The Little Duck 22p1

Chapter 22 p1

Jian Xin felt like she had been dreaming a lot lately, and she wasn’t sure if it was from reading too many novels.

The dreams were sometimes logical, sometimes not.

Sometimes she would dream of the main characters from a novel, either misunderstanding each other or being stubborn, arguing endlessly in front of her, both sides wanting her to judge who was right and who was wrong.

Sometimes she would dream that she had become an overnight sensation because of a song, but before she could be happy for long, she was ridiculed by the entire internet.

But most of the time, she would return to her high school years in her dreams.

She had discussed it with her family and became a boarding student. Yan Lu was one of her roommates. They did dorm chores together every day, ran to the cafeteria to eat together, and carried two thermoses to get hot water at night.

There were so many people in the class, all with blurry faces that she couldn’t see clearly.

The class bell rang, and she would pull Yan Lu to skip class. The two of them would walk slowly on the school’s sports field.

In countless similar but different dreams, she was always loudly complaining to Yan Lu in different scenarios, saying that she was already so old and could earn her own money, so why did she still have to take the college entrance exam?

—She had already been through her third year of high school countless times!

It had to be said, this was a terrifying dream.

Who would want to go through high school so many times?!

Even if… what you think about during the day, you dream about at night.

Even if she really wanted to see a certain person, there was no need to be repeatedly trapped in such a dream, right?

Every time Jian Xin thought of this, she couldn’t help but sigh.

Although she really didn’t want to admit it, she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about all sorts of things related to Yan Lu.

The past, the present, the blurry memories of the past, were like a gust of wind blowing over dead ashes, stirring up thousands of dust motes, dancing silently in the scorching summer sun.

Visible, but untouchable, only disturbing an already uneasy heart.

But despite all this, life had to go on.

Jian Xin told herself that she was only one person, but she was unexpectedly living two lives. Life was already hard enough, there was no need to be too hard on herself.

So during her recovery, she only wrote one song. The rest of the time, she was either reading Yan Lu’s novels or watching the dramas adapted from them.

Faced with an old friend who was slacking off so much right after joining, and who wouldn’t take any jobs she could avoid, everyone in the band group gave her a mild verbal reprimand.

After the reprimand, of course, they chose to forgive her!

So not only was her band group’s name changed to [Of Course We Forgive Her Zzzz], but even the proud pigeon on the group’s profile picture was P’d into a forgiving green by Zheng Xinyue.

And then the style of the group chat became like this:

Finished Ex’s Novel Yet: 4k for a one-stop songwriting and arrangement job, due at the beginning of next month, a bit urgent, anyone want to take it?

Lan Lan Also Wants Repetitive Words: Xin Zi won’t take it anyway.

Yue Yue Wants Repetitive Words: If Xin Zi won’t take it, Yue Zi will.

Lan Lan Also Wants Repetitive Words: If Yue Zi won’t take it, Lan Zi will.

Yue Yue Wants Repetitive Words: If Lan Zi wants to take it, Lan Zi will take it!

Lan Lan Also Wants Repetitive Words: [Dumbfounded]

Lan Lan Also Wants Repetitive Words: [Pigeons on all sides]

Finished Ex’s Novel Yet: So who actually wants to take it?

Yue Yue Wants Repetitive Words: [After you]

Lan Lan Also Wants Repetitive Words: [After you]

Finished Ex’s Novel Yet: This job is 4k! @It’s Not a Crime to Read Your Ex’s Novel

It’s Not a Crime to Read Your Ex’s Novel: [Middle-aged, gradually becoming calm]

It’s Not a Crime to Read Your Ex’s Novel: [Let me lie down a little longer]

Lan Lan Also Wants Repetitive Words: I knew it [Facepalm]

Yue Yue Wants Repetitive Words: [Facepalm][Shrugs]

It’s Not a Crime to Read Your Ex’s Novel: Going back to watching dramas!

Finished Ex’s Novel Yet: [Don’t worry, the pigeon is on the deer]

Speaking of watching dramas, Yao Wenqian was a really good drama-watching buddy.

To make it easier for Jian Xin to watch dramas, she even shared her QQ account password with her.

She said that her membership accounts for various platforms were all linked to her QQ, so if she wanted to watch a drama on any platform, she could just log in with her QQ, and she wouldn’t need to send a text or scan a QR code for verification every time!

Honestly, the moment she received the account and password from her little cousin, Jian Xin was completely stunned.

You have to know that something like QQ is very personal. To let someone log in casually, how much trust would that require!

This was a little too flattering!

Picked Up a Heart: You’re too trusting of me!

Don’t Steal My Little Pudding: [Hehehe]

Don’t Steal My Little Pudding: My cousin’s good friend is my good friend!

Don’t Steal My Little Pudding: If you’re willing to watch dramas with me, our little boat of friendship can be upgraded to a luxury cruise ship!

Don’t Steal My Little Pudding: Remember to tell me if you see any plot points you like or want to complain about!!!

Picked Up a Heart: [No problem]

Don’t Steal My Little Pudding: [Hehehe]

Faced with such trust, all Jian Xin could do was send her real-time thoughts to Yao Wenqian every day while watching dramas.

Yao Wenqian seemed to really like the feeling of someone chatting with her while watching. She always replied very quickly. As long as she was awake, she would basically reply in seconds, and from time to time, she would send her a couple of doodles about the stories.

Jian Xin had never had it so good when reading novels before. Not only did she have someone to chat with about the plot at any time, but she could also see various fan art.

With such a good buddy, her “Seven-Year Ex’s Works Completion Plan” was also carried out exceptionally smoothly.

But one day, Jian Xin came across a doodle on Weibo that she had received in a private message.

