School ended today with an eerily quiet atmosphere compared to usual.

The corridors outside were bustling, but the owls of Class 4 were collectively well-behaved, quietly packing their bags and whispering as if they were in the eye of a vortex before a tsunami.

At the center of the vortex, Xie Lan swung his backpack over his shoulder, turned, and walked out.

Dou Sheng followed behind, also carrying his bag.

The depression on both their faces was a copy-paste job.

The stalemate lasted from the classroom all the way to the front playground, where Dou Sheng finally, slowly, tore open a gap.

“So—when did you start suspecting?”

Xie Lan didn’t make a sound.

“I shouldn’t have revealed any flaws. I told Che Ziming and the others early on, and I also agreed with MR.X. I even unfollowed him mutually. We checked everything for the meat sauce video, from the set to the tableware. Where did you see the problem?”

No wonder he couldn’t find him on the list; they mutually unfollowed.

Witty bitch.

Xie Lan remained silent, and Dou Sheng frowned unconsciously.

After a while, he spoke again lightly, “Quite strategic, coming up with such a move. Just to peel off a layer of my disguise, you even went up on stage for self-criticism?”

Xie Lan looked straight ahead. “Not allowed?”

“I used to think you were thin-skinned.” Dou Sheng curled his lip.

Xie Lan smiled back in return. “And I used to think you were a human being.”

“……” Dou Sheng was a little displeased. “Why are you cursing people?”

The distance between the two varied with their messy steps. Until they walked out of the school gate, Xie Lan paused. “What exactly are you guilty about? Why didn’t you tell me the ID?”

Hearing this, Dou Sheng paused subtly.

The cousin thing wasn’t a big deal, but it wasn’t small either.

He didn’t say it because he felt someone with Xie Lan’s temperament might care. Not everyone could laugh off a gender misunderstanding by a million people. He was thick-skinned, and his fans were used to being naughty, but it was hard to say for Xie Lan.

He knew his fans too well. If he suddenly clarified that the cousin was male, they would say he stopped at nothing to keep a mistress in a golden house. It would be better to wait half a month and then “inadvertently” mention that the person had returned to the UK, letting it pass properly. Letting Xie Lan know now would be useless; apart from upsetting him for no reason, it wouldn’t serve any purpose.

And! He couldn’t be blamed too much for mistaking the gender at the beginning, right? Just that photo with the hairpin, and Xie Lan looked delicate, fair, and cute. It wasn’t excessive to mistake him for a little girl, right?

Dou Sheng quickly recalled the comment section of his video. It should be relatively clean, so he said lightly, “Just did it for fun at the time, don’t be overly nervous.”

Xie Lan turned to look at him, his gaze slightly condensed. “Serious?”

Dou Sheng gave a confirmation.

“Lying to ghosts.” Xie Lan sneered. “Forget it, I’ll figure it out myself.”

Neither spoke on the car ride home.

Sitting together in the back row, each sticking to a door, Dou Sheng put on headphones and scrolled through Bilibili, while Xie Lan looked out the window expressionlessly.

His heart was a bit messy.

Even when he first saw through Dou Sheng’s fake persona, he hadn’t felt this awkward. He could feel Dou Sheng’s complicated mood, probably a mix of guilt, embarrassment from being exposed to his face, and annoyance. He was the same—a bit angry, but also feeling subtly unjustified.

Zhao Wenying baked a sweet chiffon cake for a late-night snack, but Dou Sheng only passed by the kitchen, glanced indifferently, said he wasn’t hungry, and went upstairs. Xie Lan ate a bite perfunctorily, and as soon as the sound of Dou Sheng closing his door upstairs rang out, he also got up and said he was going back to his room.

Zhao Wenying followed upstairs and knocked on Dou Sheng’s door. “Did you two fight?”

No answer.

“No.” Xie Lan stood at his door and said vaguely, “Auntie Zhao, go to sleep early.”

Zhao Wenying tutted rarely. “No way, two big guys in their teens can still have a tiff?”

She laughed for a long time. “Alright, you’re brothers under the same roof. Having a tiff is fine, just don’t really hurt feelings.”

Xie Lan whispered, “I don’t have tiffs with liars.”

The door suddenly opened, and Dou Sheng asked, “Who are you calling a liar?”

His voice was really a bit fiery and fierce. Xie Lan was stunned, and immediately retorted, “Not you?”

“Hey, hey, alright, alright.” Seeing the situation was bad, Zhao Wenying immediately squeezed between them to block them. Unfortunately, a woman of 1.6 meters standing between two 1.8-meter boys couldn’t block their line of sight at all, so she could only wave her hands helplessly back and forth like windshield wipers.

Although separated by a very hard-working adult, the two could still feel each other’s fierceness within reach.

Besides fierceness, there was also the tension of teenage boys’ tempers flaring up at a critical moment.

Dou Sheng was fierce, Xie Lan was even fiercer. They glared at each other, neither willing to loosen up first.

