Before Xie Qingcheng arrived for their date, he had heard that this
young woman cared a lot about a man's income. But contrary to his
expectations, her enthusiasm didn't ebb after he told her his salary wasn't
high at all.
"Professor Xie, you're such an intellectual, truly so modest," Bai Jing
beamed. "Aiya, it's not easy to find such straightforward men these days,
you know."
Xie Qingcheng was at a loss for words.
"Professor Xie, you seem to have great taste," continued Bai Jing.
"You're someone who appreciates the finer things in life, right?"
Xie Qingcheng frowned, "No, I—"
"I could tell the moment I saw the way you're dressed."
Xie Qingcheng was even more dumbfounded.
He had no idea what Bai Jing meant until she finally blurted it out,
unable to hold herself back any longer, "Professor Xie, the T-shirt you're
wearing is a genuine article from our counter. There were only five or six
pieces in stock in all of Huzhou, so they were extremely hard to get. Even if
you buy its price in accessories, you still wouldn't be able to purchase it.
You're so low-key."
Only then did Xie Qingcheng finally understand that the strange
trajectory this date had taken was a result of the change of clothes He Yu
had offhandedly given him.
He pondered the girl's words for a moment and then remembered
what He Yu had said so casually.
No need. I'm not accustomed to wearing clothes that other people
have worn. Just toss it after you change—it was getting old anyway.
The depravities of capitalism.
"Professor Xie, you're not being sincere with me on this date," Bai
Jing smiled. "The price of this shirt of yours is nearly a year's salary for
many people, and it's very hard to purchase it domestically without
connections, yet you only invited me out for coffee?"
"You've misunderstood," replied Xie Qingcheng. "I borrowed this
shirt from a friend."
"Borrowed?" Bai Jing's eyes immediately widened.
After this point, the conversation took a rather unremarkable turn. As
soon as the formerly delighted salesgirl learned the truth, the matchmaking
date returned to reality.
Bai Jing's interest in Xie Qingcheng waned noticeably. After she
coerced him into taking some selfies together, she pointed her camera at the
dessert and clicked away before turning it on herself and doing the same.
She was occasionally interrupted by messages from her customers, to which
she replied with voice messages without the slightest hesitation or
embarrassment.
"Mrs. Zhang, please don't worry. Of course I've kept that limitededition bag for you. Aiya, you don't need to send me any more thank you
gifts, it's not worth the trouble."
"Executive Wang, the dress you ordered has arrived. When would it
be convenient for you to come to the shop? Yes, it's already been altered to
your size—plus size, but the front collar needs to be taken in two
centimeters. Don't worry, I've noted it all down here."
The meal was exceptionally awkward. Xie Qingcheng footed the bill
and lowered his head to glance at Bai Jing. This young woman was about
the same age as his students. He never harbored any genuine matchmaking
intentions and only wanted to fulfill Auntie Li's wishes, so he didn't take
any of Bai Jing's words or actions to heart. Plus, he had old-fashioned ideas
about chivalry, so he said, "I'll call a taxi for you."
"All righty, all righty," Bai Jing said, without a trace of politeness.
"Thanks a bunch, Professor Xie."
They were on Huzhou's busiest street, and it was the evening rush
hour. The two of them waited for a long time, but all the taxis that passed by
were already occupied.
Xie Qingcheng sighed. "If you don't mind, I can walk with you for a
bit. It'll be easier to call a car if we turn the corner up ahead."
"That's fine," Bai Jing replied, "but I have to start a livestream at
eight o'clock. I've already scheduled it, and my fans will be upset if I bail at
the last minute. Do you mind?"
Xie Qingcheng didn't use streaming apps, but he'd heard a bit about
them from Xie Xue. Hearing Bai Jing's words, he asked without thinking,
"You're a streamer as well?"
"Yup, I work very hard. I'll become a top streamer soon enough,
heh."
Xie Qingcheng nodded. "It's always good to have a dream. Let's go
then, I don't mind."
