The biggest difference between Sunshining Network and regular websites is that it has more reporters than editors.
Mia Ginger looked at the half-empty work area, slung her bag over her shoulder, quickly caught up with Hugo Potter’s pace, and went downstairs with him.
As soon as Hugo got downstairs, he flagged down a cab.
Mia hesitated for a second and didn’t mention that she’d driven; the two of them got into the taxi.
"What’s your WeChat?" Hugo asked once he was settled.
Mia took out her phone and opened WeChat; Hugo scanned her QR code and quickly pulled her into the work group "Society Section."
Mia promptly edited the group contact remark.
Hugo had already started scrolling through Twitter. After he finished, he said to Mia, "Take a look at this. This is our news tip for today. A post that blew up online first thing this morning: a middle schooler in Swirl District suddenly passed out while playing games in an internet café and died after resuscitation failed at the hospital. His mom got into a dispute with the hospital. This tweet was posted by his family."
"Mm." Mia quickly skimmed it on his phone, then asked, "What about the hospital angle?"
"Sister Chapman went to follow that." Hugo thought for a moment, then said, "She’ll be in charge of the follow-up on that side. Our main job is the undercover visit to the black internet cafés. The places we’re going later are basically all in ’villages-in-the-city’, the environment’s bad, so be mentally prepared."
Mia smiled. "I grew up in a village-in-the-city."
Hugo: "..."
After a moment, he suddenly laughed. "Right, online they say—cough, cough—you went missing for quite a few years before."
Mia smiled and didn’t reply.
Back then the Ginger Family’s affair had been all over the internet. As people in a circle closest to the news, it wasn’t surprising her colleagues knew who she was. Some of them had probably even dug up her background. She was prepared for that and had no intention of hiding it.
"Ever written news copy before?" Hugo asked again.
Mia shrugged. "Just stuff at school. I don’t have much experience."
"School writing is fine. Writing news isn’t like writing fiction. If you want to put it simply, it’s actually pretty simple: time, place, people, cause, process, result—make it clear and you’re good. The key is it all has to be real. Fake information counts as a news accident. But today we’re doing a joint undercover visit, we only need to handle a small piece of it, it’s not that hard. When we get back, you take a crack at writing it and I’ll look it over for you."
"Okay." Mia answered briefly.
Hugo took a car key out of his bag and handed it to her. "Use this for recording later."
The car key was fake. If you didn’t look closely it could pass for real; it was a pretty covert recording gadget.
Mia fiddled with it twice and asked him, "Can’t I just use my phone?"
"You can do both, record on both." Hugo gave her a look and explained, "I’ll be in charge of taking photos later, so the recording is on you. A phone’s the most convenient, but it’s easy to have accidents—someone calls you or whatever, it’ll mess you up. Sister Chapman and the others all carry two, three phones each, but I’m a broke loser, my month is always tight, so I’ve only got the one."
"..." Mia laughed and let it drop.
Hugo was cheerful by nature, blunt and straightforward, didn’t seem to have many hidden thoughts—whatever came to mind, he said.
Sitting with him the whole way, Mia also felt at ease.
In a little over half an hour, the two of them arrived at the undercover location Reagon Chapman had assigned.
The whole process, Mia could only sum up with one phrase: everything that could go wrong did.
She’d grown up in Eastern Peak Village, sure, but she’d basically never been to other villages-in-the-city. Hugo hadn’t either. The two of them went into an alley, took turn after turn, and still couldn’t find the black internet café.
With no choice, they wandered around one of those really obvious internet cafés for a while—nothing. They took a few photos and left.
They picked a random noodle shop for lunch and just felt hot.
Not only hot, but exhausted.
After they finished eating it was already past twelve. The two of them wandered around the village again for a long time, and then Mia had a brainwave.
She asked two little boys who had their arms around each other’s shoulders, and even paid them two yuan, before the two boys finally led them to the internet café in the village.
And then—
Hugo got caught red-handed while taking photos.
His phone was almost smashed.
After arguing for ages and watching him delete all the photos, the two of them were finally let go.
After stewing in frustration, they dragged themselves to a second tiny internet café. Using the excuse that he didn’t have his ID so he had nowhere else to get online, Hugo signed up for a card and went in to surf the net, looking for chances to take photos while he was at it. Mia pretended to be his girlfriend waiting outside and chatted idly with the young owner.
By two-thirty, they finally managed to get the photos.
Mia was dead on her feet.
Seeing it was getting late, the two of them hurried back to the office.
Aside from Reagon Chapman, basically everyone else had already returned. Mia sat down and didn’t even have time to take a sip of water before she started writing.
Hugo poured her a glass of water and reminded her from the side, "Everything the internet café owner said has to match the recording word for word, don’t miss even a character. Undercover pieces like this are the most troublesome—easy to cause problems."
"I get it." Mia nodded and listened to the recording while typing.
She kept glancing at the time in the bottom right corner of the computer desktop and only felt more and more nervous.