Once was for an experiment or something, but this thing harms the body a bit. Song Qing originally already had a bit of a cold, speaking voice slightly hoarse, after doing it became even hoarser.
So Nan Zhi didn’t deliver it to him again, after going back upstairs, she opened a new one and tried it herself again.
This time gathered full courage, in one go stuffed it in, it was very uncomfortable, dry heaving wanting to vomit, nausea came up, but because of Song Qing’s previous experience, this time she knew where the shortcomings were, when it first went in, movements were faster, suffered a bit less, later eased up, didn’t hurt, just uncomfortable.
After it finished and confirmed it pumped out stomach acid, poured in some warm water, carefully experienced the feeling, memorized the discomfort, felt there weren’t other problems, then took it out.
Just after finishing, she vomited once, that nauseated feeling lingered for a long time. At dinner, just as food was swallowed, there was a kind of illusion of it surging back up.
At 4:30 in the afternoon, when needing to go to work, her stomach still felt uncomfortable, but when she was upstairs putting on clothes, saw downstairs Song Qing was feeding the two cats, that discomfort feeling receded again, mood also turned from cloudy to sunny.
Ever since a month ago, when she intentionally spent a long time saying goodbye to the cats and only left a few seconds to hug him, this guy had put quite a bit of thought into things here.
When she worked the night shift, if he saw her getting ready to go down, he’d feed the cats. The newly bought cat food had freeze-dried meat and small fishies. The two cats really liked it. At feeding time they were afraid of being late by even one step, burying heads in their food and could eat for a long time.
Where was there any time to care about other things? Naturally wouldn’t come to send her off, and at that time only he sent her, so she naturally only hugged him.
When she worked day shift, he would turn on the electric blanket on her bed.
Cats naturally like to snuggle with people. After getting familiar, even more so wish they could stick to someone all the time, loved to run onto people’s beds.
In winter, changed into fleece-lined four-piece bed set, also laid down the electric blanket, the two cats liked their own nests even less, had to sleep with people.
Nan Zhi’s sleep was too bad, at night when the cats ran around, she and the cats didn’t sleep well together. Song Qing was completely the opposite. Even if in the middle of the night the cats jumped up and down, he still could sleep through it unaware, one sleep till dawn.
Sometimes late at night upstairs Nan Zhi could hear the movements of the cats downstairs, but Song Qing couldn’t.
Once he fell asleep, he was really asleep, unlike her, who had endless nightmares every day and such.
He also had a warm body, even without electric blanket, the quilt inside was warm, so now the cats slept with him.
In the morning after he got up, the two cats would curl up where he had slept. If he turned on the electric blanket again, warm bed and cold hard tile floor—such a strong contrast—if nothing major, the cats naturally didn’t like getting up.
So once again, only he was the one who sent her off, and only he was the one hugged.
If she got up late, this guy, afraid there wasn’t enough time, would even call her two minutes early, or after time was up, intentionally work loudly to urge her.
Once downstairs, if the cats were in the mood and ran over, if he saw, he’d stop the wheelchair in the middle, block the cats’ path, and go forward first to get a hug.
Not the kind of person who sits and waits for things to happen, but exactly the opposite, someone who takes the initiative to grasp opportunities, and if there are none, then creates them himself, full of little thoughts.
Putting all those little thoughts on her—whether or not she’d get mad? Of course not. And she even had a kind of feeling of being valued.
In order to get her to hug him, even pulled out the thirty-six stratagems. [a Chinese idiom referring to clever schemes or tactics, usually from a classic military strategy book]
He worked so hard, how could she bear not to hug him? Nan Zhi walked over, through thick clothes, tightly hugged him for over ten seconds before letting go, and said: “I’m going to work now.”
Song Qing gave an “mm” sound, followed her to the doorway.
Nan Zhi had already carried her bag on her back, inside it was a heavy lunchbox and roasted milk tea. If one sniffed carefully, one could still smell the fragrance of fruit—no need to look to know, inside was full of Song Qing’s care and intention.
She reached the doorway, before going out looked at Song Qing, then at the two cats beside him eating, and then at the increasingly full-of-life atmosphere of the home, already faintly resembling a warm little nest—wasn’t very willing to leave.
Why do humans have to go to work?
She roared inside.
If only she didn’t have to go to work, how great would that be.
If one doesn’t need to go to work, the world would fall into chaos, so she was only grumbling inside, still honestly opened the door and left.
After getting outside, in the end, couldn’t hold it back, sighed with a feeling, “Really don’t want to go to work.”
—
Inside the house, although the voice was small, Song Qing still heard it.
The phrase “don’t want to go to work” wasn’t the first time Nan Zhi had mumbled it. Every time before going to work, and just after getting off work, she couldn’t help but softly sigh it in places where he couldn’t see or was far away.
If he heard movement and turned his head, she would force herself to cheer up again, with a face like “what are you talking about, I didn’t say anything.”
Song Qing hadn’t really held down any proper job, just did summer break part-time gigs, not counted as a real proper job.
