The one who called out was none other than Li Zirui.
Dressed in sportswear, Li Zirui looked clean and fresh.
He had met Jiang Yubai back in their freshman year during orientation. However, he was unaware of Jiang Yubai's relationship with Lin Zhixia. Lin Zhixia was completely absorbed in her studies and had no time to participate in Jiang Yubai's social circle.
But today, the opportunity arose. Jiang Yubai formally introduced her: "Lin Zhixia is my girlfriend."
Li Zirui laughed and said, "Lin Zhixia is my academic advisor, so that makes you my senior in terms of hierarchy."
Jiang Yubai deliberately avoided the topic of "hierarchy." He glanced at their gear and casually asked, "Are you going rock climbing?"
"Yes," Li Zirui pointed ahead. "Why don’t we go together?"
Before he finished speaking, Lin Zhixia pushed open the glass door and stepped right between Li Zirui and Jiang Yubai.
Just minutes earlier, Lin Zhixia had been bouncing around the room, circling Jiang Yubai and calling him "Professor Jiang." Now, however, she had become extremely composed and polite, greeting them with, "Hello, my name is Lin Zhixia."
Li Zirui nodded at her.
Without hesitation, Lin Zhixia asked, "Have you finished your homework?"
Li Zirui’s smile froze on his face.
This was Lin Zhixia’s first time serving as an undergraduate advisor. She wasn’t sure what to talk about with students in informal settings. After some thought, she decided that discussing academics was the safest approach—it would both demonstrate her concern for her students and allow her to address their questions promptly, killing two birds with one stone.
So, Lin Zhixia continued, "Have you decided on your thesis topic? Have you finished reading the four literature reviews? You mentioned you were interested in studying the HHL Algorithm—have you made any progress in the past couple of days?"
If Lin Zhixia became interested in an algorithm, she could usually master it within two days, along with generating a wealth of related insights.
Assuming others were like her, she thought Li Zirui would be the same.
However, Lin Zhixia’s barrage of questions made Li Zirui nervously swallow.
Since the last tutoring session yesterday, Li Zirui hadn’t touched, let alone read, a single paper. He couldn’t answer Lin Zhixia’s questions and hid behind Jiang Yubai.
Jiang Yubai felt like laughing but restrained himself.
He exchanged a few words with Li Zirui to calm him down. Li Zirui invited Jiang Yubai to go horseback riding and play polo at a manor in southern England the following week, and Jiang Yubai agreed.
Li Zirui gave a hearty laugh, waved goodbye, and said, "Goodbye, Professor Lin."
Professor Lin’s tone was cheerful, brimming with enthusiasm for her teaching duties: "See you next Friday! Don’t forget to work on your paper!"
Li Zirui sprinted away at full speed, disappearing from Lin Zhixia’s sight as if running a 50-meter dash.
On the wide, wooden-floored corridor, the sound of Li Zirui’s shoes scraping against the ground grew fainter and fainter.
Lin Zhixia was taken aback and murmured, "He ran away."
Jiang Yubai put his arm around her shoulder and asked, "Shall I continue teaching you how to play?"
Lin Zhixia agreed, "Yes, Professor Jiang."
They walked back into the squash court.
Surrounded by four walls in a private space, Jiang Yubai opened up: "Earlier, I heard someone call you Professor Lin…"
"What about it?" Lin Zhixia asked him.
He served the ball, hitting it a few times before replying, "Nothing."Lin Zhixia deduced, "You heard others calling me Teacher Lin, and you're not used to it?"
Jiang Yubai stopped playing ball.
Holding the racket, he stood in place as the white ball rolled away from his feet. Lin Zhixia grabbed his fingers and playfully shook them.
He leaned closer to her, and she whispered in his ear, "Besides wanting to play teacher-student games with you, I also want to play doctor-nurse, CEO-secretary, king-knight..."
Before Lin Zhixia could finish her sentence, the racket slipped from Jiang Yubai's hand.
