Qiu Mian casually tapped into the post and discovered that the comments beneath this Weibo update were a mixed bag of everything.
There were the envious ones:
[The young master’s birthday, this old servant is happy from the bottom of my heart.]
[I love so much that the young master shares fragments of his daily life. Telling me about every birthday gift he receives means the young master has me in his heart.]
[So this is how rich people celebrate their birthdays. Care to celebrate mine too? Oh, oh, you won’t? Well, if you won’t, then fine, whatever. Actually, I didn’t really want you to help me, lol. I have money, I’ll buy it myself. You’re pretty average, hahaha. So ridiculous, you’re really putting on an act.]
There were the comment-controllers:
[Happy birthday, young master! Please take good care of Sansheng Entertainment @Qiuyu_Versatile_Actor, Fashionista, Ratings_Guarantee!]
[Please take good care of the beautiful @HongYue who is both sweet and salty, on a stellar path, and full of charm!]
And then there were the horndogs:
[Husband, buy me.]
“I really can’t stand these second-generation rich kids putting on airs,” Wei Pu muttered, unable to watch any longer. Harboring a bit of wealth-resentment, he had always been prone to guessing the worst of the wealthy with maximum malice. “Playboys like this taking over the film and television industry are mostly just here to chase girls!”
Qiu Mian had no desire to let his imagination wander, keeping his demands simple and unpretentious: “Whatever. Girls won’t crash my resources; as long as he doesn’t turn into a scandal-ridden artist, that’s fine.”
“Mian-mian, you really haven’t seen enough. Where is choking limited to female celebrities? And it’s not just women coveting him!”
He helped Qiu Mian tap open the comment thread for [Husband, buy me], where surging tides of spring and wild, orgiastic chaos were surprisingly rampant among nine out of ten male commenters.
Qiu Mian: “”
“There used to be rumors that this Young Master Pingying was gay. Ever since then, gay guys have been clocking in under his comment section on a daily basis.”
Wei Pu clicked his tongue and shook his head. “There are plenty of rich folks who eat from both plates, and in the entertainment circle, there are even more looking to climb up by finding a sugar daddy… Take Liao Bin, for instance. Wasn’t his scandalous romance tied to his backer?”
Liao Bin was the male lead whose scenes were heavily edited down in Qiu Mian’s second drama, Si Yao Chronicle. Back then, Liao Bin starred in several major productions back-to-back, his popularity soaring to the heights of top-tier traffic, only to be suddenly exposed for engaging in an improper relationship with a married backer. Having been exposed with hard evidence as a male homewrecker, he plummeted from grace and never recovered.
That backer’s penchant for playing the field was no secret within the circle; rumor had it that his wife didn’t care at all about those affairs, and it was purely because Liao Bin pushed his luck too far and slept right in their family home that he finally pissed her off.
With that cautionary tale in mind, Wei Pu advised earnestly: “Mian-mian, you still need to keep your guard up. The entertainment circle is a giant vat of dye; you can’t be too careful against others.”
Qiu Mian calmly replied: “It’s fine. I’m very unremarkable, so I probably won’t catch anyone’s eye.”
“So why on earth do you have this delusion that you’re unremarkable?!” Wei Pu asked, extremely incredulous. “Even if you can’t tell beauty from ugliness, you should at least be able to recognize the attitude of the people around you, right? I remember once after a model audition, I accompanied you back to school, and in a single afternoon, exactly sixteen people asked for your WeChat, both men and women, and some even shoved their business cards at us no matter what!”
“Ah, that model audition…” Qiu Mian rested his chin on one hand, his tone somewhat ghostly. “The interviewer suggested I get plastic surgery.”
“”
Wei Pu was furious: “Was that guy blind?! What did he say verbatim?”
Qiu Mian thought about it and actually remembered, cheerfully imitating the other’s tone: “This face should be appearing right outside the entrance of a plastic surgery hospital.”
