When Lin Xiao turned off the phone screen, the electronic clock on the bedside table jumped to 00:01. The WeChat dialog box still said "Good night" from half an hour ago, but she stared at the familiar profile picture on the WeChat sports rankings, and the number 4327 steps pierced her eyes like a thorn – the boyfriend who said he was "too sleepy to open his eyes" two hours ago was now using his footsteps to draw secret tracks in the city. This absurd "accompanying performance" has been going on for three months. My boyfriend always says that he is so busy with projects that he lives at work, but his step count is always extremely active every Wednesday night. Once she deliberately said, "I want to drink the long-established sugar water store in the south of the city because I have a sore throat." Two hours later, the other party sent a message saying, "I just got off work and I can't buy it." But the next day, she saw his check-in photo in front of the sugar water shop in the Moments of a mutual friend. The WeChat movement is like a silent detective, tearing apart all the carefully crafted excuses. What really made her break through was last Thursday. My mother sent me a WeChat message asking if I stayed up late again. She casually said I went to bed early, and then went to a disco with her best friend until the early hours of the morning. During the video the next day, her mother suddenly said: "It's time to change the curtains in your bedroom. The light leaking from the curtains at twelve o'clock last night woke me up." She was shocked to realize that her mother would guess her life every day based on her step count on WeChat – less than 100 steps means staying in bed, 3,000 steps means commuting, and more than 10,000 steps means sneaking out to play. Those lies that they thought were seamless have long been seen through by the eyes behind the numbers. The companionship of modern people is like the likes of WeChat sports, and the performance can be completed with a flick of a finger. Colleague Xiao Zhang’s circle of friends is always positioned at the company where he works overtime, but his WeChat activities show that he walks 20,000 steps on the riverside trail every night; his cousin posted a parent-child photo with her child, but the step record revealed that she left the child with her parents and went to the gym alone. We are busy pretending to be the perfect partner, filial to our children, and motivated employees on social media, but we forget that real companionship requires the warmth of our feet on the ground. At one o'clock in the morning, Lin Xiao opened her boyfriend's dialog box, entered and deleted. The moonlight outside the window made the phone screen pale, and the number 4327 steps was still there, like a silent mockery. She suddenly remembered that her mother always said, "There was no WeChat step count before. When your dad came home late, I would sit at the door and wait for his footsteps." Although the waiting at that time was painful, at least every step was real. Nowadays, we are too lazy to even measure lies with our steps. She pressed the delete key and cleared the dialog box where she had been chatting for three years. The moment the phone screen went dark, the WeChat sports ranking list was automatically refreshed, and the boyfriend's step count became 4,512. On the other side of the city, in a lighted window, someone might be weaving the next "good night" lie to the same number.
