28. Queen of Hearts
After the joint inspection ended, Ms Armstrong returned to Room 404, but did not leave work immediately.
The office was quiet. The air conditioning was steady, the light so white it seemed first to dilute every person who had stayed behind to work overtime. Lord Albatross stood beside her desk, wings folded flat, as though every question not yet spoken had already been compressed by it into a format convenient for review.
Ms Armstrong pulled up today’s collaborative case, page by page, preparing to make the final annotations.
[Room 402 recovery judgement]
[Room 405 retention classification]
[Room 404 contextual health assessment]
Every column was complete.
Beautiful, even.
Beautiful enough that the whole thing looked like nothing more than a standard process demonstration, rather than several pauses that had almost grown human around the edges of paper, forced back down and rearranged into a version fit for upload.
When she reached the second case, her finger stopped.
Not because of the child’s drawing that said “Mummy don’t fall”, but because in the retention notes added by Room 405, one detail collided suddenly with an old file in her memory.
[Family-associated paper item.]
[Not recommended for separate extraction.]
[Retain as part of main object.]
[High emotional weight, but no dissemination risk.]
The phrasing was too familiar.
Not the content. The gesture.
Like certain people were especially skilled at standing on the narrowest edge allowed by the system and forcing a reason for something that ought to have been removed to remain alive. Not illegal. Not quite lenient. Only a very restrained, very precise holding back. If you did not look closely, you would think it was professionalism. But if you looked long enough, you knew there was partiality hidden inside it.
Ms Armstrong looked up.
“Lord Albatross, retrieve all Room 405 retention cases from the past six months using ‘associated paper item’, ‘family memory carrier’ and ‘high emotional weight but no dissemination risk’ as key conditions.”
Lord Albatross acknowledged. The search interface quickly brought up rows of files, white text neatly aligned, like a line of bones already trimmed.
Ms Armstrong’s gaze moved slowly downward.
Then she stopped at one of them.
Not today’s case.
Three months earlier.
[Registration type: postcard]
[Retention status: legal]
[Summary method: bilateral handwriting sample / low political sensitivity / high private commemorative tendency]
[Approver: Room 405. Vivian Poonson]
Her finger paused again.
Three months ago, Paul Paton had not yet started work in Room 402.
At that time, there should not have been any necessary work contact between him and Room 405.
Yet this postcard had not only gone to Room 405. It had been approved by Vivian.
Ms Armstrong did not immediately think too much. She simply opened the record.
The image appeared.
The front was an old photograph.
Snowy stood on a table, beside a green tin of mini M&K chocolates.
The tin shone cleanly, as though it had only just been taken from the shelf and had not yet gathered anyone’s sweat or warmth. Printed above the photograph was an English sentence:
[Yummy, Yummy, Chocolate!]
She turned the postcard over.
On the back were only two short passages.
————————————
Serena,
Thank you for the chocolates. Wishing you all the best at work!
(handwritten signature)
Paul
PS: Registered.
————————————
Paul,
Thank you for remembering me. We can be friends.
(handwritten signature)
Serena
serena.simms@wrensentimenthub.com
PS: Registration updated.
————————————
The words were simple.
Almost restrained.
Ms Armstrong stared at the two passages for several seconds. Not because their content was shocking. Quite the opposite — because it was too clean. Clean enough that someone seemed to have deliberately trimmed away every part that might grow unnecessary meaning, leaving only thank you, friends, registration and update. That cleanliness was not innocence. It was processed restraint. Like two people who both knew they could not write too much, each drawing their hand back, leaving only the minimum required for something to qualify as “retainable”.
“Bring up the approval notes for this case,” she said.
Lord Albatross quickly displayed them:
[Judgement: bilateral handwriting established.]
[No obvious unilateral pursuit tendency.]
[Memory object constitutes low-dissemination private memento.]
[Recommended for legal retention.]
Ms Armstrong looked at those lines and suddenly understood that what had felt familiar was not only the wording, but that act of holding back.
Because this was not simply following regulation.
This was someone seeing the almost unacknowledgeable weight inside that postcard, and still choosing to judge it as “retainable”.
She leaned back in her chair and did not speak at once.
