He worked in silence.
At least, he tried to.
Shen Rui's fingers flew across the keyboard, typing out revisions to a proposal, numbers and projections scrolling past on dual monitors. His desk was clean, his posture exact, his mind sharp as ever. He'd shut out distractions a thousand times before. Noise, people, chaos—none of it fazed him.
But now… there were eyes.
Staring.
Unblinking.
He didn't even have to look to know.
Lin Xie sat perched at the edge of the long couch near his desk, elbows resting on her knees, chin slightly tilted down, her gaze pinned on him with eerie intensity.
Like she was studying a strange species.
Like he was the one being analyzed under a microscope for once.
"I can feel you staring," he said flatly, not looking up.
"You blinked just now."
"That's called being human."
"You do it in groups of three."
He paused mid-sentence. "Excuse me?"
"Every time you're focused. Grouped blinking pattern. Three short, one longer. Then you stop. Twelve seconds of pause."
He turned to glance at her, expression halfway between exhaustion and disbelief. "Are you cataloguing my blinking now?"
"I like patterns," she said simply.
Then she stood and crossed the office to stand beside him, peering at the document on his screen without asking. He didn't bother stopping her anymore.
She pointed to a paragraph in the draft. "Your phrasing here is too soft. The client will think you're flexible."
He blinked—once.
"Change 'we may consider' to 'pending our terms.'"
He stared at the sentence. She was right.
"I've already read this proposal," she added.
"When?"
"This morning. While you were reviewing the last one. You minimize windows in a predictable rhythm."
"…You broke into my documents."
"I clicked on them."
"That's not better."
She leaned over, reached for a pen, and underlined a section in his handwritten notes without hesitation. "You can remove this clause. They already agreed verbally."
Shen Rui leaned back in his chair, arms crossing as he stared at her—this girl who had materialized into his meticulously controlled life like a glitch in the matrix. A quiet, sharp, hoodie-clad hurricane who now helped with contracts, rewrote proposals, pointed out inconsistencies in financial reports, and catalogued his blinks—all without ever being asked.
And she didn't even realize she was helping.
Or being strange.
Or unsettling.
Or distracting.
She just was.
She moved back to the couch after a while, curling her legs under her, still watching him work in the exact same silence.
He went back to typing. Ten seconds passed.
"You blinked again," she whispered.
He slammed the keyboard gently against the desk and sighed.
But didn't ask her to leave.
-----
The city outside blurred into streaks of neon and gold, dusk bleeding across glass windows as the black car pulled away from the office building.
Inside the vehicle, silence reigned.
Lin Xie sat with her hands neatly folded in her lap, seatbelt fastened with textbook precision. Her eyes didn't leave him—not even once. She sat angled toward Shen Rui, watching him the same way someone might observe a ticking bomb or an unfamiliar species of predator. Fascinated. Quiet. Intrigued.
He could feel it. The weight of her gaze. Like infrared locked onto his side profile.
He tapped once on his phone screen, checked a schedule, then flicked a glance at her.
"You're staring again."
"Yes."
"…You do realize that makes most people uncomfortable."
"I'm not most people," she replied without hesitation.
"That's becoming increasingly obvious."
Her eyes didn't shift. Didn't blink. She was cataloguing again—he could tell. Every time his thumb moved. Every micro-expression. Every word he used, processed and filed away in whatever titanium vault she called a brain.
She tilted her head slightly. "Why do you check your calendar at red lights but never when the car is moving?"
"Because I trust my driver less than I trust a stationary vehicle," he muttered.
Lin Xie nodded. "Statistically reasonable."
Shen Rui sighed.
The rest of the ride continued in that eerie quiet. The kind that wasn't heavy, just dense. Thoughtful. Analytical. Lin Xie occasionally glanced at the tinted windows as they passed pedestrians, shops, and blinking billboards, but never for long. Everything returned to him. Back to the strange puzzle that was her new environment—and he, apparently, was at the center of it.
She didn't speak again until they were nearing the penthouse district.
"You didn't flinch today when the CFO raised his voice," she said softly, almost like she was thinking aloud. "But you gripped your pen tighter when Zhou mentioned the client from Vance Holdings."
Shen Rui arched a brow. "And?"
"You disliked the CFO, but you weren't threatened. You're threatened by the client. Or irritated."
"I'm not threatened by anyone."
She nodded. "Irritated then."
He exhaled through his nose, amused despite himself. "Is there anything you don't log?"
"Not unless I'm told to."
"And no one told you to log me."
She looked out the window again as the car pulled into the secured gate of the building.
"You're the most confusing thing in this city," she said quietly. "I'm still collecting data."
The car slowed to a stop in the private basement garage. The guard saluted. The elevator waited.
Shen Rui stepped out of the car. Lin Xie followed.
Still watching.
Still silent.
Still processing him like he was her most intricate mission yet.
He tried not to wonder what she was learning.
The elevator ride to the penthouse was silent—at least on his end.
Lin Xie, however, was in her usual observational mode.
