Tan Ze grabbed a small plastic stool and sat right by the doorway to gnaw on his duck necks. The front door was left wide open, letting the air conditioning from the living room spill out as if electricity were free.
Standing in the living room, Liang Xubai glanced over at Tan Ze still sitting out by the entrance eating, then reached out and pulled the dress off the coffee table. It was blue and white, with a multi-layered puffy dress design on the lower half. The fabric felt stiff to the touch—clearly not top-tier merchandise.
He chuckled, refolding the dress precisely the way it had been and putting it back.
As expected, Liang Xubai received a message from Tan Ze that night at 10:30 PM.
Streamer Flossy Yanbei sent an exclusive photo wearing a dress to the account Black Dog. The photo was taken right in front of the full-length mirror in Tan Ze’s bedroom.
Tan Ze hadn’t curled his hair that day; long, straight black locks hung down against his chest. The slanted V-neck design completely exposed one of his collarbones, and straight legs peeked out from beneath the hem of the dress. His cheeks were puffed out slightly, wearing an expression that looked thoroughly unnatural—like a forced attempt at acting cute.
Liang Xubai read it without replying.
Tan Ze officially went live at 11:00 PM. Black Dog still hadn’t replied to his message; he had no idea whether the guy had seen it or not. Originally, he’d thought about changing out of the outfit if Black Dog didn’t respond.
[The streamer you follow, “Flossy Yanbei,” has started streaming! Hurry up and join the livestream room!]
Tan Ze’s traffic had been pretty decent over the past few days, with peak viewer counts hitting close to a thousand each time, and his core base of regular watchers had doubled compared to before. The cross-dressing stream last effect had worked wonders last time by reeling in Black Dog; who knew, maybe he could hook someone else this time too.
Weighing his options, Tan Ze ultimately decided not to change.
[Why is he wearing a dress again?]
[Whose punishment is it today, streamer?]
[Nobody’s punishing him, I’ve followed every single stream these past few days.]
[So it’s voluntary?]
[This Flossy Yanbei is sliding down the cross-dressing path and never looking back.]
“I’m wearing it on my own today,” Tan Ze tugged at his collar. “This dress is brand new. Does it look okay? The cross-dressing stream last time felt like it had a pretty good effect, so I added an extra broadcast session tonight.”
With that, Tan Ze stood up from his gaming chair, backed up a few steps to frame his entire body in the livestream camera view. He wasn’t wearing shoes that matched the dress, just a pair of house slippers. Even though the dress was a relatively large size, it still looked a bit short on him, resting a section below his upper thighs.
Not daring to linger too long in front of the camera for fear of getting flagged and banned, he jogged back and sat back down after showing the full outfit.
Tan Ze smiled at the lens, his eyes sparkling. “The style I bought looks pretty decent, right?”
“I bought this today on the spot. Original price was three hundred, bargained it down to one hundred and fifty.” As he said this, Tan Ze let out two smug little hums.
“Yeah, wearing a dress brings in more viewers and more gifts. Since everyone likes it, I’ll wear it. After all, everything is about you guys.”
Tan Ze rambled on to himself: “I’ve gotta make a living off this after all. Thanks for the airplane, Xiao Qi, thank you Xiao Qi.”
“We’ll do PK battles in a bit, let’s just chat with everyone for a little while first.” Tan Ze dragged his gaming chair backward, offering a fuller view of the puffy dress bunched up on the chair, stacked in layers just like ocean waves.
He waited all the way until midnight, but no gift arrived from Black Dog. Since Black Dog’s account was a bare-bones burner with no entrance animation and hadn’t even joined his fan club, and because the user stayed completely silent without sending gifts, Tan Ze had no earthly way of knowing if he was even watching.
At midnight, Xu Xiu pulled him into a PK battle, and just like usual, he lost several rounds in a row. Tan Ze got penalized multiple times—and while they were all harmless little punishments, he still felt an inexplicable wave of irritation when his expectations fell flat.
