Su Wei stood before a bookshelf, a faded old rag in her hand, stacking a pile of foreign-language journals from a cart onto the shelf.
She wore a simple, light-colored shirt, and a fine layer of sweat beaded on the tip of her nose.
"Xiaosu, you can take a break from that for a moment."
A voice came from behind her.
Su Wei stopped what she was doing and turned around.
Old Zhang from the library stood in the aisle between two rows of bookshelves, a large teacup in hand and a puzzled expression on his face.
"Teacher Zhang."
Su Wei said.
Old Zhang took a couple of steps closer and gestured.
"Put the rag down and go wash your hands. You don’t have to do this work anymore."
Su Wei watched him quietly, waiting for him to continue.
"Just now, Vice Director Fang from the School of Physics personally called over here."
Old Zhang seemed like he still hadn’t figured out the whole story, sizing up Su Wei as he spoke.
"He said he wants to transfer you to a new position. That foreign materials room at the east end of the third floor will be your responsibility from now on. Your main duties will be helping teachers from the various departments search for foreign literature on the computer and doing some archiving."
Old Zhang took a sip of tea and added,
"There’s a private cubicle over there with air conditioning and a new computer. Your pay will be based on the highest subsidy level for our internal staff. You should go up and get familiar with the place now."
Su Wei lowered her head slightly.
’Vice Director Fang from the School of Physics.’
The title flashed through her mind, and she pulled up the man’s file in her head.
’For no reason at all.’
’The Vice Director of the School of Physics personally called to transfer a freshman like her to a new position.’
Su Wei didn’t ask any more questions.
She neatly draped the old rag over the handle of the cart and gently dusted off her hands.
"Okay, thank you, Teacher Zhang."
Su Wei’s voice was cheerful. She walked to the sink in the corner, washed her hands, flicked the water off, then picked up her canvas bag and went up the stairs to the third floor.
Pushing open the door to the materials room cubicle on the third floor, a wave of cool air washed over her, instantly dispelling the stuffy heat clinging to her body.
By the window sat a clean desk, with a Pentium computer on top.
The cubicle was very quiet, with only the soft hum of the air conditioner vent.
Su Wei walked over, pulled out the office chair, and sat down.
The back of the chair was comfortable.
She placed her canvas bag on her lap, unzipped it, and took out a square, black floppy disk from the innermost compartment. It contained the model Su Wei had been working on recently.
She expertly inserted it into the floppy drive. CLICK.
A loading bar quickly popped up on the computer screen.
Listening to the familiar whirring of the floppy drive and feeling the cool air blowing from above, Su Wei leaned back in her chair, the corners of her mouth turning up slightly.
’No matter what, this is a good thing.’
「The next morning.」
「Physics Building, third floor, east wing.」
A plaque for the Key Laboratory of Fluid Mechanics and Aerodynamics hung on the double wooden doors at the end of the hallway.
Chen Zhuo followed Alchemist, stopping in front of the doors.
Alchemist pushed the doors open and led Chen Zhuo inside.
The laboratory was spacious. As soon as they entered, they could hear a low, dense humming sound.
It was the sound of cooling fans from more than a dozen PCs and two large workstations running at once. The air was a mix of the smells of hot computer cases and coffee.
Several huge blackboards stood against the wall, covered with cross-sectional diagrams of a train’s locomotive and a tunnel, alongside a dense, spiderweb-like scrawl of partial differential equations.
There were five or six people in the room, some in white lab coats, others in simple old T-shirts, all either staring blankly at their screens or tapping at their keyboards.
"Everyone, hold on a moment."
Alchemist clapped his hands. His voice was quite loud.
The people in the lab turned their heads one by one.
"Let me make an introduction."
Alchemist gestured to Chen Zhuo beside him, his tone calm.
"This is Chen Zhuo, a sophomore from the Junior Class. This kid has an excellent foundation in mathematics and very sharp theoretical intuition. He’ll be on our project team from now on."
Alchemist paused here.
"However, he hasn’t worked in an engineering lab before or dealt with actual project data. Zhang Yuan, you and the other seniors should guide him for a while. Explain to him how our high-speed rail tunnel aerodynamic model works, and let him get a feel for the temperament of real-world data."
Standing next to Alchemist, Chen Zhuo gave everyone a gentle smile and a slight nod.
"Hello, seniors."
The one called Zhang Yuan was a tall guy sitting in front of the main control computer.
He looked to be about twenty-six or twenty-seven, a Ph.D. student. His hair was as messy as a bird’s nest, and he had huge dark circles under his eyes, clear signs of many sleepless nights.
Hearing Alchemist’s words, Zhang Yuan quickly stood up, rubbed his tired eyes, and waved at Chen Zhuo with a smile.
"Welcome, welcome! Junior, you’ve come at the perfect time. We’re in dire need of some fresh blood around here."
The other master’s and doctoral students in the lab also smiled warmly.
In their eyes, Alchemist’s words had made it perfectly clear: this was a junior who was brilliant, a perfect score in theory, but had probably never even touched a wrench.
’He’s a young genius, after all. He deserves to be looked after.’
In fact, they felt that having a lively junior in the lab might help to alleviate some of the oppressive atmosphere caused by the recent project stall.
Seeing the handover was complete, Alchemist remembered he had a meeting to attend, gave a few more instructions, and left.
Zhang Yuan pulled over a rolling office chair from beside his workstation and patted the empty desk next to it.
"Junior, you can sit here."
Chen Zhuo walked over, pulled out the chair, and sat down.
Zhang Yuan turned and rummaged through a nearby metal cabinet for a moment. He returned with two books as thick as bricks and a stack of A4 papers printed with wind tunnel data, dropping them onto the desk in front of Chen Zhuo with a THUD.
"*Fundamentals of Aerodynamics* and *Introduction to Fluid-Solid Coupling*."
Zhang Yuan pointed at the two massive tomes, his smile a bit helpless.
"Junior, Dean Fang said you’re good at math, but this is real-deal engineering. You have to chew through these basic concepts first, or we won’t be on the same wavelength when we discuss things."
"Okay, I’ll start reading."
Chen Zhuo looked at the two thick books in front of him. He didn’t feel looked down upon; on the contrary, he found the arrangement to be extremely reasonable.
He was here to learn, after all.
"The computers we’re using right now are all running critical data. The load is too heavy, and they crash at the drop of a hat."
Zhang Yuan pointed to the powered-off computer in front of Chen Zhuo.
"You focus on the materials for now. This machine is normally just for looking up papers. Don’t go running any big programs on it. If there are any physics concepts you don’t understand, feel free to ask me anytime."
Chen Zhuo nodded, took a pen from his pocket, and opened the book on top.
Seeing how quiet and obedient he was, Zhang Yuan turned back with satisfaction and went back to staring at the screen of his main computer.
The lab quickly returned to the monotonous hum from before.
Chen Zhuo sat in the corner, quietly turning the pages of the book in his hands.

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