Against the Algorithm

Chapter 38: Meant for One

Her lashes lowered, the depth in her eyes unreadable as she looked once more at the medallion lying still in the velvet. But she didn't close the box. Didn't push it away. She simply... held it. Like the words were still sinking in.

And Sicheng, true to everything he had promised with that one gesture—waited, his hand now resting behind her once again, but closer this time. Still not touching, still not urging.

The silence had stretched, not uncomfortably, but with the kind of gravity that came when neither of them were rushing to fill it. Yao sat still, the velvet box open in her hands, her hazel eyes fixed on the medallion like it held not just weight, but meaning she hadn't dared let herself believe in until now. Her thumb ghosted once more across the back of the pendant, brushing lightly over the Lu family decree, her pulse a steady hum beneath the stillness.

She swallowed hard. It wasn't the kind of swallow that came from nerves, or confusion, or even fear—it was heavier, rooted somewhere deeper, tangled in the quiet ache of someone who had learned, too young, how to survive without asking for permanence.

Her voice, when it came, trembled softly at the edges—not from doubt in him, but from the enormity of what he was offering her. It was careful, barely above a whisper, like if she said it too loudly, the moment might break apart. "Cheng-ge..." Her fingers curled slightly tighter around the edge of the box. "Are you sure?" Her eyes lifted then, hazel depths flickering with something raw and painfully human. Not panic. Not rejection. Just the sharp, quiet fear of someone who had never been chosen this way before. "Are you really sure that... this is what you want? That something that binding—" she hesitated, her voice catching slightly on the weight of the word "—with me... is what you're certain of?"

She didn't pull away.

She didn't close the box.

But the question was real.

Pressed from the part of her that had always been logical, always calculating, always precise—and now found herself holding a vow too vast to measure. Because this wasn't a promise made in passing, or a gesture for show. It was a vow carved into metal, backed by legacy, and worn not as decoration, but as declaration. Her lips parted again, then closed. She didn't flinch when his hand moved—only lifted her gaze to meet the full burn of his amber eyes as he shifted closer, slowly, deliberately, his voice as calm as ever but low, almost rough with the intensity behind it.

"Yes," he said simply, but not lightly. "I am sure." And there was nothing casual in that answer. Only certainty. Because he had made his decision long before he ever had the necklace made. And nothing in her tremble, or her quiet question, changed that. Not one bit.

The box in her hands trembled just slightly, not from fear, not from rejection, but from the tension that always came when something mattered too much. Yao's eyes searched his face one more time, as if trying to memorize every detail, every flicker of certainty in the sharp amber gaze that never once looked away from her. His voice still lingered in the space between them, calm and absolute, his answer grounding her in a way nothing else ever had.

Yes. I am sure.

Her breath wavered. Then, without a word, she shifted. Carefully, reverently, she moved the open box from her lap and extended it back toward him with both hands, still open, still cradling the necklace as it had before, the medallion gleaming faintly in the low light. For a breath, for just the briefest flicker of time, Sicheng thought she was giving it back.

That she was turning him down.

That maybe the weight of it, of what it meant, had been too much.