Time, at Luminar Systems, didn't exactly fly—it flowed. It slid along clean glass and whiteboards crowded with arrows, collected in coffee cups, and poured itself from meeting to meeting until evening folded it away.
For almost three weeks now, Qing Yun had learned the river's rhythm.
Morning: she stepped out of the elevator with a soft "hello," hair tied half-up, half-down, a lanyard at her throat and a notebook that already knew where to open. The receptionist had stopped checking her name after the third day. The turnstiles recognized her. So did the pantry's electric kettle; it began to boil the second her hand reached for the switch.
She worked under Su Shen Qiao—Luminar's partner with a clean bob, sharp handwriting, and a talent for turning chaos into a gantt chart. Shen Qiao didn't waste words, but when she said "good job," it felt like getting a gold star in first grade.
Lin Qing Yun translated executive emails that came armed with idioms and urgency. She cleaned up English pitch decks until the verbs buttoned themselves properly. She brightened investor briefings with a calm smile, loaded prototypes into sleek black cases, labeled cables (twice), and wrote a little memo called "Travel Packing for Engineers" that turned panic into a checklist. By day four, a designer brought her an extra stapler like an offering. By day seven, an intern whispered, awed, "Shen-jie's secret weapon," and Qing Yun almost choked on her tea.
At 4:45 sharp, she powered down, filed what needed filing, and told Shen Qiao, "I'm heading out." Then she walked—always walked—to the bookstore around the corner, a triangle of sandwich in hand, sunlight sliding low across Haiyun Road. Five o'clock, she slipped behind the register. Eight o'clock, a certain car hovered like a promise by the curb.
It became a story the office told itself in the half-jokes of lunch.
"Miss Lin, you're efficient and luminous," announced Xiao Li from Frontend, theatrically shielding his eyes. "Did the CEO personally hire you to brighten morale?"
"Morale is a KPI," said Product Manager Zhou, deadpan, while peeling a mandarin. "Qing Yun is a strategic hire."
"Strategic?" HR's Sister Fang lifted her brow. "Then why does the CEO's car appear at eight p.m. outside the bookstore?"
"Coincidence," Qing Yun said, pouring hot water for everyone and pretending she hadn't flushed. "He reads a lot."
"Mm," Sister Fang said wisely, accepting the cup. "He reads traffic."
They laughed. Qing Yun did too, because laughter was easier than explaining that the street looked different when a familiar car stopped there. That the night felt shorter when a door opened from the inside. That "thank you" could be a whole language if you knew how to say it.
Sometimes she met Gu Ze Yan's eyes at Luminar—at the far end of a corridor, in the glass reflection of a meeting room, through the pantry doorway when he came for black coffee and she was tearing open tea sachets for the afternoon. They were brief, those glances. Courteous. A nod, a small lift of his mouth, then the click of business resuming. He never intruded on Shen Qiao's territory. He didn't ask her to do anything beyond her scope. But there was always water on her desk by ten, a paper cup jacketed in a sleeve with a tiny ink line across it—their private mark that meant, Drink, you stubborn person.
He was busier than rumor promised. Most afternoons, she saw him only as a moving silhouette through glass. He was sharper here than anywhere she'd seen—voice precise, mind fast, sleeves pushed just enough to say he was working, not posturing. When he emerged from meetings, he always made time to look through the open floor, just a second, like someone checking weather before stepping out.
On Fridays, someone in Operations stuck red paper cutouts to the pantry cabinets and tied tiny tassels to the handles. The office grew a quiet, warm layer of red—a lantern here, a couplet there. People began counting days under their breath: train tickets secured, mothers' grocery lists forwarded, cousins' names remembered. The word "go home" threaded through lunch like steam. Xiao Li described a dog that would undoubtedly cry upon seeing him. Sister Fang debated how many pairs of thermal socks to bring her father. PM Zhou declared himself loyal to dumplings above all political parties.
Qing Yun listened, smiled, and asked enough questions that everyone left the table a little lighter. She didn't say she had no train tickets to fight for, no hometown relatives to gossip with over sunflower seeds. Her home was a small apartment where the heater hummed like a cat and a girl called her jiejie in a voice that always sounded like spring.
"Miss Lin," Shen Qiao said one morning, pushing aside a tangle of USB-C cords with her pen cap, "you're a miracle worker. The investors understood the pitch. They didn't even complain about the font."
"Fonts are important," Qing Yun said gravely.
"Tell that to engineers."
"I do," she confessed, lowering her voice, "but I bribe them with tangerines."
