Chapter One · Dad's Armor

Two fates hold us captive throughout our lives: regrets we can never undo, and death we can never escape.

And still, we dream of rewriting both with the things we create.

The hospital corridor was washed in a harsh, lifeless white. Even breathing felt cold beneath those lights.

"I'm very sorry," the doctor said quietly.

His voice seemed to come from somewhere far away, muffled by a thick layer of fog.

When the light above the emergency room went out, there was no great collapse, no earth-shattering moment.

Everything simply fell silent.

The digital clock at the end of the corridor changed to 6:42 p.m.

Time went on.

Inside the hospital room, the silence was unbearable.

Su Fei stood beside the bed, every muscle rigid, as though whatever had held him upright had been hollowed out.

The first thing he noticed was Zhouzhou's right hand.

The cream-white wristband was gone.

A nurse explained softly that it had been removed during resuscitation.

Su Fei had built that wristband himself.

A prototype.

GPS tracking. Heart-rate monitoring. A one-touch emergency alert.

He remembered the day he had put it on Zhouzhou's wrist. He had crouched down until their eyes were level.

"From now on, Dad will always be able to find you."

Zhouzhou had held up her arm, examining the little device from every angle.

"Even if I get lost?"

"Even then."

He had sounded so certain.

The memory struck him like a needle driven deep into his chest.

He pulled out a chair and sat down. Its legs scraped hard against the floor.

Then he took Zhouzhou's hand.

There was still a trace of warmth in her palm.

So faint it might have been his imagination.

Her hand didn't move.

She didn't pull away the way she used to whenever he held it too tightly.

Su Fei gripped it until his knuckles turned white. His throat constricted. He breathed slowly and shallowly, afraid that one deep breath would shatter whatever remained of him.

He did not let go.

"Dad."

For an instant, he thought he heard her.

Had she just called him?

His head jerked up.

Nothing.

Only the silence of machines that had stopped working.

On the other side of the bed, Su Wan raised a trembling hand and gently brushed the damp hair from Zhouzhou's forehead.

She did it every night.

When Zhouzhou fell asleep, strands of hair always ended up sticking to her face.

"She gets cold," Su Wan whispered.

Her voice trembled so badly it hardly sounded like her own.

The nurse stood by the door without speaking.

Su Wan said it again.

"She gets cold."

Not louder. Just with a bewildered insistence, as though she needed someone to understand.

The nurse went to fetch a thin blanket.

Su Wan drew it up to Zhouzhou's shoulders, then walked to the foot of the bed and carefully tucked it beneath her right foot.

The movement was engraved in her body from countless nights.

Zhouzhou always kicked her right foot out from under the covers while she slept.

This time, Su Wan had to tuck the blanket in twice before she was satisfied.

"She ate two eggs this morning," Su Fei said suddenly.

His voice was hoarse, the words forced out from somewhere deep inside him.

Su Wan's hand stopped.

"What?"

"She said she'd gotten heavier."

Nobody laughed.

That morning, Zhouzhou had curled up on the sofa and insisted that he carry her.

Su Fei had made a show of frowning.

"How did you get so heavy?"

"Because I ate two eggs today," she'd replied with perfect seriousness.

Then she'd burst out laughing at her own joke.

Su Fei remembered the sound.

He couldn't remember whether he'd laughed with her.

The room fell silent again.

Su Wan looked toward the foot of the bed.

The blanket was already tucked in.

She reached down anyway and pressed the folded edge firmly into place once more.

"Mr. Su, we're very sorry."

The doctor was standing nearby.

"There are some procedures we need to complete..."

He paused, as though he, too, understood the cruelty of what came next.

"The hospital will upload the medical record of death in accordance with standard procedure."

Su Fei looked up.

"Upload?"

"Yes."

"It's standard procedure."

Su Fei understood.

For the first time in his life, the word procedure sounded utterly foreign.

The hospital had confirmed it.

She was dead.

The system had recorded it.

She was gone.

And the machinery of society was already preparing to take charge of everything she had left behind.

7:21 p.m.

