Baby Reindeer

Year 2017

I met him in 2017, 7 years ago, when I was 15 and Eminem’s album Revival was dropped. I was a crazy fan of Eminem at that time, so was he. He DM’d me on BiliBili, a Chinese video-sharing platform just like Youtube. He said:

I’m just sooo excited that Eminem dropped his new album today, so I decide to find someone and buy them this album as a gift. I saw your comments under so many of his videos, so I think you’ll be the lucky one!

Yes, as I just mentioned, I was crazy for Eminem so I left my comment under almost every one of his videos on Bilibili. Probably part of me saw this as a goal, a way to prove that I’d been there. You know, I came I saw I conquered. So obviously, that was how I attracted his attention.

I felt like I was blissed. Maybe a little exaggerated, but that was my first time winning anything just based on my luck. I added him on QQ, a Chinese messaging app with a funny name, especially if your’re French. Honestly, I thought he’d buy me a physical album, turned out it was just a digital one. But anyways, beggers can’t choose. Well, he also got me two months of premium membership for the music app, so shut up girl.

This is exactly what I thought at that time. Even though he only spent like 50 RMB, or £5.5, I thought ofc I couldn’t delete him straightly after this. Then, we started chatting. In the first evening, he already decided to share all of his traumas. According to him, he had always been a straight-A student till the big big entrance exam for high school. His grades could only got him into a vocational school, which is terribly dispised by us Chinese (I’m sry). Ever since the result came out, his mom was crying all the day. His dad was furious that he chased him with a knife across several blocks. After that, he decided to lock himself in the bedroom without food or water for a whole week. He peed in the bottle if he had to.

It’s just easier to open up to a complete stranger, isn’t it, especially when they are paid or bribed by £5.5 to hear all this shit. But still, I didn’t delete him, cuz of his favor of one digital album and two-month premium membership. But I was 15, so I don’t think you can expect too much from me. I couldn’t just buy a ticket, fly 1400 miles to find him, chase him with a knife, and force him to leave me the fuck alone. Disappointing, I know.

We kept talking on and off for two weeks or so. Then he started to set this rule, REQUIRING me to reply him in five minutes. If I was unable to do so, I had to tell him in advance. Or else, there would be a big meaningless argument about how I wasted his time waiting for my reply. When did I ask him to wait tho? He just had some control issues and was unwilling to admit.

Things went on like this for another one month or two. Then this day came. I completely forgot about his messages that night, so when I realized I was scared cuz I knew what would happen: an hour long fight with no result but my sleep hour deprived. If you’re Chinese, you’ll know how life is like during high school; if you’re not, basically, we get up at 6:30 or earlier, sit in the classroom for 15 hours, and go to sleep after 12. First of all, how do you expect a busy-and-exhausted-af student to reply you at anytime; second of all, I need to sleep; third of all, WHO ARE YOU?

So I just decided to pretend that I fell asleep and reply him the next morning. Unfortunately, I forgot again the next day. So I just gave up, no reply anymore. I saw his messages continuously swarming in. Then two days later, he deleted me. One day later, my friend from junior high sent me a screenshot of that guy asking her: Why isn’t she replying? Is she sick? Did she reply to you? Did she use QQ in the past three days? Fucking sick. Think about it, how could he add my friend if he had deleted me? He was so prepared when he press the delete button. He probably wrote down every account that may know me well.

I told her to leave him alone. Since that day, he started to send me messages on every platform, BiliBili, the music app, and trying to add me on QQ using three different accounts.

Year 2019-2020

Yes, he kept adding me for two and a half years. He would be amazingly successful if he had done some other things with this kind of persistence. That’s what my mom would say if she knows about this.

It was the winter vacation just before COVID-19 hit us. I came home from the last day in school. I was so happy so obviously I decided to ruin my mood by finally accepting his friend request. I thought, all I needed to do was just explain what happened that day and say goodbye. Just as easy as that.

Of course not. What are you thinking? In less than ten seconds after I clicked “accept”, he sent me like 50 screenshots of our previous chats and he said

Look, our talks were perfect for a moment…if you didn’t delete me
We would still be friends if you didn’t do that
I’m so heartbroken. All I could do was just to read our chat history again and again and again.
It’s all your fault.
But it’s all good now you’ve added me back.
Don’t delete me ever again please.

One can even make themself believe their own lies. Did I delete him or did he delete me? What a great trick to blame everything on me.

I thought he almost tricked me, but maybe he did to some degree. I always think I’m not that kind of people that can get gaslighted, but holy shit, words can affect your brain so much and so quickly. I don’t know why I felt a tiny bit of guilt at that time so I didn’t delete him, again.

So these are the two funny and desparate ways he used to threaten me not to delete him:

1.Heartbroken love story of his: “My ex told me she liked me just before we graduated from junior high. Then she went for high school and me vocational school. She told me she needed to cut all digital devices during the last year of high school for Gaokao (or Chinese National College Entrance Examination, NCEE). I agreed. I waited for her for a whole year. When the exam was finished, I couldn’t believe she even had the audacity to tell me that she wanted a break-up? Then she turned away and got together with a stupid guy from her class. Fucking cheater.”

I guess he tried to tell me his pathetic life story to prevent me from “abandoning” him like his ex did. But seriously, his ex might also use three years to excape from him and just found a better excuse than I had.

2.Suicide threat: “Don’t delete me! If you delete me, I’ll cut myself. Wait, just ten minutes, I’ll go find the scissiors.” *Ten minutes later* *Sent a picture of his arm with red marks but no cuts or blood* “The scissors are too dull.”

Dw, the second one was too funny I didn’t believe a bit of his words. I knew he was a coward and could never have the ball to do it.

This time I kept him in my contact for four months, during which we didn’t really talk much. So I told him to delete me when we hadn’t talked for days, and he shockingly said yes, but of course regreted in less than one minute. I never added him back since.

During this year, he found my phone number, my high school name, and my Baidu Netdisk account (like iCloud but it’s an app that syncs everything on your phone). I’ve no idea how he got any of this. Before the second time he deleted me, one day he sent me a picture. I thought it was familiar so I asked what it was. He said, you don’t recognize it? It’s from your Baidu Netdisk. I was scared to fucking death. That means he also had my password, right? But how, I asked. He said, hehe, guess. I thought, fuck off, stupid asshole. Luckily, that account wasn’t the one that I normally use and that was the only picture on it. I knew he had my phone number because he sent me a text after my Gaokao to ask me how I did.

Year 2021-2022

Unfortunately, I only got rid of them two years ago. He found my Weibo account (another Chinese social media just like Twitter), and used ten or more accounts to harass me on Weibo. Ofc I blocked every one of them. Well, my friend said, why don’t you talk with him, maybe it’ll work. I thought, how could it work, but I still followed the advice cuz I’m a good friend. I asked, what on earth do you want. He said, the answer doesn’t matter anymore, the end of the story has doomed. Bye bye, fucking poet.

Well, I know I said I never added him back since 2020, but except for this time when I didn’t recognize it was him. That was the first time I knew people could find my Wechat account by searching QQ account. So if you didn’t know this, please check your setting and turn it off.

He also sent a long message again on BiliBili, saying that was the last message he would ever send me and wishing me have a good result on an exam that I’d no idea which one he was talking about.

And that’s finally the end.

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