The following morning began like any other—sunlight pouring through the glass walls of the penthouse, a faint scent of coffee drifting from the kitchen, and the soft hum of the city waking up beneath them. Shen Rui had already dressed, crisp and quiet, sipping his Americano with half a mind on his schedule and half a mind on her.
Except today, she wasn't there.
No sudden footfalls behind him. No silent breakfast companion sitting across the table, watching him like he was a riddle that needed solving. No notebook in hand, no chart of "sleep efficiency vs. shared space comfort levels." Just… nothing.
It was unsettling.
He tried not to think much of it. Maybe she'd gone back to bed. Or maybe she was updating her chaos graphs. But an hour passed. Then two. She didn't follow him out the door. Didn't check if his tie was crooked. Didn't trail him down to the garage like she always did, standing exactly one meter behind him, no more, no less.
By the time he reached the Shen Group headquarters, Shen Rui was already annoyed. Not furious. Not confused. Just… irritated.
Because she didn't say goodbye.
His mother called later that day.
He took the call between meetings, half-distracted as he reviewed numbers on his tablet.
"Rui," his mother said lightly, "your birthday's next month."
He blinked, expression blank. "Is that a reminder or a warning?"
"A warning," she replied cheerfully. "I expect dinner. And no excuses this year. I'll send someone to help coordinate. Maybe that sweet girl—Lin Xie. I like her. Have you asked her what she's planning to give you?"
Shen Rui raised an eyebrow. "She doesn't care about birthdays."
"Then educate her. You're her first everything, aren't you?"
He didn't answer. His throat went oddly dry.
His mother chuckled. "Talk to her. See what she's up to. I have a feeling she'll surprise you."
Then the line cut off.
Back in the penthouse that night, Shen Rui noticed it again: the silence.
She wasn't there to greet him. Wasn't curled on the couch. The table was untouched. Her tablet was missing. He walked through the living room, then stopped in the hallway outside her door.
He knocked once.
No answer.
He tried again. "Lin Xie?"
Nothing.
He frowned.
Behind that door, Lin Xie was sitting cross-legged on the floor, wires splayed out around her, circuits blinking in intricate arrays, small mechanical limbs twitching beside a half-finished chassis. A soldering pen glowed faintly in her fingers as she adjusted a sensor, her brows furrowed in focus.
She didn't hear him. Not really. Her mind was too busy calculating heat dispersion ratios, optimizing stabilization functions, and testing defense protocol sequences. The robot in front of her was still skeletal—no casing yet—but its framework was dense, armored, and reinforced with multi-core AI memory chips.
It was a bodyguard.
She was building him a bodyguard.
Because he always walked in front of her.
Because when people stared at her, he moved to block them.
Because the capital whispered about him—about his status, his power, his rivals.
And for some reason she didn't fully understand, the thought of him in danger made her hands tighten.
She didn't know what a birthday was.
The word was familiar. But she had no memory of one. No date she could call hers. No candles, no cakes, no laughter burned into her childhood because there was no childhood.
But now there was him.
And his mother had said it like it mattered.
So she researched.
"Birthday: the anniversary of someone's birth. Often celebrated with gifts, events, or gestures of affection."
Affection.
She didn't have much of that. Not the traditional kind.
But she could build.
She could protect.
So she decided. She would give him something no one else ever could: something made entirely by her hands, her mind, her intention.
A machine that would stand between him and any harm.
She hadn't told him.
Didn't plan to.
The robot needed to be a surprise.
And so for the next several days, Lin Xie barely left her room.
She ordered parts under false names. Had materials routed through dummy accounts. She built until her fingers were stained with wire grease and her nails were chipped. She tested movement protocols, AI response time, emergency override behavior. She taught the robot how to say Shen Rui's name in nine different tones, just to see which one sounded safest.
Meanwhile, outside that door, Shen Rui was quietly spiraling.
Because she stopped following him.
She stopped watching him work, stopped quietly correcting his math when he worked too late and got sloppy, stopped sitting next to him in shared silence like it was the most natural thing in the world.
It wasn't like her.
And for the first time in years, Shen Rui felt something… hollow.
Like something important was slowly backing away from him and he didn't know how to stop it.
She didn't even kiss him anymore.
No surprise attacks.
No kisses that made him freeze up and sweat.
