White Night Walker: Aren’t you still in class right now?
White Night Walker: Won’t you get in trouble for secretly using your phone to chat with me?
Yi: No, I won’t.
Yi: Just thinking that you might be talking to someone else behind my back makes me restless.
Yi: And I have so much more I want to say to you….
Yi: I miss you so much.
Yi: Drinking coffee on an empty stomach will make it hurt, so you have to be careful, okay.
Yi: I was just thinking, you must be so lonely at home by yourself. If only I could be there with you.
Yi: Or maybe, do you think that since I’m not home, you have a little more freedom?
Yi: Do you think that without someone watching you, you can secretly be happy?
Yi: You wouldn’t think that, right?
Yi: If I suddenly came home right now, would it surprise you and make you happy?
It was a selfie taken in the classroom.
Smooth, deep cherry-blossom-colored hair draped over her shoulders.
She stared directly at the camera.
Her gaze was so focused it was almost piercing.
She was very beautiful.
Yet there was a faint chill.
As if devoid of warmth.
No trace of light in her pupils.
It was as if even light itself was swallowed up.
Gu Yebai couldn’t help but recall what that author friend had casually said earlier—Yi had the potential to be a yandere.
Yi: Why aren’t you replying?
White Night Walker: I was just simply admiring you in the photo.
White Night Walker: I’m really looking forward to you coming home after school.
White Night Walker: I’m going to go write my novel now.
You want to see my update soon, right?
Yi: Fine, I won’t bother you for now.
Yi: After you finish writing, you have to report to me immediately.
Yi: Send me a picture of your lunch too, to prove you’re eating properly.
Yi: If you get tired from writing and want to sleep, you have to tell me.
Yi: If I send you a message and you don’t reply for a long time, I’ll get worried….
It was a side profile photo.
Her red hair was tousled by the breeze.
Strands stuck to her cheek.
Sunlight fell on her features.
Soft and warm.
She looked really sweet.
Yet it also felt strangely suffocating.
As if no matter what he did, a pair of red eyes were quietly watching his every move behind him.
Was this care?
Or surveillance?
Gu Yebai took a deep breath.
Suddenly remembering that Yukino had also sent a message earlier.
He opened another chat window.
Even though Gao Hongyi had explicitly instructed him to report to her before chatting with anyone else, Yukino was male, so it should be fine.
White Night Walker: Sorry, sorry, my girlfriend was just blowing up my phone.
Yukino: No worries.
Yukino: Of course spending time with your girlfriend is more important than spending time with someone like me.
White Night Walker: Yukino-san is also a very important person to me!
Yukino: If I were a girl, you might actually manage to win me over.
Yukino: Did you have fun gaming?
White Night Walker: No, got screwed over by someone.
Yukino: That’s rough.
Yukino: Oh, by the way, the other day, you and Yi took that picture on the Ferris wheel at Donghai Disneyland, right?
Yukino: You wouldn’t happen to be in Donghai now, would you?
Yukino: You really got yourself a sugar mama, huh, Haki Bai?
White Night Walker: It’s not really like that.
White Night Walker: It’s a long story.
White Night Walker: Do you want to hear about what’s been happening to me lately?
White Night Walker: Let’s do a voice call. I want to talk to you.
Yukino: Can’t talk right now. Let’s just type.
Yukino: Dummy, I’m in class!
It had been two years since he first met him.
Back then, Gu Yebai watched his novel royalties shrink bit by bit.
His heart grew colder with it.
His confidence in the path of writing novels slowly crumbled during that time.
Many authors said they wrote for their own enjoyment.
But most of the time, that was just self-comfort.
Works that no one read were truly hard to stick with.
When creating, an author’s mind would wander intensely.
Many plot developments were thought through more deeply and complexly than readers ever saw.
And because of that,
most authors, aside from checking for typos, hardly ever reread their own novels.
Just give up.
That thought had surfaced countless times.
It was around then that Yukino appeared.
He was even more enthusiastic than the author himself.
He would actively talk about the possible paths a character’s fate could take.
He would analyze cracks in a character’s personality.
He would ask about details that even Gu Yebai himself had never seriously considered.
It was as if, in his eyes, those fictional characters were truly alive.
Yukino seemed flippant on the surface, yet possessed a nearly calm and insightful understanding of love, death, and life.
His financial support was also exceptionally generous.
Almost every month, he alone accounted for a third of Gu Yebai’s royalties.
He was someone who truly loved the work from the bottom of his heart.
And had long since become an incredibly important presence to Gu Yebai.
He wanted this friendship to last a lifetime.
He wanted to tell all the endless stories to this person whose real name he might never know.
So, telling him a few things about real life was probably okay.
White Night Walker: First, I have to apologize to you.
White Night Walker: Before, when I said in the group that I was working in Xinghai City, that was all a lie.
Yukino: I’ve always called you Xiaobai for a reason.
Yukino: Because I could tell, the real you should be very young.
Yukino: Around sixteen or seventeen.
White Night Walker: You got it.
White Night Walker: I am sixteen, just started high school.
White Night Walker: This next story is a bit long.
White Night Walker: Because the main character is me.
White Night Walker: The story starts when Yi’s parents, during a routine blood test, discovered that Yi has type B blood….
So Gu Yebai patiently laid out, bit by bit, everything that had happened to him recently.
He wanted to talk.
He didn’t mind Yukino knowing the real him.
Rather, he looked forward to being known by him.
In life, you need a few people you can talk to about anything.
Because they exist, life doesn’t have to fall into loneliness.
Gu Yebai stopped hiding things and frankly spoke about Linchuan County.
He spoke of the unforgettable poverty.
He spoke of his parents….
In a warm coffee shop, jazz music played.
Himuro Mio sat by the window, a cup of steaming black coffee before her.
She looked at her phone.
Her favorite author was opening up his heart, showing her everything he had once hidden online.
It wasn’t a glamorous story.
This confession felt like a grand declaration of trust.
“I’m sorry.”
“You told me your story, but I was like a coward, afraid to tell you.”
Himuro Mio closed her eyes.
Every word Gu Yebai said lingered in her mind.
Slowly filling out the skeletal, hollow figure she had imagined, making it whole.
She could almost see Linchuan County.
See that cold, gray, worn-out little county town.
See a boy with a schoolbag on his back, shivering in the biting wind, yet still running desperately.
She could imagine his suffering.
Even though White Night Walker tried to add humor to all his hardships, Himuro Mio could hear the bitterness beneath.
“Why didn’t you tell me these things?”
“It was so hard, you couldn’t even afford your parents’ medical bills. If you had told me, I would have brought them to Tokyo and gotten them the best treatment!”
“But why couldn’t you tell me all this sooner?”
“Why didn’t you try to rely on me?”
Himuro Mio bit her lip tightly.
“What you have now isn’t happiness.”
“It’s just a painkiller injected into your suffering…”
But more than the novel, Himuro Mio found she wanted to hear more stories about White Night Walker himself.
That was even more captivating than his fiction.