Page 11 of From Beijing, With Love

Then, with a cup of black coffee in hand, he sat down at his desk and got to work.

Yang combed through the paper and made an inventory of the damage, his cheeks growing hot at the thought of his adviser reading the paper in this botched state. The worst offense was the missing graph corresponding to the cmk-1 strain. His research hypothesis was that certain genes controlled the cellular stress response, and the output for the cmk-1 strain was his most promising result. The fact that it was missing was mortifying.

He didn’t allow himself to sit with that mortification for too long. It wasn’t productive. Instead, he tossed back the coffee and got to work. Unfortunately, the document on the server had been the only copy, and Yang—so very stupidly—hadn’t bothered to back it up. Fortunately, he’d had the displeasure of spending every waking second of the last month toiling over this paper, which meant most of its content was still etched in his brain.

An hour later, he had restored much of the paper from memory.

All that remained was to regenerate the missing graph using the Python program that was as old as time itself. No, older. It predated Yang’s time at Tsinghua, but it worked without fail, chomping through the data and spitting out graphs in the exact way Dr. Sun demanded.

While the Python program churned through the data, Yang’s stomach growled, reminding him that dinner was long overdue. Too late to go down to the dining hall, Yang broke out his instant ramen stash. Turning on the kettle in the kitchenette in his dorm, he thought about what his dad would say about instant ramen. How he’d start with a lecture on its poor nutritional value, followed by listing no less than three carcinogens found in the flavor packet alone. The chemistry lecture would get too specific too quickly. Yang missed that.

This was the longest he had been away from his hometown. He always visited for Lunar New Year, but the train tickets had sold out this year. As he poured boiling water over the noodles, he was just glad the problem with the paper was nearly fixed and he didn’t have to forgo his trip home.

That is, until he set the bowl of steaming-hot noodles down in front of his laptop.

On the screen, all he saw was red. The same program he had used for months had crashed with so many errors he didn’t even know where to start. None of it made much sense to him: He wasn’t a Python programmer, and he’d had no hand in creating this three-thousand-line monstrosity.

Three more cups of coffee later, Yang was still buried in the avalanche of error messages. His dinner sat untouched. He might have even made things worse in his attempt to debug the code.

As a stress-induced migraine began to set in, his phone vibrated with an incoming call. The vibration grated on his last nerve, so he answered.

“Hey, it’s Daniel. Daniel Wu!” the voice on the other side shouted. Yang cringed and pulled the phone away from his ear. “The guy from the tour. We went to the Mut … the wall.”

“I remember.” Yang bit back a snide remark about how his short-term memory was still fairly intact despite the multiple concussions he’d probably suffered today. He forced his eyes away from the screen. “Are you okay?”

“I might have left my wallet in your car.” Daniel was still yelling like he was competing with the generic Mandopop playing in the background.

“Give me a second.” Yang dashed downstairs. Luckily, he hadn’t returned the Prius yet. Inside, Daniel’s wallet was wedged between the passenger seat and the center console. “Got it. I can drop this off at your hotel tomorrow.”

“I kind of need it tonight? You know, to pay?” Daniel said, finally at a volume that wasn’t giving Yang hearing damage. “I’m at the bar across from the hotel.”

Yang sighed as he leaned against the car. The day was catching up to him and the no was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t knowingly leave Daniel stranded.

“On my way,” Yang said after a longing look up at his lit window in the boxy dormitory where his laptop—and all the errors—sat waiting.

CHAPTER SIXDaniel

Daniel had a high alcohol tolerance. Some might even say superb.

But somehow he was only on his third drink and could barely feel his lips. Maybe it was the fault of the saccharine cocktail with the mini umbrella, or perhaps it was the shot that looked like vodka but tasted like lighter fuel.

The trip to the bar wasn’t so much a nice-to-have but an absolute necessity after the day Daniel just had. Not wanting to be the only one drinking in the hotel bar (aka the lobby), he’d ventured outside to the closest bar, according to his app. After going through a dark, winding corridor, down a flight of stairs, and into the basement of the shopping complex, he heard the call of music.

The bar was well lit and had a school cafeteria–meets–pub kind of vibe. Everything was plastic—the chairs, the menu, the tablecloth—and the air carried the scent of stale alcohol and cigarette smoke. But for what it was worth (and it was worth a lot), the place looked clean.

And when the drinks started coming his way, Daniel cared a little less about the ambience (or lack thereof) and allowed himself to relax. Until he realized that he didn’t have his wallet and had left all his cash in his hotel room—the same wad of cash he’d shoved at Yang as a tip after chickening out of giving him the bookmarks.

Daniel’s inebriated brain churned through all the places where his wallet could possibly be before remembering the one dreadful place where he’d spent the majority of his day—Yang’s car. When Yang agreed to drop off his wallet, Daniel rotated through a carousel of feelings: relief, shame, guilt. He was a mess in need of rescuing. What else was new?

This is all just a lot. Taylor’s words rang in his ears. He meant that Daniel was a lot. Too much.

When the server who looked too young to be serving alcohol came to Daniel’s table, he gestured for another drink. He didn’t care what, as long as it got the job done. What appeared in front of him a moment later was another shot—a double—of the same foul liquor he’d had before. It could get people drunk on vapor alone. Daniel downed it in one gulp so as to not linger on the taste, which he could only describe as alcoholic.

The numbing in his lips spread to his burning cheeks as he eased back into the plastic chair, the lights above him blinking on and off. His head was spinning, and out of nowhere, another shot appeared in front of him. At least he wasn’t thinking about Taylor’s words anymore, nor was he thinking about being in the city where his dad had grown up; he was only thinking about a grumpy face and a sarcastic voice.

“Sorry to interrupt.” The sarcastic voice had come to life, accompanied by that familiar grumpy face.

Daniel shot up, knocking his plastic chair backward onto the floor with a loud bang. He pulled Yang into a hug as he slurred, “I’m so happy to see you.”