Before entering society, he even somewhat yearned for working, always thought no matter how bad it was, it would still be better than those times. He couldn’t wait to enter the workforce. After seeing Nan Zhi’s state and daily complaints, he realized—working actually wasn’t all that great.
All day getting scolded, no freedom, had to handle complicated interpersonal relationships, doctor-patient conflicts, every time left physically and mentally exhausted.
When Nan Zhi was at home, she was lively and cute; once out the door, her resentment was stronger than a female ghost’s.
Lately, the times she had red eyes were increasing, and coupled with today using herself for the experiment to insert a gastric tube, she must’ve been wronged at the hospital again.
Song Qing rolled his wheelchair into the small living room, continued editing videos, studying his own mini program, trying hard to earn money quickly—
So Nan Zhi could feel at ease and go full-time \[as in quit her job].
Nan Zhi actually earned not little. Back in her hometown, she still had two apartments, and rent alone gave her seven to eight thousand a month. Even so, she still didn’t dare to casually resign.
Seven to eight thousand looks like a lot, but actually only barely enough for her monthly spending on food and living. She couldn’t save anything.
Her painting was unstable income-wise, hit a bottleneck, and constantly got criticized, so her shadow toward drawing grew bigger and bigger—so big she didn’t dare to touch the brush easily.
Sometimes she even felt like her brain wasn’t working, creativity and inspiration also becoming fewer, not as flexible as before.
If it continued like this, sooner or later her road would only get narrower and narrower, unable to bounce back, so she didn’t dare to go all-in on painting.
Although nursing was tiring, at least it was a proper, legit job, could be done until retirement—stable, more grounded.
She didn’t have any savings either, and was the type of person like a spinning top—poke it, it spins; don’t poke, it won’t move. Simply put, couldn’t self-discipline. If she lived off her art full-time, she’d starve to death.
So even if she hated working again, still forced herself to go every day. Her spirit felt like it was squeezed dry every day. Went out listless, came back the same, took a long time to recover energy again.
If she had enough savings, it probably wouldn’t be like this.
Song Qing added subtitles to the videos he had accumulated over the past few days, sped them up and considered them edited, then uploaded them to the mini-program he developed himself.
This mini-program could manage multiple accounts at once. Basically all short video platforms big and small in the country, he had accounts. After integrating them through the mini-program, he could schedule uploads at fixed times.
It saved him from having to climb through each account one by one.
Short videos were good like that—wide net casting, didn’t need to be limited to a specific place.
Some platforms had already reached the requirements to open a product window. He reluctantly paid the deposit, logged into the account himself to open the window—could earn a little, was a little.
The deposit could be refunded later.
He also hopped the firewall and uploaded to foreign platforms too.
It was more troublesome to climb the wall mdomestically, needed a ladder \[梯子 – slang for VPN]. After switching to international network, then he used his mini-program to manage and upload to the accounts.
That side had fewer content restrictions, but all sorts of conditions were very strict. Withdrawing money was the biggest pain among pains. He didn’t manage them as diligently as the domestic ones, but when it was time to reel in the net, he found out the foreign accounts earned more than the domestic ones.
It might be information gap, or maybe because updates are stable and he works diligently, but he still feels luck took up a large portion.
Before doing it, he searched for a lot of tutorials. Most people couldn’t get it running. He also did it with a “just try” attitude. Anyway, the video was already edited, just had to upload it, then study more about how to make money.
Didn’t expect the income to be okay. It just took a long time to withdraw the money. Some time ago he was working on that. After such a long time, there was finally news that the money arrived.
In the account, it was only a few hundred, but converted into RMB it was several thousand.
Of course, he transferred all that money to Nan Zhi.
While at it, he roughly calculated the money earned this month and decided to drop one part-time job, freeing up time to study programming and accompany her.
His current schedule was too packed, and even when with her, he had to work—either doing illustrations or reading books, or tutoring others and disturbing her painting.
Another reason was, Nan Zhi used to love going out for a meal from time to time. Her friend circle had no privacy settings, so with a little effort, it could be seen—every few days she would go to nearby concerts, comic cons, art exhibitions, or go out and play. Now, every time she suggested going out, it would clash with his schedule.
If alone, she just didn’t really want to go out. For food delivery, she’d call delivery. If not available, she could only wait at home. Other activities, she could only give up.
Too many restrictions, many pleasures couldn’t be pursued. Over time, this wouldn’t be good for her recovery.
Her psychological condition needed companionship.
So part-time jobs still needed to be done, but they couldn’t be fixed-schedule ones—had to change to flexible ones, so he could accompany her to go out whenever she needed.
What Song Qing decided to drop was cooking jobs. This task wasn’t tiring, just required making a bit extra while cooking for himself. In the morning, he could make baby food earlier, and he’d eat his portion along the way.
If it were just him alone, he might have taken on a few more similar gigs to earn a bit more. But working this job while being with Nan Zhi didn’t really work—so he dropped it.
