Turning Traffic into a Red Carpet amid the Semifinal Clamor

Boston's winter showed its most savage face on the first Tuesday of December.

The Charles River had frozen over with ice thick enough to walk on, and the branches along its banks had frozen into transparent amber. The wind swept in from the Atlantic Ocean, carrying salty, fishy moisture and temperatures of minus fifteen degrees Celsius, slicing invisible cuts into every patch of exposed skin.

By the time Su Jin came out of the Stata Center, it was already dark. The streetlights blurred into pools of orange light in the fog, like a handful of pumpkin lanterns someone had casually hung in midair.

She pulled her coat tighter around her-a short Moncler down jacket in matte black, with 800 fill power. It was almost weightless, yet as warm as if she had a furnace tucked against her chest.

It was the first down jacket she had bought in Boston. She had always thought it wasn't pretty enough, but she had grabbed it on her way out today, never expecting to run into the coldest day since winter began.

Underneath was a cream-white Acne Studios turtleneck cashmere sweater, exceptionally thin and soft, warming her after only a short while against her skin. She wore light-blue straight-leg Mother jeans with frayed hems and a pair of black Church's Chelsea boots.

Her hair was tied in a high ponytail, revealing her whole face and the pair of Tiffany HardWear ball earrings on her earlobes. The golden spheres swayed slightly beneath the streetlights, forming a rugged yet refined contrast with the jacket's matte black.

She wore neither a hat nor a scarf. The tip of her nose and her cheekbones had turned faintly red from the cold, and a small snowflake that hadn't yet melted clung to her eyelashes.

The walk from the Stata Center to the parking lot was about four hundred meters. It took her six minutes, during which three MIT students stopped to ask whether she was Su Jin, and two people held up their phones and took pictures from a distance.

Another girl chased after her and said, breathlessly, "I really love your portrayal of Lin."

Su Jin froze for a moment, then smiled and said, "Thank you."

After the girl left, Su Jin stood where she was, watching her figure disappear at the far end of the streetlights. Her lips were still curved in a smile, but a faint, indescribable emotion lay in her eyes.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was a message from the system.

[Host, it's almost time to check in.]

She quickened her pace, climbed into the car, and shut the door.

With the heater turned up to full blast, she leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes, waiting for the familiar voice.

[Ten, nine, eight, seven...]

She slowly opened her eyes as the countdown continued.

Outside the car window, a streetlight blurred into a hazy pool of light in the fog, like a watercolor painting soaked with water.

A little snow still clung to her eyelashes. In the warm air, it turned into a droplet that hung from their tips like a tiny, transparent tear.

[Three, two, one-ding!]

[Congratulations, host, on completing your ninety-seventh daily check-in!]

[Today's check-in reward: a 2.8% stake in Netflix, valued at approximately 960 million US dollars. The equity transfer has been completed. The host is now one of Netflix's shareholders, with the right to attend shareholder meetings and vote on major matters.

This asset has been automatically placed in the host's offshore trust. Annual dividends are estimated at 14 million US dollars.]

[Today's check-in reward: lifetime VIP membership at Maison de Couture, a private haute couture salon in Beverly Hills.

The salon is one of the top haute couture boutiques in the United States, open to only forty VIPs worldwide. It provides four private haute couture services each year, working with brands including the Chanel and Dior haute couture ateliers, Giambattista Valli, Zuhair Murad, and Elie Saab.

The host's first appointment has automatically been scheduled for next February in Paris, dovetailing seamlessly with the Chanel advertisement shoot.]

[Bonus "piecing together the empire" Easter egg triggered: the Netflix stake forms an upstream-downstream industry connection with Huace Starlight and Windbreaking Pictures. Content produced by the host's film and television production companies can be distributed globally through Netflix, with a preliminary estimated increase of 150% in overseas rights revenue.

The system has automatically generated a "three-year plan for taking content overseas" and sent it to the host's email.]

After listening, Su Jin leaned back in her seat without moving.

Warm air roared through the car, blowing rippling patterns into the mist on the windows.

She gazed at the blurred streetlight outside, a number turning over in her mind-960 million US dollars. Not the sum of her fortune, just one check-in.

At this time last year, she had still been worrying about a credit card bill of sixty-seven thousand.

