Yu Zixin sat alone in the Riverlight Software office, lit only by the glow of two monitors and the flickering light above the vending machine. It was 11:58 p.m.
He hadn't meant to stay this late.
Again.
But the bug was haunting him — a weird edge case in the payment API that crashed the entire sandbox when triggered by a specific transaction pattern. It wasn't even his code. But everyone else had gone home, and someone had to fix it.
He leaned back in his chair, rubbed his eyes, and opened the same terminal window for the fiftieth time.
error: paymentModule.js: line 408 - undefined 'userSession'
He stared.
Then sighed.
"Of course. Of course it's the session."
Outside, the city pulsed with midnight traffic — scooters, ambulances, late-night ramen deliveries. Inside, the only sounds were the click of keys and the hum of the air vents.
Zixin's mind drifted to her again.
Bookstore Girl.
He'd seen her three times since that day. Never long enough to say anything. Just passing glances in the courtyard, or in the lift, or once at a noodle cart. She always had a book in hand.
The last one was called "Things We Leave Unsaid."
He remembered because she left it behind in the break room one afternoon. He'd read the first two pages before returning it to the desk with a sticky note that said, "Page 43 is gold."
Two days later, he found a sticky note on his keyboard.
"You're right. Page 43 is everything."
No name. No smiley. Just that.
It stayed on his desk like a bookmark for the version of him he hadn't met yet.
At 12:32 a.m., he finally found the fix.
One missing reference in a session hook.
He committed the patch, restarted the sandbox, and watched the build pass with a green checkmark.
It felt like nothing.
And everything.
He sat in the quiet for a long moment.
Then he opened his notes app.
Bug fixed
Buy coffee
Return library books
Write a message
Read page 44
He closed the laptop.
Time to go home.
As he passed the 14th floor on his way out, he noticed something taped to the notice board.
A flyer.
"Quiet House After Hours – open mic, stories, quiet people welcome."
He read it twice.
Then took a photo.
Then — for reasons he couldn't explain — smiled