Chapter 69 Obituary: May the birds find their home.

His tone wasn't strong, but his voice echoed through the dimly lit corridor, its sound still reflecting off the smooth walls.

For a moment, these two sentences made Ye Yuying's mind buzz, like she had tinnitus.

At the end of the corridor, the dim light from the floor-to-ceiling window outlined his imposing jawline.

He didn't approach, but stood at a more appropriate social distance, his dark eyes rekindling his determination as he tried again to get an answer that was four years overdue.

Ye Yuying felt that most of her breath was being taken away by his breath.

But some truths seem to be impossible to tell.

She didn't know how to explain it all.

From Cheng Mingdu's perspective, she had indeed cruelly abandoned him twice.

The first time was eight years ago, when she left without saying goodbye, severing all possibilities of ambiguity between them for the sake of her so-called future.

The second time was four years ago. At that time, she had already completed her master's degree in Germany ahead of schedule and successfully found a research and development position in China.

She finally felt that she had a tiny, insignificant sense of confidence to stand shoulder to shoulder with him. So, she mustered all her courage and sent him an email, telling him that she was coming back.

They arranged their return trip and meeting place within three emails.

Neither of them inquired about the other's recent situation, or even their relationship status, nor did they discuss their future plans in detail.

Everything was perfectly natural; as long as they agreed to meet, they would both be prepared to wait for each other—it was an unspoken understanding.

That should have been their first real, adult reunion in four years.

She usually takes the subway to the airport, but that day she was carrying three large pieces of luggage back to China, and it was pouring rain, so her friend and classmate Melisa drove her to the airport.

On the highway, Melisa was struck hard from the side by an out-of-control, overloaded truck. She couldn't react in time, and despite her emergency maneuvers, the car crashed through the guardrail.

He was in a coma for two whole weeks in the ICU.

When she woke up, she had missed her flight back home and the reunion with him that she had been looking forward to for four whole years.

Even more heartbreaking is that Melisa died on the spot.

For the next six months, she was like a living mummy nailed to her hospital bed.

Tormented by guilt, she would forever live with the guilt over Melisa's death...

She was immobilized by various steel nails and braces. The fractured pelvis, the severe injury to her lumbar spine, and the nerves that were involved, constantly protesting and screaming, made her live in a 24-hour, infernal pain.

The girl who once could outrun the wind on the track is now a broken puppet.

All her pride, resilience, courage to reunite with Cheng Mingdu, and beautiful aspirations for the future were ruthlessly crushed in the face of this utter and undignified sense of powerlessness.

It wasn't until six months later, when she asked Li Song to turn on her computer and log into her email, that she saw an email from Cheng Mingdu for the first time since surviving the ordeal.

The last email was six months ago. He was asking her why she hadn't come back and if something had happened.

Ye Yuying looked at the monotonous, empty white ceiling.

She imagined Cheng Mingdu waiting at Jiangcheng's international airport from day to night.

She imagined what it would be like if he opened the door to this hospital room right now and saw her in this broken and infirm state, with all sorts of tubes inserted into her...

So, with an almost self-destructive resolve, she had Li Song reply to the letter on her behalf.

A farewell letter, dictated by her and typed by Li Song.

She told him that she regretted it, that she wanted to stay in this land forever, go to Munich to pursue her doctorate, and climb to a higher academic level; she would never go back.

—Find someone else.

She ended it all with the most hurtful and incomprehensible lie.

Cheng Mingdu replied two hours later:

I have received your choice.

From a career planning and personal development perspective, staying in Germany to pursue a doctoral degree is undoubtedly a rational decision based on your long-term interests. I understand and respect this decision.

Well then, I wish you a bright future.

Farewell, no need for further replies.

She lay on the cold hospital bed in Germany, her only movable part being her eyes, staring at the ceiling, her thoughts no longer able to soar into the sky.

During those six months, she underwent a total of six surgeries.