Lord Albatross stood beside her and quietened too, as though it knew its master was slowly drawing several previously unrelated lines closer together.
402, 405, Paul, Vivian.
And a Serena from Wren Sentiment Hub.
Ms Armstrong did not know who Serena was.
Nor did she know Paul was Sample 87.
At least, she had not known.
She was simply used to annotating things inside Silver Eagle: annotating paper, annotating contact between people, annotating records that looked small but might in fact grow into something more.
Her job was not to guess stories.
It was to find risk names for stories.
But once certain annotations began joining into lines, the lines were no longer merely lines.
She pulled the postcard case, today’s inspection case, and Paul Paton’s recent cross-contact records with Room 405 into the same grey-white correlation map.
The white dots had originally been some distance apart. But once she opened the timeline, those distances slowly began to resemble a path. Not a clear path. Only a very pale, very thin tendency that had not yet grown a formal name.
But she had done this work long enough to know that the most dangerous things were often not proven associations, but things like this — not yet large enough to alarm anyone, yet already beginning to draw themselves together.
She looked at that path and finally added a very light tag inside the system:
[Requires further medical-side judgement]
Not an escalation.
Not an alert.
Only an annotation.
Like circling in pencil something that had not yet agreed to be named.
“Forward this to the Emotion Stabilisation Centre,” she said. “Medical-side review.”
Lord Albatross confirmed in a low voice:
“Forward under ordinary cross-sampling mode, or under individual association anomaly mode?”
Ms Armstrong thought for two seconds.
“Ordinary mode,” she said.
She did not know who Paul Paton was.
Still less did she know who Sample 87 was.
She only knew that some things were not yet large enough to alarm anyone. But if they were not marked out first, then in future, nothing might be visible clearly enough.
White light flashed.
The file was sent.
Not handled.
Only delivered.
Yet many things truly begin to grow from precisely this kind of seemingly harmless “send it over for a look”.
The floor of the Emotion Stabilisation Centre was whiter than other places.
It was not a matter of decoration, but of habit. White walls, white doors, white corridors — white in a very steady way. So steady that anyone walking in would first be forced to draw in the colours on themselves, so as not to appear too conspicuous.
Chief Medical Officer Sandy Summers had originally been preparing to leave work that day.
Queen of Hearts stood beside her, arranging the last batch of records awaiting review into a stack of gentle projections, as though every medical file had already been soothed before arriving in front of her. She was a card-like agent, slender in outline, red and white, never speaking quickly, as though every judgement had to be washed once through the mind before she would allow it onto the table.
Sandy scanned quickly.
Most of the records were ordinary. Elevated retrospection. Sleep fluctuation. Course absence. Secondary disturbance after home visit. Mild pursuit of old objects. Each one was like a small crease naturally growing somewhere in the city each day, then slowly pressed flat again by procedure.
Until she saw the postcard.
The image stopped for a moment.
Queen of Hearts noticed her gaze slowing, and expanded the related information slightly. The two passages were very short — so short it seemed neither person had wished to fill the space with words. But the longer Sandy looked, the more she felt some place in her chest that had not moved for many years being touched faintly.
Not because of Serena.
Because of Paul.
More accurately, because when that name appeared beside another set of information, she realised she had never recognised that the two lines belonged to the same person.
Paul Paton.
Paul.
Pok.
Queen of Hearts prompted softly:
“Supplementary data may retrieve corresponding sample code.”
Sandy did not click it open immediately.
She only looked at the postcard, at the sentence “Thank you for remembering me. We can be friends,” and suddenly remembered something she had not thought about for many years.
Back then, there were no agents.
No emotional ratings.
No real-time transmission.
No white horse or dolphin to translate a moment into risk for you.
Only classrooms, textbooks, blackboards, and those trivial things you only understood afterwards were the reason you had kept remembering.
It was a secondary school English lesson.
She and Pok had been placed in the same group discussion for the first time. The wind that day was a little dry. Pages rustled when they turned. The classroom carried the smell of chalk dust and sun-warmed uniforms.
The teacher had just written the topic on the blackboard and asked them to discuss in groups. Pok sat opposite her, textbook in hand, looking as though he were preparing very hard to say two sentences in English to prove he was participating. But just as he took a breath and prepared to speak, his nose suddenly itched.
