Chapter 556: 556
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Combustion from alcohol and gas would have a quiet flame . Only when the fuel was of wooden material that it would have this crackling and popping sound .
"Hello? How can I help you?" Ten seconds later, Chen Ge realized that there was still no one speaking, so he tossed out this question as a probe . A bottle fell to the ground, and it sounded like its content splashed out and caused the fire to burn even stronger .
"Hello! Is anyone there?" The phone was answered, so this meant that someone had to be near the phone . "Is this a fire? Are you okay? Please tell me your location immediately!"
Chen Ge was getting nervous, and he screamed loudly . The fire was still burning, and then a different voice cut through the roaring flame .
"Can I talk to you for a moment?" The man's voice was nice but rather hoarse .
"Sure, since I have nothing to do at the moment anyway . " Chen Ge had been afraid that the other party would refuse to communicate . As long as there was communication, he could get useful information . "Then what do you want to talk about?"
After a long time, his reply came . "I don't know . "
The person spoke slowly like he was constantly thinking . Chen Ge could hear the tremor in the person's voice . He was unstable . Chen Ge did not dare to randomly run his mouth lest he provoked the man .
"Shall we talk about something happy?"
"There are many happy things . Everyone is happy, and I know I should be happy, but for some reason, I am unable to be happy . "
"Just relax, then how about we share some of our best memories?"
"Memories?" The man went silent again, but the sound of fire burning became clearer and clearer . "When I was young, my parents kept arguing for the sake of living . "
When he heard that, Chen Ge knew that something was wrong . This was not a happy memory—he wanted to interrupt the man, but the man on the other end of the phone did not appear like he was going to stop .
"My mother was very strict with me because she wanted the best for her son . I've always been an obedient child . A bit shy and didn't like to talk . When I was at primary school, I was quite good at my studies, but unfortunately, throughout the six years, I only got three good student award .
"During secondary school, my English was very bad, and my result was average . During the third year, my mother found me an English tutor for one-on-one tuition . I had to attend classes after school until 9 . 30 pm . When I reached home, it would be around 10 pm .
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"The tutor was a very good teacher . I got ninety-five marks on my English, but I did not get similarly good results for Math and Chinese, the subjects that I was supposed to be good at . However, overall my result was still at the front of the class . If I remember correctly, the total mark was about 560 marks or so . With that result, I could apply for all the high school other than Si Yi High .
"Actually, I really don't understand why we need to label children . Si Yi High was the best high school, and I was missing the mark by twenty plus marks . If I wanted to enter Si Yi High, I had to fork out tuition, which was 18,000 RMB .
"The monthly salary of my parents was four thousand RMB . To give me a better head start, they scrounged up this money to send me to Si Yi High .
"Should I be thankful?
"I don't know . Perhaps it was the sense of guilt, but I worked so hard for the first three months I entered the school . I was afraid of being exposed, afraid of other people finding out that I didn't get in there with my own results but because of money .
"Actually, other people might not even have cared about that, but perhaps I'm just someone who is naturally prideful or perhaps I don't want to be the same as them . For the first exam, my results were higher than average, and I was happy . I worked even harder . But for my middle year exam, my result slid down to lower average .
"I couldn't find the reason . Perhaps it was my method of studying or perhaps I just wasn't putting in enough effort . What else could I do but push forward?
"When the result for the last exam came out, my result dropped even further to the bottom of the class . A good student became the worst student—the identity had changed, but the mind needed a time to get used to the situation . When my mind also adapted to this change, then I'd change from a normal student to a bad student .
"I'm a strange fella, the type that has a strong sense of pride and arrogance . When we were called to pick the stream that we wanted to focus on, I had a crush . It was something that is difficult to explain, but I felt happy whenever I saw her .
"She was the good student type and also very hardworking . She would show up for class early in the morning . The key to our classroom was with the monitor, so I woke up early every morning just so I could arrive at school before the monitor and jumped into the room through the classroom window to help her open the door .
"There were many similar things . When she went to the canteen to buy lunch in the afternoon, I would take my English textbook and study it while leaning against the corridor . I wanted to see her, to see her walk back from the canteen to the classroom .
