Keda’s Cafeteria No. 2 was a cacophony of voices.
It was the peak of the dinner rush.
Chen Zhuo still wore that disarmingly gentle smile, his eyes clear and sincere. He even thoughtfully pushed Chu Ge’s tray closer to the center of the table.
"You added her?"
He ate very slowly, chewing each mouthful of rice for a long time before swallowing.
"Scooch over, make some room."
"Hey, seats over here!"
Lu Jia’s voice grew quieter and quieter.
Lu Jia was being honest.
Beside them, Lu Jia couldn’t help but snort with laughter.
"I didn’t send that much."
"This guy’s hopeless, isn’t he? If it were me, I would’ve already..."
He gaped at Chen Zhuo.
He swallowed the rice in his mouth, adjusted the glasses on the bridge of his nose, and his voice was a little strained.
"It’s been a week. Did you add her on WhatsApp yet? Don’t tell me you’ve been cuddling that instant noodle receipt to sleep every night after lights out."
Chu Ge slapped his thigh.
"Brother Zhuo, you talk some sense into him."
Chen Zhuo just smiled without replying and picked up his chopsticks again.
Zhao Peng and Zheng Nan grabbed chairs, added them to the ends of the table, and sat down with their own trays.
After a long, choked moment, Chu Ge pointed a finger at Chen Zhuo’s nose.
Chen Zhuo, sitting beside Lu Jia, had been silent the entire time.
Chu Ge pointed at Lu Jia, who was sitting across from him, with his chopsticks and raised an eyebrow.
The two PhD students, who were usually mild-mannered and scholarly, were also covered in sweat, but their faces were alight with excitement as they followed Dayong through the throng.
Chu Ge perked up. He even stopped picking at his food and leaned forward.
Lu Jia, who was head-down, shoveling rice into his mouth, instantly flushed red at the comment.
Chen Zhuo folded the napkin and casually placed it beside his tray.
He slowly swallowed the food in his mouth, then picked up a napkin and wiped the corners of his mouth.
"Dayong, have you been mining coal or blowing up bunkers? You reek enough to kill every fly in this cafeteria. And what is that black gunk on your sleeve?"
"Coming through! Excuse me, coming through! Watch out, or you’ll get soup on you!"
Chu Ge turned to Chen Zhuo, trying to recruit an ally.
’The smoothness of calculus was useless against a Discrete Matrix with infinite nodes. The error term was like a tattered rag flapping wildly in the wind, impossible to pin down.’
Although his gaze rested on Chu Ge across the table, his eyes weren’t truly focused. In the few minutes Chu Ge and Lu Jia had been bickering, Chen Zhuo had already re-derived the convergence domain of the Gauss-Bonnet Theorem three times in his mind.
"What’d you talk about? Did you use that game theory and Nash equilibrium spiel of yours? What was the first thing you sent? You didn’t actually send ’Hi, I’m the guy who was stuttering next to the holly tree the other day,’ did you?"
"A smiley face? You waited three days just to send her the default yellow smiley face emoji? And then? How’d she reply?"
In truth, he hadn’t tasted whether the tomatoes were sour or sweet today at all.
He wasn’t even wearing a jacket, just a simple undershirt with a collar already soaked through with sweat.
’Still a dead end.’
Trailing behind Dayong were Zhao Peng and Zheng Nan from the School of Physics.
"If I were her and I got a smiley face in the middle of the night from some guy who can’t even form a sentence, I’d have to be a saint not to delete you on the spot. Where’s that brain you use for calculus?"
On his tray was a portion of stir-fried tomatoes and eggs and another of braised pork.
Just then, a booming voice with impressive carrying power cut through the crowd in the aisle.
Lu Jia put down his chopsticks. His expression turned a little awkward, and he started unconsciously picking at the edge of the table.
"I just sent a smiley face."
Wang Dayong, carrying two stacked metal trays, bulldozed his way through the long line for food.
He looked at the indignant Chu Ge, a faint smile touching his eyes. His tone was placid, as if he were commenting on the weather.
Chen Zhuo snapped out of it.
Dayong unceremoniously plopped down right next to Chu Ge.
"After all, you just got kicked out of the computer lab last week for wearing flip-flops, and you went and flamed the admin on the student forum. Even if she does have an impression of you, it’s of a maniac in flip-flops who hammers on his keyboard loud enough to wake the dead."
At a table near the north window, Chu Ge was holding his chopsticks, listlessly picking out strips of pork from a plate of stir-fried pork with hot peppers.
"No shit!"
Dayong spotted Chen Zhuo’s group, his eyes lighting up. He strode over and slammed the two trays, piled high with a mountain of food, onto the table.
Chu Ge sniffed the air, then immediately leaned back, giving Dayong a look of utter disgust.
"Brother Zhuo... you usually look so nice and harmless, why do you go straight for the jugular the second you open your mouth? That’s called being unconventional, alright? Ever heard of a hacker’s ’laissez-faire’ attitude?"
"I added her. She accepted the day before yesterday."
Chu Ge’s words died in his throat.
A large, dark grease stain was smeared across his forearm.
"Eat up. If you keep picking through your stir-fried pork, you’ll only have the peppers left."
Chu Ge stared, looking at Lu Jia as if he were an alien. After a long moment, he squeezed out a sentence through clenched teeth.
’That divergent integral term at the boundary of the continuous domain was like an impossibly tangled knot, stubbornly blocking the final link in his logical chain.’
One of the trays was piled high with pork ribs.
"She didn’t."
"Hey, Lu Jia, what about that supermarket receipt?"
"If it were you, you probably wouldn’t have even made it past step one."
Dayong grabbed his chopsticks and carelessly wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, smearing a black streak of grime across it in the process.

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