SMMW | Chapter 36

A new day began, and the sun rose as usual.

Because he had exhausted himself emotionally, failed to treat his injured hand in time, and slept on the floor for half the night, among other things, Song Hao had developed a bit of a fever.

After taking his temperature, it turned out to be 37.8 degrees. Song Hao had not wanted to move at all, but he was thirsty, so he could only drag himself out of bed in a daze.

He dug out some fever medicine. Luckily, it had not expired yet, so he boiled some water and took a pill.

It was only when he was washing the cup that he noticed he still had not dealt with the wound on his hand. The blood had already clotted. It only looked a bit frightening. He casually wiped it with an alcohol pad, and counted that as treatment. The rest could be left to his immune system.

What else was there?

Oh, right, he had to eat, but he really had no appetite. He ordered a bowl of porridge on a delivery app to muddle through. At least there would be food. He could deal with eating when he got hungry.

Song Hao flopped back onto the bed and continued letting his mind go blank.

It felt like he had forgotten something…

Song Hao turned over and saw the computer on the desk, still in standby mode. He had not shut it down after coming back last night.

Oh, right.

The game had shut down. There had been some bugs at the end, but aside from that, there was nothing else.

Maybe he had just loved playing it too much. Last night he had even had a bit of a breakdown.

But it was all over now. The game was gone, and life still had to go on as usual.

Bored while waiting for the delivery, Song Hao took out his phone and started scrolling through short videos.

First came a rapid string of notification sounds. He had 99+ unread private messages, and the top one was from someone called “Duzhi.”

[Duzhi: You really are f**king something, getting people to cyberbully me.

Duzhi: I’ve got ten thousand alt accounts. Let’s see whether you can report faster or I can make them faster.

Duzhi: Say something!

Duzhi: Tell that pack of dogs of yours to stop biting. If you’ve got guts, come out and fight me one-on-one.

Duzhi: How are we settling this? Name your terms. Bro’s not short on cash.

User has been banned]

Song Hao yawned. Duzhi? Duzhi? Duzhi? Just how much did he like those two syllables? If he had changed his username even a little, he would not have been tracked down so easily.

He could not be bothered to read the rest of the private messages either, so he marked them all as read in one tap.

When he switched to the recommended videos page, the algorithm was still diligently and stupidly pushing him Dynasty-related news. Most of it was about last night’s server shutdown, but because there had been too many bugs, the players were not as sad as expected. Instead, everyone was clowning around and complaining.

In some videos, the entire court and harem had completely swapped roles, ministers became favored concubines, and consorts became court officials. A beauty with one fragrant shoulder half-bared stood in the middle of the court, righteously accusing an old man of being a seductive menace bringing ruin to the nation. A white-bearded elder who had served through three reigns was clinging to the player and sobbing pitifully about how wronged he felt.

Some players had developed a glutton ability, where absolutely everything was edible. Click on a rock, edible. Click on a tree, edible. Click on a house, edible. It truly achieved the materialist version of “the prime minister’s belly can hold a boat.”

Some had all the NPCs collectively go out of control, specializing in reading one thing and replying with complete nonsense. Want to pick a consort to summon? The eunuch announces court session. Want to take a bath? The imperial kitchen sends up soup. Want to go traveling incognito? A minister directly writes an order stripping the emperor of his status and reducing him to a commoner.

As for this, the Dynasty production team’s response was, the server getting a little chaotic right before shutdown is perfectly normal. It’s already been sold off, so don’t come looking for us.

In short, it was a perfect case of wanting money but no shame. There were several high-ranking trending topics, and every single one was full of people cursing them out.

Song Hao forced his sluggish brain cells to think. Oh, so all the strange things last night had been because the shutdown was near. They were all just bugs.

A knock sounded at the door, and someone outside shouted, “Left it for you at the door!”

Song Hao went to get it. He had thought the porridge had arrived, but what he saw was a delivery box. He did not even remember buying anything.

There was no logo on the cardboard box. He opened it, and the thing inside was wrapped in bubble wrap. When he unwrapped it, it turned out to be a scroll.

Then Song Hao remembered what he had bought. It was that CG merch with no free shipping.

All at once, he did not dare open it.

It was not because he had lost interest. It was because he was afraid. Not afraid of the game, but afraid of himself, afraid of sinking back into yesterday’s emotions, those uncontrollable emotions.

It was clearly only a scroll, but Song Hao stared at it as though it were Pandora’s box, not daring to move.

Knock knock knock, another knock came at the door. This time it really was the food delivery.

Song Hao let out a sigh of relief, opened the door to take the food, stepped around the scroll, and drank porridge at the computer desk. He gulped down half a bowl before remembering that he had had no appetite to begin with. Once the rice gruel went down, he could not even remember what it had tasted like.

He put the lid back on to save the rest for the next meal, wiped his mouth, and fled back to the bed, turning his back to the scroll and playing on his phone.

Of course, he could not actually enjoy it. The scroll’s presence was too strong, or rather, he cared about it too much.

The harder he tried not to care, the less he could stop himself from thinking about it.

He watched food videos, absurd videos, funny videos, yet he still could not forget that thing.