No quiet mumbles about lip angles or oxygen intake.
Just… nothing.
On day five, he stood outside her door again.
Knocked once.
No answer.
His jaw tightened. "Are you angry with me?"
Silence.
He stepped back. Waited another ten seconds. Then walked away.
Inside, Lin Xie glanced at the door for exactly one second.
Then back at the robot.
She'd installed a retinal ID sensor last night. It would only respond to his eyes. His fingerprints. His voice.
She looked down at the power core glowing faintly in her hands, heart oddly heavy.
She missed him.
But she wanted to give him this.
Her first gift.
His first birthday with her
She whispered under her breath, "Please work."
And soldered the next piece into place.
-----
That evening, the Shen estate was lit up in quiet, tasteful luxury. The grand courtyard buzzed with low instrumental music, the ambient scent of white jasmine, and a guest list so influential that the security detail could've doubled as an international summit.
It was Shen Rui's birthday.
But he didn't look like someone being celebrated.
He was quiet. Composed. Wearing an ink-black tailored suit and standing beneath the lanterns like a statue carved from cold firelight—sharp, unreadable, regal.
He greeted the important guests. Shook hands with board members. Let relatives approach with polite smiles and predictable flattery.
But his eyes kept searching.
Scanning the edges of the crowd.
She was late.
Lin Xie didn't arrive until halfway through dinner.
She appeared silently, as usual. No fanfare. No dramatic entrance. Just a soft click of heels on marble, a slipstream of midnight blue silk as she passed through the garden path—shoulders bare, hair pinned loosely, no makeup except for a faint shimmer at the corners of her eyes.
Like stardust had tried to collect on her and only managed to linger.
She looked…
He almost forgot how to breathe.
She looked like nothing in that courtyard could hold her attention except him.
And it was true.
Because the moment she stepped onto the scene, she didn't glance at the guests, didn't greet his family, didn't blink at the wealthy heiresses peeking from behind gold-rimmed champagne flutes.
She walked straight toward Shen Rui.
Stopped just two feet away.
And tilted her head.
"You didn't wait," she said quietly.
"You're late," he murmured back.
"I was finishing something."
His eyes flicked down to the faint trace of black smudge on her wrist—the ghost of soldering work she must've scrubbed off in a rush.
He didn't ask.
She didn't explain.
But something in him twisted.
She was here.
She hadn't forgotten.
And she looked at him like he was the reason stars were mapped.
"Happy birthday," she said simply.
He exhaled, like he'd been holding that breath for hours.
"Thank you."
Behind them, someone called for the toast.
A crystal clink. A dozen voices lifting glasses. Polite, rehearsed compliments about Shen Rui's empire, his brilliance, his future.
But he wasn't listening.
Because her fingers—small, cool—had just brushed the inside of his wrist.
A signal.
"Later," she whispered.
He nodded.
He didn't ask what.
Because she looked like she was holding a secret.
And Lin Xie didn't have secrets—not the usual kind. Everything she was, she said. Everything she thought, she calculated. But this… this was different.
The rest of the night passed in a blur.
People came and went.
His mother teased him about marriage.
His sister joked that Lin Xie must be a government experiment.
His father clapped him on the back and handed him the key to a new investment fund.
But Shen Rui kept looking at the clock.
At Lin Xie, who now stood across the courtyard, silent in the shadows, ignoring food, champagne, conversation. Her eyes only followed him.
When the party ended and the last of the guests had been ushered out, Shen Rui didn't go to his study.
He went to the balcony.
She was already there.
Sitting on the wide bench under the overhanging vines, a square black case at her feet.
When he stepped forward, she stood.
No words.
She simply picked up the case and opened it with two quick flicks of her fingers.
Inside—
A machine.
Compact. Matte black. Sleek and angular like something out of a defense lab prototype. It was humanoid, roughly the size of a teenager, its core exposed in gentle pulses of blue light. And its eyes—
It had his eyes.
Or rather, a scan of his eyes embedded in the core recognition system.
Shen Rui's breath left him.
"I didn't know what a birthday gift was supposed to be," Lin Xie said softly. "But I know you're surrounded by risks. You don't say it. But I've observed."
She glanced down at the bot.
