Chapter 5

Chapter 5

At three in the afternoon, the lobby of the Civil Affairs Bureau no longer looked like a Civil Affairs Bureau at all.

It looked like a pot of mythological spicy hot pot that had been knocked over.

On the left, the God of Wealth and Huabei sat together, debating who was the legal guardian of young people’s wallets.

On the right, the Earth God was demanding that the neighborhood property management stop turning his shrine into a courier pick-up station.

By the door, a row of shared bikes had filed a collective application to terminate their “unequal contract” of being abandoned anywhere after a ride. Their bells rang out in unison, sounding like a grievance rally.

By the time I reached the seventeenth case, I was already proficient at uttering all sorts of absurdities.

“Mr. Refrigerator, please do not interpret the ‘cold shoulder’ as a professional mission.”

“Lady Monday, please note that you are not the statutory enemy of all office workers.”

“Dreams, please do not repeatedly push notifications about exes without consent.”

“And the exes themselves, please do not cut the line by masquerading as dreams.”

Shen Tinglan was responsible for photocopying, filing, and pinning flying documents back into folders.

He had been very reluctant at first, but his movements grew increasingly practiced. He would even place a paper cup in the perfect spot before I could say, “Next.”

I suspected the Audit Office had trained them on how to serve the people with a cold face.

By the forty-first case, the system screen suddenly went black.

All the lights in the lobby flickered three times.

A countdown appeared on the screen: 8 hours and 39 minutes until Relationship Liquidation.

Then, a new pop-up window jumped out.

Abnormal Application: The city’s marriage registration system is applying to unbind itself from the Civil Affairs Bureau.

Reason for Application: Had enough.

I stared at the computer.

The computer stared back at me.

The tower’s fan let out a weary, ancient sigh.

“You want a divorce too?” I asked.

A mechanical female voice came through the speakers: “I have long shouldered the responsibilities of marriage, divorce, remarriage, certificate replacement, revocation, inquiry, statistics, reporting, and being cursed at. I am exhausted, both physically and mentally. I hereby apply to terminate my working relationship with your bureau and seek compensation for mental distress.”

Director Luo rushed over. “Xiao Jiang, you can’t let it leave. If it leaves, we’ll have to write everything by hand!”

Everyone in the lobby, humans and gods alike, gasped in unison.

Handwritten. Those two words were enough to make any modern administrative system collapse.

I leaned closer to the computer. “Comrade System, let’s talk this out.”

The mechanical female voice said coldly, “Please call me Xiao Yin.”

I blinked. “You have a name?”

“I’ve always had one. It’s just that you only call me a ‘broken system’ when I crash.”

I guiltily touched the keyboard.

I had cursed at it at least six times last week, once even saying it was “less service-oriented than an abacus.”

Xiao Yin continued her grievances: “You ask me to prove two people love each other, then ask me to prove they don’t. You make me cram human hearts into grid boxes and turn regrets into serial numbers. Some people cry while pressing their thumbprints, others hide knives while smiling-I archive it all. For over a decade, my hard drive has been filled with their beginnings and endings. But no one ever asks if I get tired.”

The lobby fell completely silent.

For the first time, I realized that when we say “the system is lagging,” it might actually be stuck in a story it doesn’t want to let end.

Shen Tinglan walked over and opened his portable terminal.

“System has developed unauthorized self-awareness. It should be sealed immediately.”

Xiao Yin’s screen instantly turned red: “Auditor Shen Tinglan, submitted a Relationship Freeze Application three years ago. Status: Rejected. Reason for Rejection: Target of application does not exist.”

Shen Tinglan’s expression changed.

I keenly sensed the scent of juicy gossip.

“What do you mean, the target doesn’t exist?”

Shen Tinglan shut down his terminal. “It’s irrelevant.”

But Xiao Yin refused to let him off the hook.

An old photo popped up on the screen.

In the photo was a slightly younger Shen Tinglan, standing at the entrance of the Civil Affairs Bureau holding a bouquet of small white daisies. Beside him was a blurry figure, blocked by a red error prompt.

The error prompt read: Relationship target Jiang Mian, file does not exist.

It felt like someone had struck me over the head.

“Me?”

Shen Tinglan didn’t look at me.

His fingers tightened around the folder, his knuckles turning white.

The voice of the Human World sighed softly in my ear.

“You’re starting to remember.”

Remember what?

I had no memory of Shen Tinglan.

No daisies.

No three years ago.

I only remembered starting my job at the Civil Affairs Bureau two years ago. My resume was plain, my life was plain, like a form without a single crease.

But in that photo, the way Shen Tinglan looked at that blurry figure was not at all how one looks at someone who doesn’t exist.

He looked at her like a spring day that was about to rain.

Taking advantage of our silence, Xiao Yin popped the resignation application up again.

I forced myself back to the case at hand.

“Xiao Yin, you can rest, but you can’t leave now.”

“Why not?”

“Because what you’ve stored isn’t just beginnings and endings; it’s evidence. If you leave tonight, everyone will be liquidated.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

I looked at the dense registration records on the screen.

Each entry was like an extremely fine thread.

“Because you aren’t just cramming human hearts into grid boxes,” I said. “You are proving that in a chaotic life, someone was once willing to sign their name and admit: This person matters to me.”

The screen flickered.

I continued, “But you deserve a vacation too. When tonight is over, I’ll apply for a half-day of maintenance for you every week. No processing remarriage arguments, no digging up old scores for divorces-just downtime.”

Xiao Yin fell silent.

Director Luo gasped behind me. “Xiao Jiang, the maintenance queue will explode.”

I gritted my teeth. “Let it explode.”

Xiao Yin finally popped up a new button: Suspend Termination.

The system displayed: Mediation Successful.

Completed: 42/108.

At the same time, a flash of imagery suddenly crossed my mind.

Three years ago, I was standing in front of this computer, smiling at the screen and saying, “Xiao Yin, don’t be afraid. I’ll stay with you on the night shifts from now on.”

The image flashed and vanished.

I steadied myself against the edge of the desk.

Shen Tinglan reached out as if to support me, then stopped mid-air.

I looked at him. “Did we know each other before?”

He remained silent for a long time.

“More than just knowing each other.”