During the years Jiang Yubai and Lin Zhixia shared a desk, "role-playing" was their preferred activity between classes. It started as a spin-off game from the "Exploring the Universe" comic series, gradually evolving into an independent form of entertainment.
Jiang Yubai repeatedly savored Lin Zhixia's game proposals—in comparison, squash and rackets seemed utterly dull.
He suggested, "Let's go home now."
"Home?" Lin Zhixia picked up the racket. "Aren't we playing anymore?"
Jiang Yubai tried to persuade her: "My house has a swimming pool, tennis court, squash court, shooting range—just no rock climbing room. If you come home with me to focus on practice, you'll progress much faster."
Lin Zhixia sighed, "I thought you were going to play role-playing games with me."
Though caught red-handed, Jiang Yubai remained unflustered: "We can play whatever you want."
Seeing him so serious and proper, Lin Zhixia deliberately teased him: "For the CEO-secretary game, I'll be the CEO, you'll be the secretary..."
Jiang Yubai cooperatively addressed her: "President Lin."
He carried himself with such steady composure, as if he'd spent years navigating corporate secretary work. After being stared at by him for a moment, Lin Zhixia inexplicably lost her nerve. She abandoned the game: "I... I don't want to play anymore."
Jiang Yubai asked again, "Still coming to my place?"
"No." Lin Zhixia said firmly.
Jiang Yubai had anticipated this. He responded, "I've prepared strawberry pie and shrimp dumplings. Would you like to try some?"
After much hesitation, Lin Zhixia ultimately followed Jiang Yubai home.
At Jiang Yubai's house, he personally taught Lin Zhixia how to grip the racket and play. They played from morning until dusk, moving from the squash court to the tennis court, finally settling by the swimming pool.
The fading sunset light pierced through the floor-to-ceiling windows, scattering across the clear pool water where ripples overlapped and reflections intertwined.
Lin Zhixia sat on the pool edge, leaning forward to skim the water surface.
Jiang Yubai told her he was undergoing "swimming coach" training, and in a short while he'd be able to offer her one-on-one swimming lessons.
Lin Zhixia looked up at him.
He joined her sitting on the cool tiles. Holding her hand, he gently kissed her knuckles.
The pool no longer felt like a pool—its surface stretched wide as the sea, shimmering like morning clouds. Lin Zhixia smiled softly: "Thank you, Teacher Jiang."
Since the beginning of spring, the weather had gradually warmed.
Short trips became highly popular among students. France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy were all ideal weekend destinations. Students could depart from London airports on Friday evenings and reach their destinations that same night, getting proper rest at hotels before sightseeing on Saturday and Sunday.
Lin Zhixia scrolled through travel photos from around the world on WeChat Moments.
Even so, her academic enthusiasm never waned.
However, at exactly 8:00 on Monday morning, she received an email from her advisor.Her advisor decided to take a month off.
After asking around, Lin Zhixia learned from an Indian senior that her advisor was going to Switzerland for vacation with his wife.
Vacation?
Lin Zhixia was puzzled: "But our group is very busy right now. Why would our advisor choose this time to go on vacation?"
Wen Qi sighed: "Our group has been busy from the beginning of the year to the end."
That was indeed true.
There were over a dozen PhD students and seven postdoctoral researchers in Lin Zhixia's group. Every month, someone would submit a paper, receive review comments, or come up with new ideas... In other words, from the group's perspective, they were always busy.
There was another line in the advisor's email: balance between work and life.
Lin Zhixia stared blankly at the email for a while.
She had just finished writing a new paper the night before yesterday and was about to submit it to her advisor for review when he went on leave.
Lin Zhixia could only temporarily set aside her own paper. She opened her file folder and took out four essays—these were all submitted by her students.
Taking out a red pen, Lin Zhixia began carefully grading her students' papers.
Rather than simply grading, she was actually providing detailed notes for her students.
