The morning after Maya had left, Li Feng found his meticulously planned routine subtly disrupted. The clarity he usually felt after his physical training was slightly clouded, as if a new, unquantifiable variable had entered his system. He still logged his reps, the precision of the numbers a small comfort, but his mind kept drifting back to the sensation of Maya's neck under his fingertips, the way her eyes had widened, the quiet catch in her breath. He tried to analyze it, to break down the "connection" he felt into its constituent parts – chemical reactions, neurological responses, social programming. But the feeling itself stubbornly defied complete reduction. It wasn't just data; it was… more.
He spent hours on his C program, making rapid progress on a new data compression algorithm that would streamline his trading bot. He found satisfaction in the elegant efficiency of his code, in cutting redundant lines and optimizing every byte. He ran a small, controlled Forex trade. It wasn't a huge win, but his algorithm predicted the market's micro-fluctuation with uncanny accuracy, yielding a small profit. The confirmation of his system's efficacy was calming, a return to the predictable. Yet, even as he worked, a quiet part of his mind continued to process the unexpected surge of human emotion from the night before. It was a new kind of complex problem, one without a clear logical solution.
Later that afternoon, a message popped up on his university account. It was from Chloe Sterling. He blinked. She rarely contacted him directly unless it was related to a group project. The message was brief: "Can you meet? Coffee? Need your brain on something. It's... not uni work."
Li Feng stared at the message. 'Not uni work.' That was intriguing. His internal algorithms for social interaction flagged this as an unusual deviation from typical patterns. Curiosity, a purely intellectual drive, prompted him to reply: "Okay. When?"
They met at a quiet cafe on the edge of campus, a place Li Feng usually avoided for its inefficient service flow. Chloe arrived looking a little frazzled, a stark contrast to her usual polished appearance. Her designer jacket seemed to hang slightly off her, and her eyes held a restless energy.
"Thanks for meeting," she said, stirring her coffee without looking at it. "Look, this is probably going to sound a bit mad, but I don't know who else to talk to."
Li Feng waited, his gaze steady. "Proceed."
Chloe leaned forward, lowering her voice. "It's Julian. My brother. He's... been acting even stranger than usual. He's always been glued to his computer, you know? Building his 'networks,' whatever that means. But lately, it's different. He's more secretive, more intense. And there are these weird things happening around the house."
Li Feng raised an eyebrow, prompting her.
"Like, the Wi-Fi. It's usually a nightmare. But then, for a few hours, it'll be perfect. Like, impossibly fast, no lag, even with everyone streaming. And then it'll just... revert. Or the smart home system. Dad's convinced he's got some new virus, but Julian just smirks. And his computer, Li Feng. The lights on it, the way it hums… it's like it's alive. He's running something. Something huge." She looked at him, desperation in her eyes. "He said he's 'unveiling the new truth.' And he's barely sleeping. He's obsessed."
Li Feng processed her words. "Unveiling the new truth." The phrase resonated with the anomaly he'd seen in the market data, but he dismissed the fleeting connection. He focused on the immediate facts: a sibling observing erratic network behaviour, heightened secrecy, and a grand, vague pronouncement. "What do you want me to do?"
"I don't know!" Chloe ran a hand through her hair. "Just... tell me if I'm losing my mind. Or if you think he's doing something genuinely weird. You're good with systems, right? Better than anyone I know."
Li Feng considered. This was outside his direct sphere of interest, but the pattern of observed anomalies, combined with Julian's cryptic behaviour, presented an intriguing puzzle. And Chloe was genuinely distressed. His new "connection" variable for Maya had opened up a very subtle channel for understanding distress in others. "I cannot determine his exact activities from anecdotal data," Li Feng stated, then softened his tone slightly. "However, the observed inconsistencies... are noteworthy. I could... look into it."
Chloe's face lit up with a fragile hope. "Would you? Oh, Li Feng, that would be amazing. Just... be careful. He's really protective of his tech."
As they parted ways, Li Feng found his mind already constructing potential frameworks for investigating Julian's 'network.' It was a deviation from his planned schedule, an unexpected tangent. But the complexity of the puzzle, and the flicker of concern for Chloe's obvious worry, felt like new, worthwhile variables in his expanding world.