Chapter 152

Chapter 152

Dear readers,

Today is May 30, 2024. Crazy Thursday.

As I type this at my workstation, I’m eating the KFC my coworker picked up for me.

Just now, that tall, chubby leader of mine came by again.

Did I forget to tell you his name last time?

His surname is Niu, and his given name is Fen.

Niufen.

Oh my God, his name is Niufen…

All right, I can’t laugh anymore. There goes today’s merit.

Back to the point. Let me talk about my own life again.

Don’t be fooled by how much I talk online. In real life, I really don’t like talking, just like Hu Heng when he was a child.

Hu Heng didn’t like talking because he stuttered back then. I’m different. My situation is even more special-

My voice is extremely unpleasant.

Hoarse, heavy, like I’ve smoked ten thousand cigarettes in a row.

When I keep my mouth shut, you might still be willing to look at my face. I’m tall and slender, with a high nose bridge, bright eyes, and even a clearly defined jawline.

But the moment I open my mouth, it’s over. You’d definitely keep your distance.

So in life, I’m actually an I – person – an introvert, as represented by the letter I in the 16 personalities test.

My useless vocal cords are a barrier to my social life, but that doesn’t mean I don’t crave social connection. I long for love. I long for beautiful feelings.

And as luck would have it, not long after I posted this novel online, I attracted a reader who wanted to have an emotional exchange with me.

This reader’s username was automatically generated by the system: User 92541728.

It was too hard to remember, so I called him User 925.

I’m sure you’ve all seen this reader in the comment section too. Some of you may even have interacted with him, but you probably wouldn’t remember that string of gibberish – like username.

This reader once left me a book review, saying he didn’t only appreciate my writing, but also wanted to get to know me personally. He had also left many paragraph comments, sharing his views on different chapters and passages.

In Chapter 3 of Volume 1, I once wrote this description of Qin Song: “But when he actually went on blind dates, he became picky. He didn’t like women who were fat, didn’t like women with dark skin…”

There, User 925 left a paragraph comment: “A very realistic male mindset.”

In Chapter 6 of Volume 1, there was this line: “She wrote a memo for the travel plans she had made for herself and Qin Song!”

User 925 commented: “She’s a professional.”

…

There were plenty of similar comments. If you want to read them, they’re still in the places I described. You can find them all.

At first, I didn’t pay any attention to this User 925. Not until early April, when I opened Weibo and found a private message from a stranger:

“Excuse me, are you the author of The Ashtray, Huahua Xiao Saozi?”

I thought about it, then replied:

“Mm-hmm, that’s me.”

That’s right. I use the same username on Weibo and Fanqie. This reader had actually gone out of his way to search for me on Weibo.

The other person replied instantly: “That’s great. It really is you. I finally found you.”

A tiny bit of happiness stirred in my heart – I actually had a fan in the true sense of the word. Not only did he follow my novel, he had also come to follow my personal Weibo!

But I didn’t know what to say in reply. Just as I was hesitating, another message came from him:
“My Fanqie ID is User 92541728. I’ve been following you since your novel only had a few chapters! I really like your writing style, pacing, and ideas! Could we get to know each other and be friends?”

I read the message twice, then opened the app to double-check. Sure enough, there really was someone like that among my followers.

Back then, I only had twenty-four followers, so it was easy to find this “925.”

I wasn’t good at socializing and had no idea what kind of friendship he meant by “be friends,” but I was more than happy to have one more person to chat with.

And just like that, User 925 and I added each other on WeChat.

I scrolled through the comments User 925 had left me, then looked at his profile and realized he was male.

He didn’t ask me what my name was, and I didn’t ask him for his. He called me Huahua, and I simply saved his contact as User 925.

925 and I hit it off right away.

He had all kinds of funny, absurd reaction memes, and he could toss out and catch every trending joke.

Our conversations rarely hit a lull. Whenever one thread ended in a statement, another question would always pop up, and the conversation would keep drifting farther and farther through endless questions and answers. Our chat history grew longer and longer too.

I especially loved talking to him about the characters in my book.

Although I had typed every one of those characters into existence with my own hands, as their images became more three-dimensional, I couldn’t help developing more and more thoughts about them in my head.

925 was incredibly cooperative, and I discovered that he had a lot of fresh takes on the characters I wrote.

He especially liked talking to me about Qin Song.

After I gave him a rough explanation of how I had designed Qin Song as a character, he said:

“Qin Song is a very complicated character.”

“If you say he’s good to He Qian, well, he cheated on her so badly she could practically race horses on top of her green hat. But if you say he’s bad to He Qian, he still takes on the responsibilities a husband should when she’s sick and vulnerable. He even firmly stands in front of her to protect her when it comes to his parents.”

“The real world is usually like that too. Everyone is multifaceted. Human nature changes in an instant, and every side is different.”

I loved hearing him make comments like that. At the very least, it proved that the characters I created could stand on their own.

Aside from my novel, we also talked about life.

What we had eaten that day, what area we had rented our apartments in, what movies were showing in theaters, what new embarrassing things our bosses and coworkers had done… We had so, so much to talk about. Every day, we chatted on and off from morning until night.

I was in a great mood during those days, and I updated like crazy. Once I started typing, I would often bang out six or seven thousand words in one go.

But do you know what else I felt at the time?

I felt that, acting like this, I was especially like Zhang Qiong.

Zhang Qiong and that “Liang He” had chatted like this too. Back then, she had also felt that “Liang He” was the best chat partner in the whole world.

Maybe I was overthinking it. After all, my imagination had always been wild and sprawling.

How could the real world possibly overlap with a novel? Especially a novel I had typed out myself.

I shook my head, chased that thought away, and continued living this happy, fulfilling life where I had a friend.

But something that happened on April 7 changed my mind again.