CH 57

Xiang Wan’s period passed without incident.

For Xiang Wan’s first birthday cake, she didn’t choose matcha or red bean flavor; instead, she chose red velvet.

As she ate, cream smudged her lips and she looked up at Yu Zhou and smiled.

Yu Zhou suddenly thought that she and Wanwan looked a bit alike.

After the long vacation, Yu Zhou’s sister finally returned, so Wanwan was taken away. Yu Zhou was left like a grandmother whose grandchild had been taken away, playing with the remaining cat toys every day.

It was amazing that such a small creature, with a size no bigger than an arm, could cause such a ruckus in a hundred-square-meter space.

When it left, the room seemed bigger, perhaps because there was no cat litter box or piles of cat food and litter anymore.

Su Chang made full use of Yu Zhou’s “lonely old feelings”, delivering her some cat videos in a timely manner, thus sometimes they communicated like ordinary familiar online friends.

Many things happened during this time, most of which were not worth mentioning, such as…

The second and third publishing houses came to Yu Zhou, but she chose the first one after consulting with her editor and was already proceeding with the contract.

The script reading for the second season went smoothly. But Yu Zhou was now focused on writing her first contracted long work. It might have been due to losing that feeling of freshness, Yu Zhou was not as excited as when they went through the first season, certainly, she’s also not being so cautious anymore.

Xiang Wan’s short series had two episodes aired with quick transmigration as the theme. After the production had begun, Yu Zhou realized why Xiang Wan had been chosen to play the lead despite having not previously done so. First, the transmigration theme involved both ancient and modern, which means Xiang Wan’s voice was very suitable.

Secondly, the production was very demanding. As each episode was an independent story and had to fully engage the listener within five minutes, many drafts and demos had been scrapped, which also included Xiang Wan’s audio.

As a rookie and one who had also invested in the production, Xiang Wan was very cooperative without any complaints.

Without any big-name stars on board and with only a few splash screen advertisements on the platform, the first two episodes of this series were lukewarm. Xiang Wan might not earn too much money, what’s more, the episode count remained uncertain.

In late October, Xiang Wan accepted a female secondary role for a BG non-commercial audio drama, which was worth mentioning as it was a medium-sized IP.

Generally, an IP with such a large fan base would typically become a commercial drama. However, since the author didn’t sign on, she only wrote this work and then lost interest in writing, even regarding the audio drama as somewhat casual. Since she got along well with the planners, she authorized them to make it non-commercial.

Out of gratitude and trust in the author, the crew went all out to produce it with the same standard flow as a commercial audio drama. Typically, non-commercial audio dramas are free and irregularly updated, but the crew not only prepared all 15 episodes in advance but also set a weekly release schedule.

With stable updates, the crew purchased all new bgm and materials out of pocket, along with their careful and sincere post-production efforts, the quality of this drama was quite anticipated.

After three rounds of auditions, Xiang Wan finally got the role after constantly discussing with the planners and making adjustments to her voice.

Su Chang once again topped the charts with a BG audio drama, gaining tens of thousands of fans weekly. However, there were rumors that she would not be taking on new work until September of next year. There were also rumors that she was using the name of her studio, SC, to form a voice team and get involved in film and television dubbing.

These small rumors only floated around the forum for a few replies, with no one able to provide proof or any exciting gossip. So, after a few bites of unverified gossip, people quickly moved on.

On the evening of November 20th at eight o’clock, the ending FT of the first season of the audio drama “Shrine” was about to begin.

FT stands for Free Talk, which is basically a chat session where the production team discusses the behind-the-scenes content of the audio drama, answers listener questions and shares their creative experience and gains via online live streaming of the audio.

The team had all arrived early as their respective avatars appeared in succession on the online interface. The host was a VA of a support role who was bright and lively, very good at creating an atmosphere, thus the whole process proceeded smoothly amidst seriousness, liveliness, unity and tension.

