'SEE YOU MORNING' 024 Aftermath

Li Haojun woke up in the morning. Today he was scheduled to go to Ellensburg. He checked the weather forecast, and it didn't look good. He had originally planned to drive himself, but he wanted to leave the only vehicle in the household for Qin Wenjing. He looked up past summer thunderstorm and flood disaster records — they didn't seem too severe — so he said to Qin Wenjing,

"I'll leave the car with you. If there's a local flood disaster, head to the high ground in the northeast in advance. I'll bring some necessary supplies and equipment to Ellensburg. The weather doesn't look great, but don't worry, I'll be careful. Keep in touch."

After saying goodbye to Qin Wenjing, he grabbed the supplies and equipment he'd collected from the basement and took a flying taxi to Ellensburg. The weather was still just overcast, the flight altitude remained below the cloud layer, and only the southwest seemed darker than the rest. Mid-flight, he inventoried the supplies in his luggage and couldn't help but reflect on everything he'd been through.

He soon arrived in Ellensburg. This side was mountainous, the weather even more overcast, gusts more pronounced, giving the feeling that a mountain storm was about to break — even the aircraft shook violently on landing. He shouldered his backpack, pulled his suitcase, and headed straight for the control room. Huh, he found Malaya already there, her small figure intently watching her sister take samples in the production workshop through the surveillance monitors. Truly, the early bird catches the worm — no wonder her sister had been selected by the company right after graduation for an internship.

"Good morning, Malaya, you guys got here early." Li Haojun said, setting down his things and walking over to sit beside her.

"Yeah, there's a quality issue with the production line here, my sister wanted to come early. Plus the weather's getting worse too, so we had to fly over before it got bad."

"Haha, I saw the forecast too." Li Haojun said as he downloaded the production data, used a model to analyze the cause of the quality issue, ruled out seasonal factors and raw material factors, and sent a robot to take some photos of the production process on site. Li Haojun seemed to have found a suspected direction, and then just waited for Kesiya to come back with her sample analysis results. By now, dark clouds had gathered outside the window, and fierce wind swept past the corners with a howl.

"Malaya, I think you should order some food now — today, tomorrow, maybe even the day after. Even though there are food reserves here, they're not as good as fresh food. I'm not sure if the flood yellow alert here will trap us for a while."

"Okay," she said, immediately springing into action.

"You don't doubt my judgment?" Li Haojun asked curiously.

"I checked the weather forecast too. Besides, I'm your assistant, right? Wouldn't it be weird if I didn't help you do your job and instead deliberately went against your wishes to cause trouble?"

Hearing her say that, Li Haojun laughed too.

As time passed, the sky grew darker and darker, and the howling wind swept over the corners and eaves. On the surveillance feed, he could see Kesiya had finished sampling and left the production workshop, now in the analysis lab, and the analysis data was gradually being transmitted into the control room monitors as she worked.

Soon it was lunchtime. At the round table in the conference room, the three of them sat next to each other. Malaya, uninhibited as ever, sat beside Li Haojun, while Kesiya sat on her sister's side.

"I didn't expect you guys to get here so much earlier than me. I saw you were busy as soon as I arrived. Thanks for your hard work." Kesiya didn't usually talk much, always doing her work quietly and without fuss, so Li Haojun made an effort to communicate with her more.

"Yeah, I got a system notification that there were some issues with the production data here, so I needed to come check. Malaya arranged the trip — she said there'd be thunderstorms, so we came before the weather got bad."

Kesiya's voice was soft, her speech rate gentle, she seemed a bit shy, always only looking up at Li Haojun when she spoke, while Malaya was in stark contrast to her.

Over the meal and casual conversation, Li Haojun paid more attention to the low, rolling dark clouds outside the window. It seemed a heavy downpour was about to come, and the factory had been built at the western mountain pass of Ellensburg to stay away from the urban dust pollution. The city itself was located in a river alluvial basin among the mountains, and the west was precisely the first position to face rainfall from the Cascade Range.

"A mountain storm is coming..." Li Haojun murmured to himself, watching the rolling dark clouds.

"Our factory back there has standard flood procedures for the rainy season. Maybe this one does too." Kesiya said softly, looking at Li Haojun.

"Oh? Good, I'll look into it later. I only took over here recently too."

"Mm, when I did my onboarding training at Eagle, it covered this stuff. That factory has automatic flood walls to prevent the plant area from flooding during the rainy season."

"Ethan was still suffering from amnesia a few months ago, so it's normal he's not familiar with these details," Malaya explained to Kesiya, as if making excuses for Li Haojun, while glancing at Li Haojun out of the corner of her eye.

Li Haojun smiled at her and said nothing, thinking to himself: what's this little girl bringing that up for? Is she building me a ladder or tearing one down? She's being mischievous beyond measure.

