Liu Sizhen didn’t like messy rooms. The first thing he did when he arrived at the small attic that afternoon was clean up. He rolled up his sleeves, pulled up the collar of his shirt to cover his nose and mouth, and used it as a makeshift mask.

He tried to find a pair of gloves but couldn’t find any.

Additionally, the kettle was broken, so he had to use cold water. The winter water was slightly numbing, and since the attic wasn’t very convenient to move around in, he had to carry water back and forth. Once, he almost slipped and fell because he didn’t step carefully.

Liu Sizhen didn’t like messy rooms. The first thing he did when he arrived at the small attic that afternoon was clean up. He rolled up his sleeves, pulled up the collar of his shirt to cover his nose and mouth, and used it as a makeshift mask.

He tried to find a pair of gloves but couldn’t find any.

Moreover, the kettle was broken, so he had to use cold water. The winter water felt sharp and numbing, and because the attic was hard to navigate, he had to make multiple trips to fetch water. One time, he almost slipped because he lost his footing.

The cheap cleaning agent didn’t feel much when it first touched his skin, but after a while, he started feeling a burning sensation in his hands. However, Liu Sizhen was busy cleaning up the long-standing grime and didn’t pay much attention to his hands.

Cleaning the trash and tidying up didn’t seem too tiring, but after bending over countless times and doing various small tasks, running up and down the stairs, Liu Sizhen found himself sweating and feeling exhausted, despite it being the end of December.

By the time he finished tidying up, he felt a faint redness and swelling in the areas of his hands that had been wet. However, the pain in his hands was secondary. What hurt more were his wrists and back.

After living as a rich young master for the past half year and rarely doing chores, his body had grown lazy, and the sudden shift was hard to adjust to. He felt tired after only a short while, his waist and back aching.

His activities caught the attention of the landlady downstairs. She probably heard the noise earlier but was busy with her store. She came to check when Liu Sizhen was almost done.

The landlady was of unclear nationality, probably someone who had married from abroad. She appeared to be in her thirties or forties, with dark skin. She looked up and asked in heavily accented English what Liu Sizhen was doing.

Liu Sizhen smiled and answered in fluent English that he was cleaning the room.

Her reaction was even more surprised than when she first saw him cleaning. Liu Sizhen barely understood her words but managed to catch that she was surprised he was smiling.

From her long explanation, he gathered that before he came, this shell of a person had been quiet and didn’t interact with anyone. One particular line was clear: she said he looked like he had lost his soul before.

She said she was happy to see that he was doing better now, and she even lent him some cleaning tools.

He quickly cleaned up the attic, which was now much more spacious, thanks to the slanted roof design. He also cleaned the small, rusty window at the far end and opened it a little to let in some air.

By then, it was dark outside. The area where Liu Sizhen rented seemed to be a poor neighborhood, as there were piles of trash around the corner when he went downstairs.

The street was littered with garbage, and he dragged his exhausted body to a 24-hour convenience store to buy some instant food. He had originally planned to eat at the restaurant next to the convenience store, but when he reached his pocket, he realized his paycheck hadn’t been paid yet.

As he handed the cashier money, Liu Sizhen noticed his hands were trembling slightly without his control.

He felt embarrassed, slowly handing over the coins while avoiding the cashier’s gaze, quickly leaving with a bag of bread.

The shaking hands were from muscle strain caused by overexertion.

When he stepped out of the store, he looked up at the dark sky.

Not far away was a neon-lit street, and even from a distance, he could hear the sounds of laughter and chatter. The dim pink lights and the scantily clad women in transparent storefront windows immediately told him it was likely a red-light district.

No wonder the men on the street had looked at him with that kind of gaze. The cheap rent in this area now made sense. No one would want to live in such a neighborhood.

Liu Sizhen tightened his thin autumn jacket, sniffled from his stuffy nose, and silently hoped he wouldn’t catch a cold. He had heard that medicine was expensive here, and he didn’t have much money left.

It was the first time in his life that he was worried about money.

As Liu Sizhen was about to leave, a tall, middle-aged man with curly hair walked toward him. His Asian features stood out in the predominantly blonde street, and the man seemed unsteady, likely drunk.

Though his speech was unclear due to his fast pace, Liu Sizhen could tell from his tone, gestures, and broken words that he was asking how much money Liu Sizhen had.

Liu Sizhen pretended not to hear and quickly walked away. His memory was good, and he remembered people he had passed by once or twice. His attitude clearly rejected the man, and behind him, the man seemed angry, yelling a few things.

It was likely a few racial slurs.

[How miserable… I’m worse off than the male lead right now.]

The message arrived right on time in the middle of the night.

