According to Wen Jiang’s recollection, he had been playing Candy Crush on Qian Lang’s phone, reaching level 1135, when he heard a faint splash of something hitting the water.
He set the phone down at the time, his first thought that Qian Lang, heartbroken beyond measure, had chosen to jump into the sea with his phone in tow. But he quickly spotted Qian Lang still very much alive within his field of vision.
The supposed star of the yacht’s farewell party, who should have been the center of attention, was instead sprawled in a dingy corner by the railing. He presented Wen Jiang with only a desolate back view, and not far from his feet lay a tumbled wine bottle. Preliminary judgment: he’d gotten drunk, tripped over the bottle, and in his overwhelming sorrow, simply decided to stay down on the deck.
As Qian Lang’s best friend, Wen Jiang hauled the drunken puddle of a man up, slung him over his shoulder, and dragged him back to his room. Along the way, he endured three struggles, two bouts of clawing, one tear-soaked sob against his clothes, one round of groping, and countless incoherent howls. It was practically a “subduing” maneuver to get Qian Lang pinned to the bed—Wen Jiang had even seriously considered knocking him out with a chop to the back of the head because of the chaos.
Thinking back on it, Wen Jiang pulled out the shirt he’d worn the day before and pointed to a long tear in it. “You ripped it open directly from both sides with your hands. I can confirm you weren’t holding your phone at the time.”
Qian Lang’s voice trembled slightly. “Why would I rip your shirt?”
Wen Jiang replied offhandedly, “You said you were in so much pain you’d rather explode and die. I figured you mixed that up with clothes bursting or mistook me for the detonation button—because after tearing open my collar, you were still demanding to know why a person couldn’t just die like that.”
Ignoring Qian Lang’s utterly defeated expression, Wen Jiang pushed forward a second piece of evidence: a clean, ironed set of clothes. “You were rolling around on the deck last night, so I stripped off everything you were wearing and handed it to the staff. When they delivered these this morning, I checked—your pockets didn’t have a phone either.”
“No way,” Qian Lang wiped his face, his tone laced with disbelief. “I’m the party host, at least. Not one person checked on me?”
“You said you wanted to be alone, and most people were playing Truth or Dare anyway.”
Qian Lang fell silent. His drunken heartbreak binge last night wasn’t exactly something to brag about. Truth or Dare itself wasn’t the point—Xie Qi had been playing too, and Xie Qi was the real crowd magnet. With Xie Qi in the game, Qian Lang’s shining star status was reduced to gathering dust on the sidelines.
With a long sigh, Qian Lang said emotionally, “Bro, you’re the most reliable one. Otherwise, I’d have slept on the deck all night.”
No wonder his five or six years of friendship with Xie Qi had been overtaken by Wen Jiang, whom he’d only met in high school. In key moments, Wen Jiang always came through.
“If you remember right, I didn’t join because I didn’t draw the short straw—not because I wanted to look after you,” Wen Jiang admitted candidly, without a hint of regret in his tone. “This might just be retribution for my impure intentions.”
Qian Lang: …
“From the security footage I pulled, nothing fell out of your pockets the whole way back,” Wen Jiang steered the conversation back, delivering his final conclusion. “You probably weren’t drunk enough to type into thin air, so you must’ve dropped my phone into the sea when you fell last night.”
“…Holy shit,” Qian Lang raked his hair, flopping back onto the sofa only to clutch his head as a splitting pain hit. His whole face scrunched up. “Hiss—look, I’m heading out soon. I’ll buy you a new one. We good? Call it even?”
Qian Lang figured it casually—he didn’t want any bad blood with his friend before leaving the country. As someone who could charter a yacht for a party, replacing a phone—or ten—was no big deal. Wen Jiang’s family was comfortably middle-upper class; not filthy rich, but at the lower end of Qian Lang’s circle. He wouldn’t sweat losing a phone, and he seemed emotionally stable now.
The emotionally stable Wen Jiang replied, “That might not work.”
“No way?” Qian Lang bolted upright on the sofa, only to crash back down from the vertigo and ache of his hangover. He took a moment to recover before managing, “What’s so precious in your phone?”
“Nothing, really.” Wen Jiang answered straightforwardly. He’d combed through his memories that morning—no irreplaceable data, losses within tolerance. A missing phone wasn’t a huge deal.
He crossed his fingers over his knee, interrogating Qian Lang like a suspect. “How much do you remember from last night?”
Seeing Qian Lang’s blank stare, Wen Jiang rephrased. “How did you confirm yesterday that the person you were messaging was Huo Xia Tong?”
