Chapter 5: The Offer

Tang Yu walked into Zhou's office at nine the next morning holding her phone out in front of her.

"You had me followed."

"My driver," Zhou said pleasantly. "He was stuck at the lights on Jinli Road. I'm sorry you had to see it."

"You sent me a picture of a private moment."

"I sent it to check you were alive, since you didn't answer the Monday report." He folded his hands.

"Sit down, Tang Yu. I'm not angry."

She stayed on her feet.

"The agency's contract says a tester can't have a personal relationship with a user in the test pool."

"Then fire me."

"I don't want to fire you." Zhou smiled, and slid a folder across the glass. "I want to promote you."

She looked at the folder without touching it.

Inside, in neat black type, was an offer.

Head of Quality Assurance at Hongxian, permanent.

The salary was one she did not have to read twice, and there was a share of the company at launch.

It was more money than she had earned in four years.

"What's the catch?" she said.

"Very little. There is a file in our codebase. match/redthread.py."

Zhou took off his glasses and polished them.

"It's the core of the matcher, about nine thousand lines. It came in two years ago as an open-source contribution, under the handle night_kettle."

"I've seen it. It's good."

"It's very good. It's the only part of the app that works."

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