“…” Wei Pu’s mouth twitched. “I think what he meant was that you’re so handsome you could serve as a template and gold-lettered signboard for a plastic surgery hospital.”
“He was obviously laughing at me.”
“That wasn’t mockery, it was a smile of gratification! Didn’t he pass you on the spot?”
“Oh, I rejected him on the spot.”
“”
Although Qiu Mian always did as he pleased, he still seemed a bit petty when it came to weird things. Realizing it had been a misunderstanding after all, he smiled, though he didn’t forget to mutter: “I hate people who talk in circles.”
Having interacted with Qiu Mian for a long time now, Wei Pu knew he liked speaking bluntly. Moreover, he often failed to understand polite social niceties, hints, or implicit nuances, taking things entirely at face value. After doing so, he wouldn’t bother reading the room, sometimes arriving at completely skewed interpretations and potentially offending others.
Yet this wasn’t Qiu Mian’s fault; he seemed naturally poorer at perceiving emotions, relying on long-term observation and learning from others’ reactions to regulate his own emotional responses.
Having known Qiu Mian for over five years, Wei Pu could even say that the current Qiu Mian had made marked improvements compared to before.
Nowadays, he would occasionally smile, ask when he didn’t understand, and strive to grasp the emotional world of his characters.
Whereas the past Qiu Mian had been cold, estranged, and devoid of ripples, like a passerby who had accidentally strayed into the human world.
Wei Pu felt a great deal of the gratification of a parent watching his child grow up.
Because of the hit broadcast of Si Yao Chronicle, Qiu Mian had a variety show to shoot in a few days. During the interim, he had a temporary window, so Wei Pu took leave to return to the neighboring city to visit his grandmother and girlfriend, repeatedly instructing Qiu Mian not to travel through dreams alone before leaving.
Unlike ordinary sleep and dreaming, a traveling dreamer’s actions in the dream space could not perceive external information during the process. From the real world’s perspective, it looked as though they had fallen into a deep coma, and unless they actively ended the dream travel, they could hardly be woken up by normal means, leaving themselves in an extremely perilous state.
Official traveling dreamers naturally had professionals watching over them during work, along with expensive medical facilities monitoring their physical status. Qiu Mian, however, was different; usually, only Wei Pu was by his side to keep watch, so Qiu Mian granted him a morning leave to catch up on sleep.
Though Qiu Mian didn’t actually care about this; prior to meeting Wei Pu, he had spent his many years of dream-traveling entirely alone. He possessed strong control within the dream space, and a single dream-travel session rarely exceeded ten minutes; back in school, he could finish one during a class break and sleep normally at night.
However, Wei Pu had a nagging, worrying personality, coupled with his belief that Qiu Mian had shown him grace, leading him to eagerly monopolize all sorts of chores. Initially, Qiu Mian felt it was making a fuss over nothing, but ever since filming began, his daily call times varied wildly, and it was easy for him to remain trapped in a dream-travel state and fail to arrive on time. Wei Pu helping him field the crew’s endless calls was practically essential, so Qiu Mian had accepted this custody.
Now that Wei Pu had traveled far away and couldn’t keep tabs on him, Qiu Mian thought about it and still followed his wishes, not because he worried solo dream-traveling was unsafe, but purely because he wanted to give himself a holiday.
Unlike official traveling dreamers with fixed shifts, Qiu Mian traveled through dreams based on his mood. Years ago, before the official establishment of the dream-solving base, he had operated almost year-round, seizing every spare moment at school to catch up on sleep or travel through dreams. It wasn’t until the official dream-solving teams were properly staffed that he felt comfortable branching out into more real-world work.
He was well acquainted with the strength of the eight dream-solving teams in the Eastern District and knew the upper limits of their load, which was why he used to help handle dangerous dreams. But ever since his accidental encounter with that newly added team last official outing, he figured the authorities didn’t quite need his assistance anymore, so he had been cherry-picking less urgent-looking dreams to slack off in; nobody was paying him a salary anyway.
