SMMW | Chapter 38

“President Jiang, please take a look. This is the game development recommendation report from the shareholders’ meeting.” The secretary placed the document on the desk, opened it, and pointed especially at one line. “Especially point five, which suggests adding more flexible romance elements.”

“What is that supposed to mean? I don’t get it. Explain it.” President Jiang was extremely busy and did not even raise his head.

The secretary looked a little awkward. “It means… the original wording is, allow marrying a man as a wife.”

“Huh?”

“That really is the original wording. This shareholder holds 15% of the company, and I heard she likes playing games. She also voted in favor of the acquisition back then, so I think her opinion deserves particular consideration.”

“What kind of nonsense is this? How do I have time for this right now…”

The phone rang. President Jiang stopped complaining, let out a sigh, and picked up.

“This is xx Hospital. You are the family member of the patient in bed number five, correct? The patient has now regained consciousness. You…”

President Jiang shot to his feet in excitement, nodding as he listened. “Alright, alright, alright, I’m coming, I’m coming right away!”

——————

Welcome to Dynasty. Your selected route is, Power Minister Route (Medium Difficulty).

※ 3D Face-Customization Pack, purchase successful~

※ Strategy Hint Pack, purchase successful~

〖Task One: Pass the prefectural exam and become a xiucai.

Completion condition: Literary Talent > 50〗

[Strategy Hints]

Reading increases Literary Talent, resting reduces Fatigue.

If Fatigue exceeds 20, you will be unable to act and will be forced to rest.

※ Private Library, purchase successful~

You may read once per day. Reading different books gives random stat bonuses without increasing Fatigue.

※ Family Pastry Shop, purchase successful~

You may eat pastries once per day. Different types of pastries give random stat bonuses.

※ Super Golden Treasure Chest, purchase successful~

Money +1000000

〖Task Two: Successfully enter the academy

Completion condition: Earn 500 wen for tuition within three days (the first three receive a 40% discount)〗

[Strategy Hints]

You can earn money by copying books.

〖Task Three: Pass the provincial exam within one year and become a juren

Completion condition: Literary Talent > 100, Physique > 15〗

[Strategy Hints]

The hero-saves-the-beauty event is triggered by default by the character with the highest affection in this stage. If Physique is greater than 20, you can win.

Pharmacy: chatting with characters increases affection. When affection exceeds 60, you may purchase Baiweizi to treat your mother.

Wanshu Pavilion: there is a chance to run into characters. Once affection exceeds 60, there is a 30% chance of waiving the pavilion entry fee.

When a character’s affection exceeds 100, you may visit their home to propose marriage. Wedding costs start at 5000 wen.

Participate in the poetry gathering in the seventh month to earn money, increase prestige, and meet new romantic interests.

Actively befriend your classmates in the academy. They may later become your forces at court. Among your classmates are civil officials, military generals, treacherous ministers, and others, so be careful to distinguish them.

〖Task Four: Pass the metropolitan exam in half a year and obtain an official post.

Completion condition: Literary Talent > 150, Physique > 30, Martial Skill or Intelligence or Prestige > 30〗

[Strategy Hints]

Choosing an official’s daughter as your principal wife can increase your influence at court. There may even be classmates disguised as men.

Associating with women from the pleasure quarter can help you obtain intelligence, but it will lower your prestige.

Developing a business can accumulate wealth, but it requires a certain amount of starting capital. Marrying a woman with business talent can reduce management costs.

Learning martial arts can help you build ties with the Ministry of War later, and you may also have the chance to meet women of the jianghu. Physique must exceed 30.

〖Task Five: Choose the power you will support and become a powerful minister.

Completion condition: Establish at least one faction line, Martial Skill or Intelligence > 50, Prestige > 50〗

[Strategy Hints]

You can win support through marriage ties or by arranging marriages for your children.

Properly assign residences to your wives and concubines. If characters with incompatible personalities live together, conflict events will be triggered.

The available factions are the Emperor and the princes. Acknowledging your father will automatically place you on the emperor-supporting route. Choosing a prince will automatically place you on the succession-struggle route.

Note: The Emperor may have offspring living outside the palace.

You can choose which faction to support based on affection values.

〖Affection Values:

Emperor, Xuanyuan Hong, 26

First Prince, Xuanyuan Yi, 15

Second Prince, Xuanyuan Chong, 8

Third Prince (Crown Prince), Xuanyuan Hao, 999〗

……

〖Thank you for your support and love for Dynasty. This game journey has now reached its end. Please follow the development progress of the new version. We look forward to meeting you again!〗

——————

“Zaizai?”

