SWG Chapter 29
by VolareTime rewinds to that afternoon in Yecheng—
After waiting a while longer, Ruan Shengyi dialed the number again. This time, it wasn’t unanswered, but a busy signal.
She quickly hung up, the annoyance in her heart gradually fading, replaced by a hint of doubt.
It seemed like Xiao Wenyu wasn’t intentionally ignoring her calls, but that she was genuinely busy. But the holiday hadn’t officially started yet, so how could she be so busy?
Ruan Shengyi’s heart skipped a beat. She snuck out of the reception and called the bar.
Xie Yu answered, and naturally, her first sentence was a jab: “Oh, you still remember your shop? If you hadn’t called, I was planning on selling it for you!”
“…Xie Yu, how’s business been these past two days?”
“It’s so cold already, do you even need to ask? Hey, winter salaries are still paid as usual, right?”
“…” This Xie Yu, would she be unhappy if she didn’t tease her a bit?
Ruan Shengyi pinched the space between her eyebrows.
But she didn’t know how to ask. Directly asking about Xiao Wenyu’s business? Wouldn’t that seem too deliberate? Calling Xie Yu and asking about the other person… she could imagine how angry Xie Yu would be.
How should she ask in a way that wouldn’t seem so obvious, but still get to the key question?
Xie Yu tapped the microphone. “Hello? Hello! Is the phone receiver broken, or is your mouth sewn shut? If you don’t say anything, I’m hanging up!”
“No, um… Xiao Wenyu didn’t answer my call today.” The usually composed Ruan Shengyi stuttered, blushing as she stammered out the question.
Silence filled the phone for a moment.
Then, Xie Yu burst into laughter. “Good heavens, so that’s why you suddenly remembered this shop. Good, good, that’s great…”
Ruan Shengyi wanted to punch her for laughing so hard.
But Xie Yu knew her limits. She cleared her throat and said, “I told you a long time ago to register for Douyin.”
Ruan Shengyi slowly typed out a question mark.
Douyin? What did that have to do with Douyin?
Xie Yu: “Xiao Wenyu went out for a photoshoot the other day, and someone posted the results online, and it went super viral.”
Oh, so that’s it.
Happy emotions surged within her. Ruan Shengyi coughed lightly, restraining herself from jumping up and down, and said with feigned composure, “She deserves it.”
Xiao Wenyu was so good at taking photos, and she loved photography so much. She deserved it.
Xie Yu scoffed. “She certainly deserves it, but a lot of people are saying they love her and want to marry her, so that’s…”
Ruan Shengyi: “What do you mean?”
“Download the app and become a modern person, sis!”
But Ruan Shengyi genuinely feared any app that would spread her information online. She… she really didn’t dare to download it, and couldn’t download it.
She said in a low voice, “Screenshot it for me.”
Xie Yu laughed again. “Every single post has thousands of comments, how am I supposed to screenshot that for you? Download it yourself, or don’t bother looking!”
“Every single post?!” Judging from that, there were many posts?
Why were there so many posts?
Ruan Shengyi hadn’t used these apps before, and she really didn’t act like a modern person. She didn’t even know the mechanics of marketing accounts, and just assumed that the person who posted the video had posted a lot of them, and by chance, every single one went viral.
That person was too good at running their account!
Ruan Shengyi sighed inwardly, feeling an even bigger headache coming on.
After hesitating again and again, she turned to Chen Yuexin and told her what she wanted.
Chen Yuexin refused without even thinking. “This app paints a very precise user profile. I’m not giving it to you. If I do, my reputation will be gone.”
“…Then…”
Chen Yuexin patted her shoulder and encouraged her: “It’s a good opportunity to download it now. That way, if you want to make any drinks in the future, you don’t have to call me, right?”
“…” These unreliable people.
But she was, indeed, afraid.
Ruan Shengyi simply left the reception to get some air.
The reception was located in the suburbs, and the back of the building was extremely quiet, so quiet that she sometimes wondered if she had returned to Shacheng. She found a corner to sit down, opened her phone, and closed it again.
If she registered, but didn’t post anything or comment on anything, wouldn’t that prevent her specific location and personal information from being exposed? Those people shouldn’t have the ability to dig that deep.
But…
This was something that couldn’t be 100% safe.
She had even gone into the app store and brought up the app’s page, all it would take was a download, and it would automatically install.
The internet was that advanced nowadays.
She also couldn’t stay offline forever, forever hiding in a corner of the internet, unnoticed.
After hesitating again and again, Ruan Shengyi gritted her teeth and clicked download.
She was using data, so the download speed was very fast. In less than a minute, the installation complete page had already popped up.
Too fast, so fast that it didn’t give her time to react.
But thankfully, it didn’t give her time to react. Even if there was a single second of time, she might have chosen to give up.
But…
Since it was already downloaded, might as well take a look.
Ruan Shengyi opened this app that was completely new to her, exploring how to use it like a student. She hadn’t even swiped twice when a prompt suddenly popped up asking her to register.
She closed it, went to click search, and the app tirelessly kept popping up the prompt asking her to register.
…
Did that mean she couldn’t even watch videos without logging in?
She thought for a moment, then directly chose to log in with her phone number. A string of numbers paired with a blank profile picture was all the content of her account.
…Good, good thing this app didn’t force her to fill in personal information.
Ruan Shengyi breathed a sigh of relief, found the search bar, and first entered a name to search.
“Xiao Wenyu”
There were only a few scattered results, mostly comments mentioning the name.
She randomly clicked on one of the videos, and the first thing that hit her was a sound that nearly shattered her eardrums–
[Omg! This photographer is too good at understanding people’s hearts!]
