What It's Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 120: Kasumi of August (continued)

From this ID and the language style of these two answers, Xiang Kun constructed an image of a joking young girl in his mind.

As he continued to browse the activities of “Kasumi of August”, aside from the two responses, she had also shown interest in questions such as “Does raw meat taste good?” “What parasites can be found in blood?”, “How is human blood different from other animals?”, and “What is hemophilia?”

However, all these activities occurred two days ago.

Yet this wasn’t a new account. Looking further back, there were activities from five years ago, but they were all likes related to anime and cosplay, completely different from the current style.

From these activities alone, very little information could be gathered.

Xiang Kun copied the ID of this user to multiple search engines, and other than on Zhihu, he did not find the same ID on any other platform.

People have different habits when creating IDs online. Some like to use one consistently, while others pick something on a whim.

However, regardless of the method, unless it’s intentionally misleading, the

chosen TD would usually have some connection with the person’s preferences-

“Kasumi” is a fomapized Japanese word. After searching, Xiang Kun found that as a name it has multiple translations such as Kasumi, Kumi, Kasumori, Kasukuni, Kazumi, Kaekuni, Kaekumi, Kasutsuta and Hanae, etc. It’s a fairly common name. For example, the Japanese actress Arimura Kasumi, whose romanized name is also Kasumi, is well -known to Xiang Kun.

Considering the types of questions this user was interested in when she first joined Zhihu five years ago, this “kasumi” was likely the name of a Japanese anime character.

Looking at the search results, there were numerous anime or game characters named kasumi, such as Kasumi from Pokemon, Kasumi from the Dead or Alive series, and Tendo Kasumi from Ranma 1/2.

However, none of the animes related to the questions she was interested in five years ago had a character named kasumi, so it was hard to determine the origin of this kasumi.

Or perhaps her Chinese name was simply Kasumi.

As for August, it could be her birthday month or the month she registered the account.

He analyzed the user’s profile picture, and the result was Misaka Mikoto from “A Certain Scientific Railgun”.

And the name of that character also appeared in the topics she was interested in five years ago.

Xiang Kun had already listed the animes and anime characters related to the liked answers and topics of interests of “Kasumi of August” in a table, but these alone were not enough.

“There’s still too little information…” Xiang Kun scratched his head.

If he could directly access Zhihu’s backend and see her registered email, phone number, and other personal information, it would be much simpler.

But that was nearly impossible.

Hacking into Zhihu’s backend? Xiang Kun says he simply couldn’t!

He continued hovering his mouse over the Zhihu page, clicking into the profiles of the six people she followed, and after checking them, found that they were all anime experts, and two of them had reset. As for her two followers, they were both banned for advertising.

Xiang Kun continued to check the questions and answers she had liked.

Then he scrolled through the comments of each liked answer and finally found one of her comments under an answer she had liked five years ago.

In the answer, the user had posted a cosplay photo of a female anime character, and “Kasumi of August” commented: ‘Wow! (?Y?O)J So cool! I also have this costume, but why doesn’t it look as good on me!!! 555555!!

This is the only piece of text that “Kasumi of August” left on the account, other than the two answers from two days ago.

This reply revealed that she was also into cosplay, at least five years ago, and she also owned this costume.

Should he search for a user with the same display picture or posts about cosplaying the same character in forums related to the several relevant anime/manga, discussion groups, and “Tieba” or “Douban”?

Xiang Kun mulled over the search method while saving the cosplay picture from the user’s answer for an image search.

As he sifted through the resulting matches, Xiang Kun suddenly found a post on a niche anime forum. The post author, after posting the same picture, followed up with a photo hiding her face, then a crying emoji:

“555555!!! Come see what is called seller’s show and buyer’s show! Her cosplay versus my cosplay! It’s the same character and the same costume, why is there such a big difference!”

The string of fives and exclamations points immediately caught Xiang Kun’s attention.

Then he started to search all the posts and replies by this user named

“Full-time Magical Girl L” and discovered many emoticons, including ” (?Y?O)J”, which was also used in the Zhihu comment, appearing multiple times-

Although there isn’t any definitive evidence yet, Xiang Kun instinctively felt that this was “Kasumi of August”.

The posts she had made on that forum outnumbered those on Zhihu. He not only found her QQemail used for acquiring resources but also her birthdate, which was August 11th — she mentioned once on that day that it was her birthday.

After continuous searching, he found out the city she lived in and that she was in the eighth grade five years ago.

Using this information, he found her Weibo account; from a photo posted a few years ago, he discovered a watermark “@kasumiiii”, confirming that one of her previous IDs contained the key word “kasumi” and further validating that she was “Kasumi of August”.

Upon further investigation of her Weibo, he found her selfie which showed a sunny and youthful girl.

He discovered the name of her school from some of the images, and through her interactions with others, he discovered her real name was Lv Xiaoxia, along with her class information.

Xiang Kun also found her accounts on Tieba, Bilibili, and Douban and even her another account on Zhihu.

More importantly, although she did not update her Weibo frequently, with her latest post being a week ago, her schoolmates, who frequently interacted with her, had posted a photo from the day before yesterday where a group of girls were enjoying desserts together during the National Day holiday.

In the photo, a beaming “Lv Xiaoxia” sat in front of a serving of dessert.

If she had already turned into a vampire by that time, how did she manage to enjoy the meal at the dessert shop with her friends? Had she discovered a method similar to Xiang Kun’s, allowing normal food to stay in her stomach for a longer period? But given the predominantly liquid nature of the desserts they were having, even swallowing two stones, like what Xiang Kun did, wouldn’t make a difference.

Xiang Kun stared at the screens displaying the activity pages of two Zhihu accounts, “Kasumi of August” and “Dawn of Xia”, both belonging to the high school senior Lv Xiaoxia. The former was created five years ago, whilst the latter was frequently used in recent years..