Thursday. Ten o'clock, all-hands.
The biggest conference room on the eleventh floor seats eighty. Today a hundred-plus came; two rows stood at the back, some leaning on the windowsill, some balancing notebooks on the fire hydrant to write. Paper cups held instant coffee, three-in-one, stirred with bubble-tea straws. A row of bottled water sat on the table, each bottle wearing a freshly printed Filial Score logo sticker, stuck on crooked—half over the label, half sunk into the groove of the bottle.
The main screen carried the headquarters livestream. At 9:59 the feed stuttered once and froze on the host's raised hand. Someone laughed. Two seconds later it came back.
Liang Cheng stood at the back by the door. Su Man was on his left, arms crossed, a pen in her hand, teeth marks in the cap.
Feng Tuo stood up front, arms crossed too, said something to the man beside him. Neither of them laughed.
At ten sharp the livestream began.
The host read the quarterly numbers: new accounts, continuation rate, partner-institution count. At "over one million families served," the screen let off fireworks. Scattered applause.
Then He Yu took the stage.
VP of product, thirty-seven or thirty-eight, gray sweater, sleeves pushed to the forearms, a clicker in hand, no notes. He walked on, ignored the prompter, and first looked out over the room and waited for it to go quiet.
"Last year we ran a user survey," he said. "We asked surviving families what they feared most. Twelve thousand responses came back. Sixty-one percent gave the same three-word answer: can't afford it."
He paused.
"What goes live today is for that sixty-one percent."
He turned to look at the pie chart behind him, said nothing, looked for about three seconds. The room quieted down.
Those three seconds were rehearsed. Liang Cheng could tell. He'd seen too many people pause for exactly three seconds at a client's front door—say nothing, let the other party finish thinking the worst on their own.
Only then did he click.
The big screen turned the page. Three words, white bold, filling the screen:
The Filial Score.
Page one was the definition.
The Filial Score: a credit scoring and credit-line service for surviving family. Built on four dimensions—income stability, repayment history, account linkage, social credit—it generates a personal credit line. The line may be used for account renewal, downgrade handling fees, value-added services, and terminal settlement.
Page two was four boxes, one dimension per box, a line of small type under each.
Income stability: payroll deposits over the last 12 months. Repayment history: the applicant's own payment record with Afterlife Cloud. Account linkage: number of linked accounts under the applicant's name and time on network. Social credit: third-party credit-report interface.
Liang Cheng looked at the second box: repayment history, the applicant's own payment record with Afterlife Cloud. His entry had exactly one line—this Monday, 23:11, voice-access fee, debited from the executor's preauthorized balance. The system counted it as a repayment.
The first call he ever made to Ma was, in the system, a payment record.
"Borrow against future income to keep paying today," He Yu said. "This isn't like buying a house. When you buy a house, you're the one living in it. This one is for your father and mother to live in."
Laughter from the floor. It stopped right away, because nobody was sure it should have started.
Liang Cheng glanced at those eight words on the screen: borrow against future income to keep paying today. He thought it was well written. Whoever wrote it knew what they were writing.
Page three was the demo.
An anonymized client, name pixelated. Credit rating A. Line of credit 42,000.00. Scrolling down, the installment plans popped up: 12, 24, 36 months. The 36-month cell was highlighted green, monthly payment 1,286.40.
He Yu tapped the green cell with his clicker. "Thirty-six installments, one thousand two hundred eighty-six point four a month. That's less than what a lot of people send home in a month."
Page four, a live demo.
"We've invited a user here today." He Yu stepped aside, clearing the center of the stage.
A man in his fifties came up, wearing a jacket, phone clenched in his hand, clenched hard. The host passed him a QR code; he scanned, entered his number, entered the code. The big screen mirrored his phone.
The progress bar ran six seconds.
The line came out: 28,600.00.
Applause. Real this time—the scattered patter swelled into a stretch of it.
The man tapped Renew Now. The amount field defaulted to a number: 45.00. Basic tier, one month.
He confirmed. Green text on screen: renewal successful, account valid through the 15th of next month.
The applause came again, louder than before.
Liang Cheng looked at that 45.00. The man had been approved for twenty-eight thousand six hundred and spent forty-five. The whole room was applauding forty-five a month, twice.
Coming offstage the man's hand was still shaking. He pushed the phone into his jacket's inside pocket; it took him two tries to get it in.
