After that night, Cheng Shu did not avoid her. In Lu Zhi's eyes, that alone counted as progress. He was still busy, still in meetings late into the evening, still all business on the surface. But he started sending her messages—not the perfunctory *Are you there?* of work notifications, but messages with actual content, written in his own particular way. One Wednesday afternoon he sent: *On the Ruichi account—there's something in the data you should watch.* She replied: *Which part?* He sen...