Wen Qing slowly opened his eyes. His eyes moved sluggishly as he searched for the source of the voice. After a long while, they finally focused on the woman standing beside the bed.

“Zaizai, does anything feel uncomfortable?” the woman asked softly.

“Mother…”

Wen Qing recognized her. This was his mother.

When Wen Manqiu heard that form of address, she froze for a moment, then immediately nodded. “Yes, Mother’s here.”

“What kind of weird way of calling people is that?! Get the doctor back in here and have another look. He’s been lying here for three months, don’t tell me lying there broke his brain!” a loud-voiced man shouted. Wen Qing had only just woken up and could not handle the shock, so he shrank his neck back in fright.

“Jiang Hong,” Wen Manqiu said, restraining her anger and lowering her voice as much as possible, “shut up. Stay where you are. Otherwise get out.”

Jiang Hong also realized how fragile the patient was, and sulkily shut his mouth. Still wanting to save face, he added stubbornly, “A-Qing, look at me. Do you still remember who I am?”

Wen Manqiu did not want to argue with him, and she also wanted to test Wen Qing’s condition, so she did not stop him and simply waited for the answer.

Wen Qing narrowed his eyes and studied him carefully. After thinking for a while, he said slowly, “It’s Lord Jiang.”

“What do you mean, Lord Jiang?!” Jiang Hong stamped his foot in frustration, but under Wen Manqiu’s glare he did not dare raise his voice. He slunk out to ask the doctor about Wen Qing’s condition.

Wen Manqiu could not be bothered with him and continued keeping watch at Wen Qing’s side.

“Mother…”

“Mother’s here.”

“What happened to me?”

“You got sick and slept for three months.”

“Three months?”

“Yes. You bought the newest model of holographic gaming pod, but the game you were playing was too old and incompatible with it. After it malfunctioned, you fell asleep.”

“Game.” Following that keyword, Wen Qing tried to think further, but his head immediately began to ache as if pricked by needles.

Seeing the pained expression on his face, Wen Manqiu quickly stopped him. “Zaizai, if your head hurts, then don’t think about it. You just woke up. The doctor said that a lot of your bodily functions still haven’t recovered yet, so you can’t be overstimulated.”

“…My head hurts.” Wen Qing complained to his mother like a child.

Wen Manqiu comforted him, “Be good now. It’s nothing serious. The doctor said once you woke up, things would be better. After this, we’ll just nurse you back to health slowly.”

“Mm.” Wen Qing nodded weakly.

“Are you sleepy? If you are, you can sleep a little longer. Mom will watch over you while you sleep.”

Wen Manqiu gently patted her son’s chest and hummed a lullaby under her breath, as though Wen Qing were still a two-year-old child.

“Bright moonlight~ xiucai lang, riding a white horse~ across the lotus pond…”

With his mother beside him, Wen Qing felt an immense sense of safety. His body gradually relaxed, and drowsiness slowly filled him. Half asleep and half awake, he murmured as if talking in a dream, “Mother, when I hadn’t woken up yet, did you sing too…?”

Wen Manqiu could no longer hold back her tears. She covered her mouth, turned aside, and cried hard a few times, then cleared her throat before daring to answer, “I did. You heard it?”

“Mm,” Wen Qing’s voice grew quieter and quieter. “I think… I heard it…”

While Wen Qing was comatose, he had still been wearing the connection equipment from the holographic gaming pod. To be safe, they had not dared remove it, so he had lain in the hospital bed for three full months like that.

Although he had doctors, nurses, caregivers, and family members looking after him, because he had been bedridden for so long, Wen Qing still suffered aftereffects such as 20% muscle loss, impaired motor function, and sensory integration disorder.

All of those were still considered relatively minor problems. After all, he was still young, and with nutritional supplementation and rehabilitation training, he could recover from them.

At present, the greatest problem still lay in his nervous system.

The holographic gaming pod worked by linking the brain directly to the game, allowing for the most immediate sensory experience. Wen Qing did not usually play games very much, yet he had rashly connected the gaming pod to an older-version game, which caused a malfunction and left him comatose.

This counted as a new kind of illness produced by high-tech development. All bodily signs were normal, yet the person simply would not wake up.

Because of this, the hospital organized an expert team that proposed multiple hypotheses. The risks were divided into high, medium, and low levels. Over the course of three months, they tried them one after another. All of the medium- and low-risk plans were declared failures, and in the end they could only turn to the high-risk option.