He Yu flipped to the second-to-last slide, titled H2 Roadmap. The page was cut into six blocks, five in color, the bottom-right one gray, one phrase inside the frame: Last Words Plus. The top-right corner was tagged "Coming in H2."
He pointed his clicker at that block and said nothing.
Someone in the audience laughed. Someone asked, "What's this one?"
"See you in H2," He Yu said.
The big screen held two seconds, then moved on.
Liang Cheng typed three words into his phone's notes app: Last Words Plus. When he finished he didn't know why he'd typed them. He didn't delete them either.
Ten forty, the media call-in.
A reporter asked: if the family ends up unable to pay, what happens?
He Yu switched the clicker to his other hand.
"We have a complete risk-disposal process," he said. "Same as any consumer credit."
"Could an account be deleted early because the family couldn't pay?"
"The Filial Score is a standalone credit product," He Yu said. "Account disposal follows the account's rules, the credit follows credit's rules. Two separate lines."
"And if one person is both the debtor and the account executor?"
"Two separate lines." He Yu repeated it and smiled. "That's where we spent the most care in the design."
The hand raised at the back was one of their own, marketing. He asked: that line in the deck, "people in the trade are the best-paying clientele"—was that literal?
He Yu smiled. "Literal."
The stage laughed, the floor laughed, all in step.
Liang Cheng didn't laugh. He thought of that table the other night, the seven ringtones lining up to sound one after another.
Ten fifty-eight, launch time. The big screen counted down—five, four, three, two, one. At twelve sharp, full rollout.
As the countdown hit zero, people in the back rows were quietly reading out their own numbers.
"I got forty-two k."
"I only got nineteen."
"Yours is a new hire. Wait for the tenure."
Liang Cheng's phone buzzed. A push from the work app:
[Afterlife Cloud] Your Filial Score has been generated. Tap to view your credit line.
He didn't tap. The room was applauding; he stood still.
When the applause ended the crowd started for the doors. Everyone had to scan the check-in code on the way out; the doorway jammed for two minutes.
In those two minutes the department group chat went off. Feng Tuo posted one line: everyone complete Filial Score activation and post a screenshot, by end of day.
The chain of replies started.
"Me, 42 k." "Me, 38 k." "Me, 19 k, new hire, not enough tenure."
Someone posted a mini-program link titled "Filial Score Leaderboard"—tap in and you could see the company-wide ranking, top twenty with profile pictures.
Feng Tuo messaged him privately: yours is the highest in the group, screenshot it and send it to me, one more item for your culture score.
Liang Cheng didn't reply.
In those two jammed minutes, he opened the push.
The page started with an animation, a cloud cradling a heart; it spun three seconds and stopped.
Your Filial Score: 782 (rating AA) Available credit: 186,000.00 yuan
Liang Cheng stared at the number.
His take-home was nine thousand twenty. Student loan still owed eighteen thousand five hundred thirteen twenty-five. Bank balance thirty-four hundred. Nine hundred forty left over each month.
The system had given him a hundred eighty-six thousand.
Below sat the installment plans, four columns. 12, 24, 36, 60 months. The 60-month column was the longest, and the greenest.
60 months, monthly payment 3,100.00.
Thirty-one hundred. Add the twenty-one-eighty student loan: fifty-two eighty. Take fifty-two eighty out of nine thousand twenty, thirty-seven forty left. Rent twenty-four hundred. Thirteen forty left.
Thirteen forty a month. Thirty days. Forty-four point six a day, to cover three meals, the subway, utilities.
He dragged the page down, looking for a reason.
At the very bottom was a block in the smallest type size, gray, no heading above it, no bold:
[Line composition] base credit 32,000.00 + career bonus 154,000.00 [Bonus basis] retention-operations practitioner (7 years on the job, historical performance TOP 20%) [Client segment] best-paying clientele [Collateral] the applicant's own wage income and housing fund for the next 60 months [Default handling] 3 consecutive missed installments upgrades the collateral to full garnishment and syncs to the personal credit file
Career bonus, one hundred fifty-four thousand.
Seven years in the trade, eight hundred-odd families talked into renewing, so the system judged him the person most likely to keep paying. He knew better than anyone what nonpayment meant, so his score was the highest.
The logic was airtight. Airtight logic is the hardest kind to live with.
Before closing it he tapped into the mall on reflex and looked at the farewell call.
90 minutes, billed separately, 268.00. Returning-customer price 238.00.
