Tomorrow is a workday.
It was already three in the morning, but Chu Hui still couldn't fall asleep.
He wandered around the house like a ghost, groping through the darkness by the moonlight streaming in through the window, until he finally came to a slow stop in front of the bathroom mirror.
Looking up, the young man in the mirror had a pale face, long bangs covering his brows, haggard with a hint of gloom.
Gained weight. Lost weight.
Truth be told, he could no longer keep track of his body's changes. There was a period when he'd been crazily obsessed with sweets and meat, causing his body to puff up like an inflated balloon. Then he'd neurotically started dieting, and after all that tossing and turning, all he'd gotten was a long, tedious medical report. The doctor who'd seen him had sworn up and down that if he kept this up, he absolutely wouldn't live another ten years.
God, seriously. Another ten years.
At that thought, he quickly slumped his shoulders and drifted away again. After a while, finding himself with nowhere else to go, he let himself melt into the sofa like a puddle of mud.
After a moment of quiet, the couple next door suddenly started arguing. The sound of a door opening, a door slamming—an Omega's hysterical voice grew increasingly clear, escalating from accusations of coming home late to slippers left lying around, then to the unfamiliar pheromone detected on the other's body, and finally arriving at that soul-searching question every couple faces when they fight—"Just tell me, do you still love me or not?"
Bang. The door shut.
Chu Hui never heard the Alpha's answer. He slowly turned over, wedging himself deeper into the sofa.
Killing time in this era was easy—all you had to do was tap your finger on your Terminal and a variety of Holographic Entertainment Arenas would be at your disposal, from the northern auroras to tropical rainforests, from desert gobi to deep-sea wonders, and even the ability to dive through the cosmos and watch the twenty-four-hour live construction broadcast of the Extraterrestrial Ring City.
Those dazzling streams of information and the neon lights shimmering on the buildings wove together the illusion and reality of this world, but once you closed your eyes, everything became painful and slow again.
It wasn't until dawn was nearly breaking that Chu Hui felt like he'd managed to sleep a little. Dragging himself out of the sofa by the faint light on the horizon, he got dressed, washed up, packed his bag, clipped on his work badge, and walked out the door.
The couple next door happened to be stepping out at the same time—somehow they were already inseparable again. He watched coldly as they stole a quick kiss around the corner, silently cursing them to break up tomorrow.
—Other people's noisy, bickering happiness easily wounded him, making him feel like a stray dog that had been randomly kicked while walking down the street.
"Little Chu! Heading to work, are you?" The old man from upstairs came walking toward him. Over sixty but still spry, he did calisthenics and shadowboxing at home every morning, blasting music with the windows open, loud enough that the neighbors filed complaint after complaint. Only Chu Hui ignored him like a dead man—which, ironically, earned him the old man's favor.
The first thing that came with that favor was being set up with the old man's Beta grandson. That time, Chu Hui had just been sitting alone in the park, spacing out, when he watched the old man march over with a man in his thirties in tow. The man, who'd initially looked impatient, quietly changed his expression upon seeing Chu Hui's face and smiled, saying they could get to know each other.
He didn't know what the old man had told him, but faced with this situation, he couldn't help the malice rising in his chest, so he smiled too and said, "Ah… if you don't mind that I've had a kid before."
The old man's face changed, telling him not to talk nonsense. Then Chu Hui bent over and laughed, like a child who'd just gotten away with a prank.
He was thus branded as a lunatic—perhaps also as someone with a messy sex life or outright debauched. Though it wasn't without its benefits: at least he had far fewer troubles, and no one was foolish enough to meddle in his affairs anymore. Except for this old man who kept spreading rumors about him.
So at those words, he only nodded with a perfunctory expression, mumbling vague acknowledgments, and quickly brushed past him.
The car was already waiting at the community gate. Detecting Chu Hui's approach, the door automatically opened upward.
He bent down and sat inside. The buttons on the center console lit up at just the right moment, and the holographic screen floating up was still on the news page he'd been browsing when he got out last time. He swiped it away casually and went straight into the Research Institute's system to start working.
Even in the year 3811, rush hour stubbornly persisted in human society—especially in Lando, the Federal Central District. Fortunately, the 0916's driving was as steady as ever, delivering him to the Research Institute's entrance precisely one minute before work started, just like always.
"Good morning, Chu Hui."