He was the type who acts immediately without delay—didn’t want to waste time, directly told the other side. Even though the client offered more money, he didn’t agree. After discussing the end of the work period, he put down his phone and opened the mini-program, checking if there were any after-sales problems.
There were, but few, because there weren’t many users yet. He set up an activity: refer one person and get one month free usage; refer two people and get two months—so on and so forth.
This event still had some effect. Although not much money was made, the number of users increased.
He then put another mini-program online—a software for blocking toxic speech.
As long as you authorize this software, then when using other people’s software, you will be protected by the toxic speech blocking software.
Actually, he also wanted to make a software that could block others from replying to your messages—for example, when arguing with people online and cursing each other, the other side can’t curse back; by enabling a ban, others can’t reply, and their messages won’t come through.
Later he realized that was too difficult. He was still a beginner. Being able to make the toxic speech blocker was already not easy.
But he did add a function to record toxic messages and automatically reply to the other side.
As for replying with what, well, he had already collected some very argumentative phrases to try out—out of ten people, nine would get pissed off—so he didn’t really count as unable to fight back. He could at least act like a human spam bot, just throw a bunch of stolen phrases back and not care if they made sense. There was offense, no defense, absolutely no shame.
This software was similar to the first one—he made an advertisement and placed it on the homepage. Those who needed it would download it themselves.
The set price was very low, two yuan. Just like the previous program, referring one person would get you one month free, referring a few people would get you a few months free.
Two yuan was cheap, and many people thought it was worth it. They’d directly buy it, and after trying it themselves, they’d recommend it to others.
The first software was also done like this. At the beginning, it was just embedded ads in related videos. Later on, people promoted it in groups, helping spread its usage.
He hoped the toxic speech blocker software could also be done well. He felt this hope was quite big.
People nowadays get angry so easily. On the trending tab, every day, someone is being cursed out. Doesn’t matter what’s said—it’ll be cursed. With sarcasm, without sarcasm, cold mocking, hot mocking, switching to alphabet typing, coded speech… No matter what you say, they’ll think you’re insulting them and their mother. With this, at least there would be a layer of protection over the eyes and ears, and the heart wouldn’t get hurt so easily.
He opened an auto-reply mode that sent back the same type of toxic messages to the other side, attacking them, without needing to take action personally.
The original intention of this software was to protect Nan Zhi, but he felt that many other people needed it too.
Song Qing planned to stop doing this soon, so he could focus on making up lessons.
Every night he fixed a time to work on these at three hours max. Weekends were full days. He also planned to quit this job.
At first, he did this to see if the income from mini-programs and videos could support doing it again. But he felt Nan Zhi’s condition was getting worse and worse, so he already started to cut one, and was already looking for someone else to take over the other one.
Right now the one he’s tutoring is elementary school, so the price is low. He took on a new one, this time tutoring a high schooler, three hundred per hour, one-on-one, time and place flexible, six hours a week.
It was someone introduced by a grandma in the alley—the grandma’s daughter works at a related agency and has connections in this area.
He had already agreed early on. Today was the last day of tutoring the previous family. At the end, the family found an excuse to deduct some money, saying it was to cover the time he missed finding another tutor.
Song Qing didn’t argue with them, just took the money and continued transferring it to Nan Zhi’s account.
Then he checked his own work, confirmed there weren’t any leaks when reviewing code, then tried out a new software experiment, disassembled a competitor’s software. Time flew by while busy—when he noticed again, it was already almost 2 a.m.
Nan Zhi was about to get off work.
She would want to sleep right after coming back from night shift, so Song Qing had cooked rice in advance, steamed a few lotus seed paste buns, prepared a bit of kelp and made seaweed soup.
He put them on the dining table and waited for her to come back, just like usual, while holding back the urge to look up at the second floor.
Everywhere in the house had been cleaned—only the second floor hadn’t.
The bathroom on the first floor was already cleaned early on. Based on Nan Zhi’s usual habits, he felt the second floor must be a mess. But possibly because of that, he didn’t want to go up.
—
At two o’clock, Nan Zhi had gotten off work. Since everyone was on night shift, and she had swapped shifts today, tomorrow would be her turn to rest. If she dragged herself today, she’d drag others tomorrow. It wouldn’t do anyone any good. So everyone agreed, and when the time came, the handover would happen and the shift would be over.
Nan Zhi was really tired today, just felt stifled—her mood wasn’t great.
But while changing clothes, she discovered a text message on her phone. She opened it and saw it was a transfer notification: two transactions, one over a thousand, one over four hundred. This money, without saying, must have come from Song Qing.
Every time Song Qing had money, he would give it to her immediately, always very familiar in manner, like going to the toilet—made her mood suddenly better.
Nan Zhi changed her clothes, hung up her coat, put away her phone and headed toward home. On the way she used Song Qing’s money to buy two bottled drinks, sipping while walking.
This money came too timely—there was no way for a bad mood to hang on.