Chapter 26: Can You Please Stop Playing Motion-Sensing Games Next Door?

Why didn’t I ever hear motion-sensing games when I was drinking next door? Every time I opened the door, it was either a level-clearing game or fighting. Am I really that uninteresting? What makes that white-toothed, dark-skinned guy better than me? Is it just because he bought a battery? Seriously, it’s just a battery!

The terrace outside the door was larger than the balcony inside Yu Zhimei’s apartment. Her plants were flourishing, so she bought new pots and soil over the weekend and transplanted them to the terrace. After living in Shanghai for so many years, Yu Zhimei had rented “old, small, broken” apartments where the corridors were stiflingly hot and humid in summer, and her neighbors were strangers. She kept her door locked tight, treating only the space inside as her home. But now, everyone in the unit was familiar, and with Jian Zhaowen next door, using the space outside as an extension of home didn’t seem like a problem anymore.

Sure enough, Xiao Ma Ge started shouting from downstairs: “Yu Zhimei, do you have any humanity? Why are you playing music so early in the morning?”

“It’s not me—it’s Jian Zhaowen.”

Jian Zhaowen had just bought a pair of Devialet speakers for fifty thousand yuan—one upstairs and one downstairs—and was playing Beyoncé’s concert at ten in the morning. When Xiao Ma Ge heard about Jian Zhaowen’s new speakers, he rushed upstairs. Knocking on the door, he was greeted by a groggy Jian Zhaowen: “Brother, you’re sleeping in while blasting four-thousand-five-hundred-watt speakers. How can you even fall asleep?”

“I worked overtime and accidentally dozed off. Did we disturb you? I’ll turn it off right away.”

No one knew that Jian Zhaowen fell asleep in the early hours of the morning while coding with Android Studio and Xcode open. One of his three screens displayed product requirement documents, while the other two were filled with densely written code. The later it got, the clearer his mind became. The downside was that he could fall asleep anytime during the day. One moment he thought the Devialet sound was too loud, and the next he went to grab headphones from the bed—only to collapse as soon as his hand touched the pillow. Jian Zhaowen seemed to be on a countdown; every time he thought about everything Philip took away, he wanted his fingers to move faster. By dawn, his double eyelids had five layers of folds. Xiao Ma Ge saw that Jian Zhaowen’s new speakers weren’t as high-end as the ones he’d sold him and triumphantly descended the stairs. He had already moved his speakers and sofa downstairs, adding a mattress he’d purchased at great expense, making his forty-five square meter apartment feel like a luxury suite, both inside and out. Jian Zhaowen wasn’t used to soft mattresses and, being busy with work, hadn’t bought a sofa. From the corridor into his room, there were only shoes, clothes he brought, and two computers with external monitors—it looked more like an office. While drinking, Jian Zhaowen said that the sofa he left behind when moving out of the apartment was more expensive than the one Xiao Ma Ge had taken over. But moving it to Shanghai wasn’t practical, so he left it along with the rest of the furniture for the next tenant. Hearing this at Miaolin Dessert Shop, Xiao Ma Ge pulled out his phone and opened the calculator, counting zeros on the screen while slamming the table: “Boss Jian, if you think it’s troublesome to deal with, why not call me? I’ll go to Beijing and sell it for you—I’ll take thirty percent commission!”

“Too lazy to clean up.” Jian Zhaowen glanced at Yu Zhimei and saw her drinking quietly without responding, leaving him bored and fiddling with his phone.

“If someone as extravagant as you moves into Xiao Ma Ge’s place, Xiao Ma will definitely rip you off.” It was Yu Zhimei speaking.

“I have principles. Collecting rent, buying second-hand goods cheaply, reselling phones—that sort of thing. I don’t cheat or swindle.”

“Reselling... phones?”

“Yeah, yesterday I went to Songjiang to pick up ten iPhones and sold them in Xujiahui, earning five thousand yuan.”

“... Don’t you have a job?”

“Yu Zhimei, how much does a day’s work pay? I earned five thousand yuan in half a day. Isn’t skipping work justified? Don’t be so obsessed with work. Let’s be clear: working is for money, not dreams, alright? By the way, Boss Jian, did you know that Yu Zhimei went to Beijing to look for you two days before you came back?”

Jian Zhaowen looked at Yu Zhimei, who quickly grabbed her phone and stammered: “It was just work-related. I stopped by to have dinner with an old neighbor.”

“Oh really? Then why did she ask me where you lived? Did you go to his house?” Xiao Ma pressed.

“The call didn’t go through, so I left. I had to catch an early flight back to Shanghai the next day. I didn’t have time to visit his house.”

“Oh.” Jian Zhaowen raised an eyebrow, deliberately avoiding looking at Yu Zhimei.

“If I’d known his ex-girlfriend was living there, I wouldn’t have gone.”

“You two are just guilty. Too bad Yu Zhimei is already someone else’s girlfriend. Jian Zhaowen, what important business did you have in Beijing that you couldn’t even accept Yu Zhimei’s confession? Did you get married or something?” He Jie rolled her eyes impatiently.

Jian Zhaowen held his breath and stayed silent, staring at his phone. Amidst hundreds of avatars, Yu Zhimei’s friend request sat there, and every time he saw it, his heart burned with frustration. He Jie continued stirring the pot: “Yu Zhimei, bring your boyfriend over sometime so we can see what this dancing man looks like.”

