Data streams collided silently in the air of the conference room. Wang Chuan finished his presentation and sat down. He could feel Wang You's gaze on him like two cold searchlights, lingering briefly. There was no agreement in that look, nor disagreement—only pure assessment, as if scanning the performance parameters of a tool.
He didn't avoid it. Instead, he met her eyes and gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. He was sure Wang You caught it. This wasn't a collegial gesture; it was something more clandestine, a signal that could only exist between the two of them—if his hypothesis about the "shell" held true.
The meeting concluded with efficient, dry consensus. The Executors filed out. Wang You gathered her electronic notepad with her usual precision and efficiency. Wang Chuan deliberately lingered until the room held only them.
"Your analytical perspective is unique, Archivist Wang Chuan," Wang You's voice was even, betraying no fluctuation. "Deriving potential flaws in the emotional modules from the reverse angle of system stability maintenance costs… that is not typically the conventional viewpoint of the Records Department."
"Merely an objective deduction based on historical data," Wang Chuan replied, his tone equally calm. But he took a few steps forward, closing the distance. "Some patterns, when observed long enough, always reveal certain… anomalies."
"Anomalies signify deviation from the optimal path," Wang You lifted her eyes, those overly clear pupils looking directly at him. "The system's purpose is to correct anomalies."
"Perhaps some anomalies are themselves part of the optimization," Wang Chuan said slowly, "only the system cannot understand them yet." He reached into the inner pocket of his uniform and retrieved a folded, slightly worn piece of paper. He didn't fully unfold it, merely allowing the clumsily yet fervently drawn crayon image of a starry sky to be exposed between them for a fleeting moment.
Time seemed to freeze.
Wang You's gaze fell upon the image. For the first time, a minuscule crack appeared in her programmed, perfect expression. It wasn't shock, nor recollection. It was more like a… deep-level system recognition conflict. Her pupils contracted slightly, processing this visual information that could neither be categorized nor quantified. It was a starry sky deemed "useless," even "harmful," by the system—a gift from the Dreamweaver, that already-purified "source of contamination."
A second, maybe less, and the crack vanished. Her expression returned to normal, even colder than before. "Irrelevant image materials should not be brought into work meetings, Archivist. It is non-compliant."
Yet she didn't immediately look away, nor did she ask about the image's origin. Her fingertips tightened unconsciously on the edge of her electronic notepad—a tiny, almost undetectable, human-like gesture.
"Just saw it by chance," Wang Chuan said, refolding the paper and returning it to his pocket. "Thought it was… interesting." He knew the seed had been planted. It wasn't a command, not a data packet, but a question—a purely emotional impact from outside the system's logic. If the "Initial Heart Project" truly existed, if Wang You was indeed that "shell," then this non-compliant, "useless" starlight was the only key.
He said no more, turned, and left the conference room. His footsteps echoed in the empty corridor.
Behind him, Wang You remained standing motionless. The air before her shimmered slightly; invisible data windows flashed, opened, and closed rapidly within her field of vision—her internal systems running at high speed, processing the anomalous interaction she had just received. Was it a threat assessment? Or… some deeper, triggered protocol?
She raised her hand, looking at the fingers that had unconsciously tightened moments before. For the first time, an exceedingly rare emotion flickered in her eyes—something akin to "confusion." It was as fine as a hair, yet like a stone dropped into a placid lake, it sent ripples across the flawless data-lake of her emotions—ripples that could not be ignored.
The system believed a perfect world had no need for stars.
But someone always needed them.
And that someone,perhaps deep within the cold, precise shell of the Executor, was beginning to awaken.