The afternoon sun spilled over the service courtyard, staining the gray stones with a warm, golden hue. The din from the kitchens had faded to a contented hum, and the air smelled of bone broth and the promise of a hard-earned rest. Seated in a quiet corner, the echo of Xiao Yue's laughter still floated between them, an anomalous and strangely pleasant data point in Kenji's system.
For the first time, his mind wasn't processing at full speed, optimizing the next protocol or analyzing a new vulnerability. It was… silent. A silence that wasn't empty, but full. Filled by the warmth of the sun, the lingering taste of soup on his palate, and the solid, calm presence of the young woman beside him. It was a new form of efficiency, one he didn't understand but, for the first time, felt no need to dissect.
A yawn, a purely biological reaction he couldn't suppress, overtook him. The exhaustion of the last few days, both physical and mental, was finally claiming its toll. His eyelids felt heavy as if made of lead. Without thinking, without calculating the risk or the implication, his head tilted, seeking the nearest support. It found Xiao Yue's shoulder.
She tensed for a split second, surprised by the unexpected contact. But then, feeling the dead weight of his head, she relaxed. He was exhausted. The great CEO, the genius from another world, had simply run out of battery. A tender smile formed on her lips, and she held perfectly still, becoming an impromptu pillow.
Kenji didn't sink into darkness. He slipped into a much older, more dangerous place: the corrupted data file of his own memory.
The first stimulus is a sharp sound: the metallic screech of a rusty swing set's chains. He sees a schoolyard in Tokyo; the bright colors of the other children's clothes are an overwhelming blur. They run, they scream, they play a game of tag with illogical rules and a disproportionate expenditure of energy.
"There's Tanaka-kun, the robot," he hears one child whisper to another. "He never plays, he just reads."
He is in a corner, under a ginkgo tree, with a book on differential calculus. He isn't sad. He is… analyzing. The trajectory of the ball, the speed of the runners, the inefficiencies in their movements. An invisible yet impassable glass wall separates him from them. It is not his world. It never has been.
"The boy's a genius, but he's strange," he hears a teacher's blurry voice say. "There's nothing we can teach him academically, but socially… it's like he's missing a piece of software."
The scene changes. He's in a sterile, white hallway. A man in a white coat is speaking to his parents. Their faces are a mask of concern and frustration. He hears scattered words: "difficulty processing emotional stimuli," "severe social anxiety," "a form of neurodivergence." To Kenji, it's a simple label: deficiency in the interpersonal communication protocol. A disease. A design flaw that makes him incompatible with the rest of the world.
His parents try to talk to him. He responds with data, with probabilities, with logic. He watches the warmth fade from their eyes, replaced by a weary resignation. They love him, but they don't understand him. He is a different operating system, and they don't have the manual. They become distant shareholders in his life: providing resources, but without getting involved in the day-to-day management.
The school cafeteria is a chaos of noise and smells. He sits alone, as always, with his lunch tray perfectly organized by nutritional groups. Then, a shift in the matrix. A new variable.
A tray is set down in front of him. He looks up. Her face is a blur, a worn-out memory, but her hair is a deep, shining black, and her smile is a data point that defies all logic.
"You looked lonely," she says, her voice a clear sound in the midst of the noise. She offers him an onigiri. "My mother always makes too many."
He doesn't know what to say. He analyzes her expression. No mockery. No pity. Only genuine curiosity. He accepts the onigiri. The first resource received without having requested it, without having optimized for it. The first intangible asset.
It becomes a routine. Yuki. That's her name. He never asks about her grades. She never asks about his projects. They talk about "inefficient" things: the color of the clouds, a song on the radio, the taste of peach tea. She's the only one who doesn't try to "fix" him or "understand" him. She simply accepts him. She's the only one who seems to speak his language, even though she uses none of his words.
One day, under the same ginkgo tree, she looks at him with her bright eyes and asks, "Do you want to go to the summer festival this Saturday? There'll be fireworks."
His brain projects two conflicting scenarios, almost like holographic screens. On one, the image of her, her expectant face full of a warm, hopeful light. On the other, his schedule: "20:00 - Sync Call with Frankfurt Team. Critical. Launch of Project Odyssey Phase 3."
The logic is brutal. Unassailable. The meeting is an asset with a quantifiable return on investment (ROI). The date is… an emotional variable with no clear performance metrics.
"I'm sorry, Yuki," he hears his own voice, flat, professional, the voice of a CEO closing a deal. "I have an unavoidable commitment."
The light in her eyes dims. A 47% drop in the asset's morale, a part of his brain registers. But she smiles, a weaker version of her usual one. "Oh. Okay. Maybe some other time."
There was never another time.
