“Tap-tap-tap—meow~”
“Tap-tap-tap—meow~”
The air conditioner in the corner blew a cool breeze. The money tree beside it swayed gently in the wind, a patch of dehydrated yellow visible on its dark green leaves. A fat orange cat was highly curious about that spot of yellow and had been resting its paws on the rim of the pot for quite some time.
It repeatedly tried to stand up, but its sheer weight caused the potted plant to wobble precariously, scaring it into freezing in place.
A’Kun’s gaze had been fixed on this “heavyweight” orange cat for a long while now.
To many people, watching a cat crouch adorably on a potted plant was likely a relaxing and enjoyable experience.
For instance, the woman sitting behind the money tree.
Fei Lengcui—Luo Sui.
The rustling, swaying leaves were sometimes an obstacle, and sometimes an aid. One moment they blocked his view of the woman, and the next they outlined her skin, as fair and bouncy as milk jelly.
His gaze hid among the leaves, peeking at the woman’s elegantly curved willow brows, her round, perky nose, and her appearance that—despite her actual age being not so young—was still as fresh and tender as a young girl’s…
Right, and her lips.
A’Kun loved peeking at women’s lips the most.
They were a water-red hue, as inviting as a ripe peach.
If one could kiss lips like those, who knew how sweet they would taste?
However—this voyeurism had already been interrupted.
Ever since her phone’s notification chimed a moment ago, Luo Sui had kept her head down, typing away on her screen. Her long hair veiled her cheeks; through the gaps in the leaves, all he could see was her perfectly round, bare shoulder.
It was noon, and there weren’t many customers at the Meow Meow Cafe.
Just him, and Luo Sui.
The “Tap-tap-tap—meow~” sound echoing continuously through the room was the sound of the keyboard input method on Luo Sui’s phone.
Without even needing to peek at her screen, A’Kun could accurately guess that Luo Sui was definitely using a cat-themed keyboard skin. He stared at that smooth, pale shoulder for a good while, until a fluffy cat tail unexpectedly swiped past his line of sight.
It was that big orange cat leaning on the potted plant.
Looking back at Luo Sui, a British Shorthair had wandered over, rubbing its head against her ankle and meowing.
Eventually, he lost interest and withdrew his gaze, focusing his attention back on his own phone.
The interface on his phone displayed none other than Fei Lengcui’s information.
Wasn’t it fascinating?
Inside the very same cafe, just a few steps away, a complete stranger was physically spying on your body in reality, while simultaneously dissecting your mind, layer by layer, on the internet…
…
Fei Lengcui had a burner account with only 2 people she followed, and of her 12 followers, 10 were bot accounts.
A’Kun had found this using her university email address.
The process went roughly like this: he searched for Luo Sui on the Renren network, found someone with a birth year matching the 1988 listed on Fei Lengcui’s Weibo, and traced that to Qinmen University. He then searched for “Luo Sui” and “Qinmen University,” digging up a contact list for the 2006 Architecture Department Outstanding Student Council Members from the university’s official website.
It listed her mobile number and email from her college days.
Next, he searched the email. A few years ago, the Tianya forum had a data leak, making it possible to directly search for login passwords and IDs via email. The Tianya ID Fei Lengcui had registered was “Xihe,” and the password was flora0608.
“Xihe” was a homophone for “Evening Grain” (Xi He), which was a part of Luo Sui’s real name. This was a common habit when creating IDs; people always liked to draw from their own names or things they liked. As for 0608, that was undoubtedly Luo Sui’s birthday.
This “Xihe” ID also appeared on Luo Sui’s Baidu Tieba account. Unable to avoid the cliché, she had used the Tieba ID [Xihe Flora] to ask for downloadable resources. That time, she left a QQ email address, which was faithfully recorded and scraped by search engines. This allowed A’Kun to smoothly obtain her QQ number.
A’Kun didn’t rashly add her as a QQ friend; that would be too abrupt. Compared to QQ, WeChat might be a little easier to add her on. By making a phone call pretending to be telecom customer service and asking to add her on WeChat to send a data plan package, most people would drop their guard and accept the request. Whether or not they actually paid for the package was another matter entirely.
After getting the ID [Xihe Flora], although there was no Weibo account under that exact name, he was able to search Weibo and find that someone had @mentioned it back in 2011. Clicking into that account and searching through its following list, A’Kun finally, much to his satisfaction, discovered that deeply hidden alt account—completely unlike how unguarded and casually Fei Lengcui interacted on her main account.
