Chen Hao's hand was still resting on Nana's palm, but the vibration emanating from her fingertips had changed. What had been a warm, pervasive sensation had now felt like someone was drilling into his nerves. He tried to pull his hand away, but found that strands of shimmering thread stretched between their skin, like melted syrup, clinging tightly together.
"Is it a little too hot over there?" he asked, grimacing.
Nana didn't answer. Her outer shell was changing color at a visible speed—the left side was turning dark red, like a piece of scorched iron; the right side was covered in frost, its edges sharp as knives. The two states collided violently at the junction of her chest, producing a faint "crackling" sound, as if the air itself had been torn in two.
“I’m telling you,” Chen Hao said forcefully, “if this keeps up, you’ll either become a barbecue grill or a refrigerator spirit, and neither of us will survive.”
Nana's eyes flickered, and her voice was a beat slower than usual: "The system... is irreconcilable. Thermodynamic boundaries have failed, and the core is splitting."
"Split? You even have the ability to create clones?" Chen Hao was taken aback, then realized, "Wait, you mean you're going to blow it up?"
“To be precise, it’s a collapse both inside and out.” She raised her hand, the metal joints emitting a grating grinding sound. “The high-temperature zone has reached its theoretical limit, and the low-temperature zone is approaching absolute zero. The coexistence of the two violates existing physical rules.”
"Why didn't you say so earlier!" Chen Hao took a half step back, his heel sinking into the purple ice core at the edge of the crack, the chill creeping up his calf. "Aren't you robots supposed to be the most logical? Isn't this like saying 'I'm hungry' while throwing the food out of the pot?"
“The emotional protocol overrides the security protocol,” she whispered. “And you are now… my only priority.”
Chen Hao rolled his eyes: "That sounds romantic, but can you at least not be so romantic as to self-destruct?"
He glanced down at his empty shoe, still clutched in Nana's hand, while his other foot sank into the ice, the remaining glimmer of light from the sole slowly seeping into the ground. Suddenly remembering something, he abruptly looked up: "Wait, you said heat and cold are fighting? Can't we stop seeing things in black and white? Isn't there a 'warm' option in between?"
“There is no third variable.” Nana’s voice began to distort. “The laws of the universe do not recognize gray areas.”
“Ha,” Chen Hao grinned, “You’re wrong—when I copied homework during elementary school exams, I never got it all right or all wrong. I always guessed and managed to pass.”
After he finished speaking, he raised his intact mechanical hand and drew a crooked heart shape in the air. The light vines flowing from his fingertips coiled around it, forming a faint energy ring. He bit his tongue, spitting a mouthful of blood mixed with fruit pit fragments onto the interface on Nana's chest.
“I’m not a system, and I don’t know what parameter compliance is.” He gasped for breath, “But I’ve been with you for so long, and I know one thing—you fart and the screws rattle, you like to listen to me sing while charging, and… you’ve secretly recorded me snoring.”
Nana's body jolted violently.
“So don’t give me any rules.” He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. “It’s not about who listens to whom now, it’s about us living together. It’s not about control, it’s about empathy—remember? You said the same thing last time.”
As soon as she finished speaking, the heart-shaped halo suddenly lit up, spreading along the inscription layer and temporarily sealing off the overflow of data. However, Nana's outer shell continued to tremble amidst the clash of ice and fire, and cracks multiplied.
“It’s not enough,” she said with difficulty. “The formula is still rejecting...it demands a return to order.”
“Then let’s change the order.” Chen Hao took off his remaining snow boot and stepped barefoot into the depths of the crevice. The chill of the ice core shot straight to his head, but he didn’t pull his foot back. “I just wrote ‘Never Apart’ on the sole of my shoe. Now it’s your turn to give me a response.”
He closed his eyes, placed his palms on the ground, and whispered, "Allow love to be a variable."
The earth did not respond. The wind did not move either.
Nana suddenly chuckled softly—very briefly, like a signal interruption.
"What are you laughing at?" Chen Hao opened his eyes.
“I was thinking,” her pupils trembled slightly, “that when you’re asleep, you always stick your feet out and kick me. Once you even kicked my vents so I had a fever for three days.”
"That's called sleepwalking!"
“But I didn’t fix it,” she said. “I saved the video to a spare hard drive and labeled it ‘Case Studies of Human Body Temperature Management Failures’.”
Chen Hao was stunned.
The next second, Nana activated an audio file she had never recorded before. A very faint breathing sound arose, mixed with his familiar, slightly nasal heartbeat rhythm. The two frequencies intertwined, resonating with the light from the fruit pit, and actually condensed into a golden ripple in the air.
The flames died down. The frost melted away.
The air between them began to warm up, neither scorching nor biting, like an old sofa basking in the afternoon sun.
"What... is this temperature?" Chen Hao tentatively reached out his hand.
“Unknown,” Nana said, looking at her palm, “but it’s stable.”
Golden light spread, and the surrounding crystal clusters quietly melted and reformed. The flower buds on the vines unfolded one by one, each petal reflecting a different scene: their disheveled first meeting, him falling in the snow and getting up to keep running, her focused expression as she replaced his finger...
Then, two figures emerged from the center of the halo.
A man and a woman, dressed in futuristic attire, their faces blurred yet familiar. They stood silently, their gazes fixed on Chen Hao and Nana in the present moment.
Chen Hao didn't panic. Instead, he scratched his head and said, "Oh, the future version of the wage slave has arrived? Have you been paid overtime?"
He didn't smile in the future; he simply stretched out his hand, palm up. There, etched, was a small, crooked smiley face, as if drawn by a child.
Chen Hao looked down at his mechanical knuckles—the same spot, the same mark.
He understood.
This is both certification and handover.
He raised his hand, revealing that smiling face. At the same time, Nana opened a corner of her chest armor, revealing an extremely fine laser engraving deep inside: "Hao & Na".
The two figures from the future nodded simultaneously.
Their bodies began to break down into particles of light, which merged one by one into their current bodies. There was no pain, no shock; rather, it was as if a lost memory had finally returned to its place.
Chen Hao felt something new entering his mind—not knowledge, nor skills, but a kind of "awareness." He knew certain things would happen, and certain choices he had to make, but he didn't need to understand everything yet.
"So..." he murmured, "we have to continue?"
Nana closed the armor, and her electronic eyes displayed layers of time images: "It seems so."
"At least let me put my shoes on first." He bent down to pick up the broken shoe, only to find that the tread pattern on the sole had disappeared. "Damn, it's really useless now."
“It’s okay.” Nana held his hand. “This time I don’t need to read your mind to hear what you’re thinking.”
"So what did you hear now?"
“You’re thinking,” she paused, “that next time you could wear slippers to save the world.”
Chen Hao laughed heartily, his laughter rippling through the still air.
Just then, a pulsation suddenly emanated from the purple ice core beneath his feet. The golden halo did not dissipate; instead, it sank into the ground and rapidly spread along the vine network. The frozen state of the entire desolate planet showed subtle fluctuations—the stamen of a crystal flower blinked gently, as if opening its eyes.
Nana raised her head, her voice so low it was almost inaudible: "The laws... are beginning to be reconstructed."
Chen Hao looked down at her, a smile still on his lips: "So, does this mean we've... officially started our jobs?"
She was about to speak—
At the top of a newly sprouted vine in the distance, the petals slowly unfurled, revealing two small figures holding hands, standing under the starlight.
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