Chapter 106 : The Tail End of 2009
Mei Fang spent two weekends accompanying Xia Yuan and Lin Youxi to practice riding bicycle. During this time, Xia Yuan and Lin Youxi also found time to practice on their own.
By the third week, the two of them could already ride their bicycles to school, but they always rode together, with Mei Fang and Xia Yuan protecting the less skilled Lin Youxi.
The winter of 2009 was as cold as the previous year, but the weather was mostly sunny, so the ground wasn’t too slippery. The three of them rode their bicycles to school on such days.
They endured the hardships and worked hard day and night.
They waited together in the cold wind for a companion who overslept.
They bought various snacks at the school gate shop.
Delicious and warm thousand-layer cakes, fragrant pancakes.
They looked at the delicious but always dauntingly expensive sliced rice cakes.
Pan-fried dumplings priced at five yuan for three pieces, or ten yuan for five pieces, were outrageously expensive.
And the sweet oatmeal porridge that was cheap and of good quality, one yuan for a cup, with the option to refill.
Although Mei Fang was mentally prepared for his life in the second year of middle school, he couldn’t help but sigh at how tough studying was back then.
Now, unlike his past life, he wasn’t just thinking about indulging in a particular game.
His spare time was squeezed to maintain the website with Lin Youxi and find time to practice guitar with Xia Yuan
Of course, the most important thing was to maintain his academic performance.
He used to think that the subjects in middle school were mainly theoretical knowledge, and studying wasn’t too difficult. However, the questions he encountered in the Advanced Class were more inclined towards Olympiad-style problems, and occasionally, he would spend a long time pondering the solution for some problems he couldn’t understand.
In his past life, his grades were average, and he wasn’t particularly talented. It was only because now he had people urging him (Xia Yuan and Lin Youxi) and because he had the desire to study hard that he was able to present himself as an excellent student.
In this life, the relationship between Mei Fang and Zhang Ming was more subdued compared to when they first met in high school. After all, they were not sitting together now, and the friendship they had from playing games together in the past didn’t develop because Mei Fang dedicated all his spare time to accompany Lin Youxi and Xia Yuan.
However, the friendships of middle school boys didn’t depend on the depth of emotions. They became familiar with each other through daily conversations.
Compared to Du Zihan, Zhang Ming didn’t have such a strong aversion to girls. On the contrary, due to his reputation as a kind person in the class, he was quite popular among the girls.
Due to the school’s policy, students weren’t allowed to leave the campus during class hours. Many students grew tired of the limited options in the school cafeteria and would go to the school’s railings to buy breakfast from the local vendors. Zhang Ming was among those who helped girls buy breakfast.
Sometimes, Mei Fang would see Zhang Ming being bossed around by others and would remind him a couple of times that he should learn to refuse if he didn’t want to do it. However, Zhang Ming felt it was no big deal and didn’t think much of it. Mei Fang decided not to insist further, thinking that Zhang Ming would eventually feel bothered by it and take a stand on his own.
At this moment, although Xia Yuan could attend classes with Mei Fang and Lin Youxi, her academic performance in the Advanced Class was not smooth. The difficulty level of the math and physics problems she encountered in this class was increasing rapidly. Sometimes, the scores she obtained in this class embarrassed her to the point where she didn’t dare to show them to others. She devoted more of her thoughts to studying, to the extent that sometimes she couldn’t even attend guitar lessons with Mei Fang.
Another source of distress for Xia Yuan came from the pressure brought by Lin Youxi’s excellence.
As the Class Monitor of Class 9 and consistently ranking first in the entire grade, Lin Youxi naturally became the Class Monitor of the Advanced Class as well. Almost every time, she would achieve scores that even amazed the top students in the Advanced Class, and in this class, Lin Youxi was always surrounded by many students, seeking her guidance.
As Lin Youxi’s exclusive desk mate, witnessing the comparisons between them, Xia Yuan couldn’t help but be affected mentally. Mei Fang noticed all of this, so whenever there was an opportunity in class, he would talk to Xia Yuan.
Lin Youxi probably also noticed Xia Yuan’s discomfort. Later on, the students who came to her for advice were often turned down, or their questions were put behind the ones Xia Yuan wanted to ask. Gradually, people stopped surrounding Lin Youxi.
Although the process differed somewhat from the aloof image in Mei Fang’s previous life, it seemed that Lin Youxi was indeed undergoing changes along a similar path.
Meanwhile, the website operation of C Site was currently in a lukewarm upward trend. Since it had A Site (AcFun) as a reference, the platform had gradually formed a stable user base.
Mei Fang maintained strict user selection for C Site, similar to the early days of B Site (Bilibili) in his previous life. However, unlike the early days of A and B Sites, C Site didn’t restrict registrations to specific holidays. They implemented a series of gaming and anime-related multiple-choice and quiz questions, requiring an accuracy rate of over 95% for membership registration. Only registered C Site members could contribute videos and send bullet comments.
Currently, C Site’s official UID0001 was 【Mountain Has Forest】. This account was usually used by Lin Youxi to post site update announcements. However, Mei Fang, in the name of Lin Youxi, also used this account to casually chat with users on the website to gather suggestions.
Mei Fang also has experience in community management from his previous work and was also an anime enthusiast himself. Despite being busy with studies and other aspects of life, whenever he appeared on Baidu Tieba or other forums, he could easily connect with everyone.
Mei Fang, in his role as the site administrator, imitated Lin Youxi’s usual tone of speech, showcasing a cool and elegant demeanor. However, the online community users naturally assumed that the administrator of C Site must be a tech-savvy otaku. Lin Youxi found this amusing because she noticed that Mei Fang was really learning to be like her. She was also amazed by the online community.
In addition to this, Mei Fang secretly sent many popular content creators on A Site (AcFun) free registration codes under the guise of being the C Site owner. Some of them responded to Mei Fang’s invitation, but only a few actually posted videos on C Site. Only the subtitling groups invited by Mei Fang were enthusiastic about submitting their produced anime videos, hoping to spread their beloved anime to a wider audience.
The reason why the local anime culture was able to expand over the past 22 years was because of the early efforts of these passionate anime enthusiasts, especially the subtitling groups who promoted it out of love. Mei Fang was deeply moved by their enthusiasm and dedication during his conversations with them.
Together with Lin Youxi, Mei Fang’s reason for establishing C Site wasn’t driven by commercial motives. He envisioned that as long as the platform could sustain its operation, even with a slight loss, it would still be acceptable.
While there might be future websites following suit or emulating their model to create more commercialized and successful platforms, Mei Fang has no intention of easily changing the current harmonious cultural atmosphere of this community.
Mei Fang’s aspiration was for C Site to stay true to its original intent until the end. Withstand the pressure to maintain the purity of its user selection, and to tread a different path from B Site (Bilibili), which he had known for 22 years. In a way, it might also serve as compensation for the unfulfilled desires of the previous generation of anime enthusiasts who couldn’t find a sense of belonging for 22 years.
After the winter snow, a new year (Lunar New Year) had arrived.
As the ice melted and the snow thawed, the signs of spring gradually awakened.
With the arrival of 2010, following a brief winter break, Mei Fang and his classmates in the second year of middle school soon entered the second semester.
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