Ch117 - Is That Me?

trigger warning: not the most pleasant description of death

“Who keeps knocking, it’s so annoying…” The man’s impatience suddenly vanished  after clearly seeing the two people standing at his door. He felt like he was dreaming. “Ji Xiunian, Lu Xu?”

‘Birth of an Idol’ was currently very popular. Although the man had never followed the show, he often received many notifications about the show when going online. Lu Xu was the centre contestant of the survival show, and even less needed to be said about Ji Xiunian—who didn’t recognise the Film Emperor?

With two popular celebrities appearing at the entrance of his home, the young man momentarily became somewhat stiff. He couldn’t help but look out. “Are you guys recording some reality show?”

“Probably a live broadcast of death.” Lu Xu said this and very naturally walked in.

His attitude was too natural. It made the man subconsciously back up so they could make their way inside.

Ji Xiunian was still a little doubtful on the identity of the decedent. His gaze landed upon the man’s body and he casually asked, “Ding Hongyang?”

“Yes…” Because his name had suddenly been called by a celebrity, Ding Hongyang unconsciously nodded. He asked, full of suspicion, “Nian ge, you know my name?”

He kept unconsciously looking at the two of them, thinking this was some kind of a reality show.

The client name matched, but the client should have been dead by now.

Ji Xiunian looked deeply at Ding Hongyang, then raised his hand to cover his mouth and nostrils. “Can you smell anything?”

When the door had opened earlier, Ji Xiunian had already smelt something strange. It became even more apparent when they entered.

The stench made people’s stomachs churn. It was a nauseating scent.

“Ah!” Ding Hongyang finally came back to his senses, and somewhat panickedly began picking up the garbage on the floor. He didn’t forget to prevent them from coming over for the time being. “I’ve been a bit lazy recently, so I haven’t been cleaning. Aaaaaa I’m so embarrassed, please sit down first, I’ll organise everything quickly…”

The house was littered with miscellaneous objects and socks. Take-out containers piled up in the corners. It was hard to tell when Ding Hongyang had last gone outside. It seemed as if he never threw away any of his trash and it was all left in his room.

“Could you guys not watch me please?” Ding Hongyang was also helpless. As a game addict, he didn’t usually clean up at home. How could he have predicted that two celebrities would suddenly drop by?

If he knew this he would have cleaned his house up beforehand. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been in such a mess.

But if it was a reality show, how did they find his place and how did they know his name?

The more Ding Hongyang thought, the more he thought of how strange it was. He couldn’t help sneaking glances at the two of them.

Lu Xu circled around the place after entering, and asked him when he heard movement inside, “Are you playing games?”

“Mhm.” Ding Hongyang nodded. He suddenly had an inkling of an idea. Could they have come because of his job? As a game streamer, Ding Hongyang could be considered rather popular within the gaming circle.

His hands were quick and pretty. Recently, there were more and more people watching his competitions. Along with that, he had less and less rest. Gaming was Ding Hongyang’s true love. It could be considered a very joyful thing to be able to turn his interest into a profession.

It was just that starting off was difficult. Staying up all night to play games had become a regular occurrence.

Ding Hongyang had been a streamer for three years. The first two years were very difficult to start off with, and not many people watched him. In the past year however, his business began rising. This led him to wanting to strike while the iron was still hot.

The longest time he had challenged himself to not sleep was 48 hours in a row. It was a good challenge.

The more Ding Hongyang thought about this, the more he thought that maybe his identity as a gaming streamer had intersected with the entertainment circle every once in a while, but he still didn’t understand how they had managed to discover him.

Just as he wanted to ask about it, Lu Xu opened his mouth before him. “Ding Hongyang, male, 23 years old…”

After hearing his personal information come out of Lu Xu’s mouth, Ding Hongyang felt even more so that something was off.

Even if they had come here from his livestream ID, there was no way they could know his personal information.

“Cause of death, sudden cardiac arrest from chronically staying up too late…”

Before waiting for Ding Hongyang to voice his suspicions, Lu Xu continued to inform him of his death. “Please look at this message. If you don’t think there are any issues, please sign. I will send you off…”

“What the hell.” Ding Hongyang didn’t retrieve the materials Lu Xu gave him. He only looked at them, full of suspicion. “Is this how variety shows play nowadays? Don’t you think making this kind of joke in front of me is too much…”

No one wanted anyone to make jokes about their life and death in front of them. Even if it was for the sake of a reality show, it wasn’t something Ding Hongyang could accept.

He pressed his lips as he watched Lu Xu. He could only feel that all their fans had been blindfolded from these two people’s true nature. When faced straight on with them, they really didn’t seem very cultured.

On one hand, Ding Hongyang wanted to cooperate with filming the show with them. With these two people’s popularity carrying him, it would be of great help to his profession. But on the other hand, he thought that Lu Xu’s words were somewhat unpleasant. He didn’t know where he had learned to speak of such ghostly things.

As he stood there struggling over this dilemma, Lu Xu had already walked over to Ji Xiunian and gave him his phone. “This order should have been sent three days ago. There was an error in the system’s order distribution, but fortunately it didn’t cause too bad of an impact. However, if you encounter this situation in the future, you must report the error in time and try to help the system avoid the recurrence of this error…”

“Okay, I’ve noted it down.” Lu Xu was full of energy when he taught others. Ji Xiunian listened carefully, obviously taking it to heart.

Ding Hongyang took the interaction of these two people seriously, and felt that the two people seemed to have exchanged roles. Putting aside his previous impression, from his point of view, Lu Xu seemed to be the teacher in this scenario.

“So what you’re saying is he has already been dead for three days, right?” Ji Xiunian looked at the order renewal date and felt that this was even more incredulous. “But isn’t he standing in front of us right now looking perfectly fine?”

“Are you sure he looks perfectly fine?” Lu Xu didn’t answer when he heard this question, and instead replied with another question. He pointed towards the bedroom. “Nian ge, smell it. Isn’t the smell coming from there?”

Lu Xu was right. The pungent smell really did come from the bedroom.

Ji Xiunian couldn’t help but ask, “So, his body is inside?”

Ding Hongyang was annoyed when he heard this. He couldn’t help coming forward and saying, “What body, I’ve been perfectly fine by myself in my home. There’s nothing going on like the nonsense you just said, okay?”

As he spoke, he had already opened the door, to let Ji Xiunian have a good look at it to verify that they were just speaking nonsense. As a result, he was only halfway through his speech when he saw the scene in the room. Ding Hongyang was dumbfounded. He pointed to the smelly, lifeless corpse on the seat. It felt like there had been a sharp impact against his soul. “Is that me?”