The memory warps, becoming a nightmare. There are no more images, only sound and raw data. The sharp, harrowing screech of tires on asphalt. The crash of twisting metal. Then, silence. A headline floats in the darkness, in a cold, digital font: "ACCIDENT ON ROUTE 7. DRUNK DRIVER HITS BUS. MULTIPLE FATALITIES." His heart, that unreliable biological muscle, stops. He accesses the public records. Her name is on the list of the deceased. No tears. No screams. Just an icy cold. A calculation error. A systemic failure.
His mind, in an act of self-torture, begins to run simulations. Scenario A: He accepts the date. They are at the festival. She is not on the bus. Probability of accident avoidance: 100%. Scenario B: He goes on the date. He walks her home. He misses the call with Frankfurt. Phase 3 is delayed by 12 hours. Financial cost: 1.2 million yen. Yuki's life: preserved. Return on investment: infinite.
A choked sob pulls him from the simulation. He realizes it's his own. He's in his 88th-floor apartment, the pinnacle of his success. The place is a mausoleum of minimalism and efficiency, perfectly tidy, perfectly silent. And in the center of his chest, where there should be a feeling of triumph for the newly completed Project Odyssey, there is only a black hole. A void.
He understands. The work wasn't the goal. It was the anesthetic. A way to fill the void Yuki's death had left, the void he himself had helped to dig. He had buried himself in work so he wouldn't feel, so he wouldn't think about the biggest miscalculation of his life. The karoshi wasn't an accident. It was a slow-motion suicide.
The pain in his chest from the dream is real, sharp. It's the memory of the heart attack that killed him. He feels himself drowning in regret, in the crushing logic of his own failure.
A real sob, wet and trembling, pulls him from the darkness.
He feels something wet on his own cheek. He touches it. Tears? Why…? The question is human, confusing. The first instinct is panic. Shame. An unacceptable loss of control. He needs to recalibrate, resume control, erase the evidence of this… weakness.
Then, he registers other data. A solid warmth against his temple. The soft, sweet scent of jasmine. The texture of silk fabric beneath his cheek.
He opens his eyes. The world slowly comes into focus. He is in the service courtyard of the Silver Cloud Clan. And his head is resting on Xiao Yue's shoulder. The tears he feels are his own.
He sits up with a jolt, as if he's been electrocuted.
Xiao Yue looks at him, not with mockery or analytical concern, but with a gentle calm that completely disarms him. Her heart, however, is pounding. Seeing him so vulnerable, a tear track on his cheek, awakens a fierce, protective instinct in her.
"You fell asleep," she says softly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. "While we were talking, you just… shut down." A small, tender smile plays on her lips. "I didn't want to wake you. You looked so cute asleep."
The word "cute" enters Kenji's brain and finds no category to file itself under. His programming, his years of self-discipline, scream a single directive: Get up. Apologize for the lapse. Create distance. Get back to the plan.
But the memory of the dream, of the void, is too fresh. The memory of the cold in his Tokyo apartment clashes with the warmth of Xiao Yue's shoulder. The memory of the silence of his success clashes with the soft sound of her breathing.
She is the antithesis of his failure.
He looks at her golden eyes, not filled with pity, but with a quiet acceptance. He sees the small smile on her lips. And in that instant, for the first time in his two lives, Kenji consciously disobeys a direct order from his own logic. He chooses warmth. He chooses connection.
Slowly, as if testing a new and dangerous movement, he lets his head rest again on her shoulder. It's a gesture of surrender. An acceptance of his own need. With infinite care, Xiao Yue shifts her posture slightly to make him more comfortable, a small gesture worth a thousand words.
Kenji inhales deeply, filling his lungs with the jasmine scent she gives off. It is a real, tangible data point.
He closes his eyes.
"Five more minutes," he whispers, his voice barely a thread of air, but laden with the weight of a decision that has taken him two lifetimes to make.
Xiao Yue remains absolutely still. She feels the weight of his head, the warmth of his breath against her neck. Her heart, which had kept a steady rhythm, suddenly begins to hammer against her ribs like a war drum. A heat that has nothing to do with Qi spreads from her shoulder through her entire body, concentrating in her cheeks. She's sure her face is as red as her hair.
He hadn't pulled away in disgust. He hadn't apologized for his weakness. He had chosen to stay. He had chosen her company over his efficiency.
He trusted her. Not just as a partner. He trusted her to be his place of rest.
Suddenly, she felt immensely powerful. Not with the power to shatter rocks, but with the quiet, overwhelming power of being the refuge for a broken genius. The sole harbor in the storm of a soul that had traveled between worlds.
With a protective solemnity, she held perfectly still, becoming the sturdiest pillar in the universe so that her CEO, her consultant, her strange friend from another world, could have his five minutes of peace.