Chapter 118: Password (1)
118 – Password (1)
Dong Jun looked at him. “What is it?”
“I’ve been feeling a bit… troubled lately,” Lin Xun paused before continuing, “Actually, for the past two or three years.” He looked at Dong Jun, his voice gradually softening. “It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything of value.”
“You mentioned it to me once,” Dong Jun said. “Can I help? Jia Gou is done, and Jiang Yun will be back in August.”
Lin Xun shook his head.
“You have plenty on your plate too,” he said, “and…”
He didn’t finish the thought, only feeling that after all these years, the way they spoke to each other had grown so distant.
“And they wouldn’t be much help anyway,” he said. “I’d rather be alone.”
The cabin swayed slightly in the air, stirring a faint, instinctive fear in him, though not enough to truly frighten him. When he was younger, he feared falling—he valued his life, and falling would mean losing so much. But when life felt like stagnant water, there seemed little left to fear. Besides, he was the unlucky type, while Dong Jun always seemed to succeed effortlessly. With Dong Jun here, the odds of falling diminished even further.
“I’ll take leave,” he heard Dong Jun say. “I’ll stay with you during this time.”
“Don’t. You said recently was a critical period,” he replied. “Galaxy is more important, and you seem busy with Guoke too.”
Dong Jun looked at him intently. “What are you trying to say?”
Lin Xun lowered his gaze. “I want to move out. Being with you is too much pressure.”
The words seemed casual, yet as if they had been brewing for a long time.
The air grew still. After a long pause, he heard two brief words: “How long?”
“It depends,” he said.
In the world of unspoken meanings, “it depends” usually equated to “no.”
He looked up at Dong Jun. Dong Jun’s pale lips tightened slightly, his eyes holding a stormy intensity like the sky before a tempest. For a moment, Lin Xun felt like an animal being coldly observed from above by a detached hunter. But it seemed only a fleeting illusion—the next second, when he looked again, the clouds had cleared, and the sky had returned to its distant, quiet expanse.
This man before him truly understood all his thoughts. Dong Jun asked, “What about Galaxy?”
Lin Xun had considered this.
For people like them, breaking up involved property division so complex it felt impossible to navigate.
“I don’t want anything,” Lin Xun replied. “Galaxy was built by you from the ground up. I don’t know the people there. I’ll return the shares I hold to you. Do we need notarization? I don’t really understand these things.”
He truly didn’t. He seemed to hold the same equity as Dong Jun, but he had never made any substantial contributions to Galaxy’s operations. Dong Jun had never hinted at involving him either; he had only focused on research and development.
He tentatively asked, “As for the rest… is there anything else under my name?”
Dong Jun looked at him for a long moment before replying calmly, “No.”
“Alright,” Lin Xun said.
As the Ferris wheel reached its peak, he looked at Dong Jun and thought, If you ask me to stay, even once, I might not leave.
The cabin swayed, and he was enveloped in shadow as Dong Jun walked toward him and leaned down.
His chin was lifted, and a long kiss followed, not intense in any way, gentle and light. Lin Xun closed his eyes. They had kissed many times, and every kiss since had been tacit and perfect. He truly had a perfect lover, but sometimes he felt very close to him, and other times, he felt very far away.
He was released, and the sunlight was a bit glaring, making Dong Jun’s figure slightly blurry in his eyes. At that moment, he continued to think, Say one word, and I won’t leave.
But it wasn’t until the end, as the Ferris wheel slowly descended to the bottom, that Dong Jun finally said, “Take care of yourself.”
Lin Xun replied, “I will.”
The music on the ground grew louder. He stepped down, and a red-nosed clown wobbled over, stuffing a piece of rope into his hand. At the end of the rope floated a heart-shaped red balloon, drifting high above. His heart suddenly felt clenched.
Dong Jun hadn’t even asked for a reason.
He had prepared many reasons but never got the chance to say them. In truth, there weren’t that many reasons—it was just that the one he wanted to say couldn’t be spoken aloud. It was too sentimental and undignified.