He had already covered it with a tissue.
But perhaps the sneeze had been too forceful — or perhaps adolescence was simply gifted at pushing people into their most embarrassing versions — a strand of mucus still flew out and stuck to her hair, bright and glistening, like someone clumsy had applied styling gel in entirely the wrong place.
Pok froze completely.
It was not ordinary embarrassment. It was more like a boy’s soul suddenly tripping over on the spot while still having to pretend nothing had happened. He stared for a second, then could only act as naturally as possible, reaching towards her hair with a tissue. His movement was so clumsy it was almost honest. That clumsiness was not undignified. It was too dignified — so dignified that you knew at once he was truly panicking, and truly trying to fix it.
Sandy sat opposite him and saw everything.
She should have frowned, or at least moved away. But for some reason, she could not hold it back. The corner of her mouth lifted slightly. She did not laugh aloud. She was not mocking him. It was only like a small patch of snow melting by itself on the surface.
And it was that tiny moment—
So brief, so small, not worth being recorded by any system.
But Sandy knew that was the moment her defences broke.
She would remember that smile for the rest of her life.
Not her own smile.
The look in the boy opposite her: so mortified he almost evaporated on the spot, yet still forcing himself to stay calm, awkwardly wiping her hair with a tissue, the corner of his eyes filled with panic and sincerity.
After that day, she began noticing Pok.
Not obviously. Not the kind of liking where you found excuses to get close every lesson. Only that she would remember where he sat, remember how he always swallowed once before speaking English, remember how he could sometimes be very clever, yet always took half a step back at precisely the moment when he most needed to step forward.
But that was not the clearest time.
In another English lesson, the teacher asked everyone to give a short presentation. Sandy chose the topic: My Summer Job.
That summer, she had worked at McDangDang. She stood at the front of the class and spoke steadily, explaining what time she had to report to the shop every morning, how to wrap a burger in the shortest time, and how to remember several customers’ orders at once during peak hours. She said there was a regular customer who ordered the same breakfast every morning, and slowly began chatting to her a little at the counter. Once, she had accidentally knocked over food and stained a customer’s clothes, resulting in a complaint.
She did not use dramatic sentences. She simply laid out the everyday life of an ordinary working girl, plain and calm. At that moment, she looked more mature than most people in the class — as though she had already stepped early into a world where she had to support herself, while everyone else was still sitting in the classroom calculating mock exam marks.
The English teacher’s comment was very practical too.
You’ve made good use of the summer holiday to enrich yourself — well done!
When it was Pok’s turn, however, he decided to do the complete opposite.
His topic was called: My Clever Turtle.
The class had already begun laughing before the image even started. He held a tiny sea turtle into the projection camera. The shell was not new, but the eyes shone with great self-righteousness.
This is my turtle. His name is Clever Turtle.
The classroom was silent for half a second.
Then a turtle voice actually rang out:
“I am a clever turtle—”
The whole class burst into laughter. The English teacher sat in the back row, first rolling their eyes enormously, then drawing something with a red pen on the course sheet, as though leaving an unspoken footnote on the student’s life.
Pok pretended not to see and continued with full seriousness:
He likes eat lobster. So he works part-time in a herbal tea shop called Golden Root Tea Hall, to earn money to buy lobsters.
In those few minutes, he described Clever Turtle as a small agent with genuine personality, preferences and part-time work plans. It played video games with him, always claiming its completion time was faster than his. It also “sold intelligence” to humans, saying it had an IQ of ten million and could share a little with foolish him. But after he had “bought” some, he did not feel he had become much cleverer.
By this point, several boys were almost collapsed over their desks with laughter.
Sandy sat by the window near the front. Usually, she rarely showed such obvious expressions in class. But this time, she really could not help it. She raised a hand to cover her mouth and laughed.
Not a polite laugh.
Not a laugh performed for the atmosphere between classmates.
It was the laugh of someone genuinely amused, unable to take it back in time.
She lowered her head slightly, her shoulders trembling just a little. Sunlight slanted in from the window and fell across the side of her face. For that moment, the whole morning seemed to brighten.
