William Harper reluctantly placed his newly bought phone on the seat in front of him. He had originally intended to wedge it between two closely seated passengers, but because he was too agitated, he ended up stuffing it into the lap of one of the chubby male passengers.

The male passenger’s face turned bright red, and he whispered, “How did you tell that I’m GAY!”

William Harper immediately blushed all over, desperately wanting to swear on the 12TB of “serious materials” in his eight hard drives that he was as straight as steel! If only he had those 12TB of study materials with him, he might have impulsively made them public right then and there.

As for the consequences...

Disseminating XXOO information would definitely get him arrested!

As soon as the subway arrived at the next station, William Harper got off early, even though he still had twelve stops to go before reaching home. He was too embarrassed to retrieve his phone, which was still valiantly playing “Let’s Go Have Some Fun Together,” and left it to that “I’m GAY” guy.

It took William Harper two extra hours to get home than usual, and he was in a particularly foul mood. He turned on his computer, and his first reaction was to search for cheap phones. Without a phone, modern people simply can’t get by, as if they’ve lost the ability to breathe. But he had only graduated recently, his income wasn’t very high, and the phone he’d abandoned today was also a recent purchase. He really didn’t have the money to splurge again, so he could only look at the cheapest youth editions from various brands.

Just as William Harper was seriously comparing the cost-performance ratios of various budget phones, an unsolicited pop-up appeared, and the background music was actually that same “Let’s Go Have Some Fun Together.”

William Harper almost smashed his computer too, but luckily he was quick and clicked the little “x” in the upper right corner of the pop-up, barely suppressing that “demonic impulse.”

“If I smash my computer too, I’ll be eating pickled vegetables for at least three months. I’ve already lost too much today, I can’t afford to lose any more.”

William Harper stroked his computer with heartache, as tenderly as a king comforting a wrongly accused minister, but then a page caught his eye. It had a very eye-catching headline: “Get a Phone for One Yuan.”

William Harper knew that this so-called big giveaway was definitely unreliable—probably some virus or trojan-infested junk site—but he couldn’t help himself, relying on his professional background, and clicked on it anyway.

The page was actually quite clean, and a form to fill in his address popped up quickly.

William Harper hesitated for a moment, then tried entering his address. The page immediately switched to a countdown timer, which startled him—he thought he’d downloaded a time bomb.

Fortunately, his engineering-trained brain rationally told him that computer networks hadn’t evolved to the point of transmitting physical objects, so he calmed down and took a closer look at the page. The countdown was actually for the phone’s delivery, showing that it would arrive at his home in 29 minutes and 8 seconds.

William Harper spat and cursed, “Damn, that fast? Do you think you’re a food delivery service?”

He was now convinced he’d encountered a scam site, though he wasn’t sure what they were after—maybe collecting personal info, maybe planting a trojan. Either way, William Harper didn’t care much; he was a computer whiz, his computer’s security was top-notch, and ordinary hackers couldn’t get through. Even if they did, it didn’t matter—there was nothing of value on his desktop anyway.

Just as he was continuing his painstaking comparison of which cheap phone had the best value, almost forgetting to eat or sleep, the doorbell suddenly rang. He hesitated for a moment—even though he remembered he hadn’t ordered takeout, hadn’t bought anything online recently, and didn’t owe the landlady any money—he still went to open the door.

A young man in a yellow courier uniform skillfully handed him a package, didn’t even ask for a signature, said nothing more, and didn’t even check if he was the recipient—just turned and left in style.

Leaving William Harper standing there bewildered, it was the first time he’d ever received such a badass delivery.

“Did they deliver someone else’s package by mistake?”

William Harper quickly saw that the recipient’s name was indeed his own, so it definitely wasn’t the courier’s mistake. If there was a mistake, it was society’s.

He found a box cutter and opened the package, only to find an extremely simple wrapping: a layer of corrugated cardboard on the outside, a wad of old newspaper inside...

At the very center was a phone with no packaging or accessories whatsoever—not even a charging cable.

That’s when he remembered the “Get a Phone for One Yuan” page.

“Did they really send me a phone? Wait, that can’t be right! Even if it’s a one-yuan phone, you still have to pay one yuan. I never paid a cent, so how did this phone get delivered? Are authors these days so eager to give protagonists cheat items that they don’t even bother with basic logic anymore?”

While complaining, William Harper tossed the corrugated cardboard and old newspaper into the trash and took out a long, narrow phone.

Yes! Long and narrow.

This phone was actually an extremely rare and bizarre 21:9 aspect ratio. The entire front was a screen, with no buttons at all, and the screen-to-body ratio was as high as 98.888%.