Nighttime Manhattan was ablaze with light, traffic streaming through the avenues as neon and billboards cast the city in something almost unreal. After submitting supporting documents for a formal complaint regarding the previous day’s incident at a nearby police station, Chen and Yan Qing walked one behind the other along the sidewalk, carried forward by the rush of pedestrians and yellow cabs.

  Chen broke the silence first.

  “How long will this process take?” he asked, tone neutral, genuinely curious.

  Yan Qing blinked. “Which part?”

  “The human accountability sequence,” Chen clarified. “The review. The consequence. The apology.”

  Yan Qing let out a short breath. “Weeks. Months. Possibly longer.”

  Chen frowned slightly. “That seems… inefficient.”

  “Welcome to bureaucracy,” Yan Qing said. “Best case, it gets investigated. Worst case, it gets buried under paperwork until everyone forgets it happened.”

  Chen considered this as they waited for the light to change. “And this is acceptable?”

  “It’s normal,” Yan Qing replied. “Those aren’t always the same thing.”

  Chen hummed, clearly unconvinced.

  The silence that followed threatened to stretch into something heavier.

  Yan Qing cleared his throat and glanced pointedly at the takeout bag swinging from Chen’s hand.

  “You seem in a pretty good mood,” he said, deliberately lighter. “Earth sashimi. Really that irresistible?”

  Chen looked down at the container, then back up, unfazed by the shift. “Of course. It’s genuinely good.”

  Yan Qing looked at him with helpless amusement, the corner of his eyes lifting despite himself. “Keeping you fed is going to bankrupt me.”

  Those golden eyes flicked sideways. Then Chen gave him a smile bright enough to be insulting. “In exchange, how about I explain the principle behind my multifunction bracer?”

  Yan Qing’s dark eyes lit instantly. His posture sharpened like a switch had been flipped. “Name your price,” he said at once. “Seriously. Don’t hold back.”

  Works every time.

  Chen didn’t say it aloud, but the thought slid through him with a private satisfaction. Yan Qing’s face—open, eager, unguarded—was a reward all its own.

  They kept walking. Chen spotted a 24-hour convenience store on the corner and stopped. “Wait here. I want to see if they still have that snack from last time.”

  “…Fine,” Yan Qing sighed. “Quick in and out.”

  He didn’t notice—didn’t even register—that he’d already handed his credit card to an alien without a second thought. He watched Chen disappear through the glass doors, and his mind immediately veered toward bracers, power sources, projection lattices, engineering constraints.

  He was halfway into a mental model when a familiar voice drifted from across the street.

  Yan Qing turned on instinct.

  A woman was approaching, her arm looped through a man’s. They walked close, unhurried, as if the city belonged to them.

  It was Xiao Wen—his fiancée.

  Yan Qing’s gaze locked. He straightened from the lamppost as if yanked by a wire and stepped forward.

  Xiaowen didn’t notice at first.

  She noticed him only when he stopped directly in front of her.The smile on Xiaowen’s face froze.“…Yan Qing?”Surprise flickered across her features—sharp, unguarded, gone almost as soon as it appeared.“You’re—” She stopped herself, eyes narrowing slightly, as if reassessing something that should already have been settled. “How come you are out so fast?”Yan Qing frowned. “Out?”She waved it off too quickly. “Nothing.”

  “Xiaowen.” His own voice was low, controlled—too controlled. The slight tremor at the end betrayed him anyway. His eyes slid to the man beside her: tall, tailored, unfamiliar, watching with a distant sort of contempt. Yan Qing’s brow tightened. “What are you doing? Who is he?”

  Xiaowen released the man’s arm almost reflexively, as if the gesture might erase what it had implied. For a beat she looked caught off guard. Then her expression reset—cool, impatient. “He’s my friend. Don’t start a scene, Yan Qing.”

  “A friend?” Yan Qing gave a short, humorless laugh. He stared at her without blinking. “We’re getting married next month. You’re walking down the street holding another man’s arm. You expect me not to ask?”

  Xiaowen’s face darkened, sharpness rising. “Didn’t I tell you? We’re done.”

  Yan Qing went still. “What?”

  “If it’s because I’ve been neglecting you—” he started, and even hearing the words out loud seemed to scrape something raw in him. “—I can change. I will.”

  Xiaowen lifted her chin. Her eyes were cold, the kind of clean, cutting cold that didn’t bother pretending. “We were never going to work. So let’s make it clean. End it.”

  For a moment Yan Qing couldn’t speak. The city noise seemed to press in, distant and unreal.He drew in a breath, forcing his voice to stay steady.“Why,” he said. “You owe me at least that.”

