Xie Lan had a very strange dream.

When he was little, he dreamed a lot, but ever since his mother passed away, his dreams became fewer. When he did dream occasionally, they were always about her.

But this dream was really a bit strange.

He dreamed that Dou Sheng and a boy wearing a mask were sitting behind small desks. The nameplates on the desks read “Ren Jian Jue Shuai Dou” and “Gong Zi Ye Shen” respectively. Crowds of people lined up and walked towards them, always passing Dou Sheng first. Just as the first person was about to speak, Dou Sheng said, “Roll next door.”

That person said, “Okay.”

The next one came, and Dou Sheng said, “Take care, won’t see you out.”

That person replied, “Understood.”

The next one—”Only fools are my fans.”

“OK.”

The next one after that—”Do you know what you should do?”

“…Go next door.”

However long the night was, that was how long Xie Lan watched from a god’s-eye view as Dou Sheng drove away fans in his dream.

When he opened his eyes, his head was splitting with pain, his body shivering with cold, and the quilt had fallen to the floor.

“……”

He probably taught himself without a master and awarded Dou Sheng a set of Shaolin continuous kicks in his dream.

Little Ma bought breakfast. The previous two days it was soy milk and fried dough sticks (youtiao), but today there was also coffee and paninis.

Dou Sheng placed the coffee in front of Xie Lan and glanced at him. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” Xie Lan said listlessly with a nasal voice, “Had a very infuriating dream.”

“You clearly have a cold, can you blame that on a dream too?” Dou Sheng got up and shuffled towards the living room in his slippers. Xie Lan took a bite of the panini and found he couldn’t even taste the bacon.

He sniffled and clicked open Dou Sheng’s Weibo again.

Under the last post from yesterday, fans were spamming the screen in a queue.

• You lost me /roll eyes

Copy-paste, scrolling until his finger was sore with no end in sight.

It’s over. Xie Lan thought coldly in his heart, It’s truly a miracle how someone like this can have a million fans.

He glanced at Dou Sheng’s follower count; it was over a hundred thousand more than Bilibili. But he didn’t record it last night, so he didn’t know how many fans ran away overnight.

A box of cold medicine was placed in front of him.

Dou Sheng bent down close to the screen. “What are you looking at?”

“Watching your fans being scolded away,” Xie Lan said emotionlessly.

Dou Sheng paused, then laughed. “They’re just saying it with their mouths, but in their hearts, they love me to death.”

Xie Lan: “……”

Where on earth does this sense of security come from?

Groggy all the way to school, his mind was full of that eye-rolling emoji.

As soon as he entered the classroom, Dai You came out with papers, smiling. “Morning, Jiao (Beauty)¹.”

Xie Lan: “?”

Dou Sheng raised his foot to kick. “Shut up.”

Dai You ran out two steps laughing, jumping up to slap the doorframe before leaving.

Xie Lan asked in confusion, “Calling me?”

“Calling you what?” Dou Sheng clicked his tongue. “He’s rapping. Always like this. If he doesn’t rap for a day, his tongue itches.”

RAP???

Xie Lan sat down in his seat completely baffled, pulled out a tissue to wipe his eyes which were moist from the cold, and said nasally, “I think your attitude as an Uploader is incorrect.” It even triggered my long-dormant career ambition.

Dou Sheng paused while taking out homework. “Huh?”

“Your competitor, that Gong Zi Ye Shen, I watched him,” Xie Lan said. “Looks more like a human being than you.”

“How do you know him?” Dou Sheng frowned, took out his phone, and poked at it inside his desk. A moment later, he suddenly laughed.

“You mean I should also suddenly post: I love, love, love you guys so much?”

Xie Lan glanced at him sideways.

Dou Sheng laughed so hard he dropped his phone inside the desk. “Do you know what that bunch of idiots would reply?”

Xie Lan’s despair intensified. “Why call fans idiots?”

“They would collectively vomit, spam the screen telling me to get lost, and then actually unfollow.” Dou Sheng answered the previous question himself, casually tossing a stack of materials onto Xie Lan’s desk. “Alright, study your Chinese.”

Xie Lan looked down. It was stapled white paper, with Dou Sheng’s handwriting on the cover.

Second Cat Language Correction Booklet

“What is this?”