High-risk option: shut down the game.

Because it was a new kind of illness, the experts’ proposed plans all carried a somewhat imaginative element. They guessed that Wen Qing’s consciousness had become mixed together with the game. The game environment had been altered and fused with his memories, becoming familiar to the patient and causing him to lose his sense of self, making him believe he was part of the game.

If the game company shut down the server, the game world would stop functioning, and perhaps that would let the patient recognize the falseness of it and voluntarily withdraw.

This method was equivalent to cutting the power after a computer crashed. The computer might recover, or it might be completely ruined. It was extremely risky.

Treatment proceeded with multiple plans in parallel. Wen Manqiu had heart but no strength left. As soon as the high-risk proposal was raised, Wen Qing’s biological father, Jiang Hong, volunteered to take over the negotiations. He even declared that if the developers refused to cooperate by shutting down the game, then he would simply buy out the game.

Wen Manqiu knew that, first, Jiang Hong wanted to win over Wen Qing and make up for their lost family bond, and second, his company just so happened to be planning an acquisition anyway, so this merely pushed things along. But since the child was sick, as long as the result turned out well, she did not bother nitpicking her ex-husband’s selfish motives.

But more than two months later, as Wen Qing grew weaker by the day and the experts had exhausted all options, when they finally decided to take the risk, Jiang Hong said he still had not secured it.

Only after asking around did Wen Manqiu find out that for those two whole months, he had actually been haggling with the game company over the price!?

Jiang Hong said that the game company had set its asking price outrageously high. They actually dared ask three million for a broken little game. He said he had already forced it down to one million, and if they just held out a little longer, he could probably get it for five hundred thousand.

Hold out a little longer? Who was supposed to hold out? Wen Qing, who was being kept alive on IV fluids?

Ha. Truly cold-blooded. She had actually believed that he would give up even a portion of his own interests for his own flesh and blood.

“One week. I can mortgage my house and stock holdings to get three million. If you still haven’t secured it within one week, then stay out of it.”

Jiang Hong accepted his fate and stopped haggling. Within five days, the deal was concluded at the price of one million. Dynasty was successfully acquired, shut down, and its servers stopped.

Thankfully, after the game shut down, Wen Qing’s brainwaves showed violent fluctuations, and on the third day, he woke up.

After waking, Wen Qing was somewhat dazed. Whenever he used his brain, his head would hurt. His memories of the game and of reality were like two jigsaw puzzles from the same series, similar yet different, making them impossible for him to distinguish clearly.

Fortunately, Wen Manqiu discovered that even inside the game, she had still been Wen Qing’s mother. Using that as a point of reference, Wen Manqiu stayed constantly by Wen Qing’s side and began helping him sort out which memories belonged to reality and which belonged to the game.

While drinking porridge, Wen Qing suddenly stopped and said,

“This wasn’t cooked by you personally. The porridge you cook is salty.”

Wen Manqiu guided him carefully. “When did you drink salty porridge?”

“I was studying at night, too tired. You brought me a midnight snack, and I drank it… three times?”

“Zaizai, I only ever made porridge wrong once, and that was when you came home from school in first grade. That is reality. The thing about drinking salty porridge three times while studying and getting late-night snacks, that was in the game.”

Wen Qing’s lips moved as he silently repeated those words. After a long while, as though he had memorized them, he nodded heavily. “Alright.”

Wen Qing’s stomach and spleen were too weak, and at least half of his nutrition still had to come through IV fluids. When the nurse came to change the drip, Wen Qing asked, “Do you have a doctor surnamed Yun here?”

The nurse shook her head.

Wen Manqiu asked, “Male or female? Can you describe them a little more?”

“She’s the pharmacy owner’s daughter, very young and very warmhearted, but it was always her father who actually treated the patients.”

“Mm-hmm. What you’re talking about is from the game. In real life, Dr. Xiao Yun is a veterinarian at a pet hospital. You used to rescue stray cats and dogs quite often, and you even got a membership card there for it. They all joked that you were a major shareholder. That is reality.”

Wen Qing listened with great seriousness. “Alright.”

Before bed, Wen Qing said, “I also took a lot of exams, but most of the time, first place was Yuan Hao.”

As she tucked in the blanket corners for him, Wen Manqiu said in a casual chatting tone, “Weekly exams, monthly exams, mock exams, the school really does have a lot of exams, and fluctuations in grades are normal. You usually place within the top five, and that is reality. Including you, a lot of your classmates have gotten first place before, but I don’t remember anyone named Yuan Hao. Yuan Hao should be a game character?”