The alt account’s name had long since been changed to meaningless English letters, or perhaps some indecipherable pinyin abbreviation that A’Kun couldn’t piece together.
It seemed to be Fei Lengcui’s private sanctuary, though it hadn’t been updated in a long time. It stopped a month ago.
The latest post was published at 4:12 AM:
[Thought about it for a long time, I still want to die.]
The one before that was at 1:55 AM:
[Crying until I can’t breathe, insomnia every day, emotionally collapsed to the point where I can’t think normally. Apart from wanting to die, I just want to die.]
On that very same day, the supposedly depressed Fei Lengcui posted this on her main account:
[Got my first paycheck from the new job, got a haircut that no one recognizes. Everyone will probably be shocked when they see me now, they won’t even recognize me [Smile].]
She even attached a super cute cat emoji, brimming with joy. It was completely impossible to tell that this was a person who screamed, struggled, and wept in agony in the dead of night.
Fei Lengcui’s new job was in medical corporate sales—a job that required her degree but not her architectural expertise. She took to it like a fish to water; colleagues even left comments praising her below the post.
For one person to be so vastly different across different accounts on the same platform…
A’Kun didn’t find it strange. Most of the time, updates on social media were just a performance. You performed for your followers, just as you performed for your neighbors and relatives—equally hypocritical and artificial. Words and pictures were much easier to sugarcoat and edit than the mask-like expressions worn on one’s face every day.
Separated by an internet cable, who could truly know if the person on the other end was crying while writing about laughter, or smiling while writing about tears?
Although Fei Lengcui’s alt account didn’t have many pictures and deliberately hid personal info, her rants—which were far more raw than her main account’s—revealed a lot more.
February 2, 2012, she wrote:
[It’s ridiculous. This is the third New Year’s Eve I’m eating instant noodles. I live more miserably than an orphan. If you guys don’t want to come home for New Year’s so badly, then just never come back!]
“You guys” referred to Fei Lengcui’s parents. A’Kun pieced together the general picture of her family from other posts below it.
[You’re living on ‘Africa time’ has almost become my roommate’s permanent joke about me. Next time you call, can you please consider the domestic time zone? You always say you’re accommodating your child, but how come I’ve never felt it even once?]
Fei Lengcui’s parents worked in Africa and rarely came home. Fei Lengcui complained about this immensely, and the poor communication with her parents was also a major factor in her bad moods.
[Hilarious, I’m only in my twenties and they want me to go on blind dates. Do they think marrying me off will finally rid them of me completely?]
[I don’t want to answer the phone anymore. Now I get scared just seeing it ring.]
[Why do we have to nag about things we talked about ages ago every time we call? Do we really have nothing else to talk about?]
[My voice is so obviously hoarse, I have a cold, and they don’t even ask a single word about it. Speechless. It really is better to rely on roommates than on heaven and earth.]
There was one post on the alt account that caught A’Kun’s attention in particular.
It was posted three months ago, at 12:02:
[Made a very major decision. This is probably the most out-of-bounds thing I’ve done in my entire life, and there will never be anything more out-of-bounds. I can’t describe the feeling while waiting. I only remember sitting on the stool, my legs shaking so badly I almost fell off. But… I’m so happy. From now on, I will no longer be me!]
Immediately after, at 12:03, she posted another:
[But I still haven’t completely figured out that matter. Even though it seems I can’t turn back, I’m scared.]
This time, their carpet-style investigation in an unfamiliar place did not go particularly smoothly.
After parting ways with Old Hu at noon, they casually ate a bowl of noodles by the roadside and immediately rushed non-stop to the nearby temples they had shortlisted. Temples were always on mountains, and a continuous cluster of temples meant climbing an entire mountain. As long as there was a temple, no matter how high, far, or treacherous the peak was, they had to go up.
But reality rarely met expectations. During a carpet search like this, it was often very difficult to find useful clues right at the beginning.
Among the temples they visited that afternoon, some had not been renovated last year; some had been renovated, but involved neither Arhats nor Heavenly Kings; and some only had small statues about a meter tall that couldn’t possibly hide a person.
By the time the bright orange sun sank all the way from the sky down to the horizon, the day’s search inevitably had to end.
But Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin didn’t return to the hotel they stayed at yesterday.
They did extend their booking at that hotel—but only the booking.