In the end, Dou Sheng moved his gaze away first and said coldly, “Think whatever you want, can’t be bothered with you.”

“Whatever.” Xie Lan turned around at the same time. “Falling flowers are intentional, flowing water is ruthless.¹“

Dou Sheng, with one foot already over the threshold, almost tripped.

Zhao Wenying was shocked. “Lan Lan, who taught you this? Which of you is the falling flower?”

“It’s him.”

“It’s him.”

Dou Sheng kicked the door shut, half his sentence muffled inside. “Holding an idiom dictionary and memorizing blindly.”

“None of your business.” Xie Lan couldn’t help blurting out in English, then recovered and said, “From now on, sweep the floor in front of your own door!”

Dou Sheng raised his voice inside, “It’s sweep the snow in front of your own door²!”

“Sweep whatever you love to sweep.”

Xie Lan returned to his room panting and closed the door too.

Damn bitch.

Annoyed, he put on his headphones, tuned into the local news, and grabbed paper and pen for shorthand.

The female anchor’s flat voice sounded.

“25-year-old handsome guy turns love into hate, angrily deletes girlfriend’s doctoral thesis.”

“Programmer dissatisfied with Lolita girlfriend being too clingy, sends her to kindergarten.”

“Two groups of stray cats fight in Hongqi Alley, attracting dozens of elderly onlookers.”

Couldn’t keep up with a single sentence. Couldn’t do listening comprehension when in a bad mood.

He looked down at his paper. The first two sentences were empty, and the last one was written messily.

—Big Cat and Second Cat fight, attracting ten Zhao Wenying onlookers.

What a mess.

Xie Lan fiddled with his phone for a long time. His gaze swept over the pink TV icon, and his agitated emotions suddenly paused.

Opened the APP, searched for “Ren Jian Jue Shuai Dou”.

Sure enough, there it was. 1.01 million followers. The avatar was a plain bean, same as WeChat.

Xie Lan clicked on it casually.

In his two-year career as an Uploader, Dou Sheng had posted over a hundred videos. Gaming, lifestyle, music, animation, digital, study… he had posted them all.

The video content was miscellaneous, or rather, very spontaneous. The first video two years ago was sharing photography skills, then two game reviews, all with 50-60k views. By the fourth video, which could be considered his “debut” work, posted in the study section, it had 8 million views, 3 million likes, and 1 million coins. Terrifying.

—From Top 500 to Top Scorer in High School Entrance Exam in One Year

Xie Lan stared at this title for a long time.

The video was an automatically playing PPT using a template with plane tree leaf patterns. It organized mind maps according to the review method and question volume for each stage. Each stage’s method corresponded to a report card. As the methods adjusted faster and exams became more frequent, the curve of grade improvement was heart-stopping: from 500 to 220, 130, 80, 40, 20, 5, 3, 2—the last one was the High School Entrance Exam, first in the city.

Xie Lan stared at the final small screenshot of the score inquiry for a long time, realizing he had completely immersed himself and broken out in a sweat.

Then a hand appeared on the screen, a very familiar hand, making a ‘V’ sign.

Two lines of text faded out of the shot—

• Junior high stuff is little; good methods allow for a quick rush.
• But the prerequisite is to save up a burst of energy, to have light.

This video was still Dou Sheng’s most viewed video to date.

After that, Dou Sheng’s videos became more and more varied.

There were daily VLOGs, travel with Zhao Wenying, following the trend to review dirty buns, playing horror games late at night, writing lyrics and covering anime OPs…

He wanted to film a record of a small business, so he seriously set up an egg pancake stall for two weeks last summer, later closing due to pressure from Chengguan (urban management).

He wanted to film stray cat life, so he tied a GoPro to Mimi, broke three machines, and finally only scraped together eight minutes of footage.

He wanted to record the sound of heavy rain hitting plane tree leaves, so he waited for a rainy night, bit a flashlight in his mouth, carried the camera without an umbrella, and went out. Miraculously, amidst the overwhelming sound of heavy rain, he actually recorded the subtle, crisp difference of rain hitting plane trees.

Dou Sheng had a hundred strange ideas, so there were a hundred strange videos.

Very free.

Xie Lan scrolled up one by one. BGM, storyboarding, scenes, sense of story, foreshadowing and twists… the videos were getting better and better.

But he soon saw a ripple.

It started about three or four months ago. The video types began to become singular, basically all game reviews.

Game review views were stable and less prone to errors, but compared to the fresh-clothed, angry horse (spirited youth) of the past, they were much inferior. The root of all this lay in a vlog from mid-December last year. The mood in the vlog was obviously not high, and the comment section built thousands of floors.

—Douzi, don’t feel bad, definitely Top 100 next year.

—Why? Didn’t they release news saying the miscellaneous category Uploader spot would go to Douzi?

—Don’t understand, total data exceeds gzys.

—Mainly gzys’s video themes completely copy Douzi.