A game character? Wen Qing did not feel that was true, but he could not remember anything more, so in the end he answered vaguely, “Mm.”

Conversations like this continued, but the “game character” Yuan Hao also appeared more and more frequently.

A television program on classical poetry was playing, and Wen Qing said, “I joined one too, but I got knocked out in the first round. Yuan Hao got first place and won a thousand-yuan prize.”

Wen Manqiu searched her memory. “The only thing you joined as a child was a calligraphy competition, and you really did get knocked out in the first round, but I don’t remember who got first place.”

A courier delivered a bouquet of flowers. The card read wishing you a speedy recovery, signed “Muzi.”

“Muzi… Yi, the short scholar I ran into with Yuan Hao on the road into the city.”

“I’ve met Muzi. She’s your junior schoolmate, a very forthright girl with short hair, a sophomore this year. Yuan Hao…” Wen Manqiu shook her head. “Is he a classmate too? I’ve never heard you mention him.”

Wen Manqiu was working on the small sofa in the private hospital room, and Wen Qing saw it. “I also managed some business matters. Later I was too busy studying, so I handed everything over to Miss Ke. Yuan Hao also helped me transport goods and bargain over prices.”

“You really did help manage the company’s social media for a while, but it was too exhausting, so later I handed it over to a specialist. Is Miss Ke Coco? She’s the assistant manager at our shop, and she’s been an enormous help during this period. There are very few men in the company… and there isn’t any Yuan Hao either.”

Wen Manqiu rubbed her shoulder. She still had no idea who Yuan Hao corresponded to in reality. Since he appeared so often, he ought to be one of Wen Qing’s good friends.

Wen Qing lowered his head, feeling disappointed.

Not a classmate, not a rival, not an employee…

Even now, he still did not know who Yuan Hao was. The only memories he had of Yuan Hao were glimpses caught from fragments involving other people.

Could it be that he really was only a game character?

Wen Qing did not want that answer.

A month later, Wen Qing was discharged from the hospital and continued recuperating at home. He still had to go to the hospital regularly for rehabilitation training and checkups.

He had also basically recovered his memories of reality.

Wen Qing, a third-year printmaking major, was currently on medical leave from school because of illness. His parents had divorced when he was young, so he followed his mother’s surname, Wen, and had basically severed ties with his biological father. His mother’s parents were his grandfather and grandmother, but both had passed away when he was five, so in the end it had still been his mother who bore the main burden of raising him alone.

Only Yuan Hao remained a mystery.

Wen Qing already knew that the game he had been playing was Dynasty, but during his hospitalization he had been restricted from contact with electronic devices, and his mother, still frightened by what had happened, had deliberately kept him away from them.

Now he was home alone, and finally had the chance to search for information on Yuan Hao using Dynasty as a keyword.

Wen Qing typed [Dynasty Yuan Hao] into the search bar, and what came up were all Yuan Ba, Yuan Aotian, Yuan Table, and so on. There were so many characters surnamed Yuan in Dynasty!

He tried [Dynasty Wen Qing] as well, but naturally there were no results for that either.

What other keyword could he use?

Wen Qing tried to dig for clues from his memory, but whenever he tried to think hard about anything related to Yuan Hao, his head started hurting. Sweat broke out across his forehead, and just before the pain forced him to give up, he finally caught hold of one abrupt keyword, Baishu.

“Baishu?”

He could not understand what that had to do with the game, yet his subconscious still felt it was important.

Hesitantly, Wen Qing changed the search term to [Dynasty Baishu]. This time, the results were much richer, and ranked first was a recommended viral video.

〖Da Da Da Da Baishu · posted two months ago

Challenge: Clearing a Pay-to-Win Game with 0 Spending #Dynasty #PayToWin #Livestream〗

This was a compilation video. Every episode was very long because the creator had uploaded his livestream recordings in full from beginning to end, with no editing whatsoever.

The game took up most of the screen. Only in the upper-right corner was there a small window showing the streamer’s camera feed.

The streamer called Baishu was a guy with short black hair, though it was a little long and partly covered his brows and eyes. So while he was playing, he occasionally kept pushing the hair off his forehead to one side. The camera quality was not especially high, but it was still clear enough to show that he looked pretty good.

Of course, when he kept messing with it until it turned into a bird’s nest, then it looked funny rather than handsome.

