Mark sounded so serious that Ming Ying’s heart skipped a beat.
He lowered his head and swiped open his phone screen.
[: New platform mega giveaway! Click the link to claim your $888 benefit package—]
Oh, the junk mail had followed him abroad.
Mark leaned in to look. “Is it that hot girl?”
Ming Ying laughed and put his phone away, signaling for Mark to keep driving. “Mark, thanks for the warning. But please keep your eyes on the road. We’re in the same car, so we really are sworn brothers in life and death right now.”
Mark grinned. “I like that joke. If you take my advice, I’ll like it even more.”
The truth was, no straight man—especially a pure, romance-inexperienced straight man—could ever listen to this kind of warning.
On the drive from Queens to Brooklyn, Ming Ying checked his phone no fewer than five times.
No new conversations had been started.
Alright, maybe he was just flattering himself.
He put the phone away and started chatting with Mark.
Mark was an undergraduate at N University, already three years in. The way Ming Ying ended up knowing him was, frankly, as bizarre as it was magical——
Two months ago, Ming Ying had just finished his bachelor’s degree and was spending his vacation in Shanghai picking up some tuition money as a tour guide. Because he spoke English, he exclusively handled groups of foreign tourists, and it just so happened that Mark had signed up for a trip to China with his group.
They hit it off right away. As they talked, they discovered they would be future schoolmates, and instantly bonded like old friends.
The whole room-sharing arrangement had been settled back then, too.
N University’s main campus was in Manhattan, and undergraduate dorms there generally weren’t offered to graduate students. Mark happened to be looking to rent off-campus, so they decided immediately.
The place Mark chose was perfect—a simple two-bedroom. When Ming Ying pushed open the door, the first thing he saw was a vivid poster of some British football team hanging in the living room.
Ming Ying raised an eyebrow. Mark noticed and smiled. “I hope you’re not a fan of my mortal enemy.”
Ming Ying laughed self-deprecatingly. “You know I’m Chinese. I really don’t have much right to an opinion on football.”
Mark made a disappointed face.
Well, the reason Ming Ying said that was because he actually was a fan of Mark’s mortal enemy.
He didn’t mind one way or the other, but considering how fanatical the English were about football, he figured it was better to keep quiet.
On his first day after landing, Ming Ying couldn’t sleep because of the time difference. His brain was running on delayed excitement, so he unpacked his luggage, then stuffed all the food and drinks he’d brought into the living room fridge.
By the time drowsiness finally hit, the sky outside was already bright.
Yawning, Ming Ying went back to his room. Before going to sleep, he first opened his laptop and sent an email to his advisor, Professor Thomas. Then he picked up his phone.
WhatsApp was quiet.
Ming Ying leaned back in his swivel chair and suddenly thought, Maybe she added me on a different platform?
Like WeChat, or Telegram.
So he checked all his other apps. Still nothing.
Ming Ying wasn’t exactly disappointed—after all, his original intention had only been to make one more friend.
Instead of logging out of WeChat, he snapped a bunch of photos of his room and sent them to Ms. Chen Qinqin and Comrade Ming Jianguo. Then he tossed the phone aside, collapsed onto the bed, and because he was utterly exhausted, fell asleep in less than a minute.
Ming Ying slept deeply, but not all that comfortably.
He had a bad habit of not sleeping well in strange beds; the only reason he could sleep at all was pure exhaustion.
After a string of chaotic dreams, Ming Ying woke up.
He fished the alarm clock over and glanced at it. Oh, he’d slept about six hours.
His head ached a little.
Ming Ying burrowed under the blanket for another ten minutes before finally sitting up. And even after sitting up, he didn’t fully wake, just sat there.
Only when his eyes gradually focused and his mind slowly returned did he rub his head, throw off the covers, and get up.
It was already afternoon in New York, and a light rain was still falling outside.
Ming Ying carried his phone into the living room. Mark wasn’t there. He poured himself a glass of milk and pressed the phone on.
There were a ton of messages, so many that he couldn’t scroll to the bottom. Messages from his parents, messages from friends, plus several student and alumni WeChat groups he’d joined—the notifications were practically flooding the screen.
Ming Ying tapped to look. The alumni groups were mostly sharing recommendations for bars near campus.
He scrolled through, broadening his horizons for a while, then casually switched to WhatsApp. The first thing he saw was a message from Mark.
Mark: Ming, I’m heading to the bar. Saw you were dead asleep and didn’t wake you. If you get up, let me know, I’ll take you to have fun!
Ming Ying thought, Bro, I’d love to have fun too, but I need money.
He shook his head and replied with a thanks, but said his head was hurting so he’d pass.
Just as he was about to exit, his fingertip suddenly froze.
Because a new, unknown conversation had started on the screen.
XI: Hello
Ming Ying paused. Very few people knew his phone number. Most Chinese people only added each other on WeChat. Anyone who added him on WhatsApp would be a foreigner.
But the name was strange—it looked sort of like Chinese.
Chinese. A spark flashed in Ming Ying’s mind.
Could it be… that girl!
Ming Ying set down his milk, sat up straight on the sofa, and scrolled through this unfamiliar account.
Aside from the name looking vaguely Chinese, the profile picture was also odd.
Square, with a door and a door number. It looked like a campus scenery shot.
