I sent a text to my online boyfriend: "Off work yet, hubby?" He replied instantly: "Not yet. Give me a minute, be good." But can someone please tell me... Why is it that the exact message I sent to my online boyfriend... Is the exact same message the mega-star Silas Young just answered on his livestream? I stared at the #1 trending video, my hands shaking. I silently shared it with him, adding a single question mark: "?". Silas replied quickly: "Sorry, forgot to turn off message notifications." 1 "Let's break up. We're not right for each other." I held the phone to my ear, looking at the keys to the brand-new Porsche I had just picked up, feeling like a bucket of ice water had been poured over my head. Today was my two-year anniversary with Julian. I had planned to come clean today and tell him the truth: I was actually a trust-fund kid. And as an anniversary gift, I was going to give him the Porsche he had always dreamed of. Who could have guessed he would dump me instead? "Why?" Julian sneered. "You spend every day obsessing over celebrities. Your Instagram and TikTok are full of Silas Young. And you're asking me why? Are you my girlfriend, or Silas Young's?" I tried to argue: "That's just because Silas had a new movie coming out recently..." Julian cut me off: "I only started gaming in the first place because of you. Now, I'm a top-200 streamer on the whole platform. And you? How long has it been since you played a game with me?" A wave of guilt washed over me. "I'm sorry." "Don't bother." Julian continued, "We're seniors in college now. You're an adult. Stop obsessing over celebrities all day and put some effort into your own future." With that, he hung up. I stared at my phone, unable to articulate the bitterness in my mouth. Is it that I don't want to put in effort? It's that I literally don't need to put in effort! 2 That night, I started doing some soul-searching. Have I really been neglecting Julian too much lately? But... he was the one who was always busy with streaming and his career. If he hadn't been too busy to spend time with me, I wouldn't have gotten bored enough to start obsessing over a celebrity. Last month, he even forgot my birthday. I waited at his apartment all night. The next day, he came back with his clothes all wrinkled, acting cute and saying he had a company dinner. He claimed there were a lot of big shots there, and to secure more resources, he drank too much and ended up sleeping in his boss's office. I was originally angry, but seeing the dark circles under his eyes, I felt bad for him. In high school, because my family was so wealthy, I was used by my best friend. Since college, I've always kept a very low profile. After getting together with Julian, knowing he came from an ordinary background, I never told him about my true financial situation to protect his ego. But I couldn't bear to see him working so hard anymore. Secretly tipping him in his livestream wasn't enough. So, I ordered the Porsche he had always wanted, planning to come clean on our anniversary, beg for his forgiveness, and give him a huge surprise. When my best friend, Chloe, found out, she mocked me: "Even the most tragic heroines in history would call you pathetic. He makes a bunch of money and buys you a $300 bag, and you turn around and drop $150,000 on a car!" "He's just being frugal!" I defended him. "He's wearing a $1,500 Balenciaga jacket." "He finally made some money, of course he wants to treat himself a little!" Chloe just sneered: "Heh." I had never experienced much hardship growing up. My biggest setback was in high school, hearing the friend I had practically subsidized talking trash about me behind my back. This led to a situation where I was great at everything... except that I was hopelessly, tragically romantic. That night, I decided to make one last struggle to apologize and get back together with Julian. But before I could send the message, a push notification from the streaming app popped up. "J-God confesses his love live." ? Who? The J-God I'm thinking of? Who is he confessing to? Me? With trembling hands, I opened Julian's stream. I watched as the guy who had just dumped me that morning stared earnestly into the camera: "Serena, I like you. Will you be my girlfriend?" My brain buzzed. The live chat was scrolling at light speed, filled with two distinct voices. The first was cheering for this Serena to say yes. The second was exposing Serena's identity. She was the owner of Julian's streaming agency. The very same boss whose office he claimed to have slept in last month. Wow. I laughed out of sheer anger. Dumping me in the morning, confessing to someone else at night. This seamless transition speed was faster than a bullet train. 