On the sixth day of the Lunar New Year in Zeyang, the late winter chill was at its most biting.
The festive New Year buzz hadn’t completely faded, but far fewer people were out on the streets. The wind scraped against your face like it was studded with barbs—a dry, biting cold.
Chen Zhuo walked along the path of the City No.1 Middle School’s faculty housing complex, carrying two red paper boxes.
One box held old-fashioned sponge cakes that Liu Xiuying had waited in line for over half an hour to buy that morning. The other contained two tins of high-quality Xinyang Maojian Tea.
As he walked through the City No.1 Middle School faculty housing, its paths littered with coal cinders and fallen leaves, retired teachers bundled up in thick cotton-padded coats would occasionally stop and squint at him.
Once they recognized him, they would invariably greet him with a wave of enthusiastic small talk.
"Well, well, if it isn’t Xiaozhuo! You’re back for winter break?"
"You’ve gotten taller, you’ve gotten taller! How are things in the Keda gifted program? My grandson looks up to you as a role model every day."
Chen Zhuo would always stop, stand in the biting wind, and respond with a gentle smile.
When meeting older elders, he would even give a slight bow and patiently answer questions about whether the university cafeteria food was good or if it was cold in the winter.
The pleasantries didn’t end until he reached Unit Three of Building Three.
Climbing the worn staircase, Chen Zhuo arrived on the third floor and stopped before the door on the left, raising his hand to knock.
A few seconds later, the sound of shuffling slippers came from inside.
"Coming, coming! Who is it, during the New Year..."
The lock gave a CLICK.
A wave of heat, carrying the scent of orange peels baked on the radiator, instantly rushed out, pushing the dry cold of the hallway back a step.
Old Zhao stood there in a gray wool sweater, the collar of a washed-out white shirt peeking out at the neckline. His hair, as always, was impeccably combed.
Seeing who was standing outside, Old Zhao was stunned for a moment, then the fine lines at the corners of his eyes instantly crinkled as a broad smile lit up his face, the delight in his eyes impossible to hide.
"Well, well, Chen Zhuo! Come in, come in!"
As he spoke, Old Zhao hurried to take the paper boxes from Chen Zhuo, hooked a brand-new pair of cotton-padded slippers from the bottom of the shoe rack with his foot, and kicked them over to Chen Zhuo.
"It’s only the sixth day of the New Year. Instead of sleeping in, you came all the way over here in this wind? Aren’t you freezing? I see you’re just wearing a sweater under that jacket—that’s not warm enough. You’ve gotten a little taller, but you’re still too thin. Over at Keda, don’t just spend all your time sitting in the library. How’s the cafeteria food? Is it too sweet? Are you drinking milk every day?"
Old Zhao placed the pastries and tea on the low cabinet by the door, launching into his customary stream of chatter while making sure to shut the door tightly, as if afraid to let in even a wisp of cold air.
"Our relatives all left a couple of days ago, and my mom happened to buy some freshly baked sponge cakes, so I thought I’d bring them over while they’re still warm and wish you a belated happy New Year..."
Chen Zhuo said with a smile, rubbing his hands together as he changed into the slippers.
Before he could finish, a distinct, cold snort came from the living room sofa.
"Alright, Old Zhao, give it a rest. He’s a big boy now, you think he’s going to freeze to death?"
The voice was a familiar, smoky rasp, tinged with nonchalance and a hint of smug pride.
Having changed his shoes, Chen Zhuo looked up toward the living room.
Old Zhou was slumped on Old Zhao’s sofa.
He was wearing that same old dark brown jacket he always wore, a pair of worn-out cotton slippers on his feet, which were propped carelessly on the edge of the coffee table.
On the coffee table in front of him sat an unfinished game of chess. A teacup was placed beside it. His eyes were baggy, his stubble clearly hadn’t been shaved properly that morning, and even his hair looked like he had just run his hands through it a couple of times, leaving it a disheveled mess.