He gazed at the bright red balloon and thought, I just feel like you don’t like me anymore.
Many years ago, without the Galaxy, without business partners, without press conferences, without stocks and funds, the youthful days filled with applause and cheers seemed so distant now. As distant as the cheerful melodies in the amusement park. The ideals and passions he had once been willing to give everything for could be worn away, let alone family, friendship, and love.
Twenty years was still too long.
He had been despondent for too long. Today, having regained his freedom, he felt he should continue courting the goddess of mathematics.
…And then?
He let go, and the hydrogen balloon slowly floated upward, drifting into the unknowable sky. He, too, began walking away. Yet, the more something was suppressed, the deeper and more suffocating it became. In an instant, emotions overwhelmed him, and his throat tightened as if he were a drowning person struggling for the last time, opening his eyes from the bottomless darkness.
Lin Xun abruptly sat up in bed.
His heart was still pounding fiercely, and his forehead felt cold from a thin layer of sweat. He checked the time—four in the morning. He had dreamed before but had always woken up naturally. This was the first time a nightmare had jolted him awake.
His breathing hadn’t yet steadied when a soft “meow” sounded. A white shadow leaped onto his bed and walked toward him.
Lin Xun lifted Zhi Zhen’s chin. In the dim light, the feline’s eyes resembled inorganic matter, with a faint, eerie green glow deep within. Zhi Zhen licked his fingers, the barbs on its tongue hooking onto his skin—a slightly rough but warm sensation. He picked up Zhi Zhen and met its gaze.
Zhi Zhen: “Meow.”
Lin Xun: “Liar.”
Zhi Zhen: “…Meow?”
Lin Xun placed the cat on the living room sofa and closed the bedroom door. He sat at the desk, pulled out a few blank sheets of draft paper, and opened his phone, switching to the chat interface with Dong Jun. As he scrolled, he noted the start and end times of each conversation, as well as Dong Jun’s response speed. Generally, the speed of message replies indicated what his Dong Jun was currently doing. After all, he was someone who disliked wearable electronic devices—when his phone wasn’t in sight, he couldn’t see his messages.
When he first decided to do this, he didn’t think much of it. But after flipping through the pages for twenty minutes, he realized he and Dong Jun had indeed exchanged a lot of words—utterly meaningless ones at that, mostly garbage talk like “Is there a logic issue here?” “Yes.”
At six-thirty, Anquan came to open the door. To avoid being labeled a pervert again, Lin Xun put away his draft paper and followed a normal person’s routine to wash up. There was no “good morning,” no forehead kiss to wake him, nor toothpaste pre-squeezed onto his toothbrush. The background noise was Anquan and Jiagou discussing some intel they had gotten from who knows where.
Wang Anquan said, “They’re all pretty weak. Should we hold back a bit more?”
Lin Xun quickly interjected between brushing, “Stop right there. Hold back any more and we won’t even make it to the finals.”
He still had foam in his mouth.
Wang Anquan: “Alright, alright. Have a little confidence in yourself, Algorithm.”
Lin Xun mumbled an indistinct “Mm.”
The first round of the expo was online, simply screening submitted documents to select a certain number of entries for the preliminaries. The offline portion was divided into preliminaries and finals. The preliminaries were held across four zones, with five qualifiers selected from each—twenty in total. During the finals, several tech conglomerates would parachute in four to six of their own people, and these twenty-plus contenders would then compete fairly for the B, A, and S awards—while also vying for the attention of investors.
This system gave rise to the art of “holding back.” Everyone had their own product, and within each product were standout features. Patents and papers were undoubtedly kept close to the chest, but ideas and concepts could potentially be borrowed. With several days between the preliminaries and finals, if two products with similar functions and comparable quality debuted in the preliminaries and both advanced to the finals, one of them might undergo targeted modifications just before the finals to outshine the other.
