Chapter Two: The Whole City Shuts Up

Lin Mo shared it with no one. Five minutes later, Tang Ke dropped the same picture into the office group chat. “Who made this? It looks just like Rice Ball downstairs, lol.” By two, distribution reached three percent. Lin Mo ran downstairs. Rice Ball slept on a cardboard box, his neck bare. At 3:22, a student who filmed pet videos passed by. At four, someone remixed the meme into “office cat gets promoted.” At 5:40, distribution crossed twelve percent. When Rice Ball woke, a red bow tie existed around his neck. The store owner insisted the cat had always worn it and produced a photograph from three months earlier as proof. The bow tie was in that photograph. It was absent only from the picture Lin Mo had taken that afternoon.