Gu Lizhou had been a little hesitant, wondering if calling out to him so abruptly might be a bit too forward. After all, the other person might’ve already forgotten him. However, the word “again” from the other party made him want to continue.

He pointed at the wall full of small advertisements and asked, “Did you post these?”

“How could I? Do I look like that kind of person?” As soon as Zhong Weishi finished speaking, he spotted a refreshingly out-of-place missing person notice amid the ads for “genital enlargement surgery.”

With a heavy “ai” he lazily admitted, “Yeah, I posted them. What’s the problem?”

Gu Lizhou stifled a laugh and crossed his arms. “Is this how you guys look for people?”

“What’s the problem?” Zhong Weishi countered.

Gu Lizhou sneered, spreading his left hand. “Hand me your phone.”

“What for?” Zhong Weishi instinctively reached for his pocket, suspicious that the man might take advantage of the darkness of the night as a cover to steal his phone and run.

“To help you find someone,” Gu Li Zhou said indifferently.

Zhong Weishi looked at him suspiciously, “How?”

“By using your brain.” Gu Lizhou hooked up his fingers. “Give me the phone.”

Wow!

Look at that NB1牛(niú) 逼 (bī) – equals to fvcking awesome in English. attitude—he could blow a rhino up to the sky with it.

Zhong Weishi had seen shameless people before, but never anyone this shameless.

Suppressing the urge to kick him down the stairs, Zhong Weishi fished out his phone and handed it over, ready to poke holes in his boasting.

Gu Lizhou flipped the phone so the screen faced him. “Unlock.”

“I’m telling you, calling won’t help. My friend tried countless times, and it just gives a busy signal.” Even as Zhong Weishi said this, he unlocked the phone anyway.

Who knows how many years the phone case had been used? The printed design was almost worn down to a solid black.

There were seven pages of apps in total, mostly games and video software. Each time he flipped through a page, the phone lagged a little.

Seeing him tapping away at the screen as if searching for something, Zhong Weishi couldn’t help but lean in. “Don’t go snooping ah. I’ve got a lot of little secrets in there.”

Gu Lizhou lifted his eyelids and gave him a knowing smirk as if something had come to mind.

Zhong Weishi didn’t need to guess to know what he was thinking. “Not the kind you’re imagining. I, am a decent person.”

Gu Lizhou didn’t believe it at all. “If you can’t reach him through WeChat, try other apps. There are so many ways to communicate these days, you’re bound to find something that works. Why is your phone disconnected from the internet?”

“Oh, the service was cut off,” Zhong Weishi said.

That night, he had planned to leech off the upstairs Wi-Fi to top up his phone bill. But when he opened WeChat, he found he only had 25 yuan—just short of the minimum required to recharge. So, he decided just to make do until next month.

Gu Lizhou asked, “Your service got cut off, and you’re not topping it up? What, are you planning to display this crap for an exhibition ah?”

Zhong Weishi wanted to save face, so he stuck out his neck and said, “What’s wrong with not topping up? Can’t I just use it to check the time?”

Without another word, Gu Lizhou turned on the hotspot on his phone and connected it to Zhong Weishi’s.

Zhong Weishi couldn’t help but grumble, “Why are you using my phone when you have yours?”

Gu Lizhou straightforwardly replied, “I don’t want to download Kuaishou.”2A short video social media platform where users can create and share their content in a convenient and simple way.

“Oh…” Zhong Weishi dragged out the sound, then frowned and asked, “Then, why do you think I’d have Kuaishou on my phone ah?”

Gu Li Zhou said without lifting his head, “Temperament.”

Zhong Weishi closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He never thought he’d one day hear something like that from someone else.

The truth was, he did have Kuaishou on his phone, but that was only because Qiangzi, trying to mimic some kind of eating broadcast trend last year, had begged him a thousand times to download the app and help boost his presence.

He would never forget that sunny afternoon when he finally found Qiangzi’s livestream. Qiangzi was sitting in the back of a tricycle, with a vast golden wheat field as the backdrop.

Inside the tricycle sat a huge rice vat, large enough to fit two Sima Guangs, filled with fiery red chili oil and instant noodles.

Qiangzi, grinning ear to ear, basked in the joy of the harvest as he spoke to the screen, “Today, I’m taking on the instant noodle challenge! There are 100 packets of noodles here, and since I like my food spicy, I bought the spicy beef flavor and added two jars of Lao Gan Ma. If you like this, follow me oh!”

That day, Qiangzi summoned almost every brothers in the internet cafe to come online and send him gifts, driving the viewership into the four digits.

It was like the whole place was in a state of flux.

It felt like he was peaking the moment he debuted.

Qiangzi used both hands to shovel noodles into his mouth, devouring them like a king, his sheer presence oozing from the screen.

That was also the first time in Zhong Weishi’s life that he’d ever tipped a streamer.

By the time Qiangzi had eaten half the vat, he couldn’t stop hiccupping, clutching his round belly, so stuffed he could no longer speak.

As expected, Qiangzi ended up wrecking his stomach.

That very night, he vomited and had diarrhea, eventually needing to go to the hospital for a three-day IV drip. When Qiangzi’s mother came to bring him some food, he took one look at the noodles and directly threw up.

From that point on, he developed a strong aversion to eating live streams.

“I downloaded it and forgot to delete it,” Zhong Weishi concluded.

Gu Lizhou believed his lengthy explanation, especially since the only streamer in his follow list was one called “Big Stomach King Huangfu.”

The last post on that account was from June of last year.

He resisted the urge to click and witness that heart-wrenching eating show.

What surprised Zhong Weishi, though, was that after Gu Lizhou entered a string of numbers into the search bar, an ID actually popped up.

The avatar was Er’Gou.