‘SEE YOU MORNING' 072 The Spell of Love

‘SEE YOU MORNING' 072 The Spell of Love
Carrying the results and equipment from a weekend of research, Li Haojun sat back in his office on Monday with renewed energy, but his mind wasn't on work—it was on proving his own hypothesis, which felt far more rewarding than the dull tasks awaiting him here.
After their recent interactions, Li Haojun noticed Sienna seemed to have grown closer to him. She talked more now, always asking about his life choices after work conversations, seeking his opinion on things. To avoid trouble, Li Haojun checked local laws and company policies for any rules about office romances—there were none. Not even a police station in this town.
Li Haojun also watched how other colleagues reacted to him and Sienna spending more time talking at the office. No one seemed to care. Good workplace atmosphere, no gossip, everyone seemed refined.
They'd arranged to go to Sienna's place after work to test her home environment. After most of the day, he was just waiting for quitting time. Staring at the tree shadows stretched long by the setting sun outside the window, Li Haojun suddenly felt the guilt of wasting his life. This lousy job had long filled him with resentment, so he walked out of his office, went to Sienna's desk, and said,
"Let's go," simple and direct.
"Huh?" Sienna didn't understand at first, looking up into Li Haojun's eyes. Then a smile spread across her face, though she was still trying to hold back laughter. She packed up her things, glanced carefully at the colleagues nearby, and timidly left her desk.
Same route, but this time he knew the way by heart. When they arrived, before entering Sienna's house, Li Haojun pulled out a hood and handed it to her.
"Put this on."
"Oh," Sienna took it and examined it, asking,
"What is this," while trying to figure out how to put it on.
"Anti-electromagnetic radiation hood," he explained, taking it from her hands and putting it on her himself, seeming a bit impatient.
Sienna didn't resist. After putting it on, she felt around to make sure it fit properly, looking up at Li Haojun with her eyes, seeming to ask for his opinion. Does it fit? Does it look good? Like a baby afraid of the cold in winter, adorably cute.
Li Haojun followed Sienna inside, watching her every move, comparing it to how she'd been before.
When Sienna walked up the stairs, she suddenly stopped, turned around, and said with a look of surprise,
"What should I be doing? I feel like I want to take a shower, but I don't know why I want to do that."
"Come on, come down, let's sit in the living room first," Li Haojun said, waving Sienna over. He sat on the sofa himself, pulled out a commercial radio frequency detection device, connected it to his computer, moved the display window near the brainwave frequency band, and pointed it out to Sienna who had sat down beside him.
Sienna still didn't quite understand, staring at Li Haojun with wide eyes, waiting for him to explain further.
"There's electromagnetic interference at brainwave frequencies in this room, but I don't know why it doesn't affect me. Maybe it's not a match."
"Oh," Sienna just nodded in agreement.
It seemed she wasn't sensitive to her rights being violated, or perhaps she had never experienced what free life at home should be like, so she felt nothing.
As he was thinking, Li Haojun noticed a repeated high-frequency signal alert. He clicked into the signal attribute details and found it was the same repeated high-frequency digital signal, appearing at intervals.
Could such a signal be a command? A repeated command—does that mean the previous command wasn't executed? Thinking of this, Li Haojun shifted his gaze to Sienna—she indeed hadn't taken a shower and gone to sleep as usual.
Then Li Haojun suddenly realized his shielding hood worked by active phase difference to block electromagnetic waves. Was the signal he was receiving coming from its cancellation phase radio frequency? Looking at Sienna's dazed expression, he didn't bother explaining. He gradually lowered the amplitude of the electromagnetic shielding hood, and the screen response confirmed it was the source.
But there was no other same-frequency electromagnetic wave in the space that needed neutralizing. So, could it be coming from Sienna's head?
Thinking of this, Li Haojun completely turned off the shielding hood and removed it from Sienna's head. At first she watched these operations curiously, finding it interesting.
When Li Haojun was about to bring the radio frequency detection device close to Sienna's head, he noticed the screen alert—that brief high-frequency signal had appeared again. He stopped alertly, observing Sienna's reaction.
Sure enough, slowly, her eyes stopped looking at him, she stood up slowly, and walked toward the second floor. Li Haojun quickly picked up all his equipment and followed closely behind her, not wanting to miss any details.
