From: Jian Li jian.li@berkeley.edu To: Alex Vukovic alexvuk@ucsb.edu Date: October 24, 2024 Subject: Brunch
Alex,
My father would like to meet you. Sunday, 11am, Kirin Restaurant on Shattuck. Business casual.
Do not be late.
Jian
Alex reads the email three times. He reads it a fourth time standing in the shower, water running cold because he's been in here long enough to drain the tank.
My father would like to meet you.
He didn't think Jian respected him enough for this. They've been working together for six weeks now, grinding through white papers and MIT OpenCourseWare lectures, building out the theoretical framework for Inferthermic in stolen hours between classes. Alex has shown up, done the work, pulled his weight. But Jian has never once suggested they do anything social. Never mentioned friends, never invited Alex to anything, never even referenced a life outside of thermodynamics and machine learning and the careful, methodical construction of their shared obsession.
Alex realizes, standing there with shampoo still in his hair, that he's never seen Jian hanging out with anyone else. Not once. The guy goes to class, goes to the library, goes home. No parties, no study groups, no social media tagged photos. Just... work.