Chapter 6: I Don’t Know

On the twenty-fifth day of cohabitation, Lin Xia seriously summarized her observations from this period and reached a conclusion:

Su Xin’s troublemaking followed a pattern.

It wasn’t random chaos; there was a logic to it.

She would first observe, find some exploitable detail, wait for the right moment to mess with Lin Xia, and then pretend nothing happened.

’Lin Xia internally named this logic “Premeditated Harassment.”’

The name was very accurate, but she didn’t write it in her report because she wasn’t sure if that description was appropriate.

Lin Xia recorded a few incidents that occurred between the sixteenth and twenty-fifth days:

Incident 1: One day, Lin Xia noticed that her pens kept disappearing.

She lost three in total.

Later, she accidentally opened a drawer and found the three pens neatly arranged at the back, sorted by color.

“Su Xin, did you put these away?”

she asked.

“No,” Yin Qi said.

“Maybe you put them there yourself and forgot.”

“…”

Incident 2: Lin Xia had a habit of checking the doors and windows before bed.

One night, she finished checking and just lay down, only to find the bedroom light still on.

She got up to turn it off, went back to bed, and the light turned on again.

She repeated this three times.

The third time she returned to bed, the light turned off right on time, as if someone was deliberately waiting for her to lie down.

The next day, she asked Yin Qi about it.

Yin Qi was drinking water at the time.

She turned around and said in a serious tone, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a wiring issue. Do you want to put in a maintenance request?”

“…”

Incident 3: One day, Lin Xia went out shopping.

When she returned, she found her jacket neatly folded and placed next to the pair of gloves she usually couldn’t find.

The gloves were underneath the jacket, so she found them too.

“…Thank you, Su Xin.”

She took the gloves, a bit frustrated.

“But you could’ve just told me where the gloves were, no need for this.”

“I don’t know where your gloves are.”

Yin Qi peeled an orange without looking up.

“I just folded your clothes. The gloves fell out from inside.”

“……”

Lin Xia stood there, holding the gloves.

In the end, she decided to let it go.

Next time, she would definitely sew an AirTag into her clothes.

……

On the twenty-fifth day, Yin Qi pushed her luck.

That afternoon, Lin Xia was on a video call with a colleague from headquarters.

They were discussing work for about ten minutes, and the microphone was still on.

The colleague mentioned a recent troublesome B-class meme case.

Then, suddenly, a voice came through on Lin Xia’s end—and it wasn’t hers.

It was Yin Qi’s.

“Oh, I know that B-class case,”

her voice sounded clearly over the line.

“There’s a flaw in your containment plan. If that meme is emotion-triggered, forced containment will only make things worse. You’d be better off trying isolation and observation first.”

The colleague on the other end was silent for two seconds.

Lin Xia quickly turned around—Yin Qi was sitting on the sofa, nearly five meters away, holding a book with a focused expression.

She showed no sign of having moved closer.

“You—how did you…”

Lin Xia lowered her voice.

“How did you hear that?”

“I wasn’t eavesdropping.”

Yin Qi turned a page.

“Your phone volume was a bit loud.”

“…”

The colleague on the other end cautiously asked, “Lin Xia, who’s that next to you?”

“It’s… the subject I’m monitoring.”

Lin Xia took a deep breath.

“It’s fine. Go on.”

“Actually, her suggestion…”

The colleague’s voice had a strange hesitation.

“It kind of makes sense?”

“…”

Lin Xia looked at Yin Qi.

“Do you want to become an agent too?”

“No way,” Yin Qi said.

“Too tiring.”

After the call ended, Lin Xia sat back down and stared blankly at her work documents for a while.

Then she pulled up the B-class case file, found the “flaw” Yin Qi had mentioned, and stared at it for ten minutes.

Then she wrote a note in her memo: “Based on comprehensive assessment, it is recommended to adjust the handling plan as follows…” and sent it to her superiors.

After sending it, she looked up at Yin Qi.

“Have you ever been exposed to GMRA work before?”

she asked.

“No,” Yin Qi said.

“I only came into existence not long ago. Where would I have a ‘before’?”

“Then how did you…”

“Common sense,” Yin Qi said.

“Things related to emotions only get worse the more you suppress them. That’s not meme knowledge; it’s just basic logic.”

Lin Xia stared at her for a moment, then said nothing more.

She lowered her head and continued organizing her files.

But quietly, ’Lin Xia made a mental note of this.’