Against the Algorithm

Chapter 61: The Line Between Trust and Fire

She peeked out just long enough. Fingers trembling, hair a mess, face still bright red as she reached, without making eye contact, for the glass of water. Her hand barely cleared the top edge of the blanket mountain, groping blindly until it bumped into the cool rim. Sicheng, watching with all the calm of a predator in no hurry to make the kill, helped guide it into her grip with a single lift of his brow and a very faint, very smug smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.

She took three sips. Maybe four. Swallowed down the Advil like her entire soul depended on it. Then, Like a creature caught halfway between panic and primal shame. She dove back into the blankets.

Headfirst.

The glass thunked softly onto the nightstand, and in the same motion, she curled in on herself like a burrito bracing for emotional impact, yanking the covers all the way over her head and burrowing into the mountain of pillows with the ferocity of a woman fully intent on never resurfacing again.

Sicheng raised both brows.

And waited.

Nothing.

Not even a whimper.

He leaned forward, resting an elbow on the bed as he stared down at the trembling heap of cotton and mortification. "Are you planning to stay in there for the rest of the day?"

The burrito trembled violently.

Then a muffled, choked whine, "Forever."

He blinked. "You do realize we have to fly back to Shenzhen in less than forty-eight hours."

"Cancel it."

"I can't."

"Then leave me here. Bury me in the hotel linens. Tell the staff it was a tragic case of girl says too much while drunk and now must become one with the bedding."

He chuckled, deep and slow. "Yao."

Silence.

"I already told you, I wasn't mad."

"You should be," came the tiny, mortified squeak. "I bit you."

"You also humped me."

A high-pitched, strangled noise of death erupted from the depths of the blankets.

"I was tipsy!"

"You were a menace."

"I am a disgrace!"

Sicheng couldn't hold back the laugh that burst out of him, low and shaking as he leaned his head down against the sheets. "You're fine," he murmured, voice sliding through the fabric like silk. "You didn't do anything wrong. You didn't scare me. You didn't ruin anything. I promise."

"No."

"Yao—"

"I'm a burrito now. There is no Yao. Only shame and blanket."

Sicheng pressed his forehead against the bed and groaned. "You really plan on staying like that?"

"Until the world ends. Or I stop existing. Whichever comes first."

And from beneath the blankets, warm, flustered, and entirely convinced she would never recover, Yao refused to move, even as her Captain quietly smiled and reached out to stroke a hand gently along the top of the burrito where her head probably was, whispering with low amusement, "You're lucky I love you."

A muffled squeak answered him. But she still didn't come out. Not even if the world ended.

Sicheng let his hand rest there for a moment longer, brushing slowly over the top of the blanket-wrapped catastrophe that had once been his brilliant, poised, ruthlessly logical shy introverted Tiny Boss Bunny, now reduced to a soft, overcooked dumpling of shame and squeaked denials. He waited. She didn't move. Not even a twitch. Her silence was both a declaration and a challenge. And if there was one thing Lu Sicheng didn't do? It was lose challenges. He leaned in, voice low, velvet-smooth, and far too calm to be anything but dangerous. "You have two options."