Too Spicy to Handle

At seven that evening, at the restaurant Su Niannian had chosen.

It was nothing fancy—just a Hunan restaurant in the shopping district near his place called "Too Spicy to Handle."

By the time he arrived, Su Niannian was already seated by the window.

Han Luyi pulled out a chair and sat down, lifting his eyes to look at her.

The last time at Bug Café, it had been afternoon. Sunlight had streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and Su Niannian had sat against the light, clean and fresh, like a cup of warm water. Now it was night. The restaurant's warm pendant lights shone down from above, deepening the contours of her features. Her long hair fell loosely over her shoulders, and the thin chain at her collarbone stood out against her light apricot sweater. There was something about her now that she hadn't had during the day.

"You look really nice today." Han Luyi settled into his seat, his tone as casual as if he were commenting on the weather.

"...When have I not looked nice?"

"There's never been a time you didn't. Last time was last time's kind of pretty, and today is today's kind of pretty."

The words came out so smoothly that Su Niannian had no way of telling whether he meant them or was just being glib. If she responded, it would sound like she was acting coy; if she didn't, she would seem petty.

"Such a smooth talker." In the end, she only said those three words. She turned to look out the window, the tips of her ears faintly red, though the dim lighting made it hard to tell.

An open Apple laptop sat in front of her, its screen packed with spreadsheets.

The server came over. Just as Su Niannian was about to pick up the menu, Han Luyi spoke first.

"One chopped chili fish head, one stir-fried yellow beef, one blistered green pepper, one hot-and-sour shredded potato, two bowls of rice, and a pitcher of sour plum juice."

Su Niannian looked at him, the menu half-raised in her hand. She neither put it down nor opened it.

"...You ordered that fast?"

"My place is nearby. I've been here a few times." Han Luyi casually took the menu from her and handed it back to the server.

While they waited for the food, Su Niannian turned her laptop toward him.

"You said you had an idea to discuss but refused to spoil it for me, so I had no choice but to make my own guesses. As for code review, I've already mapped out the field." She lifted her chin. "Basic product manager skills."

On the screen was a competitor analysis chart. Seventeen products were listed, each with its core features, technical approach, pricing strategy, user reviews, funding rounds, and her own rating in the far-right column. The scale was out of five, but the highest-rated product had only received a three.

"When did you make this?" Han Luyi asked.

"I started organizing it after our last talk. At first, I was just looking into it casually, but the more I dug, the more there was." Su Niannian said it lightly, as though it were nothing worth mentioning.

Han Luyi glanced at her. A thin layer of concealer beneath her eyes covered the signs of late nights.

"What's missing from the one you rated highest?" he asked, pointing at the chart.

"Just like I told you last time, it can only do static analysis. It can find a Bug, but it can't tell you what impact that Bug will have in a real business scenario. What programmers need isn't 'There's a problem with this line of code,' but 'What kind of disaster will this line of code cause after it goes live?'"

"So the core pain point is—"

"The gap between code and reality." Su Niannian tapped the table with her finger. "Your exact words last time. I thought about them for days afterward, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt you'd hit the nail on the head."

The chopped chili fish head arrived, steaming hot. Han Luyi picked up the serving chopsticks and placed several pieces of the tenderest meat from near the fish gills into Su Niannian's bowl.

"Eat first. It'll get fishy when it cools."

Su Niannian lowered her eyes to the fish in her bowl. Every piece was the best part.

She didn't thank him. She simply picked up her chopsticks and took a bite.

"I want to make a tool," he said. "I've already thought of a name: BugKiller."

"BugKiller?" Su Niannian repeated it. Chewing her fish, she frowned slightly. "The name's too geeky. Programmers might get a kick out of it, but it won't sell well if you want to commercialize it later. Use it as an internal codename for now. We can think of an official name later."

"It won't just find Bugs. What it needs to do is—" Han Luyi organized his thoughts. "Build a Bug pattern database. It'll structure the characteristics, trigger conditions, impact scope, and optimal fixes for every type of Bug, then use that data to train an AI model so it learns to 'see a piece of code and know what problems it might cause after going live.'"

Su Niannian put down her chopsticks and leaned forward.

"Wait. This Bug pattern database you're talking about—where does the data come from? That's the most critical question. The reason existing competitors can't do this well is that their training data consists only of the code itself. They lack the layer of 'how code performs in real-world scenarios.'"

"From me."

Su Niannian blinked twice.

Han Luyi explained, "Over the years, I've written hundreds of thousands of lines of code and debugged at least dozens of systems. Since I started freelancing recently, I've fixed more than a hundred projects. I've been recording the characteristics, trigger conditions, and repair paths of every Bug."

