Steam filled the small bathroom, turning the mirrors into opaque sheets of white condensation. Under the rushing spray of hot water, Lu Huawei was in the middle of a full-blown systemic crisis.

Her long, purple hair was completely soaked, clinging to her back like dark silk as she paced back and forth within the narrow confines of the shower stall. Her usual rigid, majestic composure had entirely vanished.

Suddenly, she stopped, placing both hands flat against the wet tiled wall and leaning her head against her arms. The hot water poured over her shoulders, but it did nothing to soothe the chaotic storm inside her analytical brain.

"What will I do next?!" she screamed over the roar of the running water, her voice echoing off the porcelain. "The verbal rejection script was a complete failure! The subject's cognitive reasoning is entirely compromised by romantic delusion!"

She shut off the water, hastily dried herself, and practically threw on her favorite pastel-pink pajamas. Sprinting down the hallway of her home, she ducked into her bedroom and slammed the door shut, locking it with a sharp click.

The pristine, leather-bound research notebook sat on her bed, right next to the crisp white envelope sealed with the small pink heart sticker. Huawei resumed her frantic pacing, her pajama-clad feet thudding softly against the floorboards. She picked up the letter, staring at the heart sticker as if it were an unexploded device.

Unable to contain her nervous energy, she jumped onto her mattress, rolling over and over across the blankets while clutching the envelope tightly against her chest. She tangled herself completely in her sheets, staring blankly up at the ceiling.

"If standard human logic fails to communicate a negative response," she muttered to the empty room, "I must identify a lighter, more socially acceptable method of termination."

Defeated by her own lack of data, she kicked herself free from the blankets and lunged toward her desk. She snatched her tablet, fired up a streaming app, and aggressively searched for every popular romance movie in the database.

With her ruby eyes fixed intently on the screen, she began fast-forwarding through the films at three times the normal playback speed. Her finger tapped the screen relentlessly, skipping past the sweeping musical numbers, the dramatic hand-holding, and the long, poetic monologues.

"Irrelevant... unscientific... highly improbable physics..." she muttered under her breath, skipping ahead until she finally located the precise rejection scenes.

She paused a scene where a tearful heroine gently let down a childhood friend. Huawei leaned in closer, squinting as she closely analyzed the facial expressions, the tone of voice, and the body language on the screen.

She needed a formula that was gentle enough to prevent another delusional bypass, yet firm enough to restore optimal classroom efficiency by tomorrow morning.

Slowly, she pulled her notebook toward her, unscrewed her pen, and prepared to log her new findings.

Hour after hour slipped away into the quiet night. The tablet screen continued to cast a rhythmic, flickering blue glow over her workspace as movie after movie played through the rejection sequences.

But the human body, unlike Huawei's idealized logical systems, had strict physical limits. Her eyelids grew progressively heavier. The rapid analytical tapping of her fingers slowed to a crawl.

Finally, exhaustion won the battle. Huawei's head dropped onto her outstretched arms, her cheek pressing against the hard wood of her desk.

Her long purple hair fanned out across her notes, completely covering her scribbled equations on human emotion. Tucked safely right beneath her sleeping palm was Subject B's white love letter, held fast as her breathing finally steadied into a deep, uninterrupted slumber.