After ten minutes of tearing himself apart inside, Song Hao finally gave up tormenting himself and chose to face it.

He encouraged himself. It was all fake, all bugs, just a piece of merch.

He even tried persuading himself that getting attached was normal. These days people all called 2D characters wife, husband, son, daughter, and he was only one of them. Slightly more extreme, maybe, but still under control.

He got out of bed, picked up the scroll, and unrolled it in one breath. The face that had laughed and cried through that farewell with him yesterday returned before his eyes.

But the Wen Qing in the picture was dressed in wedding robes, smiling gently, without the slightest trace of pain.

The only one left in pain was him.

Song Hao’s eyes stung, and with trembling lips he let out a breath, desperately forcing the tears back.

“The print quality is pretty average, not worth fifty-nine at all. The colors along the edges are uneven, the paper is not that good either, and if you smell it closely it’s even a little pungent. And… and if you look carefully, it doesn’t really look that much like him either. After all, when a 3D model gets printed onto a flat surface, the image gets distorted, so it’s really only so-so. Just bought it for fun.”

Song Hao transformed into the sharpest-tongued and most vicious critic in the world, so harsh he wished he could pull out a magnifying glass and hunt down flaws in the scroll, criticizing everything from workmanship to printing, from materials to packaging.

By his standards, the fact that they dared print something like this meant that every last one of them, from the game dev team to the printing factory to the distributor to the courier, should either change careers or get the death penalty.

Was it really printed that badly?

Not necessarily.

But Song Hao said, “This isn’t Wen Qing. Wen Qing has a tiny mole on his left eyelid. This one doesn’t.”

He felt guilty the moment he said it, because that mole was very faint, and it was on the eyelid too. Normally, with the eyes open, you could not see it at all. Even after playing for so long, he had only caught sight of it a few times. This print was only done at ordinary resolution, there was no way it could have captured that level of detail.

Song Hao found a black pen. He was going to add it himself.

His hand was trembling. He only had this one copy. If he ruined it, then there would be nothing left.

But he insisted on adding it anyway. One hand gripped the other as he tried to move steadily toward the scroll. On Wen Qing’s left eyelid, near the outer corner of the eye, he left a tiny black dot of ink.

It was only a dot of ink. At first glance it did not seem to change much, but when Song Hao straightened up and saw the whole picture, he instantly broke down in tears. He could not lie to himself anymore, could not pretend he was still a normal person. Something really was wrong with him. He had fallen in love with a game character.

Maybe there was some explanation for it, a bug or something else, but so what? His feelings were real.

The fever medicine took effect, and Song Hao started getting sleepy. He carefully made sure the ink dot had dried completely before rolling the scroll back up properly, placing it beside his pillow, and falling into a heavy sleep.

When he woke up again, it was already ten-thirty at night.

He was sweaty, but the fever was gone. His appetite had returned too, and now he was a little hungry.

After accepting it坦然接受后, the mental burden vanished. Song Hao now felt completely relaxed, almost like after messing up an exam and then taking the spanking on the backside. The body suffered a bit, but the heart felt much better.

He took a shower, ordered delivery, unlocked his phone, and a rapid stream of notification sounds immediately rang out again. More new private messages, all sent by fans. After all, he had been streaming for quite a long time. By the later stage, his room had five or six thousand regular viewers, and at peak times it could hit ten thousand. He had built up quite a lot of fans.

The messages could roughly be divided into three categories. People asking when he would resume streaming, people concerned about how his health was doing, and people reporting battle results from the campaign against Duzhi.

The takeout had not arrived yet, so Song Hao simply started a stream. No camera, no face reveal, no advance notice, just voice only. Even so, within five minutes the number of people watching had already reached a thousand.

[!!!]

[Ahhhhhhh]

[Bro!]

[The missing person is back!]

[Where did you go?!]

“Nowhere. I just stopped streaming for a while. I saw your private messages. I had time today, so I came on to let you know I’m safe.”

[Your state during that last stream was seriously awful, we all thought you were gonna do something bad]

[If I hadn’t seen your account go online now and then, I really would’ve called the police, wu wu wu]

[That asshole already got dealt with]

[We won’t let you be wronged]

[Latest battle report, seventeen accounts have already been taken down]

“Hahahaha, good.”

[Don’t brush this off]

[Why did you refund him, I’m so mad!]

[It was over ten thousand, that really hurts]

[That guy acts all tough, and he’s still got online loans unpaid]

[Yeah, if you took his money he definitely would’ve had a total meltdown]

“At the time it was just… my emotions got the better of me. I felt like taking his money would mean joining him in bullying Wen Qing, so I refunded all of it.”

[Don’t be so soft-hearted, promise me, okay]

[Wu wu wu he loves him so much]

[HaoQing 99]

[Did you secretly log in again later, you definitely did, right?!]

[I bet you couldn’t bear to leave sister-in-law]

“I logged in on the last day.” Song Hao pressed down on his emotions a little when he said that. “I said goodbye.”

[And you didn’t stream it?!]

[Wu wu wu wu you’re treating us like outsiders, huh]

[BE aesthetics]

[I shipped something real]

[Explain it, explain it in detail!]

