Against the Algorithm

Chapter 22: How It Begins

Sicheng blinked.

Paused.

And then exhaled a short, sharp sound—half laugh, half disbelief—before his smirk deepened, his eyes narrowing with delighted amusement. "A hooligan?" he repeated, voice entirely too pleased with itself, like he'd just heard the most absurdly adorable thing in the world and fully intended to savor it.

Yao, immediately regretting the words the second they left her mouth, clenched her fists tighter into her sleeves and lowered her gaze again, her voice quieter but still flustered as she stubbornly muttered, "Yes."

"And what exactly," he drawled, shifting slightly in his chair, leaning back with that infuriating, confident ease, "makes me a hooligan, hm?"

Her breath hitched—because of course. Of course he wasn't going to let it go. Of course he was going to make her say it, make her explain, make her squirm. She exhaled shakily, lowered her gaze even further, and muttered under her breath with miserable honesty, "Saying things like that. Without warning. Making people—making me flustered."

There was a pause.

Then—his voice, softer now, teasing, but edged with something sharper, something that slipped under her skin. "So you're admitting that I fluster you?"

Yao froze. Absolutely, completely, utterly froze. Her eyes snapped up, expression horrified, lips parting as if to take it back, to undo what she had just accidentally confessed, to salvage what little composure she had left. But it was too late.

Because Sicheng had already seen it—had heard it, had felt the truth in her voice, and now it was written all over his expression, in the curve of his smirk, in the glint in his eyes, in the satisfied way he leaned back with the knowledge that she had just handed him exactly what he wanted.

So Yao, with no other option left to her, dropped her face into her arms again and hid, praying to every available power in the universe that he would somehow forget this ever happened.

He wouldn't.

Sicheng, watching her fold into herself like a collapsing star, shook his head slowly, amusement rippling through every line of his posture, his voice dropping lower, softer, warmer—but laced with something deeper, something possessive, something that was entirely, unmistakably his. "Get used to it, Xiǎo Tùzǐ," he murmured, "I'm not going to stop."

And Yao—helpless, hopeless, completely overwhelmed—knew, in that exact moment, without a shred of doubt, that she was doomed.

Still flustered beyond repair, her entire body brimming with flustered heat and mortified energy, Yao did the only thing she could think of, the only thing her scrambled brain could latch onto in the midst of his verbal onslaught—she grabbed the nearest object, which happened to be the portfolio sitting in front of her, and promptly buried her face in it, pressing the cool, stiff pages against her cheeks like they could somehow act as a shield between her and the insufferable man who was still watching her with that stupid smirk.

Because this was too much. He was too much. His words, his tone, his expression—all of it was designed to make her unravel and he knew it. It wasn't fair. How was she supposed to function around someone like him, someone who knew exactly how to throw her off balance, how to pull the ground out from under her feet, how to leave her scrambling for words and breath and dignity without even lifting a finger?

It wasn't fair at all.

So with her face still pressed firmly to the pages, voice muffled but no less laced with sheer exasperation, she blurted out the only defense she had left—the last petty shred of retaliation her overheating mind could summon.