“How have you been lately?” Tang Xin looked terribly haggard, noticeably thinner by several pounds. “Let me tell you, I’ve been absolutely swamped recently. That University Student Entrepreneurship is nothing but a pain. It’s a load of rubbish—this so-called entrepreneurship for college students doesn’t make a cent. What kind of business are they even creating?”
She vented her frustration, furious over putting in so much effort only to receive not even one percent of the return she hoped for.
“All right, all right, why don’t you just quit the competition then?” Pei Xingyan was unfazed. He had originally advised her not to waste her energy on such thankless tasks—or rather, tasks that only pleased the teachers without benefiting anyone else.
Whether in college or society, good things never come with the impossible triangle of high pay, easy work, and low barriers.
Just like the work he was doing now—helping people with psychological issues—it sounded like it had no barriers, but in reality, the threshold was incredibly high. There was no room for error in any aspect.
“That sounds easy for you to say. You’re the one who has to report to the teachers for me, huh?” Tang Xin chatted half-heartedly, then suddenly remembered to ask Pei Xingyan what he wanted with her. “Hey, you mentioned before about checking some backstage info. Did something happen?”
“There’s no real problem, just need to take a look,” Pei Xingyan said without revealing the full reason. After all, it was just a suspicion for now. If his theory about Su Shanshan’s mental state turned out to be true, the fewer people who knew, the better.
“Your app already has a backdoor. You can just enter developer mode and check it yourself.”
Tang Xin pulled out her phone and demonstrated. In just a few steps, she taught Pei Xingyan how to access it.
A good boss must absolutely trust their tech backbone—sometimes even more than themselves.
Pei Xingyan got the method and immediately stopped the conversation. Just then, Tang Xin’s phone also buzzed. The two sat on opposite ends of the bench, heads down, each focused on their own screens.
Pei Xingyan carefully scanned the backend, searching through Su Shanshan’s chat logs.
He flipped through for a long time before finding those long messages from that day—not because he was careless, but because Su Shanshan sent him hundreds of messages every day, an overwhelming flood that made his eyes spin.
Pei Xingyan steadied himself and examined them closely.
He wasn’t mistaken. Su Shanshan really had sent him those messages—text, voice, images, videos—all recorded in the backend as sent by her.
But the strange thing was, she later deleted those messages.
Though Pei Xingyan didn’t understand how Tang Xin had done it, the backdoor she left behind recorded every little detail about the app.
Among the records was a meticulous log of Su Shanshan sending messages to him in the dead of night, then deleting those messages on her own phone just before dawn.
What was going on?
Pei Xingyan felt goosebumps all over and, despite his fear, kept scrolling upward. He found the messages from that day when Su Shanshan, emotionally charged, scolded him.
And again, she deleted those records from her phone that same night.
He couldn’t help but think of a word—sleepwalking.
Su Shanshan seemed to get up in the middle of the night, send him all those messages, then, in a daze, delete them herself before going back to sleep peacefully, waking up the next morning remembering nothing.
That was why when he asked her, she was completely clueless.
Pei Xingyan felt this was utterly absurd. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t figure out why!
Last time she scolded him like that, he wasn’t even angry. This time, she kept interrogating him like a real landmine girl—why was she so cagey?
And why delete the records from her own phone?!
Isn’t that just burying your head in the sand?
He didn’t believe Su Shanshan was a complete online fool. She was a seasoned digital artist, after all. How could she not know that deleting records on her end only made them invisible to herself, while he could still see them perfectly on his side?
Pei Xingyan racked his brain, feeling his back turn icy cold.
This was too bizarre. No matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation.
Other things were easier to explain—for example, why she said she didn’t remember. He could understand that as her fear of being distanced from him, or even that Su Shanshan really was a dissociative identity disorder patient, and those actions weren’t done by her ‘main’ personality, so she refused to take responsibility.
But the fact that she deleted those messages on her own phone was as if she was afraid of discovering what she had done herself—
No…
Pei Xingyan suddenly trembled uncontrollably, startling Tang Xin beside him into a brief shiver.
His heart pounded wildly. Even when he was a kid watching Ju-on and The Ring with Ye Ziwei, he had never felt this scared.
A possibility—a very real, terrifying possibility—was growing clearer in his mind.
Pei Xingyan now believed that maybe Su Shanshan really hadn’t lied. Maybe she truly didn’t know what she had done.
He hurriedly opened his phone and searched: “Dissociative identity disorder patients—do they know about their other personalities?”
The answers varied. Some said yes, some said no. But among thousands of responses, this possibility did exist.
Pei Xingyan took a deep breath.
If Su Shanshan really had dissociative identity disorder, but didn’t know she had it, nor that other personalities existed, then naturally she wouldn’t be aware of what she did when not ‘herself.’
And the other personalities, in order to conceal their existence, would try their best to erase any evidence they left behind…
This was a very reasonable explanation. Though there was no absolute proof, Pei Xingyan felt it was almost certainly the truth.
Otherwise, he just couldn’t explain the irrational things happening to Su Shanshan.
But that meant Su Shanshan’s condition was unimaginably serious. Pei Xingyan had planned to wait until they were closer, until she trusted him more, then bring her to see Doctor Li for an evaluation.
Now it seemed it wouldn’t be that simple.
From this perspective, considering how quickly Su Shanshan’s expression changed in a matter of seconds that day, and how she explained her scolding and apologized later, if she really did have other personalities, then the speed at which they took control was unbelievably fast.
There was no way he could easily take her to the hospital.
Pei Xingyan sighed deeply, lamenting how hard it was to make money.
But in a way, this eased his mind. After all, Su Shanshan had spent no small amount of money, and if he didn’t put in the effort, he wouldn’t feel right.
“What’s with the sighing? Young people shouldn’t be sighing,” Tang Xin said, now looking much more cheerful and lively, even in tone.
“Sigh,” Pei Xingyan sighed again.
“Stop sighing! New business is coming, and it’s two deals!” Tang Xin’s face lit up with anticipation of the money on the way. “Once I close the deals, just wait for the gold to roll in!”
“Sigh!!!”
Pei Xingyan sighed even more heavily. He just hoped these upcoming clients wouldn’t be the kind of troublemakers who made things difficult.