Chapter 126: Password (9)

126 – Password (9)

What followed was all quite natural. They went to celebrate with a hotpot meal, then headed home together—the only thing that happened was that Lin Xun forgot to remove his collar. Feeling guilty, he couldn’t shake the feeling that a few people had glanced at him a little too long.

On the way back, Jia Gou asked, “Algorithm, you seem a bit off today.”

Lin Xun shrugged. “The final selection is in a couple of days.”

“Don’t worry,” Wang Anquan said. “Our algorithm will crush the competition.”

“That’s easy to say,” Lin Xun replied. “But we’re not exactly top-tier.”

He hadn’t been present for the latter half of the preliminary selection, but he had watched the livestream from Dong Jun’s car while being held by him. The result was undeniable: when the scores were announced, with a full score of 100, Goddess of the Luo River ranked first with 95.7 points, advancing to the final selection.

The deducted 4.3 points might have been due to some judges questioning its scope of application—such things were not unprecedented. The most well-known example was AlphaGo over a decade ago, which defeated a genius Go player, proving that artificial intelligence could indeed surpass human computational abilities through learning and training. However, the team later suffered significant losses because the training costs for AI were too high, and no matter how intelligent it was, it could only play Go. It was a product whose significance outweighed its practical value, much like many other AI products it represented.

But Lo was still quite practical.

At the very least, when Lin Xun was about to get out of Dong Jun’s car, it proactively reminded him that it was raining outside.

“If this isn’t impressive, what do you want? To reach the heavens?” Wang Anquan said.

“Look, we’ve worked on this for three years. But the opponents we’ll face in the final selection have likely put in no less effort than we have.”

“Six years,” Jia Gou chimed in. “We actually started planning it in college.”

“Exactly, but we also have to face the wildcard entrants,” Lin Xun said. “Galaxy, Eagle will bring their most promising product this year to the expo for a preview. Eagle has also developed strong AI this year, and their team has dozens of people.”

“So what?” Wang Anquan said. “We only have two days left. Our product is already finalized and can’t be improved further. These two days, we should just relax and have fun. Maybe, Algorithm, if we dress you up nicely these days, we’ll score higher.”

Lin Xun: “…”

He refused to continue the conversation with Wang Anquan and leaned against Jia Gou, browsing MO with him. MO, short for MathOverflow, is a mathematics community. Unlike ordinary Q&A forums, the questions users post here are often unsolved, cutting-edge problems. For example, the question Lin Xun first saw when he logged in at age eleven still remained unanswered.

Faced with mathematics, no one could avoid feeling insignificant. The goddess of mathematics stood there, always there, looking down upon all living beings, telling people: there are indeed laws in this world that humans, even with all their intelligence and a lifetime of effort, cannot touch. So browsing MO was something that calmed Lin Xun’s mind—compared to mathematical problems, real-life issues seemed trivial, and he shouldn’t let them trouble him.

Thus, he maintained this false sense of peace gained from browsing MO to keep himself going, spending an uneventful evening sitting on the sofa petting his cat.

Jia Gou handed him a glass of cold milk. Lin Xun took it and brought it to his lips.

His breathing trembled slightly as he raised the cup, tilted his head back, and took a small sip.

The next moment, a wave of nausea surged up. His hand shook, spilling milk all over the table—then he choked, coughing violently.

Jia Gou patted his back rhythmically. “What’s wrong with you today?”

Lin Xun took a deep breath, but the false calm still couldn’t hold. When a person is nervous, they truly can’t eat anything.

He said he was fine, then added, “I’m going to bed early today.”

Jia Gou looked at him, a hint of concern in his sapphire-blue eyes. “Then rest well.”

Lin Xun hummed in response, walked over to the coffee table in the living room, and pulled open a drawer beneath it—this was where they usually kept their medicine.

In the programming profession, schedules often flip day and night. Once the biological clock is disrupted, sleep quality tends to suffer, so they always kept a stock of over-the-counter sleep aids on hand—from melatonin to oryzanol and even chlorpheniramine, each suited for different situations.

He randomly grabbed a bottle, took a double dose, shut Zhi Zhen out of the room, turned off the lights, and went to bed.

