The Webnovel Writer

"You..." In the café, Gu Ruoyan set down her coffee cup, hesitating slightly. "I hear you're a writer?"

The mellow notes of a saxophone drifted through the café. Afternoon sunlight spilled through the floor-to-ceiling windows onto the table, where dew still glittered on the rose at its center, fresh, fragrant, and in full bloom.

The setting was beautiful, and so was Gu Ruoyan. For this blind date, she had deliberately changed into a long dress she seldom wore. She had also let down her usual practical high ponytail, her long, ink-black hair cascading over her shoulders and lending her an even more elegant air.

She had come to this blind date with expectations, but the man in front of her was something of a disappointment...

He was tall and reasonably handsome, but his clothes were casual, and he hadn't even shaved properly. At the very least, that proved he wasn't taking this date as seriously as she was. That aside, he seemed to lack energy, and he looked so nervous around her, like a shut-in who spent all day gaming at home and never saw another human being.

Hmm... a writer. Maybe that was just how they were? Listless, unkempt, and bad at socializing?

A writer sounded interesting... That was part of why Gu Ruoyan had been willing to take this blind date seriously, even though, for all her claims of loving books, she had never heard of this supposed writer.

Chu Ge sat across from her with both hands propping up his chin, his heart racing. He had been through plenty of blind dates arranged by his mother, but he had always just gone through the motions. So had the women. Both parties understood the deal, and after a meal they went their separate ways without even exchanging WeChat contacts.

He had never expected this date to be with such an elegant, beautiful woman. Why was someone this gorgeous going on blind dates instead of acting in movies?

He wasn't remotely prepared for this!

"I asked you a question..." Gu Ruoyan sighed. "Auntie Wu said you're a writer. Could you tell me about your work? I'd like to read some of it."

"...Ah, yes." Chu Ge cleared his throat. "I've written quite a few novels, but I don't think any of them have fully demonstrated my true capabilities. As the ancients said, literature is a vehicle for truth. At present, I'm developing a sweeping narrative set against the backdrop of a particular historical period, exploring the vastness of the universe and the boundless natural world, depicting the indomitable struggles of ordinary people at the bottom of society in the face of adversity, and examining profound questions concerning the fate of China and even humanity as a whole, thereby fulfilling a writer's social responsibility! That's why I've been searching for my goddess of inspiration, my Muse..."

"Could you speak plain English?" Gu Ruoyan folded her hands on the table, her eyes lowered slightly.

Chu Ge sheepishly stopped waving his hands around. "Uh, I've been writing a cultivation novel lately. An underdog story."

Understanding dawned in Gu Ruoyan's eyes.

He was... a webnovel writer.

Did webnovel writers count as writers?

She wasn't sure. In any case, it was a field Gu Ruoyan knew nothing about, and very different from her usual conception of a writer.

"How much do you earn a month? Is it stable? Do you get the five statutory insurance benefits and a housing fund?"

"Rousseau once said, 'Writing for bread would soon stifle my genius and destroy my talent. Nothing vigorous, nothing great, can ever come from a mercenary pen. Need and greed might make me write faster, but they cannot make me write better...'"

"Plain English!"

"It's not very stable. Some months I make less, but I made over ten thousand this month..." Chu Ge's gaze shifted slightly. "As for insurance and a housing fund... you can actually pay into social insurance yourself these days..."

"Isn't that just being an unemployed bum..." Gu Ruoyan blurted out, then swallowed the rest.

Chu Ge smiled faintly and said nothing.

Gu Ruoyan regretted her slip. That had been hurtful... But she felt that being unemployed at twenty-seven or twenty-eight would make his autobiography an underdog story all by itself. How was she supposed to continue this date?

In the end, she gave him an apologetic smile and rose from her seat. "I have something else to attend to..."

Chu Ge sighed. "Go ahead."

Plenty of people had told Chu Ge that his parents hadn't chosen a very good name for him. It sounded like the phrase "besieged on all sides," which was terribly inauspicious, practically dooming him to struggle at everything he did. Never mind anything else-if he couldn't even find a girlfriend, another way to put it was that he was destined to die alone.

