Manager Chen

At 9:30 p.m., the twenty-eighth floor of Prosperity Group's headquarters was still brightly lit. Chen Bowen's office was at the end of the corridor, its door closed.

He was browsing the forums.

The second hottest post on the tech forum was titled NullPointer Profile Analysis: Who Is He?. The poster had connected all of NullPointer's public information and written it up like a detective report.

"BugKiller's Bug pattern database covers three areas: recommendation systems, e-commerce backends, and payment pipelines. Its patterns in recommendation systems are far more in-depth than in the other two areas, suggesting that he has a deep background in recommendation systems."

"When Prosperity's recommendation system crashed, a blog post NullPointer published a month earlier precisely identified every failure path. It practically reads like an insider's memoir."

An insider. Recommendation systems. Prosperity's recommendation system.

Chen Bowen did not need to guess.

A core recommendation-system developer who had left this year, technically exceptional—there was only one person at Prosperity who fit the criteria. The one Chen Bowen had personally laid off.

The comments were still guessing. "Prosperity? ByteDance? Beaver? Little Yellow Book?"

"An employee at a major company couldn't possibly make a product, right? They'd get fired the moment the company found out."

"Then he must have left."

The whole internet was looking for NullPointer. No one knew that the answer was in Chen Bowen's phone: the layoff approval form he had personally signed two months ago, bearing the name Han Luyi.

Chen Bowen put down his phone. The corners of his mouth twitched upward, and he failed to suppress them.

The non-compete reminder letter had been sent last month. A twelve-month restriction period, stated clearly in black and white. Han Luyi was making BugKiller, directly violating the restriction clause.

This was not a coincidence. This was a gift.

Everyone on the forum was guessing "senior expert at a major company," with P8 as the starting point. Some were even guessing P9.

He was only a P7.

Chen Bowen stood and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window. From the twenty-eighth floor, half the city's lights spread beneath his feet.

It was just one letter.

The next morning, Chen Bowen went to the Legal Department on the twenty-second floor.

The last time he had come was to push through that non-compete reminder letter. At the workstation area at the end of the corridor, there was a row of cubicles. The air conditioning was two degrees colder than upstairs.

Zhou was there. The legal specialist who had helped draft the reminder letter last time.

"Zhou, draft something for me. A non-compete violation demand letter for former employee Han Luyi."

Zhou adjusted his glasses. "Manager Chen, before drafting a demand letter, I need to verify the enforcement status first..."

"The twelve-month restriction period. He left at the end of February, less than two months ago. His product is called BugKiller. It's AI, fully covered." Chen Bowen handed over the screenshots. "It's an open-and-shut case. Just draft it."

Zhou looked at the screenshots and hesitated. "I seem to remember there being some issues with this case..."

"Get it to me before Thursday. I need it for the regular meeting."

Zhou opened his mouth, but said nothing more.

Chen Bowen left the Legal Department. In the elevator, he sent Wang Zhiyuan a message: "President Wang, add an item to Thursday's regular meeting. A former employee violated the non-compete agreement, and it's related to the last outage. I'm confident."

Wang Zhiyuan replied with one word: "Talk."

"The NullPointer prediction post from the public backlash over the last outage was most likely written by Han Luyi. He recently made a product, but the non-compete restriction is still in effect. Send him a demand letter, and he either cooperates with our public messaging or shuts down everything he's working on. It won't cost us a cent."

More than ten seconds passed. Wang Zhiyuan replied: "Present it Thursday."

Thursday. The large conference room on the thirtieth floor. The monthly cross-department meeting.

Around ten people sat at the long table. Product lead Liu Fang sat by the window, while user growth lead Zhang Yi sat across from her. Qin Ling, the head of Legal, sat at the end of the table with a stack of documents spread before him.

Wang Zhiyuan entered last. In a dark gray suit and red tie, he took his seat at the center of the table.

The first forty minutes were routine agenda items. Chen Bowen sat to Wang Zhiyuan's left, his laptop open and the PPT paused on its cover slide.

Then it was his turn.

"I'll take ten minutes. There's still a loose end from the public backlash over the last outage, and it concerns several departments here."

He projected the screen. The cover read: Follow-Up PR Handling for Sev0-20260414.

He first flipped to the second slide: a screenshot of the Weibo trending topic, #ProsperityIsDown#, from two weeks ago.

"We all went through this topic. We suppressed the backlash, and the matter should have been over. But there's one loose end we haven't dealt with."

