Someone’s Here

Liu Chen moderates “Nancheng Treehole,” an anonymous campus forum, under the username Midnight Lone Wolf. By day, he’s a cold-faced computer science student who never throws away his takeout containers and never speaks to his roommates. By night, he’s the most reassuring voice on the forum, every reply precise and gentle.

Su Wan is a campus radio host and a devoted forum user. She goes by “No Cilantro” online, and Midnight Lone Wolf is the only person she’s willing to confide in. At the start of the new semester, she moves into a shared apartment and discovers that her new roommate is named Liu Chen: a weirdo who eats instant noodles for three days straight without changing flavors and never says more than ten words at a time.

Neither of them knows that the person who understands them best online is right there beside them.

Until one day, Su Wan anonymously posts a story titled “My Roommate Is a Certified Weirdo”…