They chose a brand new hotel to check into instead. This new hotel was picked entirely at random, because right up until the moment they made the choice, neither of them knew where they would end up staying. Therefore, if Huo Ranyin’s “little trouble” was also looking for them, this small random event would surely cause that trouble a whole lot of trouble.
The more trouble the other party faced, the happier Ji Xun was.
He hummed a tune all the way to the hotel. Along the way, Huo Ranyin asked, “What about our luggage?”
“I had Ai Yin take care of it.” Ji Xun waved his phone. “I already told Ai Yin to take our luggage out of the hotel, find a nearby courier station, and use same-city delivery to send the luggage to—”
“The new hotel?”
“No, a courier station near the new hotel,” Ji Xun said briskly. “A little more troublesome, sure, but as long as it’s safe.”
The corners of his eyes lifted slightly, looking as smug as a big cat that had just successfully pulled off a prank.
However, the moment they swiped the keycard, opened the door, and entered the room, this lively big cat rapidly sprawled flat on the bed, turning into a dead cat.
The dead cat let out a groan.
“Legs. My legs are broken. Broken…”
“…” Huo Ranyin didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Is it really that bad?”
“Of course it is!” Ji Xun said. “We walked a full hundred thousand steps today!”
“I mean, tired is one thing… but is it bad enough to completely throw away your dignity?”
“Don’t be so fake, we’ve already seen each other’s truest selves anyway.” Ji Xun buried his head. A dead cat isn’t afraid of boiling water.
Huo Ranyin’s lips curled into a smirk. He sat down on the edge of the bed and reached his hand toward Ji Xun…
“Hmm?” Ji Xun tilted his head and asked.
Huo Ranyin’s hand landed on Ji Xun’s ear.
The cat-eye ear clip was giving off a faint green glow.
Huo Ranyin took the ear clip off. “Your ear is red.”
“Oh.” Ji Xun raised a hand and rubbed it. “It does feel a little hot. Probably just not used to it yet. I should be fine once I wear it a bit more. Next, we can try different styles of ear clips—”
“And stud earrings,” Huo Ranyin added.
“No to studs.” Ji Xun knew himself perfectly well, and absolutely wouldn’t force it. “Studs are sharp. With my condition, I can’t even stand looking at thumbtacks, so studs are a no-go.”
Huo Ranyin raised an eyebrow.
“You’ve got a face that says you’re brewing up a bad idea. Don’t tell me…” Ji Xun turned it over in his mind, his radar pinging with warnings. “You want me to put an earring on you?”
“Smart,” Huo Ranyin said.
Ji Xun immediately played dead.
“You don’t want to?” Huo Ranyin asked.
“Can’t do it.” Ji Xun’s expression was grave.
“Really?” The tail end of Huo Ranyin’s voice ticked up. “You don’t want to personally pick out an earring for me, and then insert the earring you chose into…”
He paused right there, seemingly intentional, seemingly not, before an aura of danger and charm washed over.
“…my ear, so you can admire the way the gemstone and skin complement each other after you personally adorn me with jewelry?”
“…” Ji Xun’s heart suddenly wavered.
He knew exactly how severe his PTSD was, but he was also deeply drawn by the image Huo Ranyin had described.
His psychological trauma was real, but what Huo Ranyin spoke of was an illusion.
Reality and illusion spun back and forth, gradually merging into an anticipated, dreamlike scene that hovered above reality…
But right at that moment, Huo Ranyin’s movement abruptly shattered his imagination.
Huo Ranyin patted him. “Alright, get up and stretch your muscles, otherwise your legs are going to hurt tomorrow.”
He did that on purpose.
Lying on the bed, Ji Xun glared sideways at him.
So it was on purpose. What are you going to do about it?
A smile played at the corner of Huo Ranyin’s lips as he crossed his arms over his chest.
Ji Xun turned his head back, seeking revenge: “I need Yinyin to give me kisses, hugs, and lift me high before I’ll get up.”
“…Where did you even learn that?” Huo Ranyin almost broke out in full-body goosebumps from the sheer cringe.
Ji Xun let out a light hmph and refused to move. But in the very next second, someone suddenly leaned in close.
Cold lips brushed past a burning hot ear.
Ji Xun turned his head in surprise, catching the slight lift of Huo Ranyin’s eyebrow: “Giving you the reward in advance. Later… I’ll be collecting interest.”
