Lin Hua's monitor always glowed coldly late at night, while lines of code flowed like a river with no end. Su Qing's desk lamp, on the other hand, favored the morning light. When she turned the pages of her books, flecks of chalk dust stirred in the air.
Their windows were once half a lane apart. Later, they were separated by the same living-room wall.
He had seen her smear coffee stains across the trigonometry problems on her draft paper. She had counted the crumbs that fell from the gaps in his keyboard. When autumn leaves swept across the balcony, the router's signal light and the highlighter marks in her vocabulary book seemed to quietly answer one another in the twilight.
Neither of them ever said the word "companionship." Then, one rainy morning, he noticed that she had quietly moved her umbrella beside his briefcase.
