Barrage Strategy Guide

The night Lauren ended things with me, the comments swarming my vision went wild. [Mess with her now, regret it forever! Karma’s coming for the male lead!] [Our Lauren’s all tough shell with a soft center—she’s obviously crazy about you!] [Shh, classic plot. How’s the guy supposed to grow without a major screw-up? Just wait till he’s begging on his knees to win her back.] I watched the glass shards slice across the back of my hand, blood dripping onto the carpet. “Anthony, are you quite finished?” Lauren’s voice was cold. “Is all this really necessary over some… misunderstanding?” I looked at her, then at the smug man behind her—her junior, Ralph. A misunderstanding? I’d heard it myself: her laughing with a friend about how I was a free servant you could summon at will, treated worse than a dog. And only moments ago, to defend Ralph, she’d hurled this very glass at me. In that instant, my heart simply stopped. Softly, I said, “Lauren. We’re done.” … Lauren and I had been together for five years. Five years. One thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five days. I’d transformed from a rebellious rich kid into a nameless shadow by her side. For her, I cut ties with my family, turned down offers from prestigious universities abroad, squeezed into a Beijing rental smaller than forty square meters, and took over every part of her life. Groceries, cooking, laundry, cleaning—handling all her trivialities, even fending off her nagging editors. And she was Lauren: the rising literary star, the genius writer. “Anthony, where’s my coffee? Hand-ground, three parts sugar, seven parts milk, under eighty degrees—how many times do I have to tell you!” At six in the morning, Lauren’s irritated voice carried from the bedroom. I immediately set down the breakfast I was preparing and went to wait on Her Highness. [Mornings turn Lauren into a cute, grumpy kitten.] [The male lead is so devoted! This is love—giving up everything to cook for your soulmate.] Right on cue, the streaming comments scrolled past my vision, trying to sugarcoat this suffocating daily grind. Three years ago, these bizarre comments had suddenly appeared before my eyes. Only I could see them. They analyzed my relationship with Lauren endlessly, and their core message never changed: Lauren loved me deeply, and everything she did was an expression of that love. At first, I believed it. When she impatiently shoved away the hot water I offered, the comments would say, [Lauren’s just under a lot of writing pressure—she does care inside.] When she acted oblivious to everything I did, they claimed, [Real love is shown through actions, not words. She just isn’t good at expressing it.] Guided by their “interpretations,” I forgave her again and again, inventing excuses for her coldness each time. I thought I was the one person in the world who truly understood her. Until I became a spineless yes-man, orbiting her and nothing else. “Anthony, what’s wrong with this sweet and sour pork today?” At the table, Lauren took one bite and slammed her chopsticks down. “The meat’s too tough, the sauce is off—are you trying to sabotage my creative inspiration?” I rushed to apologize. “Sorry—maybe the heat was off today. Should I make you something else?” “Don’t bother. I’ve lost my appetite.” She shot me an icy look. “Have you been getting more careless lately? If you can’t even handle something as simple as cooking, what are you even good for?” [Aha, she’s jealous! Lauren must have seen him chatting with the girl at the convenience store yesterday. This is her way of marking her territory!] [A bestselling author staking her claim! We love to see it.] I looked at the comments, then at her utterly unapologetic face, and felt a cold wave tighten my chest. What was I good for? I could queue at five a.m. to buy the soy milk she loved from that old shop. I could drive three hundred kilometers overnight to a mountain in the next city because she “wanted to see snow,” nearly losing my fingers to frostbite. I could recite the best passages from her books, offer ideas when she was stuck—and yet my name was forever absent from her acknowledgments. I abandoned my major, my friends, my family, everything—just to be the man behind her success. And in the end, all I earned was: “What are you even good for?” Deep inside, something finally, quietly broke.