He turned the page. A screenshot of NullPointer's prediction blog post, with the publication date outlined in red—exactly one month before the system crash.

"This blog post precisely identified every one of our failure paths. The consensus in the tech community is that the person who wrote it understands the underlying architecture of Prosperity's recommendation system."

Zhang Yi put down his phone.

"The community has already begun profiling him."

He turned the page. A three-column table: technical field, timeline, related incidents.

"All clues point to a core developer who recently left Prosperity. No one has guessed exactly who yet..."

Chen Bowen paused for a beat.

"Think about it. If his identity is confirmed, what will the media headline be? 'Prosperity laid off a core developer. Two months later, its system crashed. The laid-off employee had predicted it with precision one month earlier.'"

"We worked hard to suppress the last round of backlash. That headline could drag all of it back out. It's a PR bomb."

He swept his gaze around the room. Zhang Yi had already put away his phone.

"Based on everything, NullPointer is most likely Han Luyi, the former employee we laid off this February."

Liu Fang turned to glance at Wang Zhiyuan.

"He recently made an AI code review tool. More than two thousand people have applied for its closed beta."

He turned the page. A scan of the non-compete agreement. The key clauses were outlined in red, alongside a screenshot of BugKiller's forum post recruiting closed-beta testers.

"Han Luyi signed the standard non-compete agreement. A twelve-month restriction period covering AI, data analysis, and software development tools. BugKiller falls under every single one."

At that point, he smiled faintly.

"I've already asked Legal to draft a demand letter. Once it goes out, he has only two options: pay liquidated damages and cease operations, or negotiate. The terms are simple: cooperate in issuing a technical clarification stating that the prediction post was personal analysis and did not involve internal architecture. Once that statement is out, the backlash over the last outage will be impossible to revive."

The room fell silent for several seconds.

Liu Fang asked, "Are you sure it's him?"

"One hundred percent."

Liu Fang turned toward the end of the table. "What does Legal say?"

Qin Ling closed the document in his hands.

"Manager Chen." Qin Ling's voice was low and unhurried. "Legal has checked the non-compete agreement you mentioned."

"The company did not pay non-compete compensation, and his lawyer completed the statutory termination process. The agreement expired last month."

Qin Ling flipped through the documents on the table and pulled out one sheet.

"The signed receipt for the termination notice is on file." He looked up at Chen Bowen. "If we send that letter, his lawyer will only need one reply for us to make industry news."

Only the air conditioner could be heard in the conference room.

Liu Fang looked at the PPT on the screen, then at Chen Bowen. "Why wasn't the compensation paid?"

Chen Bowen opened his mouth. "A P7, standard procedure... HR—"

"P7." Liu Fang repeated, her tone flat.

The slide he had made was still lit on the screen, the phrase "twelve-month restriction period" outlined in red, beside a screenshot showing BugKiller's two thousand closed-beta applicants.

No one responded.

A P7 was not worth spending money to lock down, but what a P7 built was worth making ten PPT slides about.

The contradiction did not need to be spoken aloud.

Qin Ling put the sheet he had pulled out back into the stack, straightened it, and spoke in the same tone. "Manager Chen, if you need to issue legal documents in the future, follow the approval process. Do not come directly to my staff."

Then he lowered his head and turned to the next document, as though handling something entirely unrelated to this conference room.

No one spoke.

Zhang Yi picked up his phone. Liu Fang held her cup, her gaze moving away from Chen Bowen as she casually glanced at Wang Zhiyuan.

Wang Zhiyuan had not said a word from beginning to end. He held a thermos in his hand, its surface covered in a layer of condensation.

Liu Fang set down her cup and gave a light cough. "Next item."

The meeting ended. People gradually left.

Chen Bowen unplugged the projector cable and closed his laptop, moving more slowly than usual. When he left the conference room, the screen was still lit and the projector fan was still humming.

In the corridor, Wang Zhiyuan walked ahead of him at an unhurried pace.

Chen Bowen caught up. "President Wang..."

Wang Zhiyuan did not stop, as though he had not heard him.

Only when they reached the elevators did he speak. His voice was quiet.

"Do not bring this up again."

The elevator doors opened. Wang Zhiyuan walked in and pressed twenty-eight.

Just before the doors closed, he added one more sentence.

"I have other arrangements for Han Luyi."

The doors shut.

Chen Bowen stood outside the elevator.

There was no one else in the corridor. The projector fan was still spinning in the conference room.

He stood there for a long time.