She would circle areas where students' expressions were inadequate, marking them with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4... Then she would create a detailed review document on her computer following the numbered sequence. Her comments were highly professional, with fluent and precise English wording. She compiled suitable materials for each of the four students, including various specialized books and papers, which she added as appendices to her comments.
It took Lin Zhixia an entire day to finish reviewing the four papers. She had typed tens of thousands of English words, leaving her fingers and arms somewhat sore.
The money she earned was truly hard-earned.
By Friday of that week, before teaching her students, Lin Zhixia followed the usual practice of returning everyone's assignments first.
Lin Zhixia said sincerely: "I've taught you four classes now, and I can feel everyone's seriousness and progress. Last week, the major assignment for the 'Quantum Computing' course was released, and you all submitted your work promptly. I and five other teaching assistants are responsible for grading your assignments. This major assignment accounts for ten percent of your final grade, so it's quite important. Let's go over the corrections first—I noticed that three of you made mistakes on the last bonus question."
Three people made mistakes?
Li Zirui's heart skipped a beat.
After reading his own paper and then looking at Lin Zhixia's feedback, even though her wording was subtle and tactful, he still felt his paper was written like crap.
He secretly glanced at Wu PinYan.
Wu PinYan openly handed her document to Li Zirui.
Li Zirui focused his eyes and saw what Lin Zhixia had written for Wu PinYan: Your perspective is excellent. To my knowledge, no research group in the field is currently exploring this direction. If you have time and interest, you could come to the laboratory and work with us on quantum computing models.
Wu PinYan smiled quietly and whispered: "Professor Lin invited me to their laboratory. I'm going to pursue a PhD."
Another student named Han Guang interjected: "I want to apply to MIT..."
Lin Zhixia cleared her throat: "Please listen to me."
The classroom instantly became so quiet you could hear a pin drop.Lin Zhixia distributed the printed documents to the four students. The first page of the document contained additional questions for their major assignment, while the following two pages featured new problems she had designed. She wanted to teach everyone how to draw inferences from one example.
She began explaining the problem: "This code snippet in the question can correct at most one bit-flip error, yet the output state still has issues. What does this indicate?"
Han Guang raised his hand and answered: "It shows we must use a complete quantum code."
"Correct, well said," Lin Zhixia added. "In the context of this problem, to correct both bit-flip errors and phase-flip errors, we need to use a complete quantum code [1]."
Lin Zhixia drew diagrams on the blackboard, skillfully transforming the problem type and having each student answer in turn.
Han Guang responded the fastest and could even expand on the concepts.
Wu PinYan also reacted quite nimbly.
As Li Zirui pondered for over ten seconds, Han Guang clasped his hands together and smiled from his seat.
Ultimately, Li Zirui failed to successfully answer Lin Zhixia's question.
He found an excuse for himself: "Teacher Lin, I forgot to mention earlier - thank you for grading our assignments and writing such lengthy comments. You've worked hard, Teacher Lin."
However, Lin Zhixia wasn't having any of it.
She steered the conversation back to the problem itself.
She continuously guided students to speak up, maintaining a kind attitude and gentle tone.
Even so, Li Zirui felt pressured. He kept glancing at his watch, hoping this tutoring session would end soon. Finally, when the clock struck three in the afternoon, he was the first to leave the classroom and happened to run into Jiang Yubai.
Jiang Yubai asked him: "Is your class over?"
Li Zirui nodded slightly: "Just ended."
Noticing his unusual expression, Jiang Yubai inquired: "Did the class go smoothly for you?"
Li Zirui's grades were actually decent. His average test scores hovered around 60 points, where 70 points generally counted as excellent. But his previous tutors had never written thousands of characters of weekly feedback for him, nor had they frequently called on him to speak during class. He felt both valued by his tutor and unworthy of her attention.
He sighed and couldn't help saying: "Ah, this semester I don't even want to go on vacation anymore. I need to study at home."
Author's note: [1] Reference: University of California, Berkeley "Quantum Physics" homework problems
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