The corners of her mouth lifted, the curve so slight and fleeting that it vanished like a flash of lightning before it could be seen clearly.

Two

It was already nine at night when she returned to 217 Commonwealth Avenue.

She changed her shoes, hung her Moncler down jacket on the coat rack in the entryway, and walked into the living room.

The fire in the fireplace was already burning, lit in advance by the housekeeper. Logs crackled in the hearth, sending warmth across two meters and making the entire living room cozy.

She sat down on the sofa and opened her laptop. On the screen was an email from Anderson Lau-not a direct message or a text, but a formal email with attachments, copied to three producers and two distribution executives.

Su Jin, the trailer has already passed eighty million views worldwide. Variety and The Hollywood Reporter have both published features calling you "the newcomer face to watch this year."

We've submitted the film to the Berlin Film Festival's main competition. The jury president called me this morning to say they'd seen the trailer and wanted to know when they could see the full film.

Venice and Cannes have also sent invitations, hoping we'll premiere at their festivals-but Berlin is the most eager. They're willing to give us a prime-time premiere slot.

I've been making films for twenty years, and this is the first time a festival has called to compete for a premiere without seeing the full film.

You've created a miracle.

After reading the email, Su Jin leaned back on the sofa and thought for a long time.

The fire burned fiercely in the fireplace. A log collapsed, sending up a small cluster of sparks that traced fleeting arcs of light through the air.

She picked up her phone and messaged Anderson: When is Berlin?

Anderson replied instantly: February 15. Your Chanel ad shoot wraps on February 10, so the timing is perfect.

It's less than two hours from Paris to Berlin. I can have the production team arrange a private plane for you.

Su Jin replied: No need. I have one.

Anderson sent back an exclamation mark, then another message: Do you know what you are now? You're the biggest dark horse of this year's awards season.

Berlin, Cannes, and Venice are all competing for you.

It's your first film, and you haven't even finished acting in it, but you've already become the person every film festival wants to invite.

Su Jin looked at the words, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly, but she didn't reply.

She put down her phone and opened her laptop. On the screen was a quarterly report email from Zhao Mingyuan, with a long list attached-brands and platforms that had approached Huace Starlight over the past month.

Chanel was first, followed by Dior, Hermès, Cartier, and Bvlgari, then Netflix, HBO, and Amazon Studios. Only after those came the three major domestic video platforms and several satellite TV stations.

Zhao Mingyuan had written in the email: President Su, we're not choosing partners anymore. We're screening them.

Too many are coming to us on their own, and our time and energy are limited, so we can only pick the best to work with.

Her gaze lingered on Dior's name for a moment before she opened a message from Zheng Ying-the president of Chanel China, the woman she had met in Beijing the week before.

Su Jin, the atelier in Paris has scheduled your appointment. February 8 through 10, three days. The head tailor will personally take your measurements and conduct your fittings.

The head of the haute couture atelier saw your photos and said you were "the perfect clothes hanger"-their exact words.

Also, Virginie Viard, the atelier's head designer since Karl passed away, would like to invite you to dinner. She said it had been a long time since she'd met someone who made her want to make clothes for them herself.

Su Jin replied with one word: Okay.

Then she closed the email and opened another document from Zhao Mingyuan-the due diligence report on Windbreaking Pictures.

The report was nearly a hundred pages long, packed with figures and charts. From financial data to legal risks, from the core team's backgrounds to the contract terms of its signed directors, every detail had been turned inside out.

Zhao Mingyuan's team had been extraordinarily thorough. They had even dug up and read the papers Pofeng's founder had written at university.

The final page contained Zhao Mingyuan's personal recommendation: Buy. The valuation can still be negotiated, but this team and these six people are worth the price.

Su Jin signed the final page electronically and sent the document back to Zhao Mingyuan with a note: Initiate the acquisition. Start negotiations at 85% of their asking valuation, with an increase of no more than 10%.

After closing, the founder stays on. Give him 15% in options.

Zhao Mingyuan replied instantly: Understood.

Three

Two days later, the Elite University Championship semifinals were held at MIT's Kresge Auditorium.

The auditorium was MIT's largest lecture hall, seating twelve hundred people. Normally used for graduation ceremonies and lectures by Nobel laureates, it had been temporarily converted into a competition venue for the day.

