Four Split Personalities

Real-time: 11:19 AM

City B, Mo Tan’s house

After finishing shopping for groceries, eating, and taking a bath, Mo Tan distractedly finished washing the dishes. He stood in the kitchen for five minutes, then suddenly dove into the bedroom, pulled open the wardrobe, and started rummaging through it with an unusually stiff and serious expression.

Ten minutes later, having changed from pajamas to a plain white shirt and ordinary jeans, he slowly left the bedroom and stood in front of the dressing mirror pieced together inside the living room, carefully scrutinizing himself.

[Hmm, there’s nothing particularly eye-catching.]

Looking at the ordinary young man in the mirror, he let his shoulders droop in a somewhat dejected manner, then, as if to encourage himself, he waved his fists: "But there’s also nothing that would make someone blackout, so that’s good!"

He took a deep breath, then shuffled to his dining/ computer table and opened his old laptop, which was almost as heavy as a brick. He booted up the system in the most ordinary way, set the security level to the lowest, and logged into a popular social networking app of the time.

After all, humans are social animals. Therefore, every era and every country will inevitably have one or several social networking apps and platforms with a wide range of users. The main features of the former include group chats, messaging, video and audio, file transfers, and sharing, while the latter come in various forms, like comment-based videos, etc. Under normal circumstances, each country or region has different social networking apps, and ninety-nine percent of countries use some global platforms simultaneously. As for the remaining 0.1 percent, no further comment is needed.

In any case, Mo Tan logged into his social app, which he visited daily, but where he didn’t have many "friends". The first group included contacts like "Mo Tan is my dad", "Yu Chen♣", "Dayang", "Master Kang", "FFF Group East Asia Branch Seventh Special Forces Private Cui Xiaoyu", "Hard-working Little Gogog", "Ji Xiaodao", and others, totaling seven people. Of course, he had other several hidden groups of contacts, but none of them could really be considered Mo Tan’s friends, so let’s not dwell on them.

Today wasn’t a special day. However, these restless young people had formed a mutual admiration after the New Year

and had decided to meet up every so often, whether in person if possible to have some fun, or online during their shared free time for a video chat—always making sure these meetups didn’t interfere with their gaming time to foster relationships and exchange information.

And today, at precisely twelve noon, was the appointed time for their first online gathering.

Beyond that...

11:30 AM

The unsuspecting laptop suddenly rang with a series of chimes.

[Yu Chen♣ requests a video call with you. Accept?]

Mo Tan’s body jolted, then he timidly pressed "Accept".

Half a second later, a young girl wearing a goose-yellow home sweater appeared on the screen. She smiled warmly and waved vigorously at Mo Tan while hugging a half-human tall purple teddy bear: "Yo!"

"Yo!"

Mo Tan also shook his arm, displaying a relatively natural smile, and instinctively asked, "How are you feeling?"

Yu Chen blinked blankly for a few seconds before her face turned slightly red and she silently said, "Um... I’ve been drinking lots of hot water... Should be better in a couple of days..."

"Ah, that’s good."

Mo Tan breathed a sigh of relief, then suddenly froze, "Wait a minute, didn’t you say you had to complete a certain task to wake up? Have you figured it out?"

"Huh?"

Yu Chen looked confusedly at the screen, curiously asking, "What are you talking about? I’m awake, you know."

Mo Tan scratched his cheek sheepishly and coughed, "I meant in the game..."

"Oh! You mean in the game! I don’t know about that one,"

Yu Chen touched her lower lip with her index finger, shrugged lightly: "I still haven’t figured out that ’Wake-Up’ task. Right now, every time I log on, everything goes black, and I can’t see or hear anything. I can only send messages and chat, um, but chatting with Feather Song and Big Sis is quite fun."

Mo Tan was stunned, "So when you said it should be fine in a couple of days, you meant..."

"Ah!"

Yu Chen immediately buried her head in her chest, whispering like a quail: "Because you started by asking how my body was... I thought it was that... um, that you had noticed..."

Mo Tan continued in astonishment, "That? Which that... oh?! Could it be..."

"Exactly that ’could it be’!"

Yu Chen lifted her face slightly towards the camera, bared her teeth, and continued in her threadlike weak voice, "I thought you recognized this pain-relieving herbal bear, ugh! Who starts by asking about someone’s physical condition in a game!"

Although she spoke that way, the girl’s sticky tone held no deterrent power; it sounded more like she was coyly pouting. Of course, she was indeed in a flustered rage, but her way of showing it was simply too feeble.

Mo Tan was momentarily speechless, looked around awkwardly for a while, and then blurted out helplessly and thoughtlessly, "Well, remember to drink plenty of hot water and avoid cold drinks, okay..."