[It’s been so long since I’ve seen such a comfortable photoshoot!]
[Wow, I hope my photographer can be so understanding and gentle!!]
Was this the person’s video style?
Could she go viral like this?
Ruan Shengyi narrowed her eyes. Just like that?
She looked at the comments section, and didn’t see too many “wife” type comments like Xie Yu had said.
Could a video like this bring a lot of traffic and popularity?
But the blue words in the comments section caught her attention. “Gentle Photographer” had turned blue, and there was a small magnifying glass next to it. She tried clicking it, and as the page changed, a bunch of other videos appeared.
Even she couldn’t help but “wow” in surprise.
The first video that popped up here had over 500,000 likes and several thousand comments. One of the visible comments was–
“Ahhhhh, how can such a gentle sister not be my wife! Age isn’t a problem, sister, look at me!!!”
Ruan Shengyi: …So, this was the video Xie Yu was talking about?
But the voiceover was still a robotic female voice, only the scene was different from the previous one. This one focused more on scenes of Xiao Wenyu.
It was Xiao Wenyu standing in the sunlight, wearing a small flower hat and a silk scarf, holding a camera in her hands, with a gentle yet distant smile on her lips.
A breeze blew past, and she tilted her head in the direction of the wind, pushing those stray hairs back behind her ears, then gripped the camera again and softly urged the coser to pose in the breeze.
Ruan Shengyi smiled, resting her chin lightly on her knees, staring at the person in the scene, watching it again and again.
As for the comments section…
She wouldn’t look at it. That would just be making herself miserable!
No matter if the comments section was good, bad, or if the locals were vying with each other to post photos of Xiao Wenyu that they had taken, she wouldn’t look. Looking would just… make her very sad, very sad.
But this video was clearly not the original video. The traces of splicing were too obvious, the cuts were also poorly done. It was a low-quality and noisy video, but it had accidentally gone viral.
Then what about the original video?
How should she find the original video?
After thinking for a long time, she still clicked on the comments section.
Soon, the comments section gave her the answer.
Or rather, the answer was in the caption, because this person had tagged the original author.
Ruan Shengyi clicked on it. The original video also had several hundred thousand likes.
She flipped through it. This was also the most lively and bustling video in her entire account. The rest of the videos had a maximum of 20,000 likes.
It was a relatively long video, over four minutes long.
In the complete video, Xiao Wenyu’s clips weren’t many, and there were no filters added like in the marketing account. It was a pure phone-shot video, shaky, but even more gentle.
Xiao Wenyu when she was taking photos was simply too beautiful.
Although it wasn’t the first time realizing this fact, Ruan Shengyi couldn’t help but be immersed in it.
Xiao Wenyu, shining brightly in her beloved career, was simply the most beautiful person in the world.
Ruan Shengyi unknowingly became engrossed, watching the video on repeat, until the hand she was supporting herself with felt numb. She accidentally clicked on the comments section.
In the comments section, there were many people showing off the photos they had taken. There were people from the coser circle showing off their perfect cos photos, and there were also people posting photos of Xiao Wenyu that they had occasionally taken.
They weren’t taken well at all.
Ruan Shengyi smiled slightly, opened her photo album, and found the series of photos she had taken earlier.
Not as good as the ones she took.
Whether it was the hazy and beautiful photos taken through the glass, or the photos under the sparkling water, they were so beautiful that every time she saw them, she would be immersed in them, unable to help but repeatedly caress these two photos through the screen.
She pondered for a moment, and selected one of the photos to post in the comments section.
Hmph, she definitely wanted everyone to see this extremely beautiful Xiao Wenyu. If doing so could make her shop’s business better and better…
Leaving this comment wasn’t a big deal.
She went to search for Xiao Wenyu’s account again. Xiao Wenyu seemed to not have a personal account, only a shop account, which already had tens of thousands of followers. The latest video was posted this afternoon, thanking everyone for their support and roughly explaining the booking requirements and schedule issues. The data was only so-so…
Her Tonight Intoxicated shop account only had a few thousand followers.
Ruan Shengyi rested her chin on her knees somewhat dejectedly, caressing the side of her phone. Accidentally, she clicked into the private messages.
The official automatically generated message hung at the top, saying: “You can only send one message before the other party replies or follows you!”
Only one message.
Ruan Shengyi clicked on the screen, and finally sent a message–
User778625361: It’s me.
She returned to the message page, and realized that in just over ten minutes, her own information page was already about to explode. She clicked over and saw piles of “asking for the original photos” comments popping up like water.
How do you post original photos on Douyin? Can you even post original photos on Douyin?
She called Xie Yu. Xie Yu seemed to be watching videos, laughing as she said, “User778625361, please post the original photos~”
Ruan Shengyi was slightly annoyed: “How do I post them?”
“It’s simple, I’ll teach you…”
Ruan Shengyi followed the steps to quote the comment and post a pure-picture Douyin, then turned back to reply to the comments in the comments section one by one.
That way, she could at least bring some help to Xiao Wenyu’s business, right?
Xie Yu: “Have you posted them all? Boss, the one you picked out isn’t the best-looking one, right? Quick, quick, are there any better-looking ones? Show me!”
Ruan Shengyi smiled and said in a low voice, “Goodbye.”
Xie Yu: “…?? You’re going to use me and then…”
The phone was hung up mercilessly.
Ruan Shengyi looked at her phone for a while, but that person hadn’t replied to her message yet.
Neither app had replied.
She pondered it, and tentatively dialed the number.
…