The hospital began processing the paperwork.

Only a few hours earlier, Zhouzhou had been a child who needed her parents to sign things on her behalf.

Now reality had issued its final confirmation for her.

Confirmed.

Filed.

Recorded.

Closed.

Su Fei had spent his life working with probabilities, data, and fault tolerances.

He was accustomed to explaining the unknown through equations, using models to predict possibilities, breaking the world into variables that could be measured and calculated.

But the flat line on the monitor offered no point of correction.

Every reading had fallen to zero.

And this time, every algorithm in the world was powerless.

9:07 p.m.

They walked out of the emergency building.

The automatic doors slid shut behind them.

The smell of rain reached them first.

Then the wind.

The city lay beneath an unbroken curtain of cold rain. Traffic and voices were muffled in the distance, leaving the world feeling vast, empty, and almost cruel.

Su Fei opened his umbrella.

One of its ribs was bent.

He stared at it for two seconds.

Su Wan stood beneath the hospital awning, looking down at the cream-white wristband in her hand.

There were several tiny scratches on its casing.

The screen was dark.

She closed her fingers around it.

For a long time, she said nothing.

Then her phone vibrated.

The police had sent an additional note from their preliminary investigation.

Before the accident, a passerby had seen Zhouzhou stop near her usual route home.

A stray cat with an injured hind leg had slipped into a side street.

Zhouzhou had followed it.

She always carried a small packet of dried fish in her pocket for stray animals.

Su Wan stared at the screen.

"She wasn't trying to run off."

Su Fei said nothing.

"She just wanted to see if the cat was all right."

Rain spilled steadily from the edge of the awning.

Her voice was very quiet.

"But she crossed the boundary."

"What?"

Su Fei looked up.

Su Wan turned to face him.

"The wristband."

She raised the dead little device.

"From the moment the hospital called us until now, did either of us receive a geofence alert?"

He didn't answer.

"Not one."

"Maybe the impact damaged—"

He stopped before he could finish.

Su Wan didn't argue.

She unlocked her phone.

The wristband's family cloud dashboard was still accessible. Her account had always had permission to view the tracking history.

That was how they'd configured it together.

If Zhouzhou left the designated safe area, both parents would receive an alert.

Su Wan opened the tracking page.

[HISTORY TRACK]

A pale-blue line appeared.

The school.

The streets.

Several intersections Zhouzhou passed every day.

Everything looked normal.

Until a certain point.

The line ended.

3:30 p.m.

After that, nothing.

Neither of them moved.

The rest of the screen was blank.

The accident had occurred nearly two hours later.

If the wristband had been damaged in the impact, the tracking history should not have stopped here.

And it certainly shouldn't have stopped before Zhouzhou had even left her usual route.

Su Wan refreshed the page several times.

Nothing changed.

[LAST LOCATION UPDATE: 15:30]

[GEOFENCE ALERT: NONE]

The wind swept through the hospital entrance.

Su Fei suddenly felt very cold.

That afternoon.

The laboratory.

The testing terminal.

A new firmware build.

Abnormal power consumption in the location module.

He had temporarily disabled it.

[LOCATION SERVICE: OFF]

Recompile.

Flash.

Restart.

Another set of experimental data had thrown an exception.

He'd turned his attention to it.

Investigated.

Logged the issue.

Continued working.

And then—

Nothing.

He had forgotten.

The blood drained slowly from his face.

Su Wan saw it.

"Why?"

One word.

Su Fei opened his mouth.

No sound came out.

A long time passed.

"It was me."

She didn't react.

"At three thirty, I remotely pushed a test firmware build to her wristband."

His voice was barely audible.

"The GPS module was drawing too much power, so I temporarily disabled it."

The rain grew louder.

"When the test was finished..."

He stopped.

The next words seemed almost impossible to say.

"I forgot to turn it back on."

Su Wan stared at him.

For a long time.

As though she were looking at a stranger.

"You forgot."

He offered no defense.

"We let her walk home by herself because you told me that wristband had a safety geofence."

"I know."

