Against the Algorithm

Chapter 21: Lines No Longer Imagined

Sicheng, still standing there, still watching as his idiot teammates lost their minds, still processing the absolute disaster that had just occurred. Slowly dragged a hand down his face. Then—without another word. He turned and left. Because if he stayed in that room any longer, if he heard even one more second of this conversation, he was going to lose it. And he would much rather take this up with Yao later. When they weren't surrounded by a bunch of nosy, dramatic idiots who clearly had no concept of personal boundaries.

Yao was flustered beyond belief, completely overwhelmed, utterly undone by the relentless, unfiltered chaos that had erupted around her, her mind still scrambling to recover from her own accidental oversharing, her cheeks burning with secondhand heat, her fingers trembling slightly from the sheer emotional whiplash of the last five minutes—and yet, beneath all the embarrassment, beneath the mortification, beneath the fact that she had somehow ended up talking about sex ed classes and Jinyang and Ai Jia's lack of door etiquette in front of a room full of absolute idiots—she realized something.

She had no regrets.

None.

Because honestly?

They deserved this.

Every single one of them.

They deserved the awkward silence that followed her panicked, flustered rambling. They deserved the chaos she had accidentally unleashed. They deserved to hear every humiliating word of her muttered, panicked meltdown. Because clearly—clearly—none of them had ever been around a woman who had never dated before. None of them had ever considered how someone with no romantic experience might feel in a situation like this. None of them had thought for even a moment about what it might be like to be vulnerable, to be uncertain, to be new to all of it—and still be trying to figure it out while surrounded by a pack of grown men who handled emotional nuance with all the grace of a brick through a window.

So as Yue writhed on the floor like a man possessed, gasping between breathless bursts of laughter that had long since crossed into wheezing hysteria, as Lao Mao wiped tears from his eyes and Pang tried—and failed—to drink water without choking on it again, as even Ming, stoic, responsible Ming, shook his head with the smallest trace of a smirk curling at the corners of his mouth—

Yao made a decision. A sharp, clean, absolutely justified decision. One that required no second thoughts, no apologies, and certainly no consideration for what it might unleash. With a face still burning, hands still twitching, and eyes narrowed in quiet, simmering vengeance, she reached for her phone—calmly, deliberately, without saying a word.

And she called Lan.

Because if there was one person on this earth who would understand, if there was one person who would immediately take her side, if there was one woman who could and would correct this behavior with surgical precision and the kind of cold, motherly wrath that left grown men trembling?

It was Madam Lu.

The phone rang once.

Twice.

Then it connected.

And Yao didn't even hesitate. Didn't breathe. Didn't think. She just spoke. Rapid-fire. Panicked. Barely coherent. "Aunt Lan—I—I just—I don't know what to do with them anymore! I said one thing, and now Yue won't stop laughing, and the others—they're all just—chuckling! And—and I know they don't mean it in a bad way, not really, but it's like—it's like they've never met a girl who hasn't dated before, who hasn't—who hasn't had—who hasn't—!" She stopped. Sputtered. Whimpered. And nearly swallowed her tongue trying to not say anything else incriminating.