Annoyed that Black Dog didn’t keep his word, annoyed that the guy was playing mind games with him.
Right before ending the stream, Tan Ze thanked the leaderboard contributors one by one, stood up to bow to the camera, and sat back down to chat for a bit out of habit before finally shutting down the livestream room.
The moment he was off-camera, he recklessly yanked his dress up. His thighs were already rubbed bright red and covered in scratch marks, with uneven bumps swelling up. It itched terribly.
Whatever material that dress was made of, Tan Ze was clearly having an allergic reaction.
He didn’t have any allergy medication on hand, nor any spare ointment to apply, so he simply stripped the dress off, tossed it aside, and checked his phone for nearby pharmacies. Loratadine cost thirty-six a box, plus a five-yuan delivery fee.
And the pharmacy was a full kilometer away.
Tan Ze surrendered to his fate, dragging himself to the closet to dig out a pair of loose shorts to pull on so he could head downstairs and buy some himself.
To his surprise, Liang Xubai—who usually turned his lights out ages ago at this hour—was still wide awake. Through the gap in the door, the light was clearly visible in the dark.
Tan Ze walked straight to the entryway to change his shoes when a faint sound of a door opening came from behind him.
“Where are you going?”
Tan Ze didn’t even look back, his voice flat. “None of your business.”
….
The next day, Tan Ze washed the blue dress, hung it up, and listed it for sale on a second-hand marketplace platform. He sold it for a dirt-cheap price—or rather, it wasn’t worth much to begin with.
Cutting the price in half was already an overstatement.
His bad luck, figured.
He obviously couldn’t just message Black Dog and ask why he didn’t send any gifts.
Instead, he could only enthusiastically edit a message and send it over to ask if the guy had watched the stream yesterday.
Tan Ze: [Black Dog-ge, I wore a dress for the stream yesterday. Did you catch it? What did you think? Would you mind giving Xiao Bei a little feedback… ><!]
As he typed, Tan Ze felt a faint wave of nausea rising in his throat.
He desperately needed a top-tier financial supporter right now. Whenever he did PK battles—unless it was a team match decided by pure luck—he practically lost every single time, and his pathetic scores were always cobbled together one tiny 9.9-yuan gift at a time.
He didn’t know many influencers, and the rare times he did PKs were when Xu Xiu set them up; the actual organic traffic being funneled his way was minimal.
With random matching, the creators who were more famous than him didn’t want to battle him, while the ones just as obscure as him yielded no traffic or engagement. Ten minutes of PK fighting would net him nothing more than pocket change.
As Xu Xiu had said, starting out as a streamer—especially a male streamer starting out—meant you couldn’t afford to care too much about pride.
The golden rule was simple: suck up to them and provide emotional value.
Otherwise, the moment you opened your mouth, it was just about money—who would willingly play the fool and get taken for a ride for no reason?
As exhausting as being a boot licker was, nobody in their right mind argued with money.
Black Dog still hadn’t replied.
Feeling a bit fatigued, Tan Ze walked over to the fridge, popped open a can of soda, and stared at the bubbles fizzying up inside the aluminum, a wave of anxiety creeping over him.
Without a sound, Liang Xubai materialized behind him and called out his name.
Startled out of his wits, Tan Ze instinctively took a step back and glared at him with guarded eyes. “What?”
“…” Liang Xubai lifted his eyelids to look at him, his tone flat as he delivered the news. “Your dad is coming to Jiang City. Did he tell you?”
“When? I didn’t know.” Taken aback, Tan Ze pulled out his phone and started scrolling through his chat logs, wondering if he’d somehow missed a notification.
Liang Xubai cast an indifferent downward glance at Tan Ze’s phone screen, noticing that a familiar chat window with a slightly darker color ranking near the very top. The corners of his lips twitched into a subtle, knowing smile.
Failing to find any message from Tan Chengxuan, Tan Ze clicked his screen dark. “How do you know, and what’s he coming here for?”