That was the truth. He had simply left out the part about Sight.

"Your personal experience is definitely valuable, but one person's sample size isn't enough." Su Niannian frowned. "AI training requires massive amounts of data."

"Right. So the first step is to build a minimum viable product. We'll use my existing pattern database to create a prototype and first verify whether the idea can work. If it does, then the second step is finding ways to expand the data sources—for example, integrating Bug reports from open-source communities, public code vulnerability databases, and Q&A data from technical forums."

"MVP first, data flywheel later," Su Niannian summed up.

"Right."

"So how long do you plan to take to make the MVP?"

"One week."

Su Niannian was drinking sour plum juice and nearly choked.

"One week? Are you serious?"

"I've already started writing it. This afternoon, I set up the Bug pattern database framework and worked out the classification structure. I already have relevant experience with the algorithms, and I'm familiar with model training too. A week for a prototype won't be a problem."

Su Niannian stared at him for three seconds, then set down her sour plum juice.

"You know the AI code review project I was pushing at my company? The requirements stage alone took two months."

"Because you have processes, approvals, cross-department coordination, and executives who have to sign off."

Su Niannian thought about it, then smiled. "All right. If the king of the grind says one week, then one week it is. What can I help with?"

"User research and the requirements document," Han Luyi said. "You understand users better than I do. You define what BugKiller should look like, how the core feature priorities should be ranked, and who the first target users are."

"That's my specialty." Su Niannian had already started typing on her laptop.

The two ate and talked at the same time, picking up speed as they went. Su Niannian held food with one hand and typed with the other. Whenever Han Luyi discussed the technical plan, he habitually gestured over the table with his chopsticks, until she smacked the back of his hand. "Don't point at the table with your chopsticks. It's rude."

By the time they had finished the chopped chili fish head, Su Niannian had a complete MVP requirements document on her laptop.

Han Luyi read through it once.

"Your requirements are incredibly clear," he said.

"What else would they be? Should I write vague requirements and wait for the developers to chew me out?" Su Niannian huffed. "And besides..."

She paused, her voice softening.

"It's been a long time since I met a developer I could communicate with this well. At my company, I can argue with the technical team over one requirement for an entire week. With you, we got it done in forty minutes."

"That's because you write good requirements."

Su Niannian said nothing and lowered her head to close her laptop.

Light fell across her from the side, casting a small shadow from her lashes over her face.

"Show me the prototype in a week. I'll help you conduct user testing," she said.

"In what capacity? You still work at the company."

Su Niannian lifted her sour plum juice and took a sip, her gaze falling outside the window.

"As a friend helping out," she said after two seconds. "Anyway, someone took my own project away. It's not like I have anything better to do."

Han Luyi called for the bill. Su Niannian tried to grab it but failed, then glared at him. "I'm treating next time."

"Sure. You can treat me the day BugKiller goes live."

"Deal." Su Niannian packed up her laptop, then glanced at him again. "Oh, right. Don't go home and make do with instant noodles again. Keep at least some food in your fridge."

"When have I ever made do with instant noodles?"

"For three out of four years in college, your lunch was instant noodles with ham sausage. Don't think I don't know."

"...That was because I was lazy, not because I was poor."

"And? You haven't changed now, have you?"

Han Luyi wanted to argue, but then remembered that he had indeed eaten instant noodles for lunch yesterday. He said nothing.

Su Niannian smiled.

When they left the restaurant, the night wind was a little chilly.

"How are you getting back?" Han Luyi asked.

"Taxi." Su Niannian took out her phone to call one. "What about you?"

"Walking. Fifteen minutes."

"Then go on ahead. Don't wait for me."

"No rush." Han Luyi leaned against a streetlamp pole. "I'll leave after your car arrives."

Su Niannian looked at her phone screen without raising her head. The wind blew her long hair across the side of her face, and she tucked it behind her ear.

"Han Luyi."

"Yeah?"

She seemed about to say something, but her phone rang. Her car had arrived.

"Nothing." Su Niannian opened the car door, then turned back and smiled at him. "Go home and sleep early. Don't stay up writing until dawn again."

"Got it, Mom."

"...Get lost."

The door shut, and the car drove away.

Han Luyi stood where he was, watching the taillights vanish at the intersection before turning to head back.

He activated Sight.

Everything along the street immediately gained layers of data. Two screws at the base of a public trash bin were loose. The convenience store sign had a three-pixel color shift. Across the street, a middle-aged man jogging on the sidewalk had wear in the meniscus of his left knee.

The whole world seemed to have been peeled open, revealing dense code beneath its skin.

Han Luyi turned off Sight and kept walking.