83: Chapter 83 Healing Moments

10:00 AM

The first morning after the victory, the sunlight was beautiful.

When Alex woke up, he realized he had slept for a full nine hours—the longest continuous sleep since his rebirth. No nightmares, no warning from his Spider-Sense, only a deep, restorative darkness.

He lay in bed, not getting up immediately, just listening to the sounds in the safe house: Hank and Rex talking in low voices in the kitchen downstairs, the rhythm of Marcus tapping on his keyboard in the distance, and... the steam of the coffee machine.

Ordinary sounds. Sounds without threat.

The system interface floated quietly at the edge of his consciousness:

【Current Popularity: 7,514,000 points】

【Spider-Sense (Intermediate) Proficiency: 95%】

【Creative Master (Elementary) Proficiency: 65%】

He was still 2.48 million away from ten million. But today, that number didn't seem so urgent.

He got up and found a handwritten note on the nightstand:

“Breakfast is in the kitchen. Don't work. Rest today. —Taylor”

Alex looked at the note and smiled. Taylor's handwriting was a bit messy, clearly written in a hurry. She should have had a performance in Los Angeles last night, but she still remembered to remind him to rest.

He went downstairs. In the kitchen, Hank was frying bacon, Rex was cutting fruit, and Marcus was sitting at the dining table with his laptop—but the screen was dark.

“Strictly following orders.” Marcus raised his hands. “Taylor called and said if we let you work today, she'd cancel next month's performance in Nashville.”

Alex sat down at the table and took the coffee Hank handed him. “What about the data for ‘Truth on the Dance Floor’?”

“It's great,” Marcus said, but didn't open his computer. “The Billboard Real-time Chart has already risen to twelfth place, and it's eighth on the Spotify Global Daily Chart. But we'll look at the detailed data this afternoon. For now—” he pointed to the frying pan, “eat breakfast.”

This was the most ordinary meal since his rebirth. No emergency meetings, no encrypted communications, no legal documents. Only the sizzle of frying bacon, the aroma of coffee, and the autumn sunlight outside the window.

Rex sliced an orange, juice splashing onto the table. “Sorry.”

“It's fine.” Alex took a slice of orange. The sweet and sour taste exploded on his tongue, simple and real.

Hank brought the fried bacon and eggs to the table and sat down. “Seriously, how long has it been since we had a meal like this?”

No one answered. The answer was too obvious—since the ambush at Southeast Storage, life had become one crisis after another.

“What are we doing today?” Alex asked.

“Taylor said you should go for a walk.” Marcus finally opened his laptop, but only to pull up a map. “She recommended Radley Lake Park on the outskirts of Nashville. She said it's ‘quiet enough, natural enough, to remind people that the world isn't entirely full of jerks.’”

Alex considered it. Going out meant risk, but Northrop had just suffered a legal setback and likely wouldn't take physical action immediately. Moreover, his Spider-Sense gave no warning.

“What about you guys?”

“We're going,” Rex said. “But we'll keep our distance. Just think of us as ordinary tourists.”

“Do I need a disguise?”

Hank laughed. “Just wear a baseball cap. You're a musician now, not a fugitive.”

---

1:00 PM · Radley Lake Park

The autumn sun filtered through the changing leaves, casting golden spots on the lake's surface. Alex walked along the lakeside path, his baseball cap pulled low, but he didn't wear sunglasses—he wanted to see the colors clearly.

The real colors. Not the data streams in the system interface, not the images on the safe house's monitoring screens, but the orange-red of the leaves, the deep blue of the lake, and the pale grey of the sky.

Fifty meters behind him, Rex and Hank were disguised as a pair of middle-aged friends out for a jog, maintaining a distance where they could see him without disturbing him. Further away, Marcus sat on a bench pretending to read a book, while actually monitoring his equipment.

But Alex tried not to think about those things. He just walked, breathed, and looked.

Swans were gliding on the lake. A child was throwing breadcrumbs; the swans approached gracefully, then suddenly began to fight—it turned out that grace was only a facade.

Alex smiled. He found a bench, sat down, and took out his phone. Not for work, but to take photos—the lake, the swans, the elderly people walking in the distance. Then he opened Taylor's chat window and sent them over.

Almost immediately, a reply came: “Finally breathing some normal air?”

“I suppose so.”

“Writing songs?”

“Not today.”

“Good. Keep breathing.”

A simple conversation. But Alex found himself smiling. A real smile, not strategic, not performed.

He turned off his phone and continued sitting. The wind blew across the lake, bringing a moist scent and the distant aroma of a barbecue. A family was having a picnic, and their laughter drifted over.

An ordinary life. A world he had almost forgotten.

His Spider-Sense sent a faint signal—not a threat, but... attention. He looked in the direction of the sense; thirty meters away, a young girl was looking at him, then whispering to her companion and taking out her phone.

He had been recognized.

Alex considered whether to leave, but the girl had already gathered her courage and walked over.

“Excuse me... are you Alex Su?”

He looked up and tipped his cap slightly. “I am.”

The girl's eyes lit up. “Oh my god, I love ‘Radioactive’ so much! And yesterday's ‘Truth on the Dance Floor’... that song...” She suddenly choked up. “My brother serves in the Air Force. Last year, he almost because of... never mind. Anyway, thank you for writing those songs.”

Alex nodded. “I hope he stays safe.”

“He's been moved away from the front lines now.” The girl wiped her eyes. “Because of your reports, they re-inspected all the... anyway, thank you.”

She wanted an autograph, but Alex hadn't brought a pen. So the girl took out her phone. “Can we take a photo?”

