Chapter 293: End of the Trip
After watching a movie, she had pretty much seen nothing and didn’t understand what the movie was about. She only knew she was very unhappy because she hadn’t sat with her dearest Shion-sensei. She could only watch Shion-sensei eat popcorn with Fang Jiangning, occasionally chatting a few sentences, while she could only watch dryly.
That was clearly my seat…
After the movie was over, she still hadn’t gotten over it, still thinking about this matter.
“This movie is so boring. Although it’s not to say that domestic films are bad, the plot still has too many flaws.”
“I think the Father of Sorrows from a while ago was better.”
Fang Jiangning and Yu Linna were chatting happily, talking and laughing all the way, and even bought two ice creams on the roadside. This made Xiao Yanhan’s teeth itch with hatred.
No, that’s mine!
She really wanted to roar like that.
Her dearest Shion-sensei, her favorite idol, was now her roommate. The one who had liked her first was her, this die-hard fan. She was the first in everything…
“Why is there such a strong sense of resentment…”
Lan Ranyan suddenly felt uncomfortable. Her intuition told her that there was a very bad atmosphere around her.
…
As their trip was about to come to an end, Xiao Yanhan also had to consider her manga. After working so hard for so long, constantly revising, constantly learning, her story had improved a lot compared to before, but she still felt it was a struggle. Her biggest trouble was that she couldn’t get her manga published in a magazine, nor could she get a long-term serialization for her manga. She couldn’t even draw a decent short manga.
She was thinking about how to draw it well. Before, Shion-sensei had said that her original story-telling ability was too weak. She was also thinking about whether to find a partner, but it wasn’t very realistic. At least now she had to get her manga going.
Since she couldn’t handle complex plots, she might as well write something simple and crude. For example, a “pretentious” manga, or a “fanservice” type of manga, she could try to do that.
But shouldn’t the most important thing to consider be a confession or something…
“You look very troubled.”
Yu Linna said, licking her ice cream.
“Ahaha… not really.”
“It’s particularly obvious.”
And Yu Linna always felt a little dangerous. She hoped it was her illusion. She didn’t want a repeat of what had happened in the hot spring.
Xiao Yanhan sighed silently in her heart. How she wished she could say those words to the girl she liked, but she couldn’t. She always felt that if she said it, they wouldn’t even be friends anymore. She still wanted to continue to be friends with her.
…
After returning, Xiao Yanhan had been tinkering with her manga, although there wasn’t much progress.
Two days later, their trip also ended, and the four of them embarked on the journey home. Lan Ranyan’s home was in Beijing, so she directly bought a plane ticket and flew home from there. The three of them also went to the airport to see her off. After sending Lan Ranyan off, the three of them returned to Guangnan and parted ways again.
Because Xiao Yanhan’s route was different from theirs, she had no choice but to go her separate way. But actually, Xiao Yanhan had already made up her mind. She would definitely go and find Yu Linna during the holidays. But before that, she had to finish her manga. It was almost time for submission, and she hoped her manga could be published. This time, she still had to continue drawing.
“Shion-sensei, please give me some useful advice. Please tell me how to draw a good manga!”
As soon as she got home, Xiao Yanhan called and harassed Yu Linna, asking her how to do her manga. And Yu Linna herself was still busy, so she was naturally annoyed, but she still patiently answered her.
“Think more, draw more.”
“Is there any difference between you saying that and not saying anything at all!”
Yu Linna quickly hung up the phone, leaving Xiao Yanhan to worry over her draft paper. How on earth was she going to draw a manga? She really had a headache. She had been drawing her manga for several years, and the rejected manuscripts could fill a whole box, but she had never successfully submitted a work. Besides her increasingly exquisite art style, her characters were getting better and better looking, their chests bigger and bigger, their muscles more and more obvious, and the characters were also getting better and better looking. But in terms of the story, she just couldn’t improve. This was also where she felt a headache.
This time, Xiao Yanhan wanted to draw a short manga about an idol, about a battle, about a phantom thief. The story was probably about a girl who was an idol by day and a phantom thief by night. The style of the story was a bit like the shoujo style of the 90s, but she admitted that her own art style was not shoujo at all, and the fanservice was very obvious, just like the style of a harem manga.
And her screenwriting ability was not strong either, unlike Yu Linna, who was proficient in everything. She sometimes wondered if it would be better to find a partner like her dad.
“So you called to harass me just for this?”
Lan Ranyan had just gotten home and hadn’t even had a few bites of her meal before she was harassed by a call from Xiao Yanhan. She was instantly furious and had the urge to press her to the ground and teach her a lesson. This Xiao Yanhan, would she die if she didn’t cause trouble for a day?
“Ranran, you also know that I really want to get my manga published. Can you see if you can come up with an idea or something?”
“To be honest, what’s the point? I’m not a manga artist.”
Lan Ranyan heartlessly rebuffed her.