The blogger who posted the picture was a big name with over 700,000 followers, named Qian Xiaohuan.

Jian Xin stared at this number of followers for a long time, then went to search elsewhere and found that some very popular games had hired her to draw things in recent years. Netizens’ evaluation of her was that she was a very young, talented artist with a very unique style.

She had never thought that this drama-watching buddy who had sent her flying in the middle of the night was a big name in the art circle who could get five-figure commercial jobs in her sophomore year of college, and whose works were now in high demand!

Jian Xin searched for a while longer with a shocked expression and found that Yan Lu’s popularity in recent years was also somewhat related to this young lady.

Four years ago, the pen name Perched by the Roadside could only be said to be not completely unknown. Many people said she was a hidden gem of an author, but she had always been in a lukewarm state.

It wasn’t until Qian Xiaohuan started to occasionally draw fan art for her novels, attracting many curious peers and fans to read them. The peers and fans liked what they read and also started to create and consume fan works in a small circle, thus attracting the attention of more passersby.

Later, there were more and more derivative works of Perched by the Roadside’s novels, even developing from fan art to fan fiction and fan songs. With more and more passersby from various circles, her popularity grew higher and higher.

But it wasn’t so much that Qian Xiaohuan had made Perched by the Roadside, but rather that they had made each other.

Before Qian Xiaohuan started drawing fan art for Perched by the Roadside’s novels, her Weibo actually only had tens of thousands of followers. Most of her followers later came from drawing fan art of Perched by the Roadside’s novels and drama versions.

Jian Xin lay in bed, holding her phone, looking at the path Yan Lu had taken these past few years, looking at some old readers saying that her most popular novel now only had a few thousand collections when it was first completed. A lot of indescribable feelings welled up in her heart.

In her increasingly distant memory, there was once a novel that Yan Lu had written, stroke by stroke, in the classroom.

That story took place on a small campus.

Lin Xiaoshuang was the main character of the whole story, a little girl who was always walking on the edge of a cliff, avoiding the sunlight, facing the cold wind, spreading her arms, and imagining that she could grow wings and fly freely.

The school bully who always bullied her, the alcoholic father who loved to gamble, the grandparents who favored boys over girls, the family background that made her unable to hold her head high.

Her world was so small, her world was so bad—besides Li Xia, there was no other light.

Lin Xiaoshuang was as quiet as a little mute. She wanted to say something to this world, but all the bad things would quietly strangle her thousands of cries and pleas for help that were about to burst out.

In Lin Xiaoshuang’s story, it seemed that besides Li Xia, there was no hope at all.

At that time, Jian Xin would always cry very loudly, thinking that it was the most profound love. Because of Li Xia’s redemption, Lin Xiaoshuang ran forward with all her might and became a very good person.

But now, looking at the other stories Yan Lu had written, Jian Xin realized that both she and Yan Lu—the kind of love they had longed for in their youth, “shedding one’s skin and changing one’s feathers for one person, striving to reshape oneself to be worthy of them,” was only because their worlds were still too small at that time.

Now, Yan Lu no longer wrote such stories.

Her main characters, whether they had the power to fight against everything or not, would, in one fantasy journey after another, slowly grow into a person who could cross mountains and rivers—not for anyone, but for themselves.

During this period, Jian Xin had finished reading several of Yan Lu’s novels from these past few years.

The more she read, the more she felt that the Yan Lu who had written the character of Lin Xiaoshuang in a small notebook was really gone.

Actually, this was quite good…

Lin Xiaoshuang couldn’t be without Li Xia, but Yan Lu could be without her.

With this thought, Jian Xin couldn’t help but sigh.

She stopped her archeological dig into Yan Lu and her little cousin, opened Douyin, and started scrolling aimlessly.

The terrifying big data seemed to have installed a surveillance camera in her phone. She hadn’t even swiped through a few videos when a recommendation for Endless Rain was pushed in her face.

The background image was the “Rainy Night Confession” drawn by her little cousin, and the background music was the chorus of the drama’s ending theme.

The video content was a large scrolling excerpt from the original text.

[In Xiao Qiu’s not-so-long life, she had changed herself for Jiang Yan more than once.]

[She fantasized with a full heart that one day, when she became the best version of herself, she would be worthy of him.]

[But no one told her, who was to define the so-called “best.”]

[She guessed, she observed, she learned…]

[She kneaded everything that might win praise into every inch of her flesh and blood, regardless of the pain.]

[It wasn’t until she discovered that she had become unlike herself, and the person she thought she would never be separated from in this life had eventually drifted away from her, that she was shocked to realize—the “goodness” in the eyes of others was never what she wanted.]

[The rain in her heart fell harder and harder, as if it would never stop.]

[But she didn’t want to drown in this endless rain of Jiang Yan.]

[So, she packed her bags and ran to a distant place alone.]

[The sky is wide and the earth is vast, wandering freely.]

Video caption—Loving anyone is not as good as loving yourself. Sisters, come and read this novel, refuse to dig for wild vegetables, and cure your love-struck brain! #EndlessRain #PerchedbytheRoadside #GoodNovelRecommendation

Jian Xin: “…”

Why do my knees hurt even when I’m reading a novel?

Life is just too hard.

Jian Xin pouted, tossed her phone by her pillow, and closed her eyes sullenly.

The air conditioning seemed to be a little too cold. She unconsciously shrank into her blanket.

“…”

The blanket seemed to be gone.

In a daze, she wanted to reach for the blanket, but found that her hand was also gone.

Jian Xin took a deep breath and slowly opened her eyes.

Beneath her was the familiar duck nest, beside her was the familiar Corgi, and the lights in the study were still on.