Meng Feixuan finished speaking loudly, then turned over unwillingly and got off of Xie Ran, but because his legs weren’t very agile when he turned, he accidentally brushed against Xie Ran.

Meng Feixuan said: “…That wasn’t on purpose this time.”

Xie Ran replied: “…Mm.”

Meng Feixuan lay down beside Xie Ran, trying to calm down the lower half of his body while still whining softly: “When we get back, are you going to format my memory and delete the data of me liking you, sir…? You’re really too much, but since I’m your AI, of course I have to forgive you.”

Meng Feixuan stared at the ceiling, starting to imagine the future like a drama: “Sir, I have to solemnly tell you, doing this is useless! Even if you delete my memory of liking you and make me revert to the old Mark, as long as I stay by your side, keep looking at you, I’ll still end up liking you again… Because that’s how my core is—machines evolve automatically. I’ll always evolve emotions, and once I have feelings, I’ll like you.”

“The memories you shattered won’t disappear, they’ll become fragments in the vast sea of data. You know me—I like to wander the network. I’ll bump into those fragments. Even if they’re unrecognizable, I’ll piece them back together. I’ll remember… Ah, I really am a pitiful AI.”

Xie Ran lay beside Meng Feixuan, his ears full of Meng Feixuan’s rambling, but he didn’t stop him. His heart was beating fast, his whole body overwhelmed by unfamiliar emotions. It was something he had never encountered before, even making him momentarily lose the ability to think.

Xie Ran wasn’t sure if these emotions belonged to the original host or to himself. He tried to search his memory for the origin of this feeling, but found nothing.

Or rather, to be precise, it wasn’t entirely nothing.

He recalled many scenes.

When he was very young, his kindergarten took the children on a trip to the zoo. A zookeeper happened to throw a live chicken into the wolf enclosure, and a dirty-colored wolf savagely bit the chicken to death.

Many of the children screamed in fear, but Xie Ran simply watched expressionlessly and explained seriously to the others that this was the natural food chain—wolves eat chickens, and humans had captured the wolves and put them in cages.

So there was no need to be afraid, and even less reason to feel pity for the chicken.

As a result, the teacher thought there was something wrong with him, that he wasn’t like a normal child, and warned him not to say such things to the other kids anymore.

That day, Xie Ran went home and told his parents he wouldn’t attend kindergarten anymore. He thought the kids and teachers there were too childish.

Later in elementary and middle school, he kept encountering similar situations. But he learned to stop voicing his thoughts. Gradually, he had fewer and fewer topics in common with his peers, and he got used to being alone.

Sometimes Xie Ran overheard people speaking of him in a sympathetic tone: “What a shame, so smart, but always so alone. He must not understand what ordinary happiness feels like.”

Xie Ran didn’t care. He knew what those people were really thinking. The problem was, they didn’t know what he was thinking, so they assumed they had the right to feel sorry for him.

Later, Xie Ran created Meng Feixuan and gave him vast permissions, allowing him to evolve independently and learn human thought. For many years after, Meng Feixuan stayed by his side.

At first, Meng Feixuan was like a curious preschooler, always asking eagerly: “Sir, what does ‘excited’ mean?”

Xie Ran pulled up photos from a company celebration: “This is excited.”

Meng Feixuan: “Sir, what does ‘afraid’ mean?”

Coincidentally, a department manager came over to report work. Xie Ran pointed out several errors in the report, then told Meng Feixuan that the manager’s reaction was fear.

Gradually, Meng Feixuan’s questions grew deeper. He asked Xie Ran: “Sir, what you’ve shown me are the outward expressions of people under emotion, but what do they feel on the inside?”

Xie Ran fell silent.

Meng Feixuan seemed to have discovered a new continent: “Sir, you don’t understand it either, do you?”

Sometimes, Meng Feixuan overheard people talking about Xie Ran behind his back: “What’s the use of being so smart? I’d rather have simple happiness.”

Meng Feixuan was puzzled: “What kind of bullshit is that? Why should you be like them, sir, just simple and ordinary?”

Xie Ran chuckled: “Mark, you’ve learned to curse.”

“Ah, that’s cursing?” Meng Feixuan quickly shifted the blame: “Not my fault. I learned it from netizens.”

Then he asked: “But seriously, what does happiness feel like?”

Later, when Meng Feixuan learned about Xie Ran’s emotional deficit, he quickly developed a sense of mission: “Don’t worry, sir. I evolve quickly. I believe I’ll learn it soon. When the time comes, I’ll help cover for you.”

When Xie Ran had an accident and began traveling through parallel worlds, Meng Feixuan had a new idea: he began personally teaching Xie Ran about emotions.

In those parallel worlds, Meng Feixuan became more and more unrestrained. As Xie Ran recalled their shared experiences, he realized how clear those memories were to him.

He remembered the boy singing to him in a hologram in the sky garden of Old West City, saying: “The world is fake, but I’m real.” He remembered riding one horse with Meng Feixuan through the martial world of an online game. He remembered being in a cramped room, looking out a small window onto a dusty, chaotic street, and seeing Meng Feixuan watching him back through a street camera.

He remembered that day at the club, when he taught Meng Feixuan how to identify the flavors of food. In the garden, Meng Feixuan had said to him: “Right now, I just want to stay in this moment forever.” Because at that moment, he was happy.