Just like last time, Sienna showered in the bathroom as if no one was there. Even though the glass was transparent, Li Haojun stood right across from her, pressed against the glass outside the bathroom.
This time Li Haojun didn't sit far away on the sofa. Instead, he pressed the antenna of the radio frequency receiving module against the bathroom glass, trying to record Sienna's brainwave activity.
The computer was on the floor. From time to time he received brief high-frequency signals. Li Haojun observed Sienna's behavior patterns—they seemed to be changing accordingly—but he couldn't measure her brainwaves. They were all drowned out in the background noise.
After a while Li Haojun got tired of looking at the waterfall diagram of background noise, and instead admired Sienna in front of him. Her big eyes, fair skin—but the sparkle she had in the office was gone. It was as if she had been taken over, taken over by another machine executing a fixed program. Even her body movements seemed somewhat stiff.
As Sienna followed the same routine as before—showered, returned to the bedroom, lay in bed—Li Haojun finally got the chance to place the detection device on her forehead. Sleep brainwaves, but? The amplitude was unusually large. Li Haojun noticed this anomaly, so he kept changing angles, reading values from different directions on her forehead. It seemed smaller from other directions.
Li Haojun, staring at the screen in surprise, noticed at the bottom of the screen—some signals appearing and disappearing. He checked the phase—they seemed to be residuals canceled by this strong signal. Could it be? There was another transmitter?
Li Haojun went downstairs and retrieved an industrial-standard implant chip detection device from his bag. He slowly moved it to Sienna's forehead, and sure enough, there was a reading response.
Looking at her peacefully sleeping face, she was Sleeping Beauty under a spell—only this spell came from modern technology. The person who controlled the console or the backdoor was her prince. Li Haojun also understood why this town looked so desolate and quiet—because the people here had no free will after work. They were only allowed free will during working hours. That was also why there was no government here, no police. It must be a server somewhere that controlled everything here.
Li Haojun quickly continued to scan every inch of her skin. Sure enough, there were chips under the skin of her arms and lower legs—ordinary, mature commercial models, used for identification.
Looking at the sleeping Sienna, Li Haojun couldn't help but think—he could do anything to her. He could also do anything to the other people in this town. Anyone who entered a house and still had free will could do the same, had that same privilege. Was it these privileges available to certain people that bred the SM whips and toys in the office piano stools?
Pausing his thoughts and returning to reality, Li Haojun gently lifted her head and put the shielding hood back on her. During the gradual matching process, he found that brief high-frequency digital signal appeared again. This dispelled his doubts—there was no need to ask, this was the command signal sent to the chip in Sienna's head. Her status was being monitored by the environment.
Li Haojun had to abandon the idea of helping her gain freedom, because things weren't that simple. A system was operating here.
Silently packing up his equipment, he knelt on one knee beside Sienna's bed, looking at her delicate face. How much Li Haojun wished in his heart that she had her own colorful life outside work, even if it was just coming home after a long day and zoning out.
During the return flight, Li Haojun kept thinking—perhaps only this simple and crude method of making everyone go dormant when they got home could completely eliminate nighttime urban crime, and also avoid drugs and sexually transmitted diseases. This system compensated for the shortcomings of every individual in this town's collective. If another pandemic came, it wouldn't be undone by a few self-controlled fools ruining everyone's isolation efforts.
But if he and Qin Wenjing, a couple like them, lived here—would the management system make an exception for couples? Thinking of this, Li Haojun laughed at himself. What was he thinking? There had been lover bandits throughout history. There would be no exceptions for any ordinary person. Thinking that he lived in a free place, he considered himself lucky.
But was he really free? Obviously not. He also had to accept work orders, for the sake of living. When faced with Sienna being stripped of her freedom, and he could only quietly leave—why? Because he didn't want to get into trouble.
Was he really a coward? Li Haojun wanted to excuse himself, because before this coma, he had heard that he had also fought alongside Lily. It was just that now he was older, so he had become more cautious.
If he had once not cared about his own safety, then what was he worried about now? Qin Wenjing—he couldn't leave her, no matter what.
If Sleeping Beauty Sienna fell under a technological spell that plunged her into slumber, then might I, the hopeless romantic Li Haojun, have fallen under a spell of love from which I cannot extricate myself?