In the spring of 2020, when the world felt like a held breath, Lin Wei, a 22-year-old college student in Shanghai, found himself scrolling Bilibili at 2 a.m. again. The pandemic had turned his dorm into a gilded cage. His days blurred into livestreams, danmaku scrolling like digital rain, and the hollow comfort of autoplay.
The link led to an unlisted Bilibili stream. No chat. No likes. Just a live feed of a different room: a basement, walls lined with old calendars from 2019. In the center, a radio crackled. A voice—same boy, older now, maybe seventeen—whispered into the mic:
One night, an anonymous upload appeared in his recommendations. No thumbnail. No title. Just a string of numbers: . He almost swiped past. But the view counter read zero , and something about the stillness of it pulled him in.
In the danmaku of that final night, one line lingered above all others, scrolling gold:
He messaged @OldSoul_2003 again: “What do you need?”
“They told us to stay home to stay safe. But some of us were already trapped. Deliver us from the fathers who shout. From the mothers who drink. From the silence after the slam.”
Desperate for answers—or distraction—Lin Wei sent a DM. Ten minutes later, a reply: “Watch this before midnight. Don’t watch alone.”