3 Chloe was absolutely furious. "We cannot let him get away with this!" "We definitely won't." I might be a hopeless romantic who tends to assume the best in people, but that didn't mean I was a pushover. If he wanted to make me suffer, he needed to make sure I was actually the suffering type. Back then, Julian only started gaming to pursue me, to have a common interest. But the fact that he got a little famous was also, ironically, because of me. My gaming skills were maxed out. I was a god-tier Akali player in League of Legends, capable of diving into a team fight and getting a Pentakill. After I reached the Challenger tier with Akali on my main account, I used his account to climb the ranks, pushing it to Challenger as well. The game automatically saved the highlight reels. He edited those clips and posted them on TikTok, and unexpectedly, they went viral. From then on, he started streaming, but he never played Akali again. Was it because he didn't want to? No, it was because he couldn't. His Akali was thoroughly average, completely incomparable to my mechanics. There were loud doubts at first, but he excused it by saying he wouldn't play champions he had already taken to Challenger again, and that his game sense and macro play were actually quite good. Plus, he had a handsome face. As time passed, those doubting voices faded away. I was a bit uncomfortable at the time, but Julian had said, "My grades aren't great. If I wait until graduation, who knows how long it'll take before I can give you a stable life? Right now, the streaming income is pretty good..." He then bought me a $300 bag. A bag our housekeeper wouldn't even carry. But I, like a tragic romantic idiot, took that $300 bag and forgave the world. Chloe asked me, "What's your plan?" "My plan?" I let out a short laugh. "To send him out to eat dirt." That night, I recorded an Akali gameplay video. The zigzag movement pattern was identical to the viral video Julian had posted back then. Originally, this was an alt account with only a handful of followers; nobody paid attention to it. But I had way too much money. I bought some traffic, and "accidentally" bought my way to the #1 trending spot. The top comment was from Chloe. "This movement looks exactly like J-God's famous highlight reel." I replied, deliberately stirring the pot: "How do you know his famous highlight reel was actually played by him?" Julian called me that very night. "Audrey, what exactly are you trying to do?" 4 He actually had the nerve to call me? "Julian, don't you think you owe me an explanation?" "I thought we had already made things very clear." "Clear?" I scoffed. "You cheated, and then blamed the breakup on me to make me feel guilty. I've never been slapped in the face like this." Julian's laugh was even more obvious than mine: "Who do you think you are? Audrey, considering we used to be together, I didn't want to make this ugly. Name your price." Name a price? Julian was actually asking me to name a price? That sentence jolted me completely awake. Suddenly, everything I had done over the past few days felt absurd and meaningless. I had actually liked a piece of trash like him, and wasted so much time on him. I must have been truly blind. "If I name a price, I'm afraid you won't be able to afford it!" "Take your filthy money to the grave with you, and never show your face in front of me again!" With that, I hung up directly. Online, I stopped paying for traffic. The topic was clearly suppressed, and the heat died down. The public outcry receded like the tide, gradually disappearing without a trace. After deleting a few posts trying to dox me, Chloe asked what my next move was. I just said I didn't want to waste another minute on that scumbag. I thought the situation would blow over, but unexpectedly, in the middle of the night, the topic's popularity suddenly surged again. The reason? The mega-star Silas Young had liked my post. He unliked it half an hour later and posted a half-hearted explanation: "Finger slipped." To be acknowledged by your own idol in such a way... I was probably the first. The internet was filled with "Hahahaha," calling Silas cute and happily eating popcorn. But Julian was instantly thrust back into the eye of the storm. The whole internet was saying Julian was a liar, making a huge fuss, demanding he play Akali live to prove his innocence. The next day, I went back to campus to meet with my advisor. As I was walking out, a white BMW blocked my path at the school gates. 5 A slender woman stepped out of the car, looking around thirty years old. She had a great figure, but her makeup was so thick you couldn't tell what she actually looked like, and her perfume was strong enough to knock someone over. She stood in front of me, looked me up and down, and acted incredibly haughty. "Let me introduce myself. I am Serena Vance." I hadn't seen this kind of dramatic scene before, so I froze for a moment. My stunned silence translated as fear in her eyes. She grew even more confident, her tone dripping with contempt: "Julian is a top streamer heavily promoted by our agency, and now, he's also Serena Vance's boyfriend. Name a price. How much will it take for you to come forward and clear this up?" I snapped back to reality, feeling it was utterly