You Are the Code of My Heartbeat

Exception Handling

Cheng Jian had been staring at the flashing red warning on her screen for over twenty minutes.

`Exception: HeartRateOverLimit`

Her own health monitoring program kept popping up alerts. She glanced at her wrist — the smartwatch showed a heart rate of 107 beats per minute, nearly 40 bpm higher than usual. The log indicated that this anomaly started precisely at 9:47 AM today — the exact moment Lu Wan had walked into the study with a tray of fruit.

"Still debugging?"

Lu Wan's voice came from behind, and Cheng Jian instinctively hit `Ctrl+Alt+Del`, shutting down the program. A steaming cup of herbal tea was placed beside the keyboard, with a sticky note under it — a smiling face and the words *"Drink more water."*

"Thanks," Cheng Jian murmured, her voice unusually soft.

Lu Wan tilted her head, studying her. "Your ears are really red. Is the aircon too hot?"

Cheng Jian unconsciously touched her earlobe — it was burning. She watched as Lu Wan naturally reached to lower the temperature, her sleeve slipping back slightly to reveal a faint smudge of watercolor paint on her inner wrist. That stain had been there since yesterday, when she’d complained about how hard the pigment was to wash off.

"What do you want for lunch?" Lu Wan leaned against the desk, tapping her fingers lightly on the teacup. "I found a new Cantonese place downstairs."

Cheng Jian’s eyes followed those slender fingers without realizing it. She remembered how Lu Wan’s nails had gotten stained with soil last week while repotting the succulent.

"Anything is fine." Cheng Jian heard herself say.

That clearly didn’t satisfy Lu Wan. Suddenly, she leaned forward, placing both hands on the armrests of the chair, trapping Cheng Jian between the desk and the seat.

"You’ve been distracted lately," Lu Wan said.

Cheng Jian’s breath caught for a second. There was a hint of lavender in Lu Wan’s scent, mixed with the faint smell of turpentine from the paints. At this distance, she could see the curve of Lu Wan’s lashes and the tiny mole near the corner of her right eye.

"The project launch is coming up," Cheng Jian replied, her voice dry.

Lu Wan studied her for a few seconds, then suddenly poked her cheek. "Did you know that when you lie, your eyes blink three times without you noticing?"

Cheng Jian froze. She hadn’t known that about herself.

"Let’s go," Lu Wan straightened up, grabbing the now-empty teacup. "We’re leaving at half past twelve. No excuses."

Only after the footsteps faded toward the kitchen did Cheng Jian exhale slowly. She reopened the health monitor and saw that during their conversation, her heart rate had spiked to 118 bpm.

`Warning: SystemOverload`

She deleted the warning.

At 3 PM, Cheng Jian discovered an unfamiliar folder while organizing her code. The path showed it was created two weeks ago, labeled `/sunshine/`. Opening it revealed dozens of photos — her shirt hanging on the balcony, gently swaying in the wind; puddings lined up neatly in the fridge, glistening under warm light; the succulent plant on her desk stretching its leaves in morning sunlight.

The most recent photo was taken yesterday evening. It showed Cheng Jian reading on the sofa, golden rays filtering through the window and casting delicate light across her face. Her lips were slightly curved — a rare expression of relaxation.

Each file was named with the date and temperature, like `20230618_28℃`. Cheng Jian hovered over the delete key for a long time before finally renaming the folder to `/backup/`.

At eight PM, Lu Wan returned with a large cardboard box tucked under her arm. "For you!" Her eyes sparkled, a speck of dust on her nose.

Inside was a programmer-themed wellness kit: a neck massager labeled "15 minutes a day"; an eye mask box with a moon and the word "Goodnight" drawn on it; a wrist pad with "Hello World" printed on it; and at the bottom, a gray wolf plushie wearing an eye patch over one eye, tagged "Debug Companion."

"This one," Lu Wan grabbed the plushie and stuffed it into Cheng Jian’s arms, "you can hug it when you vent about bugs."

Cheng Jian looked down at the toy and suddenly noticed it bore a striking resemblance to her usual frowning expression. That realization made her lips curl upward involuntarily.

"You smiled!" Lu Wan exclaimed like she’d just discovered a new continent. "I’m saving this as my wallpaper!"

Cheng Jian instinctively tried to move away but stopped when she saw Lu Wan bouncing excitedly with her phone raised. In the captured moment, her smile looked more natural than ever.

At 2 AM, Cheng Jian woke from a nightmare. In it, she was sixteen again, alone in an empty room, staring at flickering lines of code. Thunder rumbled outside, and she mechanically counted prime numbers — 2, 3, 5, 7, 11... until a `Segmentation fault` jolted her awake.

The living room was lit by a warm nightlight. Lu Wan was curled on the sofa, asleep, her digital tablet still on. Half-finished on the screen was an illustration of a girl holding an umbrella, turning a cloud labeled `ERROR` into a marshmallow.

Cheng Jian carefully picked up the tablet and was about to cover Lu Wan with a blanket when her wrist was suddenly caught.

"Bad dream again?" Lu Wan’s voice was thick with sleep.

Moonlight filtered through the curtain gaps, casting soft patches of light on her face. Cheng Jian suddenly thought of that photo from yesterday — realizing, for the first time, how someone else might see her.

"When I was little..." Cheng Jian heard herself begin, "I used to count primes when I was scared."

Lu Wan’s fingers tightened gently around hers. "And now?"

Cheng Jian looked at their overlapping hands. The alarms of `Exception` and `Warning` in her mind gradually quieted.

"Now..." she gently squeezed back, "I don’t need to anymore."

The next morning, Cheng Jian found a new file on her desktop: `/backup/new_protocol.txt`. Inside was only one line of code:

try { accept("sunshine"); }

Cheng Jian opened the terminal and typed:

echo "response: yes" >> protocol.log

Then she hugged the little wolf plushie and gently poked its nose.