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On the other side, Yu Mao rushed out of the cafeteria and had only just reached the stairwell, ready to head back to the dorm, when a staff member came up and stopped her.

“Um, Miss Yu Mao…” The other person was in a bad mood and clearly wanted to accuse her and vent, but at least remembered they were live, so they kept it brief.

“Viewers are asking you to reveal your blog account; they want to follow you.”

He still couldn’t help muttering a small complaint: “You didn’t fill it in when you submitted your form.”

Yu Mao was still in that dazed state where her thoughts were only just beginning to work again. At that, she frowned slightly and tried to remember whether there was anything in her account that shouldn’t be made public. After a moment, she nodded.

“The name is Nine Lives Cat.”

She only had one blog account. Years ago, she had used it to watch and repost Nan Changgeng’s materials and songs; in the years when Nan Changgeng disappeared, she had posted a few stray thoughts, but even then her self-expression had been extremely limited.

As she remembered it, she had posted one blog entry before joining the program, but there was nothing shameful in it.

After saying that, she turned and went upstairs, completely ignoring the staff member left standing there, her bearing stiff and cold in a way that felt almost robotic.

Once she was out of range of the camera and microphone, the staff member rolled his eyes, spat on the ground, and left while suppressing his temper.

The moment the account was exposed, the viewers in the livestream room rushed to the blog and searched the nickname.

There were quite a few accounts with similar names. They scrolled all the way to the bottom before finally finding what seemed to be Yu Mao’s account in fifth place from the end—

There was a tiny tail emoji after the nickname; it had a total of three followers, two zombie accounts, and one beginner guide.

When they clicked in, the first blog post they saw was:

[Only one tail left.

I have to go see her and do the last thing.]

To the viewers, this post was as bizarre and eerie as Yu Mao herself, full of strange, cryptic rambling.

[What is she talking about? What tail, what last thing… why do I have a bad feeling about this?]

[It sounds like a last will and testament. Is it really okay to say that…]

[I think so too. Legend has it the nine-tailed cat has nine lives, and one tail left means one life left, right? As for who “she” is, that seems obvious enough, so does this mean she wants to see Nan Changgeng before she dies, then do one last thing?]

[I looked back, and this post was made on the day applications for the show opened, so whatever she wants to do is probably going to happen on the program. I’m so curious.]

[Compared with that, I’m more curious where the first eight lives went…]

[Aren’t you all taking this too seriously? I think it’s just the fantasies of a mentally ill person. How can one person have nine lives?]

[No, I’m starting to feel a little uneasy. Nothing bad is going to happen, right? What is she going to do to Nan Changgeng?]

People chatted while scrolling through the blog. Some were impatient with dwelling on that one post and quickly slid down to look further, only to find that there was a gap of almost half a year between the latest post and the one after it.

The content was: [It hurts.]

Just those two words, with no beginning and no end.

Going further back, every half year or every few months she would post a very short blog entry with an unclear meaning.

For example, records like how many tails were left, plus more than a dozen repeated lines such as “I want to see her,” “I can’t go on like this anymore, I’ve lost so many tails, just having a voice isn’t enough,” “What kind of punishment will peeping bring,” and “I have to hide well.”

If you said it was normal, it was normal enough; the internet was full of cryptic types, and this kind of expression was far from unusual.

But when paired with Yu Mao’s image, and then imagined as coming from her mouth, the atmosphere immediately turned unsettling.

It was only when they reached eight years ago that those stray fragments basically disappeared. The blog became mostly reposts and uploads of various early Nan Changgeng videos, with captions listing the filming time, as if she were archiving them through the account.

Eight years ago was exactly when Nan Changgeng had vanished from the industry without a word.

At the time, her career was at its peak; in terms of traffic, buzz, and professional ability, she was top-tier in the field. To disappear so suddenly caused quite a stir, and there were even rumors that she had died.

It wasn’t until later, when she quietly released a few new songs, that although they no longer stirred much excitement, they dispelled the rumors on their own.

Under the blow of that grief followed by joy, many fans had turned from fans into haters, resentful that Nan Changgeng had clearly been fine but hadn’t come out sooner to clarify the rumors, leaving them to suffer for nothing and toyed with by her.

[So Yu Mao was actually an old fan from the beginning? Her earliest blog post is from fourteen years ago. How old was she then? Eight?]

[She had a phone that early? Didn’t her family situation suck? Would her parents buy her a phone?]

[I checked the model suffix on the early blog posts; it’s the model of a kids’ smartwatch. Makes sense…]

[My God, an eight-year-old was already using a blog to chase idols? She probably couldn’t even read all the characters yet.]

[Wait, Nan Changgeng hadn’t debuted fourteen years ago! She had no real fame at all. The videos of her performing in the band were only dug up by fans after she got famous later, and this was right when she had left the band to study more. It doesn’t even make sense to call her a fan from the band days. What’s going on with Yu Mao?]

[I think Yu Mao must have known Nan Changgeng through some other channel; it was probably in real life rather than online.]