—Doesn’t constitute plagiarism, don’t talk nonsense. This counts as following the trend at most, disgusting you but you can’t do anything about it.

—Did you guys see that Weibo from gzys? “Thanks to the humility of Uploaders of the same type.” I say screw him.

—Sigh, gzys has high cooperation with official events, and his persona is stable. Actually, many passersby think Douzi is too crazy and naughty.

—Really, only family knows Douzi’s good points, 555 heartache.

It took Xie Lan a lot of effort to dig out that gzys was “Gong Zi Ye Shen” (Young Master Night God).

A search showed 1.1 million followers, certified as a Top 100 Uploader last year. The variety of submission types was similar to Dou Sheng’s, and the personal info section also said high school student. Early videos basically completely stepped on Dou Sheng’s topic selection, and only gradually developed their own content after getting Top 100.

After researching all this, Xie Lan suddenly felt his legs go numb. He had accidentally scrolled through Bilibili for over two hours. The blank paper for listening comprehension in front of him was full of numbers and time nodes written casually; he had unconsciously organized Dou Sheng’s career line.

After all, this could be considered his profession, and in this respect, his career ambition was quite strong.

For the latest video, both Gong Zi Ye Shen and Dou Sheng posted “Dialect”. Ye Shen flew to more than a dozen cities to find passersby to record a dialect relay. Drone shots raised the level wildly; great rivers and mountains, great people—indeed very attentive. 1.24 million views, 120k likes, 80k coins.

Dou Sheng’s video was very plain. Apart from the footage recorded with Xie Lan that night, there were some other classmates recording their hometown dialects without showing their faces. Using montage techniques, it pieced together a discrete yet unified storyline about hometown, ancestors, and roots.

Without the Big Cat filter, Xie Lan also felt that Dou Sheng’s work had higher artistic quality, and the simple production idea was more touching.

But in terms of current data, Dou Sheng was slightly weaker: 980k views, 120k likes, 70k coins.

Xie Lan frowned hard and hissed in disbelief.

Knock knock.

The door sounded.

Xie Lan glanced at 00:25 at the top of his phone, paused, then asked, “Who?”

“Me.”

Dou Sheng’s tone had returned to peace. “Coming in.”

Unknown if it was because it was late at night and bad to make noise, or if Dou Sheng himself had cooled down, the fierce Big Cat look from just now was gone.

“Um, the transaction made today, I brought the stuff to you.”

As he spoke, he put down a stack of bound materials.

Xie Lan paused for a while before remembering it was the “Classic Essay Arguments” exchanged for helping Yu Fei catch cats.

“Ah.” Xie Lan said dryly, “Thanks, put it there.”

“Did you eat?” Dou Sheng asked standing at the door. “I just went down to raid the fridge, took too much, do you want some?”

Xie Lan paused. “Took what?”

Dou Sheng put the cut chiffon cake on a plate and a cocoa milk on his bedside table, mumbling, “Eat if you want, leave it if you don’t.”

Xie Lan withdrew his gaze. “Mmh.”

After another moment, Dou Sheng said, “I’m going to sleep.”

Xie Lan didn’t make a sound. Dou Sheng walked out, then turned back and whispered, “Just now the fire was a bit big. Don’t be angry, it was my fault to begin with.”

“I’m not angry.” Xie Lan lowered his head and quickly wrote the English nursery rhyme pussy cat on the white paper, pointing to his headphones. “I’m practicing Chinese listening, busy.”

“Oh.” Dou Sheng curled his lip and closed the door for him.

Only after the person left for a good while did Xie Lan put down his pen.

He walked to the bedside table, ate the cake in a few bites with a fork, and drank two mouthfuls of cocoa milk. Cool and silky, the breath of foul air in his chest was drowned away by the milk.

Certain people finally had an awakening of humanity and knew they were in the wrong, right?

Hmph.

Xie Lan curled his lip at the wall separating the two rooms.

For the sake of the cocoa milk, he said in his heart.

Picking up his phone again, he clicked on Ren Jian Jue Shuai Dou’s dialect video. His finger slowly, gently, placed on the small like button, paused—

The pink progress circle slowly wrapped around the coin icon, turned a circle, glowed with a bling, and disappeared.

Triple combo recommendation successful! (Like, Coin, Favorite)³

Xie Lan hummed at the bean avatar on the screen. “I’m good, right?”

1. This is a famous poetic line describing unrequited love. The falling blossom has feelings and wants to stay with the water, but the water flows on without feeling, carrying the flower away.
   Xie Lan uses it to tell Dou Sheng he doesn’t care about him and is ignoring him ↩︎
2. Means to mind your own business and not worry about others ↩︎
3. At the end, Xie Lan gives the video a “Triple Combo” (holding the like button to simultaneously Like, Coin, and Favorite). This is specific terminology for the Bilibili platform (B station), representing the highest form of support a viewer can give a video. ↩︎