“Liveliness” and “unity” were the attributes of others while “seriousness” and “tension” were personally owned by Zhou Bo.

This was her first time participating in this type of event; with her voice which wasn’t very good, she felt like an out-of-place duck among all the CVs.

She even felt she laughed like a duck when she spoke.

It was ok for her to speak one or two sentences, but once she spoke for a long time her voice was weak and shaking. She couldn’t even catch her breath if she spoke even longer.

The comments from listeners on the public screen were so fast that she got dizzy from just looking at the flying words. Her ears turned red with embarrassment as she didn’t even know what she was talking about.

Occasionally, there were comments that said, “Hahaha, the author is so funny.”

“Hahaha, the author is really a comedian.”

“How can there be such a witty author? Don’t make me laugh to death.”

“??? Author, do you even know what you’re saying? Hahaha.”

…I don’t know, who knows.

Yu Zhou was feeling depressed.

Sometimes, after Su Chang finished speaking and before she had time to turn off her microphone, Yu Zhou could hear her occasional laughter on the other side, like a feather in the chaos of war and disaster.

After about thirty minutes of streaming, there was finally a relatively serious question.

The host asked her, “Author, many listeners are interested in knowing, did you have any involvement in casting? Did you give any opinions?”

“Well…” Yu Zhou thought about it. Besides, when F asked her something during the casting process for Su Chang, she had not heard about the auditions nor participated in the casting process. But if she only talked about Su Chang, it wouldn’t seem appropriate.

So she said, “I didn’t participate. The casting was done by the teachers in the crew, but when I heard about it, I felt that it was very close to what I imagined and even pleasantly surprised.”

“Which one surprised you the most, can you say it?” the host provoked.

On the screen, Su Chang’s name and Shen Bai’s name were flashing.

Yu Zhou looked at the screen full of “Su Chang” and her quiet profile picture.

At this moment, Su Chang had her microphone turned on. The light blue circle around her profile picture flickered with some ambient noise, but she didn’t say anything.

Yu Zhou smiled before saying, “I actually love all the teachers, but the most surprising is Miss Gu Qi’an hahaha, because I knew a little bit about her before and it seems like she has never played a bottom character before~”

The audience laughed at her teasing tone.

Gu  Qi’an turned on her microphone and said, “Yes, yes, I, the big top, finally played a bottom character for my dear Qingqing. Do you turn off the lights every night now, Qingqing?”

“Ah? Why?” Qing Shen asked.

“Because there is honor light on your face~”

The production team and the audience laughed together.

After answering a few more questions in earnest, it seemed like the author didn’t have anything else to do. Yu Zhou went from sitting on the couch to lay on it, with her phone aside and her ears listening, closing her eyes to rest.

Ah…I really can’t stand live streaming, these colorful words might really blind my eyes.

The sound of light footsteps echoed in the hallway as Xiang Wan emerged from the second bedroom. Seeing that Yu Zhou was almost finished, she handed over the peach in her hand and asked, “Peach, Would you like some? I peeled it and there’s half left.”

Yu Zhou was about to answer but suddenly remembered something and quickly checked the livestream interface.

…She had forgotten to mute herself.

And it just so happened that the moderator was asking a question, waiting for the main performer to answer. On the microphone, the avatars of Yu Zhou, Su Chang, Zhou Ling and the moderator were all flashing with a faint blue halo.

This meant that the audience had no way of knowing who the sound had come from.

Yu Zhou made eye contact with Xiang Wan, gesturing for her not to speak. She then saw Zhou Ling mute her microphone, so she hurriedly clicked on the microphone icon to mute herself as well.

Su Chang was not affected and answered the question calmly and there was no impact on the barrage in the public chat.

But Yu Zhou had a bad feeling about this.

She switched the livestream software to the background and checked the forum for a moment.

Sure enough, there was already a thread with the title: “Did I hear correctly???”

The content was: “Someone was listening to ‘Shrine’ FT just now? Was that…Xiang Wan?”