Leaning back against the fridge with his arms crossed, Liang Xubai replied, “Probably to see old classmates. Though my dad probably won’t have time to see him.”
Though spoken without intent, the words hit home; Tan Ze felt a sudden, sour ache in his chest. Forcing a smile, he let out a snide, barbed remark: “People in your family really are cut from the exact same cloth.”
Liang Xubai gave him a scrutinizing look for a moment. “Oh?”
“Arrogant and self-absorbed to a fault,” Tan Ze said evenly, taking a large gulp from his soda can.
Liang Xubai let out an unbothered chuckle and replied with a nonchalant “Oh.”
Choosing to ignore him further, Tan Ze strode away, returning to his room and slamming the door shut behind him with a resounding crash.
Liang Xubai grabbed a matching can of soda from the fridge and retreated to his own room as well.
Tan Chengxuan really was coming to Jiang City. Strangely enough, Liang Xubai had found out about it long before Tan Ze ever heard a peep from his own flesh and blood.
It wasn’t until the day before Tan Chengxuan set off that Tan Ze finally received a message saying he’d be dropping by to check on him.
That night, Tan Ze ended his livestream early. Lately, he’d fallen into a habit of sending Black Dog a message every single day. The only exception was the day before yesterday, when Black Dog had finally replied with a brief message saying he was busy recently.
At least it wasn’t total radio silence, and he hadn’t gone off watching other streamers—a small mercy amidst a string of bad news.
After logging off, Tan Ze tossed and turned in bed, utterly unable to fall asleep. He stared blankly at the ceiling, where a patch of light and shadow differed from the rest because his curtains hadn’t been pulled completely shut.
Tan Chengxuan wasn’t coming to see him. That much was beyond doubt.
Tan Chengxuan was hardly the loving father type. Ever since he and Tan Ze’s mother, Cheng Xinya, had divorced, Tan Ze had lived with his grandparents. During holidays and summer breaks, he would be shipped off to either Tan Chengxuan’s or Cheng Xinya’s place under the guise of “maintaining family bonds.”
Both of them had remarried—Tan Chengxuan when Tan Ze was fifteen, and Cheng Xinya when he was eighteen. Now, each had a happy and fulfilling new family. Tan Chengxuan had fathered another son the year he remarried; the boy was five years old now and had just been gifted an apartment bought entirely by Tan Chengxuan.
Cheng Xinya had given birth just that year; an older mother, she had delivered a baby girl via C-section back in January.
At the time of the divorce, Tan Ze’s custody had legally fallen to Tan Chengxuan, but Tan Chengxuan had promptly dumped him onto his grandparents. His interactions with Tan Chengxuan were minimal, their father-son dynamic as painfully polite and distant as two strangers.
Tan Chengxuan loved putting on a facade of authority. Periodically, he would summon Tan Ze for a short stay, forcing him to sit through a long-winded, insufferable lecture. From middle school and high school all the way through college, Tan Chengxuan acted as though he deeply cared about Tan Ze’s grades, yet he had never actually managed to remember a single one of them.
The man just went through the motions of playing the role, and Tan Ze went through the motions of playing along. He desperately tried to act like the obedient, low-maintenance, high-achieving son, while Tan Chengxuan frantically performed the part of a clear-conscience father.
Ah, the ties of blood.
Tan Ze didn’t particularly want to see Tan Chengxuan; the bitter resentment in his chest hadn’t faded yet. For years, he had played the good boy to perfection, yet he hadn’t managed to squeeze a single penny of tangible benefit out of his stingy father, while his half-brother had quietly walked away with an entire apartment.
His demands weren’t even high—he just wanted to move out and live on his own, yet Tan Chengxuan had silently shoved him right into someone else’s home.
Tan Ze figured that roughly eighty percent of the reason he was always forced to live under someone else’s roof could be blamed squarely on his dear old dad.
I really need to buy a house.
Tan Ze thought hazily just as sleep finally pulled him under.