Huo Xia Tong was Qian Lang’s ex-girlfriend. They’d broken up just the day before yesterday over his move abroad—fairly amicably. They’d teared up, blocked each other for resolve, like a pair of star-crossed lovers torn by the world.
But a day later, Qian Lang couldn’t hold it in anymore. At the party, he’d drowned his sorrows until he was a mess, then in the early hours, grabbed Wen Jiang’s phone to beg Huo Xia Tong for reconciliation. Tearful, unhinged messages—his brain’s self-preservation had wiped the embarrassing details, but he remembered messaging his girlfriend clearly. “I picked the red profile pic. Tongtong… Huo Xia Tong’s is red, right?”
Huo Xia Tong’s avatar was technically a cartoon princess with fiery red hair, autumn maple leaves and hearts in the background—strikingly red at a glance. Wen Jiang’s eyes held understanding. “My friends list has more than one red avatar.”
“Duh, mine’s red too.” Qian Lang stated the obvious. They’d had couple avatars—hers a red-haired princess, his a red-haired prince. They’d broken up, sure, but he wasn’t over it yet; hadn’t changed his pic.
He’d considered switching before boarding the yacht, but saw she hadn’t, so he let it slide. Drunk and lovesick, fueled by desperate courage, he’d snatched Wen Jiang’s phone and poured his heart out via Wen Jiang’s account to win back his love.
Of course, that was Qian Lang’s internal memory. Wen Jiang watched him silently, his ink-dark eyes making the once-confident Qian Lang squirm.
He was like Doraemon, but every gadget he pulled failed to reassure Nobita Qian Lang. Wen Jiang handed over the third item—Qian Lang’s detection wristband. It clearly displayed the Supernatural Ability name and activation time: the familiar B-rank Absolute Trust paired with C-rank Amplification, making Qian Lang’s vision go black.
As the name implied, Absolute Trust used text or speech as a medium to greatly enhance others’ trust in what they saw or heard. Though B-rank itself, boosted by C-rank Amplification, it could affect even A-rank ability users.
Qian Lang, holder of Dual Supernatural Abilities, often suffered ability instability—especially drunk, prone to unconscious activation. Not intentional, but from an outsider’s view, in a moment of sincere confession to win back his ex, he’d “played dirty,” using his power to manipulate trust. Total screw-up.
Was this romance doomed? They’d talked openly; reality dictated the amicable split. No more clinging post-breakup—maybe closure was best. Reason returned, leaving Qian Lang’s heart a tumult, like a tragic youth novel protagonist on the cusp of growth through love. But Wen Jiang ignored the emotional rollercoaster.
He glanced at the moping Qian Lang and leisurely drew the final evidence from his pocket—Qian Lang’s actual phone, which Wen Jiang had held all night. “I was playing Candy Crush on your phone yesterday and didn’t notice your messages.
“This morning, since you were still out, I used your phone to call your family and saw my account had sent you two messages last night.”
He opened the chat app. “Wen Jiang” had messaged “Qian Lang” twice. First: “Tongtong!” at 9:50 PM. Three minutes later: “I have something to tell you.” Nothing after.
9:50 PM was definitely Qian Lang using Wen Jiang’s phone—but he’d meant Huo Xia Tong. How’d it end up on his own account? And just two messages? Where were the love confessions and cherished memories?
“I’d seen Huo Xia Tong’s gaming account before, when she was boosting your rank, so I logged into mine and contacted her about this—” Amid Qian Lang’s shocked, mortified expression, Wen Jiang continued flatly, “—She said you didn’t say a word to her last night.”
“Wait… what? Holy shit?” Qian Lang’s face flushed and paled as he processed. “Fuck! You mean I was messaging someone else all night yesterday?!”
Wen Jiang looked at him expressionlessly and corrected, “Possibly not just one person.”
“Huh?”
“You mistook your own avatar for Huo Xia Tong’s, but only sent two messages.” Wen Jiang paused, shifting gears. “Suppose it’s late at night, you can’t see clearly, and there are three unclaimed keys in front of you—but only one is yours. You’re in a rush to get home and have to grab one now. What do you do?”
“Grab all three, duh.” Qian Lang blurted, then froze.
“That’s what I figured you’d do.” Wen Jiang nodded, leaning back into the sofa to stare at the ceiling. “So I reasonably suspect you messaged more than one.
“In the worst case, you went through everyone in my list with a red avatar—and used your Supernatural Ability on them.”
