Chapter 84
Fiona took the folder, glanced down at it, and paused for a moment.
Soren and Gaia.
She said nothing and left with the folder.
In the hallway, Soren was just walking out of the R&D department when he happened to see Gaia stand up from her workstation. The two walked one after the other toward the far end of the corridor.
Soren walked ahead at an unhurried pace.
Gaia followed a few steps behind, head down, her gaze fixed on the tips of her shoes.
The hallway was long. Sunlight streamed in from the window at the end, stretching their shadows far behind them.
Halfway down, Soren slowed his steps.
He turned his head slightly, his gaze landing on Gaia's face with a scrutinizing look. "You're going to Ms. Wipere's office too?"
Gaia nodded.
Soren's brow furrowed slightly. What could an ordinary employee who'd only been with the company for two years possibly have that was worth presenting? "Do you know what it means that Ms. Wipere called you in?"
Gaia looked up at him, not quite understanding what he meant.
"It means your proposal was selected. It means you'll represent the company at that tech competition." Soren's tone was measured, and toward the end, it even carried a lecturing edge. "The nation's top technical talents will be there. You can imagine how fierce the competition will be."
Gaia's fingers tightened around the technical manual in her hand, her eyes lighting up slightly.
She hadn't expected that her clumsy design would catch Ms. Wipere's eye.
Soren saw the anticipation in Gaia's eyes. His mouth turned down in a disdainful expression. "You've only been in the field for two years. You've been doing testing and maintenance this whole time. You have virtually zero design experience. I haven't seen your proposal, but what could a newcomer possibly produce that's competitive? Every contestant there graduated from top schools, has extensive experience, and has an entire team backing them. If you go, odds are you won't even make it past the preliminaries."
His voice wasn't loud, but it gradually dimmed the light in Gaia's eyes. "The company invested resources to secure these spots for us. If you go and don't even place, it'll embarrass the company."
Soren's voice dropped lower than before. "Instead of that, you'd be better off just doing your job—simple, low-pressure work. You're still young, and you're a woman. There's no need to put so much pressure on yourself. When the time comes, find someone suitable to marry, be a good wife and mother, and live a stable, peaceful life. That's better than anything."
Gaia kept her head down, her lips pressed so tight they turned pale.
Her fingers gripped the technical manual, knuckles white, nails nearly digging into the pages.
She'd heard these words more than once.
Her biological father had said the same thing.
He spoke as if women weren't meant to do technical work, as if all her efforts didn't compare to the path of "getting married."
She'd pulled so many all-nighters, word by word, devouring those dense academic papers, line by line, writing that code. And in the end, in others' eyes, she was still just "the girl who wasn't suited for this line of work."
Her eyes reddened bit by bit, but she bit her lip and refused to let the tears fall.
Soren watched her bowed head, fell silent for a moment, and said nothing more.
He turned and continued walking toward the end of the hallway.
Gaia stood where she was, took a deep breath, forced back the tears welling in her eyes, then lifted her foot and followed.
The office door was half-open.
Lucinda sat behind her desk, twirling a pen in her hand.
She looked up. Her gaze swept past Soren's face and landed on Gaia's.
Gaia's eyes were slightly red, the rims still holding traces of unshed tears, but her back was straight, her lips pressed firmly together.
Lucinda didn't ask. She pushed the two design drafts in front of her toward each of them. "I've reviewed your proposals and made some revisions. Take them back and look them over."
Soren took his design draft and opened the first page.
His gaze fell on the annotations. At first, he was dismissive, even somewhat casual.
But soon, his brow furrowed.
The notes Lucinda had written beside his algorithm parameters—every single number was so precise it made his chest tighten.
He followed the annotations down the page, his fingers unconsciously flipping to the second page, the third, faster and faster.
The parameters he'd deliberated over for a month and still felt weren't perfect—she'd adjusted them to the optimal solution with just a few strokes.
The slightly redundant logic judgments in his design—she'd reorganized them with cleaner methods, boosting efficiency by more than one level.
He looked up at Lucinda. The condescension in his eyes shattered piece by piece.
This wasn't something an outsider could revise. This wasn't even something an ordinary expert could revise.
What was hidden in these annotations—he'd only seen it in papers published in top industry journals.
Gaia was also looking at her design draft.
Her fingers trembled slightly—not from nerves, but because the handwriting in the margins was too familiar.
Lean, precise, each stroke carrying a calm, composed strength.
The clumsy parts she'd written had been restated in more precise language.
The parameters she'd racked her brain over for several nights without finding the optimal solution—someone had effortlessly adjusted them to a value she wouldn't have dared to imagine.
And the two pages she'd written most messily—they'd been crossed out entirely, replaced with a new version in the margin.
Concise, sharp, every protocol impossibly precise.
This style—she'd seen it before.
Gaia's breathing suddenly quickened.
Her fingers turned to the last page of the draft. She stared at the annotations for several seconds, then abruptly looked up at Lucinda. "Ms. Wipere… do you also admire Mr. Felix Grayson?"
Lucinda's fingers paused slightly.
Felix Grayson—that was the name she used in the scientific research community.
When younger scholars in the field mentioned that name, their tone always carried a reverence bordering on awe.
"This approach to solving the problem…" Gaia's voice trembled slightly as she pointed to the annotations on the draft. "It's almost identical to the method in the paper Mr. Grayson published in a top journal. I've read that paper over and over. I've studied every line of code, every parameter. So… I recognized it immediately."
Her eyes lit up, as if she'd found some kind of resonance. "Ms. Wipere, do you also deeply admire Mr. Grayson? Otherwise, how could you be so familiar with his problem-solving approach?"
Lucinda looked at her, the corner of her mouth curving slightly. She said nothing.