Long Time No See

Su Niannian replied on WeChat quickly.

"That was so sudden! Why didn't you say anything in the group chat?"

"Nothing much to say. Just a normal transition."

"You're still the same. No matter what it is, you brush it off in four words!"

Han Luyi smiled at the screen. Su Niannian's way of speaking had not changed at all. She always used exclamation marks when typing, as if afraid the other person would not feel her emotions.

"How have you been lately?" he asked.

"Still alive. What about you? Any plans?"

"I'll take a break first and think about what to do next."

"Then want to meet up? It's been a long time. We can catch up."

Han Luyi typed a few words, then deleted them. In the end, he replied with a simple "Okay."

Su Niannian sent him a location.

Bug Café.

Han Luyi paused. The café was near his home, a ten-minute walk from his residential complex, and he went there almost every week. Old Zhou's coffee was not the best, but the place was quiet and the Wi-Fi was stable. Places packed with programmers always had a particular kind of relaxed atmosphere.

How did Su Niannian know about this place?

"I found it on Dianping. The ratings are pretty high. And it's close to you, so don't be polite and say you'll come pick me up or something."

Su Niannian said she was meeting a client nearby the next afternoon and would be done around three. "Perfect time to stop by and sit for a while?"

Han Luyi said okay.

After closing WeChat, he leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.

More than two years of silence was neither especially long nor especially short. Long enough for someone to change jobs twice, for a city to tear down a street and rebuild it, for two people who had once talked every day to become a quiet profile picture buried low in each other's contact lists.

At 2:50 the next afternoon, Han Luyi pushed open the door to Bug Café.

Old Zhou's café occupied the ground floor of a neighborhood storefront. A black sign hung outside, painted with a ladybug holding a coffee cup—a pun on Bug. The shop was small, with around a dozen tables, and its walls were covered in posters full of programming jokes. The most eye-catching one read, "It works on my machine." Next to it, Old Zhou had added a handwritten line: Then don't touch it.

"Little Han!" Old Zhou looked up from behind the counter. He was a middle-aged man in his forties, a retired programmer with half as much hair as his peers and twice as good a temper. "Americano or pour-over?"

"An Americano first, Brother Zhou. I've got a friend coming later."

"Meeting someone? That's rare. You've been coming here for half a year, and this is the first time you've brought a friend."

"A university classmate. Haven't seen her in a long time."

Old Zhou nodded knowingly and did not ask any more questions.

Han Luyi chose a seat by the window. Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling glass, yellowing the worn copy of Code Complete on the table.

At 3:02, the door opened.

Su Niannian stood in the doorway.

Han Luyi recognized her the instant he looked up. She had changed, yet she had not.

Her hair was still long, though not as long as it had been in university, reaching her shoulder blades with a slight wave. She wore a cream-white knit cardigan over a white dress, along with white canvas shoes. Around her neck was a white choker with a tiny pearl dangling from it. A thin silver bracelet rested on her left wrist, with no other unnecessary accessories. She still had that clean, all-white look, like she had stepped out of a milk commercial.

She looked a little thinner than she had in university, and the line of her jaw was more defined, but when she smiled, she was still the same. Her eyes curved first, then the corners of her mouth followed, as if her smile flowed out from her eyes.

"Luyi!"

Su Niannian smiled the moment she saw him, waved, quickened her pace slightly, and sat down across from him.

"Niannian." Han Luyi smiled too, greeting her naturally. "It's been two years. Why are you thinner?"

"Overtime worked it off. Our team released four versions in one month. I practically lived at the company." Su Niannian set down her bag and looked him over. "You, on the other hand, haven't changed at all. Still like this."

"Like what?"

"Just... hoodie, jeans, sneakers. Factory-default programmer settings."

"What programmer's factory settings come this handsome?"

Su Niannian laughed but did not respond. She turned to inspect the shop's decor instead. "This place is so interesting. Is that 404 page on the wall real?"

"The owner wrote it himself. He used to be a programmer too. He coded for fifteen years until he went bald, then retired and opened a café."

"Wow. A cautionary tale right in front of you."

