My IQ Increases Year by Year

Zhang Zhicheng, who was standing nearby, agreed wholeheartedly, looking at Chen Zhuo as if he were a living Bodhisattva.

The New Year’s visit was soon over.

When Zhang Zhicheng’s family of three left, Chen Jianguo and Liu Xiuying walked them to the top of the stairs.

Zhang Zhicheng and his wife were beaming, feeling like they had hit the jackpot with this visit.

But then there was Zhang Qiang.

He was like a soulless puppet, clutching the heavy, black notebook to his chest as he shuffled unsteadily behind his parents.

As he went down the stairs, he glanced back at Chen Zhuo, who was standing in the doorway.

His eyes were filled with accusation, indignation, and a deep despair for the world.

Chen Zhuo leaned against the doorframe and gave him a little wave.

His smile was as warm as a spring day.

The security door shut.

The room fell silent.

Chen Jianguo remarked with feeling as he cleared the cups from the coffee table.

"Xiaozhuo, you’re really taking this seriously with Qiangzi. He’s the Zhang family’s only child. If you can actually pull his grades up, Old Zhang will probably start worshipping you like an ancestor."

"It’s the least I can do. No trouble at all."

Chen Zhuo casually picked up his cup and took a sip of water. It flowed down his throat, warming his stomach.

The thought of Zhang Qiang’s miserable life over the next twenty days made the water he was drinking seem exceptionally sweet.

He didn’t feel guilty. The second year of middle school was a critical turning point, and he couldn’t just stand by and watch Zhang Qiang turn into some delinquent who only knew how to play arcade games.

’Since we’re brothers, it’s my job to pave the way for him, even if the methods are a little... painful.’

Just then, the landline in the corner of the living room suddenly began to ring.

RING RING RING—

Chen Zhuo set down his insulated mug, walked over, and picked up the receiver.

"Hello?"

The other end of the line was filled with a cacophony of background noise.

There was the frantic CLACKING of a mechanical keyboard, the loud whirring of computer case fans, and even a few sharp video game sound effects mixed in.

"Fire in the hole!"

"Hey, Brother Zhuo!"

A hoarse but strangely excited voice came through the receiver.

Chu Ge.

"Happy New Year," Chen Zhuo said.

Chen Zhuo switched the receiver to his other hand and walked to the window.

Outside, someone downstairs lit another string of firecrackers, their sharp CRACKLING echoing over the snow-covered ground.

"Happy my ass."

Chu Ge swore from the other end of the line. In the background, someone seemed to be yelling for the owner to bring them more instant noodles.

"I’ve been stuck in this shitty little internet cafe since New Year’s Eve, pulling all-nighters for two straight days. I’ve been typing so much I think my keyboard is about to start smoking."

Chu Ge’s voice buzzed with the unique fervor of a tech fanatic.

"What’s wrong? Did your underlying architecture crash?"

Chen Zhuo’s tone was light as he watched the scraps of paper from the firecrackers scatter outside.

"The architecture is fine, but the database is completely frozen."

Chu Ge took a sharp drag from a cigarette on the other end of the line.

"My buddy in the Capital City—the one working on the Six Degrees of Separation concept—and I managed to build the prototype for a campus social network. But as soon as the concurrency ramps up, the multi-dimensional cross-referencing for a few thousand users sends his rented server into a complete deadlock."

Chu Ge paused, his tone turning serious.

"Brother Zhuo, that stuff about discrete algebra matrix dimensionality reduction you taught me in the dorm at the end of the semester... can that be rewritten as a database query? We don’t need to worry about continuity; I just need to cut the redundancy from the multi-node concurrency in half."

Chen Zhuo’s gaze drifted past the frost-etched patterns on the windowpane to the gray-blue sky in the distance.

"It can."

Chen Zhuo’s voice was steady as he continued to look out the window.

"Find a piece of paper and a pen. I’ll dictate, you write."