Xia Anmian’s feet froze in place.
Standing behind her, Jiang Yi felt an icy chill surge through his entire body like freezing water in the dead of winter.
The moment he heard those five words, his mind went blank with a deafening buzz. His heart clenched violently before pounding out of control, as though it were about to burst straight through his chest.
His back pressed against the cold metal door. Without even realizing it, his fingers dug into the peeling paint along the edge of the doorframe, scraping it off piece by piece.
Su Xiaoyue’s words were like a knife, plunging straight into the place he was most terrified of anyone touching.
“He doesn’t want me anymore.”
Jiang Yi’s Adam’s apple bobbed. His throat tightened until he could barely breathe.
He forced himself to calm down and rapidly went over everything in his head again and again. ‘The account was an anonymous account I bought. It wasn’t linked to an ID card. I never sent voice messages or photos. I never revealed any personal information. The account has been deleted—completely erased. They can’t trace it back to me.’
But as he stared at Su Xiaoyue’s swollen, bloodshot eyes, he suddenly realized that none of those calculations mattered.
‘If she really jumps… If they take her phone and recover the data… If they go through those chat records one message at a time…’
In theory, none of it should lead back to him.
However, Su Xiaoyue’s parents would see everything he had said to her. Her teachers would see it. The police would see it.
Everyone would know.
‘The cyber police will definitely trace it back to me.’
Acid surged into his throat.
Jiang Yi swallowed it down forcefully. His fingernails dug deeper into the peeling paint on the doorframe until tiny flakes became lodged beneath them.
For several seconds, the rooftop fell silent.
The howling wind, the police sirens below, and the distant rumble of fire truck engines blended together and flooded Jiang Yi’s ears.
‘No.’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘She can’t die.’
‘At least, she can’t die today.’
‘We can’t break up like this. I need to end things with her peacefully!’
Jiang Yi’s hands were trembling violently. He had broken up with girlfriends before who had cried, threatened him, and made dramatic scenes, but none of them had ever gambled with their own life the way Su Xiaoyue was doing now.
When he pulled out his phone, his thumb slipped across the screen. The old phone flew from his shaking hand and smacked against the concrete rooftop.
It bounced once.
Spiderweb cracks instantly spread across the upper-left corner of the screen, scattering tiny shards of glass across the ground.
Jiang Yi didn’t even have time to think about it. He practically threw himself down after the phone. His knee slammed into the concrete with a dull thud, but he felt no pain.
He snatched it up.
The shattered screen was still glowing. Several cracks stretched across the WeChat icon like scars.
“Can it be recovered?” Jiang Yi asked hoarsely, his throat feeling as though it had been stuffed with cotton. “An account that’s already been deleted… Can it be recovered?”
He had no idea.
The satisfaction he’d felt when pressing that confirmation button back then was now matched by an equal amount of panic.
But when someone was driven into a desperate corner, instinct made them grasp at even the faintest possibility.
Jiang Yi exited WeChat and opened Taobao. His fingertips dragged across the cracks in the screen, the surface rough and sluggish beneath his touch. His hands were trembling so badly that it took him three attempts to correctly type the six Chinese characters for “recover deleted WeChat account.”
The search results appeared immediately.
Most were listings advertising “professional chat history recovery” and “permanently deleted file restoration.” Jiang Yi knew most of them were scams, but he couldn’t afford to care anymore. Find the original chapter at g.com.
He randomly opened one store.
The customer service avatar was gray.
He tried another.
Offline.
Another.
Still offline.
Jiang Yi’s heart pounded faster and faster. The tension inside his chest had been stretched to its absolute limit, and he felt as though he were about to lose his mind.
The fifth store was called “A-Qiang Tech.”
The customer service representative was online, with a cartoon character wearing sunglasses as the profile picture.
Jiang Yi practically hammered out the message, [Can you recover a deleted WeChat account?]
More than ten seconds passed before the other person replied, [No.]
Jiang Yi immediately typed, [What if I pay more?]
The reply came back, [Paying more won’t help. It’s a technical issue. Once WeChat deletes the server data, it’s gone. Nobody can recover it.]
Jiang Yi stared at those words for three seconds before backing out and opening another store.
The sixth.
The seventh.
The eighth.
Finally, the ninth store.
It was called “Tech Xiao Wang,” and its status read, “Professional Solutions for All Kinds of Difficult Problems.” The customer service avatar was a panda with a cigarette hanging from its mouth.
Jiang Yi sent the same message, [Can you recover a deleted WeChat account?]
This time, the response came almost immediately.
[We can try, but there’s no guarantee.]
Jiang Yi’s breath caught.
[How much?]
[300 yuan. Payment upfront. No refund if it doesn’t work.]
300 yuan.
All the spending money Jiang Yi had on him added together was barely over 200 yuan.
[Can you make it cheaper? I need it urgently.]
[Urgent or not, there’s nothing I can do about the price. This job requires finding someone who can access an interface. It’s troublesome.]
Jiang Yi gritted his teeth and transferred every last bit of money in his WeChat balance.
182.3 yuan.
He sent a screenshot along with another message, [This is all I have. I’ll pay this first and make up the rest later.]
The other person went silent for several seconds.
Jiang Yi’s thumb hovered above the screen as he stared fixedly at the chat window. Sweat soaked his palm, making the phone case slick in his grip.
Finally, the customer service representative replied, [Fine. Send me the WeChat ID.]
Jiang Yi immediately typed in the ID of the deleted account.
It was the account he had used for more than two years specifically for his online relationship with Su Xiaoyue—a chaotic string of letters and numbers he knew even better than his own ID number.
[Ten minutes.]
Jiang Yi clutched his phone and leaned heavily against the metal door. His back pressed against the freezing surface as he gulped down breath after breath.
The wind on the rooftop was fierce, whipping his hair wildly across his face, but he didn’t bother brushing it aside.
His eyes remained locked on the screen.
He waited for that avatar to light up again.
He waited.
Just like Su Xiaoyue, perched at the edge of the building, waiting for a message that would never come.
Su Xiaoyue had one foot on the building’s ledge while the other remained on the rooftop. She clutched her phone in both hands, her tear-soaked fingers repeatedly tapping the screen.
[Brother, are you there?]
[Brother, please reply to me.]
[Brother, I’m begging you.]
[Brother, Brother, Brother, Brother—]
There was no profile picture beside any of her messages.
Only a line of gray text appeared each time.
[The recipient has deleted their account and cannot receive messages.]
Su Xiaoyue seemed not to see it.
She typed another message.
[Brother, do you remember what you promised me? You said that after I finished the college entrance examination, you’d take me to see the ocean. We’d go to Qingdao together. You said the sea there is blue, not yellow.]
Send.
Gray text.
[Brother, you also said that when we finally met, you’d hug me. You said I’d definitely be prettier than I looked in my photos. And you said… you said I was the most well-behaved girl you’d ever met.]
Send.
Gray text.
The battery indicator in the upper-right corner flickered.
9% became 8%.
Su Xiaoyue glanced at it, but her fingers didn’t stop.
[Brother, I’m going to find you now. Remember to come and pick me up.]
Send.
Gray text.
7%.
[Brother, I don’t blame you. If you’ve started hating me, just tell me. I won’t keep bothering you… I just want to know why…]
Send.
Gray text.
6%.
[Brother, you promised you’d never leave me all alone.]
Send.
Gray text.
5%.