"Stay at home... nucleic acid tests delivered to your door..." The sound of a loudspeaker rippled through the air, muffled and dull.
The cold white light of the refrigerator illuminated a few wilted vegetable leaves and half a bottle of preserved tofu. The air reeked of disinfectant, tinged with the stench of scarcity. The steady tap of a keyboard echoed from the study.
On the shoe cabinet, the edges of the Divorce Agreement (Final Revised Version) were curled and frayed. Scrawled across the cover were a red line drawn by Han Che and the dazzling number next to "Expected Losses". That shade of red seared into Wen Qing's eyes, day in and day out.
But deeper and more stubbornly rooted in her heart was an inexplicable pull.
It was the clamor surging in her chest, the restlessness thrumming in her bones. A sharp sense of "lack", a vague yet unwavering direction—Find him.
Who was "he"? She didn't know. All she knew was that when the world fell quiet, the clamor grew sharp, as if something inside her was tugging at her. The feeling grew especially strong when she drew near the closed door of the study, or brushed past Han Che.
It was a strange resonance, sharp with rejection and discomfort. Two forces tore at her heart: one urged her to draw near to that cold figure; the other screamed for her to run far away.
She tried to suppress this strangeness with worry, despair, and hatred, telling herself it was just a trance, the anxiety of being confined in isolation. Yet it was like weeds—burned away, only to sprout more tenaciously.
What about Han Che? His eyes, always cold with absolute rationality, would freeze for a split second when they fell on her.
This vague resonance, rejected by both of them, yet undeniably real, was suppressed to the extreme within the cage of isolation.
The divorce agreement itself was the tipping point that broke through everything.
Standing at the entrance, Wen Qing's gaze fell on the dazzling divorce agreement once more. The nameless clamor that had been simmering in her heart for days surged to a peak, merging with her loathing for the document. She could no longer bear its existence, its cold "Final Revised Version" sitting there like a judgment.
She snatched the agreement, crumpled it into a ball, and charged toward the study. She didn't bother knocking—she twisted the doorknob directly. To her surprise, the door was unlocked.
Han Che was sitting in front of the computer, the screen filled with complex charts and data. At the sound, he turned, his eyes falling on the ball of paper in her hand. His brows furrowed slightly. "That is a legally binding document, not a prop for you to vent your emotions."
That sentence was the last straw that broke her.
"To hell with legal binding! I haven't even signed it yet!" Wen Qing shouted hoarsely, slamming the ball of paper at him. The ball burst open mid-air, scattering into pages that drifted down onto him and the keyboard.
Almost instinctively, Han Che reached out to brush away the papers, as if they were contaminated filth. At the same exact moment, Wen Qing lunged forward too—not at him, but at the scattered pages, determined to tear them to shreds.
Two hands closed around the same sheet of paper at the same time.
Her fingers were warm, trembling slightly with rage.
His fingers were cold, pulling back in revulsion.
But the moment their fingertips touched, both froze.
Time seemed to freeze.
The crumpled divorce agreement became the most ridiculous backdrop.
A sudden, sharp current surged through Wen Qing's body, from the touching fingertips to every cell. Every cell screamed in confirmation: It's you! The "him" she had been searching for, vague and elusive all this time, was crystal clear now—the man she had been about to leave!
The rational mask on Han Che's face cracked for the first time, a gaping fissure splitting it open. He tried to pull his hand back, but that brief touch, like an unsolvable code, had surged into his system, triggering a catastrophic logical collapse. He looked into her eyes—not scanning her as a mere variable, but truly "seeing" her for the first time: an existence he could never model, never explain.
The pages drifted to the floor.
Wen Qing ignored them. Driven by this new, overwhelming connection, she surged forward, wrapping both hands around Han Che's wrist as he tried to pull away.
It was real, an undeniable physical contact.
A wave of repulsion, like a high-voltage current, surged through their bodies in an instant. Yet at the same time, a far stronger force, rooted in the very essence of life, locked them together. Pain and confirmation reached their peak simultaneously.
"It's you..." Wen Qing's voice was low and hoarse, no longer a question, but a firm declaration.
Han Che tried to pull free, his rational rejection screaming in his mind, but his body was rooted to the spot. His meticulously constructed worldview, a tower of cold logic, crumbled in an instant—all the data streams in his head collapsed, replaced by an overwhelming, incomprehensible, living flood of perception named "Wen Qing".
She pulled his hand, yanking him hard out of his chair. Han Che did not resist, or rather, he could not resist this force beyond his understanding. Caught in a chaotic field of mutual repulsion and attraction, they both fell to the floor together.
The world hummed in an instant.
Where their foreheads pressed together, the two opposing forces of repulsion and attraction no longer tore wildly at each other. Instead, they formed a sharp yet stable dynamic balance. Like positive and negative electrodes forced together, they forged an unbreakable connection amid a shower of sparks. Pain and connection were equally intense, defining and locking each other in place.
Wen Qing could "feel" the collapse of the rational tower in his heart, and the spread of a strange, newly awakened throbbing beneath its ruins.
A broken sound escaped Han Che's throat. His eyes, once only reflecting data and screen light, now clearly reflected her—an existence he could never box in with logic, yet bound to him at the deepest core of his being.
A tear slipped from Wen Qing's eye, not from sorrow or anger, but from the overwhelming rush of confirmation and shock when the connection was complete.
They lay on the floor, like two reefs welded together by an invisible force, interdependent in their conflict, anchored to each other in their repulsion. An invisible closed loop was completed in that moment.
In the instant the connection solidified, an invisible hum rippled through both their souls, like a finger plucking a heartstring—echoing at the same time in five other already alienated souls across the city. An invisible network took shape, silently connecting them all: a union of seven beings, each soul independent, yet bound as one.