Chapter 6 Dream and Reality

Chasing a dream comes at a price.

Nobody can keep flopping forever, living off a few hundred or a thousand yuan a month in full-attendance bonuses for the rest of his life.

Zhang Qiren had been grinding away at the bottom of the web-novel world for nearly two years now — one flop a year, every one of them with subscriber numbers in the double digits. This was already his third book to reach paid release.

Three times was the limit.

Whether it was the pressure of making a living or the look in his family's eyes, no one could tough it out forever.

For those two years, Zhang Qiren had delivered takeout to keep body and soul together while he wrote to chase his dream. A few months ago he'd had a huge fight with his family; in the end he quit even the delivery job, burned his boats, moved out of the house, followed a shared-housing ad for writers to Chu Ge's place, and threw himself wholly into working out a new book.

He had no source of income left.

Over those few months, the savings he'd scraped together delivering takeout had nearly run out. If this one flopped too, however unwilling Zhang Qiren might be, he'd have no choice but to give up the dream and do as his family said: find a factory job.

It wasn't a matter of what genre to write — that had nothing to do with it. Zhang Qiren had never been good at romance to begin with; he was better at wild concepts and snark, which suited no-heroine far better. Whether a book took off depended partly on ability and partly on plain bad luck.

Chu Ge had been in the business longer. He'd watched plenty of kids full of confidence enter the field and quietly vanish — or turn into bitter trolls, haunting every platform and nitpicking every work posted there.

Behind every one of them was the sound of a dream breaking, and of someone who couldn't accept it.

Who among outsiders knew of the brutal culling behind that "unemployed vagrant" label?

Chu Ge was in much the same boat as Zhang Qiren. He'd been a nine-to-five office worker once, decided a life like that was dull and flavorless, and started chasing the literary dream. His luck had been decent enough: the income from his first book just barely covered food, and it happened to coincide with a falling-out with his boss, so he'd simply quit and written full-time. Up to now, after two or three flops in a row with his savings mostly gone, this book's performance mattered enormously to him.

The one thing he had slightly better than Zhang Qiren: Chu Ge's family supported him. Or, to put it another way, they had no attention to spare for him.

Chu Ge's parents supposedly worked for some classified unit. He himself didn't know what his mom and dad did; they were never around — just the occasional phone call. He was in touch with his mother a bit more; he hadn't heard his father's voice in a year. It hadn't always been like this; only in the past few years, who knew what had gotten into them...

The only thing the two of them fretted over was his marriage prospects, and they rarely commented on anything else. His mother was actually rather proud that her son could write books, and bragged everywhere that "my son is an author" — which made Chu Ge want to cover his face in embarrassment.

That was right: the "Auntie Wu says you're an author" from Gu Ruoyan during the blind date — that Auntie Wu was Chu Ge's own mother. Where she and Gu Ruoyan had met, he had no idea...

Then again, another reason he'd moved out to rent a place when there was nobody at home: he was sick to death of the looks around him. Step outside and he'd run into some neighbor or elder beaming at him: "Little Chu, I know the manager over at XX Leather Factory — want me to introduce you?"

Chu Ge would beam right back: "No need. Save her for his wife's little sister."

Turn around and he could practically feel the whispering behind his back: "That Chu kid's a washout — twenty-seven, twenty-eight years old, still holed up at home doing nothing."

So he'd simply moved out. Out of sight, out of mind.

Such was the awkwardness this line of work brought. As for how Gu Ruoyan had acted at the blind date, Chu Ge was only too used to it.

Supportive family or not, Chu Ge was a grown man of twenty-seven or twenty-eight and naturally too embarrassed to hold his hand out to them for money; he'd stubbornly kept up appearances and told them his income was quite good... and now, if he flopped, he really had no idea how he'd get by.

The two men who shared the same ailment sat eating skewers and sipping liquor, and Zhang Qiren really did give him some advice on revising the manuscript: "This book of yours — early on there's a bit of a harem tendency, but you haven't locked in a relationship with any of them, it's all gradual buildup.

That may have something to do with your personality... which happens to leave you a way out. Later you can just switch to stock-market romance, and give an open ending at the end, where nobody knows who the protagonist chose — or whether he chose anyone at all..."

Chu Ge was silent for a moment. "Talk like that in our group chat and you'd get beaten up."

Zhang Qiren laughed. "Don't tell me you haven't thought about it yourself — otherwise why would you suddenly announce you're reorganizing your outline and taking a day off?"

Chu Ge genuinely hadn't considered it before; mostly it was just that his usual way of thinking didn't run in that direction, so it was hard for him to think along those lines on short notice. Now that it had been pointed out, it was a real eye-opener.

Zhang Qiren's proposal didn't merely sidestep the harem problem of dropping a heroine — in the end everyone got dropped anyway, so who would still care about Qiu Wuji alone? The process would please both harem fans and single-heroine fans at once; the numbers might even come out better. The only cost was getting cursed out once the book was finished — but by then the money was already earned, so who gave a damn about curses?

There was one more benefit: the Qiu Wuji screen time that had been such a headache wouldn't need much cutting. He could still follow the original outline; he'd just change her relationship with the protagonist into a normal sect master and sect member, and simply not write anything suggestive. So what if readers kept guessing whether she'd be collected?

It was practically a plan that satisfied both sides.

Chu Ge raised his glass in a toast and said sincerely, "Qiren, there's no justice in this world if you don't make it big. The study and understanding you've put into this stuff runs deeper than most people's."

Zhang Qiren's eyes gleamed. "I think there's no justice in this world if I don't make it big, either."

He paused, but his gaze seemed to drift, his expression turning a little complicated.

Chu Ge followed his gaze and saw a girl in black, seventeen or eighteen by the look of her, coming along the street. She passed the skewer stall without a word and walked into their housing compound.

As she went by, the smell of liquor drifted off her.

Chu Ge recognized this girl.

Because she lived on their floor — the apartment across the hall.

Neighborly relations were cold these days. They'd lived on the same floor this long and never exchanged a word. When they happened to meet in the elevator, each kept their head down over their phone, not even a nod. Naturally he didn't know her name.

A writer's life had days and nights turned upside down, and this girl was much the same; they often ran into each other in the middle of the night, and every time she was reeking of booze.

Sometimes there'd even be a little cut on her temple...

Most people's first guess would be a bar girl, or a small-time delinquent — something along those lines.

"She used to stream games. I came across her stream once," Zhang Qiren said in a low voice. "Only she barely talks, just silently plays her own game, so her viewer count is tiny. Probably can't even support herself."

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

Zhang Qiren sipped his beer and said nothing.

Streaming and web novels were actually very similar in a lot of ways — easy to put yourself in the other's shoes.

They were all flops. Who was going to look down on whom?

Chu Ge said suddenly, "You like her?"

Zhang Qiren's grip on his glass tightened a little, and he said carelessly, "She's pretty. Sure, I'd like a taste — that's only normal. Haven't you ever been tempted?"

Truthfully, Chu Ge had been tempted too; he'd even pictured going to some club and happening to ask for her as his hostess. That's how men are — judge the deed, not the heart; a little fantasizing was perfectly normal. In high school he'd even fantasized about the Chinese teacher in the next class.

Not that any of it was realistic — neither of them had the money to go to a place like that anyway!

Zhang Qiren soon picked the thread back up: "As for liking her — not that far. Someone in that kind of work, how could it ever... anyway, we can't even feed ourselves. Even if I knew which club she works at, I wouldn't have the money to go patronize her. So what's the point of talking about liking or not liking?"

Chu Ge raised his glass and drained it. "Keep at it. You're going to make it big."