As a top programmer, Cheng Xu lives by one motto: everything can be quantified, and anything can be programmed. He has written a rigorous operating system for his life: calculating calories at every meal, planning the most efficient routes when he goes out, and even recording his daily mood swings in an attempt to find the bugs. His friends say he lives like a robot. Cheng Xu disagrees: this is efficiency, this is stability.
That is, until an illustrator named Xia Wan moves in next door.
Xia Wan’s life is one long string of “Fatal Errors” in Cheng Xu’s system.
She gets a sudden burst of inspiration at three in the morning and blasts symphonies through her speakers. She smears paint on the white hallway wall and names the result Encounter. She even cries tears of joy when the cactus she’s growing blooms a tiny flower.
For the first time, Cheng Xu’s system encounters an anomaly it can’t process.
Cheng Xu tries to “optimize” Xia Wan with logic.
He draws up a Healthy Routine Management Plan for her, and she uses it as a backing board for her painting.
He helps her analyze the Optimal Solution to Socializing, and she teases him, “Doesn’t living like that wear you out?”
He warns her, “Your life is full of redundancy and randomness. It’ll cause the system to crash.”
Xia Wan smiles and hands him a freshly baked, somewhat misshapen cookie. “But sometimes, redundancy is another word for surprises and romance.”
When an important project at the company hits a deadlock and no one knows what to do, it’s an irregular line in one of Xia Wan’s doodles that gives Cheng Xu a game-changing flash of inspiration.
When Cheng Xu falls into an emotional loop because of childhood trauma and can’t “debug” himself,
