Chapter 5: What Was That Sound?

Living together entered its third week, and Lin Xia finally accepted a reality:

This surveillance mission would most likely pass quietly through the long, mundane days, and then on some ordinary morning, the evaluation report would come out, the procedure would be completed, and life would continue.

Su Xin isn’t scary at all.

She’s just a bit strange, hard to figure out, a bit… somehow, she makes you feel like she knows everything, yet she just chooses not to say it.

She’s hard to describe.

Lin Xia deleted and rewrote her feelings about Su Xin three times in her log, and ultimately deleted it all, because she wasn’t sure if intuition counted as observational evidence.

Meanwhile, beneath the calm surface of their cohabitation, Yin Qi had been doing one thing—listening.

A Meme’s consciousness was naturally connected to the world’s Information Field.

It was like reaching a hand into water—the direction of the flow, the temperature, could all be felt by the hand.

Most of the time, she actively kept this perception at a low frequency.

Listening, listening, occasionally some special signal would become slightly clearer.

She would listen for a moment, then let it blur again.

Most signals were ordinary city noise: people’s anxiety, anticipation, and lingering thoughts, all mixed together, indistinguishable, not worth listening to.

But on the twentieth day, she heard something different.

That signal was very faint, but sharp like a needle suddenly pricking her.

She had been washing dishes at the time, and she almost dropped a bowl.

She quietly filtered out that signal in her consciousness…

It was hard to describe what it was.

She only felt something stir in the depths of the Information Field.

It wasn’t a Meme’s signal, nor human thought, but a tightly hidden surge.

Like something swimming quietly far beneath the surface, deliberately suppressed.

Yin Qi put down the washed bowl, turned off the faucet, and sensed for a while longer.

Unfortunately, this time, the signal disappeared.

The Information Field returned to calm, as if nothing had happened.

She stood in the kitchen, silent for a moment.

Then Lin Xia leaned in from the living room and said, “Are you done washing? I kind of want some fruit.”

“I’m done,” Yin Qi said.

“There’s some in the fridge.”

Her tone and expression were perfectly normal.

She turned off the kitchen light and walked back to the living room.

But she had just memorized the rough coordinates of that signal in her mind.

‘This world really is interesting.’

She sat back down on the sofa and picked up her phone to scroll.

Lin Xia took a plate of cut watermelon from the fridge and set it on the coffee table.

Sitting down beside her, she said, “Want some?”

“Thanks,” Yin Qi said, taking a piece.

“Did you finish your report today?”

“Halfway there,” Lin Xia said.

“I’ll finish after I eat, then sleep.”

“Mm,” Yin Qi said, biting into the watermelon.

“That first sentence you wrote, ‘Subject’s condition today is normal’—you can change it.”

“?”

“I’m in great condition today. Not just ‘normal.'”

Lin Xia stared at her.

“How did you… again…”

“Guessed,” Yin Qi said calmly.

“You write ‘normal’ every day.”

Lin Xia opened her mouth, then realized it was true, and closed it again.

‘Su Xin definitely knows what I’m thinking.

But if I keep pushing, she’ll just say “I guessed.”‘

‘What exactly is her ability?’

She thought for a long time and couldn’t figure it out.

She decided to go write her report.

Yin Qi leaned back on the sofa, holding the leftover watermelon rind in her hand.

Watching Lin Xia seriously sit down at the desk, open her laptop, and begin writing her routine log, she couldn’t help but laugh softly to herself.

‘Such a serious little Agent.’

She looked down at her fingers.

The ten rings sat there quietly.

Then she gently probed her consciousness into the depths of the Information Field, confirmed that the “surge” had not reappeared, and slowly pulled back.

‘Nothing. Probably just random noise.’

She told herself that.

But that feeling just now was like suddenly hearing an unfamiliar footstep in a quiet forest—even after it faded, you could be certain that “it” was still there.

She temporarily pushed the matter of that noise aside, behind the serious business of eating watermelon.

‘Whatever it is, I’ll leave it to your GMRA to handle.

Let it surface on its own first, and we’ll talk later.’

She took another piece of watermelon and bit into it.

Sweet.

Outside the window, the city was still noisy, still a patchwork of green and orange, still quietly flowing with something in some unknown depth.