Smears

Yu Nian saw that his attitude seemed fairly normal, but he still couldn't quite relax and asked another question. "Does it make you uncomfortable?"

Yu Nian had long since prepared himself for this sort of thing.

If Bian Yan couldn't accept having a gay roommate, he would be hurt, but he could understand. He might just have to avoid coming back to the dorm as much as possible from then on.

"What's the big deal?"

Bian Yan laughed heartily. "I'm not some ancient zombie from the Qing Dynasty. Besides, it's not like I've never seen this before."

"Let me tell you, I worked a summer job with a relative who does renovations. There were these two older guys, both big, tall men. They were really nice and even taught me how to install windows. Back then, I thought they seemed pretty close, you know, in a way that was different from everyone else. It wasn't until my relative told me later that I found out they were a couple."

"I thought I'd have a hard time accepting that kind of thing too, but after spending time with them, I didn't think it was a big deal. We're all just ordinary people."

Bian Yan took two apples from under the desk, washed them on the balcony, and handed one to Yu Nian. "Actually, I thought there might be something like that between you and Qin Yu before, but I was afraid I'd gotten the wrong idea, so I never asked."

Yu Nian took a bite of the bright red apple and said, a little embarrassed, "Was it that obvious?"

"Not really. Mostly because I'd seen a real couple before," Bian Yan added. "But I was pretty surprised you two had dated, because the two of you just seem..."

Yu Nian gave a self-deprecating smile. "His family's pretty rich, but I didn't know about him and the Azure Group before."

"No, no." Seeing that he had misunderstood, Bian Yan hurried to explain. "I just meant that you're so nice, while he looks like the type who likes ordering people around. Even if you were only friends, I'd still worry about you getting hurt."

"But it's fine now. Whatever you were to each other before, there's nothing between you anymore."

Only then did Yu Nian relax, a little wistful. "Yeah. There's nothing between us anymore."

"You're not still thinking about him, are you?" Seeing his subdued mood, Bian Yan assumed he still couldn't let go.

Yu Nian shook his head. "We actually didn't date for very long. I just didn't expect him to come looking for me again."

After breaking up with Qin Yu, he had devoted himself to studying and working. He really hadn't been as heartbroken as he had imagined.

It was just that, now that his earlier burst of impulsiveness had faded, he remembered that Qin Yu was the heir to the Azure Group, and a little fear crept in after the fact.

The gap between their social classes was too great. Someone truly wealthy could leave him with nowhere to go with the flick of a finger.

Bian Yan was easygoing and hadn't thought that far ahead. He crunched into his apple, making every bite look delicious as he always did with food. "Hey, you genuinely liked him once. It's normal."

"But from what I heard you say in the classroom, he really does sound like a piece of work. It's good that you cut him off. There are plenty of handsome guys in the world. Don't waste your energy worrying about someone like him."

Yu Nian pressed his lips together and gave him a reassuring smile.

After his afternoon classes, Yu Nian saw a message from a longtime fan. It contained a post titled, "Come admire this obnoxious streamer: a series of baffling moves from 'Rice Cake, Not Cake' lol..."

Autumn Fish Who Loves Rice Cakes: This is disgusting! They deliberately edited the video from that day to smear you!

Autumn Fish Who Loves Rice Cakes: But I've already contacted everyone in the group to help clear things up in the comments.

Autumn Fish Who Loves Rice Cakes: A few of us mods are also putting together evidence to counter the smear campaign. Don't be sad, Nian /heart/heart.

Yu Nian hadn't expected there to be more to this incident. Judging by what Qiūqiūyú said, it wasn't good news.

He braced himself and opened the video.

It showed the match they had played that day. Qinggang had added captions and commentary, saying he had initially been pleasantly surprised to learn that Yu Nian was a streamer too.

But the content was riddled with malicious edits.

Qinggang had deliberately put footage of himself dying in the bottom lane alongside clips of Yu Nian farming in the jungle, then coming over to collect the minion wave after he died. He paired it with text: "I asked for help several times, but he completely ignored me. Sigh, maybe it's because I'm not a girl."

Then came a few clips of Yu Nian working with the mage in mid lane. The mage's username looked cute, and Qinggang had deliberately shown the gender field on her profile, inviting even more speculation.

After that came all sorts of misleading portrayals of Yu Nian refusing to cooperate with Qinggang, paired with passive-aggressive, faux-innocent commentary. At the end, there was footage of Yu Nian standing by and watching Qinggang get killed without helping, along with parts of their argument.

The half-true, half-false video, combined with manipulative wording, was highly inflammatory.

The video had only been up for two or three hours, but it already had several hundred thousand views.

Divine Call was an extremely popular game, and Qinggang was well known. Even players who disliked him knew who he was.

With Qinggang's fans helping push it into the trending feed, plenty of people began insulting Yu Nian in the comments as soon as the video gained traction.

[Wow. I thought Qinggang was already obnoxious enough, but there's always someone worse out there /vomit]

[This guy acts like he's never seen a woman before. Why does he latch on the second he sees one, aaaah]

[He was deliberately targeting him. Jealous that Qinggang has more fans, right? I was in the stream that day. This Rice Cake was disgusting, making all those snide remarks!]

[I was in the stream too, so how come I don't know about any of this? You Qinggang fans know perfectly well how much truth there is in this video.]

[Lmao, the bootlickers caught a whiff and came running. Like streamer, like fans. The video's right there, and they're still denying it.]

[I've watched this streamer's tutorial videos. I thought his voice sounded really nice and he was pretty skilled. I never imagined he had such a rotten personality...]

[Person above, get some standards. You actually like that fake cutesy voice? He won't even show his face. For all you know, he's some two-hundred-pound guy picking at his feet~]

[...]

In all his time streaming, Yu Nian had never been subjected to online abuse like this. It was impossible not to be affected.

He took several deep breaths and tried to forget those malicious insults, but his chest still felt tight.

After replying to Qiūqiūyú, he saw that several other moderators were comforting him too, angrily cursing the others on his behalf. Yu Nian felt a little consoled.

At least plenty of people still knew the truth. He wasn't completely alone.

In fact, Qinggang's smear job wasn't particularly clever. Anyone who took the time to check would see how misleading those edits were.

But public opinion often spiraled out of control. Once the video had shaped people's first impressions, how many would bother to investigate the truth?

Yu Nian hurried home and analyzed the holes in Qinggang's video with them. They needed not just to clear things up, but to make their response specific, listing every point the other side had used against him.

Yu Nian wrote a clarification himself, then had the moderators review it twice. After making some revisions, he prepared to post it along with the newly made video.

At eight that evening, Yu Nian posted his clarification right on time.