Besides, it also sounded like "virgin." Wasn't that just asking for trouble?

And so, not one of Chu Ge's eleven blind dates had worked out.

Of course, the previous ones had failed because he hadn't actually wanted a girlfriend.

How could women possibly be more fun than games? If his mother hadn't pushed him, none of those eleven dates would have happened.

What a shame... This one had been truly beautiful, so beautiful that even now Chu Ge found it a little unreal. The sudden flutter in his heart still hadn't settled.

Chu Ge sat quietly in his seat, looking at the dew on the rose petals rather than watching Gu Ruoyan's lovely figure walk away. Two or three seconds later, his whole body seemed to relax. He leaned lazily against the soft backrest, picked up the coffee he had only taken one sip of, and drank it at leisure. As though nothing had happened.

The coffee cost a hundred and twenty a cup. Chu Ge wondered whether this bitter stuff, as bitter as his mood right now, could somehow prolong his life. Why else would it be so expensive?

He lazily took out his phone, opened QQ, and tapped into a group chat called "Friendly Fire."

It was a small group, with only a little over three hundred members including Chu Ge. Compared with some supposedly two-thousand-member groups that were actually dead as doornails, this one was lively despite its modest size. Everyone's mouth fired like a Gatling gun; one trip to the bathroom, and he would come back to 99+ messages.

Chu Ge deserved much of the credit for a small group being this active.

Someone had once drawn up a sprawling list of twenty requirements for an active group chat. The first and most important was having an idiot for a group owner...

It was an excellent assessment. Chu Ge was the group owner.

This was his reader group. He was the author, and his pen name was his real name, Chu Ge. Naturally, "Friendly Fire" meant a bunch of readers in the same group screwing... never mind.

At the moment, the group seemed to have reached an unspoken consensus over a screenshot of some news story, and everyone was repeating the same line.

"One more reason to fear marriage today."

"One more reason to fear marriage today."

Out of habit, Chu Ge tapped the repeat button.

Chu Ge: "One more reason to fear marriage today."

"..."

The group fell silent for a moment before someone asked, "Author Chu? Didn't you say you were on a blind date? Why are you back so soon?"

"How long does a blind date take?" Chu Ge tried hard to sound calm. "GG."

The group grew merry again. "Good thing it's GG. Women aren't nearly as fun as writing, and you haven't posted today's update yet!"

Chu Ge's fingers paused over the keyboard for several seconds. He didn't reply.

Most people didn't care how the person on the other side of the screen felt. All they cared about was that he hadn't updated today. That was why Chu Ge usually avoided taking time off even when he was a little sick. The response to a day off was often not "Get some rest," but "Making excuses again."

Unless they were longtime readers who had grown attached to him. Unfortunately, Chu Ge hadn't yet built up that sort of readership.

In the end, he was still just someone his blind date considered an unemployed bum...

He put away his phone and drained the coffee, which had already gone half cold. "The bill, please."

The server came over. "A hundred and twenty."

Chu Ge blinked. There had been two coffees. "Are you doing half price today?"

"The lady paid for her own coffee before she left."

Chu Ge instinctively turned to look out the window, only to remember that Gu Ruoyan had left at least five minutes ago.

Although Gu Ruoyan's thoughtless remark had stung, he didn't hate her for it. Most people viewed his profession that way, after all. He was long used to it.

Besides, nerves had made his performance far too over the top... What the hell had all that nonsense even been?

Chu Ge didn't know why someone with Gu Ruoyan's looks and elegance would need to go on blind dates. If he wanted to assume the worst...

Forget it. Why bother? What did a passing stranger's past have to do with him?

For him, the remark in the group that had rubbed him the wrong way was the reality he needed to face: he hadn't finished writing today's update. If he kept dawdling, he would miss it.

(End of chapter)

Can't find it by searching the book title? Try searching for the author-it might simply have been renamed!