Most foreigners used their own photos as avatars. This person clearly wasn’t a typical foreigner.
Ming Ying thought back to the girl at the airport. She hadn’t seemed like this style at all.
So he hesitated and tentatively sent a message.
Mingo: Hello, who r you [smile]?
The instant the message went out, Ming Ying suddenly felt a little nervous.
But the nervousness vanished quickly. Because after a minute passed, only one of the blue checkmarks lit up.
That meant the message had been sent successfully, but the other person hadn’t seen it at all.
Just then, an email notification popped up in his message bar. It was from his German advisor, Professor Thomas.
Ming Ying went back to his room, opened Outlook, and read the email.
The email was long, its content completely at odds with the stereotypical German personality. The whole thing was a very sincere expression of thanks for Ming Ying choosing him as an advisor…
Ming Ying read it for a long time. The only piece of actual useful information was a line about introducing him to some senior students.
He scratched his head, a little baffled, but still replied very seriously. He had to write a reply at least longer than the professor’s, right!
After finishing that long email, Ming Ying had completely forgotten about the person who had added him on WhatsApp.
So when he picked up his phone again and saw that two small blue checkmarks had appeared at the end of his sent message, Ming Ying froze.
But after that brief pause, he realized—
The other person had read it!
Ming Ying shot up from his chair.
……
When the message from an unknown account came in, Silas was speaking at a symposium in Melbourne.
The man was leaning on the lectern with both hands, smoothly taking questions from reporters below. His remarks drew waves of laughter from the audience; the atmosphere was excellent.
Just then, the phone at the upper left of the podium suddenly vibrated with a “buzz.”
Silas, still smiling as he answered a question, glanced down at the screen. It showed someone had sent him a message.
He paused slightly.
This brief pause was noticed by the reporter who had asked the question, who pressed, “May we know what’s more interesting to you than ‘capital flows,’ Mr. Aston?”
Hearing this, Silas straightened up and casually picked up his phone with a smile. “I’d like to know too.”
This was his personal phone. Fewer than a handful of people had this number.
And clearly, none of those people would casually message him.
“Excuse me.”
The man raised a hand to indicate he’d check the message.
Immediately after, everyone under the spotlights saw this young and handsome Mr. Aston slightly raise an eyebrow.
“Wow, looks like an interesting message,” the reporter joked.
Silas put down his phone and smiled. “I think I’m still more interested in capital flows. Let’s continue.”
A round of laughter followed.
After the symposium ended, Silas said goodbye to several professors. He walked from the conference hall to the restaurant, then stopped at the top of the stairs and looked at his niece, who was eating. “Cherry, come here.”
Cherry shuddered. She knew her prank had been discovered. Feeling extremely guilty, she shuffled over, the little dress she was wearing seeming to dim in color.
Silas looked at his troublesome niece, pointed at the phone, and said with no expression, “Explain.”
On the phone screen was exactly the message from the account named Mingo.
Mingo: Hello, who r you [smile]?
This was a message that, in both content and sender, was so out of place it shouldn’t have appeared on Silas’s private phone.
But after glancing at it, Cherry said fearlessly, “Oh, this! It’s your cute boy!”
Silas frowned.
Cherry spoke with absolute certainty. “Don’t you remember? You stared at his back at the airport for a full ten seconds!”
She had never seen Silas stare at anyone for so long outside of scolding someone.
Silas then remembered. It was that Chinese boy who had secretly taken his picture at the airport.
Cherry: “So? You remember now!”
The man narrowed his eyes but didn’t scold her. He simply pocketed his phone, turned around, and said, “I’ll contact your father.”
Cherry let out a cry and shouted after his back, “Hey, don’t delete him!”
“He’s an N University student, you know!”
“He’s so poor and miserable!”
“And he said you’re very handsome~”
Silas finally stopped walking.
The man turned his face to look at her. “Cherry, you can be on a flight back to New York tonight.”
“……”
Whether he believed her nonsense or not, the girl didn’t dare protest any further.
At the same time, in Brooklyn, New York,
Ming Ying sneezed.
It had been almost an hour, and his phone was as still as stone.
He rubbed his head with a frown and decided to find something else to do.
Constantly fixating on that read-but-unreplied message wasn’t going to help.
He opened his laptop, browsed the school forums, and added a few more senior students from his major. To his surprise, he discovered that among his fellow Thomas students in his year group, there was actually an Asian face.
Ming Ying clicked on the avatar of a guy named Alan in the forum and took a look. He had a gut feeling this person was ethnically Chinese.
So he reached out and sent a greeting.
The reply came back in English, asking him to add Alan’s WhatsApp.
Ming Ying felt a little odd about it, but after leaving the chat and checking the guy’s daily-life posts, he understood. Yep, definitely a Chinese person, but the kind who had grown up overseas.
Alright then.
Ming Ying added Alan as a friend. He instinctively wanted to type in Chinese, but immediately remembered the guy might not even know Chinese. So he chose the friendly [Puppy Peeking Sticker] to send.
Mingo: [Puppy Peeking Sticker]
Unfortunately, he exited the chat right after sending it, completely failing to notice that he had sent it to the wrong person.
Ding-dong—
Just then, the doorbell suddenly rang.