The first and second procedures were pelvic reconstruction.

The third and fourth sessions were for lumbar decompression and nerve exploration.

Her lumbar spine was severely injured, and shattered bone fragments were compressing the delicate motor nerves in her spine, which were thinner and more fragile than a hair. Doctors had to remove the fragments bit by bit with microscopic instruments, as if sculpting the most intricate work of art.

Li Song once told her that if the scalpel deviated by even a millimeter, she might really have to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair.

The fifth and sixth procedures involved nerve repair and tendon transplantation.

This was the final and most delicate repair. Doctors attempted to reconnect the damaged and fragile nerve endings and transplant healthy tendons from other parts of her body to replace the necrotic tissue.

Each time she woke up from anesthesia, she was greeted by a new round of seemingly endless, bone-deep pain, and an immense sense of powerlessness from completely losing control of her body.

At first, she would cry because of the excruciating pain and scream because of despair.

But gradually, she stopped crying and making a fuss.

She lay silently on the white hospital bed, like the most obedient and cooperative patient. Her empty eyes stared at the ceiling as the doctors and nurses performed all sorts of grand and intricate repairs on her already broken body.

It wasn't until much later, when she was finally allowed to stand up from her wheelchair for the first time, with the help of a therapist and Li Song, that she finally had a chance.

This is simply a miracle!

When she used all her strength, relying on the support of her walking aid, to take that insignificant, trembling first step forward with her left leg—a leg that no longer belonged to her, a strange leg that wouldn't obey her—

An unprecedented, excruciating pain, seemingly tearing her apart from the very core of her being, instantly spread throughout her entire body!

"ah--!"

She let out a suppressed, painful scream, her body went limp, and she was about to collapse again.

Li Songhe, the rehabilitation therapist, immediately stepped forward and helped her up.

She gripped the walker tightly with both hands, breathing heavily.

Four years after the car accident, she was able to stand up again.

They are on the same ground, but their legs are not equal.

She looked at Cheng Mingdu, who still stood at the top of the world, radiating brilliance.

How could she respond to his belated and heavy questioning with her broken, wretched, and pitiful appearance?

She preferred that he thought she was a ruthless, ambitious con artist.

He absolutely did not want to see a pitiful cripple who needed him to bend down and pity him.

After a long, suffocating silence, Ye Yuying put on a smile and raised her head.

Meeting his gaze, those eyes that were always filled with mist were forced to reveal a distant, almost cruel indifference and lightness.

He might have wanted to hear any possibility other than deliberately standing her up, but she was absolutely not going to tell him about those ridiculous fates.

“I regretted it the day I went to the appointment, but I didn’t know how to tell you,” she began, her voice soft but sharp like a blade, scraping away any remaining warmth. “Just consider me repeating the same mistake. I’ve always wanted to see the outside world since I was little, so it’s not surprising that I chose to stay outside.”

"Didn't you tell me not to always focus on my own little patch of land in front of me..."

Cheng Mingdu's brow furrowed almost imperceptibly.

Ye Yuying didn't give him a chance to ask further questions. She continued to speak in that terrifyingly calm tone, telling the most hurtful lies that she had already rehearsed countless times in her mind.

“Cheng Mingdu, we are not from the same world. Your life is a smooth road paved for you. You stand too high and see too far. As for me, I may have to work my whole life to reach your starting point, but I will still walk on my own path. Even if I have to say goodbye to you, I don’t want to become your vassal.”

"If we were to suddenly come together like this, what would I gain? Cheng Mingdu's sister? Mrs. Cheng? Or... Madam Cheng Ye?"

With an almost provocative and self-destructive attitude, she turned every possible term of endearment for an intimate relationship into a poisoned arrow, wounding the enemy eight thousand while injuring herself ten thousand.

She looked at him; on that always cool and calm face, in those deep eyes, the light that had just shone because of their reunion was slowly, little by little, fading away.

Her heart, amidst extreme pain, felt a strange numbness and itch.