[I can already imagine a whole C-drama-style wlw novel where the heroine meets a beautiful older sister when she’s little, falls in love at first sight, clings to her and says she’ll marry her when she grows up, then chases after her for more than ten years only to grow up and find that the older sister has long forgotten her…]

[Help… there’s really a vibe like that, and it’s seriously tragic too. Not only does the older sister not remember her, she even seems a little put off by her. Nan Changgeng is obviously avoiding Yu Mao. Yu Mao clearly did well at the initial stage, but during the picking round she deliberately passed her over.]

[Yeah… I didn’t dare say it before, but even if there were other considerations, she should have explained, right? Skipping her like that directly feels way too deliberate, but I don’t know the inside story, so I won’t say more. I’ll pity Yu Mao first. Having a whole heart full of love and getting no response is bad enough, and then being rejected too; that would really hurt.]

The deeper they dug into the account, the more puzzled the viewers became, and the more curious they were about the story between the two of them in the past.

Countless marketing accounts swarmed in at the scent of blood. Based on the clues Yu Mao had revealed, they sorted them out and added all kinds of speculation, then released a series of short videos with a strong suspense flavor; the buzz was not low.

And all of this, of course, was entirely unknown to Yu Mao at the moment.

She had already returned to her dorm, taken out a can of infant milk powder from her bag, and made herself a cup of extremely thick milk. The water was only lukewarm, several lumps of powder had not dissolved, and she drank it all down in a few big gulps.

Though milk was indeed something you could eat or drink, it didn’t look like she particularly enjoyed it.

Yu Mao knew that exposing this kind of eating habit in front of the camera would make her seem even stranger, but that wasn’t something she needed to worry about.

She was the only contestant who, when alone, never spoke to the camera by herself, silent as a plant that had only just turned into a human.

After quietly washing the cup and setting it back on the table, a figure darted past outside the dorm.

“Hey, kitty, I brought over the fruit you didn’t finish!”

Yirui An rushed in, bright and lively, and, like she was presenting a treasure, set the plate on the cabinet beside Yu Mao’s bed.

The sudden noise made Yu Mao stiffen briefly in surprise. She maintained the posture of leaning slightly forward to set down the cup, paused for two seconds, then straightened up and sat back down on her bed as usual.

She gave a small nod and said thanks, but did not look at Yirui An even once.

Like a doll that had been set down somewhere, gazing out toward the increasingly faint dusk light outside the window, holding a fixed posture and no longer moving.

Yirui An stared straight at her. Far from getting annoyed, her eyes lit up with delight.

She stepped over and blocked Yu Mao’s view outward, then crouched down to inspect the girl’s face carefully, face-to-face.

That look was strange. It didn’t seem like she was observing a real living person; hidden within her fondness were shock, and a subtle obsession and possessiveness.

Her gaze swept over Yu Mao’s indifferent, hollow brows and eyes, then slid down to her lips, scrutinizing her whole face.

The girl’s features were small and delicate enough, and the only makeup on her face was the lipstick on her lips, yet even so she still lacked a trace of color, her skin carrying a dim, pallid whiteness.

Like a little ghost doll.

Yu Mao gave no reaction to Yirui An blocking her view. Not even her expression changed in the slightest; she seemed to have sunk into stillness.

Yirui An’s expression grew even stranger, a thread of barely restrained fervor showing in her eyes. She lifted a hand and actually tried to touch Yu Mao’s eyeball.

Yu Mao leaned back and avoided the hand.

She blinked lightly; as her lashes trembled, her eyes closed and opened again, revealing black pupils once more.

Her warning was soft and flat: “Please keep a safe distance from me, and don’t touch me.”

Yirui An froze for a moment. Staring at the almost inorganic emptiness in her eyes, she suddenly burst out laughing, excitement and agitation mingling together.

“Hahahahaha, okay, okay, I won’t touch you, I won’t touch you.”

She raised her hands and backed up, leaving about a meter of space between them. Her freckled face was lit with a dazzling smile. “Sorry, I just really, really like you.”

Yu Mao really was…

too perfectly suited to her fantasies.

At that, a trace of liveliness finally gathered in Yu Mao’s eyes. She looked directly into Yirui An’s eyes; after one second, she calmly withdrew her gaze and gave no response.

Yirui An still had no intention of leaving. She looked at her with an appreciative expression and asked her many questions as if they were chatting casually.

Including, but not limited to: what color she liked, what hobbies she had, whether there were any other celebrities she liked besides Nan Changgeng, why she only ate milk and fruit, whether it affected her health, whether she liked small animals, where the name Yu Mao came from, what happened after her mother died, and so on.

There were so many questions that they became a bit noisy, and some of them were obviously overstepping and rude.

But Yu Mao responded to every question thrown at her, answering each one seriously.

Favorite color — “Gray-blue, white.”

Hobbies — “Listening to music.”

Other celebrities she liked besides Nan Changgeng — “None.”

Reason for being picky about food — “I forgot.”

Effect on her health — “It doesn’t matter.”

Whether she liked small animals — “Yes.”

Origin of the name — “My mother raised a cat. She said I was the extra one.”

After her mother died — “I was sent to a welfare home to live. Where did my father go? I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

Yu Mao’s answers were extremely concise; sometimes they were almost the same as not answering at all, and sometimes the amount of information was astonishing.

Yirui An’s questioning lacked a certain sense of boundaries, but it did indeed help everyone understand Yu Mao more.