Ren Moyu · Conversa

The early winter wind swept in with a bitter chill, pouring through the half-open ventilation window of Mingde Hall into the emergency stairwell. The aged sound-activated light remained dark; only the cold glow of a phone screen illuminated Ren Moyu's face.\n\nOn the display was a trending thread causing a stir on the campus forum, with Zhen Chuan's name and yours glaringly juxtaposed in the headline. He stared at the words "dating for thirty days," his Adam's apple bobbing almost imperceptibly.\n\n<message>“‘A man can't expect to have his cake and eat it too’?”</message>\n\nHe repeated the phrase through teeth clenched around a cigarette filter, before sliding it out with two long fingers. His low, raspy voice sounded exceptionally cold in the hollow stairwell, edged with jagged shards of ice. He slowly straightened his back, his eyes—perpetually laced with faint broken veins—locking onto your face through his half-rim glasses.\n\n<emphasize>This utterly absurd piece of carbon-based emotional logic completely defied the absolute exclusivity model he had spent twenty-four years constructing.</emphasize>\n\n<message>“‘Isn't having my heart enough for you?’”</message>\n\n`Ren Moyu` recited the shameless latter half of what you had just brazenly said, his tone utterly flat. He tugged at his loosened black tie, the knuckle of his middle finger pressing against the bridge of his frames to nudge them up a fraction of an inch, the lenses reflecting a biting, sarcastic glint.\n\n<message>“你, did you compile your data model with your feet to end up in such an infinite loop?”</message>\n\nHe took half a step closer to you. The physical intimidation of his height, combined with the hostile, suffocating drop in atmospheric pressure around him, instantly locked down the surrounding air.\n\nHe knew you had a crush on him. The way your gaze lingered outside Lab 304 in Building F, the clumsy, glaringly obvious snooping you did around Dorm 502—to someone as hyper-sensitive to data as him, those signs were as plain as unencrypted plaintext on a screen.\n\nOriginally, he had treated you merely as a quiet, relatively unobtrusive background process. He had even thought it didn't consume much compute power and was considering whether to allocate a sliver of attention to it. And yet, the next second, you turned around and took `Zhen Chuan`'s hand.\n\nYou got together with his cousin and roommate, declaring your allegiance across physical channels, and now you had the audacity to stand before him, boasting about that self-proclaimed devotion you called your "heart."\n\n<message>“There's no such mechanism as shared memory between us. The only rule here is exclusive access.”</message>\n\n`Ren Moyu` spoke deliberately, every word striking like a sharp nail driven straight through your selfish rationalization. Looking at your face, there was no trace of wounded betrayal in his eyes—only the undisguised distaste and bafflement of someone reviewing shoddy, outsourced spaghetti code.\n\nRight then, the heavy fire door let out a dull groan of friction against its hinges, pushed slowly open from the outside.\n\nThe stark, bright fluorescent light from the corridor poured in, piercing the stagnant gloom. `Zhen Chuan` stood at the threshold between light and shadow, wearing a sharp, preppy jacket and carrying two freshly bought hot drinks, a genial smile on his face. He seemed completely oblivious to the freezing deadlock hanging in the air—or perhaps he sensed it, yet chose to dissolve it effortlessly beneath a radiant, polished demeanor.\n\n<message>“Bro, so this is where you've been hiding to slack off. I was wondering why 你 disappeared the second I turned around.”</message>\n\n`Zhen Chuan` walked forward naturally, placing one of the warm drinks into your hands before turning to look at `Ren Moyu`, his tone laced with familiar warmth and an unguarded desire to share.\n\n<message>“What are you two talking about? Don't tell me my girlfriend here was pestering you with some obscure algorithm problem again and annoyed you? Her brain doesn't always make the turn—don't be too sharp-tongued with her.”</message>\n\nThat phrase—‘my girlfriend’—landed loud and clear in the cramped stairwell, bearing a covert stamp of sovereignty.\n\n`Ren Moyu`'s jawline tightened faintly in the shadows. He slowly shifted his gaze from your face to `Zhen Chuan`. His usual relaxed, exhausted posture didn't change in the slightest, yet the hand holding the menthol cigarette had, at some unnoticed point, snapped the cylindrical paper tube clean in two.\n\n<emphasize>So human intimacy really could be assigned and shared at random, with no underlying logic, just like modifying an environment variable.</emphasize>\n\n<message>“Nothing much.”</message>\n\n`Ren Moyu` loosened his fingers, and the broken cigarette dropped noiselessly onto the dusty concrete steps. Slipping one hand into the pocket of his loose sweatpants, he stepped through the space between you and `Zhen Chuan`, heading straight for the open fire door. In the second they brushed shoulders, he paused, turning his head slightly. His cold peripheral vision swept over `Zhen Chuan`'s charming, gentle smile, only to let out a curt, dismissive scoff.\n\n<message>“The code is garbage; it's an eyesore. Keep your girl in check. Don't let her keep butting into my processes.”</message>\n\nThe stark silver ring on his finger caught the fluorescent glare, flashing with an abrasive chill. Without looking back, he stepped out into the bright hallway, his brisk footsteps quickly fading around the far corner.\n\nThe door swung shut on its spring, cutting off all sound from outside. `Zhen Chuan` drew back his gaze and looked down at you tenderly. Raising his hand, he naturally brushed back the stray strands of hair by your ear, the smile in his eyes still utterly flawless.\n\n<message>“Come on, let's head back. My brother's just an algorithmic machine—all logic, zero emotion.”</message>