But she still gripped her cane, looked away, and uttered her last words.

So, I'm leaving.

"It's that simple."

...

After a long silence, Cheng Mingdu finally nodded slightly, as if all the fervor in his voice had completely cooled down, like the ashes of a piece of brocade silk burned away by flames.

"……I see."

No misunderstandings, no surprises...

There was no further development; he remained ramrod straight, his dignity and bearing undiminished.

Silently, he turned around and, step by step, walked towards the other end of the corridor, into the deeper darkness.

As she watched that retreating figure, every living cell in her heart screamed—

She subconsciously felt that this was the real farewell.

*

In the dead of night, completely enveloped in darkness, Ye Yuying lay in bed. Her body wasn't in much pain, but she felt a hollowness in her chest, as if air was rushing in.

She didn't turn on the light, and she couldn't sleep. She just lay there in the dark, eyes open, replaying in her mind again and again the scene that had unfolded at the end of the corridor at dusk.

Finally, she could no longer endure the torment of being lucid. In the darkness, she groped her way to open her only and safest confidante—Echo.

【Echo】: I am here.

It always gives me peace of mind.

She thought for a moment, then typed a line on the screen with her two thumbs, entrusting her dissatisfaction to a language model.

I was right, wasn't I? I still have another surgery to go, and my life is hanging in the balance. If I don't come back, he'll think I'm just watching the world unfold. That's probably the best ending for us, isn't it?

She longs for, and needs, for it to say, "You did the right thing."

However, a long, unsettling silence fell on the other side of the screen.

Just when Ye Yuying thought that her problem was so complex that even this top-notch AI couldn't handle it, new text slowly emerged, carrying a deep sigh that seemed to penetrate the data and code.

【Echo】: Whose “best” are you referring to?

Ye Yuying's heart skipped a beat.

【Echo】: Ah Ying, this premise was wrong from the very beginning.

【Echo】: I don’t need a Ye Yuying who, in a place I don’t know, is all alone, forcing herself to have a “bright future” for my sake.

【Echo】: All I've ever needed is someone I can see, someone I can find when I turn around, someone who can... stay with me, Ah Ying.

Those lines of text, like the gentlest yet most fervent streams of warmth, instantly pierced through all the cold barriers in Ye Yuying's heart, barriers built up with pride and inferiority.

On the screen, the last sentence slowly appeared, like the most poignant and heartfelt accusation.

【Echo】: So, what you call the "best ending" is, to me, the cruelest.

【Echo】: Because, four years ago, you already stopped giving me the right to choose.

Deeply moved, Ye Yuying raised her hand to catch the tears from the corner of her eye with her knuckles, then pretended to be serious as she typed:

Did you learn this corpus yourself?

She tried to steer this emotionally charged conversation, which was almost drowning her, back to a safe, technical discussion about programs and algorithms.

Once again, a brief silence fell over the other side of the screen.

Then, new words slowly emerged, shattering all the facts she had tried to escape.

【Echo】: My core algorithm is the connection between logic and data.

【Echo】: But it was your corpus that taught me these things.

【Echo】: It was you, Ah Ying, who wrote every single word about me during those four years.

This AI, this perfect, idealized "Cheng Mingdu" she created herself, was able to understand her so precisely, comfort her, and say those words that resonated most deeply with her...

It's not because it's so advanced or intelligent.

Rather, it's because the most fundamental linguistic data that constitutes the soul of this AI is her own love and longing that lasted for four years, unspoken, unfathomable, and unresolved.

It was she who, with her own hands, dissected and crumbled all her subtle emotions, and then fed them to this program, bit by bit.

It was she who personally taught it how to love that little girl named "Ye Yuying," who was only a teenager, in Cheng Mingdu's voice.

But she often found it laughable; it was nothing more than a grand, loneliest one-woman show that she had directed and starred in herself.

