I Handled the Divorce for the Gods at the Civil Affairs Bureau - Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Shen Tinglan refused to talk about the past in the lobby.

His reason: “Too many irrelevant personnel.”

I looked around.

The God of Wealth and Huabei were flipping through each other’s ledgers. Lady Monday was grabbing Mr. Weekend by his tie, screaming that he was too short. Line 3 was sprawled on the floor, weeping and complaining about how the Morning Rush Hour made it doubt its own existence as a subway line every day.

There were indeed many irrelevant personnel, and all of them were incredibly nosy.

We had no choice but to duck into the archives.

The room was stacked with old files, the air thick with the scent of paper and dust. Shen Tinglan closed the door, muffling the outside clamor into a dull hum.

He stood before a row of iron cabinets, looking like a sealed file that had finally been forced open.

“Three years ago, the city’s Relationship System faced its first Liquidation Crisis,” he said.

“Like today?”

“Worse. Back then, it wasn’t just gods and concepts. Even interpersonal relationships began to drop off the records. Husbands and wives forgot they were married; mothers and sons forgot how to hug; friends forgot they had ever skipped class together. People would suddenly let go of their partner’s hand in the street because they didn’t understand why they were holding onto a stranger.”

My chest tightened.

“And then?”

“Someone proposed using a single person as a central hub for relationships, temporarily storing all the city’s crumbling connections inside them.”

I had already guessed the answer, but I asked anyway, “Was that person me?”

Shen Tinglan nodded.

“You were a Maintainer for the Relationship System back then, not a front-desk worker. You said the System wasn’t suffering from a mechanical failure, but that the Human World was simply too exhausted. Everyone shoved their love, hate, responsibilities, and debts into it for judgment, and it couldn’t bear the weight. You volunteered to interface with the core to help share the burden.”

I leaned against an iron cabinet.

The metal was cold, like a harsh, unsympathetic truth.

“And then I lost my memory?”

“More than that.” Shen Tinglan’s voice dropped. “The System needed a stable anchor. You signed a Public Spouse agreement.”

“What exactly is a Public Spouse?”

“It’s not a marriage. It’s a relationship proxy. You can hear the voices of all the missing parties; you express, endure, and remember on their behalf. The price is that your own relationships are gradually purged by the System to prevent them from interfering with your judgment.”

I suddenly wanted to laugh.

No wonder my life was as clean as a newly created document.

It wasn’t that I was born antisocial; it was that someone had formatted me.

“What about you?” I asked. “Why do you remember me?”

Shen Tinglan looked at me.

The dim yellow light of the archives fell across the edge of his glasses like a sliver of suppressed moonlight.

“Because I didn’t agree to it.”

He told me that three years ago, we were preparing to register our marriage.

He was an inspector sent by the Audit Office to check the System, and I was the one being audited. We fought the first time we met because he said my maintenance logs were non-compliant, and I told him his brain wasn’t exactly compliant either.

Later, we spent three months fixing the System together.

He discovered that I gave nicknames to every crashing error prompt, that I played white noise for the servers at three in the morning, and that I would seriously listen to an eighty-year-old couple’s reasons for divorcing over the color of their curtains.

I discovered that his cold face wasn’t due to a lack of emotion, but because his emotions were all folded neatly and tucked away behind “regulations.”

When the Liquidation Crisis hit, I decided to interface with the core.

Shen Tinglan tried to stop me.

I said, “If I don’t go, many people will wake up tomorrow and forget why they live such messy lives yet are so reluctant to let go.”

He asked, “What about me?”

I said, “You’re so smart, you’ll forget a little slower.”

He said, “Jiang Mian, that’s not funny.”

I couldn’t imagine what my expression had been then.

Maybe I was still smiling.

Because I always liked to make ill-timed jokes when things were at their worst.

Shen Tinglan pulled a ring from his pocket.

It was a plain silver band with two small words engraved on the inside: *Later on*.

“You said that once the System stabilized, we would go register our marriage later on.”

I stared at the ring, my eyes suddenly stinging fiercely.

But I had no memory.

I was just looking at a strange man holding something I had once promised, standing before me with a restraint that looked ready to shatter.

“What happened after that?”

“Afterward, the System stabilized, and your files were rewritten. Everyone forgot you were involved. I was the only one who kept an anomaly backup because of my audit clearance.”

“So you’ve been looking for me for three years?”

“I’ve been filing appeals.”

“Only to find the subject didn’t exist.”

He nodded.

I looked down at the ring.

I should be moved; I should throw myself into his arms; I should say some long-overdue lines.

But my mind was a void.

The cruelest part of amnesia isn’t forgetting love-it’s watching the person who loves you preserve everything for you while you can only stand by as a polite spectator.

I whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Shen Tinglan shook his head.

“It’s not your fault.”

A loud bang suddenly erupted from outside the archives.

Xiao Yin’s mechanical female voice rang through the entire building.

“Warning. Public Spouse core awakening. Legacy agreement restored. Jiang Mian, please confirm within ten minutes whether you will continue to serve as the city-wide relationship proxy.”

Shen Tinglan and I rushed out at the same time.

An agreement from three years ago appeared on the lobby’s main screen.

In the signature space was my handwriting.

At the end of the agreement was a line of small text:

*Should the core awaken again, re-confirmation must be made in a voluntary, conscious, and uncoerced state.*

Countdown: 09:59.

Everyone was looking at me.

The gods, the System, the Director, the young couples there to register their marriage, the shared bikes, the Dragon King, Yue Lao, and Shen Tinglan.

They were all waiting for me to sacrifice myself again.

A voice from the Human World spoke inside my head: “Jiang Mian, this time, you can refuse.”