"Oh, thank you, Gege. You might not be very rich, but you're still
pretty handsome." Bai Jing caught up to him with a smile. "One more thing
—if you're in the frame a little, that's okay, yeah? Everyone likes to see
good-looking guys."
"…Do as you like."
Ten minutes later, Xie Qingcheng very much regretted his words.
He was truly out of the loop and had no idea that young people would
watch streams like this nowadays. Bai Jing took a pink selfie stick out of
her bag and started waving it around in random directions. The words that
came out of her mouth somehow seemed like meaningless lines spoken by
an actor; even after she had rambled on at length, he still didn't know what
she was trying to say.
"This is Huzhou's busiest street, full of beautiful guys and gals. Hey,
everyone… See the bag that person's carrying over there? That's a highquality fake, I can tell with just one look. If you wanna learn how to tell
whether something's authentic or not, remember to follow me.
"Oh yeah, next to me here's a nice piece of eye candy I met today. He
has a great personality, is an extremely educated professor, and has a salary
in the millions. Do you all see that sold-out T-shirt he's wearing? Ah, yes—
that's right, he's the one who took me out to dinner, and now he's walking
me home. Thanks for your blessings, everyone! Thank you!"
Xie Qingcheng suspected his ears might have stopped working. Just
when he was about to turn around and refute her, Bai Jing had already
muted the mic with a nimble tap of the screen.
"Sorry, Gege, it's not easy to make a living. Could you please not
expose me?"
Xie Qingcheng had no words. He simply couldn't understand why
some people liked to put up a front online, showing off manufactured
happiness and using inflated materialism to attract viewers.
But, whatever—he didn't want to argue any further with a silly girl
either.
This matchmaking date would have just ended like this, with Xie
Qingcheng silently enduring this ordeal—if they hadn't run into someone,
that is.
That someone appeared unexpectedly at a three-way intersection.
Xie Qingcheng and Bai Jing had already walked for more than ten
minutes and stopped at a less-crowded section of the block to wait for a
taxi. Bai Jing was in the middle of animatedly introducing the new high-end
products of the season to her fans on the stream.
Halfway through her spiel, the perceptive Bai Jing suddenly noticed a
blurry shadow close in behind her through her front camera. That shadow
was swaying back and forth in hesitation.
She didn't pay it any mind at first, but shortly thereafter, the shadow
began to approach her quickly. By the time she realized it, the face of a
dirty old homeless man was already reflected on her screen, rushing directly
at her.
Startled, Bai Jing glanced behind her and let out a scream.
It was an unkempt old man emanating an unbearable odor. His clothes
were so tattered with holes of varying sizes that they'd never be wearable
again once they were taken off. A lame yellow dog dashed over on his heels
and began to bark wildly at Bai Jing.
"Daughter! Daughter! I've finally found you, Daughter!"
"Eek! What's your problem?! Who's your daughter?! Go away!"
"No, no no no—but you're my daughter? Daughter, don't you
recognize your dad? Come here, let Dad take a look at you, Dad hasn't seen
you in so long…" The old man didn't seem to be in the right state of mind.
Weeping and overcome with emotion, he tried to hug Bai Jing.
Bai Jing's pretty face turned pale with shock. She took several steps
back, her stream still running as she shrieked hysterically. "Are you
insane?! Who are you?! Get the hell away!"
"Daughter, how can you not recognize me?" Tears streamed down the
old man's face. He scrambled forward, his blackened and shriveled fingers
extending like coals unwilling to die in the fading embers. He tried to wrap
his trembling arms around the girl before him. "I…missed you… Papa
missed you…"
The man spoke with a thick rural accent from the central plains.
Obviously, he wasn't the father of Bai Jing, who was a Huzhou native. Xie
Qingcheng immediately figured out what was going on and pulled Bai Jing
behind him. "It's okay—stay behind me," he reassured her.