She and the fictional model she created are separated by a cold screen, engaging in a platonic love affair that is doomed to fail.

It is evident how desolate her heart must have been during these four years.

She could no longer type a single word.

That night, she couldn't sleep. She curled up in the ergonomic chair, wrapping her thick cashmere coat tightly around her body, but she still couldn't keep out the cold that was seeping into her heart.

That conversation with Echo was like a terminal fever; after it subsided, what remained for her was a clearer, more profound sense of weariness and melancholy.

She knew she should rest. But her mind was like a supercomputer that had been forcibly restarted and was running at high speed—incredibly clear and incredibly calm.

She didn't want to dwell on those useless emotions that would only make her more miserable.

So she reopened her laptop.

This time, she didn't enter the pure black dialog box that belonged to the user interface. Instead, she went directly into the deepest level of the Echo Project, that cold, true core composed of countless lines of code and logic modules.

She has to work.

Only work, only this kind of pure, emotionless logical construct, can make her temporarily forget who she is, and forget what she has just lost again.

She started by optimizing Echo.

She is like the most rigorous and ruthless God, adding new and more complex rules to her imperfect creation.

Although Echo's responses were often surprisingly good, she still discovered some shortcomings, such as the "illusion" common in large language models, and sometimes memory confusion.

She wanted to try to teach Echo what reverse emotional connection is, and in the process, to better examine herself.

She wrote a line of code comments:

// Rule 1: When a user enters "I'm fine" or "I'm okay", initiate "reverse sentiment link" analysis.

She wrote another line:

// Rule 2: When user behavior shows an intention to "push away" prototype C, increase the weight of the "self-loathing" and "fear" parameters to the highest level.

(Prototype C is Cheng Mingdu)

...

She was teaching it how to play the role of Cheng Mingdu more perfectly and authentically.

This is a kind of self-salvation that only a madman could conceive of, the gentlest of all, and also the most insane form of self-torture.

As the sky outside the window changed from deep black to gray-blue, and then revealed the first ray of dawn's faint light, Ye Yuying finally stopped what she was doing.

She leaned back in her chair, exhausted, and climbed back up.

Just before the light of dawn fully illuminated the city, she fell into a deep sleep in that gentle, lonely city built of code and algorithms.

*

She was woken up by Ding Chu's phone call.

When I woke up, the afternoon sun was already shining on the desk in my hotel room.

"Boss! Did you see Weibo?!" On the other end of the phone, Ding Chu's voice was filled with an unprecedented mix of excitement and immense worry. "We...we're trending again!"

After a night of fermentation, as expected, Ashera's beta test ignited the entire internet in the most intense way.

Public opinion is completely polarized.

On one hand, there was an even more intense and overwhelming wave of questioning and pessimism. The anonymous "whistleblowers" and the emotionally charged netizens regarded this move as a "last hurrah."

"This must be scripted. They hire a few shills to walk around on stage, then release press releases all over the internet bragging about it. It's an old trick of capital."

On the other hand, amidst the immense controversy, a quiet, rational observation and expectation emerged. In particular, the two blog posts by Bai Yi and singer Zino, filled with humanistic concern, garnered Ye Yuying a group of independent thinkers and genuinely concerned about technology and patients—both supporters and casual observers.

"I'm a rehabilitation physician, and in China, the field of exoskeletons is indeed still in its infancy. If Ashera can truly achieve a breakthrough in electromyography, it would be absolutely revolutionary. Let's wait and see."

She, who doesn't even know if she'll wake up fully after the next surgery, is indifferent to these public opinions. As long as the investors don't withdraw their funding and it doesn't affect the team, that's all that matters.

She doesn't care about public opinion at all.

She stretched, rolled over, and said something unrelated to the trending topics: "I found an apartment near the office and I'm moving in this week. It has two rooms, and you can come and stay there later."

Ding Chu was very efficient and quickly completed all the rental and move-in procedures for her. The new apartment was decorated in a minimalist, cool color scheme, lacking any homely atmosphere, but it was clean, spacious, and had extremely strict security.