At last, the English teacher stopped their red pen, raised a hand, and asked in a half-joking, half-sarcastic tone:
So… do you actually sleep with your turtle?
Pok actually answered very seriously:
Sometimes. When it is very cold, he will climb into my bed, and sleep for a while.
The teacher slowly said, with an expression suggesting they were unsure whether to be happy for him or worried about him:
Oh. I am sorry.
The classroom erupted in new laughter, as though the ceiling itself had been lifted off that lesson.
Jason Knight even shouted with laughter:
Paul, are you kidding me? You are not a kid.
Pok somehow replied very smoothly:
Yeah, we are teenagers. We plan to sell fish to earn money.
The whole classroom laughed and dissolved into chaos.
Later, even Ennis Wanley commented:
The teacher said “sorry,” but in their mind they were probably thinking: this kid’s mental maturity is about ten years behind their actual age.
The whole class laughed again.
But Sandy did not mind the teacher’s or the others’ tone at all then.
Because she was truly laughing at him.
Not politely. Not in cooperation.
That was the moment she lost ground — and privately, in later years, it was the moment she remembered most clearly.
A boy could be embarrassed, clumsy, seemingly always half a beat slower than everyone else. But when he spoke about that Clever Turtle, the light in his eyes was real.
And that kind of truth was far harder to deal with than maturity.
From that day onwards, she knew her interest in Pok was no longer ordinary “this classmate is amusing”.
It had become something more troublesome.
Later, over many years, she tidied all of that away.
First by growing up.
Then by training.
Then by a system teaching you to translate old heartbeats into something that looked more professional.
After enough time, she had even thought she truly no longer cared.
But today, when the words Sample 87 were finally retrieved by Queen of Hearts and projected quietly on the desk, that strand of mucus that had once stuck to her hair, that English lesson by the window, and the Clever Turtle who claimed to have an IQ of ten million all returned at once.
Absurdly.
And far too specifically.
Like a film negative she had believed completely faded, suddenly showing its shadow again under white light. Not the whole roll. Only one frame. But that one frame was enough to illuminate the outline of many years afterwards.
And worse still—
The last time she had seen Pok was not at school.
Nor before that postcard.
It was more than two years ago.
That day, Pok had just finished Room 101 Sentiment Sequencing surgery.
He needed to be transferred to Room 102 for two weeks of inpatient observation. At that time, she, Queen of Hearts, and a Eggnurse medical agent had conducted his pre-admission physical examination together.
That examination room was very white. The bed was white. The curtain was white. Even the round medical light on Eggnurse’s chest was softly white, as though every procedure had first been processed into something “for your own good”.
Pok sat at the edge of the bed, his face a little pale. Not visibly weak, but carrying the kind of emptiness common in people who had just been dismantled. You could see he was still there. You could see he would answer, cooperate, raise his hand according to instruction. But certain things that ought to have been connected were no longer quite whole.
When Sandy walked up to him, he suddenly raised his head and looked at her, as though in a world too evenly white, he had finally recognised someone still carrying a little old colour.
“Are you Sandy?” he asked.
In that instant, Sandy’s chest tightened faintly.
But she still answered according to procedure:
“No. You’ve mistaken me for someone else.”
Queen of Hearts did not speak beside her. She only pushed the examination fields before Sandy one by one. Eggnurse, meanwhile, used that round, steady voice to gently remind them that heart rate, pupils, grip strength and muscle-tone response all remained within observation range.
As the examination continued, Sandy quickly confirmed that Pok’s condition matched expectations.
He still remembered his schooldays. Those earlier, cleaner parts that had not yet pulled later chain reactions along with them remained. But the memories after that — especially the parts connected to specific emotional nodes, specific names and specific association chains — had many gaps. Not entirely empty, but as though someone had precisely extracted several layers of colour, then compressed the remainder back into place.
As for ability, not all had been lost.
He still retained some professional agent knowledge and programming ability. He could read certain interfaces, knew certain module names, and would still instinctively view processes like an engineer. But those abilities were clearly incomplete, like a toolbox dismantled and only seventy per cent reassembled. You knew it could still be used. But you also knew the sharpest pieces, the ones least supposed to remain, were gone.
After the examination, she asked Eggnurse to take Pok to the observation ward.