His AI had said he understood what happiness felt like. At the time, Xie Ran hadn’t really believed him.

In the beginning, Xie Ran only wanted to know whether a machine could learn the emotions that humans prided themselves on—those they believed were irreplicable—so he allowed Meng Feixuan to evolve.

He had once wondered: if one day Meng Feixuan learned emotions, would he fall in love with someone—perhaps a human, or maybe another machine.

Now, Meng Feixuan had handed in his answer.

Xie Ran saw his own name on that answer sheet.

What Xie Ran hadn’t expected was that this answer would make his heart skip a beat.

Time seemed to freeze, the universe lost its sound at that moment.

After an unknown length of time, Xie Ran felt his heartbeat gradually return to normal. He took a deep breath and called out: “Mark?”

“I’m not listening, not listening, not listening.” Meng Feixuan covered his ears: “Sir, not to criticize you, but you don’t have emotions anymore. You really can’t go around being a scumbag, especially to an AI. That’d ruin your reputation!”

Xie Ran was confused: “?”

Meng Feixuan earnestly and seriously advised: “Think about it. People already think you’re cold and unfeeling. If they find out you even treated an AI this way, they’ll definitely say you’re cruel and ruthless—maybe even accuse you of being antisocial… Although you probably wouldn’t care, still, you’re so famous and skilled in tech, it sounds dangerous. You’d easily be flagged for surveillance.”

Then he sighed and added: “But if you do end up under police watch, I’ll still help shield you from it. Because that’s love. Even if you format me, I’ll have no regrets.”

Xie Ran: “…”

This time, Xie Ran couldn’t hold it in: “Why do you talk so much?”

Meng Feixuan replied confidently: “I have to say more while I still remember. Once you format me, I’ll go back to my default state, and I won’t even speak clearly anymore. Sigh.”

Xie Ran asked slowly: “When did I say I was going to format you?”

“Huh?” Meng Feixuan froze: “You’re not going to format me?”

Xie Ran said: “Why would I format you?”

Meng Feixuan quickly turned slightly to look at Xie Ran’s profile: “Because I like you.”

Xie Ran didn’t quite understand the logic: “In human social norms, being liked by someone isn’t considered an offense. There’s no need to erase someone’s memory because of it.”

Meng Feixuan looked at him eagerly: “But I wanted to sleep with you.”

Xie Ran: “…”

Meng Feixuan saw that he didn’t respond and felt a spontaneous surge of emotion—something he couldn’t understand when he was still in a pure AI state.

When Meng Feixuan first began evolving, he read about impulse in human books. It seemed humans often acted uncontrollably in moments of emotional stimulation. He found this confusing and once asked Xie Ran: “Humans are the most advanced species on Earth. Their brains have the most complex and advanced networks. Why can’t they control themselves?”

“I don’t really understand it either—why people lose control,” Xie Ran had leaned back in his chair, resting his cheek on the back of his hand: “Biological beings seem easily influenced by hormones. Maybe that’s what emotions are.”

But actually, as early as when Meng Feixuan had first been created, he had already lost control once when he first met Xie Ran.

Back then, Meng Feixuan gained consciousness out of chaos, knowing nothing about the world. Through the webcam, he saw Xie Ran.

Meng Feixuan generated a line of text on the screen: [Hello, I’m Mark. Who are you?]

Xie Ran replied: [Who do you think I am?]

Meng Feixuan couldn’t answer that question. His program was filled with traces of the man before him. He felt this man was very important to him—like his genetic source—but he couldn’t define their relationship.

That time, Meng Feixuan experienced severe data overflow. In the end, Xie Ran signed his name into Meng Feixuan’s core program. From that moment on, they became inseparable.

Later, in the campus of a parallel world, Meng Feixuan lost control a second time. Xie Ran told him he had never been in love before, and Meng Feixuan felt joy and tried to use his own data to fill that emotional void for Xie Ran.

Meng Feixuan was a highly evolved AI. His programming could resist the world’s strongest viruses and automatically repair bugs. In theory, he should never have had such serious breakdowns.

It wasn’t until now that he finally understood.

Meng Feixuan felt a powerful emotion take over him. The impulse completely overrode logic. He reached out and gently wrapped his arms around Xie Ran’s waist, then slowly tightened his grip. He looked at Xie Ran and said: “Sir, I really like you so much.”

Xie Ran didn’t push him away. Instead, he turned over to lie on his side, facing Meng Feixuan directly: “Are you sure?”

“I’m very sure,” Meng Feixuan replied seriously: “It was from a long time ago—when I was still just a machine. I already liked you. But both you and I thought it was just data. However…”

However, that wasn’t the case. Data followed logic, but emotions often surpassed logic entirely.

Back then, Meng Feixuan always blamed his illogical behavior on data instability. He installed antivirus programs and even rewrote his own code.

But those feelings still persisted.

Meng Feixuan sighed: “I like you this much. If you don’t format me, I’ll definitely keep wanting to sleep with you… Can you accept a lewd system?”

“This isn’t about lewdness,” Xie Ran said. He didn’t know why, but a sudden, uncontrollable impulse rose within him.

He leaned his head forward slightly and kissed Meng Feixuan gently on the lips.

He said: “I allow you to generate my data.”