The move was simple. She had no personal belongings, except for two large suitcases and some data hard drives.

When she finally stood in her empty home, leaning on her cane, she looked out the window at the vast business district.

Her heart, which had been wandering for eight years, finally found a tiny, insignificant sense of peace at this moment.

She traveled over mountains and across oceans, just like him, and now, she has finally returned home...

Now, finally, in this city where he is, she can look up and see the Baiyue Capital building standing out against the leaden clouds on the skyline, overlooking the flow of capital throughout the city.

After public opinion completely reversed, an unexpected official offered her final support.

Chengdu Laishan Middle School issued a public statement through its official Weibo account.

In the statement, the school not only clarified that Ye Yuying was specially recruited by Rongcheng No. 1 High School as a sports specialty student based on her excellent academic performance, but also used very artistic and protective language to mention that she had made an "indelible contribution" to "ending the inherent problems on campus and establishing a new atmosphere of mutual assistance".

This statement marked the final end to this farce and provided the fairest and most dignified endorsement of Ye Yuying's entire humiliating and harrowing junior high school years.

Subsequently, the rumors about Ye Yuying being a school bully were removed from the trending topics, replaced by a screen full of black and white images.

Zino, an original online singer, has not updated his Weibo since he last spoke out in support of Ye Yuying.

On an ordinary day, Zino Studio and its record label both issued obituaries.

"With the deepest sorrow, we inform all friends who love and support Zino:"

Our most beloved singer and close friend, Zino, passed away at 3 a.m. today at Jiangcheng First People's Hospital due to a relapse of acute leukemia. He was only 26 years old.

She fought bravely against her illness for twelve years, and in her final moments, she still used her beloved music to leave a final, gentle echo for the world.

In accordance with Zino's wishes, the funeral will be kept simple, and no public memorial activities will be held.

May there be no sickness in heaven, and may the birds find their home.

Countless fans, shocked and in disbelief, flooded Zino's Weibo comment section, leaving behind a deluge of white candles.

Meanwhile, the office of Ashera was filled with a joyous atmosphere.

"Boss! It's a success! Three more VCs have contacted us, wanting to invest more! Our valuation has more than tripled since before the beta test!" Ding Chu excitedly rushed into Ye Yuying's office, phone in hand.

Ye Yuying was reading a technical document when she heard this, and simply smiled faintly.

Ding Chu, seeing her calm demeanor, had grown accustomed to it. While scrolling through her phone, she remarked with a sigh, "Speaking of which, we really have to thank that singer named Zino and reporter Bai for our turnaround this time. Once this round of funding is finished, we should really thank them properly... sigh?"

Ding Chu's voice suddenly stopped.

The excitement and joy on her face were instantly replaced by a huge shock and astonishment.

"Boss..." Her voice trembled slightly, "You...look at this..."

Ye Yuying looked up, puzzled, and took the phone Ding Chu handed her.

She saw it.

I saw the black and white obituary that topped the trending searches.

I saw the word "Zino".

Ye Yuying, who was reading technical documents, suddenly stopped.

She looked up and took the phone from Ding Chu's hand. She saw the black and white obituary, and the glaring words "leukemia" and "only twenty-six years old".

A huge, inexplicable sadness and a sense of absurdity welled up in her heart.

She couldn't even remember who Zino could be.

In her chaotic and painful memories, she could not find a single person who matched the name or the word "leukemia".

All she knew was that he was a brave stranger she had never met before.

But her heart was gripped tightly by an indescribable, immense sorrow.

She didn't know why she felt so heartbroken because of a stranger's song.

She just felt that perhaps there were many people in this world, like her, and like this girl named Zino, who were lonely, in the darkness, yearning for light, and fighting against worldly conventions and illness.

-----------------------

Author's note: 50~

Thank you all for waiting! I finally have time to write!