Stolen Face

That night, a little after ten, someone suddenly added me on QQ. I never liked connecting with strangers, but his request read: “Let me expose your girlfriend’s secret.” So I accepted, even though I was pretty sure he was lying to me.

No sooner had I accepted than he messaged me: “Chen Mu, do you like men or women?”

Seeing that, I had the urge to block him right away, but the fact that he’d called me by name made me think maybe it was someone I knew playing a prank. So I asked directly who he was and what he wanted, warning that if he kept wasting my time, I’d delete him.

He replied quickly: “I’ll be straight with you then. Your girlfriend isn’t a woman—she’s a man pretending to be one.”

I only sent back two words: “Idiot.”

Then I ignored him, closed the chat window, and went back to my game. But he kept messaging, relentless. I didn’t reply, but I read what he sent. He told me to think about why my girlfriend’s voice was rougher than most women’s, why she never wore tight pants, why she’d never let me share her bed, wouldn’t even let me touch her chest.

Honestly, I froze when I finished reading, because every point hit home.

I’d met my girlfriend a month earlier in a local group chat. She looked delicate, but her voice really was a bit strange—not unlike a certain famous actress’s, but definitely husky. She’d told me she was conservative and wanted to wait until marriage before giving herself to me, said she didn’t like men who were too forward. So I’d kept my distance, never tried to cross the line; we held hands at most, maybe