Jian Zhaowen slammed his glass onto the table: “He Jie, stop giving me vodka every time I come back. You run a bar—do you only have vodka?”

This was the first time Jian Zhaowen had hated the old house so much. Just an air conditioner unit separated their terraces, meaning that with the terrace door open, he could hear everything next door clearly—the sizzling of grilled meat, video game sound effects, rhythmic noises from the loft—all of it. In the middle of the night, Jian dragged his computers to another living room and turned on music, but the rhythm from next door was still piercingly loud: bang, bang, bang.

His heart felt like it was being cut to pieces. Xiao Ma Ge’s description of the man who took Yu Zhimei dancing—he was about the same height as Jian, slightly dark-skinned but with dazzling white teeth, always smiling brightly because of his perfect smile. Dou Yu—no, Black Guy—had walked upstairs carrying batteries, and Jian felt like he’d been struck by lightning. All he could think was: self-inflicted suffering. Only after carefully asking did he learn that Yu Zhimei had agreed to date Dou Yu just half an hour before he met her. Standing stiffly at the door, Jian finally added Yu Zhimei on WeChat, never expecting his first message to be “Congratulations.”

Lulu was meowing by the screen door on the terrace. Yu Zhimei, barefoot, ran over tiredly: “Lulu, don’t fuss. You can’t go out here. If you get lost again, we won’t find you.” If Jian stood up and jumped onto the terrace, calling Yu Zhimei’s name, he could greet her and reach out halfway to pat Lulu’s head. Soon, he heard another person walk to the screen door, saying crisply: “Why is he always so curious about the outside world?”

You wouldn’t know because next door lives me. Lulu loves me. Back then, when Lulu ran away, it was me who helped Yu Zhimei find him. Moreover, I was the one who lost him in the first place. In other words, this is a memory of shared hardship. Now you’ve entered the scene—what gives you the right? Jian Zhaowen thought bitterly of the man with the gleaming teeth, angrily guzzling Coke until it was empty.

Whenever Dou Yu visited, Jian refused to sleep in the loft, opting instead to spread out a sleeping bag he’d bought during a trip and prepare to sleep in the living room. He didn’t want to hear any rhythmic sounds from the loft. But all his precautions existed only in his imagination. The terrace door next door closed, and the familiar thud of leaning back against the sofa echoed through the wall: bang, bang, bang, dozens of times. Jian, a virile man, grew angrier and angrier, turning on his Devialet speakers and blasting Beyoncé’s concert.

Half an hour later, he smoked on the terrace while Yu Zhimei came out to water her plants, her hair still wet. Jian felt awkward: “The soundproofing in this old house is terrible—you guys really went at it.”

“What are you thinking? We were playing motion-sensing games, for goodness’ sake.”

Hearing the phrase “motion-sensing,” Jian grew even unhappier. Why did they play motion-sensing games when I was drinking next door? Every time I came over, it was either level-clearing or fighting games. Am I really that uninteresting? What made that white-toothed guy better than me? Was it just because he bought a battery? Seriously, it’s just a battery!

Someone inside called for Yu Zhimei. She waved goodbye to Jian. The ashtray under Jian’s feet grew fuller. He hoped he wouldn’t hear the sounds of motion-sensing games while coding—it would make his heart race.

Of course, listening to Beyoncé wasn’t for nothing—to block out noise and stay awake. Jian was typing so fast he was developing tendonitis, diligently building his product. He seriously considered what kind of social app he truly wanted to create. All apps ultimately served ads. The most successful social apps expanded user numbers to a certain scale, then monetized traffic by selling it to brands and the next round of investors, forming a perfect economic loop. That was exactly what Philip had done. Lovedate’s homepage featured long-legged beauties, comment sections full of flaming arguments, and topics sparked by gossip—all designed to drive traffic. Whether users stayed engaged and produced content mattered most; whether they enjoyed using it or found love wasn’t the goal. What Jian wanted to do was simply let users who wanted to date generate value through dating.

In short, he wanted people to genuinely leave their hearts on his product. Just thinking about it made him realize how terrifyingly idealistic it was. To attract the largest number of users and maximize traffic, you needed vulgar, lowbrow content—not high-quality content, which was hard to measure and impossible to monetize. Creating a high-quality app that achieved large-scale profitability was logically inconsistent. Knowing this, Jian didn’t care. If he built his own app, time and money would be his. A small, beautiful app that created value wouldn’t lose even if only one person used it.

He glanced at his stocks. As an early user of Snowball, during the 2015 stock market crash when everyone else’s investments were halved, he only lost thirty percent. His financial strength remained intact. Moreover, shortly after graduation, he’d invested in gold with a senior classmate, earning some money that he steadily reinvested in Tencent’s Hong Kong-listed shares. By now, it was practically a financial product. Originally, he thought about joining forces with Philip after securing angel funding, but looking at his assets now, Jian broke into a cold sweat—thankfully, he hadn’t mentioned having savings. With Philip’s sharp mind, he’d probably strip him bare.

There were three items on Jian’s task list:

1. Quickly figure out the app’s structure and how to differentiate it from existing social apps.

2. Find the earliest batch of users.

3. Refine the matchmaking algorithm. At the mere thought of “algorithm,” he angrily pounded his chest several times: it was precisely because he trusted his algorithm too much that Yu Zhimei—a woman who often made his heart race in the middle of the night—ended up with a muscle-brained idiot.

Damn it, why are they playing motion-sensing games again next door?