The sound of sizzling oil filled the Liang family kitchen as the aroma of fried scallion pancakes wafted through the air. Outside, Beijing's early morning symphony had already begun — the distant honking of buses, the whirring of electric scooters, the rhythmic sweep of a street cleaner's broom.
In the hallway, Liang Wei sat hunched at his small desk, pen moving in tight, precise strokes across his notebook. He was tall for a Chinese man, with lean shoulders and short, neatly kept black hair. His rectangular glasses slipped down his nose as he wrote, and he pushed them up absently, eyes never leaving the page.
He'd been at it since before dawn — not because of a deadline, but because the thrill of chasing a stubborn physics problem refused to let him sleep.
A sharp knock broke his focus.
"Ge, breakfast!" Liang Mei's voice rang from outside the door. "If you don't come out now, I'm eating your pancake."
Wei smiled faintly, still writing. "Go ahead. I'll take yours instead."
"You wouldn't dare," she shot back.
"I absolutely would."
The door swung open to reveal Mei herself — twenty-two, round glasses perched on a small nose, and long black hair tied into a messy bun that seemed to defy gravity. She wore a loose T-shirt that read "I paused my drama for this?" in bold letters.
"You've been up all night again, haven't you?" she said, leaning against the doorframe. "Your eyes look like you lost a fight to a panda."
Wei capped his pen and stood, stretching. "And yet, still more handsome than you."
"In your dreams, physics boy," she muttered, turning toward the kitchen.
The kitchen was warm and cramped, cluttered with signs of everyday life — a fruit bowl overflowing with apples, the kettle whistling softly on the stove, and a small calendar marked with upcoming birthdays.
Their mother, Sun Lifen, stood at the counter, flipping pancakes with the efficiency of someone who'd done it thousands of times. She was in her early fifties, petite with short, permed hair, and a no-nonsense expression that could soften in an instant.
"Finally," she said without looking up. "I was about to feed yours to your father's goldfish."
"They're koi, not goldfish," Liang Guo's voice came from the dining table, where he sat scrolling through his phone. In his late fifties, Guo had broad shoulders and the faintest streaks of gray in his close-cropped hair. His humor was bone-dry, delivered in the same tone he used for serious conversations.
"Whatever they are, they probably eat better than he does," Lifen said, sliding a pancake onto Wei's plate.
"I eat fine," Wei replied, sitting down.
Mei plopped into the seat beside him and reached for the soy milk. "Yeah, if fine means skipping lunch, inhaling tea, and surviving on cafeteria fried noodles."
Wei took a bite of pancake and shrugged. "That's still more nutritious than your instant ramen diet."
"Instant ramen builds character," she said solemnly.
Guo looked up from his phone. "You two done or should I call the Ministry of Health?"
Breakfast continued in their usual rhythm — Mei complaining about her thesis advisor, Lifen reminding Wei to eat more fruit, Guo reading aloud absurd headlines from the morning news. Wei felt a faint twinge in his upper abdomen after finishing his pancake, but he pushed it aside. Probably too much soy milk.
After washing up, he grabbed his satchel. "I'll be back late," he said, slipping on his jacket.
"Tsinghua again?" Guo asked.
Wei nodded. "Still working on that energy decay model."
"Eat lunch," Lifen called as he headed for the door. "And not just coffee and biscuits this time!"
The campus of Tsinghua University was already alive when Wei arrived. Students zipped past on bicycles, professors chatted in the shade of gingko trees, and the autumn air carried the faint scent of roasted sweet potatoes from a street vendor outside the gates.
Inside the physics department, Wei headed straight for the lab. Zhang Hao was already there, leaning back in his chair with his sneakers propped on a desk.
Zhang was his closest friend at the university — mid-thirties, perpetually wearing a hoodie no matter the season, and with the kind of grin that made it impossible to tell when he was serious.
"Morning, Professor Liang," Zhang said without looking away from his computer. "Or should I say afternoon, given how late you are?"
Wei dropped his satchel. "It's 9:15."
"Exactly. I've been here since 8:30."
"You live twenty minutes away."
"And you live an hour away, which means you should wake up earlier," Zhang said matter-of-factly.
Wei rolled his eyes and powered on his laptop. "Remind me why I work with you again?"
"Because no one else understands your handwriting," Zhang replied, leaning over to glance at Wei's notebook. "Is that the new iteration?"
Wei nodded, pulling up a simulation. "I adjusted the decay constant, but the results still don't match the observed data."
Zhang frowned. "Maybe you're missing something in the particle interaction parameters."
"Or maybe the universe is wrong," Wei said, earning a snort from Zhang.
At lunch, they met up with another colleague, Chen Rong, at the small campus noodle shop. Chen was in her late twenties, with short hair dyed a subtle copper and the kind of easy laugh that made conversations flow.
"You look terrible," she said cheerfully as Wei sat down. "Been working yourself to death again?"
"Just chasing answers," Wei said.
"Chasing ulcers, more like," Zhang muttered.
They spent lunch debating whether Zhang's cooking could be considered a public health hazard and arguing over the proper way to eat dumplings. Wei felt that faint stomach ache again halfway through his meal, but he ignored it, laughing along when Chen claimed she could beat them both in a physics trivia contest.
By the time Wei got home that evening, the sky was painted in soft shades of orange. Mei was on the couch watching a drama, her laptop perched precariously on the armrest.
"You're late," she said without looking up.
"Had work," Wei replied, kicking off his shoes.
"You always have work."
"That's how science works."
"That's how you end up single at thirty," she shot back.
Wei smirked. "Quality over quantity."
After dinner, his parents retired early, but Wei returned to his desk. The city lights blinked outside his window as he scribbled down another set of equations, building models in his mind. Each number, each variable, was a puzzle piece — and he loved puzzles more than anything.
Somewhere deep down, he knew his family was right: he pushed himself too hard, ignored the little aches, and lived more in his mind than in his body. But to him, there was no greater joy than pulling at the threads of the universe, trying to weave them into something coherent.
Late into the night, Liang Wei worked — unaware that an equation far more personal was already unfolding inside him, one that no amount of calculation could solve.