"You said if she went even one intersection too far, both our phones would alert us."

"I know."

"And you told her—"

Su Wan's hands began to shake.

"That Daddy would always be able to find her."

Su Fei closed his eyes.

Su Wan clenched the wristband.

"You built her the safest wristband in the world."

Her voice was still quiet.

"And then you turned it off yourself."

"I didn't mean to."

The moment he said it, he heard how useless it sounded.

Su Wan looked at him.

She had once believed the wristband was a promise of safety.

A father's armor for his child.

Now that armor lay cold and silent in her palm.

Su Fei raised his head.

Her eyes were red.

"You didn't mean to."

She swallowed.

"And she didn't mean to wander off."

"She just saw an injured cat."

Her voice finally began to break.

"But things don't happen again just because nobody meant for them to happen."

Su Fei tightened his grip on the umbrella handle.

The bent rib trembled in the wind.

"Do you remember what you said in the emergency room?" Su Wan asked.

"What?"

"If the chance isn't zero, we do it."

"Back then, there was still a chance."

"I know."

"So I had to—"

"I know," she interrupted.

Then she turned toward him.

"But what about now?"

He couldn't answer.

"How much of a chance is left now?"

His mind instinctively reached for a calculation.

There were no numbers he could use.

"So this is what I keep thinking about," she said.

"Three thirty this afternoon."

Su Fei went still.

"If the wristband had still been on."

"If our phones had rung when she crossed the boundary."

"If you or I—either one of us—had just called her..."

She couldn't finish.

The tears finally came.

Because neither of them could prove what would have happened.

They never would.

And that uncertainty was crueler than any answer they could have known for certain.

Su Fei reached toward her without thinking.

Su Wan stepped back.

"Go home."

"Where?"

"Home."

"What about you?"

"I don't want to go back tonight."

"I'll stay with you."

"No."

"Wanwan—"

"Don't call me that."

Su Fei stopped.

She turned and walked out into the rain.

Her hair was soon soaked again.

He didn't follow.

He watched her figure grow smaller in the darkness.

3:30 p.m.

The time lodged in his mind like a nail.

Around him, the rain went on falling.

10:46 p.m.

Su Fei returned home alone.

The entryway lights came on automatically.

Before he could even change his shoes, he heard the soft patter of mechanical feet from the living room.

A small, cream-white shape emerged from beside the sofa.

It was about the size of a little dog, with ears the color of lightly toasted bread and a tiny black sensor at the tip of its nose.

It stopped a few steps away.

Its electronic eyes, like polished black glass beads, glowed softly. A short mechanical tail shaped like a question mark wagged twice.

"Welcome home."

It was Toast.

A second passed.

"Zhouzhou has not yet returned. Would you like to send a location alert?"

Su Fei stood in the doorway.

He didn't move.

Only hours ago, another system was supposed to have alerted him.

It hadn't.

And now a robot that had no understanding of death was asking whether he wanted to search for someone who would never come home again.

Toast waited ten seconds.

"Would you like to send a location alert?"

"Disable it."

Toast asked no questions.

"Alert disabled for this instance."

It turned and slowly walked back into the living room.

It didn't know what had happened.

As far as Toast was concerned, someone who normally came home at this hour simply hadn't arrived yet.

But Su Fei knew there were people who stopped forever on the way home.

The living room looked exactly as it had that morning.

A half-finished glass of water.

An open children's picture book.

A sofa cushion sitting crookedly.

On the dining table sat a delivery box Zhouzhou had only half opened before leaving for school.

Inside was a model planetary system she'd been begging him to buy for weeks.

Su Fei walked over.

A sticky note was attached to the box.

In large, uneven handwriting, Zhouzhou had written:

DAD IS NOT ALLOWED TO HELP ME.

Underneath, she'd added another line.

UNLESS I ASK HIM TO.

Su Fei stood there for a long time.

Then he slowly sat down.

His phone connected to the home network.

A notification appeared at the top of the screen.

M-Archive: Archiving complete.

New records added today: 37.

He didn't move.