The morning-and-evening greeting robot at the entrance automatically captured his figure and arrival time, and said with self-proclaimed humor, "There are still thirty seconds until work starts. Watching you arrive right on the edge of being late every day really makes me break out in a cold sweat for you. I think I should give you a 'Suspenseful Arrival' award."
Chu Hui: "…"
Which idiot wrote this program?
He couldn't be bothered to respond and simply walked straight in. Chen Li, a colleague from the same lab, ran in while biting into his breakfast, greeting him with full energy: "Morning, Engineer Chu!"
Chu Hui gave him a look as a response. The other man was clearly already used to his attitude and didn't find it cold at all. Instead, he proactively shared a pan-fried bun with him, saying, "Got it from that pan-fried bun shop on Xiangshui Road—try it!"
Eighty percent of the current food service pipeline was handled by artificial intelligence. All you had to do was pick a dish from the inventory, put in the raw ingredients, and in ten minutes you'd get a plate of food that looked, smelled, and tasted great—absolutely delicious by any standard. But after all, AI didn't need to eat; all they could do was run programs input by humans. Cook the same dish ten times, and you'd get ten identical, unchanging results. If you wanted something new, you still had to go to the remaining twenty percent of shops.
"Thanks." Chu Hui didn't refuse. After taking a bite, he began a long, slow chew, his mind starting to wander as he silently tried to recall what the last thing he'd eaten was.
…It seemed to be that nutrient drink he'd had while working overtime.
He couldn't remember, so he simply stopped thinking about it. By the time he finished the pan-fried bun, the two of them had arrived at the lab. The tests that hadn't finished running yesterday still hadn't finished today, crawling slowly along the progress bar as if waiting for them.
Chen Li went over first to check another experiment that had results, and his face fell. "Engineer Chu, 3A failed again. The jet flow direction deviation has now exceeded 1.5 degrees."
"Got it."
Chu Hui responded in a flat voice, as if he'd long expected this outcome. "Switch to the next material and redo it."
"Oh, okay." Chen Li acknowledged and quickly headed off toward the materials area. Shortly after he left, Chu Hui, who had been standing nearby, set down what he was holding and slowly moved over to Chen Li's position.
The failed experimental data was clear and conspicuous, as if mocking yet another of his futile attempts.
The experiment had returned to its most tedious initial stage.
When quitting time arrived, Chu Hui told Chen Li to leave first while he stayed behind in the lab to organize the previous data reports. By nearly nine o'clock, all the data had finally been uploaded, and a communication request slid in front of him.
"Hello, may I ask if this is Mr. Chu Hui?"
Chu Hui didn't even look at it, continuing to sort through the paper documents on the table, and replied wearily, "Who's this?"
"Hello, this is the Special Case Handling Division of the Federal Citizen Security Agency. I've been instructed to inform you of something… um, Liang Qiao is back. She wants to see you."
"…"
A brief silence fell on the other end of the communication.
The staff member responsible for the notification thought he might need time to process it, waited patiently for three seconds, then asked, "Hello?"
Chu Hui finished organizing the documents, finally freeing up a hand to dismiss the communication. Without even lifting his eyelids, he said flatly, "Get lost."
"Chu—"
After the staff member persistently called a fourth time, the other end finally stopped cutting off. The beep of the automatic door closing served as background noise, followed by Chu Hui's cold warning: "If you have no business, go find it in the lower city. I'll send someone to patronize you."
"Chu Hui," Lin Yuxing swiped the communication page in front of herself and said, "I'm Lin Yu—"
"Get lost."
The communication was cut off again.
"He doesn't seem to believe us," the staff member said, glancing at their superior's unpleasant expression, and asked hesitantly, "…Should we call again?"
"I'll call him from my personal communication."
Lin Yuxing raised the personal Terminal on her wrist, and a default-sized holographic screen hovered above it. After a brief moment of mental preparation, she searched for Chu Hui's contact information and initiated the call.
"I said—"
"Chu Hui, this is Lin Yuxing," she cut straight through his impatient opening, speaking rapidly. "I know you don't believe what I'm saying. A few hours ago, I didn't believe it either. But the facts are what they are. The Special Case Division discovered someone using Liang Qiao's credentials to log into the system. After automatic geolocation, it was traced to Forbidden Zone 3. I was on a mission nearby and received the notification first, so I rushed over to confirm the user's identity."
She finished in one breath, then said decisively: "Fingerprints, iris, DNA, pheromone—all identity verifications have now passed. She is Liang Qiao."
