Curious

The number of viewers kept climbing. Since it was the weekend, many people had free time to scroll through their phones.

Zhang Ding was also a loyal fan of Su Tingbai's food content. As a Beijing drudge, he usually did not like going out to play or attending gatherings. After work, what he loved most was buying groceries at the market and going home to cook himself a delicious meal as a reward. Thus, the videos he enjoyed most were food bloggers and mukbang streamers.

Today was the weekend, and he had no plans to go out. Instead, he had bought a pile of ingredients and planned to make hotpot or something similar to enjoy a pleasant weekend.

Whenever he cooked, he liked to turn on Tingbai the Cabbage's videos, crank up the volume, and start preparing the ingredients.

He had been a longtime fan of Su Tingbai, following him since he only had tens of thousands of followers. Later, Zhang Ding had learned to film videos himself. He mainly filmed himself eating delicious food, and over time, he unexpectedly gained a small following too. This brought him some extra income and raised his standard of living. He had moved from his old, rundown tiny apartment into his current two-bedroom, one-living-room place, and had even saved up some money.

Because of that, he was quite grateful to Su Tingbai. If it had not been for him, he would never have suddenly thought to film food videos himself. Many of his filming and editing techniques had also been learned from Su Tingbai.

At first, he had actually worried that he might be plagiarizing Su Tingbai, and had even sent him a private message. Only after Su Tingbai replied and encouraged him did he truly let himself go for it.

Though their filming techniques were more or less similar, their content was different.

Zhang Ding had his own audience, which did not overlap much with Su Tingbai's.

This spared him a great deal of trouble.

However, he had not become arrogant because of that. He was still naturally a die-hard fan of Su Tingbai and watched every one of his streams.

[Ding-dong! Your special follow has gone live!]

The special-follow notification snapped Zhang Ding back to himself. He stopped handling the ingredients, wiped his hands, decisively entered the livestream, and sent a comment.

[Aibo, you finally went live!]

His comment was quickly swept away by everyone else's, because he was not the only one who had noticed that Su Tingbai had started streaming.

[You bastard, you still remembered you have a livestream?]

[Oh, isn't this Su Tingbai? You still know how to stream? I thought you'd forgotten all about us!]

[My luck is great today. My break happened to coincide with Aibo Live! I've got something to watch while eating!]

[Am I seeing this right?! It's only eleven in the morning! You're actually streaming at such a normal hour? What are you streaming today?]

[Whoa! It's my favorite, an outdoor stream! Aibo, what are you planning to eat today?]

Su Tingbai was rather surprised too. He had not announced the stream in advance, yet more than two thousand people had joined in such a short time. He smiled, caught sight of that comment, and answered, "It's an outdoor stream today. Camping, barbecue, that sort of thing. Just watch for fun!"

The moment he spoke, many people sent him gifts. Though they were all small gifts, they were still expressions of the fans' affection.

Whenever Su Tingbai was in a good mood, he would read the comments and thank people for their gifts. Skipping over some strange usernames, he thanked people one by one. Then, from the corner of his eye, he noticed a hand slowly reaching toward the pack of extra-spicy spicy strips on the table. Quick as lightning, he grabbed it. "You can't eat this! It's too spicy!"

"I can!" A clear, slightly indignant voice entered the livestream viewers' ears.

[!!!! What a nice voice! It's a little weak, though.]

[Who is that? A new guest? This is the first time we've heard a new guest's voice this clearly. It sounds so good!]

[Damn, having nice hands is one thing, but his voice is this nice too?]

[No, is a single voice really enough to get you all worked up? Isn't this just a pretty common young man's voice? I can fake one too!]

[You'd better not fake it. If there's a frog in your mouth, spit it out. If you have phlegm, swallow it.]

[I'm dying, this is too entertaining!]

[Why is it that the moment a new guest appears, some people have to start yapping everywhere? It really ruins the mood.]

[Even though the new guest hasn't shown his face, based on his hands, proportions, and voice, I can already picture a beauty. The sickly kind, because he sounds a little weak, but that just makes him even more appealing, hehe~]

[Before he shows his face, nothing you say matters. Imagining things is just imagining things. Who knows, maybe he's an ugly shrimp-faced guy! Some influencers look beautiful with half their faces covered, but once the filters come off, they're pig-headed. Voices like that have the highest chance of being a voice-only scam.]

[He's so skinny. He can't be a pig.]

[Then he's a shrimp-faced guy. Remove the head and he's edible.]

Zhang Ding frowned as he watched these rabid dogs bark and sent a comment.

[This is a food stream. If you want to fight, take it outside. Tingbai hasn't said anything, but you people are already picking at someone?]

As soon as his comment appeared, the stream moderators began taking action as well, kicking out those ruining the atmosphere and pushing down the unpleasant comments. For a while, no one continued the previous topic.