After lunch, Li Haojun pulled Kesiya along to research the standard flood response procedures, while Malaya stood by the window, watching the intensifying wind carry rain in waves that slapped against the glass, carefree like a child.

Li Haojun and Kesiya found the system entry point and, based on the weather forecast, activated the automatic plant flood response procedure. From the control room, they could see in the distance that all factory doors and windows locked shut, and flood walls on the inner side of the plant perimeter rose up, blocking water from flowing in — as if the entire factory were a large ship floating upstream in the water, and the control room were the bridge steering that ship.

The whole afternoon passed quickly with flood preparations and inspections. At dinnertime, the few of them ate something simple. Malaya still seemed full of energy, while Kesiya seemed a bit tired. Li Haojun sent Qin Wenjing a message to let her know he was safe, asked about the situation on her end, then went straight to the company management department to vent — assigning tasks to employees without explaining the situation, not mentioning flood hazards at all. The company needed to take on its social responsibility. If any employee got hurt or killed because of this, it would be an irretrievable loss. The management personnel who responded were only offering perfunctory comfort and had no real interest in listening, giving brief replies before ending the conversation.

After an afternoon of wind and rain, the dark clouds had almost completely dispersed, and a waning moon hung above the cloud edge.

"You guys go sleep in the rest room next door. You've had a long day. There are sofas in there, more comfortable." Li Haojun said, pushing the control room chairs together and lying down on them.

"Come sleep in the rest room with us too, we don't mind." Malaya said. She was always so informal.

Kesiya just echoed with a hum, and when she saw Li Haojun hadn't moved, she tugged Malaya's arm and whispered, "I'm going over first, I'm tired."

Li Haojun lay on the chairs, turned off the lights, and turned his head to gaze at the moonlight outside the window. He couldn't help sending Qin Wenjing a few messages. Malaya hadn't left either — she'd pulled over a chair and sat beside him.

"This is a good spot for moon-gazing," she said, also looking up at the window.

Li Haojun turned his head back and just happened to see her left arm resting on the back of his chair, her blonde hair scattered across her chest, her cheeks and body's contours silhouetted in the silver moonlight. The humid air and the afternoon's busyness carried a faint scent of a young girl's light perspiration.

"Why don't you go keep your sister company?" Li Haojun asked softly.

"I want to see the moon too."

Li Haojun said nothing, thinking: there are windows in the next room too, what does she need to come here for? This little girl just loves stirring things up. But he was too tired — the silver moonlight, the moonlit night with dim clouds, seemed to have a hypnotic effect. So he said softly to Malaya,

"I'm tired, I won't keep you company chatting. I'm going to sleep." Malaya didn't answer, still sitting there. In his peripheral vision, she seemed to be in the same position, gazing at the moonlight.

...He didn't know how much time passed before the patter of raindrops entered Li Haojun's ears, waking him from deep sleep with their sound. Before opening his eyes, he already knew the bright moonlight was gone. He stretched his body, adjusted his breathing and heart rate, and opened his eyes slightly. Sure enough, the overcast sky showed not a trace of light. Maybe it wasn't even time to get up yet. He instinctively turned his head — Malaya wasn't there. But there seemed to be clear, even breathing. He turned his head again — at the same horizontal level as himself, by the faint light of the control room buttons, he saw it was Kesiya. She'd pulled a chair over too, lying on her side beside him, her naturally wavy long hair spilling down from the chair.

Li Haojun didn't disturb her, wondering if Malaya had egged her on. Given her personality, she would never do this on her own. Before his thoughts could wander far, while a trace of sleepiness still lingered, Li Haojun turned to face the darkness of the wall, trying to pull himself back into dreams.

In a daze, he didn't know how long passed. The rain intensified, the sound of the downpour filling his ears. Li Haojun took a deep breath, adjusting his state to start a new day, but his mind wondered whether that figure from the night was still there. He opened his eyes and turned his head slightly — she was already sitting there, one leg hanging naturally, the other folded up on the chair. Her thighs and hips displayed every curve unique to a woman.

She was tying up her hair, and when she saw Li Haojun wake up, Kesiya hastily explained,

"Yesterday I saw you were so tired, I was worried something might happen here, so I slept a bit and came over really early this morning."

He thought to himself: she was afraid I'd sleep too deeply and miss something. That's actually pretty thoughtful. So he replied,

"Alright, thanks for being so thorough. Maybe I should report your work hours accurately." Li Haojun lay on the chair talking to her. It should have been a simple working relationship, but the youthful presence all around him and the charm of the opposite sex made him have to shift his attention under the guise of discussing work.

From early morning, the rain poured heavily. Li Haojun began to worry about the possibility of landslides and mudslides. Standing at the second-floor control room window, the elevated position made it look like the floodwater was still relatively clear, and the mountain vegetation coverage was decent. Based on yesterday's quality inspection, Kesiya went to the workshop to supervise the robots replacing the wear-prone components. Malaya was assigned to monitor her sister's work via the surveillance video. Li Haojun himself was most concerned about the flood's progress, observing the water flow, receiving local disaster warning reports. The tense morning was consumed this way.

