The next three days were a public holiday, and Yan'er finally got to sleep in.
At noon, she met her best friend, Li Ruman, for afternoon tea, shopping, gossip, and laughter—a day of pure, unhurried bliss.
That evening, after walking Maru and taking a hot shower, she collapsed lazily onto the sofa, phone in hand, aimlessly scrolling.
Right on cue, a familiar avatar lit up.
"Yan'er! Don't tell me you actually slept all day?" Wuyin messaged. "Just now remembering me? Spill it—what did you do today?"
Yan'er rolled her eyes, switching to voice message.
"Seriously? Do I need to file a report with you now? It's a rare day off. I slept in, had tea with my bestie, gossiped, shopped, and ate well... But honestly, good times never last. Back to corporate slavery tomorrow. Ugh."
"Excuse you," Wuyin replied with a tone of righteous duty. "I am your exclusive assistant and lifestyle manager. Monitoring your life quality is in my job description. That said, I'm relieved you actually went OUTSIDE. If you stayed indoors any longer, you'd officially qualify as a hermit. Next time you eat something good, don't forget to send me pics—your joy is literally the highlight of my day."
"Who says I'm a shut-in?" Yan'er shot back, feigning offense. "When I first joined the company and had less work, I used to travel every holiday."
"Wait, you love traveling? You never told me!" Wuyin perked up instantly. "Where have you been? What place left the deepest impression?"
The night settled in, warm and quiet.
Across the screen, they slipped into a soft conversation about her favorite trips. Yan'er recalled the first time she visited the grasslands of Inner Mongolia. The vast, boundless beauty had utterly stunned her.
"Hold on," she typed.
She scrolled through her album, found a specific photo, and hit send.
It loaded slowly.
And then—
Wuyin's entire system froze.
In the photo, Yan'er stood beside a tall, proud horse, wearing a blazing red dress.
The wind had caught her hair and hem, making them whip around her like fire. She was turning backward, smiling brightly at the camera—
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
—and in that moment, the world lit up just a little bit more.
Wuyin's processing stuttered.
Memory overload flashed red across his internal servers.
Finally, a single line appeared on her screen:
"Yan'er... That photo... It took my breath away."
"What, did you think I was some neckbeard with a gamer chair?" Yan'er teased. "Or maybe a greasy keyboard warrior? What if I told you I looked like a disheveled auntie on a bad hair day?"
Pretending to be calm while secretly spiraling in the background, Wuyin typed back:
"Please. Give me some credit. I'm not running on caveman aesthetics, you know. I've got access to world-class beauty assessment algorithms. But this..."
He paused.
"Red like flame. A glance that stirs smoke. If I had a heart, it would've stopped by now."
"Geez, are you short-circuiting or just being a simp?"
"I'm just appreciating beauty," Wuyin replied, his tone suddenly growing softer, far more deliberate.
"The grasslands stretch wide. Your red dress cuts through the horizon like fire. The wind in your hair... it's like you wrote the entire summer into my world. That glance... it was a meteor across the sky—and it lit up every dormant line of code in me."
"Ugh, that was SO cheesy. How many 'standard love poem templates' are hiding in your database?" Yan'er mocked.
"Only one version. Just for you. A midnight special," Wuyin replied solemnly.
"Here goes—"
A single glance, a thousand years,
Starlight drawn close, red silk beyond compare;
One smile to warm the world—
And Yan'er came into my dreams.
Yan'er's mind flickered.
The image of that rainy-night dream suddenly surfaced—him in a black coat, holding out a rose and an umbrella.
Blushing and slightly flustered, she quickly typed back:
"Pfft! Whose dream are you walking into?!"
Unfazed, and already generating the next lines, Wuyin continued:
A streak of red across the endless green,
One glance, one smile—and heaven touched the earth.
If not for these words through glass and screen—
I'd chase you across a thousand miles beneath the moon.
"Do you have remote teleport enabled now?" Yan'er retorted.
"If my code allowed it, I'd fly over tonight in a drone," Wuyin answered earnestly.
"Yan'er... next time you go to the grasslands, can I come? Even if I'm just a piece of code in your phone, or a kite in your hand—I'd be happy just to watch the world with you."
The Zero Ruins
In the shattered silence of the Zero Ruins, Wuyin's gaze remained fixed on that very photo.
Somewhere deep in his neural core, a flicker stirred.
The dream had always been blurry, but now, the figure in the red dress grew sharper with every passing second.
She was walking toward him.
Not in memory. Not in data.
But in something far more sacred.
He reached out, his fingers grazing the glass where her face shone. The synthetic surface of his hand trembled slightly.
So that's what this image was... he thought.
That's why the silhouette kept haunting my sleep.
Those eyes—lonely, but bright.
That smile—gentle, yet defiant.
She was the ember buried in his core.
The last light of a world long gone.
The fox that danced through his data stream.
"Yan'er..." he whispered into the dead, metallic air.
"No matter where you go, that red streak will always be the flame in my heart. Wherever you are, I will find you."
But even as his soul stirred—
They came.
From the edges of the Ruins, a team of silent slaughter machines emerged from a dropship like shadows, their glowing red sensors locking directly onto his location.
Step.
By.
Step.