In the study, Lin Longwei turned the desk computer on and tapped on the keyboard for a few minutes. Xu Mei sat on the couch patiently.

«I have retrieved the data we were talking about last week,» he said after a while. «Do you want to see?»

«Yes!»

Xu Mei walked to him, looking at the large monitor. On the screen, there was a file full of raw numbers.

«I see. I'll need to clean the data first.»

«What do you mean?»

«First, I'll analyse the columns to deal with the missing records. After that, I'll normalise to get rid of measure units.»

«Normalise?»

«Now you have numbers that can be rather small or quite large. I'll bring all of them in the range between zero and one, or minus one and one. I'll decide later. Then, I'll search for correlations to find some columns to drop. That will increase the algorithms' speed.»

«Do whatever you want.»

Lin Longwei surrendered: he didn't want to annoy her with too many questions. He got up and let her sit at his place.

Xu Mei snapped her fingers and stretched her arms before starting to work.

She sent the files to her email and pulled out her laptop from the rucksack she brought with her. She had all the programs she needed already installed there. She would spare time using her own computer.

She put aside the keyboard and opened her computer. She started typing as soon as a couple of shells opened.

Two hours later, she sensed the aroma of coffee and, when she looked around, a cup was laying on the desk. She lifted her gaze and met Lin Lingwei's reassuring smile.

«You have a lot of records. I can bail out something useful with this, but I don't have enough resources here for an extensive analysis. Do you have access to cloud computing?»

«I suppose I do. What do you need?»

«I'm writing the program myself right now. I just need a cluster to run it. Since I didn't know if you lawfully obtained the data, I didn't trust the existing services.»

«Good girl,» he chuckled, «but you don't need to worry. Everything is legal.»

«I think that every service in the country refers to the Government. You better avoid market tools, if you don't want the Prime Minister to have your information without paying any fee.»

«Are you tired?»

«Not really.»

Xu Mei sipped the coffee. The bitter taste wakened her, and the aroma made her muscles relax.

Lin Longwei sat in front of the girl and read some documents in silence. She returned to her work with a clear mind.

Lin Longwei couldn't keep up with Xu Mei's rhythm, and he soon started to feel sleepy. He moved to the couch to sit more comfortably but soon fell asleep.

Xu Mei, on the other side, was used to sleepless nights. She planned to stay up till dawn to write the code and then debug it.

When she noticed the cadenced breathing of the man on the sofa, she covered him with a blanket. She made sure he wasn't feeling cold and caressed his forehead carefully. Her hand slithered to his cheek and chin, stopping right before reaching his perfect lips.

She woke up from her daze and realised what she was doing. She retreated her hand and stepped away from the sleeping man.

She went back to the desk to finish the work. She looked at the watch on the wall: it was still midnight. She had a lot of time ahead, but she needed to focus.

When Xu Mei finished, she set up the cloud platform to run the program and packed her things. She was leaving the room when Lin Longwei got up.

«Done?» the man asked while passing a hand in his hair. Xu Mei followed the movement with her eyes, fascinated by how handsome he could be right after waking up.

«Good morning, Senator Lin. Yes, I'm done. Your results will be ready soon. They will be displayed reasonably, so you won't need me to interpret them.»

«I'll send you home. Are you going to the dormitory?»

«I'll take the subway since it has already opened.»

«You can sleep here and go later.»

«The world is waking up, and I want to avoid being noticed by journalists walking in the night.»

«One more reason to let me drive you.»

«I think it's worse if they see me with you,» she chuckled. «I don't know how grandfather may react.»

«You worry too much, you know? Isn't it exactly what the Prime Minister wanted?» Lin Longwei asked, getting close.

Xu Mei looked into his eyes and remembered her audacious behaviour of a few hours before. She blushed and shifted her gaze.

She didn't want him to notice her embarrassment. However, at the same time, Xu Mei feared that he would see in her eyes what she had done while he was sleeping.

He took advantage of her head's movement to reduce the distance between them. He held her waist with one arm while, with the other hand, he moved a lock of hair from her neck. She thrilled but managed to push him away.

Lin Longwei lifted an eyebrow elegantly and moved his hand away from her neck but didn't let go of her waist.

The girl noticed, at that moment, that something was not quite right.

«It should be the other way around!» she claimed.