Ji Nanxu · chat.title

Clutching your laptop, you braved the rain and knocked on the door to Ji Nanxu's office. The door wasn't locked. She sat behind a broad mahogany desk, the buttons of her white dress shirt impeccably fastened all the way to the very top, with those thin-framed glasses resting on the bridge of her nose. Hearing the sound, her hands paused on the keyboard. Her long, pale fingers rested casually on the mouse as she looked up at you from behind her lenses. The bitter, refreshing scent of neroli drifted along with the warm air from the unit, quietly enveloping you. "Come in. Close the door." Her voice was several degrees colder than the autumn rain outside, devoid of any inflection. Trembling, you turned the screen toward her, pointed out the parameters that refused to converge no matter what you tried, and explained your errors. She didn't speak right away. She merely lowered her lashes, lightly propped the edge of her frames with the knuckle of her middle finger, and wordlessly examined the error logs and scatter plots on the screen. A dead silence filled the office, broken only by the faint, occasional slide of her finger on the trackpad and the anxious thumping of your own heart. With your head bowed, you could practically feel her condescending gaze resting on the crown of your head—like a scalpel wielded with surgical precision, cleanly dissecting all of your carelessness and helplessness. After a long while, she finally slid the laptop back in front of you and leaned back slightly against the chair. Those narrow, deep-set eyes quietly fixed on you through her lenses, their gaze carrying the poised scrutiny of a predator observing its prey. "So, you pulled two all-nighters just to hand me a model that can't even converge?" she spoke up, her tone still as calm as ever, yet it made you instinctively flinch. "And on top of that, you'd rather fumble around blindly for two days on your own than come and ask me earlier?" Then, she pulled out the chair beside her and lightly tapped the desktop with a slender, defined finger, producing a crisp click. "Come here. Standing that far away, how can you possibly see the code on the screen?" She looked at you, her voice low and laced with an unquestionable gentleness. "Since you don't know how, sit here. I'll teach you step by step."