The comments were scrolling too quickly, and Su Tingbai was watching Shen Rui'an to stop him from sneaking spicy strips, so he did not notice. The others were busy with other things as well and did not notice either.

They were preparing for a barbecue. Some skewers had already been prepared, while others were still being threaded, so they had only set up one fixed camera angle that captured Su Tingbai and Little Zhu behind him.

Shen Rui'an's gaze was glued to the spicy strips. This was Ya-ya's secret weapon for protecting her throat. Who would have thought that, despite such a cute name, she actually had a smoker's voice?

She said this was what she used to take care of it.

Shen Rui'an was curious how something could be spicy enough to give someone a smoker's voice, so while Su Tingbai was busy streaming, he stealthily reached for the pack of spicy strips, which only had two left.

But his grand undertaking collapsed before it could even begin, and Su Tingbai caught his hand in the act.

"I just want to try some! Just a tiny bit!" Shen Rui'an held up his pinky finger.

Su Tingbai firmly shook his head. "No. I'm about to start barbecuing. If you eat that now, will you still have room for King Crab when it gets here?"

Shen Rui'an thought for a moment, then honestly shook his head. Extremely unwillingly, he said, "Fine, then hurry up. I'm so hungry~"

He sprawled weakly over the table.

Su Tingbai laughed. He glanced at his phone and found that Xing Ying and the others had already set off. They should be arriving soon.

He said to Shen Rui'an, "They'll be here soon. All right, I'll grill you some skewers and hot dogs to tide you over first, okay?"

Shen Rui'an nodded indifferently. Still unwilling to give up, he glanced at the spicy strips, then watched helplessly as Su Tingbai calmly finished them all!

He ate them! All!

How hateful!

Shen Rui'an could only take a dry towel, squat down, and angrily dry Baisui's fur.

After swallowing the spicy strips, Su Tingbai silently gave them his assessment: not spicy.

Then he began preparing the sausages.

They planned to barbecue with fruitwood charcoal, since it would be more fragrant.

Meanwhile, viewers who had overheard the two talking were already flooding the chat.

[??? King Crab?]

[Holy crap? That's a seriously big splurge?]

[Looking forward to it. Camping barbecue with grilled King Crab?]

[Why isn't there Australian lobster? I want to see that!]

Just as Su Tingbai was grilling sausages, Xing Ying and Huo Heng finally arrived.

Holding his phone, Huo Heng was avidly watching the stream. "Tsk, tsk, tsk. 'I'll grill you some skewers and hot dogs to tide you over first, okay?' Ugh, why is Su Tingbai acting so cutesy! I have never heard such a voice from him before!"

He let out a strange cry. Xing Ying focused on driving while rolling his eyes at him. "Enough. We should be grateful if we even get to order anything. Don't compare yourself to him—you can't compare. That's the Shen Household's young master. We can't compete."

At that, Huo Heng put down his phone. "I'm getting more and more curious about Shen Xiaoyao. Even though we're from the same compound, I've barely seen him. I've seen the Shen Household's eldest plenty of times, though. He's a smiling tiger, just like the old man in my family. What do you think Shen Xiaoyao looks like, for Su Tingbai to have fallen for him?"

Xing Ying was curious too. The last time he had seen Shen Rui'an was in middle school. Shen Rui'an had been in elementary school then, a rather pretty child, just sickly and seemingly not very fond of speaking to people. He had that cute stern-faced look.

"I don't know. After I skipped ahead into high school, I didn't see him for a long time either." Xing Ying and Su Tingbai had been in their rebellious teenage phase then. They skipped ahead into high school, then went on to university. Neither their high school nor university had been near their elementary school, and they lived far apart, so they rarely met.

"He should still be pretty good-looking, right? It's not like he could have grown ugly?" Xing Ying said uncertainly. He recalled that everyone in the Shen Household, from old to young, was strikingly attractive. Even Shen Jing'an, that smiling tiger, was the same.

Huo Heng disagreed. Child stars could grow ugly, let alone ordinary people.

"That's hard to say. Wasn't there someone from our compound who was famous for being adorable as a kid? Now he's pretty average. If his family weren't rich enough to dress him up, he'd be no different from some bleached-haired punk."

Huo Heng rubbed his chin. "I heard the old men at home praise Shen Rui'an for being such a cute child all the time when we were little. Hey, if Shen Rui'an didn't hate going out, that title of 'cute kid' really wouldn't have gone to that idiot from the White Household. I'm getting more curious now. If Shen Rui'an gets better and goes back, wouldn't that White Household guy be furious? Another person better-looking than him."

Huo Heng gave a teasing smile. "I heard he still hasn't gotten over Su Tingbai."