"Actually, it's quite embarrassing because even though I studied the textbook for the whole semester, in the English exam, I only scored in the thirties . The exam results became worse and worse . I was constantly one of the worst ten students in the class . During the third year, when all the students gave it their all and fought like there was no return, my interest was reading and writing .
"I read all type of books, not related to school . Web novels, magazines, sci-fi novels, and thrillers both locally and overseas . After reading so much, a world would be constructed in my mind, a world that was my own . That was also the first time that I opened a writer's account for myself online and started to try to write some things .
"There was still over one hundred days to the high school exam, but even the friends that stayed at the internet café started to retreat to focus on their study . However, all that I focused on was my story and my writing .
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"During one of the school assemblies, the headmaster was standing on stage . I stared at him and thought about the books that I liked, the authors that I admired . I wanted to be like them, to construct a world that many people would appreciate .
"The exam was over, and there were two ways to understand this .
"One was exam was over, and the other was my life was over .
"I scored just enough for vocational school . Compared to those who wanted to give the exam another go, I decided to grasp this last chance to confess my love . But until today, I did not say it because that day I saw the girl whom I liked got together with the monitor .
"I went to cut my hair until I was bald . As the only student from Si Yi High to go to a vocational school, I had to have my own style, walk my own path . I planned to cut myself off from my former classmates, probably because the greater the pride, the more one dislikes pity from others .
"Even if I was a bad student, I was a bad student with a dream . After I got to the school, writing became my life . I planned to write an epic that combined all the elements of the great writing that had come before me . I had read many books, so I knew a bit of everything . I put the manuscript that I wrote on the internet .
"That was when I received my first contract . My work was more than 300,000 words, but no one was reading it . Then, I tried to give them my other stories, but they were all rejected . During the latter half of the third year, some of the students started to focus on moving to actual university or studying to become teachers . I went to someplace far away from home to start my internship .
"The factory where my father worked closed down . The old CEO was sent into jail for ten years due to illegal activities, so only my mother's salary was keeping the family afloat . She earned less than two thousand a month .
"For the internship, I chose the place furthest from home because the salary was the highest, and it was close to the ocean . About thirty-three people from our school chose to have their internship at this company . Since it was a frontline worker and it was factory work, there was constant interaction with gas and copper sludge . One month later, only sixteen people remained .
"Due to professional reasons, I was moved to another department . The work wasn't easy, but it was still acceptable . Slowly, I got used to the lifestyle . The leader thought that even though this child did not like to speak, he was honest and serious, so my internship ended sooner than others, and I became an official worker .
"I worked eight hours daily with one day of rest every week . After I got used to this, I started to ask myself, am I going to work like this forever? How can I have no dreams for myself?
"I started to write again . After an eight-hour shift, I would write four thousand words a night, without any readers or any support . Even those comments mocking me wouldn't total up to four thousand words . If I didn't write, nothing would change . Writing was tiring, but I liked to write .
"Perhaps the gods had mercy for the hardworking . There were few readers, but the crush I had from high school suddenly contacted me through internet . Way back when I was at university, I heard from another friend that she had broken up with the monitor; however, I had been too focused on writing to care about it .
"Then, we started to reconnect . During the annual break, I went to visit her and her university . Vocational school and university were not that different, or at least I did not think it was that different . However, when she continued to study for her masters and doctorate, then I thought the difference was quite huge .
"I forgot what I said on the day of confession . I couldn't even remember the date, but the conclusion was that we were not compatible . I couldn't say that I was disappointed .
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"I threw myself back into work and writing . Finally, the book was contracted . There were still no readers, and I got just over six hundred for my writing every month . Six hundred of that was from constant writing instead of popularity .
"Then, I searched for my book online and found it on many aggregator websites . I was so pissed . I begged and reported . I tried my best to find the people who stole my writing . The website had a forum for readers, and it was even more lively than the official forum . After I friended the person online, I told him to remove my book immediately, or I would have to resort to legal actions .
"He ignored me .
"I found other aggregator sites and realized that the uploader used the same account, so I tried to reason with him . He still ignored me . Finally, for the first time in my life, someone as prideful as I am begged him .
