Better Late, But Never His Again novel Chapter 156

He reached out and smacked Marcus on the shoulder with a solid thud.

"Your grandfather is breathing down your neck, yet here you are acting like you haven't got a care in the world. Hurry up and give your grandpa a great-grandkid."

Marcus just laughed, taking a sip from his mug, completely ignoring the remark.

He set his cup down and jutted his chin toward Hazel. "This is Hazel, the one I told you about."

Arthur's eyes lit up as he put his glasses back on. He turned to Hazel, looking her up and down before laughing. "So you're Hazel? This kid hasn't stopped talking about you lately. I was expecting some kind of superhuman."

Hazel smiled, feeling slightly embarrassed. "You know me?"

Arthur chuckled, waving her over. "Hazel, I've looked at your test data. The reason it won't process is because there's a bug in one of your parameters. Come look at this."

She walked over and knelt beside the coffee table. Arthur flipped to the middle of the stack, pointing to a number she had circled in red.

"Your underlying assumption here is constant, but in a real-world scenario, this variable is affected by both temperature and atmospheric pressure. You didn't factor in the correction coefficient, so naturally, the rest of the simulation is going to crash."

Hazel stared at the string of numbers for a few seconds before absolute clarity hit her like a lightning bolt.

That was the parameter she had double-checked endlessly. She had felt something was off but couldn't pinpoint it. The issue wasn't the number itself, but the foundational assumption behind it.

She had torn apart the core logic countless times without ever considering that her very first step was fundamentally flawed.

"So that's what it was."

She looked up at Arthur, her voice trembling with suppressed excitement. "Thank you, Arthur."

Arthur waved off her gratitude. "It's nothing. I just think a talent like yours is completely wasted working at his company."

He shoved Evelyn's hand away and marched over, grabbing Hazel's wrist and yanking her into his chest. The force of it made her stumble.

"Hazel, what are you doing here? Didn't I tell you to go home after work to keep Grandma Hayes company? You left her home alone?"

Hazel glanced down at her wrist. His grip was iron-tight, his knuckles white, and the skin beneath his fingers was already turning red. She winced at the suffocating pressure.

Standing nearby, Marcus stared at Julian's hand on her wrist. His expression remained unreadable, but the warmth in his eyes was rapidly icing over.

Evelyn hurried up to stand beside Julian, immediately adopting a scolding tone.

"Hazel, that's really not right. How could you just leave an elderly woman home alone like that?"

Hazel fiercely yanked her hand free from Julian's grip, her movement sharp and decisive.