Chapter 15 - Story 46-48

【46.]

Xu Chi was woken up by the vibration of his mobile phone the next day.

With his eyes closed, he found his cell phone drowsily in bed. After opening his eyes, he found it was a Wechat call from Tang Yanzhi.

“Hello…”

“Are you still sleeping?”

“Well…” Xu Chi put his head and cell phone under the pillow, “What’s the matter?”

“Huh? You’re going back home today, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And your train leaves at ten o’clock, right?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s 12:00 now.”

“Oh.” Xu Chi turned over slowly, then jumped up from the bad all of a sudden, “12:00?”

“Yep.” Tang Yanzhi’s laughter came into Xu Chi’s ears through the microphone. “It’s 12:00 now.”

Xu Chi held his mobile phone and sat cross-legged on the bed. At this moment, his roommate was still sleeping heavily. He rubbed his hair and asked, “How come…? I didn’t hear the sound of my alarm clock.”

The lukewarm voice of Xu Chi made Tang Yanzhi stimulated. Then he cleared his throat and said, “If you’re ready, go downstairs. I’ll be waiting for you there.”

“Why are you waiting for me?”

“’Take you home.”

“Uh… I have no ticket now.”

Tang Yanzhi finally couldn’t help laughing. “I’ll drive you back home.”

【47.]

Even after Xu Chi got into the car, he was still sleepy.

He was sitting in the front passenger seat, with the warning tone of the seat belt ringing. Tang Yanzhi looked at Xu Chi who seemed to fall asleep in a second, bending over to help him fasten the seat belt.

As Xu Chi looked up, he saw a figure approaching himself. Before he realized who it was, Tang Yanzhi rubbed his head. “Little boy…” Actually, he wanted to say “did you write late last night?”. Finally, he gave up this idea and said, “Did you sleep late last night?”

“Mm-hmm.” Xu Chi had little resistance to the hand on his head. He squinted and yawned, “It’s about 4 a.m.”

Touching Xu Chi’s soft hair, the first thought of Tang Yanzhi was that he was so cute!

The second was that he should be hided!

【48.]

When they were on the way, Xu Chi became awake, chatting with him and eating the bread and milk given by Tang Yanzhi.

“Tang Yanzhi.”

Tang Yanzhi made a turning signal and replied, “Huh?”

“I have a question for you.”

“Go ahead.”

“You are writing a BL story, right?”

“Yeah. What’s the matter?”

“Is it popular?”

Tang Yanzhi thought: You have known the answer. But why did you ask me again?  Well, he had no choice but to play this show with Xu Chi. So he said, “Not too bad.”

“What about the type? Sweet doting stories?”

“Well, yes.”

“Uh…” Xu Chi kneaded the empty bread bag into a ball and held it in his hand. He took a sip of milk, which made his face as plump as a hamster. “Let’s assume…”

“Assume what?”

“Do you think an angst writer will be popular if he begins to write sweet stories?”

What Xu Chi said made Tang Yanzhi so astonished that he almost mistook the brake for the accelerator! When they stopped at a traffic light, Tang Yanzhi turned his head to look at Xu Chi, who looked quite serious.

Tang Yanzhi sighed in his mind and thought Xu Chi was indeed foolish. Even idiot would know Xu Chi was talking about himself. However, facing such a fool, Tang Yanzhi had to be a fool together with him.

“An angst writer? You mean yourself?”

“Well… You can regard that writer as me. Anyway, it’s just an assumption.”

“Now that you want to writer sweet stories instead of heartbreaking ones, there must be some reasons. Do you think your writing is not good or you have less readers?”

“Maybe both…” Looking at the road ahead, Xu Chi said unconsciously, “At first, I thought I was a newcomer, so it didn’t matter even if there was no one reading my stories. But the situation has lasted for a long time… Even I began to doubt whether it’s worth continuing my writing.”

“Even some new comments are criticizing the values of the writer…” Xu Chi took the last sip of milk and said, “Sometimes, I don’t want to argue with such readers, but most of the time… They just listen to what other readers said… On the contrary, they do not listen to the explanation from the writer…”

Tang Yanzhi would like to tell him that it’s not true, and you have readers. Your writing is quite well. It’s just because they didn’t find such a treasure like you yet. If you want to be popular, I would help you.

But all of these words couldn’t be said.