"He's so scary!" Bai Jing wailed in fright. "How can this kind of
person be out wandering the streets? Doesn't the city care? AHHHH!"
She let out another hysterical scream as she jumped up and down. As
it turned out, the yellow dog that had followed the old man over was
circling and sniffing at her feet.
"Help! I-It wants to bite me! What's wrong with this dog?! Where's
its leash?!"
Bai Jing took off running as she screeched. Panicked, she wanted to
use the phone in her hand to call the police. To her, a homeless old man was
already alarming enough, but an ugly street dog like this was even more
terrifying. They both deserved to get locked up! Especially since they
scared her and interrupted her livestream… Hey, wait a minute—her
livestream!
Bai Jing suddenly realized that she had been streaming the entire
time. She hurriedly raised her phone to take a look. A few seconds later, her
pupils shrank violently in complete disbelief. Her ordinary and
unremarkable livestreams usually only had twenty or thirty viewers, but this time, because of this unexpected surprise, her audience had grown to more
than three hundred viewers in just a few minutes!
The viewer count was still increasing rapidly, and the scrolling
comment section filled instantly with remarks in real time:
"Shit, what happened—a nightmare in Huzhou?"
"Looks like a run-in with a crazy homeless man. Streamer! Are you
all right? Turn the camera, we want to see what's happening!"
"So thrilling! This is right next to my house!"
"That homeless old man's not a pervert, is he? He actually tried to
hug the streamer! Streamer, look! If it's serious, you need to call the police
immediately!"
Amid those comments rising like helium balloons, a rocket suddenly
flew up and exploded on the screen—somebody had sent her a 500 RMB
tip.
Bai Jing flinched. The shock of this explosion brought her back to her
senses. She suddenly realized what she should do. Hastily running her
fingers through her hair, she adjusted the camera angle, then rushed out
from behind Xie Qingcheng before he could react.
"Be careful!" yelled Xie Qingcheng.
He never could have imagined that the girl who had been so terrified
a second ago would now be standing with her pretty face upturned, heedless
of danger, next to the homeless old man. She'd even made sure to adjust her
pricey little purse beforehand so that it was hanging off her back, out of the
old man's reach.
"Let's get this straight," Bai Jing cried. "Your accent is from out of
town, so how could you possibly be my dad? Stinky old man, you're a
pervert who wanted to use this chance to take advantage of me! Do you
think I couldn't tell? Have some sense of dignity, okay?!"
Shocked, the old man retreated.
The situation was turned on its head. Xie Qingcheng realized that the
old man's intentions might not have been malicious at all. Upon closer
examination, the grief in the man's expression was too profound to be
feigned.
Xie Qingcheng couldn't help but frown. "Miss Bai, can you turn off
the livestream? This old gentleman doesn't look like he's in a very good
state. He might have mistaken you for someone else. Why don't you call
city management first? Let's take care of this."
But why would Bai Jing listen to him? The viewer count in her
stream was rising steadily; she didn't even find the old man stinky anymore.
She brought her powdered face even closer to him.
"Hey, come take a look—everyone, come take a look." Bai Jing had
the homeless man look at her phone screen. She positioned the selfie stick
so that the front-facing camera had them both in frame. "Old pervert, look
at me, then look at yourself. You think I'm your daughter? Take a good look
—look at your shabby clothes, your messy hair and filthy face. Can you still
say that you weren't trying to be a lecher?"
The homeless old man was stumped for a moment. His eyes then
followed the direction of her pointed finger, and he squinted as he looked
up along the selfie stick.
After getting a good look at the two of them on the phone screen, the
old man was taken aback at first. Then, as if suddenly realizing how utterly
pathetic he appeared, he tried to make a hasty escape.
Once he began to run, Bai Jing got even more excited.
Apparently, all that was needed to make a clean-freak streamer
overcome her phobia to film herself pressed up against an unkempt old man
was a surge in her follower count.
"Look, everyone! This is a perfect example of covert harassment! He
must be faking his psychological issues—watch me expose his true colors!"