Zhi Zhen scratched at the door a few times, meowed repeatedly, but to no avail, and eventually fell silent.

Lin Xun stared at the ceiling, not even knowing what he was thinking himself. After a while, the medication took effect, and the world before him grew hazy and dark.

Lin Xun had never liked dreaming, not since he was a child.

Unlike those with rich emotions or vivid imaginations who took pleasure in all kinds of dreams, he found dreams chaotic and illogical. During the day, his logic ruled his perception, but whenever he closed his eyes, everything spiraled out of control—just as he never knew what he would dream of the moment he lost consciousness.

A starry sky, an endless expanse of stars. Countless specks of light twinkled overhead, and a brilliant Galaxy faintly traced the distant horizon. Only summer nights had skies like this. The chirping of crickets in his ears and the cool breeze surrounding him confirmed it—this was a clear summer night.

So where was this?

Lin Xun looked around dazedly. He seemed to be on a rooftop. He glanced down, his gaze landing on an open window. As his eyes settled there, his thoughts grew even more muddled and blurred, as if he were looking down upon the entire room.

It was an exquisitely furnished space. In the center of the room was a bed that looked incredibly soft, with spotless white sheets and duvet covers. Summer nights brought mosquitoes, so the bed was draped with a white mosquito net, one corner swaying gently in the breeze and moonlight, like gauze or flowing mist.

This wasn’t an environment Lin Xun was familiar with. He looked to one side and saw a wall lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with books bearing obscure titles, most related to literature, sculpture, and painting. On the opposite side, to the far right of the wall facing the bed, stood a vanity—the mirror and chair were pristine, and in front of it lay beautiful combs, bottles and jars, hair ties, brooches, necklaces, and other jewelry—a woman’s room.

Suddenly, a voice sounded by his ear.

“This is the ninth year.”

A very pleasant voice.

Suddenly, an indescribable electric current surged through his entire body, as if for a moment all the blood flowing within him had turned to ice water. Lin Xun shuddered, clearly remembering everything—that collar, when the collar emitted a signal, it meant you were now entering a stable, continuous dream. And in that instant, his cognition and thoughts regained clarity, almost indistinguishable from his daytime waking state.

He realized he was sitting on the roof of a small building, the surroundings all too familiar—the little house where he had lived with his grandfather and Lin Ting as a child. But that window across from him… he strangely had no memory of it.

The character in this dream still seemed to be himself. He had a peculiar feeling that with a little effort, he could freely control this person, but he didn’t act on it, allowing his dream self to move freely.

So he turned to look beside him—and surprisingly, there was someone else sitting there.

A boy of about fourteen or fifteen, with beautiful, soft black hair that seemed freshly washed, because Lin Xun caught the pleasant scent of lemon—the shampoo he had loved most in the past, though it had been discontinued after he started high school. Lin Xun continued observing: this person wore a very loose white T-shirt, making him appear slender, delicate, soft, and well-behaved.

But when he saw this person’s features—

Delicate features that at first glance might be mistaken for a girl’s, but not the next moment, because within that delicacy lay a faint sharpness, like a feline hidden in the grass—lazy and weary now, yet with sharp teeth and claws.

Looking at those features, Lin Xun could perfectly envision what he would look like ten years later, because he recognized this person without a doubt as Dong Jun.

But his inner thoughts did not affect the actions of his dream self.

In the dream, Lin Xun spoke to the beautiful fourteen- or fifteen-year-old friend beside him, his tone light and cheerful: “So we’ve known each other for nine years now.”

“Mm.” His friend was still gazing at that half-open window. Under the moonlight, the snow-white room resembled a quiet funeral hall.

Lin Xun asked: “Are you thinking about her?”

He shook his head: “No.”

Lin Xun: “Even though I’ve never met my mother, I still think about her sometimes. When I was little, it used to make me very sad.”

The person beside him, however, spoke calmly, like someone devoid of emotion: “I’ve never been sad because of her.”

“But you’ve never mentioned her to me. I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.” Lin Xun rested his chin on his hand. “So I never dared ask you how she passed away… no one ever told me.”

“She committed suicide,” the person beside him replied. “That day, she made me practice the piano, then called my father and said she missed him, asking him to come home quickly. And then, by the time my father returned, she was already dead.”

