All-Diamond VIP

Ling Ke's eyes widened. He had absolutely no idea how that line had gotten there.

He had practiced the Schubert piece enough that he hadn't needed the sheet music at all during his grading exam. He'd only brought the exam book along for reassurance, and hadn't opened it once since the exam. He'd never imagined he could overlook a message just like that, without even realizing it.

Remembering his chance encounter with Qi Feng a year ago, Ling Ke felt a warmth in his chest, along with a little urgency. He quickly turned on his computer and entered Qi Feng's QQ number in the search box.

The search returned a handsome anime guy's avatar, with a one-word nickname: "Feng."

Ling Ke sent him a friend request. Later that day, Qi Feng accepted it.

Delighted, he was just about to click Qi Feng's avatar and start chatting when he suddenly noticed that the name was red, with a penguin sporting a tuft of yellow hair beside it.

—That color and icon were exclusive to paid members.

In an instant, his parents' self-righteous "well-meaning guidance" from back then rang in Ling Ke's ears again. He didn't want to pay any attention to it, but he couldn't help himself. It was as though an invisible force were pulling him and Qi Feng apart, erecting a wall between them.

Ling Ke hesitantly double-clicked Feng's avatar, only to have his attention caught by the other's flashy QQ Show.

A hat, sunglasses, stylish clothes, a cool background... That whole getup must have cost quite a few Q Coins.

But that didn't matter to Qi Feng, because he was also a Red Diamond VIP. He could wear every outfit in the store for free.

...

The sudden sense of disparity left Ling Ke feeling a little irritated. His hands hovered over the keyboard as he considered what to say to Qi Feng first.

—Hi, I'm Ling Ke.

—Do you still remember me?

—I'm the one who took the Grade Eight piano exam with you last year...

He came up with several opening lines, but couldn't bring himself to send any of them. He was worried Qi Feng might have forgotten him already. A whole year had passed, after all. He really wasn't sure how much of an impression he'd made on Qi Feng, reeking of sweat during their single encounter in the conservatory's exam waiting room.

If he hadn't been sorting through his sheet music today, he would have all but forgotten Qi Feng himself.

Besides, even if Qi Feng hadn't forgotten him, what would they talk about afterward?

Honestly, he wasn't very proactive socially. Qi Feng's natural ability to treat strangers like old friends was something Ling Ke probably couldn't learn in a lifetime. Making him take the first step in this was scarcely easier than asking him to climb to heaven.

And while Ling Ke agonized over it, Qi Feng didn't send him a single word either, which only made him more anxious. Normally, when a stranger added you as a friend, wouldn't you at least say hello or introduce yourselves afterward, no matter what? Accepting a request without knowing a thing about the other person, then not asking any questions—wasn't that a little too casual?

The more Ling Ke thought about it, the more awkward he felt. Before he knew it, he'd lost the courage to reveal who he was.

—Forget it.

—Even if I tell him, he might not remember.

—Just leave it at that.

Ling Ke left QQ running in invisible mode and browsed the web for a while. When he checked Qi Feng's avatar again, the other boy was already offline.

He felt a little disappointed, but also quietly breathed a sigh of relief, as if he'd been let off the hook.

After staring at the grayed-out avatar for a couple of seconds, Ling Ke slowly moved his mouse over to the... yellow five-pointed star beside it.

Back then, Qzone was still an extremely popular platform for showing off your social life.

Almost every kid Ling Ke's age maintained their own Qzone. Who didn't post a few diary entries about their feelings or upload some photos when they had nothing better to do? Add a few background tracks that expressed your personality, and this little homepage became the face of your online identity.

Qzone was also a secret base where online friends could snoop into one another's private lives. People who were popular there generally weren't doing too badly in real life—and weren't too ugly, either.

Ling Ke had one too, but he mostly reposted articles his classmates shared and photos of class activities. He rarely posted anything of his own.

Everyone had the urge to pry into other people's lives, and Ling Ke was no exception. But he hadn't dared do it while Qi Feng was still online. He couldn't even bring himself to say who he was; snooping on someone right in front of them felt a little underhanded.

Now that Qi Feng was gone, he decided to take just one peek, then slip away without a sound. Qi Feng would never know he'd been there.

With that plan in mind, Ling Ke clicked the star.

The internet was slow. Only after a wait of more than ten seconds did the page appear—no permission required. Ling Ke felt a little thrill of delight.

The homepage had one of Qzone's signature welcome animations: a cartoon boy gazing up at a starry sky, accompanied by the sound of wind chimes. It was beautiful.

Ling Ke found his headphones and put them on. Before he could react, a burst of fast-paced piano music exploded in his ears, the notes clanging and pounding as though out to smash something, laying waste to his eardrums and his brain.

The page changed to reveal a header image of a Western-style cemetery shrouded in night. A winged fallen angel stood atop one of the gravestones, looking supremely aloof and proud.

White feathers drifted down from above, while a flashing blue decorative border faded in and out around the edges, in time with the falling feathers...

He scrolled down. Below it was some poetry that barely qualified as poetry—

Wounding you, wounding me, wounds;

Never to know God's will;

A frozen river, a boy weeping;

Love, secrets, arrows;

Angels, destined to fall;

Buried deep beneath the earth, sleeping forever, never to wake.

...

These lines were also set in a glowing font, flashing on and off against the black page...

Perhaps only many years later would Ling Ke realize just how cringingly edgy all this was.

But back then, he had no inkling of it. Instead, what he saw left him utterly awestruck.

With explosive piano music in his ears and feathers drifting down the screen, he reread that incomprehensible poem and could think only that the owner of this Qzone was... so... so. Fucking. Cool.

Looking more closely, he spotted a diamond icon beside the Qzone's name, "Feng's Island." Another VIP!