  Xiaowen looked at him for a long moment.

  Not angry.Not conflicted.Just… tired.

  “Fine,” she said. “You want honesty?”

  He nodded.

  “I never stopped seeing other people.”

  The words landed without emphasis.

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  Yan Qing blinked. “What?”

  “Five years,” she continued calmly. “On and off. Sometimes serious, sometimes not. I didn’t think it mattered.”

  His breath caught. “You—”

  “I only agreed to marry you because my father insisted,” she cut in. “He wanted stability. Reputation. Someone he could show off.”

  Her gaze sharpened, finally annoyed.

  “But you?” she said. “You’re dull, Yan Qing. And strange. You live inside your head and expect everyone else to orbit around it.”

  He stood frozen, the city noise rushing back in like static.

  “I tried,” she went on, almost defensively. “I really did. But you don’t feel like a partner. You feel like an obligation. A project.”

  Yan Qing swallowed hard. “Then why stay at all?”

  She hesitated—just long enough to be honest.

  “Because it was easier than fighting my father,” she said.

  Silence.

  “And now?” he asked quietly.

  Xiaowen exhaled. “Now I’m done pretending.”

  She looked at him as if she were finally, generously, letting him see what she’d been thinking for months. “Look at you. Always in a lab, always married to your machines and your data. Do you have any idea what that means for me? Boring. Dull. That wedding ?” She shook her head, disgust plain. “No. I’m not chaining my life to someone who doesn’t even know how to live.”

  “So you picked him.” Yan Qing’s gaze cut to the man again. The man said nothing—only watched with that faint, superior curl at the edge of his mouth.

  “And?” Xiao Wen snapped. “Yes. He knows how to live. He knows how to make me happy. You—” she jabbed the air toward Yan Qing, as if he were a concept she’d gotten tired of— “you cling to your stupid equipment like it’s oxygen. You can’t even sit through one proper dinner without acting awkward. What kind of fiancé is that?”

  Yan Qing stood there, mouth parted, and found nothing. No rebuttal. No defense. The cold wind off the street slid under his collar like a slap.

  He had, painfully, no clean excuse.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at last, the words thin and pale on his tongue. “I didn’t realize you were that disappointed.”

  Xiao Wen rolled her eyes.

  Still the same. Still spineless.

  At first she’d thought he was different. Before Yan Qing she’d never dated a “science type.” Her father had nudged them together; she’d leaned in out of curiosity. And honestly—long hair or not—Yan Qing was attractive. The media loved him. The “young genius” angle had been interesting for a while.

  But novelty rots fast when the other person is the wrong type.

  “Anyway,” she said, arms crossing, gaze flattening as though he’d already become a stranger. “We’re finished. Go back to your lab. That’s where you belong.”

  Yan Qing swallowed, forcing down the bitterness. “Fine. I’ll talk to Uncle Zhao—”

  “Good.” Xiao Wen’s smile was almost cruel. “Make sure you give him a good reason.”

  Then she linked her arm through the man’s again and walked away without looking back, leaving Yan Qing with only the hard line of her shoulders and the certainty of her decision.

  He lowered his head. All he could do was stare at the pavement, like a child caught doing something wrong and not knowing how to fix it.

  A few minutes later, Chen emerged from the convenience store carrying what he apparently considered “snacks”—three boxes of painkillers. He pushed through the glass door, took one look at Yan Qing’s rigid posture, the tight fists, the shadowed face, and his expression shifted.

  “Yan Qing?” Chen crossed quickly, lowering his head to search Yan Qing’s face. “What happened? You don’t look right.”

  Yan Qing didn’t answer. He kept his eyes fixed on the street ahead, as if watching the taillights might pull his thoughts back into order. After several seconds he spoke quietly. “Nothing. Let’s go home.”

  Chen’s brows drew together. Confusion flickered in his golden eyes, followed by something quieter—restraint. He didn’t press. He simply fell into step beside Yan Qing, and together they disappeared into the neon-fed crowd.

  Back at the apartment, Yan Qing tossed his coat onto the sofa and collapsed into a chair, staring at nothing. Chen lingered behind him, silent, watching. Even without touching him—without using any of the methods he could use—Chen could feel the weight in the room.

  He didn’t like it. He didn’t like seeing Yan Qing hollowed out like this.

  A few seconds passed. Chen’s mouth tilted, as if a thought had arrived.

  He lifted his left wrist and brushed his fingers over the bracer—an unassuming piece of Teleopean equipment that only pretended to be jewelry.