“For you to use,” Dou Sheng said. “Whenever you use words or sentences wrong, we’ll note them down. There are too many internet memes now, and we don’t speak properly usually either. Don’t want to really lead you astray. I’ll be the main writer. Based on the update volume, I’ll show it to you about once a week.”

Xie Lan was a bit surprised hearing this.

Dou Sheng added, “Mainly to compensate for the cousin matter.”

“Heh.” Xie Lan sneered immediately, rejecting coldly with a nasal voice, “Don’t need it. Take it away.”

The first page of the notebook was already full.

[Yin Yang Guai Qi (Weirdly Sarcastic/Passive Aggressive)]: Not “Ying Yang Guai Qi” (Whining Sarcastic). Means someone’s attitude is strange, speaking coldly or sarcastically.

[Wang Ba Dan (Bastard/Tortoise Egg)]: Not “Wang (Death) Ba Dan”. The unborn son of a tortoise. A curse word, don’t learn it.

[Jiu Ni Ma (Just Nima/Fucking)]: Although it does add emphasis, it is also a curse word, don’t learn it.

[Falling Flowers Intentional, Flowing Water Ruthless]: Unrequited love….

Xie Lan scanned it and found that the mistakes he made himself actually accounted for a small half; most were led astray by Dou Sheng and Che Ziming.

A flash of something suddenly crossed his muddled brain. He glanced at Dou Sheng, who was looking down flipping through homework, and opened the idiom dictionary.

Jin, jin—page 359.

He was quite skilled at finding idioms now. Flip flip flip, found it in no time.

[Jin Wu Cang Jiao (Hiding a Beauty in a Golden House)]: Building a magnificent house for a beloved concubine to live in. Also refers to taking a concubine.

Xie Lan was confused by this explanation for a while, then took out his phone dictionary and clicked on camera translation.

Netizen Definition—[Concubine (Qie)]: Mistress/Little Wife.

BANG! A loud noise from the back row.

The classroom, chaotic with collecting homework, suddenly fell silent. The owls collectively turned their heads in confusion to look at the bottom left corner of the classroom.

Dou Sheng was standing perfectly fine against the wall, but his stool had flipped over. The backrest hit the ground, and the seat meant for the butt was perpendicular to the floor, innocently sticking up towards the sky.

Dou Sheng looked calm. He raised his eyes to glance at the dumbfounded owls and picked up the stool.

“Sorry, had a nightmare while sleeping. You guys continue,” he said.

Che Ziming said in shock, “Was your dream a martial arts movie?”

Wang Gou shook his head straight beside him. “Good lord.”

Xie Lan pressed his fist against the desk.

Dou Sheng set the stool right and sat down, very conservatively pulling the distance between the two stools to the maximum. Before Xie Lan could speak, he extended two fingers, pointed them down at the desk, bent the knuckles, and knocked on the desk with a thud.

Xie Lan had a confused face.

“Kneeling to you.” Dou Sheng sighed. “That bunch of idiots indeed didn’t believe it. They might even think it’s not a cousin, but another female friend. You refuse to appear on camera, so I can only ask you not to think about it for now. Put this matter aside.”

Xie Lan was furious. He looked at Hu Xiujie walking into the class and lowered his voice. “Why do you never want to solve problems? Only know how to put it aside?”

“Putting it aside is also a solution.” Dou Sheng was helpless. “My fans are rather special. Only time can deal with them, Ancestor.”

Xie Lan paused. “What is Ancestor?”

“……”

Xie Lan asked in confusion, “Are you… acknowledging me as your father?²“

Dou Sheng turned his face away numbly, opened the physics textbook, and started taking notes seriously.

Muddled all morning, Xie Lan climbed into bed top-heavy at noon back in the dorm. He couldn’t help but search Baidu again.

Turns out “I believe your evil” didn’t mean they believed it at all. quite the opposite, it meant “Ghosts would believe you” (Yeah right).

The bed frame shook a few times. Dou Sheng came up too, sitting above Xie Lan’s head.

He hissed—Sss.

Xie Lan looked up. Dou Sheng was poking his left collarbone near the shoulder through his shirt. He poked it, frowned, and muttered, “I find you to be particularly violent. Just talk nicely, why kick someone’s stool right away? I bounced up and hit the wall so hard.”