Still not convinced, Ling Ke went to look at Qi Feng's profile, only to be blinded by a string of multicolored diamonds, every last one lit up.

...Holy shit... That was just unbelievably cool!

Now the distance between him and Qi Feng was no longer as simple as a wall.

They also had the Milky Way between them, glittering with diamonds.

Ling Ke clicked through his blog and photo albums too. There weren't many updates, but there were plenty of views. Almost every blog post had hundreds of views and dozens of replies, to say nothing of the traffic to his page's message board and albums. Someone had visited just a few minutes ago.

By today's standards, those numbers would mean every post on Qi Feng's page was trending, and he would definitely qualify as an "internet celebrity."

For someone like Ling Ke, whose page hadn't had a visitor in centuries, this was practically unheard of.

Ling Ke wiped the sweat from his forehead, finally understanding why Qi Feng had accepted his friend request without asking any questions. There were probably tons of strangers adding him and following his page every day. How could Qi Feng have time to question and chat with every single one?

Internet celebrities were busy people, after all.

Since he was already there, Ling Ke went ahead and read everything Qi Feng had posted on his page from beginning to end.

Most of the blog posts were reposts of popular inspirational fluff and timeless words of wisdom. Qi Feng had written very few himself, but they were easy to identify: they were the ones with the most views and replies.

One post, titled "Fed Up," was only a few lines long: "Ugh, so fed up, so fed up I could die... I hope the Earth explodes, BOOM! The end of the world! Everything disappears! Goodbye!"

Ling Ke smiled. He had moments when he was so upset he wanted to destroy the world too, but he wouldn't post about it so bluntly online.

Beneath the post was a string of comments, all offering comfort.

As far as Ling Ke knew, nine times out of ten, the people leaving messages on someone's page were their classmates.

Xue'er: "What's wrong? Come chat for a bit."

Wind-Chasing Girl: "Listen to some music when you're feeling down."

Remembering Purple Leaves: "You'll feel better after some sleep. [Tongue Out]"

Starry-Night Angel: "If the world ends, you'll disappear too. I don't want you to disappear."

...

Tsk. Every last avatar and screen name looked like something a girl would use, not to mention those flirtatious undertones.

Ling Ke wasn't envious. He was just struck by how popular Qi Feng really was.

There was another post called "Untitled," pinned to the top of the blog. It, too, contained just one sentence: "An abandoned angel, even with wings still pure white, will become, another, god of death."

The commenters were all off on their own tangents. Some asked outright what it meant, some asked whether Qi Feng was comparing himself to a god of death, and others offered all kinds of interpretations. Qi Feng ignored them all.

He replied to just one comment, from a user named "Light Yagami."

Because that person had posted two words: "Nice poem."

Qi Feng replied with a toothy grinning face.

The corner of Ling Ke's mouth twitched. Adding a few commas to a sentence made it a poem?

Ah, it was too sophisticated for him. He didn't get it. Better to look at something more straightforward, like photos.

The photo albums had much more to offer than the blog. Looking through them picture by picture, Ling Ke finally learned what Deyin International School was like.

Qi Feng had posted plenty of pictures of his school: the athletic field, classrooms, art studios, piano practice rooms... The facilities really were much better than those at Ling Ke's school!

Their school's athletic field had a rubber surface, and they had separate indoor basketball and swimming facilities too. Qi Feng played lots of sports and liked taking sports photos, including fencing, tennis, and golf—things Ling Ke had never even tried.

Their classrooms had lockers, air-conditioning, and shared bookshelves, and everyone had a brand-new desk. Compared with the desks at Ling Ke's school, their edges and corners practically worn away, it was like night and day.

There were also pictures of Qi Feng's home. Piecing together details from a few shots—a yard, an iron gate, a glass sunroom—Ling Ke guessed it was a villa. Quite a few photos featured a big white dog that was very cute. He wondered if it was Qi Feng's.

The rest were all pictures of Qi Feng himself.

The first to catch Ling Ke's attention was a stage photo, for no other reason than that Qi Feng was wearing that familiar concert outfit. He sat onstage playing with a look of concentration, like a little prince.

Only then, a year later, did that warm, outgoing boy's features come alive again in Ling Ke's memory.

He drifted off for a moment, then kept scrolling and saw a photo of Qi Feng in a basketball uniform. Facing the camera with a ball tucked under one arm, he had one eye open and the other closed, as though someone had snapped a picture just as he winked. It captured his roguish air perfectly.

There were actually two consecutive shots of that moment. In the next one, Qi Feng had raised his other hand to flash a V at the camera, his smile both handsome and sweet.

For some reason, Ling Ke's heart skipped a beat...

Long after he closed the webpage, Ling Ke's mind was still full of Qi Feng.

Compared with that brief, fleeting memory from a year ago, his impression of Qi Feng was much more fully formed now.

But after learning that Qi Feng was an All-Diamond VIP and so popular, Ling Ke found it even harder to work up the courage to tell him they'd met before.

It wasn't cowardice. It was social anxiety, a faint, elusive streak of aloof pride in his bones.

Ling Ke felt that anything he said would make him look overeager to cozy up to him.

When he left Qi Feng's page, he even remembered to delete his visit from the history, keeping things between them "untainted."

Ling Ke never imagined that this retreat would mean five whole years without exchanging another word with Qi Feng.

From that day on, "Feng's" page became a place he quietly visited countless times.

To Qi Feng, though, it only meant one more inactive follower on his friends list, still using the default avatar.

[A Little Interlude]

Qi Feng: "You thought I couldn't see you when you were invisible? I use the 'Rainbow QQ Invisible-Status Revealer' version, damn it. I paid for it."

Ling Ke: "..." Shut up and let me be a quiet little zombie follower, okay!