Just in case, however, safety measures still had to be properly set up. Qiu Mian messaged Liang Rui: “Brother Liang, please trouble yourself to patrol the dreams these next few days. As long as the officials can handle it, it’s fine.”
Liang Rui replied swiftly, understanding his intent: “Got it, get some good rest.”
Only then did Qiu Mian toss his phone aside, stretch comfortably, and fall fast asleep.
Following a complete, sufficient, full, twelve-hour night’s sleep free of dream-traveling, Qiu Mian sat dazed for ten minutes before slowly beginning to order takeout for himself.
Since Wei Pu wasn’t around, he took the liberty of filling out the special instructions box with: “Please make it extremely spicy.” Based on past experience, without a specific note, even choosing “heavy spice” would only yield something mildly appetizing.
After finishing his lunch-slash-dinner, Qiu Mian rested for a bit to officially welcome his brief vacation. Yet for a moment, he found himself at a loss for what to do; it had been a long time since he had enjoyed such a lengthy stretch of free time.
Pondering for a moment, he pulled a treasure chest out of the storage room, sat in front of his computer, and logged into an account.
[User 68446152] was the platform’s default user name; accounts created without entering a nickname would display this sort of customer ID, looking like an unverified tourist.
Yet this was, after all, a logged-in account with upload and collection permissions. Qiu Mian scanned the backend; his last audio upload was still from last year, seemingly after a wrap-up when he had a brief pocket of free time. But back then he was busy dream-traveling and didn’t rest for long, so the audio was a mere twenty minutes long.
Qiu Mian let out a breath, drew all the curtains shut, left only a single dim, hazy bedside lamp lit, and then took out props one by one from the treasure chest.
A 3Dio microphone, feather wands, silicone brushes, sponge balls, aloe vera gel, wooden ear scoops, wind chimes, tuning forks.
These were ASMR props.
ASMR stood for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, referring to the use of audio-visual sounds to generate a pleasurable and comfortable tingling sensation within the intracranial region, which in turn helped improve sleep and stabilize mood.
Qiu Mian had encountered this type of sound long ago and found that it genuinely provided assistance to a certain demographic, so he purchased the props and began producing sleep-aid audio on his own.
Unlike ASMR creators dedicated solely to the craft, Qiu Mian didn’t stream live or use visuals; he only occasionally dropped a newly crafted clip without any contact info. Yet his popularity seemed decent, boasting a core group of regular listeners and repeat-streamers.
Strictly speaking, ASMR audio was much of a muchness, boasting triggers like chewing, friction, massage, and water flow. Yet Qiu Mian’s arrangements, combinations, pacing, and intensity always managed to strike many people’s sensitive spots, leaving them feeling tingly, dreamy, and surreal upon listening.
Yet no matter how comfortable it was, listening to the exact same audio too often would still diminish its effectiveness, and fans frequently urged Qiu Mian to update.
Of course, updates entirely depended on Qiu Mian’s mood.
At this moment, he cupped the ear-shaped microphone, opened the recording software, and gently closed his eyes, as though envisioning the vast, boundless dream space, feeling peaceful and steady inside.
Maintaining this tranquility, he began utilizing the props one by one. Goose feathers softly brushed against the microphone’s earflaps, the wooden scoop probed deep into the cochlea, the gel emitted a sticky sound against his fingertips, and the crisp chime of the wind bell seemed to resonate within the cranium.
Ninety minutes passed. As the final finger-rubbing sound concluded, Qiu Mian slowly brought the microphone close to his heart.
Thump, thump, thump. His heartbeat was steady and calm.
Qiu Mian fastened the buttons at his chest, pressed his lips first against the left ear of the microphone, then against the right, and delivered his signature sign-off as always.
“Good night.”
“Sweet dreams.”