“It wasn’t really anything,” Song Hao had overestimated himself a little. Once he started talking about this part, he still could not quite control his emotions. “I really said a few things to him. You could say we understood each other’s feelings, and then… I never saw him again.”

[Huh???]

[Wait, how did you talk to him]

[This doesn’t sound right to me]

[What do you mean by understood each other’s feelings?]

[Bro are you really okay, are you doing some kind of bit]

“I’m serious. I talked to him. Maybe because the server was about to shut down, there happened to be a chance. We talked through the input box, although we could only send two characters each time.”

[That was a bug…]

[Go scroll some videos, it really was a bug…]

[Even though it’s shippable, try to stay clear-headed…]

[We’re really worried about you…]

[Go get checked at a hospital…]

“I think it was real. Fake or not doesn’t matter anyway. The two of us are together now.”

[Together how…]

[How are you together…]

[Any straight guys here, come curse him awake…]

[I’m straight, I think Sweet Potato Bro is true to his feelings, a real man [thumbs up]]

[Your dad, and now of all times you’re shipping them?!]

[Honestly, his state kind of has that widower memoir vibe]

[sos does this stream still have any pure straight men left?!]

[The pure straight men all went off to besiege Duzhi, they understand a man’s sore spot best [screenshot.jpg]]

[It’s too blurry fam, can’t read the words]

[Yeah, it had to be censored to exactly this extent or it couldn’t be posted]

“Don’t worry. I’m already much better now.”

[You saying that just makes us more worried!]

[There’s a kind of calm madness to you]

[Don’t scare me, bro]

[Really, go get checked at a hospital]

[Not saying you’re definitely sick or anything, just in case]

“I’m really fine,” Song Hao said helplessly. “Besides, I’ve already been unemployed for three months, and my medical insurance lapsed. Can I even get reimbursed anymore? And anyway, I don’t think I’ve got much money left.”

[You don’t have money and you still refunded the gifts!]

[Why’d you refund the first two Carnivals too, what kind of showing off was that!]

[qswl]

[That stream, buying gifts for sister-in-law plus refunding money, cost fourteen thousand]

[Turn on gifts, I’ll send you some]

“It’s not that bad. Let me do the math for you. I get half the cut from the gifts he sent, so what I actually paid extra was only the half the platform took from the last three Carnivals, which was 4,500. Then figure the recharge at about 2,000. Altogether that’s 6,500, not as much as you all think.”

Song Hao opened the bank app and checked his balance.

“I withdrew my streaming split pretty regularly, so there’s already no money left there. So right now I’ve got… 1,134.”

[Ahhhhh you little brat, I have more pocket money than that]

[And you call that okay?! How is that okay?!]

[He really is all talk [smile]]

[Water, electricity, internet, phone bill, gas, property fees, rent! Even if you find a job right away, you’d still have to wait a month before payday!]

[The person upstairs is overthinking it, he’ll starve to death before payday!]

Song Hao laughed. With so many people caring about him and worrying over him for him, he actually felt pretty relaxed.

“I’m already revising my résumé, and my bros are helping me keep an eye out for jobs. The rent is paid every half year, and there are still two months left before the next payment. Mm-hm, ah, right! I’ve still got twenty thousand in Huabei credit.”

[…]

[? What exactly are you being cheerful about]

[Quit the nonsense, bring out your payment QR code]

[This is the first time in my life I’ve wanted this badly to send someone money]

[[cracking up][cracking up][cracking up]]

“I didn’t start the stream to act pitiful, really. I can survive. If it comes down to it, I can go deliver food or take on some day-pay jobs and get through this stretch first.”

[You don’t need to act pitiful, you’re already miserable enough]

[I was wrong, I thought streamers made a lot of money]

[Ask your parents for a little support]

[Heart hurts]

[I remember you used to edit videos too, and a few of them got pretty high views. What about that income?]

Right, I still had my video account.

Song Hao quickly opened the publishing page for his video account. It showed that he had continuously updated his game compilation series Challenge: Clearing Predatory Pay-to-Win Games with 0 Yuan, which had already accumulated nearly ten million views in total, with several clips even going viral.

Calculated according to views, there were now more than 8,000 yuan in earnings sitting in the backend.

He had always focused on streaming before, so this counted as an unexpected stroke of luck from something planted unintentionally.

It seemed like the problem of survival had been solved. Song Hao shared this bit of good news with the viewers in the stream, though there was still a trace of loneliness in his voice. “There’s more than 8,000 in video income. See? Every time I run into trouble, Wen Qing comes to help me.”

[There’s money now!!!]

[You were the one grinding that game day and night and posting those videos, how did this turn into Wen Qing helping again]

[Yeah, really, adjust your mindset, this is genuinely worrying]

[Sweet Potato Bro, it’s because you raised the affection so high, Qingqing thinks you’re worth helping, don’t deny your own effort]

[Bro, live well, or sister-in-law won’t be able to rest easy either]

“Mm, I know. The two of us were always putting in for each other. Right now I’m just…” Song Hao wiped at his eyes. “I’m just a little… heartbroken.”