Volume 41: Fellow Sufferers Empathize With Each Other

On November 11th at 4:00 in the morning, the housing district was completely dark. Only one window was still lit with a lonely light.

The otaku[1] Little Zhou was drinking Diet Coke with a cigarette in his hand and facing the screen. A hot, domestic TV series was being broadcasted. When he saw a funny clip, Little Zhou rewound the footage and opened the screenshot software. This whole snippet was saved as a GIF and he tapped away on the keyboard to add some text.

His profession wasn’t a normal one in the eyes of his parents and elders. Little Zhou specialized in making online emojis and selling them on major chat platforms. He couldn’t be considered a leader in the industry, and his monthly income could only just allow him to scrape by with the rent and basic life expense...