"…I don't know why, and I don't know what really happened back then, but the fact is… she didn't die. She's back."
Hearing the increasingly heavy breathing on the other end, a trace of reluctance welled up in Lin Yuxing's heart. She paused, then said, "We're at the agency right now. If you don't believe it, come see for yourself… She wants to see you."
Even without hearing any clear response from the other party, Lin Yuxing knew he had heard it, and finally said, "Come over. She's waiting for you."
The communication line cut off. Chu Hui stood frozen in place, completely at a loss for what to do, until a colleague who was also leaving late walked out and greeted him in passing, "Engineer Chu, still here?"
As the colleague drew closer, he noticed that Chu Hui's face was frighteningly pale, as if he had been startled by something. He was about to ask what had happened when the other man suddenly bolted out of the office building.
"Hey… Engineer Chu—it's raining outside!"
In the span of a dozen meters, he was drenched through. The morning-and-evening greeting robot captured his figure sprinting off into a blur and let out two cheerful laughs, saying, "Haha, four hours and five minutes have passed since the end of the workday. You couldn't bear to leave the office—you must have had a great harvest."
0916 slammed the car door shut with a bang and sped away.
…
"Before you see her, there's one more thing I need to make clear to you," Lin Yuxing said, looking at Chu Hui, soaked to the bone and utterly disheveled. "She doesn't remember anything from the past ten years. The doctors say the possibility of memory loss can't be ruled out."
"What do you mean?" Chu Hui's voice was urgent, his gaze darting frantically between the various office areas as he tried to push past Lin Yuxing and go deeper inside. His heart was pounding so fast it felt like it might leap out of his chest, and he kept muttering, "Where is she? Where is she?"
"It means she might not remember you." Lin Yuxing voiced the worst possibility. The man who had been trying to shove past her suddenly froze in place, staring at her as if he couldn't understand what she was saying.
"This is just the worst-case scenario…" Lin Yuxing pressed her lips together and said, "If you're ready, I'll take you to see her."
"I…" His nails dug deep into his flesh, but the sharp pain couldn't sober him in the slightest. He stepped forward, then back, almost pacing in circles on the spot, until finally he could only turn and face the wall. His thin fingers were clamped between his teeth, and before long they were bitten bloody.
"Director," a staff member in uniform walked over from the end of the corridor and said softly, "The bureau chief is out."
"Alright," Lin Yuxing gave a slight nod, then looked back at Chu Hui and asked, "Coming?"
"Coming." Chu Hui couldn't stop himself from drifting into a daze, but he still forced his legs to follow Lin Yuxing deeper inside—through the corridor, past the outer office area, until they finally stood before a rest room with its door open.
Inside the rest room were a sofa and a coffee table. A figure holding a water cup sat quietly leaning back. One glance was all it took for Chu Hui to nearly collapse—trembling, legs giving out, even his teeth chattering.
An illusion, an illusion, no, an illusion, I'm dreaming…
"Liang Qiao," Lin Yuxing called out her name, "Chu Hui is here."
The person in the room looked up.
The moment their eyes met, Chu Hui felt as though something sharp had suddenly pierced straight through him. He knew it was her—for him, confirming that the person before him was Liang Qiao required no method at all, just a single glance.
Just this one glance.
The grief and pain that had long since blurred became utterly real and bone-deep in that instant. Ten years was too short, ten years was too long. The days he had thought would never see an end had somehow already been cast behind him, and when he looked back, it felt like no more than a snap of the fingers.
Only a few short steps away—if he just walked over, he could grab hold of her, grab hold of the endless dream that had haunted these ten years. But for some reason, at this very moment, all his strength drained away. He could only grip the doorframe and collapse to the ground, crying and laughing at once, his whole body shaking uncontrollably.
"You…"
A pair of hands appeared before him in an instant—Liang Qiao had walked up to him. The moment she touched him, it felt as though everything had frozen solid. Chu Hui jerked his head up, watching her lips part and close, but his ears heard nothing.
The calm in her eyes, so ill-suited to a long-awaited reunion, was blindingly harsh. Lin Yuxing's words echoed in his mind. Disbelieving and utterly despairing, he seized her arm in a death grip and said, "If you dare ask who I am, I'll kill you!"
Liang Qiao was silent for a moment, then reached out and gently wiped the rain from his face, saying softly, "…I was going to ask, did you come here in the rain?"