SG 49

After closing the shop, they locked the door from the outside and walked toward the complex. Inside the shop, they didn’t feel it, but once they stepped out, the night wind was cold. Yan Anqing shivered once, and a layer of warmth soon covered his body.

“Wear a jacket tomorrow, there’s wind in the morning and at night.” Chu Baiyan took off his jacket and put it on him.

“It’s not cold in the shop.” Yan Anqing rubbed his nose. He was used to closing the shop and going straight upstairs, so he didn’t have a proper sense of how cold it was outside.

They had already moved some clothes and daily things earlier, so from Sunday night onward, they would stay there after closing. Chu Baiyan’s room wasn’t unfamiliar to Yan Anqing, and as soon as he entered, he changed into his own slippers.

The view from the twentieth floor felt completely different from the one from the shop’s second floor. The moon seemed much closer to him. Outside the window, there were no shadows of trees, but windows from the opposite building with lights still on, scattered like little stars through the night, making the scene look lively.

“Go shower.” Chu Baiyan took a towel and clean clothes from the wardrobe and handed them to Yan Anqing, who stood by the window.

As soon as the sound of water came from the bathroom, Chu Baiyan’s phone rang.

“Hello…” He was a little surprised that Lu Ran would call him at this hour.

“I just saw a video online. It says that Yan’s shop bullied customers and that you beat one up. What’s going on?” If the title hadn’t included “Starfish Pottery,” Lu Ran wouldn’t have clicked it at all.

He hadn’t expected that the video would be a direct hit. From what he knew about Yan Anqing, he barely spoke around strangers, so how could he have argued with a customer? As for Chu Baiyan, he wasn’t the kind of man who would hit someone unless completely provoked.

Lu Ran didn’t believe a word of that video and didn’t care that it was late, so he immediately called.

“That influencer asked for free stuff in the name of a shop review. Anqing refused, so he dropped the plate on purpose and started cursing. I lost control and hit him. He went home, edited the video maliciously, and posted it online.”

Chu Baiyan explained the situation briefly. He cursed in his head at how wide the video had already spread.

“That’s disgusting. Did the shop have surveillance?” Lu Ran understood right away. It was bullying, plain and simple. To fail at getting something for free and then smear them online—what kind of person does that?

“Yes. I’ve been figuring out how to edit it these days, to restore the parts that he cut and twisted.” Chu Baiyan had been thinking about that all night. The full video wasn’t suitable to release, but at least he could edit together the parts showing how the influencer asked for the gift and insulted Yan Anqing.

“Come on, by the time you finish learning, it’ll be too late. Send me the footage now. Tell me exactly what parts you want to show and what message you want to get across. Send it in text on WeChat. I’ll do the video for you.” Lu Ran didn’t just know how to edit videos, he was great at it.

He had studied digital media technology in college, focused on software development, and editing videos was easy for him. His ex-girlfriend had loved posting short videos online, and every clip she’d uploaded had been edited by him. After years of practice, he had gone from beginner to expert.

Chu Baiyan hesitated. Having someone skilled help would save time and make things better than what he could do on his own. But Lu Ran was homophobic, and even his coworkers could already tell that his relationship with Yan Anqing wasn’t ordinary.

“What are you waiting for? Send it now. I’ll finish it tonight and give it to you tomorrow morning. Then get some friends to post it online. You can’t let this drag on. People like Yan just want to run their shop, but this kind of slander ruins them. Once the internet takes sides, others will join in.”

“Alright, I’ll send it now.” What Lu Ran said was exactly what Chu Baiyan worried about. Even if Lu Ran found out about his relationship with Yan Anqing and wanted to distance himself, that could wait until this matter was settled.

After hanging up, Chu Baiyan sent the surveillance videos and explained in the chat what needed to be clarified. As soon as he finished typing and hit send, the bathroom door opened, and Yan Anqing walked out, his hair still dripping.

“Hair dryer.”

There were no plants to block the wind at this height, and it was colder than the shop’s second floor. Yan Anqing stood there in only his underwear, heat still rising from his body. Chu Baiyan didn’t want him to catch a cold, so he took one of his own T-shirts and put it over him.

“Sit on the bed.”

Chu Baiyan bent down and took the hair dryer from the desk drawer. As the warm air hummed, he thought about what he should do after he received the finished video tomorrow.

He wasn’t the only one anxious. Across the city, Xia Zhifei was venting on the phone with Meng Fan.

“Did you see the video online? It’s infuriating. That influencer wanted free stuff, the shop owner refused, and he threw that beautiful plate on the floor and cursed him. Now he’s flipping the story and putting all the blame on the owner.”

Xia Zhifei didn’t usually watch short videos, but when he had searched for the pottery shop earlier to help Meng Fan find it, his phone had started showing related suggestions. When he saw the title of this one, he already knew something was off, and after watching, he was furious.

“My future girlfriend sent it to me and asked what happened back then.” Meng Fan already knew about it and had explained it to him before, but he hadn’t followed the aftermath.

“You didn’t delete the video you recorded, right? Send me a copy. I’ll post it online tomorrow to clear things up. This is too much.” Xia Zhifei picked up the ceramic succulent pot he had bought from the shop and thought about that shattered plate and the shop owner’s teary eyes, and he felt a pang of pain.

“I didn’t delete it, but don’t get your hopes up. When I explained it to her last time, she asked me for the video and posted it online, but it got almost no views. That influencer has tons of followers, so his video blew up with likes and shares.”

Meng Fan had gone there to film the cat figurines that day, but because of the influencer’s trouble, he ended up recording the whole argument instead. The cat video never got finished, and since the shop was in chaos, he felt too awkward to stay. He ended up buying all seven cat figurines on the shelf.

“Just send it anyway. Even if it doesn’t work, it’s better than doing nothing. I hate people who bully quiet ones the most.” Xia Zhifei had once been someone who got bullied, so he felt what the shop owner must be feeling.

At three in the morning, the phone vibrated softly beside the pillow. Chu Baiyan, half-awake from worry, reached over and saw that Lu Ran had already sent him the finished video, along with a message saying he could ask for any edits.

He put on his earphones and watched it once. The video was thorough, with all the points he wanted clarified shown through captions on screen. Especially the scene with the plate breaking, where Lu Ran slowed it to three times slower and analyzed frame by frame. It clearly showed that the influencer had let go of the plate before Yan Anqing could catch it.

It couldn’t fully prove it was deliberate, but with the earlier insults and behavior, it showed that the “accidental drop” was a lie.

The word “idiot” played three times in the clip, each one louder than the last, to emphasize how the influencer had first demanded a free gift and then insulted him. From beginning to end, it showed the influencer being unreasonable and the shop owner caught off guard.

After watching, Chu Baiyan saw nothing that needed changing. It was even more complete than he had imagined. Lu Ran clearly understood what viewers cared about most and captured it more precisely than Chu Baiyan had thought to.

Chu Baiyan sent a “fist-holding” emoji. Saying “thank you” at this time would be too superficial.