Shen Qiao's mouth curved. "Keep bribing. Also—" She tapped the calendar. "We're doing a small pre-holiday dinner next week. Hotpot. Informal. Can you help me ping the department heads?"
"Of course."
"Also," Shen Qiao added without looking up, "if your sister is free, bring her. The Intern League needs new blood."
Sunny's head tilted. "Intern—"
Shen Qiao's eyes flicked up, amused. "It's what I call the group that eats the beef rolls fastest."
Qing Yun laughed. "Si Yao would win. She's strategic."
"I assumed," Shen Qiao said, and that was that.
Mid-week, Chen Rui appeared in the pantry, scooping coffee beans like diamonds. "Miss Lin," he said, leaning an elbow on the counter, "as the CEO's assistant, I must declare… the office happiness index is up twenty percent since you arrived."
"Indexes are tricky," she said. "You have to control the variables."
"Right now," Chen Rui said solemnly, "the only variable I see is whether CEO can control his face when he sees you."
Qing Yun made the mistake of glancing toward the corridor. Gu Ze Yan was mid-stride, hair clean as a line, smile tucked into its usual place. As if invoked, he paused. Their eyes met. The smile sharpened into something private—the hint of it, not the full thing. He lifted his coffee cup. Qing Yun lifted her tea.
"Control," Chen Rui whispered, delighted. "Zero."
"Work," Qing Yun whispered back.
"Yes, yes, I'm leaving," Chen Rui said, backing away before Shen Qiao could materialize out of air and scold them both.
The days were full but they weren't heavy. At lunch, there was gossip—always with a warm undercoat. Someone claimed they'd seen CEO Gu carrying a shopping bag with cartoon peaches printed on it. ("Gift for a client's kid," said one school of thought. "Gift for a certain bookstore's cat," said another.) Someone else swore the CEO had hovered at the bookstore doorway, checking his watch like a suitor from a drama. ("He was timing the traffic light," insisted the skeptics.) Qing Yun smiled and refused to be drawn.
After work, she still went to the bookstore and tied on her apron like a small ceremony. She greeted regulars, recommended novels to aunties who wanted "something like the TV show, but smarter," and learned which uncles preferred histories thick enough to block a draft. Sometimes she caught sight of him through the glass before he came in—standing by the curb, one hand in his pocket, looking at nothing in particular like men do when they're waiting for something they won't say aloud.
"Do you need a receipt?" she teased, handing him his book.
"I need a bookmark," he said, and tucked the slip of paper she offered into a place no one would read.
He drive her home most nights. If he was late, he apologized like he'd missed something irreplaceable. Once, when she waved her hand and said, "It's fine," he only shook his head: "It isn't, but thank you for pretending."
In the office, she made friends without trying. Sister Fang adopted her by week two and demanded opinions on the correct number of oranges to bring a future mother-in-law. Xiao Li asked her to test his pet side project and watched her face like it might tell him the future. PM Zhou pushed half his mandarin across the table without comment whenever she looked like she'd skipped breakfast. The cleaning auntie, Auntie Sun, insisted Sunny take a thermos of barley tea "for your sister" and refused to accept money for it.
There were tiny moments Qing Yun kept in her pocket like coins: the quiet when you arrive before everyone else and the office belongs to you; the way Shen Qiao murmured thank you when Qing Yun placed color-coded schedules on her desk; the way the afternoon light came through the east windows and turned everybody's hair into silk; Chen Rui's dramatic sigh when another meeting notice pinged; the sudden, silly joy of finding a mango yogurt in the fridge with a sticky note that simply said "Sunny :)" in a familiar sharp script.
By the second week, the holiday air had thickened. Someone strung fairy lights around a plant that didn't deserve it. Everyone talked about trains. The group chat bloomed with stickers of dumplings and tigers and fat, lucky cats. Qing Yun found a red envelope on her keyboard from Office Admin: "For first month's hard work—buy snacks." She wrote back: "Thank you—will buy tangerines," and did, a bag big enough to be a stupid joke. It wasn't. People ate them like candy and left the peels curled on napkins like small suns.
On a Tuesday that had disguised itself as a Friday, a whisper passed down the open floor like wind through grass: "CEO's coming to the team dinner." "No way." "He never does." "He's serious this year—Shen-jie convinced him." "Shen-jie or… someone else?" Laughter that pretended not to be nosy.
Qing Yun pretended not to hear. She typed an agenda, sent calendar invites, and printed two extra menus because no matter how many you printed, someone would want to look at one that didn't exist.
