A few days later—
"Nana, can you pick up Luoli tomorrow?"
"Hmm?" Nana didn't look up from her laptop. "What time?"
"Twelve. It's Friday."
"Okay."
"Thanks." Qinran returned to her work, fingers moving quietly over the keyboard.
—
That evening—
"Luoli," she said while folding his tiny clothes, "Sister Nana will pick you up tomorrow."
He looked up immediately. "Why?"
"Mom has something to do."
He narrowed his eyes. "Like what? Finding me a dad?"
She froze.
"…Why would you think that?"
He swung his legs on the bed. "A boy in my class said his mom is looking for a father for him."
Qinran sat beside him slowly.
The room was quiet except for the hum of the old fan in the corner.
"Luoli… even if you don't remember much… you do have a father."
He blinked up at her, waiting.
She inhaled slowly.
"But if one day you really want a dad in your life… you tell me. Okay?"
"…Okay."
He went back to swinging his legs, unbothered in the way only small children could be.
But something in her chest tightened and didn't let go.
—
The next day—
Outside, the morning air was cool and sharp.
She stopped in front of the building and looked up.
Xingchen Tech.
The logo caught the pale sunlight, silver lettering clean against glass. The entrance was quiet — a few suited figures moving in and out, footsteps precise on the polished steps.
She took a breath.
You've done this before. You can do it again.
Different world. Different body. Same hands. Same mind. Three years of deadlines and shipped titles and all-nighters lived in her bones whether this world knew it or not.
She thought of Luoli swinging his legs on the bed.
For our future.
She walked inside.
—
"Hello. I have an interview scheduled today."
The receptionist smiled politely. "Which department, miss?"
"Game development."
She scanned the list, finger tracing down the entries.
"Yes — Floor 7, Room 45. Left corridor, not right." She held out a lanyard with a pale blue pass. "Good luck."
"Thank you."
The elevator doors closed.
The ride up felt longer than it was. She watched her reflection in the polished metal — fixed nothing. There was nothing to fix.
Room 45.
She knocked.
"Come in."
—
Three interviewers sat across the table.
The one in the center was older, expression completely neutral — the kind that had seen hundreds of these and given nothing away in all of them. The two beside him were younger, tablets ready.
"Hello. I'm Qinran. I'm here for the game developer position."
"Please, have a seat."
She sat. Posture straight. Hands still.
"Tell us about yourself."
"I'm a Unity developer with freelance and contract experience. I specialize in gameplay systems and optimization. I've worked on mid-sized titles and contributed to tool development for faster iteration cycles." A pause. "I don't have formal documentation to present today, but I'm happy to demonstrate anything directly."
One interviewer nodded.
"What engine have you worked with?"
"Primarily Unity. C#, editor scripting, asset pipeline management, performance profiling."
"Walk us through your development process for a feature."
"Clear requirements first. Break into systems — logic, UI, data flow. Prototype fast, test early, refactor for scalability. Document dependencies throughout to prevent integration issues later."
The middle interviewer leaned forward slightly.
"How do you handle a bug you can't reproduce?"
"Isolate variables. Check logs. Add instrumentation if needed. If it's non-deterministic, I look at race conditions or memory mismanagement first. Then recreate stress conditions and wait."
Brief glances exchanged across the table.
"Our current RPG has a memory leak the team hasn't isolated. How would you approach it?"
"Unity Profiler to monitor heap allocation. Track object lifetimes. Look for unmanaged resources not being released properly. Test scene transitions repeatedly to catch reference retention."
Silence.
"A feature is eighty percent done. Launch is in three days. What do you cut?"
"Polish before functionality. The core loop stays intact. Remove non-essential animations, secondary UI effects, optional mechanics that aren't load-bearing. Stability and player experience first — and you communicate the cuts to the team early. Last minute surprises cost more than the feature."
The older interviewer slid a laptop across the table.
"Find the bug."
She pulled it toward her.
10 minutes later.
"Null reference. The event listener isn't being unsubscribed — it's duplicating on every scene reload." She glanced up. "There's also an inefficient asset loading call above it. Not the source of the leak but it's adding to your load time. And the loop at the bottom will cause frame drops at higher object counts."
The room went very quiet.
The two younger interviewers exchanged a look.
The older one studied her for a long moment, expression unchanged.
"You're hired."
She blinked once.
"…Thank you."
Her grip tightened under the table where no one could see it.
I did it.