, in theory, a perfect setting for focused work. For Lin Xiaoyang, it felt like an execution chamber.
He arrived at 3:59 PM, having calculated the exact minute required to walk from his dorm without expending excess energy on "waiting time." Su Yuning was already there, of course. She was seated before a large monitor, her fingers flying across the keyboard, lines of code reflecting in her glasses. She didn't look up as he entered.
"You are 58 seconds early. Punctuality is efficient," she stated, her voice devoid of warmth. "I have already initialized the testing environment. Please synchronize your local repository."
No greeting. No small talk. It was, in a way, refreshing. Directive received. Commencing task. Xiaoyang slid into the seat next to her, booted up his machine, and began to work.
For the first hour, it was… surprisingly productive. Su Yuning's optimized algorithm was, as promised, elegant and powerful. They spoke in the shorthand of their discipline, a language of functions, variables, and logic gates. It was a pure, intellectual exchange. The background hum of his anxiety began to quiet, replaced by the focused calm of problem-solving. For brief, precious moments, Xiaoyang forgot about the Energy-Saving Principle. This was efficient. This was… almost enjoyable.
"Your variable naming convention is inconsistent," Su Yuning noted, pointing to a section of his code. "Using 'tempVal1' and 'tempVal2' reduces readability by 22%. Semantic naming is crucial for long-term maintenance efficiency."
"…Noted," Xiaoyang said, making the mental adjustment. It was a fair point, even if delivered with the tenderness of a system error log.
This was the core of Su Yuning. Her critiques weren't personal; they were systemic. She was optimizing the code, and by extension, him, as part of the system. It was a bizarre form of attention that was both exhausting and, he had to admit, effective.
At 5:15 PM, the lab door creaked open, shattering their code-induced bubble.
Chen Yuexi peered in, her face a mask of exaggerated stealth. She was holding a large, cloth-wrapped bento box. She caught Xiaoyang's eye and gave him an elaborate series of hand signals that he interpreted as "Operation Nourishment is a go!" before she ducked back out, leaving the bento on a small table near the door.
Xiaoyang felt a flush of embarrassment creep up his neck. The heart-shaped carrots. He could feel their presence from across the room.
Su Yuning's typing had stopped. She was looking at the door, then at the bento, then at Xiaoyang. Her head tilted slightly, a processor analyzing an unexpected input.
"An external delivery. From Chen Yuexi," she stated. "Its purpose?"
"It's… food," Xiaoyang said lamely. "She thought we might be hungry."
"Nutrient intake is a necessary biological process," Su Yuning agreed, her gaze returning to the screen. "However, the timing is suboptimal. We are currently in a high-focus debugging cycle. Interruption now will cost an estimated 12 minutes of re-immersion time."
"Right. We should finish this module first," Xiaoyang said, eager to agree and move past the awkwardness.
But Su Yuning was already performing a new calculation. "The food will degrade in quality. Waste is inefficient. Furthermore, declining a gesture from a… 'friend unit' can lead to long-term social friction, which is a net energy loss." She stood up abruptly. "We will pause for 15.3 minutes. Consume the nutrients. Then resume."
It was a command. Xiaoyang watched, stunned, as she walked over, retrieved the bento, and brought it back to their workstation. She unwrapped it with the same clinical precision she used to unpack a code library.
The bento was, as promised, a theatrical masterpiece. White rice was molded into a cute bear face, with nori for the eyes and nose. Beside it were vibrantly colored vegetables, two perfectly fried shrimp, and yes, several slices of carrot meticulously carved into hearts.
Su Yuning stared at it. "The presentation is… non-standard. The heart-shaped Daucus carota sativus serves no functional purpose. It increases preparation time by an estimated 300% without enhancing nutritional value."
"It's… supposed to be… friendly," Xiaoyang ventured, picking up a pair of chopsticks she had also produced from her bag.
"Friendly," Su Yuning repeated, as if testing a new variable type. She picked up a heart-shaped carrot with her own chopsticks, examining it from all angles. "The 'heart' is a symbolic representation of affection or life essence in many human cultures. Its application here is metaphorical. Is Chen Yuexi expressing romantic affection, or is this a platonic encouragement ritual?"
Xiaoyang choked on a grain of rice. "It's… probably just… her being herself. Don't overthink it."
" 'Overthinking' is an ill-defined term. All inputs require analysis to determine appropriate output." She took a small, precise bite of the carrot. "The taste is consistent with standard carrot profiles. The shape does not alter the chemical composition."
They ate in a silence that was, for Xiaoyang, infinitely more stressful than their coding silence. He was hyper-aware of every chew, every swallow. Su Yuning, meanwhile, consumed her portion with machinelike efficiency, her gaze occasionally drifting back to the code on the screen.
As she placed her chopsticks down exactly after her allotted 15.3 minutes, she looked at him. "The social interaction is complete. Nutrient levels are replenished. We can now resume with 97% efficiency."
But just as Xiaoyang felt they were returning to safe, logical ground, she spoke again.
"Lin Xiaoyang. Your interaction with Chen Yuexi and Tang Youyou follows patterns that are… difficult to model. They are high-energy, low-predictability variables." She wasn't looking at him, but at the lines of code representing the "compatibility" module of his app. "My analysis suggests that managing these social interactions must consume significant processing power."
Xiaoyang blinked. This was the closest she had ever come to acknowledging his internal state. "You could say that," he admitted quietly.
"Then why not implement a 'firewall'?" she suggested, her tone purely pragmatic. "Define clear rules. Reject unnecessary requests. Silence non-essential notifications. It is the most efficient way to protect system resources."
He looked at her, at her utterly sincere and logical face. She had just offered him a version of his own Energy-Saving Principle, coded in her unique syntax. She saw his problem, diagnosed it correctly, and proposed a solution that made perfect sense in her world.
It was, in its own bizarre way, a form of caring.
"Sometimes," he said, the words feeling foreign, "the requests don't feel… unnecessary. Until it's too late and the energy is already spent."
Su Yuning processed this. A faint line appeared between her brows. "An emotional race condition," she murmured. "Where the check for necessity and the execution of the task happen simultaneously, leading to potential deadlock or resource depletion. A complex bug to fix."
She turned back to her keyboard, the social interlude officially concluded. "We will require more data to model a solution. For now, we resume debugging."
Xiaoyang stared at her profile, illuminated by the cool blue light of the monitor. The "Shackle-Breaking" bracelet felt heavy in his pocket. He had thought Su Yuning was just another source of energy drain, another variable to be managed. But she was more than that. She was a mirror, reflecting his own desires for order and efficiency back at him in a stark, uncompromising light. And in her own, utterly logical way, she was trying to help him debug his life.
It was the most confusing, and strangely touching, thing that had happened to him all week.
The debugging session continued, but the silence between them now felt different. It was no longer just the silence of two coders working; it was the silence of two deeply inefficient humans, each in their own way, trying to compile a connection.