The auditorium's dome formed a vast arch, its oak beams glowing dark brown under the lights. Portraits of MIT's distinguished alumni through the years hung on the walls.

The people in those paintings looked down on the competition floor from above, their expressions varied-some solemn, some smiling, some expressionless. But without exception, they had all been people who changed the world.

When Su Jin arrived at the venue, a long line had already formed outside Kresge Auditorium.

It wasn't a line of contestants, but spectators-MIT students, students from other Boston universities, local media, entertainment reporters who had flown in from New York especially for the event, and a few fans holding "SUJIN" banners.

She didn't know where these people had sprung from, or when they had started following her.

In the two weeks since the trailer went online, her Instagram followers had risen from five hundred thousand to twenty million. A kind of person she had never seen before had appeared in her comments-not people from academia, fashion, or business, but people drawn purely by her face and those eyes.

Today she wore a cream-white Celine turtleneck cashmere sweater, exceptionally thin and soft, warming her after only a short while against her skin;

On her lower half was a gray Thom Browne pleated wool skirt, its hem three finger-widths above her knees, revealing her straight calves;

On her feet was a pair of black Church's brogues, exquisitely patterned and impeccably laced;

Over it all she wore a navy Ralph Lauren double-breasted wool coat, its collar turned up to cover half her neck, making her face look even smaller and more delicate.

Her hair hung loose rather than tied up, its ends slightly curled and gleaming like satin under the lights at the auditorium entrance.

She wore no makeup-or rather, none was visible. In the evening light, her skin had an almost translucent quality, and her dark brown eyes, illuminated by the light, made her look like a goddess descended to earth.

The moment she stepped out of the car, the crowd in line fell silent.

It wasn't a polite silence. It was the silence of people struck by something, too stunned to react.

The line of twelve hundred stretched from the entrance of Kresge Auditorium all the way to the sidewalk on Massachusetts Avenue. Everyone had been talking, scrolling through their phones, and chatting with friends, but the moment she appeared, the sound vanished as though someone had pressed pause.

Twelve hundred pairs of eyes turned in the same direction at once. Among those twelve hundred gazes were awe, curiosity, jealousy, admiration, and the satisfaction of "I've finally seen her in person."

But more than anything, there was an instinctive, uncontrollable stare-like moths seeing a flame, like iron filings drawn to a magnet, like suddenly spotting the only face you recognized in a crowd.

A young man in an MIT hoodie dropped his coffee cup, splashing coffee all over the ground. He didn't look down.

A girl holding a "SUJIN" banner covered her mouth, her eyes reddening.

A reporter with a camera on his shoulder forgot to turn it on and only came to his senses when a colleague beside him gave him a shove.

A doctoral student in glasses standing at the very front of the line turned to the person behind him and said:

"I've seen her several times-in the department, in the library, at the café. But every time I see her, I still freeze for a moment. This isn't just beauty, this is-this is some kind of gift."

Su Jin didn't look at those gazes.

Head lowered, she walked briskly through the crowd, the hem of her coat tracing a clean arc behind her.

Her steps were quick

Because today's star wasn't her, but the competition.

By the time she entered Kresge Auditorium, nearly a thousand people were already seated inside.

Her place was at the far right of the stage, facing the audience, just as it had been in the preliminary round.

She sat down and opened her laptop. The screen's blue light fell on her face, giving the skin the system had enhanced to the human limit an almost porcelain-like sheen.

She lowered her eyes to glance at the questions, then raised her head and swept her gaze across the competition floor. In the Princeton contestants' section, Ethan was looking at her.

Today he wore a dark gray Ralph Lauren crew-neck sweatshirt over a white T-shirt. A sliver of white showed at the collar, setting off his lightly tanned wheat-colored skin and dark brown curls.

Instead of sitting in his place, he stood at the edge of the contestants' section, one hand in his pocket and a cup of coffee in the other. He was looking at her, his lips curved slightly, his light brown eyes a warm amber under the auditorium lights.

When he saw her look over, he raised his coffee cup as if to say, "I've been waiting for you."

Su Jin withdrew her gaze and returned her attention to the screen.

Four

The semifinal questions were more than an order of magnitude harder than those in the preliminaries.

