Mirabe stood beside him for a minute without saying a word.


    Nick noticed she was still there and looked up. Seeing her eyes fixed on hisptop screen, he paused and asked, "You into coding and small programs too?"


    He had noticed before that she had some programming software on herputer, which made him curious.


    "Just dabbling here and there," Mirabe replied, thinking for a moment before adding, "I actually majored inputational biology. It''s not exactly the same asputer science, but pretty close."


    Nick nodded, "Yeah, the core concepts aren''t that different; it''s just the applications that vary."


    "True." Mirabe''s eyes lowered slightly, then she asked casually, "What''s this program for?"


    "I found this interesting topic on an online forum, so I downloaded it to check it out," Nick exined.


    "But the initial code is a bit of a headache," Nick added, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.


    Mirabe seemed deep in thought, not diving too much into the topic of data cores. She simply mentioned, "We use virtual functions inputational biology too, but they have a drawback-high error rates in overriding libraries. Maybe switching to something like modr dposition would work better."


    "Modr dposition?"


    Nick''s eyes narrowed, as if visualizing numbers dancing in front of him. After a moment of stunned silence, enlightenment shed across his face, and he quickly deleted a big chunk of code he had just written and started anew.


    Mirabe raised an eyebrow but didn''t disturb him further and quietly left.


    Once Nick finished the program and confirmed it worked perfectly, a look of joy spread across his face. When he looked up again, his sister was nowhere to be seen.


    Nick sat quietly for a while, then smiled, turned to hisputer, opened a software, found the reply section of the forum, and sent the newly written program to a forum buddy.


    ***


    After returning to her room and taking a shower, Mirabe felt much more awake. She walked over to her desk, pulled out a chair, and turned on herputer. Logging into her chat application in invisible mode, she saw that, as usual, no one had messaged her. After browsing through a group chat and finding nothing new, she closed the chat window with a slight pout.


    Thinking about gic programming for artificial life, she nned to review some materials, only to remember she had left her backpack in James''s car.


    Leaning back in her chair, she pressed her fingers to her temples. Her pajama neckline revealed her delicate corbone, her skin glowing with a cool, translucent whiteness. After sitting quietly for a few minutes, she picked up her phone from the desk.


    Just as she was about to open Messenger, a chat window suddenly popped up on herputer. Her fingers paused, and she nced at the screen.


    The nickname on the chat window was J.


    J: "Dad, you finally came online."


    Mirabe: "


    This sudden change from being called by a schoolkid to "dad" was indeed a bit jarring.


    Mirabe nced at the icon status in the bottom right corner of herputer, raised an eyebrow, and typed back: "Looks like you''ve made some progress, even spying on dad going online incognito."


    The man on the other end of the chat winced; this wasn''t apliment, it was a jab.


    For a hacker, not knowing whether someone was online or not was an insult to intelligence.


    He coughed, choosing to skip over that remark, and replied with an unusually friendly tone: "Dad, what have you been busy withtely?"