"I was the official writer, but I had to beg this aggregator . I told him that I didn't even demand that he removed the book—I just asked that he did not update the same time as I did . Could he please wait for three days after I uploaded the official version? If he could not do three days, could he give me one day? I was pleading with him .
"I even started a thread on the forum, telling them that I only earned six hundred per month, and if people really liked the writing, I'd hope for them to support the real author . The replies said that I was manipulating their feeling, calling me names . A real author would not have cared about these things, no wonder I was not popular .
"The person who opened the aggregator did not reply to me, and I did not reply to the readers . I exited the web browser and started writing my four thousand words for the day .
"Every day, four thousand words, and I had to update daily to gain the reward money of six hundred—that six hundred was all the reward that I got for my hard work .
"After a week, when I was working, there was a malfunction at work . I broke the middle finger of my right hand . The bone snapped, and only two layers of skin were connecting the finger .
"The accident happened at 2 pm, and I left the hospital at 8 pm . I returned to bedroom . I opened the computer and continued typing with nine fingers . Daily four thousand words, only by updating daily would I be able to earn six hundred this month .
"Halfway through the chapter, with only three thousand words written, I suddenly collapsed . I collapsed onto the keyboard and cried like a dog . What was I doing?
"Then holiday came . I returned home . The girl asked me out for dinner, and after dinner, we went for a movie . The movie was a love story . The male character gave up his life for the female character, but the female character still ended up with the second male character . I seemed to see myself on screen, and I gave up everything .
"I placed the present that I had specially picked up for the night on the bridge and I squatted by the road until midnight . The people who passed by must have thought that I was very weird . I got home . The next day, I flew to Zhu Hai .
"Work, writing… I cannot honestly tell you what was keeping me alive back then . I started to write a new book, and another half a year had passed . Like what I said earlier, God has mercy on the hardworking, and I had the best period of my life .
"I ran into a female reader who was five years younger than me . At the time, she was still studying while I was working, and the distance between us was half of China .
"When I went to meet her for the first time, a tornado came, and the plane couldn't fly . Coincidentally, before this tornado left, another tornado was coming . I sincerely couldn't believe my luck .
"At the time, she told me, if I couldn't make it that day, then it meant that we could not be together . And then, a miracle happened . There was a short period between the two tornadoes when the plane was allowed to fly .
"That was my first real romance . Everything that we did was my first . My first time holding someone's hand, first time going on a date, first time going to theme park, first time walking past a Haunted House, first time taking the subway together, first time kissing…
"I did not worry her too much and hid my many weaknesses away from her like the finger that I had lost, my education background, and the book that was not as good as I made it out to be .
"I had many things that I wanted to tell her, and we matched each other . I was very happy when I was around her .
"Then I wrote a supernatural web novel, and it became surprisingly popular . Heaven was finally smiling at me . The days were glowing—the sweetness had arrived after years of bitterness . My dream was about to come true .
"I could see the bad student standing at the assembly looking at the people on stage, he walked out from the memory to thank me .
"Thank you for not giving up . Finally, you are standing alongside those authors that you admired .
"This was the happiest moment of my life, but the happiest moments are always the shortest .
"Every year, the website had a competition to pick the best newcomer . With my result, I thought my place was guaranteed, but I ran into a cheater .
"With a landslide victory I won the award, but I had to spend around 400,000 RMB to win it . Around 100,000 RMB was from donations from fans, but the remaining came from my own wallet . I sold my own house for this .
"I've figured everything out before I made that decision . If my book was reported, I would go find the cheater, kill him, and then light a fire and burn everything up including myself .
"Thankfully, the book was not banned . However, after winning the award, I suddenly felt that my world had darkened . It was supposed to be a celebratory event, but I couldn't smile .
"Everyone was happy, so I tried my best to smile . My dream came true, but I felt like something was lacking .
"When I communicated with people, I would see their mouths widening, and I would fall into them like they were black holes . I stayed with people that I loved, but they would reject my concern and feelings .
"Something must be wrong . "
The sound of fire grew, and something like a dresser was knocked over . The man's voice went further away from the phone, and the last thing that Chen Ge heard was . "This fire sure is bright…"