He worked out his own hourly rate: 9,020 divided by 21.75 days, divided by 8 hours, fifty-one point eight. Ninety minutes was seventy-seven seventy.
To talk with Ma for ninety minutes, the company charged two hundred sixty-eight—more than five hours of his shift.
He wrote the arithmetic on a sticky note. When it was done he looked at it once, tore it into four pieces, and dropped them in the wastebasket under the desk.
Then he scrolled the page back to the top, looked at that 186,000.00 a while, and closed it.
At the back rows, Su Man was still in her seat, writing something in a notebook.
Liang Cheng walked over.
"How much?" Su Man didn't look up.
"A hundred eighty-six thousand."
The pen stopped. Su Man raised her head, looked at him for two seconds, unlocked her phone, tapped twice, and turned it sideways, sliding it across the desk.
Credit line: 6,800.00.
Liang Cheng looked at that number.
"Seven accounts are registered under my name," Su Man said, pulling the phone back. "The system counts debt ratio."
"Those seven of yours—"
"You know what my salary is," she said. "After seven deductions, eleven hundred a month left."
Liang Cheng said nothing.
"That number of yours," Su Man said, capping the pen between her teeth again, "don't touch it."
"I haven't."
"Touch it once and you're a debtor," she said. "A debtor and a dutiful son aren't the same thing, but the system runs them on the same line."
She closed the notebook and stood up.
"Twelve years in this trade, I've known six people who used it," Su Man said. "Four are still paying. Two are already in garnishment. Both accounts are still there. The people aren't."
"At the launch they said account disposal and credit are two separate lines."
"Two lines, one wallet," Su Man said. "You pay thirty-one hundred a month, and by the fourth year you start picking the cheap things to eat. Not one cent less gets deducted from your mother. The system deducts hers first, then yours. The order is hard-coded."
"Which order."
"Go read it yourself." She tucked the notebook under her arm. "Annex Seven, order of offset, clause three."
She left. The check-in code at the door was still backing people up.
At the podium the feed had cut back to the empty studio at headquarters. He Yu was packing up his clicker. His phone buzzed once on the lectern. He glanced down at the screen, gave a small laugh, turned the phone over face-down on the lectern, and went on packing up his things.
Liang Cheng watched for two seconds, then looked away.
At 2:10 in the afternoon he sat back down at his desk.
At the top of work order TL-0417, below the yellow strip, a new prompt had appeared:
[Detected: the executor has generated a Filial Score credit line of 186,000.00 yuan. Use it to settle this work order?]
Two buttons. Left one blue: Use now. Right one gray: Not for now.
The blue one was lit. The system had thoughtfully added a line of small type beside it: current outstanding balance 41,386.50 yuan; use it and delisting is immediate.
Delisting. One word, printed next to a button, the way it's printed next to an elevator button.
He reached out, moved the cursor onto the blue cell, and stopped.
The cursor sat on the button for about ten seconds.
In those ten seconds he ran the arithmetic once in his head: thirteen forty a month, forty-four point six a day. Then a second time: the twenty thousand six hundred ninety-three twenty-five student loan was down to eighteen thousand and change; eight more months to clear it. Then a third time. The third time wasn't arithmetic. It was the orange line at the very bottom of the table in Chapter 5.
Pending deletion: younger son · Liang Chuan.
He moved the cursor away and clicked the gray one.
The prompt strip vanished.
At 3:40, Feng Tuo named names in the group: those who haven't screenshotted—Liang Cheng, Old Su, Xiao Zhou.
Xiao Zhou replied in a second: on it.
Old Su didn't reply.
Liang Cheng watched his own name sitting first on the list and laid his phone face-down on the desk.
At 4:20 he took the screenshot anyway. The credit-line page, 186,000.00. He sent it to Feng Tuo privately, not to the group.
Feng Tuo sent back two words: got it. A while later, another line: that ticket of your mom's—just settle it with this and be done.
Liang Cheng looked at the words for a long time. He sent back two: we'll see.
Feng Tuo didn't ask again.
He minimized the work order and the screen went back to the desktop. On it sat a folder named "To-do," seven files inside: six were other people's cases, and the last was TL-0417_full-lifecycle-log_1115.pdf.
He didn't open it.
He locked his phone and pushed it into the drawer. In the drawer: a box of business cards, a hundred to a box, half used, and a stapler a departed colleague had left behind, three staples left in the rail.
The AC was still heating.