The bedroom smelled like betrayal. Sex and stale smoke. Liam didn't panic. He just sat there, arm around Bella, checking his watch like I was late for an appointment. "If you're going to vomit, do it outside," he said. "I'll call the cleaners." I stood frozen in the doorway of what was supposed to be our wedding suite. The man who swore to protect me was looking at me like I was a glitch in his software. Red lipstick. Black lace. The sheets we picked out together. "Get out, Sarah." My legs wouldn't move. Bella giggled. Twenty-two years old, influencer-perfect, wrapped in my fiancé like a designer accessory. The next morning, I heard him muttering in the kitchen. Not to himself. To *It*. "Algorithm, suspend the Sarah Protocol." His voice was cold, mechanical. "Pause it for a year. I want to focus on Bella. Full optimization." A voice materialized in my head—robotic, inevitable, like an automated message you can't skip. **[REQUEST ACKNOWLEDGED. WARNING: SUSPENSION WILL RESULT IN PERMANENT DATA LOSS FOR SUBJECT.]** He didn't care. He didn't know that "data loss" meant my love. The Interface turned to me. An invisible prompt waiting for a command. **[DO YOU ACCEPT TERMINATION?]** I was frying eggs when it happened. My hand slipped. Hot oil splashed across my palm. I gasped. "Is breakfast ready yet? You're being so slow..." Liam was urging me on, because his little secretary had already arrived at her workstation, waiting for the loving breakfast he had made with his own hands. But how could the busy President Carter have time? I, his actual girlfriend, had somehow become a helper for their love affair. I felt resentful, tears hitting the floor. With a spatula, I cut the fried eggs into pieces, turned off the heat, dumped out the water, and slammed the kitchen door. The man in the living room holding a jewelry box startled, frowning at me. "What's your problem?!" My throat felt dry. After a long while, I choked out: "I burned myself." He impatiently dropped what he was holding and came over perfunctorily. "Such a small injury, stop being so dramatic!" As he spoke, he pulled burn ointment from the drawer, his movements irritable. I watched his fingers moving in circles, suddenly remembering the video my friend had sent me. Bella had frowned from the pain of a blood draw, and he had been so heartbroken he cried, kissing her hand in public to comfort her, not caring about the onlookers. But my casual complaint had become a burden in his eyes. "Done! If you don't want to make breakfast, then don't. Don't hurt yourself trying to win sympathy, Sarah. I'm busy!" I lowered my head and pressed my lips together. Busy caring about Bella's menstrual cycle timing, busy discussing wedding details, busy transferring most of his assets before I found out. Indeed, very busy. The door slammed. The air still carried traces of Bella's perfume. Liam's phone on the table buzzed. I looked up, and the Chat contact name "Sweetheart" pierced my heart like a thorn. He found it troublesome and never gave me a contact name. Once, when I changed my username, he didn't message me for three days. When I finally got angry, he replied matter-of-factly: "You changed your name, so I couldn't find you!" Back then, I was madly in love with him, truly blaming all the problems on myself, trying to please and apologize. From then on, I kept the same name and profile picture for many years. But now it seemed his bottom line was only set for me. The phone buzzed again. Possessed, I picked it up. The password was easy to guess—Bella's birthday. It used to be mine, then he changed it to hers. Even Liam's habit with lovers was the same. "Honey! Have you arrived yet? I'm starving to death!" Three angry emojis in a row. "Also, tell Sarah not to toast the bread too long! It hurts my throat when I eat it!" She added another line, and my eyes grew hot. With trembling hands, I scrolled up. Every complaint and grumble from Bella had a reply. "The weather's bad today." Liam replied: "Having me who loves you is enough." "Met a cute cat downstairs." Liam replied: "How cute? Cuter than you?" Those simple sweet nothings were pipe dreams for me—after all, nowadays even a reply from him felt like charity. The Algorithm saw I hadn't spoken for a long time, just kept crying, and prompted again. **[Does the conquest target agree to terminate the relationship? Once...]** "Agree!" My response was firm. I was too tired of living like this. I didn't want to consider everything for Liam anymore, having to mind his schedule even when getting angry. Didn't want to be what others called a desperate woman who couldn't keep her man but refused to leave. Even more, didn't want to become Liam's last resort after he'd had his fill of fun. He was supposed to be conquering me, but in the end, I'd become the pathetic one. **[Conquest target agrees. All feelings will be purged within seven days.]** My chest ached, and I collapsed to the floor. The sound of the door opening. Liam grabbed his phone from the table. His eyes fell on the emojis, smiling sweetly, but he didn't spare a single glance for me curled up on the floor.
