Sketch Artist

Unit 1901, Building C, Tianhe Platinum Apartments.

Su Ling sat at Lu Qing's computer desk, her eyes fixed on the 32-inch curved monitor displaying various images.

The images were stored in the "Reference Materials" folder on Drive D.

They were all female character illustrations or artwork, categorized with a level of precision that was almost bewildering.

Opening the "Maid" subfolder revealed 3,672 related images, a video folder, and another folder labeled "Inspiration." Digging deeper, one could even find Lu Qing's handwritten reviews of each video and the source references for every image.

In comparison, other categories like "Lolita," "Stockings," "JK," "Tsundere," and "Mature Women" had less extensive collections, with both illustrations and videos containing roughly half the content of the prominently featured maid section.

This observation made the young girl instinctively turn her head toward the tightly closed wardrobe.

If she remembered correctly, inside hung an exquisite black and white uniform dress that her brother had claimed was "gifted by readers."

Though she had only glimpsed it briefly, her keen sense for women's clothing quality and pricing told her that this dress couldn't have cost less than 3,000 yuan, and was certainly an authentic Japanese or British boutique design.

"So this is what brother likes."

She released the mouse, hugged her straight legs to the chair, rested her chin on her knees, and curled up in the seat, deep in thought.

Lu Qing's previous monetary transfer had been shocking, and although she had accepted it, she had no idea how to use such a sum.

It was clear that he genuinely wanted to take care of her and had already taken action to do so.

"Ah..."

The young girl sighed softly, feeling somewhat at a loss.

In today's volatile social climate, even before graduation, she understood well that earning such money was nearly impossible for a college student.

At school, her teachers had explained that many industries were already monopolized by capital, and for ordinary people to escape the fate of being mere workers, they needed to find ways to break through existing class barriers, using every available means to climb upward until they could liberate their time.

Though complex, the concept wasn't hard to grasp.

—Without reaching the middle class, one would forever remain at the bottom.

And the prospect of reaching above middle class was virtually impossible for a single person without the efforts of three or even multiple generations.

"It's already not easy for brother to establish himself in this city, and now he's taking on responsibility for my life too..."

The young girl muttered, frowning in deep thought, "What can I possibly do for him in return?"

She leaned back in the chair, slowly rotating it.

Like a cat perched on a robot vacuum cleaner, she spun round and round in the chair.

Aimlessly observing the space where her brother lived, she noticed that the entire room's layout was very minimalist, following a path of minimal possessions.

Since it was a rented apartment, Lu Qing only had the bare necessities besides essential living items, and the furniture was purely functional, showing no pursuit of high living standards.

The most expensive thing in the room was undoubtedly the computer setup on the desk.

An I9 processor, 1TB SSD, 4x16GB RAM, full water-cooling system, an external sound card replacing the motherboard's audio, clearly thousand-dollar monitoring headphones paired with even more expensive stereo speakers, and the obviously RGB-lit 40-series graphics card in the case...

Though Su Ling didn't understand these things, she could tell that the computer was her brother's only companion at home.

His connection to the world was limited to school and this apartment.

His life followed a simple routine, often sitting in this spot late into the night, typing away until his eyes could barely stay open.

"Brother's almost a junior in college, but he still hasn't found a girlfriend. Is it because he's too busy juggling studies and work?"

The young girl mused to herself, trying to analyze Lu Qing's lifestyle.

Suddenly, a series of notification sounds came from the bottom right of the computer screen.

Looking closer, she saw it was the QQ messenger app bouncing, apparently someone had sent her brother messages.

Since the software was set to start with Windows, it had automatically logged in when she turned on the computer, requiring no username or password.

Su Ling hadn't intended to pry into Lu Qing's chat history, but the avatar in the corner kept bouncing incessantly, with its endless pinging becoming increasingly annoying.

By her estimate, the sender had continuously sent thirty or forty messages...

"Who could be so chatty? Who messages like this? Don't they know how disturbing it is?"

The young girl frowned, finally unable to resist. She grabbed the mouse and clicked open the chat with this ill-mannered person.

The sender's avatar was an anime grey-haired beauty, with the ID "I'll Always Love Hana-chan," saved in her brother's contacts as "Collaborating Artist: Lubia," profile showing male, age 38.

"...Ugh."

At first glance, she finally understood why the chat window wouldn't stop pinging.

The person had sent Lu Qing about 50 high-resolution images, all of them suggestive content, with more than half being maid-related anime pictures.

[Boss, boss, did you see?! These are the latest maid character design collections I've gathered from across the web for you! All hand-picked premium collections! Haha, I specially scraped these from Twitter for you! How's that, pretty thoughtful of me, right??]

"..."

Su Ling didn't reply, but curiosity led her to open the compressed file they had sent.

Good grief, what she found inside was incredible. It contained hundreds of images and over a dozen videos, all properly categorized.

The videos included anime clips, movie scenes, Japanese drama excerpts, and edited content, all maid-uniform related, quite captivating.

Notably, more than half of these illustrations featured a single anime girl character, identical to this creepy artist's avatar—

Grey straight hair, sweater covering the chest, exposed midriff shorts, black thigh-high stockings.

It was simply the same character design posed differently, depicted from various angles and in different settings.

"Tch."

The young girl clicked her tongue, now understanding that her brother's collaborating artist was a creepy middle-aged man who liked to steal images.

This person knew her brother's preferences well and would regularly share suggestive images to fill his reference library.

It made sense—such an extensive collection would be difficult to amass alone. The sheer volume was too vast for one person's limited energy. Now seeing someone constantly feeding in "materials," the young girl became even more certain of one thing—

"It seems brother's love for maid uniforms has reached an incurable stage. When he said it was bought with reader donations before, thinking about it now, that probably wasn't true.

He must have bought it himself."

Su Ling pursed her lips, closed the chat window, and returned to her seat to analyze the situation calmly.

After about half a moment, suddenly, inspiration struck, and she stood up facing the wardrobe.

"That's it. Since brother loves maids so much, he probably wouldn't mind if I secretly tried on that dress, right?"

...

...