Ever since Lu Chen had pronounced her first three chapters “a huge improvement,” Shen Miaomiao had let the success go straight to her head.
“Sweet contemporary romance? Is that all there is to it?”
On Tuesday afternoon, she sprawled at her desk, humming as her fingers raced across the keyboard, writing Chapter Four.
As far as she was concerned, she'd cracked the code for a hit contemporary romance. Follow the framework her longtime fan L supplied, add a little of the gorgeous prose that had made her a bestselling author, and wouldn't taming that devil of an editor be a piece of cake?
At midnight that night, she didn't even wait for L to come online and mark her homework. She eagerly sent him the draft of her second major section, containing Chapters Four, Five, and Six.
[Anonymous User 9527]: Longtime fan! Look! I wrote all these new chapters in one go! This time I've packed in romantic scenes! The heroine gets dumped on a rainy night and ends up soaked. The hero drives over in his sports car to pick her up, then sweeps her off to his mansion! That pacing! That tension! Guaranteed hit!
L went silent for a full three minutes.
[L]: ...Did you forget your medication today?
[Anonymous User 9527]: ??? What do you mean?! You're questioning my bestselling instincts?!
[L]: Frivolous prose. Incoherent logic. One moment the heroine is showing the decisiveness of an independent career woman, and the next she's losing her mind in the rain over a minor setback? The hero picks her up in a sports car and sounds like he's reciting a greatest-hits collection of cheesy pickup lines. 9527, did you think getting one draft approved meant you could do whatever you liked?
Reading his venomous criticism, Shen Miaomiao clenched her fist in fury.
[Anonymous User 9527]: Hmph! You just don't understand what young readers like these days! This is called “powerful emotional impact”! Just wait and see how I win Devil Lu over with these chapters tomorrow!
[L]: ...I look forward to it. Try not to cry too loudly when he rejects them tomorrow.
...
The next day, Wednesday, three in the afternoon.
Outside the editor-in-chief's office.
Shen Miaomiao clutched the manuscript Lu Chen had just thrown back at her. The smile on her face had frozen completely.
“Ms. Shen Miaomiao.”
Inside the office, Lu Chen removed his gold-rimmed glasses. His voice was as cold as a block of ice shipped straight from Antarctica. “I thought your performance last Monday meant you'd finally figured it out. Apparently, it was just a flash in the pan.”
Lu Chen stood, his tall, lean figure radiating an intimidating pressure. Walking over to her, he extended his long fingers and tapped the manuscript hard.
“Look at the dialogue you wrote for Chapter Four. ‘Woman, you've successfully caught my attention’? ‘No matter how hard the rain falls, it cannot match the cold in my heart’? Ms. Shen, did you time-travel here from a domineering-CEO novel written twenty years ago?”
Shen Miaomiao's cheeks felt as though they were on fire. “That's... that's a classic retro style,” she muttered.
“It's stilted dialogue with details that have no grounding in everyday life!” Lu Chen cut her off without mercy, every word landing precisely where it hurt most. “All the push and pull between the leads is gone. What's left is embarrassment and melodrama. You think piling up luxury cars, downpours, and mansions makes a sweet romance? Sweetness with no texture of real life is industrial sugar sludge. Too much of it makes people sick.”
Shen Miaomiao bit her lip, ashamed and angry.
Yet for some reason, as she listened to Lu Chen's stern criticism, the words L had sent her on WeChat the previous night flashed through her mind.
“Frivolous prose. Incoherent logic.” “Sweetness with no texture of real life is artificial sweetener.”
Wait... Why were the points this devil of an editor criticized, the vocabulary he used, even his verdict of “stilted dialogue” and “details with no grounding in everyday life,” exactly the same as what L had said online last night?!
Even the timing of her humiliation was spot-on!
Head lowered, Shen Miaomiao cursed those two sharp-tongued monsters, Lu Chen and L, ten thousand times in her mind. At the same time, a shiver of alarm ran through her. L had warned her last night, but she'd been too full of herself to believe him. Now she'd really crashed headfirst into a wall with Lu Chen!
“He was... right about all of it,” she wailed inwardly.
Just when she thought she was about to be torn to shreds and ordered to rewrite the whole thing ten times, Lu Chen suddenly stopped criticizing her.
He let out a soft sigh, with a hint of resignation and compromise.
Reaching out, he took the fourth page from the stack she held and drew out a red pen.
“Watch.”
Lu Chen lowered his head, bending his neck slightly. A cool, woody fragrance drifted from his shirt collar. He struck through her excruciatingly awkward line, “Woman, you've successfully caught my attention,” then, in elegant, slender calligraphy, casually added two fresh lines beside it.
Hero: “The rain's too heavy. The subway station's flooded. I'm going that way. Get in.” Heroine: “Isn't my home in the opposite direction from Mr. Lu's company?” Hero: “The earth is round. Go around it and it's still on the way. Stop talking and take the hot tea.”
Shen Miaomiao's eyes widened. She stared at the red handwriting.
With that casual revision, the greasy, overbearing pickup line had turned into something alive on the page: a proud, stubborn man, a trace of awkward concern, and the subtle tension between two people at work!
“If another author can't get a draft approved after three revisions, I reject it and find someone else.” Lu Chen capped his pen, thrust the pages back into her arms, and gave her a cool look. “But Shen Miaomiao, you clearly have the skill and the spark. