Dark Web Mystery
Chapter One: Fingerprints in the Morning Light
The glass curtain wall reflected the morning light as Ayu pressed her employee badge on the attendance machine, producing a crisp "beep." This was her thirty-seventh day at Xingyao Technology, and her fingertips still felt sore and numb from revising plans the night before as she touched the keyboard. Half a wall of sticky notes covered the partition at her workstation, the latest one reading "Summary of Internal Testing Data for the Cloud Shield System"—a document she had spent three sleepless nights compiling.
"Xiao Xu, come to the conference room." Director Chen Ming's voice was like a block of ice hitting the office area. When A Yu looked up, she met his cold gaze. The conference room was occupied by the administrative supervisor and two unfamiliar men in suits. On the documents spread out on the table, her name was circled in red pen, glaringly obvious.
"According to the backend logs, you sent the core code of the Cloud Shield system via your private email at 22:17 last Thursday." The man in the suit pushed up his glasses. In the surveillance screenshot, her desk lamp was on, and her back was facing the computer. Ayu's nails dug into her palms. At that time, she was clearly helping her roommate take care of her mother who had suffered a sudden asthma attack. How could the surveillance footage...?
Chapter Two: Shadows in the Data Maze
"This is a frame-up!" Ayu's voice echoed in the empty conference room. The administrative supervisor pushed her phone towards her; the screen showed her personal email's sending history, the attachment titled "Cloud Shield V3.0 Core Architecture." She suddenly remembered covering for Sister Wang from the operations department that day, when Sister Wang said her computer was malfunctioning and borrowed her workstation...
As dusk settled over the time she left work, Ayu squatted under the ginkgo tree downstairs from the company building, scrolling through her chat history. Her phone vibrated in her palm; a new message popped up in the department group chat: "Given that Xu Yuting leaked company secrets, she is suspended from duty pending investigation, effective immediately." Fallen leaves swept across the screen, and she heard her own heartbeat mingling with the distant traffic, until a pair of leather shoes came into view.
"Need any help?" It was Zhou Yan from the product department, the man who was always brewing pour-over coffee in the break room. The tissue he handed her was printed with the Xingyao Technology logo, gleaming warmly under the streetlights. Ayu looked up and saw his gaze behind his glasses, like a fireplace on a winter night, so warm it made her eyes sting.
Chapter 3 Fingerprints in the Code
Zhou Yan's office was bathed in cold white light, and complex data streams flickered on two monitors. "The Cloud Shield system's code has three layers of encryption," he said, pointing to the timestamps on the screen, "but the IP address that sent the email is on the company's intranet—you didn't even connect to the company Wi-Fi that day." Ayu was stunned. She remembered using her phone's hotspot that day because Sister Wang had said the Wi-Fi was under maintenance.
The surveillance footage played frame by frame. At 10:15 PM, a figure in a gray hoodie walked into her workstation. Zhou Yan suddenly paused the video; in the reflection of the employee badge in the lower right corner, the words "Operations Department" could be vaguely seen. "Wang Fang doesn't have access to the core code," he said, pulling up the HR system, "but her husband works at a competitor company."
At 2 a.m., Ayu stared at the relationship diagram Zhou Yan had drawn on the whiteboard. From Wang Fang borrowing the workstation to the system log being tampered with, each node meshed like gears. As Zhou Yan's finger traced the "database backup time," she suddenly remembered what the IT director had said during training: "Automatic backups are performed every day at 10 p.m., at which time all operations will be mirrored."
Chapter Four: The Truth in the Mirror
The IT department's server room hummed with the distinctive buzz of servers. The administrator pulled up the backup file from that day. Zhou Yan's fingers flew across the keyboard, suddenly stopping at a series of abnormal operation records: 22:16, someone logged into the system using A Yu's account, but the login IP showed the operations and maintenance department's dedicated terminal.
"Look here." Zhou Yan zoomed in on the timeline. Thirty seconds before the backup file was generated, a piece of code was being compressed. That wasn't the core architecture of Cloud Shield, but a deliberately obfuscated old version. The real leak actually happened three days ago. Someone used Ayu's employee ID to enter the server room while she was out, but couldn't crack the new encryption, so they forged sending records to frame her.
The surveillance footage was retrieved again. The person in the gray hoodie paused at the entrance of the server room. As they adjusted their mask, a silver bracelet flashed across their wrist—the birthday gift Wang Fang had flaunted in the break room last week. Ayu's nails dug deeply into her palms. It turned out that from the moment she started filling in, it had all been a meticulously planned trap.
Chapter Five: Cracks Under the Light
In the boardroom, Wang Fang's sobs mingled with the hum of the air conditioner. "They said they'd get my son into a top-tier primary school if I got the code..." She tugged at her bracelet as if tearing away her disguise. Ayu watched Zhou Yan project the chain of evidence line by line and suddenly noticed that a button was missing from his shirt collar—the one she had ripped off herself this morning while watching the surveillance footage.
"According to Article 39 of the Labor Contract Law..." As the legal director's voice rang out, Ayu suddenly felt a chill in her fingertips. Zhou Yan had appeared beside her at some point, his suit sleeve brushing against the back of her hand, carrying a faint scent of cedar perfume. As Wang Fang was taken away by security, the sunset outside the window was spilling into the conference room, gilding Zhou Yan's profile with a golden hue.
Chapter Six: Coffee Beans in the Night
The office was empty except for the two of them in the early hours of the morning, the coffee machine whirring softly. Ayu watched him expertly dispense and tamp the coffee powder, then suddenly noticed an old school badge hanging from his name tag lanyard—the symbol of her alma mater. "Actually, I noticed you on the first day of training," he said, handing her a hot latte, tiny droplets of water clinging to the cup, "You draw little crescent moons at the end of sentences when you take notes."
The neon lights outside the window reflected off the glass. Ayu touched the burn mark on her mug, recalling how Zhou Yan had messaged her every day during the three days she was suspended to update her on the investigation's progress. From code comparison to monitoring checks, he meticulously defused each trap like a bomb disposal expert, while she had initially thought his concern was just polite formality between colleagues.
"Why are you helping me?" When Ayu looked up, Zhou Yan was wiping the coffee machine, his gaze hidden in the shadows behind his glasses. "Because I've seen the same thing before," his voice was as light as steam, "Three years ago, the intern I was supervising was falsely accused of leaking data, and he later committed suicide—I don't want that to happen again."
A mug clinked softly against the table. Ayu noticed the scar on the inside of his wrist and suddenly understood why he always brewed twice the amount of coffee when working overtime. Night fell into the office. Zhou Yan's fingertips traced the little moon on her sticky note, and he suddenly said, "Actually, the moon you drew is brighter than any I've ever seen."
The coffee machine roared to life again, this time brewing Yirgacheffe, Ayu's favorite. As the first rays of dawn climbed onto the glass curtain wall, Zhou Yan's suit jacket draped over her shoulders, still warm from his body. The words "Cloud Shield System" on the sticky note were crossed out, replaced by "Want to have breakfast together tomorrow?" followed by a crooked little crescent moon.
On the workstation partition, two sticky notes gently touched in the morning breeze, like two souls finally drawing closer. Ayu touched the cedar scent on her coat and suddenly felt that all the struggles in the data maze, the despair of being falsely accused, had transformed into the gentle warmth of the morning light in the hot coffee this man offered.
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