Xiao Yanhan was hit hard. In the phone, she seemed to even hear someone on the other side saying, “Miss, aren’t you going to practice your military gymnastics?” Her mind was now full of thoughts about manga, and her head was about to explode.
“If this story doesn’t succeed this time, if it’s not published, then all my efforts these past few years will have been in vain. I don’t want to be rejected again.”
“Then you should just give up. Manga is not for you.”
“Ranran, you’re discouraging me!”
Lan Ranyan secretly smiled.
“Yan, I find that you sometimes think too much. You’re not thinking about the right things. Actually, for a manga, it’s enough if it’s interesting. You’re always stuffing so many things into it. As an ordinary reader, it’s a headache to watch.”
Lan Ranyan’s words made Xiao Yanhan stop and think about her manga. Indeed, these past few years, her ambition had been too great. She always wanted to draw a manga with a grand scale and background. In the beginning, she had constructed a grand fantasy world, but because she hadn’t set a ceiling for the combat power, the combat power had completely collapsed, and the page count was only twenty.
After that, she always wanted to do big things, like arranging a plot for an alien invasion of Earth, or a one-man-multiple-women harem plot, or a plot where the male and male leads love and kill each other. She had almost played with all of them, but none had been successful. It was simply because her storytelling ability was not good, she couldn’t grasp the plot direction well, and the limited space made her manga be rejected repeatedly.
This time, she didn’t want to fail.
Yu Linna said that she had persisted for her dream, and had almost committed suicide because of her dream, but she still persisted and ushered in her own light. She also wanted to be like Yu Linna, to get her own light, to find her own path.
She wanted to be a manga artist like her dad, a manga artist loved by everyone. Even if she couldn’t create an era, at least she wanted to leave her own name in the history of manga. As long as she could do this, she would be very satisfied…
She patted her cheeks, swept away the shadows on her face, and pulled herself together again, starting to draw her manga. This time, she named her manga Phantom Thief Idol, and she didn’t arrange for a male protagonist to be in it, only female characters. Hopefully, she could succeed this time.
…
As January slowly passed, Yu Linna’s work was gradually completed this month. She had finished all the character design work and handed it over to them. The other party also said they would finish the game as soon as possible and have the company’s people work overtime.
But after that, basically no one came to find Shion-sensei. Things like script work, character design work, they all didn’t look for her. She had a rare period of leisure and focused on writing her novels. And at the end of the month, the web series Wulin Kitchen Maiden premiered. The originally unpromising web series received surprisingly good reviews after its broadcast. Everyone also began to understand that even if the animation of Ballad of the Enchantress had failed, Shion-sensei was still a very good screenwriter. The response to Wulin Kitchen Maiden was not bad. It scored 7 points on the Douzi website, which was quite good.
But after that, Yu Linna didn’t take on any more script work. She didn’t have the energy for it.
After this failure, she knew that she was too stubborn. Because of her stubbornness, she had rashly handed over the copyright. She had to take the blame for this failure. Therefore, she began to settle down.
Although that was the case, anyone with discerning eyes could see that her career was on a downward slope. The most obvious was that the quality of the latest volume of Ballad of the Enchantress had declined. Clearly, her state was starting to be not right, but she was still adjusting. She was trying to fill in the plot holes of the novel so that she could wrap it up and start on the next one. The story of Ballad of the Enchantress was also in its later stages. What could be told was almost finished. The relationship between the male and female protagonists had also been announced, which was a bombshell. The subsequent plot would talk about the pit of time travel.
She was working hard to fill in the plot holes, but the animation was still a mess. The story it told was getting worse and worse, and almost no viewers watched it, only die-hard fans stubbornly watching on TV. Because the ratings were not good, the production company had considered changing the schedule, but it was dropped after an internal meeting did not pass.
Because of the failure of the animation, Yu Linna was even more unwilling to let go of the adaptation rights of Zixuan and the Paper Airplane. But Wenqing’s side was keen on selling the copyright. They had been trying hard to do ideological work on her. This made Yu Linna feel disheartened, but there was nothing she could do. The contract stipulated that Wenqing owned the adaptation rights of the work, and Yu Linna could not interfere with it. This was a problem that many new authors would face. Before the work became popular, the author had no say.
She had been thinking about how to prepare for the next novel, and she had to have the adaptation rights of the next novel in her hands, not be led by the nose by others. And so, soon after, there were rumors that Shion-sensei was in conflict with Wenqing. These were naturally baseless rumors, but many people still believed them.
…
Ye Zhiyun finished reading the newspaper and crumpled it into a ball, throwing it away. After returning to the country, she was still actively looking for partners to cooperate with, preparing for the company she was about to establish. But it was still too difficult.
She held her phone, looking at the name on the list. She thought for a long time, hesitated for a long time, and finally dialed the phone number. For no other reason than that she simply wanted to see her.
“Nana.”
“You’re back? What are you doing now?”
A familiar voice came from the other end of the phone, which instantly put Ye Zhiyun at ease.
“Nothing, just wanted to find you. Where are you? I’ll come over to see you.”