Lin Xun: “Why did she commit suicide?”

That person withdrew his gaze from the room and instead looked up at the starry sky. His silhouette was quiet in the night: “Because my father couldn’t bear to be apart from her, so he forbade her from going out. Or maybe because of me—he thought my mother had divided some of her love for me, so he forbade her from having contact with me.”

Lin Xun moved closer to him, leaning against him. He felt the two of them were like two little animals huddled together.

But there was one thing that left him deeply dissatisfied.

“Why do you keep looking at the stars?” He spoke with a slight nasal tone, almost like a coquettish complaint. “I’ve been watching you for so long.”

Dong Jun turned to look at him, his eyes holding a gentle, playful smile. His response carried a similarly coquettish tone. “If I kept looking at you, I might want to lock you away too.”

Lin Xun was amused by this. He nudged his shoulder. “No need to lock me up. I’d never leave you anyway.”

“But,” he added, “if you really did lock me up, I wouldn’t call the police.”

Dong Jun studied him for five seconds, his gaze serious, as if genuinely considering the possibility of locking him away.

“If I never lock you up,” he said, “will you never take your own life, and stay with me forever?”

Lin Xun also thought seriously for five seconds before replying, “Of course I’ll stay with you forever.”

“Really?” Dong Jun frowned slightly. “She once liked my father too, but the people you like when you’re young don’t always stay that way.”

“I don’t think so,” Lin Xun said, looking up at the stars. “For example, when I was five or six, my grandfather taught me to write code and solve math problems, and even then, I felt like I might spend my whole life with these things. So by analogy, friends you like when you’re five or six won’t drift apart either.”

Then he turned back. “But why do you keep comparing you and me to your mother and father tonight? I think it’s a bit strange.”

Dong Jun suddenly leaned in gently. Lin Xun didn’t move, perhaps out of confusion, or perhaps because the visual impact of such a handsome face drawing near was overwhelming. He remained still until this beautiful friend lightly kissed him on the left cheek, as fleeting as a dragonfly skimming water, then pulled back and quietly watched him.

Lin Xun thought for three seconds.

Three seconds later, he leaned in and kissed Dong Jun’s left cheek in return.

Dong Jun’s eyes curved into a soft smile.

Lin Xun suddenly felt his cheeks grow warm, but he didn’t mind. It wasn’t like a boy and a girl—a kiss wasn’t something to be shy about. He pulled Dong Jun down to lie beside him, shoulder to shoulder on the rooftop, gazing at the stars.

Watching the stars sometimes requires a bit of abstract spatial awareness. He could recognize many constellations—Lyra in the northeast, Virgo in the southwest—their positions shifting eternally with the seasons, but the North Star remained constant.

As he stared at the shimmering North Star, the entire world suddenly felt lighter, as if floating. Lin Xun saw everything in the distance blurring, and the breathing of the person beside him gradually softened, a sign that the dream was about to end.

From start to finish, he hadn’t tried to control his dream self, perhaps feeling that the time of youth shouldn’t be disturbed. But in this moment of awakening, he sank deeper, into the body of his fourteen-year-old self, and asked Dong Jun, “Would you really lock me away?”

Dong Jun turned to look at him, a hint of surprise in his eyes, as if he hadn’t expected such a question. Then he smiled, clear and soft like fireflies on a summer night.

“Though I may resemble him in some ways,” he said, “you should go wherever you want to go.”

Lin Xun gazed at him for a long time, then watched as everything before him dissolved into scattered fragments like fireflies, lifted by the evening breeze, drifting and settling gently, until the world before him returned to a dark, tranquil calm.

He sat up in bed. Four in the morning.

Perhaps it was the deep silence of the night, or perhaps it was the sudden awakening from a dream, but he felt calm now, completely free of the tension and anxiety he had felt before falling asleep.

He took out his phone and slowly typed in a string of numbers.

Dong Jun had torn up that piece of paper.

But it didn’t matter. Even if it was torn to shreds, it made no difference.

What he had seen, he never needed to consciously remember—especially numbers. A single glance was enough to commit them to memory.

He sent a text message.

“Can we talk?”