Alex nodded. The girl's companion helped them take the photo—Alex under his baseball cap, and the girl with a smile through her tears.

“Keep it up,” the girl said before leaving. “A lot of people support you.”

After they left, Alex sat back down. The feeling was complicated—being recognized carried risks, but hearing such words...

“System,” he asked in his mind, “how much of the popularity growth is this kind of ‘real influence’?”

【System Response: Emotional value cannot be quantified. However, the interaction just now was detected to have generated ‘Deep Resonance,’ with a conversion efficiency 3.2 times that of ordinary dissemination.】

It wasn't just numbers. It was people.

He reopened his phone, this time opening the backend of the Voice of Truth platform. The number of users had already surpassed five hundred thousand, but more important was the comment section—thousands of messages sharing their own stories:

“My father is a retired engineer. He says the NT-7 issue has been known in the industry for a long time...”

“I used to work for a Northrop supplier. Quality control was a joke...”

“Thank you for your song. It gave me the courage to talk to my son in the military about this...”

Real voices. Real pain. Real change.

Alex turned off his phone. The sunlight was still beautiful, but his heart felt a bit heavier.

Just then, a video call request came from Taylor. He answered it.

In the video, Taylor was on her tour bus, with the moving highway scenery in the background.

“At the lake?” she asked.

“How did you know?”

“Marcus sent me a photo.” Taylor smiled. “You look... like a person now. Not a warrior, not a creator, just a person.”

“Thanks for the compliment.”

“You're welcome.” Taylor paused. “I have a show this afternoon in St. Louis. I'll fly back to Nashville overnight after it ends. Tomorrow... shall we write the final version of ‘Safe & Sound’ together?”

“Wasn't it supposed to be recorded tomorrow?”

“Postponed,” Taylor said. “The production team said this song needs more... real emotion. We won't work tomorrow; we'll just play the piano, sing, and talk about what this song should feel like.”

Alex understood. Taylor was buying him more “normal” time.

“Okay.”

“See you tomorrow then.” Taylor was about to hang up, then stopped. “Oh, right. Universal Music just contacted me. Because the data for ‘Truth on the Dance Floor’ is so good, they've decided to increase the next phase's promotion budget by another 20%. And—” she smiled, “they proactively proposed that if your next song can enter the Billboard Top 10, your royalty rate will jump directly to 25%.”

Good news from the business world. But at this moment, Alex cared more about something else: “What about your album contract?”

“Still negotiating.” Taylor's expression was subtle. “Universal wants to keep me by giving you better terms. But Warner's offer is higher. However... I'm considering independent release.”

“Why?”

“Because of what you've done with the Voice of Truth platform,” Taylor said seriously. “I realized that maybe we don't need middlemen anymore. Maybe creators can connect directly with their audience.”

Alex fell silent. That was a big decision.

“Don't think about that,” Taylor said. “Rest today. Write the song tomorrow. Everything else... we'll talk about later.”

The call ended. Alex continued to sit on the bench, looking at the lake.

An ordinary day. But in the ordinary, some things were changing.

---

Dinner was simple pasta and salad. The team members sat around the dining table; for the first time, no one discussed work.

Hank told funny stories from his time in the army in Germany—not battle stories, but about getting lost, language misunderstandings, and strange local food. Rex talked about his first attempt at being a personal trainer after retiring, only to find that his clients just wanted to chat and didn't want to exercise. Marcus shared his failed experience of forming a band in college: “We were called ‘Quantum Kittens.’ We thought it was cool, but only three people showed up for our first show—two were roommates, and one had just walked into the wrong venue.”

Laughter. Real laughter.

Alex listened and ate. The pasta was boiled a bit soft, but the sauce was good. The salad was fresh. Simple food, but it tasted better than any business meal.

After dinner, Rex pulled out a deck of cards. “How about something normal?”

They played Texas Hold'em. Alex wasn't good at it and quickly lost all his chips. But he didn't care—watching Hank bluff only to be seen through by Rex, and seeing Marcus unable to stop himself from smirking every time he got a good hand, was more interesting than winning money.

At 9:00 PM, the game ended. Marcus cleared the table, while Hank and Rex went to check the security system—habitual, but their movements were more relaxed.

Alex returned to his room. He didn't open his computer, but instead pulled a book from the shelf—an old book left by his parents, ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude.’ He hadn't read a novel in many years.

As he turned the pages, the words flowed. The rain of Macondo, the fate of the Buendía family, the cycles of time... a different world's problems, another kind of pain.

He read thirty pages and then put it down. Not because he was bored, but because... it was enough. One day of non-combat time was enough.

The system interface automatically appeared as he prepared for bed:

【Natural Popularity Growth Today: +68,000 points (Non-event driven)】

【Current Popularity: 7,582,000 points】

【Psychological Stress Index decreased by 42%】

【Suggestion: Maintain an appropriate rest rhythm to enhance sustainable creative efficiency.】

He closed the interface.

Outside the window, night fell over Nashville again. But tonight, the lights didn't look quite so much like monitoring eyes; they looked more like... the city breathing.

Alex lay down. His Spider-Sense was as quiet as the lake.

Tomorrow, he would write a song with Taylor. The day after, he would continue the fight. The day after that, he would face Northrop's new strategy.

But tonight, just for tonight, he could just be a person, sleeping in an ordinary bed, having ordinary dreams.

And tomorrow, when he became a warrior, a creator, and a rebel once more, he would remember the color of the lake today, the taste of the bacon, and the laughter over the cards.

Because these ordinary moments were the true meaning of the fight—so that people could walk by the lake, could eat breakfast, and could laugh.

So they could be ordinary.

He closed his eyes and slept.