“Before, I thought it didn’t matter whether I was popular or not. But last night, I suddenly thought I was so stupid. A writer who doesn’t want to be popular is not a good writer. So, why didn’t I want to be popular? What I write is for people to read. If I am not popular, it means my writing is not good. Then why do I insist on wasting my time on writing?”

“Indeed, these questions couldn’t be pondered late at night…” Xu Chi looked at Tang Yan with a smile. “I know I’ve got myself into a dead end, but I don’t know how to fix this problem.”

Tang Yanzhi looked intently at the traffic jams which were like a car show, with his fingers tapping on the steering wheel. He looked at the road ahead and said to Xu Chi, “You said you are a heartbreaking writer. So, do you like writing this kind of stories?”

“If I don’t like them, I won’t writer this kind of stories.”

“Ok…Then you just have two simple problems: You thought there are less readers and some of them couldn’t understand you.”

“Two simple problems? Come on! These two problems are hard enough to crush large amounts of writers.”

“Well, if there’s a person who could help you, such as me, FYI,  I have about 400,000 fans on Weibo, and I can repost your stories and make some compliments to help you become popular, will you accept my help?”

“No. That’s not what I want.”

“Why not? All you need is a just a way to become popular. Here it is now. Tell me why you don’t want it.”

“What I want is that after reading my stories, the reader really like it and recommend it to others rather than reading it for the sake of you. Well, I know maybe you think I’m too proud of myself… But I think these two ways are totally different.”

“What’s the difference? It’s just a way to become popular. Why do you care it so much? When you become popular, of course there will be someone willing to read your stories and give you some good comments. I just reverse the orders, but the result is the same.”

“No.” Xu Chi insisted, “I don’t need hits or popularity which are got in this way. If my writing is less good than what you said on your Weibo account, won’t it be embarrassing?”

“Don’t worry,” Tang Yanzhi smiled. “In my fans’ eyes, everything about me is perfect.”

Xu Chi was confused with what Tang Yanzhi said, “What?”

The traffic was still jammed. Tang Yanzhi continued, “Let’s talk about this matter in a different way.”

“Huh?”

“Do you like sweet stories?”

“I… I have no special feelings about it. That means it has nothing to do with my preferences. I read it, but probably, I don’t have an impulse to follow it.”

“It doesn’t matter. After all, everyone has its own preference. Originally, the reason why I wrote sweet stories was… I hope my readers would feel happy and reduce some negative energies in daily life after reading my stories. Even if it is used to kill time, it is ok.”

“To be honest, this circle is a little commercial these days. Some writers prefer to write what readers like. I totally understand. After all, everyone has a different choice and they have to make a living by this.”

“To put it simple, I feel the sweet stories nowadays…” Tang Yanzhi said, “is like ‘fast-food culture’. My fans occasionally say, after reading a sweet story and turning off the phone, all of the characters and plots are forgotten.”

“In contrast, the heartbreaking stories will be more impressive. At least, sometimes when they talked about a heartbreaking story, more than half of the comments are about hitting someone.”

“But stories like this…. were just a minority… Such as my stories… Most of them got less attention.”

Tang Yanzhi tried to say, “it’s just because not too many people read it. And it’s not the fault of your writing.” Instead, he said, “Since you prefer heartbreaking stories to sweet stories, I think you’d better give up writing sweet stories.”

“It’s not easy to write sweet stories well. Or rather, it’s not easy to write every story well. Now there’s fierce competition among sweet stories. What is your advantage?”

“If the writer doesn’t like it, how come you expect the readers to like what you write?”

Xu Chi was silent.

“Now let’s talk about the reader. Each reader is an individual. So they have their own ideas. You can’t ask all of them to follow your thoughts. Even I receive more than one hundred comments every day criticizing about my writing. As you like eating apples and I like watermelon, you won’t tell me the watermelon is not tasty and then force me to eat apples, right?”

“Therefore, most of the time, I just regard these comments as an encouragement. And these reviews, although they’re not good, they could quickly point out the weakness of your writing. As for those who criticize about the values, just let it be.”

“You can read every comment, but do not take every comment to heart. The writer’s heart is so small that it could only include the character and plots. So you shouldn’t put all the bad message into your heart.”

“All in all, I think both writers and readers should be sympathized. It’s better if they could understand each other. If not… I think it’s enough to keep balance.”

Tang Yanzhi finished speaking and stared at Xu Chi, who smiled not too naturally and said, “I’m just making a hypothesis. Why are you telling me so much seriously?”

Tang Yanzhi raised his eyebrows and smiled. “About everything related to you, I’m serious.”