Xu Ye wanted to browse the forum but restrained herself under the weight of her conscience.
She spent a moment feeling down before opening the highest-viewed food video on a small streaming platform, reciting “every grain is hard-earned” as she forced down the now-clumpy rice noodles.
Huo Shuyan urgently disabled the forum’s photo upload feature, while Liu Shuo hadn’t even had time to eat and was furiously deleting posts. Xu Ye only needed to make sure she didn’t click into the forum.
The group chat for “the only three people in the forum” stayed quiet for most of the day until Liu Shuo, calm yet despairing, started spamming messages just as Xu Ye was about to leave work.
[Liu Shuo: You guys don’t know what I’ve been through. (LostDreams.jpg)]
[Liu Shuo: You wouldn’t want to see an old man in floral shorts, nor would you want to see naked men flexing their muscles. Those are minor grievances; I can just crop the photos and delete the posts. But you don’t understand the feeling of clicking a mouse all afternoon. You really don’t, I swear.]
[Liu Shuo: Huo Shuyan, hurry up and make a one-click delete function. My fingerprints are practically gone. I’d probably have trouble unlocking my phone with fingerprint recognition now.]
Xu Ye expressed her genuine sympathy over Liu Shuo’s imminent loss of fingerprints and repeatedly confirmed with him that all image-containing posts had been thoroughly deleted.
Before she gleefully clicked into the forum, Liu Shuo typed sadly in the group.
[Liu Shuo: You don’t actually care about my fingerprints. I know.]
After replying to Liu Shuo with a reaction meme, she picked up an old phone with the forum app installed. The forum page lagged briefly before a system message popped up:
[System Message: The photo feature has been temporarily removed for upgrades. Please be patient. Updated photo-uploading rules are in the pinned post. Users must carefully read the rules before uploading images.]
Due to time constraints, the notice that Huo Shuyan hastily drafted was quite rough.
The font varied between SimSun and KaiTi styles, and the sizes ranged from 10.5-point to 16-point. By the time Xu Ye finished reading, she felt nearly blind.
The pinned post had been fixed with a uniform font and size like any regular post. Xu Ye scrolled straight to the bottom to read the photo-uploading rules:
[Admin Reply:
1. It is forbidden to upload photos that infringe on the privacy of your caretakers/pet owners, such as high-resolution full-face pictures, photos without pants, intimate kissing photos, or naked dancing photos. Violators will be banned from logging into the forum for a day. We encourage users to actively report rule-breaking posts.
2. Photos like selfies or landscapes that do not expose privacy are allowed.
3. Due to technical limitations, the number of times an account can use the photo feature per day is restricted. The exact limit will be announced when the feature is officially relaunched.]
Liu Shuo’s photo-uploading rules consisted of only three points. Though the text appeared flat and emotionless, Xu Ye could still sense his despair from the examples listed in the first rule.
She closed the pinned post and scrolled down. Sure enough, all posts with photos had been deleted, leaving behind a chorus of wails from cats and dogs lamenting the loss of new content.
[“Ugh, is it gone? I just woke up and didn’t even get to try it!”]
[“Admin, hurry up and update it! Every second waiting for it to go live is pure agony!”]
[“I’m losing it! I was about to count the exact number of hairs on MuMu’s big brother’s head, and poof, the post disappeared!”]
When Xu Ye saw the third post, she nearly lost it. Was there really such a bored dog in the world?
Curiosity drove her to click in. She recognized the ID—it belonged to the notorious house-wrecking husky.
[2F: I’m shocked. You actually had the patience to count human hairs.]
[3F: Who are you looking down on, Second Floor? Don’t underestimate dogs.]
[4F: …I saw that photo. The old man only had three hairs on his head. The original poster spent two hours and still couldn’t get the count right. Second Floor, do you think they were patient or not?]
Xu Ye: …That’s impressive, brother.
While laughing uncontrollably, her phone buzzed incessantly like it was urging her to answer. Liu Shuo was crazily tagging her in the group with nearly seven or eight messages:
[Liu Shuo: @Xu Ye, you might want to change your forum ID. I regret to inform you that your alias has just won first place in the “user whose photo everyone most wants to see” poll.]
[Liu Shuo: @Xu Ye, I’ve enabled the rename feature for you. You can change it if you’d like, but it’s up to you.]
A sense of foreboding crept in.
Xu Ye reluctantly left the husky’s source of joy and checked the two most popular photo-feature-related posts in the forum. These posts were created by the cat “Fat Orange” and the familiar dog “Snowball.”
[Fat Orange: Once the photo feature goes live, I’ll post a photo. Anyone want to exchange pics and become familiar?]