The progress bar moved forward. The streamer had chosen the Emperor Route. Unlike the freely named Power Minister Route that Wen Qing had played, the Emperor Route could only use the fixed surname Yuan.

“Too lazy to think about it, I’ll just type something random,” the boy in the video said.

He tapped at the keyboard, and the name of the game character became, Yuan Hao.

Yuan Hao? He was Yuan Hao!?

In that instant, Wen Qing’s scalp went numb. Countless memories came roaring through his mind, leaving only pain behind and no clear traces, yet Wen Qing was almost certain, this was not a coincidence of identical names. The character controlled by this boy was the Yuan Hao from his memories.

And as the video continued playing, the second-ranked “Wen Qing” that appeared later confirmed his guess even further. Because the NPC Wen Qing in the game looked almost exactly like him.

When Wen Qing played the game, he had chosen the option to generate a model from a photo, but the system-generated version had turned out too ugly, nothing like his real self. Later he had spent money on a “beauty card.” The effect had been a bit too refined, but still acceptable.

Now the Wen Qing NPC that viewers were calling “so good-looking that he definitely has to be an important NPC” was his in-game character.

In my game, there was the NPC Yuan Hao. In streamer Baishu’s game, there was the NPC Wen Qing.

It was obviously a single-player game, so why had his game and mine mixed together?

Perhaps only the videos could provide the answer.

Wen Qing did not even watch them at double speed. All of his free time became filled with those videos. He claimed he was looking for answers, but in reality he had already become a fan, completing the full set of like, favorite, and follow.

Streamer Baishu played almost every day, and every stream lasted many hours, giving a very strong sense of companionship. He was also very funny. For the sake of “zero spending,” he kept reloading saves again and again, and even pulled out Excel strategies. Wen Qing also benefited a great deal from that.

The scrolling comments in the screen recordings were very interesting too, supporters, complainers, and people shouting that they wanted to top up money for him.

Although he still had not recovered more memories, through the game interface, Wen Qing was able to see another perspective of himself.

Sending money, sending medicinal herbs, sending pastries, the NPC Wen Qing had practically become the number-one benefactor.

Baishu was also deeply moved and kept calling Wen Qing “good brother,” “my bro,” “angel,” and “trusted aide,” and even promised him the position of Chancellor.

The comments, on the other hand, were much simpler. Without exception, they all called him “sister-in-law.”

Wen Qing found it funny, and also interesting.

Of course, streamer Baishu was also very loyal.

He sacrificed his own reputation to stand up for Wen Qing. He reloaded more than ten times to dig up precious medicinal herbs to treat Wen Qing’s mother. After winning prize money, he used it to treat Wen Qing to a grand meal.

He spent money like mad on snacks to raise Wen Qing’s Physique. Wen Qing got family-price discounts on goods, but if a swordswoman wanted to buy them, she got the crooked-merchant price. When Wen Qing got sick and caused a fuss, Baishu sounded impatient with his mouth, but in reality he changed outfits four times over it.

He was so poor that he was about to get stuck on progression, yet he still worried that Wen Qing might get the short end of the stick. When buying wine, he only accepted a small discount. He could not bear to throw away the peace talisman, and entrusted the important jade pendant to Wen Qing for safekeeping. When he borrowed money in an emergency, he repaid it as soon as he received his stipend, and even added interest.

Most importantly, he had chosen Wen Qing to be Crown Princess. For the sake of his and Wen Qing’s wedding, a wedding that gave absolutely no stat increase, he broke his own rules, topped up several times, and chose the most luxurious version.

The comments were teasing that brother and sister-in-law were 99, that Baishu was hardcore iron-gay, that he truly loved him.

When Wen Qing saw this, he began wavering too. He also felt that Baishu had truly fallen in love with the NPC Wen Qing in the game.

Whenever NPC Wen Qing cried, Baishu would touch the screen several times, then withdraw his hand again in melancholy, and use the mouse to wipe away the tears.

Baishu said that the screen was dirty and that he was just wiping the screen.

But Wen Qing felt that in those few moments, Baishu had forgotten the barrier of the screen, forgotten that it was only a game, and treated the NPC Wen Qing as a real person.

On their wedding night, Baishu turned off desktop sharing and let the comments howl all they wanted. The little camera window was blurry, but it was clear that he was secretly smiling while trying out the intimacy system.

Wen Qing could not help reaching out and tapping the Baishu streamer on the screen with his finger. “Since I’m one of the people directly involved, at least let me see it.”

He clicked to the next episode.

There wasn’t a next episode???