By noon, the rain had weakened. Li Haojun muttered to himself,

"Yesterday afternoon half a day, no rain at night, then this morning another half day — could it be we were in the eye of the typhoon last night?"

"Yeah, we were looked after by the eye last night," Malaya teased from the side.

"The kids were very good, right?" Li Haojun continued her joke.

"Mm," Malaya said in a very affirmative tone.

"I want to ask — does your sister have any religious beliefs? The first time I met her, she was wearing a headscarf, I thought she was Muslim..." Li Haojun asked, trailing off.

Malaya didn't mind at all and answered readily, "No, not at all. She just likes dressing up that way."

After saying that, she turned her head and stared at Li Haojun with those pale blue eyes of hers, as if she could discover something in his eyes.

"Oh, I see. You watch your sister, I'll go prepare some food," Li Haojun said, stepping away from the awkwardness of the stare. Not wanting to indulge his desires, he had to stay away from temptation. After lunch, he arranged for Kesiya to go rest. The heavy rain had stopped, the factory work was done, and he had time to send Qin Wenjing a few more messages.

Malaya always seemed so energetic, sitting beside him, smiling as she watched Li Haojun's every move.

"How important is she to you?"

Li Haojun looked up into Malaya's eyes. "Very important." After thinking for a moment, Li Haojun changed the subject and said,

"If in future work you often have to travel far to meet up with me, won't that be too tiring? Have you considered living nearby?"

"Let's just go with how things are for now. Why think so far ahead? We'll see how things go. Actually, we're used to being on the move. We don't really have a home anyway." After saying that, Malaya turned her head to look at the screen, then turned back to look at Li Haojun.

Looking into her eyes, Li Haojun didn't know what to say. The reason was simple — he couldn't really help with that, so he didn't know what to say. Instead he asked,

"What are your plans for the future? Or rather, what does your ideal life look like?"

"This is fine. We can go to different places, meet different people, and my sister and I can always be together."

"Oh," Li Haojun understood in his heart. For the same reason of their life trajectory, her sister was her only family, of enormous importance in her life.

"I feel like you and she seem to have different personalities. Do you ever disagree when living together?"

"No, it seems like we're both easygoing. It doesn't seem like there's ever a time when one of us insists on something."

"So who usually makes decisions when you live together?"

"Both of us. We discuss it."

"That's good then." Li Haojun stopped asking. He roughly understood their relationship now.

Gradually, the rain stopped, but the floodwater still needed to recede slowly. The ground was still submerged, unsuitable for travel. So the group would still be trapped at the factory for a while. Because of the flood danger, the equipment at home had been shut down too. With nothing to do, Li Haojun went online to browse — maybe he needed a vehicle, all-weather, like for the kind of bad weather he'd encountered this time.

Malaya, always nosy, soon came over to join the fun.

"An off-road vehicle? You're buying a car?"

"I'm just looking, not sure yet. Maybe I need a vehicle that can handle weather like this." Li Haojun replied, and Malaya had already pulled up a stool and leaned in to help research.

"This one is a diesel-electric hybrid, comes with solar charging panels, pretty good for long-distance travel. Mm, like a road trip from California to Utah — sunny during the day, at night use the vehicle's power to set up a light tent, brew tea and watch the stars, that should be nice."

Li Haojun looked at her and laughed. "I need a vehicle, not a toy for enjoyment. It doesn't need to be that complicated. Simple and reliable is best."

"Then this one suits you. Four-wheel-drive mechanical differential lock, V8 turbocharged diesel engine, standard model comes with a snorkel." Malaya seriously picked another one.

"What about a flood like today?"

"Amphibious?" Malaya thought for a moment. "All-terrain vehicle?"

"Oh, that's a bit over the top." Li Haojun smiled and said, "That's why I haven't decided yet — whether I actually need to travel in extreme conditions, or for rescue."

The chatting time passed quickly. The afternoon was already halfway over when Kesiya came and sat beside Malaya. The two of them whispered a few words to each other. Li Haojun was also curious how girls could communicate at such low volumes. Then Malaya stretched,

"Ugh, I'm tired too, I'm going to rest for a bit." She said, and left.

Kesiya glanced through the production progress on the control room display, then sat quietly. After a while, she found the question she wanted to ask.

"Ethan, this production management system — if I want to check the correlation between the products that had quality issues this time and the raw materials, is there any method or tool?"

Li Haojun looked up and thought for a moment, then turned to her.