unbelievable: "Clear what up? What I posted was the truth!" "The truth isn't that important. Little girl, listen to some advice from an older sister: know when to quit while you're ahead! You haven't entered the real world yet; you don't know how hard it is to make money. The price I can offer you right now is more than you'd make working for ten years without eating or drinking. How about it? Do we have a deal?" "Know when to quit?" I sneered. "Calling me 'little girl'—you sure didn't have a problem getting your hands on a 'little boy.' You want me to help you clear his name? Keep dreaming!" Serena's face instantly turned ice cold. "Audrey, is it? You just wait! I'll make sure you can't survive in this city!" With that, she brushed past my shoulder, knocking me off balance, turned, got into her car, and sped away. My hand gripping my textbook trembled with anger. A circle of students had gathered to watch the drama, pointing and whispering at me. "What happened?" "Looks like a wife catching a mistress..." I roared: "Mistress my ass! Are you blind?!" The person who just spoke was startled by my sudden outburst, and they hurried away, whispering. I've been pampered my whole life. When have I ever suffered this kind of humiliation? Make me unable to survive? Let's see who fails to survive first. I pulled out my phone and called my brother. "Connor, I want to acquire a streaming agency." "Well, look who finally called me." Connor chuckled. "Sure, not just one. You can acquire ten if you want." 6 My brother moved fast. In less than a month, the contract was placed in black and white right in front of me. The streaming agency Julian was signed to wasn't very large; he was their star gaming streamer. Looking at the few pages of the contract and their small company's annual financial report, I truly didn't understand where Serena got the confidence to challenge me. My brother tapped the contract with his finger: "What's the plan next? Want your big brother to take you for a spin around your new company?" "It's not time yet," I said. "We're not going to find them. I'm going to make them come begging to me." Connor rubbed my head: "You really are pissed off." Damn right I was. I almost died of anger. My brother had recently taken over the family business and was very busy. He didn't stay long before leaving. I was going to implement the next step of my plan. First, I screenshotted my chat history with Julian, including the times I bought him gifts and my transfer receipts. Although I pretended to be poor, the amounts weren't large, but they were consistent. And his replies... were few. The further down I scrolled, the more I realized that the signs of his infidelity had been there all along. For the past few months, I had been the one initiating conversations, and his replies weren't just impatient, they were incredibly perfunctory. I had been so blinded by love that I didn't even recognize his cold violence. After saving the chat logs, I prepared to open the game and record another Akali gameplay. Last time, some people doubted if I was really the one playing. This time, I was going to use three camera angles and record a full, unedited version. Before I could open the game, a message notification popped up. It was from someone I hadn't contacted in years. S-Boy: "Quite the drama." I replied: "Here to laugh at me?" "How could I? I told you long ago that guy was no good." Seeing that sentence, my eyes inexplicably teared up. 7 I met S-Boy through gaming. Two years ago, I had a lot of free time in college. Aside from classes, I barely participated in any extracurriculars, using all my time to climb the ranks. After my main assassin reached the top tier, I couldn't resist trying the support role, so I picked a healing champion. Although I usually played damage dealers, I had good game sense and knew champion skills well, so playing support wasn't hard for me. But the ADC on my team was terribly incompetent. Their pacing and mechanics were a total mess. Before reaching level four, they had already been ganked and killed twice. I couldn't save them before I hit level four either, and the gold gap widened instantly. Before I could say anything, the ADC spoke up first. ADC: "A girl?" "Only knows how to play support? Getting carried up the ranks, right?" "So annoying getting girls in my games." He was incredibly toxic, and my anger flared up immediately. "With a 0/2/0 score right at the start, you have the nerve to talk trash?" "What's wrong with being a girl? Sprinkle some birdseed on the screen and a chicken pecking at it would play better than you." "Even the grim reaper can't save a ghost rushing to die. Forgot what kind of trash you are, huh, you little punk?" ADC: "Heh." Then followed a string of asterisk symbols, and he was finally muted by the system. The ADC eventually gave up and went AFK in the base. I was about to say something else when the Jungler spoke up: "Support, come follow me." I was stunned: "But you're playing a stealth