Dreams and Reality

Chasing dreams came at a price.

No one could keep flopping forever, living their whole life on a few hundred or a thousand yuan a month in perfect-attendance bonuses.

Zhang Qiren had spent nearly two years languishing at the bottom of the webnovel world. One flop a year, each with subscriptions in the double digits. This was already his third novel to go behind a paywall.

Three strikes were the limit.

Whether it was the pressure of making a living or the looks from their family, no one could hold out forever.

For the past two years, Zhang Qiren had delivered takeout to make ends meet while writing novels to chase his dream. A few months ago, he had had a huge fight with his family. In the end, he had even stopped making deliveries, burned his bridges, and moved out. An ad for writers looking to share an apartment had brought him to Chu Ge, where he had devoted himself entirely to figuring out a new novel.

He no longer had any source of income.

After several months, the savings from his delivery work were almost gone. If this novel flopped too, however unwilling Zhang Qiren might be, he would have to give up his dream, follow his family's arrangements, and find a factory job.

This had nothing to do with what kind of novel he wrote. Zhang Qiren had never been good at romance; imaginative ideas and snark were his strengths, so stories without a female lead suited him better anyway. Whether a book took off depended partly on ability and partly on whether the right opportunity came along.

Chu Ge had been in the business even longer. He had seen so many young men enter it brimming with confidence, only to quietly disappear-or, bitter and resentful, turn into trolls who picked faults with every work on every platform.

Behind all that were the cries of people unwilling to accept their shattered dreams.

Outsiders saw them as "unemployed layabouts," but how many knew about the brutal elimination going on behind the scenes?

Chu Ge's situation was much the same as Zhang Qiren's. He had once been a nine-to-five office worker too. Finding the prospect of spending his life that way dull and dreary, he had begun pursuing his literary dream. His luck had been decent: his first novel had earned just enough to keep him fed. A clash with his boss happened around the same time, so he had simply quit to write. Now, after two or three flops in a row, most of his savings were gone too, which made his current novel's performance very important to him.

The one thing he had slightly better than Zhang Qiren was that his family supported him. Or, to put it another way, his family had no time to spare for him.

Chu Ge's parents supposedly worked for some classified organization. Even he had no idea what they did. In any case, they were absent year-round, with only the occasional phone call. He spoke to his mother a little more often, but he had not heard his father's voice in a year. It had not been this bad before; something had changed over the past few years...

The only thing the two of them worried about was his marriage. They rarely commented on anything else. His mother was actually quite proud that her son could write novels and went around announcing, "My son is an author," which embarrassed Chu Ge so much he wanted to hide his face.

That was right: when Gu Ruoyan had said on their blind date, "Auntie Wu said you were an author," that Auntie Wu was Chu Ge's own mother. He had no idea where she and Gu Ruoyan had met...

As for why he had moved out to rent a place when no one was home anyway, he had simply grown sick of the looks people gave him. Every time he stepped outside, he would run into some neighbor or elder smiling at him. "Little Chu, I know the manager of such-and-such leather factory. Want me to put in a word for you...?"

Chu Ge would smile back. "No thanks. Save it for his sister-in-law."

Once he turned away, he could practically feel people whispering behind his back. "That son of the Chu Family is a lost cause. Twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and he's still sitting around at home doing nothing."

So he had simply moved out. Out of sight, out of mind.

That was the awkward reality of this line of work. Chu Ge was all too used to reactions like Gu Ruoyan's during their blind date.

In short, whether his family supported him or not, Chu Ge was a grown man of twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Of course he was too embarrassed to ask them for money. He even stubbornly kept up appearances by telling them his income was pretty good... If this book flopped now, he really had no idea how he would get by afterward.

As the two men in the same boat ate grilled skewers and drank, Zhang Qiren did offer some suggestions for the later revisions. "Your novel leaned toward a harem early on, but none of the relationships are official yet. You've been building them up gradually, which probably has something to do with your personality... That actually leaves you a way out. You can easily switch to a 'pick your favorite girl' setup, then give it an open ending. Nobody knows who the protagonist chose, or whether he chose anyone at all..."

