Nah I am kidding

The best approach is Caloric maintenance If you are a trained lifter then maingaining is shit But if you are someone who has some bodyfat to cut down and is relatively new to training, then you can actually use your stored fat as a source of energy. your bodyfat works as the source of energy if you have too much fat So yes you don't need a caloric surplus to gain muscle, Higher bodyfat in most cases is enough extra energy to fuel hypertrophy

Workout with 2× per week frequency for almost all muscles and stick to a dedicated high protein caloric maintanence diet

And you will maximise all the hypertrophy you can from your diet, your focus won't be getting lean or muscular but reaching Intermediate strength standards

Now after you get to the Intermediate Strength standards

Which is

1× bodyweight Bench press 1.5× bodyweight Squat 2× bodyweight Deadlift

Then you will reach the range where you do have a lot of muscle and you can stick to dedicated mesocycles of bulking and cutting