The Quiet Algorithm of Us

19 The Bridge to Daylight

“Take care today,” he said, with the voice men use when they pretend to be physicians without degrees. “These events are exhausting.”

“She will,” said Jinchao, appearing like a structural beam materializing between two facts. He didn’t glare. He didn’t bristle. He simply stood where oxygen belonged. “Thank you for your concern.”

“Of course,” Yichen said, stepping back with a smile that has opened more safes than keys. “Always a pleasure to witness competence.” He lifted a glass of water like a toast to boredom and walked away with the expression of a collector denied.

“Ranran,” Jinchao began, not public, exactly; just there. “Sit again.”

“I’m fine,” she said. A fiction. Sincerity adjacent. The kind of sentence any ambitious twenty-three-year-old in a silk sweater will die on. “I need to check a—” She thought “spread,” and changed it to “—schedule.”

He didn’t touch her in public. He touched the idea of her, which is worse, which is better. “Walk with me.”

They excused themselves like three cards being drawn from the deck: Zhou, Miran, Jinchao. Xiao Ning put a mug in Jinchao’s hand without announcing that she’d added ginger and sugar like bribery. The corridor that leads away from cameras and toward doors sighed because it loves being useful.

In the study, doors closed, he became that person who can narrate a crisis without scaring the patient. “Temperature,” he said.

She rolled her eyes, which is how young geniuses apologize for being mortal. “I have to check the book at two.”

“You do not get to get pneumonia at two,” he said. “Sit.” He said it as if the chair would only hold one person’s weight and had been waiting for hers.

She sat. He crouched and touched her wrist with the professionalism of a man who has asked the weather for permission. He didn’t make a doctor face. He placed his palm on her forehead for exactly one beat and frowned a private, small frown. “Mild. Enough,” he concluded.

“It’s nothing,” she murmured, which is what it always is until it is not. She thought of the opening bell’s grin, the afternoon’s laddered exits, the new levels hit by two positions she’d nursed for months like secrets. The fever consolidated its vote and listed “tremor” on the agenda.

“Tell me what must be pressed,” he said, offering the one bargain he knows she will take. “I’ll ensure pressing.”

She gave him the sketch. Energy grid basket: trim on a schedule, don’t be greedy; bank reforms: latency in rumor, harvest; platform vanity pair: take last third and leave a token to punish the future megalomania. He memorized. He is not the trader here, but he respects verbs. Then he took the phone she wasn’t trying to surrender and handed it to Kai (summoned with a noiseless text), who appeared like a font. “Execute this according to the plan,” he said. Kai nodded like a priest and left without looking at her. That’s why he’s allowed to exist.

“You’re handling my book,” she said, halfway to protest, halfway to wonder.

“I’m handling your instructions,” he said. “You’re handling the forecast that your face will be better if it is less on fire.”

Butterflies, the traitors, attempted a somersault in her ribs. She scowled at them and at her own blood and at the way the room’s square of light made everything look curable. “This is silly,” she said, which is how people with exceptional nervous systems refuse to take care of the ones they own.

He smoothed a piece of hair back, careful to keep his hand very clearly on the “if this were a hospital I would not be scolded” side of intimacy. “You can be brilliant tomorrow. Today you can have a fever.” The sentence landed like a blanket. She felt it and decided disagreements were for hours without dizziness. She nodded. The room seemed grateful.