Chen Zhuo was slightly taken aback at first, then a flicker of pleasant surprise crossed his eyes.
He turned back, picked up the box of Xinyang Maojian Tea from the low cabinet—the one he had originally intended to deliver to Old Zhou’s house separately—and took two steps forward with a smile.
"What a coincidence, Teacher Zhou. You’re here too?"
Chen Zhuo gently placed the tea on the coffee table in front of Old Zhou.
"This box of Xinyang Maojian Tea was for you anyway. It’s perfect that you’re both here, so I can pay my respects to you both at once. Happy New Year, Teacher Zhou."
Old Zhou lifted his eyelids slightly, his gaze sweeping over the tea on the table, then over Chen Zhuo.
He didn’t say thank you or show much enthusiasm. He just picked up his teacup and blew on the floating tea leaves.
"Spare me the formalities."
Old Zhou took a sip of tea and set the mug down.
"Old Zhao just likes to make a fuss. The kid’s at Keda now, surrounded by academicians and professors. You think he’s lacking for a bite to eat? Save your ’managing middle schoolers’ speech for your classroom sermons."
Old Zhao, who was pulling a tissue to wipe his hands, didn’t get angry at this. He walked over, patted Chen Zhuo’s shoulder, and pointed at Old Zhou.
"Don’t mind him," he said. "He just lost three straight games of chess to me, so he’s looking for a way to vent. Come, come, have a seat."
Chen Zhuo pulled over a small stool from the side and sat down by the coffee table.
Old Zhao turned to get a clean glass to make tea for Chen Zhuo.
In the living room, only Chen Zhuo and Old Zhou remained, facing each other.
Old Zhou leaned back against the sofa, pulled a plastic lighter from his jacket pocket, and started fiddling with it, turning it over and over in his hand without lighting a cigarette.
His gaze wasn’t on Chen Zhuo’s face; instead, he was sizing up Chen Zhuo’s shoulders and arms.
"You’ve gotten a little taller,"
Old Zhou began in a casual, chatty tone.
"Hanging around all those hotshots over there, your grasp of theory must have deepened... But let me ask you."
The hand fiddling with the lighter stopped. Old Zhou stared into Chen Zhuo’s eyes.
"You haven’t turned into one of those bookworms who just hunches over a desk calculating formulas, have you?"
Chen Zhuo sat quietly, his hands resting on his knees, listening.
"In that shabby lab of ours at City No.1 Middle School, that J2459 oscilloscope... can you still calibrate a perfect circle on it by feel alone, without using any other instruments? You haven’t lost your touch, have you?"
Old Zhao walked over with two glasses of freshly made green tea, placing one in front of Chen Zhuo. Hearing Old Zhou’s words, he couldn’t help but interject.
"Old Zhou, what are you talking about? Keda has all the best equipment. Who’d still be thinking about your broken-down oscilloscope with its paint-chipped knobs?"
"What the hell do you know!"
Old Zhou’s eyes widened, and he shot Old Zhao an irritated glare.
"Physics is a hands-on discipline! If you lose that intuition in your hands, it doesn’t matter how elegantly you can derive formulas in your head. It’s all just castles in the air, an empty shell!"
After speaking, Old Zhou turned back to Chen Zhuo, his chin slightly raised as he waited for an answer.
Chen Zhuo understood Old Zhou perfectly.
Not only did he not find this test-like questioning offensive, but he actually felt a warm sense of familiarity, a slight tingle in his nose.
Chen Zhuo casually gathered the captured chess pieces scattered on the board and returned them to the wooden box, his movements unhurried.
"I haven’t lost my touch, Teacher Zhou."
Chen Zhuo’s tone was gentle, as if he were reporting a simple, everyday matter.
"I’ve spent the last two months in the lab at Keda, working around the high-speed wind tunnel. I’ve been helping a senior student there tune the background noise resonance of the vacuum equipment."
The lighter stopped moving in Old Zhou’s hand.