She stood beside him, not quite stiff, not quite relaxed. Just… alert. Always alert. Her eyes scanned the floor numbers ascending, then flicked briefly to the reflection in the mirrored panel above—checking angles, timing, tension. She looked like she was waiting for a mission briefing.
Instead, when the elevator doors slid open with a soft chime, she stepped out, turned toward the kitchen—and said, with complete deadpan finality:
"Cook."
Shen Rui paused mid-step.
"…What?"
"Food," she said, without turning around. "You. Make it."
He blinked. The door slid closed behind them.
"Did you just give me an order?"
"Yes."
He stared at her. She'd already walked to the kitchen counter, scanning the fridge door like she was looking for a bomb schematic. When he didn't move, she turned around and pointed a single, calm finger at the stove.
"Now."
"You're ordering me to cook in my own penthouse," he said slowly, trying to decide whether to laugh or be deeply offended.
"Yes."
"And what exactly makes you think I'd agree?"
"You owe me," she said, expression unreadable.
"For what, exactly?"
"I finished your twenty-six-page contract proposal draft, cross-checked with the department revisions, flagged two minor calculation inconsistencies, and told Zhou not to give you coffee with expired milk."
"…Fair," he muttered under his breath.
Still. No one ordered him around. Not his board. Not his investors. Not the prime minister of Czechia when he once offered Shen Rui a private jet to switch investment firms.
Yet here she was—half-machine girl, chaos in a hoodie, sitting now with one leg curled under her at the dining table, watching him with the authority of a small dictator.
He sighed and rolled up his sleeves. "Fine. But if I burn it, you're eating it anyway."
"I don't fear toxins," she replied blandly.
Of course she didn't.
He opened the fridge, rummaged around, and started pulling out ingredients. Lin Xie leaned on the table, chin in her hand, completely unbothered by her own impudence.
And she didn't stop watching him. Not once.
"You hold the knife too high," she commented.
He sliced the onion harder. "Do you want food or do you want me to leave my own home?"
"You're tolerable. When you're not talking."
He turned, half-offended, half-exasperated.
She was poking a wrapped loaf of bread with the intensity of a lab technician testing alien material. A second later, the bread slipped off the counter, and she caught it upside-down midair like it was a live grenade.
He stared.
She placed it back on the counter with the solemnity of a professional assassin.
"Still edible," she said.
He was trying so hard not to laugh.
By the time the food was done—simple stir-fry and rice—Lin Xie was sitting in the chair like a smug little gremlin, arms folded, expression flat but victorious. Shen Rui placed the plate in front of her and said nothing.
She took a bite. Chewed. Chewed more.
Paused.
"…Not awful."
Shen Rui gave her a dry look. "You really know how to flatter a man."
"I was programmed for honesty, not flattery."
She continued eating.
And he, strangely, didn't walk away.
He sat across from her instead, watching her poke the tofu like it might explode.
She wasn't smiling. She wasn't laughing. She didn't even say thank you.
But she was here. Eating. Calm. Not breaking anything.
And somehow, that was more chaotic than all the rest.
As she scraped the last grain of rice from her plate with exacting precision—like she was deconstructing it for analysis—Shen Rui leaned back in his seat, arms folded. He watched her in silence for a moment, wondering again how he ended up letting a human enigma invade his high-security penthouse, command him into cooking, and criticize his knife grip like it was a war crime.
"You remember the banquet tomorrow," he said finally.
She didn't look up. "Obviously."
"There'll be a car ready at five. The dress is already in the wardrobe. Makeup artist arrives at three."
She nodded once, calmly. "Understood."
No dramatics. No questions. No confusion.
They had agreed on this arrangement before—an act. She'd pretend to be his girlfriend to shut down whatever matchmaking plan his mother had concocted. It had been a tactical agreement. Efficient. Logical.
Still, he couldn't help studying her for a beat longer.
Lin Xie, in turn, studied the polished surface of her plate, then stood up and placed it precisely into the sink. She turned her head slightly, like calculating the next step.
"Do I need to adjust behavior according to any specific script?" she asked. "Public affection? Eye contact? Proximity cues?"
Shen Rui blinked. "Not… too much. Just enough to make it believable."
She nodded again, already making a mental list.
"I'll calculate the average handholding duration observed in couples and prepare suitable expressions."
He opened his mouth. Closed it again. "You really don't have to—"
"I'll also simulate blushing," she added, half to herself. "Or at least approximate it with skin temperature modulation."
"…You don't need to simulate anything."
"Then I'll refrain from weaponized acting," she said seriously, and moved to the hallway.
She paused.
"Should I bring my own cutlery?"
He frowned. "It's not a covert mission. It's just dinner. With politicians. And businessmen. And my very nosy family."
"Then I'll observe. Adjust. Blend."
She started toward her room, still muttering about analyzing romantic couple body language videos to mimic them more efficiently.
Shen Rui stared at the empty hallway where she disappeared, then sighed.
This was going to be a mess.
But it was already too late to back out.