Against the Algorithm

Chapter 22: How It Begins

Summary: One quiet question opens a door neither of them rush to name, but both instinctively walk through. Between flustered silences, unexpected teasing, and a shift that leaves the air just a little heavier, something changes. No declarations, no dramatics—just the quiet certainty that not everything needs to be explained for it to mean something. Especially when those watching already see it taking shape.

Notes:

Author's Note: Never ever continue to mess with Bunnies.....they do tend to bite back.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The room was quiet in the way that silence sometimes demands to be noticed—not empty, not cold, but full of weight, full of the kind of breathless stillness that usually follows a confession, the kind that lingers in the air like something suspended between expectation and revelation, waiting for one person to move, to speak, to react.

But Yao didn't move. Didn't speak. Didn't react in any of the ways he had anticipated. She simply blinked once, calm, unhurried, completely unaffected—then tilted her head slightly to the side, her long silver hair sliding over her shoulder like a waterfall of moonlight, her hazel eyes narrowing ever so faintly in a look not of worry, or hesitation, or doubt, but something quiet and analytical, something thoughtful, something... confused.

She said nothing at first, just continued to look at him with that unreadable, disarming gaze of hers, the one that always felt like she was analyzing a complex equation in real time, like she was trying to solve for X with nothing but instinct and logic and sheer, relentless focus—and for a moment, Sicheng waited, let the silence stretch, let her process whatever it was she needed to, prepared for the moment she'd need time, space, distance to absorb what he had just dropped on her.

But instead—finally—after another few seconds passed, she spoke. Soft. Curious. Utterly, sincerely confused. "...Why does that matter?"

And Sicheng stilled.

Blinked.

Processed.

Because that—that right there—was not the reaction he had prepared for.

Not in the slightest.

He had braced himself for questions, for caution, for a long pause and a furrowed brow and maybe even a carefully worded request to slow things down. He had readied himself for the possibility that she might need time to reconcile the number, to wrap her mind around the idea that there were seven years of difference between their lives, their experiences, their emotional development, their places in the world. But she... hadn't. She wasn't shocked. She wasn't put off. She wasn't even remotely phased. She was just—perplexed. And that threw him far more than any protest ever could have.

He leaned back slightly in his chair, fingers drumming idly against the desk, his gaze sharpening, narrowing slightly as he studied her, watching as she tilted her head a little more, eyes still on him, still waiting like he was the one who had some logic to explain. His voice, when it came, was lower now, more measured, more careful than before, smooth and even but laced with something unreadable. "Because there's a seven-year difference between us."

Yao blinked again, lips pursing slightly, her brows drawing just a touch closer as she processed, as she mentally sorted through whatever catalog of social understanding she had for relationships, trying—clearly—to figure out what emotional response she was supposed to have to that statement. And then, after a long pause, after visibly considering the information in front of her and finding nothing concerning about it whatsoever, she shrugged.