Bai Jing chased after the old man to get him into the frame. "Hey! Get over
here!" she shouted. "Didn't you just call me your daughter? Huzhou is such
a big city with good public security, yet you still dare to scam people here?!
Have you gotten a whiff of yourself? You reek! Get over here!"
The old man's head seemed to have cleared a bit, but not entirely. His
gaze was half-muddled, half-lucid.
Watching from the sidelines, Xie Qingcheng was certain this old man
wasn't trying to take advantage of her. The man's mental state seemed very
poor. If Xie Qingcheng had to describe him, he would say that this old man was like a scrawny dog who had wandered across half of China before
finally drifting into the misty rains of Jiangnan. The concept of searching
had been carved into his bones—with just one glance, one could tell he had
lost something and had been looking for it all this time.
But Bai Jing didn't care about any of that. Although she had been a
streamer for over half a year, her performance was mediocre, and she hadn't
been able to attract many viewers. She was furiously envious of her
hardworking peers, who were able to make a living through livestreaming.
Not long ago, when she had failed to garner attention despite trying
everything she could think of, she had gone to the pages of a few wellknown influencers in a rage to flood their comment sections with hateful
remarks.
One day, she cursed one out, "Why are you putting on a show like
this?! Acting like you have some perfect life, as if everything doesn't just
run on money?! The rural lifestyle you're showing isn't real at all!"
The next day, she targeted another. "Here's a man using the money
that a woman earned with her blood, sweat, and tears to buy a luxurious
villa. Everyone's said it already—every tube of lipstick you buy was made
from the skeletons in his closet! When are the women still buying his things
going to wake up?!"
And the day after, she focused her wrath on yet another influencer. "I
can't believe you call yourself an independent, self-made modern woman.
You're just selling your trauma all day long. Isn't livestreaming your job?
You're tired, but you're still earning money. You get cussed out, but you're
still earning money. Everyone gives you so much money, what do you have
to complain about?"
No one knew about the vicious expression that would appear on her
face when she was tapping furiously away on her phone under her covers.
On the subways whizzing through tunnels, in the bustling skyscrapers, amid
the whirl of designer clothes and expensive perfume, bathed in the golden
dazzle of luxury, everyone called her Cindy, never Bai Jing. In her towering
high heels, she toiled at her job, bowing deferentially to her honored guests.
Bending at the waist, she always gave her all to maintain her
composure as she crouched down to buckle Mrs. Chen or Mrs. Li's shoes with slender, pale, jade-like hands, and then walked them out through the
spacious golden foyer with a respectful bow. No one knew how many times
she had stared after those graceful figures and thought, One day, I'll have
the proudest salesgirls welcome me with a bow too.
She wanted money and fame so badly her eyes reddened with hunger.
Thus, she forgot her fears and lost her germaphobic tendencies. She also
failed to see the old homeless man's trembling lips and the hot tears welling
up in his blurry eyes.
"Is your daughter from Huzhou? Your daughter?" she scoffed, her
words dripping with disdain. "Who knows if a stinky old man like you was
ever married. All you do is make up reasons to act crazy and harass women!
What are you hiding for? Weren't you acting all grabby with me just now?
Let everyone see your face! Come on!"
"No… No…"
Terrified, the old man shrank his head back and stooped over. The
cries coming out of his mouth sounded like the wails of an infant, mixed
with vague mumbling.
"I'm sorry… I…I got the wrong person…"
"You're sorry? What use is that?! Get over here! Look at the camera!
Take a look at what you're wearing! If you wanna come out and scam
people, you could at least make yourself look presentable first!"
In the comments filling the screen, audience members who didn't
understand the full situation were cheering on the "courageous female
streamer who was fighting back against street harassment from a crazed
homeless man." Tips began to flow and balloons began to rise, and Bai
Jing's heart felt like it was swelling up right alongside them.