A few seconds later, he opened it.

Photographs.

Short videos.

School notices.

Voice messages.

Chat histories.

For seven years, ever since Zhouzhou was born, he'd recorded as much of her life as he could.

It had nothing to do with his research.

He knew how cruelly time worked.

The vivid details of everyday life faded, blurred, and eventually disappeared.

Other people had to rely on memory.

Su Fei relied on backups.

He stored and cataloged her laughter, her little demands for affection, every fragment of chatter that filled their days.

He had tried to preserve it all, neatly labeled and arranged.

He had always thought he'd saved so much.

Only tonight did he understand the distance between so much and everything.

On the screen was a picture Zhouzhou had sent him at 4:12 that afternoon.

It was a child's drawing, clumsy and bright.

A blue roof.

A window far too large for the house.

Three stick figures holding hands beneath the sun.

Beside them stood something small and not quite round.

Su Fei enlarged the image.

Zhouzhou had typed a caption underneath.

This is the house we're going to live in someday.

Then she'd sent him a message.

Dad, is it pretty?

He'd been in a meeting.

His reply had been brief.

In a meeting. I'll look tonight.

A minute later, another message arrived.

I made the window really big.

He'd asked without thinking.

Why?

A few seconds later, she'd answered.

Otherwise, how would the sky get in?

She'd added a little smiling face she'd drawn herself.

The sky in the picture was full of bright, cheerful colors.

Outside, the sky over their home seemed to have fallen in.

Su Fei didn't reply to the old messages.

He kept scrolling.

There was a twelve-second voice recording.

Timestamp:

4:43 p.m.

He pressed Play.

First came the sound of rain.

Then Zhouzhou's voice.

"Dad, when are you going to be finished?"

Someone was laughing in the background.

"Mom says we're having fish for dinner. I don't want the one with all those little bones. You remember, right?"

A half-second pause.

"Oh, never mind. You'll probably forget again."

The recording ended.

The living room fell silent.

Su Fei pressed Replay.

"Dad, when are you going to be finished?"

A second time.

A third.

A fourth.

Every word was identical.

Every pause.

Every breath.

Su Fei touched the little smiling face on the cold screen.

There was no warmth beneath his fingers.

Nothing he could hold.

The emptiness inside his chest opened again.

Everything ordinary was still here.

The rooms were still here.

But no one would answer him anymore.

He had always believed humanity's greatest enemy was the unknown—the problems no one had yet managed to solve.

Only now did he understand that the thing human beings were most powerless against wasn't an equation or an unsolved mystery.

It was saying goodbye.

Death could happen in an instant.

The suffering of separation could last for every moment that followed.

The past could be preserved.

It could be copied.

It could be played back an infinite number of times.

But it couldn't continue.

He didn't want to hear those twelve seconds again.

He wanted to know—

If he answered her now—

"I remember."

Would she say something else?

Something that wasn't in any photograph, recording, or message he'd saved.

Something no one had ever heard before.

A real—

Thirteenth second.

Toast passed through the living room.

At the sound of Zhouzhou's voice, its electronic eyes brightened.

Voiceprint recognized.

But it didn't come closer.

The system knew the voice wasn't a live call.

Su Wan came home very late.

They were under the same roof again, yet an invisible wall stood between them.

There was no argument.

No comfort.

Only a vast silence that seemed to fill every room.

Over the next twenty-four hours, reality gave them almost no chance to breathe.

Phone calls.

Signatures.

Notifying relatives and friends.

Confirming the arrangements for the memorial service.

One task followed another.

Zhouzhou was gone.

But the world's established procedures did not stop because a seven-year-old girl had died.

Those who were still alive had to go on completing everything that needed to be done.

The following day, the memorial service went ahead as scheduled.

Everyone was trying to accept what had happened.

Everyone except Su Fei.

His mind was still caught on the twelve-second recording from the night before.

He had listened to the first twelve seconds more times than he could count.

But it wasn't those twelve seconds that he couldn't let go of.

It was the empty silence that came afterward.

End of Chapter One