"My hair is very healthy, thank you for your concern."

Old Zhou came over carrying two cups of coffee. Han Luyi had an Americano, while Su Niannian had not even looked at the menu when Old Zhou placed a signature latte in front of her.

"Little Han rarely brings friends here. This one's on me." Old Zhou smiled at Su Niannian.

"Thank you, boss!" Su Niannian accepted the cup with both hands.

After Old Zhou left, Su Niannian took a sip of the latte. When she looked up, a little milk foam clung to the corner of her mouth.

"So what have you been doing since leaving Dingsheng?" Su Niannian asked.

"Taking on some freelance jobs, writing code, thinking about where to go next."

"Freelancing?"

"More or less. Temporarily."

Su Niannian nodded. "That's fine. Your skills are there. You won't starve."

"You have quite a lot of confidence in me."

"Of course. Everyone in the class knew you were the king of the grind." Su Niannian's tone was relaxed. "In our sophomore year, you built that operating systems course project all by yourself and completely stunned the professor. He said that in fifteen years of grading assignments, it was the first time he had seen an undergraduate project with such a high level of completion."

Han Luyi laughed at that. "Your memory is too good."

"That was too iconic." Su Niannian held her cup in both hands, her eyes curved. "And there was that competition in the second semester of junior year. You led the team through three all-nighters, then slept directly on the computer lab floor after the competition. The cleaning lady woke you by poking you with a mop."

"Alright, alright." Han Luyi waved a hand. "Can you talk about something where I looked cool?"

"You have stories where you looked cool? I don't remember any."

"That's too much, classmate."

They both laughed.

The conversation flowed easily, like a computer that had been shut down for two years suddenly receiving power again. The system files were still there; it only needed a reboot. They talked about the university cafeteria, their roommates' gossip, and their teachers' catchphrases.

Every topic was safe territory.

They both understood that without saying it.

Han Luyi felt that Su Niannian had changed a little. In university, she had spoken more directly, saying whatever came to mind. Now, she paused at certain moments, as though filtering her words in her head before saying them aloud. That caution did not feel false; it only meant she had matured.

"What about you? How's being a product manager at Beaver?" Han Luyi asked.

Beaver Technology was a major domestic internet company in the second tier, focused on short videos and local services. It had gone public in Hong Kong the previous year, with a market value of over two hundred billion. In internet circles, Beaver was known for "brutal overtime, high pay, fast promotions"—the kind of place fresh graduates fought to get into, then desperately tried to escape after three years of work.

Su Niannian's expression shifted slightly.

"It's alright. Same old." She took a sip of coffee. "I've been working on an AI-related project lately. It's pretty interesting."

"What kind?"

"An AI code review tool. Something that helps development teams automatically review code quality, find bugs, and offer optimization suggestions."

Han Luyi was interested. "AI is pretty hot right now."

"Yeah, which is why our boss is in a rush. He wants to launch before everyone else." Su Niannian sighed. "But what our technical team came up with... how should I put it? It works, but it's not good enough. Compared with competing products on the market, it has no core advantage, and the user testing feedback has been mediocre too."

"How mediocre?"

"The kind where users say, 'GPT can do this for me too.'"

Han Luyi smiled.

"More annoying still," Su Niannian said lightly, "I'd been pushing this project since it was first proposed. I wrote dozens of pages of requirements documents and did the user research myself. Then last month, a director got parachuted in and directly replaced the project lead with one of his own people. I became 'assisting with progress.'"

"Isn't that..."

"Yeah, same script as yours. You played the technical version, and I played the product version." Su Niannian laughed a little after saying that. "So when I heard you'd left Dingsheng, my first reaction was, well, there's another one."

"Misery loves company?"

"Misery loves company is a social motivation too." Su Niannian's tone returned to its lighthearted mode. "I just wanted to see you. It's been two years."

As she said this, she looked out the window, her tone casual, as if she were talking about something insignificant.

Han Luyi did not respond.

He lifted his Americano, took a sip, and fell silent for two seconds.

"That AI code review tool of yours," he said, setting down his cup. "Who are its core target users?"