The rain in Oxford was not the dramatic, passionate downpour of summer storms back home. It was a persistent, polite drizzle, a fine mist that seemed less like weather and more like a permanent atmospheric condition. As Lin Xiaoyang stepped onto the platform at Oxford station, the cool, damp air was the first thing that registered—a stark, physical reminder that he was now running in a completely different environment.
Then he saw her.
Shen Qinghe stood under the large, antique clock, a figure of calm precision amidst the flow of arriving passengers. She was holding a compact, functional umbrella and a small paper bag. Her eyes found him instantly, as if she had been tracking his progress via GPS.
"Lin Xiaoyang," she said as he approached, her voice cutting through the station's murmur. "Your flight arrived 12 minutes early, but customs processing added a 23-minute delay. Your current trajectory is within expected parameters."
He couldn't help but smile. The familiar, data-rich greeting was a lifeline in the unfamiliar surroundings. "Qinghe. The environmental humidity is 87%."
"Acknowledged. It is suboptimal for electronic devices. This way." She turned, and he fell into step beside her, the wheels of his suitcase clicking on the wet pavement.
She led him to a small, parked car—a practical, efficient model. "Temporary transportation," she explained. "Your accommodation is a 12-minute drive. I have secured a six-month lease on a furnished flat within cycling distance of the city center and several tech hubs. The landlord's reliability score is 84%."
As they drove through the winding, ancient streets, Xiaoyang felt a profound sense of dislocation. The buildings were older than his entire country's written history. The energy was not the frantic, forward-thrusting buzz of a tech city, but a deep, slow hum of accumulated knowledge and tradition. It was the ultimate legacy system.
The flat was exactly as described: small, clean, functional. It had a desk, a bed, a kitchenette, and a view of a cobblestone alley. It was a perfect basecamp for a new, uncertain campaign.
"The initial priority is establishing your local network and employment," Qinghe said, placing the paper bag on the desk. It contained a local SIM card, a pre-loaded public transport card, a detailed map with key locations marked, and a meal-prep container of congee. "Your job applications have yielded three interview requests. I have scheduled them for the next seven days. The first is tomorrow at 10:00 AM with a fintech startup whose stack matches your expertise by 78%."
He looked from the meticulously prepared items to her face. In her own way, she was performing a system initialization for him. "Thank you," he said, the words feeling inadequate.
"Efficiency is critical in the acclimatization phase," she replied, but her gaze lingered on him a moment longer than necessary. "Your system has undergone a major environmental shift. Rest is the next logical step. I will return at 08:00 tomorrow to accompany you to the interview location."
After she left, the silence of the flat settled around him. It was not the comfortable silence of his old apartment, nor the charged silence of their video calls. It was the silence of a new, empty variable waiting to be assigned a value. He was hit by a wave of exhaustion and a sudden, sharp pang of doubt. Had he made a colossal, romantic, and foolish mistake?
His phone buzzed. A message in the old group chat.
Dramaturge Queen (Yuexi): THE HERO HAS LANDED IN THE NEW REALM! Report! What are the vibes? Is it all tweed and haunted libraries?
Almost instantly, a photo from Su Yuning appeared—a screenshot of Oxford's weather data and a graph of local employment rates in the tech sector. Ning.Y: Environmental conditions are suboptimal for solar power generation but adequate for human habitation. The job market is niche but stable.
Then, a private message from Tang Youyou. Stargazer Youyou: I did a remote reading of your new space. The energy is a little stiff, but the underlying ley lines are strong with scholarly intention. Place the clear quartz I gave you on the windowsill to help it flow.
A warm, grateful feeling pushed back the cold doubt. His distributed system was still online, still supporting him. He placed the quartz on the windowsill.
The next week was a grueling tutorial level in the game of "Adult Life: UK Expansion Pack." The interviews were intense, conducted in boardrooms that overlooked spires rather than skyscrapers. The questions were familiar, but the cultural context was not. He found himself explaining his "Energy-Saving Principle" and the EfficientHeart project to curious British engineers who called it "quite quaint" and "brilliantly mad."
Qinghe was his unwavering guide. She prepared him for each interview with dossiers on the companies' histories and technical challenges. She debriefed him afterwards, analyzing his answers with the detached precision of a football coach reviewing game tape.
"You used the term 'kludge' in the second interview," she noted after one such session, as they walked along the River Cherwell. "In the UK, the preferred term is 'bodge' or 'hack.' The cultural connotation is slightly more positive, implying resourcefulness. Adjust your lexicon accordingly."
He laughed, the sound startling a nearby swan. "I'm not just learning a new job market. I'm learning a new dialect of English."
"Correct. It is a nested layer of acclimatization."
Despite her support, the rejections began to trickle in. "Overqualified for the role." "Lacking specific local regulatory experience." The polite, unyielding language of British professional dismissal.
The doubt returned, louder this time. He was burning through his savings, living in a shoebox, and facing the very real possibility of professional failure—all for a relationship that was, in person, both deeply comforting and strangely intense. Their interactions were filled with a new, physical proximity, but the emotional bandwidth was still governed by their old protocols. It was wonderful and disorienting.
One evening, after a particularly demoralizing rejection, he sat at his small desk, staring at a complex coding challenge from a prospective employer. The rain tapped against the window. He felt the weight of the ancient city pressing in on him, a monument to permanence that made his own transience and uncertainty feel all the more acute.
His phone lit up. A video call request from Chen Yuexi. He accepted, and her animated face filled the screen, her room a comforting mess of art supplies and action figures.
"Xiaoyang! You look like you've been debugging without a compiler! Where's the fire?"
He gave her a truncated version of his struggles.
"Listen to me," she said, her dramatics dialed down to a rare, sincere intensity. "You are in the 'Fish Out of Water' montage. This is the part where the hero struggles, learns the ropes, and has a bunch of humorous mishaps before he finds his footing. It's necessary. You can't skip the montage! Embrace the awkwardness! Also, have you and the Human Database had your first big cultural misunderstanding yet? Like, she tried to explain cricket to you and your brain blue-screened?"
He managed a weak smile. "Not yet."
"It'll happen! And it'll be a great story! Now, go do something stupidly inefficient. Get lost in the city. Eat something weird. Stop trying to optimize the experience and just… let it compile at its own speed."
After the call, he took her advice. He left the coding challenge and went for a walk, deliberately getting lost in the winding alleys. He ended up in a tiny, crowded pub, ordered a pint of something dark and bitter he didn't understand, and sat in a corner, just listening to the murmur of academic gossip and the clink of glasses.
He wasn't optimizing. He was just… existing. And for the first time since he arrived, he felt the tension in his shoulders ease slightly.
When he returned to the flat, Qinghe was there, waiting with a small pot of tea. She took one look at him and said, "Your stress biomarkers have decreased by approximately 40%. The pub's ambient noise frequency is known to have a calming effect on the human nervous system."
"I got lost," he admitted.
"I know. Your phone's location data deviated from all optimal paths between 20:17 and 21:53." She poured him a cup. "The experience appears to have been beneficial. Sometimes, a system needs to enter a low-priority idle state to perform necessary background maintenance."
He took the tea, the warmth spreading through his hands. He looked at her—this brilliant, baffling, wonderful person who had crossed an ocean of data to meet him here, in this ancient, rainy city.
The path wasn't efficient. The code was messy. The compilation was ongoing, and full of warnings.
But the program was running. And for now, that was enough.