The harried old man feebly shrunk away, plummeting from the
excitement of reuniting with his daughter only to realize that he was
mistaken. The throes of his delusion gave way to helplessness as he came to
his senses and tried to flee the escalating situation. Under the watchful
camera lens, he was like an old dog with nowhere to run. Dazed by the
relentless pursuit of this so-called justice, he held his head and cowered,
just like the stray dog that accompanied him.
"Please stop filming, I beg you… I got the wrong person… Stop
filming… Young Miss, please stop filming…"
The old man's entire body was trembling, his legs shaking like sifting
chaff underneath his tattered pants. He covered his face, wanting to shield it
from the camera, only to realize that he also wanted to cover his ratty
clothes. In the end, he didn't know what he should hide. It felt as though
every bit of flesh on his body, every article of clothing, was not fit to be
seen, an embarrassment not to be shown to others. A flood of tears rushed
down the creases of his wizened face. He shrank to the ground, practically
kneeling as he begged for Bai Jing's mercy.
"Please, Miss, spare me…"
"I—" Undeterred, Bai Jing was about to say something when
her selfie stick was suddenly snatched away.
Without the slightest courtesy, Xie Qingcheng removed her phone and
tossed her selfie stick to the side.
"Hey! You! What are you doing?!"
"What are you doing? I've already told you—this old man seems to
be mentally unwell, and I asked you not to trigger him. Can't you hear, or
are you too daft to understand?"
Xie Qingcheng cut off the stream.
A series of brilliant colors like a carousel lantern flashed through Bai
Jing's face. She stomped her high heels and raged at Xie Qingcheng.
"How's this any of your business? Give me back my phone! I have a right
to stream! Don't you know that I need to earn money? I want to be an
influencer!"
"Whatever you want has nothing to do with me." Xie Qingcheng's
expression was frosty. His paternalistic tendencies surfaced once more as he
scolded her without blinking an eye. "However, Miss Bai, do you have any
shame? Can't you see what state he's in? To get views, you'll keep on going
even though you know it's wrong; you choose unscrupulous methods even
when you know the consequences. Despite knowing full well the pain your
actions will bring to others, you have no qualms about exploiting it for
attention because you're not the one getting hurt. Have you no
conscience?!"
"What are you saying?! Stop trying to discipline me, are you my dad?
You're just someone who had a matchmaking date with me today! It's none
of your business!" Bai Jing's temper flared as she rushed up to Xie
Qingcheng to snatch her phone back.
But Xie Qingcheng's temper was fierier than hers. He pinned Bai Jing
in place and stared down at her, his eyes cutting into her like razor blades.
"To you, a person's dignity and life are worth less than the viewers
you can attract in a single livestream. You really are a fucking freak of
nature."
"You have the guts to call me names?" Bai Jing cried. "You wretched
beggar!"
Enraged, she pounced forward and tried to slap Xie Qingcheng.
But Xie Qingcheng grabbed her by the wrist. With a sudden burst of
force, he twisted her arm, making her shriek in pain.
"If you keep making a fuss," said Xie Qingcheng icily, "not only will
I have the guts to call you names, but I'll also have the guts to beat you up."
"L-let go! If you don't let go, I'll call the police! I'll scream for help!"
Although there weren't many people on this street, they had caused a
rather loud disturbance; some passersby had already stopped to observe
from afar. But Xie Qingcheng couldn't care less—to him, the gazes of
others were nothing more than empty air to begin with. However, he was
caught off guard by a sudden shout from a sharp-eyed older woman from
the crowd.
"Oh my god! What's wrong with that old man?"
Xie Qingcheng looked down at him immediately. The old man's
mental state was fragile in the first place. But after mistaking Bai Jing for
his daughter, and then being filmed and chased by her, his heart couldn't
handle the emotional distress anymore. His lips turned pale, and the blood
drained from his face. He clutched at his chest and doubled over, curling
like a shrimp before suddenly collapsing to the ground with a thud.