assassin." The assassin's most crucial skill was invisibility. I wasn't as good at support as I was at jungle, and I was worried a misstep would reveal his position. "It's fine," the assassin used voice chat this time. His voice was young and pleasant: "The enemy team comp can't handle the late game." I glanced at the enemy team, realized he was right, and followed right behind the assassin, helping him check vision in the jungle and shielding him during team fights. The assassin's ID: S-Boy Invincible. Facts proved he really was somewhat invincible. When the game ended, the assassin dealt 50% of the team's total damage, hard-carrying that toxic ADC to victory. I added him as a friend and thanked him. S-Boy Invincible: "You're welcome. Just helping out against injustice." I had a sudden idea: "Wanna climb the ranks together? I'm a Jungle god, my Akali is slick." S-Boy waited a while before replying: "Challenger Jungler? Impressive." Me: "Just love the feeling of carrying." I said, inviting S-Boy into a lobby. Then, remembering something, I asked: "But do you main Jungle? Will I be stealing your role?" This time S-Boy used voice chat again. His tone had a hint of arrogant cockiness typical of young boys: "Nope. I play everything." 8 After that day, I added S-Boy on WeChat. He never posted anything personal on his moments, just shared various indie songs. During that time, we played games together almost every day. 1v1s to practice new champions, sending each other skins; later, we occasionally shared life updates and sent each other gossip threads. S-Boy had a nice voice, was patient and sunny. He sounded very young, but whether it was in the game or talking, you could tell he was quite mature. Once, during my period, S-Boy invited me to play, but I wasn't online. Knowing I wasn't feeling well, he directly asked for my address and ordered me brown sugar ginger tea and some warm, nourishing soup. My roommate, Candy, saw me smiling dreamily and knocked me on the head: "You're in love! Why are you smiling so creepily?" I argued: "How is it creepy!" Candy looked at the table full of food: "Who ordered it? Must be that guy you game with every day, right?" I didn't deny it. Candy was incredulous: "Are you crazy! Giving out your address and contact info so easily? Across an internet cable, do you really know what kind of person he is? What if he's a creep?" "He doesn't seem like a creep..." "How doesn't he? Because he's good at games?" Her words left me speechless and suddenly brought me back to reality. Yeah, I didn't even know S-Boy's real name. What kind of person was he in real life? He sounded young—was he a college student too? Candy sighed: "Audrey, no matter what, he's a person behind a screen. It's hard to say what he's really like. Look at all those stories online... Ugh, stop burying yourself in games all day! Return to the real world! Tomorrow, your big sister is taking you to watch a basketball game." I hesitated for a moment, then nodded: "Okay." It was at that basketball game that I saw Julian for the first time. Before the game, Candy took me over to say hi, and his eyes kept darting my way. Until the game ended, he sank the final three-pointer, the crowd erupted in cheers, and he instinctively looked toward my side of the court. 9 After that day, Julian launched a fierce pursuit of me. Every morning, he delivered breakfast to the girls' dorm, saved seats for us in class. He practically bribed my entire dorm room. Candy dramatically lifted my bed curtain to investigate: "How are things with Julian?" I lay there and casually replied: "Nothing much." Candy: "Comrade, you still need to work harder." Candy added: "But I've noticed you haven't been gaming much these past few days." I sighed. It wasn't that I didn't want to play, it was that S-Boy hadn't been around lately. I had gotten used to climbing the ranks with him during this period. When he wasn't there, my designated gaming time felt empty. Playing alone felt surprisingly boring, and I was momentarily lost, not knowing what to do. I stared at my chat log with S-Boy. We used to chat every day, but this time, it stopped last night. I asked him if he wanted to play, and he said he was too busy with work lately and apologized. So he was already working... "Damn it!" My roommate, Fish, cursed from the bunk below. "Silas Young actually got hurt!" "Who?" Candy popped her head out. "That actor who's really popular right now?" "Yeah," Fish said. "Too many action scenes, he injured his leg. Waaaah, he was hospitalized yesterday, and fans have been hounding the studio all day until they released a statement. My poor baby, Mommy's heart aches." Candy rolled her eyes at Fish's maternal fandom terminology. It went in one ear and out the other for me; I didn't take it to heart. Right at that moment, Julian suddenly sent me a WeChat message: "Wanna play a game together?" I glanced at the inactive chat with S-Boy and replied: "Sure."
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