Chapter 32: The Cracks in Rationality

Kazami Jin stared at the “Resource Provision and Behavioral Norms Agreement,” a document as cold and unfeeling as a contract, feeling her blood run cold, as if it would solidify in her veins.

Xia Yue’s words, meticulously reasoned and impeccably logical, felt like a series of sterile surgical knives. They dissected her last vestiges of dignity and her desperate yearning for a “normal relationship,” leaving them in shattered fragments.

To exchange her freedom and autonomy in social interactions for resources and stability? This felt more suffocating than Lin Wan’s overt coercion and more humiliating than Yu Niannian’s straightforward patronage.

Xia Yue was so ‘rational,’ so ‘correct,’ as if solving an optimal mathematical problem, completely disregarding that a living, breathing person was involved, along with emotions that defied quantification.

A surge of courage, unlike anything she had ever felt—a potent blend of profound disappointment, anger, and a reckless abandon—erupted from the depths of her heart.

She lifted her head, and for the first time, met Xia Yue’s icy blue gaze, which seemed capable of freezing all things, directly and without flinching.

Her voice was not loud, yet it carried a trembling, desperate resolve:

“I won’t sign it.”

Xia Yue’s brow furrowed almost imperceptibly, seemingly not expecting such a definitive refusal.

She maintained her outward composure, but her voice grew several degrees colder: “Reason? This agreement offers you the optimal guarantee for your survival. I believe this is a rational choice.”

“Rationality?” Jin echoed the word, a bitter, mocking curve twisting her lips. “In your eyes, everything can be measured by ‘rationality’ and ‘resources,’ can’t it? Including… people?”

She took a deep breath, as if intending to unleash all the emotions she had suppressed for so long. “Yes, Lin Wan is annoying; she’s always forcing me to do this and that! Yu Niannian is a bit silly, only knowing how to solve problems with money! But… but at least they are… living beings! They laugh, they fuss, they get angry, and they’d rush to save me without a second thought! Even if their methods are flawed, even if their motives aren’t pure, their emotions are real!”

Her voice was tearful, yet she fought to keep the tears from falling. She pointed at the agreement, her finger trembling slightly. “But what about you, Xia Yue? What have you done? You hide behind the scenes, calculating everything, evaluating worth, then present something akin to a deed of sale, telling me that signing it will bring ‘stability’? Is this what you call ‘good’? To lock me away in a golden cage?”

“This isn’t a cage.” Xia Yue’s voice remained steady, but upon closer listening, one could detect a minute ripple, like an undercurrent beneath glacial ice. “This is protection, the most efficient…”

“Efficient?!” Jin cut her off abruptly, her pent-up emotions bursting forth like a breached dam. “What is efficient to you?! Is it most efficient to control me like an object, severing all contact with others, making me operate solely according to your parameters?! Why don’t you just create a robot then?! Wouldn’t that better suit your ‘optimal solution’?”

She looked at Xia Yue’s still expressionless face, and a profound sense of powerlessness and sorrow washed over her. “You constantly claim it’s for my own good, to give me the optimal choice… but have you ever asked me what I want? Have you tried… like them, even if clumsily, directly, to express even a little… ‘Do you need me?'”

The last question, like a fine needle, precisely pierced the shell of ‘rationality’ that Xia Yue had so diligently maintained.

The always calm and composed Xia Yue suddenly caught her breath. For the first time, clear cracks appeared in those icy blue eyes—an emotion named ‘loss of control’ erupted like a beast breaking free from its cage!

“I need you?!”

She almost snarled the words, her usually steady voice suddenly rising, imbued with the sharp astonishment and disbelief of someone whose secret thoughts had been exposed! She lunged forward, so swiftly that Jin had no time to react!

*Bang!*

A tremendous force struck her, and Jin felt the world spin. Her back slammed heavily against the cold wall, rattling her very core. Before she could recover from the impact, Xia Yue had closed in, her hands tightly gripping Jin’s shoulders, pinning her fiercely between the wall and herself!

The distance between them was so close that they could feel each other’s rapid heartbeats and breaths.

Xia Yue loomed over her, her usually placid eyes now like an arctic landscape ravaged by a blizzard. Within them surged a tempest of intense, chaotic emotions Jin had never witnessed—anger, bewilderment, the sting of rejection, and a trace of… a deep-seated grievance and panic that even Xia Yue herself couldn’t comprehend.