[Snowball: Fellow dog lovers! Whose selfie are you most looking forward to?]
The replies under Fat Orange’s post were mostly normal, with users agreeing to exchange photos. Snowball’s post, however, had several mentions of “Good Ye.”
[2F: OP here. I’m most curious about PengPeng, Good Ye, and Da Bai. First, everyone says PengPeng looks fancy, but I haven’t seen them. Second, Good Ye saved my dog’s life—I just want to see the one who saved me, even if they’re actually a cat. Third, I’ve heard Da Bai’s head is rounder than mine, but I won’t believe it until I see it.]
[5F: +1 for Good Ye. I want to know if they’re really a dog. Don’t worry, OP. I’ve never seen anyone with a head rounder than yours in my life.]
[9F: Who’s Good Ye?]
[10F: Newbie? Without Good Ye, Snowball wouldn’t be here, and half the posts in our forum would be gone.]
[11F: So, is Good Ye a dog or not?]
Finally, after almost getting exposed a few days ago and being forced into hiding, the discussion circled back to whether “Good Ye” was a dog or not.
Xu Ye readily took Liu Shuo’s suggestion. After thinking for a long while, she typed “Xiao Bai” into the ID field.
Xiao Bai—one of the most common names for cats or dogs. Since there was already a “Da Bai” cat and an “Old Bai” dog on the forum, her adding a “Xiao Bai” human would make for a perfect match.
After changing her ID, Xu Ye anxiously continued monitoring the posts’ activity.
However, she didn’t have to worry for long before the topic quickly shifted elsewhere.
[17F: I actually want to meet the bosses.]
[18F: Agreed, I also want to see what the bosses look like.]
The bosses?
Xu Ye had always assumed “boss” referred to the black cat who invited her to the forum. Did the netizens have more than one boss in mind?
Curious, she snapped a photo of the comment and sent it to the group chat along with her question.
[Xu Ye: Isn’t there only one boss?]
[Xu Ye: (Image)]
Thanks to the distraction brought by “the bosses,” the netizens temporarily forgot about Xu Ye’s alias.
Huo Shuyan and Liu Shuo seemed busy and didn’t reply to her messages even by the end of the workday.
Xu Ye glanced at the quiet group chat one last time before boarding her bus home.
Bus route 857 lived up to its reputation; the driver’s wild driving style seemed inherited, and Xu Ye felt as if her head might hit the roof of the bus.
Clutching the handrail tightly with one hand, she used her other to open a streaming platform.
On the homepage, the first recommended streamer was her regular favorite—a so-called “monkey reincarnated” player with godlike skills.
Just as her finger hovered over the streamer’s icon, the driver’s wild maneuver caused her to accidentally tap into a random stream in the bottom-right corner.
Xu Ye was about to exit when a youthful and lively voice came through her earphones.
“Welcome, xy! Welcome to the stream! This is the all-round streamer Xiao Yu!” The energetic voice echoed in her ears. “If you like the stream, feel free to follow! If not, that’s okay too~”
The stream had only a handful of viewers, and the streamer was playing as the monkey character. Looking at the pitiful viewer count and barren chat, Xu Ye decided to support the new streamer while also picking up some tips for playing the monkey.
The streamer, Xiao Yu, was even chattier than expected. For the entire bus ride, Xu Ye’s earphones were filled with his endless chatter.
“Don’t panic, everyone! Let me teach you how to handle this situation: Liu Bei, Jin Chan, and Dong Huang on the enemy team, plus clueless teammates on ours.”
After scolding his teammates, Xiao Yu remained focused on the game. The desolate stream rarely saw any activity, but a single comment finally appeared after a long time.
[Streamer, as always, you’re so cute. You curse a lot but don’t dare make a single sound in the actual game.]
Eventually, Xiao Yu’s team’s crystal was destroyed. After a moment of silence, he calmly remarked, “The best way to handle this situation is to hit the surrender button at the six-minute mark and move on to the next match. Got it?”
Xu Ye couldn’t help but laugh and followed the small-time streamer as encouragement.
She continued browsing the forum while listening to the streamer, but suddenly, a private message from David popped up.
In just three short sentences, Xu Ye sensed the looming shadow of yet another identity crisis.
[David: Why did you suddenly change your name?]
[David: I heard the forum can take photos now?]
[David: Are you there? Post a selfie?]
Author’s Note:
The streamer is actually…
There is no love triangle in this story!
Huskies are very intelligent. The one in this story isn’t dumb—it’s just overly energetic.
You can support the translator here for faster updates! _(:3 」∠)_