Wen Qing went to the comment section and found it in chaos. Some people were calling on everyone to join the siege, some were posting their daily question of when Baishu would resume streaming, and some had already begun making HaoQing edit clips to mourn the BE.

Of course, he still found fan-recorded reuploads.

In the reupload, Baishu got progression-locked because of the wives-and-concubines count, and because he had the fidelity vow, he could not take concubines, so the game could not continue. But then someone sent several large gifts and asked him to demote Wen Qing and cast him off.

It was obvious that he was hesitant, but he still did it. Wen Qing was disappointed, but he also understood a little. After all, it was only an NPC, and after all, he could still reload a save.

But when the third request came, demanding death by imperial decree, Baishu looked straight into the camera, his gaze sharp as a blade, utterly unlike the usual funny, lazy guy.

He cursed that person as disgusting, then refunded the money, blacklisted them, topped up heavily, and desperately spammed gifts at the NPC Wen Qing. He bought page after page from the gift shop, sent page after page, but the affection still did not rise back up.

Outside the screen, Wen Qing worried himself sick, wanting to stop him from sending any more. Just like the comments said, Baishu was unemployed, so how could he pour that much money into a game?

At the very end, Baishu looked as though his spirit had been sucked out of him. Hanging his head in dejection, he said he was stopping the stream.

Something was very wrong with his state…

But the reupload only contained that one episode. Wen Qing’s heart clenched painfully. He desperately wanted to know what happened next, but no matter how he searched, changed keywords, or switched platforms, he could not find the next day’s game video.

Just like Baishu had said, he stopped streaming.

Wen Qing did not give up. He kept searching and searching, and in the end, inside a fan group, he found the video of Baishu’s return stream. But it was separated from the pre-hiatus stream by a full week, and it was audio-only.

In the video, Baishu’s tone sounded light enough, and he could still crack a few jokes, but his voice sounded especially fragile.

He said he did not have much money left and needed to go find a job.

He said he was doing fine and that no one needed to worry.

He said he had logged on on the day the servers shut down, but simply had not streamed it.

He said that he and Wen Qing had communicated their feelings, even though they could only send two characters at a time.

He said he was heartbroken…

A buzzing filled Wen Qing’s mind. He clutched his head and collapsed onto the bed, losing contact with the world for one instant. In the next, countless memories flooded into his mind.

He remembered. He remembered everything, everything about himself in the game, everything about getting along with Yuan Hao, and everything that had happened on the day the game shut down.

The game world collapsed. Everything was obviously fake. I desperately kept speaking to Yuan Hao, saying it over and over and over, and finally I got a reply.

He said we were supposed to grow old together. He called me Qingqing. He told me not to go. He said he knew my feelings. He said his name was…

Song Hao!

The final puzzle piece clicked into place. Wen Qing lay weakly on the bed, his laughter hoarse. He was overjoyed to have finally remembered his lover’s name.

Not Yuan Hao, not Baishu, but Song Hao.

There was no divide between human and game separating them. They lived in the same world, and even… Wen Qing wiped his eyes, climbed back up, and once again checked the location tag on the video upload.

They were even in the same city!

How was he supposed to find him?

Right. He was a streamer, so he would definitely have an agreement with the platform. Platforms usually required streamers to leave a contact number, and to set access conditions so that qualified companies could view those numbers and contact streamers for business cooperation.

He had helped his mother run her social media before. He remembered the company account.

Wen Qing logged into the company account, and sure enough, he found Song Hao’s number. He drew a deep breath and, with trembling hands, dialed it.

After the buzzing ring tone, the call connected.

“Hello, who is this?”

It was Song Hao’s voice, clearer than it had been in the videos. Without the separation of dimensions between them, this was their first time coming into contact at such close range.

“If you’re not going to say anything, I’m hanging up.” Song Hao’s voice sounded impatient. He said he was going to hang up, but in fact he was still keeping the call connected.

Only then did Wen Qing realize that perhaps he still was not ready to face Song Hao directly. He did not know what he wanted to say or what he wanted to talk about, and yet he had recklessly made the call.

But afraid that Song Hao would hang up, Wen Qing hurried to stop him. “Wait! Is this… Song Hao…?”

“Yes, I’m Song Hao. Who are you?”

Song Hao seemed to sigh, and his tone softened a little. The call was not disconnected.

“I… I’m…” He was almost unable to stop himself from crying. Wen Qing took a deep breath, desperately forcing himself to endure it so he could finish speaking. “I’m… Wen Qing.”