“You ask if I need you?!” Xia Yue’s voice trembled slightly with agitation, her warm breath caressing Jin’s face, carrying a dangerous, oppressive weight. “I calculated everything for you! I planned the safest path! I even… even did things I would never deign to touch! All to provide you with unparalleled security!”

Her fingers unconsciously tightened, digging painfully into Jin’s shoulders.

“But what about you?! Why are you always like this?! Why would you rather accept Lin Wan’s crude intimacy, Yu Niannian’s childish dependence, but refuse to accept the ‘optimal solution’ I meticulously prepared for you?! Why must you reject me?! I clearly… I clearly calculated all variables, and presented the best plan!”

Her logic began to unravel, no longer the cold, methodical reasoning from before, but filled with personal, emotional accusations. The layer of ‘rationality’ that encased her shattered into immense cracks at that moment.

Jin was pressed against the wall, enduring Xia Yue’s uncontrolled fury and weight. Pain and fear paled her face, but the undisguised, almost overflowing hurt and stubbornness in Xia Yue’s eyes strangely made some of Jin’s fear recede, replaced by a complex, bitter ache.

‘She’s lost control again.’

‘So beneath her perfect composure, such turbulent emotions were hidden after all.’

“Because… what you offer… is never what I want…” Jin endured the pain in her shoulders and the difficulty in breathing, looking at Xia Yue, who was so close. Her voice was faint but clear. “What I want is… equal treatment, to be treated as… a person with my own thoughts and feelings… not a program to be arranged by an ‘optimal solution’…

She paused, gathering her last reserves of courage, and spoke the words that had been hidden in her heart for a long time:

‘Perhaps… perhaps all I wanted was to hear you say, ‘I need you by my side,’ instead of, ‘Signing this agreement is most beneficial to you…”

These words, like a final blow, struck hard at Xia Yue’s heart.

She froze instantly.

The grip on Jin’s shoulders unconsciously loosened.

Those eyes, previously swirling with a blizzard, stared fixedly at Jin. The anger and chaos within them slowly receded like a tide, replaced by a deep, bewildered expression, as if seeing the person before her truly for the first time, and… an ineffable shock.

‘She had always believed that providing the best material security and absolute safety was the ultimate expression of ‘need.’ She had quantified emotions, programmed relationships, thinking this would circumvent all uncertain risks and allow her to firmly grasp what she desired. But only now, being so directly rejected and called out by Jin, did she vaguely realize… she seemed to have… misunderstood something very important.’

The air seemed to solidify.

Xia Yue maintained the posture of pinning Jin against the wall, but the aggressive intensity had dissipated. She breathed shallowly, her icy blue eyes downcast, long lashes casting a shadow beneath them, obscuring the complex, indecipherable emotions within.

A long time passed, so long that Jin thought she would either erupt again or simply turn and leave. Instead, Xia Yue slowly, painstakingly slowly, released her.

She took a step back, widening the overly close distance between them.

She did not look at Jin but turned her head slightly. The lines of her profile remained cold and sharp, but a faint, almost invisible blush spread across her earlobes.

She raised a hand, somewhat stiffly, to straighten her collar and hair, which had become slightly disheveled from her earlier intense movements.

“…I understand.”

Her voice returned to its usual cool clarity, yet upon closer listening, one could detect a heavily suppressed, uncharacteristic hoarseness and… a subtle hint of unease.

She said nothing more about the agreement, nor did she explain her earlier loss of control. She merely bent down silently, picked up the discarded “Resource Provision and Behavioral Norms Agreement (Draft)” from the floor, folded it carefully, and placed it back into her folder.

Then, she turned and, without another glance at Jin, walked directly towards the door. Only when her hand grasped the doorknob did her movement pause, her back appearing somewhat solitary and rigid.

“…I’m sorry.”

A whisper-soft apology, almost swallowed by the air, escaped her lips. Immediately, the door was gently opened, then gently closed.

In the room, only Kazami Jin remained, leaning against the cold wall, slowly sliding to the floor.

She gazed at the closed door, her heart still pounding fiercely. The sensation of Xia Yue’s forceful grip seemed to linger on her shoulders, and in her ears echoed Xia Yue’s uncontrolled accusations and that barely audible final “I’m sorry.”

A storm, it seemed, had abruptly ceased.

But Jin knew that some things had irrevocably changed. Xia Yue’s impenetrable iceberg of rationality had been cracked, a deep fissure carved by Jin’s refusal.