Xie Lan said coldly, “Blame me?”

“Don’t blame you, okay?” Dou Sheng perfunctorily whispered. “Don’t blame you, my ass. Second Cat beating Big Cat, treason and heresy, rebellious against heaven.”

Xie Lan hmphed, withdrew his gaze, and continued to rest with his eyes closed.

After a while, he suddenly propped up his sore eyelids again and looked up at Dou Sheng.

Dou Sheng happened to be unbuttoning two buttons of his shirt, pulling aside the fabric covering his left collarbone, and using his phone’s front camera to check the bruise.

It was indeed quite a heavy hit.

At the time, Xie Lan wanted to kick him, but his foot accidentally hooked the stool leg. Miracle through brute force; he dragged the stool over directly. Dou Sheng was agile enough to bounce up and stand firm holding the windowsill in that instant, just that his shoulder hit the wall.

At this moment, the middle section of his left collarbone was covered in bruises, spreading deeply and shallowly to the shoulder. On the boy’s sharp shoulder, near the end, there was a slightly protruding small bone. The area around the small bone was a bit red, probably from scraping against the wall.

Maybe influenced by the cold, Xie Lan inexplicably spaced out staring at Dou Sheng’s injury for a while.

Then he sniffled. “I have an idea.”

Hearing this, Dou Sheng let go of the lifted fabric, looking vigilant. “What death do you want to court now?”

“You take a photo, post on Weibo, say I hit you.” Xie Lan pinched his nose and released it, trying to clear it, but failed, so he spoke nasally in self-abandonment. “Tell the truth. Say I was very angry, punched you, and ordered you to explain clearly.”

Dou Sheng: “……”

“Serious?” His tone revealed despair. “Listen to my advice. Leave this matter be. It’ll be fine in a month or two… oh no, with last night’s scene, probably three or four months.”

Three or four months?

Xie Lan kicked his legs, sitting up in shock from his dying illness. “Post it now!”

“……”

“Sure?” Dou Sheng spun his phone back and forth with two fingers. “Put it aside. Sincere advice from a veteran blogger. Are you sure you won’t listen?”

Xie Lan thought to himself, Small blogger with one million fans still has a long way to go.

Why did he have more fans, yet they were all obedient and didn’t cause trouble? Because he was sincere. Being a blogger required timely communication when things happened, explaining the whole story sincerely, and respecting fans and their intelligence.

“Post.” Xie Lan ordered.

“Fine.” Dou Sheng lifted his collar and snapped a selfie, posting it on Weibo. “What to type? You say it, I obey.”

Xie Lan paused. “Just say, the person picked up at the airport really is a boy. He minds the title ‘Cousin’ very much. The explanation last night wasn’t believed by everyone. He beat me up. Hope everyone stops letting this matter continue… continue…”

Dou Sheng smacked his lips. “Continue to ferment.”

Xie Lan nodded in annoyance. “You fill in the rest.”

Dou Sheng pressed on his phone. “I posted it.”

Only then did Xie Lan lie back on the bed with peace of mind.

Head hurts so much. Having a cold was really uncomfortable. Wanted to drink a cup of cinnamon tea with a butter scone.

After a while, Xie Lan refreshed Dou Sheng’s Weibo with his consciousness on the verge of fainting.

Only to see the comment section:

–???

–Violent Delicate Flower.

–There’s even a passion scene?

• -Is this something I deserve to see??

While Xie Lan was confused, a hand reached over from the other side of the railing and patted him gently on the head.

“Young man,” Dou Sheng sighed. “You truly know nothing about power.”

---

Translation Notes:

1. This is a play on Jin Wu Cang Jiao (Hiding a beauty/Jiao in a golden house). He is calling Xie Lan the “Beauty” (Jiao). Dou Sheng covers it up by saying Dai You is “Rapping” because “Jiao” rhymes with “Zao” (Morning) ↩︎
2. In Chinese slang, calling someone “Ancestor” means they are high-maintenance, difficult to serve, or you have to treat them with extreme care/reverence (like worshipping an ancestor) because they are causing you trouble.
   Xie Lan misunderstands this literally as Dou Sheng calling him “Dad.” ↩︎