Chen Zhuo tossed the last cannon piece into the wooden box, looked up, and said with a smile,
"The wind tunnel’s equipment is excellent, and the system is certainly complex. They were used to running software models to calculate error compensation, but the results were always off from the actual measurements."
Old Zhou didn’t say anything, but he clearly leaned forward.
"So I took over that part of the work."
Chen Zhuo picked up his teacup, feeling the warmth of the glass.
"I used the same ’dumb method’ you taught me back then."
"Dumb method?"
Old Zhao asked curiously as he sat down beside them.
"Mhm."
Chen Zhuo nodded.
"Instead of using their complex partial differential equations, I just took a multimeter, disconnected the main control, and traced the underlying hardware circuits bit by bit, relying on sound, the tiny jitters of the meter needle, and my sense of touch to find the resonance point."
Chen Zhuo paused, looking into Old Zhou’s eyes.
"I finally discovered that there was an extremely tiny impedance mismatch in the analog-to-digital converter. The software’s sampling rate was smoothing out this background noise, which is why it could never be calculated on a computer. You could only catch it by going back to the most basic analog circuits."
The living room was silent for a few seconds.
A distinct glimmer of light flashed through Old Zhou’s perpetually sleepy-looking eyes.
It was as if his own unfulfilled dream of scientific research had, in that instant, been taken up and continued by the twelve-year-old boy before him.
But he forced the corners of his mouth down, cleared his throat, and snorted.
"Guess you haven’t forgotten your roots, kid."
Old Zhou picked up his teacup and took a large GULP of tea.
"A wind tunnel at Keda... Tsk. That’s definitely a lot better than the heaps of junk we have at our school."
Old Zhou set his mug down, his voice tinged with an undisguised longing.
"Get your hands on that good equipment as much as you can. The frontier of physics will always be on the lab bench, not on the blackboard."
At this point, Old Zhou glanced at Old Zhao, who was shelling peanuts beside him, and launched a merciless taunt.
"You have to work diligently like that. Don’t be like your Teacher Zhao, who just knows how to draw a few useless auxiliary lines on paper all day. He’s been drawing them for twenty years, and I’ve yet to see him produce anything tangible."
Old Zhao, who was just about to pop a peanut into his mouth, was not pleased to hear this.
"Hey, what’s wrong with me drawing auxiliary lines?"
Old Zhao tossed the peanut shell into the trash basket.
"Without my auxiliary lines, without the foundational logic of pure mathematics, you think you could calculate a parabola? You think you could build a physical model? You couldn’t even solve a single equation!"
"I rely on working backward from experimental data!"
"That’s called empiricism! A blind cat stumbling upon a dead mouse!"
And so, right in front of Chen Zhuo, two veteran teachers from City No.1 Middle School, with a combined age of nearly one hundred, began their well-practiced, daily bickering over whether math or physics was the father and which was the son.
Chen Zhuo sat on the small stool, cupping his tea, sipping it with a smile as he watched them argue.
The warmth from the radiator circulated through the room. Steam rose gently from the teacups, blurring the view between the three of them. The sound of the wind outside seemed to have subsided, punctuated by the occasional pop of distant firecrackers.
After they had argued for about five or six minutes, Old Zhao felt thirsty. He picked up his cup, took a drink, and unilaterally declared a truce.
"Alright, alright, it’s the New Year. I’m not going to argue with a physics teacher. So uncultured."
Old Zhao waved his hand dismissively and pushed the fruit plate toward Chen Zhuo.
"Have some sugar tangerines. Just bought them. They’re quite sweet."
Chen Zhuo peeled a tangerine and casually placed half of it on Old Zhou’s coffee table.
The atmosphere in the room completely relaxed.
The conversation naturally drifted to the current students at City No.1 Middle School. As a veteran teacher and the grade-level head for the junior high division, Old Zhao always had endless things to say about his students—they were the main focus of his life.

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