Five questions, four and a half hours, covering algorithm design, machine learning theory, computer vision, system architecture, and the fundamentals of quantum computing. The last subject was new this year, supposedly Professor Harris's idea. He had said, "We can't let the contestants think they've already seen every difficult problem."

When Su Jin received the questions, she scanned them quickly and already had a good idea of how to proceed.

Her problem-solving was so smooth it inspired despair.

The sound of her typing in the quiet venue was like a steadily paced piece of music, with no pauses, no hesitation, and no revisions.

She presented the answer to every question on the screen in the most elegant way-code as concise as poetry, derivations as clear as a textbook, every step impeccably precise.

By the time she reached the fourth question, some contestants had already begun turning in their papers-not because they had finished, but because they had given up.

Su Jin didn't notice the others.

Her attention was entirely on the final question-the one on the fundamentals of quantum computing, which required her to design a simple quantum circuit to solve an optimization problem within thirty minutes.

She spent twenty minutes on the derivation, eight writing the code, and two debugging, then submitted it.

The submission went through at 5:28 p.m., with two minutes left in the competition.

The entire hall fell silent again.

But this silence was different from the one in the preliminary round. That silence had been shock: "She actually did it."

This time, the silence was a kind of confirmation: "Sure enough, she did it again."

Professor Harris sat at the judges' table, staring at the answers on the screen in silence for a long time. Then he took off his glasses, wiped the lenses, put them back on, and looked again.

A professor beside him leaned over for a glance, then leaned back in his chair and shook his head. There was no disagreement in that shake of his head, only the surrender of someone saying, "What else can I say?"

Su Jin sat in her place without standing, smiling, or even looking at the audience.

She simply sat there quietly, her hands on the keyboard, looking at the code on the screen.

Light poured down from the dome onto her, casting a soft halo over her cream-white cashmere sweater. The folds of her pleated skirt cast fine shadows in the light.

Between light and shadow, her profile took on the contours of a classical sculpture-the curve of her cheekbones, the line of her jaw, the shallow groove between her nose and lips. Every angle seemed calculated, yet every angle also seemed to have grown there by chance.

It was undeniable that some people were born to enjoy everything.

Someone in the audience began to applaud, softly and sparsely, as if afraid of disturbing something.

Then the applause grew louder and denser, until it became a roar.

Su Jin turned her head and glanced at the audience-twelve hundred people, most of them standing. Some were clapping, some taking pictures, some saying something to the people beside them, and every gaze was fixed on her.

She looked at the dense sea of people, and the corners of her mouth lifted. The curve was slight and fleeting, like a petal falling onto water, gone before its ripples could be clearly seen.

Then she stood, picked up her laptop, turned, and walked out through the side door.

What she didn't know was that, at the moment she turned, a girl in the audience began to cry.

It was the girl who had chased after her at the parking lot and said, "I love your portrayal of Lin."

The person beside her asked why she was crying.

She said, "I don't know. I just think it's such a lucky thing to live in the same era as her."

Five

When Su Jin walked out through the side door, Ethan was leaning against the corridor wall, still holding that cup of coffee, which had gone cold.

The corridor was quiet, with only the faint sounds of applause and conversation drifting from the distant auditorium.

The fluorescent lights overhead gave off a faint hum, illuminating the whole corridor in a glaring white, like a tunnel with no end.

Ethan stood there, his dark brown curls washed with a pale golden glow by the lights. His light brown eyes looked especially clear in the white light, and his lips were curved in a faint, casual smile.

"You won again," he said, his voice echoing slightly in the empty corridor.

Su Jin stopped opposite him and looked at him. "You weren't slow either."

"Seven minutes slower than you," he said, his tone carrying no jealousy, only a very pure respect for an opponent. "Seven minutes. In the preliminaries, I was twenty minutes slower than you. Now it's seven. Next time, maybe it'll be three."

Su Jin looked at him without speaking.

The corridor's fluorescent lights cast a cold white glow over her face, making her skin look like a piece of unpolished jade. The color in her cheeks appeared deeper in the cold light, like two red plum blossoms blooming in the snow.

Ethan looked at her for a few seconds, then pulled out his phone, opened a page, and handed it to her.

"Take a look at this."

Su Jin took the phone. On the screen was an Instagram account with the username "sujin_fans_global." It already had over a million followers.