When I woke up again, it was already dark. I looked up at the photo in the corner and felt surprisingly little emotion. The fried eggs in the pot had swollen from soaking, just like my relationship with Liam—unrecognizable. The first day I met Liam, a Algorithm appeared in my mind. It told me that the nervous boy in front of me, who was trembling when he spoke, wanted to successfully conquer me. I didn't understand and asked what "conquest" meant. **[Conquest means making you fall in love with him!]** The Algorithm's response scared me terribly, so I knocked the candy out of the boy's hand, scattering it on the ground, and fled in panic. My mother fell in love with my father, but in the end, he beat her so badly in domestic violence that he broke three of her ribs. I just wanted to live safely. Loving someone was too dangerous for me. But Liam did everything possible to resolve all my concerns. When my parents' divorce got violent, he kicked down the door and took me away from that suffocating home. When classmates bullied me, he took a stick and fought a gang of thugs alone, getting beaten until his head bled. Later, I was dumped at my grandmother's place in the countryside, almost forced to marry an old bachelor. Liam drove a broken biker and brought me out from the mountains. So falling in love with him seemed to become natural. And he continued to be good to me year after year. He took care of all three meals a day and all the housework. He used his meager wages to support us both. When a crooked boss scammed him out of every penny, he would only hide outside and cry, never bringing any negative emotions to me. I became a useless person who couldn't do anything as long as Liam was around. Everyone said that Sarah meeting Liam was the luck of several lifetimes. I believed this in my heart too. Until Bella appeared. She was twenty-two then, fresh out of college, lively and bright. Liam and I had already stumbled our way to twenty-seven. We had lost the vitality of youth. All our love was hidden in the thick clothes prepared when it got cold. I thought gentle warmth was happiness, but I forgot. When Liam and I first fell in love, we loved intensely too. He started habitually going on business trips, forgetting our anniversaries. His bag had cute sticky notes and plush toys. When I found them while cleaning, he dismissively threw them in the trash, muttering in annoyance. "That new secretary really doesn't know the rules. I'll fire her tomorrow..." But Bella stayed by his side just fine for three years, and the things he'd thrown in the trash, he secretly retrieved late at night. Later, his favoritism became more and more obvious. On Valentine's Day, the bracelet he gave me was a free gift that came with Bella's present. Intimate photos posted on social media: "Little troublemaker insisted I post this. Guess I'm learning to document life like young people!" The tone was indulgent. Many mutual friends replied below. "Liam, you're not old at all! An age gap is perfect!" "She makes trouble, he smiles—I ship it!!" ... Only one comment stood out awkwardly: "Did you block Sarah from seeing this?" Three minutes later when I refreshed, I could no longer see that post. There was even a period when he put me on his blacklist, only removing me when he needed me. I confronted him, crying until I was hoarse. He just replied impatiently: "I'm really busy lately. Weiwei told me to block people unrelated to work. It improves efficiency!" Seeing my red eyes, he sighed heavily and transferred me 100,000 yuan. "Is this compensation enough?" The door slammed. I collapsed on the sofa. The transfer notification on my phone burned my heart. Liam, when have I ever been with you for money? But that question fell in the empty house with no answer.
Three days later, I was already frequently forgetting about Liam. Bella had added me on WeChat at some point, and her feed full of wedding preparations looked exactly like showing off. **[Today my honey showed me the wedding dress he designed himself. It's really beautiful!]** I looked at the picture. That wedding dress was Liam's graduation project from his design school days, created during the most passionate time of our love. That wedding dress that embodied all our feelings ended up being worn by the mistress. How ridiculous. I actually laughed, my heart still aching densely, just not as heart-wrenchingly as before. I couldn't help but feel grateful that the Algorithm could control my emotions. But even so, the bitterness and joy that Liam had brought me in those memories still made me choke up. A moment later, another social media update popped up. **[Wedding gift! Making you both a husband and a father at the same time!]** The ultrasound image clearly showed that Bella was already three months pregnant. That barely-formed fetus was like a harsh slap across my face. The calm I'd achieved through self-comfort instantly crumbled. I clenched my phone screen tightly, my right hand trembling, wanting to look closer, to see more clearly. But tears poured out uncontrollably. Through my blurred vision, I broke down sobbing. No wonder! No wonder Liam suddenly requested to temporarily terminate the conquest relationship. No wonder he'd been secretly transferring assets. My stomach suddenly churned. I rushed to the sink and dry-heaved, but nothing came up. After a long while, I looked at my wretched self in the mirror—face pale white, hair plastered to my face, swollen eyes no longer looking like they once did. Why? Why should I suffer alone? I picked up my phone and, without hesitation, screenshot that social media post and sent it to the alumni group chat. **[Congratulations, Boss Carter, on becoming a father.]** The tone was flat, but it shocked the group into instant silence. I didn't know what waves that message caused, but I figured it must have had quite an impact on Bella. Otherwise, Liam wouldn't have rushed over from the company in just half an hour, seething with rage. "Sarah, what do you mean by this?" "How is Weiwei supposed to hold her head up after you posted that photo in the group?! A girl's reputation is so important! Why are you so vicious?!" He slapped our photo, shattering it. I looked at the man's twisted face and couldn't find a trace of how he used to be. "Don't most people in that group already know about your relationship?" "What are you still pretending for?" I picked up the fallen photo, glanced at it, felt annoyed, and tore it to shreds right in front of Liam. His surging anger stopped for a moment. Suddenly, he slapped the scraps out of my hands. "What are you doing?!" He glared at me, his eyes full of incomprehension. "I'll handle this. Why do you have to make such a scene?!" My chest ached terribly. His "handling" meant giving the wedding he'd promised me to Bella, or using the wedding dress he'd designed for me as a love token for his mistress? I couldn't even ask. After a long while, I looked up at him. "Do you still love me?" He froze, his fingertips curling, hesitation flashing in his eyes. I waved my hand: "Never mind. If you don't love me, then you don't. Soon, I won't love you either." As I said this, I looked down, the pain in my chest reaching its peak. Tears pooled in my eyes. I took a sharp breath to keep them from falling. "Sarah, you're not a twenty-year-old girl anymore. This tantrum will only make me annoyed!" His tone was cold and hard, as if certain I was just being stubborn. He probably never knew that the Algorithm agreed to his request because I had agreed too. Our relationship—he was the one who gave it up first.
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