"So I built something that will stay close when I can't. Something that won't blink when you're threatened. It's not perfect yet. But… it'll follow you. Protect you. Shield you from harm, even if I'm not there."
He didn't speak.
He couldn't.
She turned slightly away, uncertain now. "If it's not good, I can disassemble it. I know you don't like attention, or gifts that make noise, or—"
"Lin Xie."
She froze.
He reached forward and gently tilted her chin back toward him.
His voice was low. Taut.
"You built me a guardian?"
She nodded.
"I ran the code myself. It doesn't listen to anyone else. It will only respond to you."
Shen Rui swallowed once.
Hard.
Then leaned down.
And pressed a soft kiss to her temple.
It was the first time he initiated it.
And Lin Xie…
Paused.
Her body stilled like a system freeze. Then, cautiously, almost like she was afraid of glitching, she leaned into it.
"I didn't know if you'd like it," she murmured.
He exhaled near her skin. "I love it."
She blinked. "You're overheating."
"No, I'm—"
She touched his cheek. "Facial temperature +1.9 degrees. Retinal moisture present. Vocal pattern distorted. You're emotional."
He laughed, shaking his head.
The robot stood in the background, silent, blinking its soft blue eyes.
And Shen Rui—still the youngest tycoon in China, still untouchable to the outside world—stood in the shadows with a genius girl in blue silk who didn't know what birthdays meant but built him protection from scratch.
The best gift of his life.
And she hadn't even known it was the first she ever gave.
Shen Rui didn't let go of her hand for a long time.
They stood there under the soft halo of lights from the estate balcony—her expression unreadable, his heartbeat louder than he liked to admit. The robot she'd built stood quietly behind them, its core glowing in sync with the subtle tension in the air.
Finally, he asked, voice steady but soft, "When's your birthday?"
She blinked up at him, like he'd asked her something in a language not yet downloaded to her system.
"I don't have one."
"You don't remember?"
"I was never assigned one."
That hit him harder than he expected.
Assigned. Like she wasn't born, but logged. Filed somewhere. Like she was a number, a line of code. A blueprint brought to life without celebration, without cake, without candles or chaos or anyone singing out of tune while she tried to blow out a flame she didn't ask for.
Shen Rui stared at her.
"No one ever celebrated your birthday?" he asked quietly.
She shook her head. "I was never told the date. The institution that raised me didn't… consider personal milestones useful. It was always data. Progress. Metrics."
She paused.
"I only learned what a birthday was when your mother asked me what I was giving you."
Something in his chest clenched.
And then, without ceremony, without even fully understanding why, Shen Rui reached down, clasped both her hands in his, and said—
"Then you're sharing mine."
Lin Xie tilted her head, confused. "Sharing what?"
"My birthday. From now on, it's yours too."
She blinked.
He said it like it was final. Like he was rewriting a law, not suggesting a sentiment.
"You don't get to go without one anymore," he added.
"Isn't that inefficient?"
"No. It's fair."
"But the world only has so many days. Wouldn't sharing cause a dilution of—"
"Lin Xie."
She stopped.
He stared at her, not as CEO or project, not as handler or experiment.
But as someone who wanted her to have a day that belonged to her.
"Your birthday," he said again, softer now, "is the day you arrived. The day you entered my life. That's enough reason for it to matter."
She was silent.
Not calculating. Not blinking through emotionless software.
Just quiet.
Genuinely quiet.
He'd never seen her look like that.
After a long pause, she whispered, "I don't know how to celebrate one."
"Good," he replied. "You get to learn."
He raised one hand and gently flicked the corner of her forehead.
"Next year, I expect two cakes. One for me. One for you."
"Won't that double the sugar intake?"
He chuckled. "We'll risk it."
She looked down at their joined hands.
Then said, like she was logging a new data point, "Shared birthday: confirmed."
She nodded once, then very seriously added, "I will attempt to enjoy it."
His breath hitched in his throat. And then he laughed—quiet, helpless.
"God help me," he muttered. "You're adorable."
She blinked. "That word again."
He leaned down and brushed her nose with his.
"You'll figure it out," he whispered.
And somewhere, not far from them, the robot she made softly turned its head to face the stars—its blue light flickering like a pulse of something almost human.
Next year, there would be two names on the cake.
And finally, one more person in the world who got to celebrate being alive.