Against the Algorithm

Chapter 24: The Shape of Clarity

But he wasn't going to let her—not this time, not when he could feel the distance in her silence like a wedge pressed between them—so without a word, without asking, without needing to explain himself, he tilted his head toward his office, the quietest place in the base, their place, the one room where nothing and no one else existed once the door was closed, a single gesture asking—not forcing—her to follow.

She hesitated, just for a breath, just long enough to let the weight of her uncertainty settle between them, but she followed.

Inside the office, he didn't ask her to sit, didn't take his usual place behind the desk, didn't let any formality stand between them, he stood by the window, hands in his pockets, jaw tense, eyes fixed on her, not demanding but waiting, giving her space but not distance, and she stood just inside the door like she wasn't sure whether she was allowed to come any closer. The silence between them wasn't cruel, it was careful, measured, coiled with the weight of everything unsaid—but it pressed against her nonetheless, made her fidget slightly, made her eyes drop to the floor like they always did when she was trying not to break under the weight of her own thoughts.

And than. he asked.

Quiet. Steady. Uncompromising.

"What's going on with you, Xiǎo Tùzǐ?"

She flinched—not visibly, not in a way anyone else would've noticed—but he saw it, the way her shoulders curled inward ever so slightly, the way her chin tucked down, her platinum braid slipping forward over her shoulder like a curtain she could hide behind, and then came her voice, soft and unsure, not quite broken but threaded with something dangerously close to guilt.

"...I thought maybe... you were disappointed in me."

The words landed like a punch to the chest, because she wasn't looking at him, wasn't braced for his reaction, just standing there with her arms folded in front of her like she needed them to be a shield, her voice trembling slightly but still carrying, still honest.

"Last night..." she continued, her fingers twisting into the edge of her sleeve like she was trying to hold herself together, her gaze locked somewhere far beneath his own, "You just... stopped and told me to go to bed."

And Sicheng felt something twist violently inside his chest, something cold and sharp and cutting, because of course... of course she had read it that way, of course she had taken his silence and his restraint as rejection, and now, standing there, watching her shrink into herself, watching her try to hold her composure while quietly crumbling under the weight of something she didn't even know how to name, he realized how badly he had handled it. She thought he didn't want her. She thought she had done something wrong. She thought he had changed his mind. And the idea that she had carried that for an entire day, that she had smiled politely and kept her head down and stayed away from him because she thought he regretted touching her, that thought made his hands curl into fists, made his jaw clench, made something ugly coil tight beneath his skin because this, all of it, was his fault.

He hadn't told her. Hadn't explained. Hadn't said what needed to be said. And now, she was standing in front of him like she was already bracing for the blow that would confirm every doubt she hadn't dared to say out loud.

He took a step forward, slow, measured, unthreatening, but final, closing the distance between them until the only thing separating them was her hesitation. And he didn't speak. Not right away. Not until she finally, hesitantly, nervously, with a flicker of something broken in her eyes, looked up.

And when she did, he saw it all.

The doubt.

The ache.