  “Yan Qing,” he said softly, a hint of mischief returning to his tone, “have you ever actually looked at my bracer?”

  Yan Qing raised his eyelids with effort. His gaze dropped to Chen’s wrist. ““Visually it’s a bracer. In practice, it’s more like a combined personal computer and communications unit..”

  Even in a wrecked mood, the scientist in him responded on reflex.

  “Correct,” Chen said, pleased. “But I’ve never shown you everything it can do.”

  He sat on the edge of the sofa, angled toward Yan Qing, and tapped a tiny recessed control. A gentle blue sheen bloomed across the bracer’s surface. A translucent holographic screen unfolded into the air between them, floating with impossible steadiness. Interfaces flickered past—schematics Yan Qing couldn’t parse at a glance, biological readouts, dense lattices of data that made Earth technology look like children’s toys.

  “First: baseline functions.” Chen touched the display and a panel expanded. “It tracks my physiology—heart rhythm, blood saturation, energy expenditure. It’s not very useful to you, but it matters to me.”

  Yan Qing frowned at the torrent of information. “That’s basically a smartwatch.”

  Chen arched a brow, mildly offended. “A smartwatch? I’ll want to see one. But—”

  He tapped again.

  The bracer’s housing parted with a seamless motion, and a micro-emitter slid into position. With a soft sweep of light, a three-dimensional map formed in the air—an exact, rotating model of the apartment.

  “Dynamic holographic mapping,” Chen said. “It scans the environment in real time and rebuilds it at scale. That is us.” He pointed; two small markers pulsed where they sat. “And that is the structure.”

  Yan Qing leaned forward despite himself, eyes widening. “That’s… actually useful.”

  Chen blinked—almost smug. “Of course. Teleopean technology is highly valued across parallel universes.”

  He let the map rotate for another beat, then his voice softened. “But I can do better than useful.”

  He tapped once more.

  The blue light dissolved into a drift of gold, like dust caught in sunlight. The apartment fell away.

  Suddenly Yan Qing was standing in the illusion of open space—stars at every angle, a quiet ocean of light stretching beyond walls that no longer seemed to exist. The city outside the windows became irrelevant, unable to compete.

  In the glow of that artificial cosmos, Chen’s face looked even more unreal—beautiful in a way that felt engineered, and yet oddly gentle. His gold eyes held warmth, not threat.

  “It isn’t your universe,” he said lightly, almost teasing, “but it’s still a world full of miracles.”

  A star map unfurled in front of Yan Qing—vast, layered, alive. Routes shimmered like threads. Systems pulsed with encoded histories.

  “This is a Teleopean chart,” Chen said, adjusting the projection. “The galaxies we’ve catalogued, the routes we’ve survived. Each point is a record of what we’ve endured.”

  Yan Qing stared at the swirling stars, then glanced at the cluttered apartment.

  “Hard to believe all this is happening in my living room.”

  Chen smiled. “Every universe needs a center. Today, it’s your sofa. ”

  He magnified a spiral galaxy, its arms turning like slow paint in water. He highlighted a brilliant core. Explained impossible objects with the ease of someone describing weather. A region where time ran strangely. A dark zone where probes went silent and never returned. He spoke of wonders and dangers like they were simply… parts of life.

  And slowly, without anyone naming it, the tightness in Yan Qing’s chest loosened.

  Chen turned his gaze back to him, the warmth in it almost uncomfortable. “We were going to die,” he said, quieter now. “Everything we built would have vanished. Your universe still has time. Still has places to go. We can continue because we found a way here.”

  His eyes held Yan Qing’s. “I am—truly—grateful.”

  Yan Qing didn’t answer right away. He just looked at the stars, and felt something inside him soften into something he hadn’t expected to feel tonight.

  Finally he murmured, “I never thought…”

  Chen tilted his head, watching him carefully. “Does it help?”

  Yan Qing hesitated, then gave the smallest nod. “...Yes. Thank you, Chen.”

  Chen’s smile returned, gentle and bright. “Anytime.”

  Outside, the city kept blazing—sirens, headlights, neon, noise. Inside, under a false starfield that somehow felt more honest than the street, the two of them sat in a rare pocket of quiet that belonged only to them.

  NASA – Fifth Technology Division

  “Sir, we’ve identified a suspicious individual.”

  “Show me.”

  After the aide left, the old man studied the photograph.

  “So… Subject 9 wasn’t the only one.”

  In the image, a man with metallic-gold hair smiled beside a companion. One shadowed eye glimmered faintly—predatory.

  “And this,” the man murmured, eyes shining with obsession, “is the gift you brought me, William Yan Qing.”