"Yes, look here — there's a tool for checking correlation, but you need to set quality-related evaluation variables. Look, there are these options. Also, obviously you can't just select the products with quality issues as your data sample, right? To measure correlation, you need to include both good and bad results from the same raw materials. Look, there's an auto-select option here — you can select it, and it'll automatically include everything. There's also a sampling percentage here that can save time."

"Oh, let me try, thanks." She said, then focused on the screen and started trying various control panel options.

Li Haojun pulled a chair over and sat beside her, watching her operate. It seemed she wasn't very skilled at using IT device interfaces — maybe it was a lack of past usage experience leading to insufficient understanding of the software functions, or simply a lack of comprehension?

Li Haojun watched from the side, saying nothing, evaluating this assistant's personal capabilities.

"Look at this production reaction process — it's not automated enough. You need to set the reaction type, so that different relevant parameters get evaluated. Sometimes the default settings don't apply." Li Haojun pointed at the screen.

"Oh," Kesiya looked, then turned her head to look at Li Haojun.

"Hover your cursor over the options, there'll be prompts. You can take a look."

"Mm," Kesiya did as instructed and looked for a while.

"I might need to supplement some knowledge in this area. My major never covered this," Kesiya said, with a slightly embarrassed expression.

"That's normal. Me neither. Nobody's good at everything. It's just that I've been using this system a bit longer than you." Li Haojun explained while reassuring her. Between helping Kesiya get familiar with the system and keeping an eye on the flood changes outside the window, the afternoon passed quickly. Malaya had already prepared food in the conference room. During the meal, Li Haojun told the sisters they didn't need to keep watch in the control room that night — it looked like they could prepare to leave tomorrow.

After sending Qin Wenjing a few more messages, in the relatively spacious conference room, Li Haojun pulled his chair to the window to admire the moonlight under the clear post-rain sky. The crescent moon, a faint yellow-white with a halo of light, and beyond that halo was endless deep space, endless time and space. It held the past, and would hold the future to come. Despite the differences in scale and gradient, it could be like here too — having a past, once-upon-a-time light, haze, rain, dew, branch-tip dawn light and ocean-wave sunset glow; having a future, bitterness, joy, sourness, sweetness; that which one yearns for — the eastern fence, the southern mountain; that which is before one's eyes — lamplit homes. Turning a street corner, the dimly lit street in the night, the dull streetlamps and the lights from scattered windows of roadside houses illuminating the silhouettes of the roadside greenery. The street in the night held only empty night, that faint bluish hue. Li Haojun wondered why there was no sign of people, yet here he was walking down this empty street.

Suddenly, ahead — that same small figure again, wearing overall jeans, two small braids, running along the path between apartment buildings. Li Haojun chased after her without hesitation. How could a child be running around outside this late? Just as he too ran past the spot where he'd seen the child, his mind suddenly flashed an image of the child standing in front of him — those gazing eyes, the small nose, the small mouth, everything seemed so familiar.

"My child," Li Haojun suddenly realized, shouting as he searched the nighttime street for that small figure. But though his heart ached to scour every corner of the night at once, his steps stumbled and could go no further. There was only his shouting, "My child, child, where is my child..." trying to break through the blockade of the night, to reach the child's ears.

Struggling and shouting, Li Haojun, who seemed to have to use both hands and feet just to move forward, was tripped by something. He pulled away the obstacle in front of him.

"Child, my child," he shouted, looking around in all directions.

A door opened, and in the light, a young girl walked closer. Not her.

Li Haojun looked up to identify her. At that moment, another woman came out from that door, walked a few steps forward, squatted down, and helped him up. Her long hair seemed to still be dripping. Li Haojun seemed to smell the scent of body wash... It was Kesiya. Behind her stood Malaya, standing there woodenly.

It was a dream. Li Haojun finally understood — he'd had a dream. But why was it that child again?

Kesiya helped Li Haojun sit down in the chair. Li Haojun had no explanation for the awkwardness of the moment, and just said flatly,

"I'm fine, thank you."

Kesiya was also silent at that moment. She wrapped her towel properly, stood up, and left with Malaya.

With the conference room door closing, the sliver of light that had woken Li Haojun from his nightmare was shut off too. Only Li Haojun remained, slouched in the conference room chair in the darkness, savoring everything that had just happened.

When the sun rose the next day, the aftermath of the flood was still there, but the clear weather no longer affected air travel. Malaya and the others first arrived at the airport east of Ellensburg, where the sisters would take a flight back to Eagle. Li Haojun saw them onto the plane first, then took a short-range air taxi home himself.

Watching their figures walk toward the plane, Malaya suddenly stopped, turned around, came to Li Haojun, wrapped her arms around his neck, and whispered something in his ear.

And Kesiya just stood there watching. When Malaya let go of Li Haojun's neck, he walked quietly to Kesiya, put his arm around her shoulders, and gently drew her into his embrace.

After the hug, he held her shoulders and said softly,

"Thank you for last night. Take care on the road."