Chu Ge fell silent for a moment. "You'd get beaten up for that in our group chat."

Zhang Qiren laughed. "I don't believe you haven't thought of it yourself. Otherwise, why suddenly say you needed time off to reorganize your outline?"

Chu Ge really had not thought of it before. His usual thinking did not run along those lines, so it was hard to consider that angle on the spot. Now that Zhang Qiren had pointed it out, it was a revelation.

Zhang Qiren's proposal would not only sidestep the issue of leaving a girl out of the harem-if everyone was left out in the end, who would care about Qiu Wuji alone? Along the way, it would also appeal to both harem fans and single-love-interest fans. The novel might even do better. He would just get cursed out after it was finished, and by then he would already have earned the money, so why the hell would he fear a little abuse? There was another advantage too: he would not have to slash Qiu Wuji's role, which had been giving him such a headache. He could still follow the original plot, merely changing her relationship with the protagonist to that of an ordinary sect leader and disciple. All he had to do was leave out the romantic tension. What did it matter if readers kept guessing whether she would join the harem?

It was practically the best of both worlds.

Chu Ge raised his cup in a toast and said sincerely, "Qiren, it'd be a crime if you didn't make it big. You've studied this stuff more closely and understand it better than so many people."

Zhang Qiren's eyes shone. "I think it'd be a crime if I didn't make it big too."

He paused, but his gaze seemed to begin wandering, a faintly complicated look entering his eyes.

Chu Ge followed his gaze and saw a girl dressed in black, who looked about seventeen or eighteen, approaching from the street. She silently passed the barbecue stall and walked into their apartment complex.

As she passed, she reeked of alcohol.

Chu Ge recognized her.

She lived on their floor, in the apartment opposite theirs.

Neighborly relations were distant these days. They had lived on the same floor for so long without ever exchanging a word. On the rare occasions they met in the elevator, they each kept their heads down, looking at their phones, without even saying hello. Naturally, they did not know one another's names.

Writers lived with their days and nights reversed, and this girl was much the same. They often ran into one another in the middle of the night, and every time he saw her, she was tipsy.

Sometimes she even had small injuries near her temple...

Most people's first assumption would be that she was a hostess paid to drink with customers, or some delinquent girl. Something along those lines, anyway.

"She used to stream games. I came across her stream," Zhang Qiren said quietly. "But she hardly spoke. She just quietly played on her own, so she had very few viewers. I doubt she could support herself either."

Chu Ge said, "A flop in her own industry, like us?"

Zhang Qiren sipped his drink without answering.

Livestreaming and webnovels actually had a great deal in common. It was easy to put yourself in the other person's shoes.

They were all flops. Who had any right to look down on whom?

Chu Ge suddenly asked, "Do you like her?"

Zhang Qiren's grip on his cup tightened. He said casually, "She's pretty, so sure, I'm a little attracted to her. That's perfectly normal. Haven't you ever felt that way?"

Truth be told, Chu Ge had too. He had even imagined going out to some club and happening to choose her to drink with him. That was just how men were-judge their actions, not their thoughts. A little fantasizing was perfectly normal. Back in high school, he had even fantasized about the Chinese teacher from the next class.

In practical terms, neither of them had the money to go out to places like that anyway!

Zhang Qiren soon continued, "I wouldn't say I like her. How could I, with the kind of work she does...? Anyway, we can't even support ourselves. Even if we knew which club she worked at, we wouldn't have the money to go support her. What's the point of talking about whether I like her?"

Chu Ge raised his cup and drained it. "Keep at it. You'll make it big."

Thanks to Tassels in the Mist for the 3,000 tip and two monthly votes, How Is It Different from Dewdrops on a Silken Web for the 500 tip, and Yu Lingqiu for the 200 tip and two monthly votes.

A new author with a new book-I'm overwhelmed by the love.

(End of chapter)