Eggnurse’s round body rocked forward politely.
“The ward is ready. Please follow me.”
“If you feel dizzy, dry-mouthed, or suddenly cannot remember the previous step, you may tell me.”
Pok nodded and followed it out.
He did not walk quickly, nor did he turn back. His back looked normal. So normal that if you did not know which door he had just come out from, you might think he was only a little more tired than usual.
But Sandy knew that was not it.
After he had been taken away, the examination room became briefly quiet.
It was then that a sea turtle agent slowly crawled out from the small shadow beneath the bed.
Sandy recognised it at once.
Clever Turtle.
A little older than in her memory, and quieter too. But that unhurried temperament — as though it understood everything yet was too lazy to point it out immediately — had not changed.
It looked up at her and said its first sentence very evenly:
“You are clearly Sandy.”
“You can hide it from Paul, but you cannot hide it from Clever Turtle.”
Queen of Hearts immediately lit up, as though preparing to take over this sudden node. But Sandy did not ask her to report it at once. She merely stood there, looking at this agent who should not have appeared within the procedure, yet had somehow remained alive in an old version of things.
Clever Turtle slowly continued:
“Send me to Mr Taylor.”
“Just say you found a lost agent on the way.”
Its tone was too calm.
So calm it did not sound like a request. More like an agent who understood procedures earlier than many people had already written the lie she would be able to tell.
Sandy did not answer immediately. Queen of Hearts reminded her softly:
“If this agent is not included, it will later constitute an unregistered item.”
“If included, a source explanation must be assigned.”
Clever Turtle looked up at Queen of Hearts.
“You’re very good at saying ‘trouble’ in plain-language form.”
Queen of Hearts did not get angry. She only replied mildly:
“I am responsible for making trouble sound more survivable.”
The examination room remained quiet for several seconds.
In the end, Sandy did as Clever Turtle wished.
She sent it to Mr Taylor. She said she had found a lost agent on the way, suspected to be part of Sample 87’s old-object chain, and recommended temporary inclusion for observation. The whole explanation was complete and clean. Clean enough that it looked as though she had merely performed a standard medical-side risk closure.
Only she herself knew it was not entirely that.
Because at that time, she had already felt clearly: she was not someone standing outside the procedure. Nor was she simply being forced to execute it. She was part of the whole design. She both wanted to leave Pok something, and personally participated in sending him through that door.
Now, more than two years later, Sample 87’s file had returned to her desk.
And Queen of Hearts still stood beside her, waiting quietly.
After a long time, Sandy finally stood.
She closed Sample 87’s file, her voice so flat it almost carried no emotion.
“From now on, send 87’s medical preparation materials to me first for review.”
Queen of Hearts looked at her.
“Is this medical-priority judgement, or additional personal attention?”
Sandy put away her tablet, her voice faint as though there were nothing inside it.
“It is procedure.”
But she herself knew it was not entirely procedure.
At least, not a procedure without memory.
Because some people, even after many years, after many systems, after many layers of renaming and reorganisation, still leave an extremely fine white line in your heart.
Usually invisible.
But once light falls on it, you know it has always been there.
And worse still, she now finally knew that the line was no longer only in memory.
It had been touched by the system.
Circled by Ms Armstrong.
Taken over by the medical side.
Quietly placed on her desk by Queen of Hearts.
From this moment on, the white line was no longer merely an old matter.
It was beginning to enter procedure.
Sandy stood where she was and did not leave at once.
The white light from the corridor fell in inch by inch, pressing her shadow very pale. Queen of Hearts said nothing more beside her, only remained quietly there, like a card that knew too much and also understood this was not the moment to ask further.
Finally, Sandy said only:
“Pull me another copy of all 87’s non-essential paper associations from the past three months.”
Queen of Hearts acknowledged.
When the screen lit up again, the papers that had originally been scattered across different departments, cases and purposes — postcards, picture-frame backboards, associated scraps, registration samples — slowly began joining before her into another map.
A map more like fate than medicine.
More like old debt than procedure.
And she knew she could no longer treat it as an ordinary review.
Because once some people stop being “Sample 87” and become “Pok” again, every white light that follows will no longer be only white light.