It was a mass invitation sent to his email, an account he hadn’t logged into in a long time. Liu Sizhen even calculated the time difference and figured out that the message was likely sent during the daytime in China, so it wasn’t intentionally sent so late.

Apart from the invitation, when he first logged into his inbox, the sheer number of emails nearly froze the page. The screen was filled with dense red notification dots, and scrolling down revealed an endless stream of emails.

Most of those emails came from the same account.

Each one began with a question:

—Where are you? Will you come back for the New Year?

—Can you tell me your address? I promise I won’t bother you.

There were a few other messages, and Liu Sizhen opened and glanced through them.

—Do you really hate me that much?

—Please reply, okay? Did you block me?

—Please reply.

—Don’t ignore me.

—Liu Sizhen! Where are you?

Without exception, all of these messages were from the male lead, Lin Bosheng.

He had sent many, many emails. The inbox was full of unread red dot notifications, almost all of which were from his account. Occasionally, there were some junk advertisements, but by far the most numerous were the messages from the male lead’s account.

For eight years straight, he had never missed a single day, showing remarkable perseverance. Liu Sizhen didn’t even know how he managed to write so much, but just reading it made his head spin.

He kept up with sending an email every day, sometimes even multiple times a day, persistently asking about his recent situation, his life…

And every year, on Liu Sizhen’s birthday, he would send birthday wishes exactly at midnight… Sometimes they would be a few seconds late, but he would always explain why, usually because of work or something similar.

Liu Sizhen slowly continued going through the emails. He had spent most of the day cleaning his room, sweating profusely, and taking a cold shower. He felt a bit lightheaded, dizzy, as if the words on the screen were jumping around.

The earliest emails were simply asking about Liu Sizhen’s whereabouts. At that time, Lin Bosheng had probably just learned that he was abroad, and there were also some greetings from other accounts, with normal, everyday questions one would expect from old classmates.

But after receiving no replies, Lin Bosheng became a bit anxious, and the tone of the emails started to shift, growing increasingly strange and absurd. One of them made Liu Sizhen furrow his brows the more he read.

—Liu Sizhen, what do you mean by this? Can you just tell me? You know how I feel about you, you must know, right? So why are you avoiding me?

What feelings? What avoiding him?

—You’re not coming to the class reunion? All your old friends are here, they all want to know how you’ve been.

—They said you haven’t contacted them. Is that true? I thought you just didn’t want to talk to me. Where are you? How are you? I’m really worried about you. Please reply.

—Where are you? Where are you, exactly!

—Don’t scare me, okay?

—Liu Sizhen, you’d better not let me find you!

From the timing of the emails, it seemed that the classmates from Class 11 had graduated from high school and were holding a reunion, but Liu Sizhen hadn’t attended. From this point on, the emails started to lose their urgency, as though Lin Bosheng had accepted the fact that Liu Sizhen wouldn’t reply.

He began using the email as a diary of sorts, sending daily updates about his life: where he was, what he was doing, what had happened that day, who he had met.

Lin Bosheng had entered university and worked hard from his freshman year, participating in various competitions to earn money. From the timestamps of the emails, it was clear that he often stayed up late or even pulled all-nighters preparing for these competitions.

While other classmates were having fun, he was already working on several projects with his professors, trying to gain experience and earn funding. He worked so hard to make money…

In the emails, he wrote that he hoped someday when he wanted to buy Liu Sizhen a gift, he wouldn’t have to worry about the price. He wanted to give him the best…

But throughout all this, Liu Sizhen had never replied to a single message.

However, Lin Bosheng’s emails never stopped.

It was as if he had developed a habit of sending Liu Sizhen a daily report.

Not a single message said he missed him, yet every word reeked of longing.

Until three months ago, when Liu Sizhen’s family had the incident.

—Please reply.

—Liu Sizhen, I’m begging you.

In the tiny attic with the lights off, only the faint glow of the computer screen illuminated Liu Sizhen’s face. It was an old antique computer from who knows how many years ago, left behind by the landlord because they couldn’t be bothered to move it, gathering dust.

He hadn’t expected it to still work…

The main reason it was still usable was that Liu Sizhen’s phone had been shut off due to unpaid bills.

It was slow and sluggish, like an elderly grandfather, and there was no way to play games on it. The best it could do was browse the web, but even that was slow, especially since there were so many emails. It was almost impossible to go through them without some lag.

While nibbling on some dry bread, Liu Sizhen was reading through the male lead’s experiences over the years. Honestly, it was quite an interesting read. Lin Bosheng had a kind of toughness about him, a rare and admirable quality that Liu Sizhen had always appreciated and envied.

As he continued reading, suddenly, a new email popped up on the screen.

—Found you.