That afternoon, Shen Qiao drifted by Qing Yun's desk, a rare unhurried look on her face. "How are you doing?"
"Good," Qing Yun said. And it was true—the days were long, but they fit.
"Balancing all this with your other jobs… you're a hero," Shen Qiao murmured.
"Just a person," Qing Yun said. "Heroes get capes."
"We can get you one," Shen Qiao said, straight-faced. "Company expense."
Qing Yun laughed, and Shen Qiao's eyes warmed for a second into something almost sisterly. "My mother asked if I'm eating," she confessed, glancing at her phone. "I told her, There's a girl at the office who reminds everyone to eat. We'll survive."
"I'm honored to feed Luminar," Qing Yun said.
"Feed it words," Shen Qiao replied, tipping two fingers at the slides on Qing Yun's screen. "Those are the sharpest tools we have."
Near closing time, a tiny parade happened: paper cutouts, a string of red envelopes hung across a shelf in defiance of minimalism, a plate of snacks that materialized and vanished as meetings did their work. The office felt like a place about to exhale.
"Miss Lin," Sister Fang announced as if she were emceeing, "pre-holiday dinner, Thursday. Don't run away. Bring your appetite. If you don't eat, HR will dock your… happiness."
"Yes, ma'am," Qing Yun said, saluting with a pen.
"And bring your sister," Sister Fang added, softer. "If she's free."
Qing Yun's smile changed at the edges. "I'll ask."
When she forwarded the dinner invite to the department heads, she could almost hear the replies: "Finally," from Engineering; "Will the soup base be mala?" from Data; "Can we expense extra beef rolls?" from Ops. She almost added "Yes" to all of them before remembering she wasn't in Finance.
Her phone buzzed. A private message.
Gu Ze Yan:
Team dinner Thursday?
She blinked at the screen. She hadn't told him. Of course he knew. He was the calendar.
Lin Qing Yun:
Mm. Hotpot. Shen-jie's orders.
Three dots. Pause. The kind of pause that felt like a breath in a conversation, not an absence.
Gu Ze Yan:
Save me a seat.
She stared a moment too long at the five words, then typed the sensible thing:
Lin Qing Yun:
If you arrive late, I'll eat your beef rolls.
Gu Ze Yan:
Then I must arrive early.
She could see his mouth when she read that—how the smile hid behind the words, not in front. She put the phone down because if she didn't, she'd smile at it in the middle of an open office, which Chen Rui would never recover from.
Five o'clock came, as it always did. Qing Yun packed her things, waved at Shen Qiao, and slipped out. The bookstore was exactly where it always was, warm and full of small noises. She tied on her apron, straightened the counter pens, and smiled at a girl who wanted something "like poetry but less judgmental."
At eight, the glass reflected headlights. The car she knew stopped where it usually stopped. A man she knew got out, hair neat, shoulders easy, laugh lines small and true. He didn't rush. He never rushed when she was working. He just stood there like a lighthouse and let her finish being who she was before letting her be someone else.
On Haiyun Road, the paper lanterns over the noodle shop's awning swung a little in the soft wind. The city felt like it was leaning toward holiday, toward dumplings, toward home.
Qing Yun locked the till, turned off the lamp by the window, and stepped out into the street. He opened the passenger door like a man who knew rituals mattered. She said thank you like a woman who knew they did.
As they pulled away, she glanced back at the bookstore—the familiar glow, the bell that never behaved, the window that remembered faces. It looked, briefly, like a postcard. Then the turn came and the moment folded.
"Busy day?" he asked, voice because he liked hearing her answer.
"Mm." She tipped her head against the seat. "Everyone's already halfway to their hometowns in their minds. The code refused to cooperate, so I bribed it with tangerines."
"Tangerines are a recognized debugging tool," he said.
"I'll publish a paper."
"Let me peer review."
They laughed. The traffic light blinked them through. Somewhere, someone set off a test firework too early, a single flower of color that surprised the neighborhood and then pretended it hadn't.
Qing Yun thought of the office—the red paper, the warmth, the simple decision to sit around one pot and call that a celebration. She thought of her sister, making lists of snacks and pretending not to be excited. She thought, too, of a message: Save me a seat.
"Okay," she said softly to the window, to the road, to no one in particular. "I will."
He glanced over, curious. "What?"
"Nothing," she said, and smiled into the dim.
The car carried them forward, steady and kind. The city outside kept its bright promises. Inside, the quiet between them agreed to hold the rest.