The page was full of photos of her-from her Vogue magazine shots to screenshots from the trailer, a secretly snapped profile of her on the MIT campus, and a video a passerby had taken of her stepping out of the car that afternoon, just a few seconds long.

The latest post had gone up ten minutes ago. It was a photo of her sitting at the competition, head bowed as she wrote code. It had been taken from the side of the audience, with the light falling on her face and the gray pleats of her skirt rippling in the light like layers of fine waves.

The caption read: She won. Of course she did.

Su Jin looked at the photo in silence for three seconds, then handed the phone back to Ethan.

"Why did you start this account?" she asked.

Ethan slipped the phone into his pocket and shrugged.

"I didn't. An MIT freshman started it. He studies computer science, and he's a fan of yours. He stopped me in the hallway yesterday and asked if I could ask you to follow the account-he said if you did, he'd be happy for a whole year."

Su Jin looked at him, the corners of her mouth curving up. "So you're passing along a message from a fan?"

"I'm passing along a message from an eighteen-year-old kid who studies computer science and looks up to you," Ethan said.

"His hands were shaking when he stopped me in the hallway yesterday. He said he was from Ohio, and no one in his family had ever gone to college. He was the first.

"He said he saw you at the Championship and thought, 'So an Asian girl can be that amazing at MIT'-his exact words." Ethan paused.

"He thinks you changed his life."

Su Jin said nothing.

The fluorescent lights in the hallway buzzed. The applause in the distant auditorium had stopped, replaced by the noise of the crowd filing out.

She stood there with her head lowered, looking at the tips of her shoes for a long time.

Then she took out her phone, opened Instagram, searched for the account, and followed it.

Ethan watched her, his smile widening a little.

"He'll be happy," he said.

Su Jin put her phone away and raised her head to look at him. They stood beneath the fluorescent lights in the hallway, one in a cream-white cashmere sweater and gray pleated skirt, the other in a dark gray sweatshirt and jeans, a foot of space between them.

She looked into his eyes-those light brown eyes looked especially clear in the white light, with an extremely fine, dark brown ring around each pupil, unexpectedly similar to her own.

"Ethan," she said, looking at him with a smile, "why did you tell me all this?"

Ethan looked at her in silence for two seconds, then met her eyes.

"Because I think you should know. You're not moving forward alone.

"There are a lot of people behind you, watching you, following you, and thinking, 'Maybe I can do it too,' because of you."

Su Jin said nothing.

She just looked at him for a long time, so long that the fluorescent lights in the hallway flickered, as if reminding them it was getting late.

"Thank you," she said.

Ethan shook his head. "Don't thank me. Thank yourself."

He turned and walked toward the other end of the hallway. After a few steps, he stopped and looked back at her.

"Su Jin," he said, "I'll go see your film at the Berlin Film Festival."

Su Jin was taken aback. "How did you know-"

"All of MIT knows." He raised an eyebrow.

"Your trailer has been downloaded from the campus network more times than the course materials for all our classes put together."

His words made Su Jin laugh, the corners of her mouth lifting in a smile she couldn't hold back.

She lowered her head and looked at the tips of her shoes, then raised it again and watched him disappear at the end of the hallway.

She stood alone in the hallway, listening to the distant noise of the crowd and the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead.

She took out her phone, opened the fan account, and glanced at the comments beneath the latest post.

The first comment read: She studies computer science at MIT, she acts in movies, she makes investments, and she's changing the world. I just want to ask-how many hours does she have in a day?

The second comment read: I don't care what she does, I just watch her. I could look at her face for a lifetime.

The third comment read: Did you notice she's wearing a Thom Browne pleated skirt today? It's from the 2024 fall/winter collection, limited to fifty worldwide. She wore it to the semifinals and won.

That's it-she has both talent and taste.

Su Jin looked at the comments, a smile tugging at her lips. She put her phone away, turned, and walked toward the other end of the hallway.

Her footsteps echoed through the empty hallway, one after another, steady as something that would never stop.

At the end of the hallway was a floor-to-ceiling window. Beyond it lay a Boston winter night. Across the Charles River, Cambridge was ablaze with lights, and in the distance, the red aircraft warning light atop the Prudential Center's spire blinked like a star someone had hung in midair, one that would never go out.