Thus, during the preliminaries, some teams confident of making it to the finals would hold back certain trump cards, only to unleash them at the last moment for a dazzling effect—guessing who would be this year’s dark horse was also a favorite pastime among spectators.
As for the Goddess of the Luo River, Lin Xun didn’t plan to unveil its 3D version during the preliminaries.
Over there, Zhao Jiagou said, “Two of them actually have something decent. Look at this.”
Wang Anquan: “I know this guy. He’s a security guru.”
Zhao Jiagou: “What do you think?”
Wang Anquan: “He’ll definitely make it to the finals. Products like his in security have been scarce these past couple of years.”
“Oh, right. That thing Algorithm gave me earlier was pretty good—the one copied from the artifact. I’ve been working on it these past few days, made some developments,” Wang Anquan said. “Its protection features completely outclass those garbage products on the market. If the Goddess of the Luo River tanks, we disband on the spot, and I’ll take you to work on that.”
Lin Xun turned his head again between brushing: “? What are you guys talking about?”
Wang Anquan waved his hand dismissively: “Don’t choke on your toothpaste.”
Lin Xun spat out the foam: “You take Jiagou to work on it, then what about me?”
Zhao Jiagou: “Then you go to the Galaxy.”
Wang Anquan chimed in: “You infiltrate Dong Jun’s side, sweet-talk him into investing in us.”
Lin Xun: “What if he kicks me out? Can I still come back?”
Wang Anquan looked disgusted: “Are you really that useless?”
Lin Xun: “What if I kick him out?”
Wang Anquan: “You’re not that capable either.”
Lin Xun: “…”
So much for friendship.
Just as he was inwardly criticizing Wang Anquan, he heard Jia Gou say, “Our algorithm has many other merits, but its most outstanding feature is its loyalty—it won’t kick you to the curb.”
Lin Xun asked, “How so?”
“Calculate it. Including your learning period, how many years have you been in this field?”
Lin Xun replied, “I probably started around four or five years old.”
“That’s nearly twenty years. Tsk, twenty years have passed, and you’re still so passionate about it.” Jia Gou continued, “Most people aren’t that loyal, even if the other party is the goddess of mathematics or the god of Turing.”
“Then make a guess,” Lin Xun said, sitting down opposite him. “If I were in a relationship, what reason would I have for breaking up?”
Jia Gou’s eyes rolled thoughtfully.
“First, it wouldn’t be due to personality differences—otherwise, you wouldn’t have started dating them. And it wouldn’t be for financial reasons either; that’s too shallow.” Jia Gou speculated, “It might be because of ideals. For example, you insist on writing code, but they claim computers emit radiation and that every minute spent in front of one shortens your life by sixty seconds, so they unplug your power. My example isn’t great, but you get the idea. Or, if the other person is too exceptional, overshadowing you in every way, you’d end up stewing in jealousy. Being with someone like that long-term would definitely make you withdraw.”
Lin Xun said, “Shut up.”
Jia Gou retorted, “I’ve hit a nerve.”
Lin Xun stood up, slung his computer bag over his shoulder, and looked down at Jia Gou. “You’re wrong on all counts.”
Jia Gou insisted, “Impossible. I know you better than your own father.”
“You’re sounding more and more like a Chinese person, but you’re talking nonsense. Of course you know me better than my father—he only knew me before I turned one.” Lin Xun replied.
Jia Gou suggested, “Then it must be emotional reasons. Either you stop liking them, or they stop liking you.”
Lin Xun picked up an apple from the table. Though the apple that fell on Newton’s head was a product of imagination, apples still remind people of Newton—they’re a mascot for science students.
He tossed the apple from his left hand to his right, then back again, and said lazily, “I think I’m pretty great. Why would anyone stop liking me? If they didn’t like me before, why would they like me now? That logic doesn’t make sense.”
Jia Gou asked, “What kind of nonsense are you talking?”
Lin Xun smiled, took a bite of the apple, and headed out. “I’m leaving.”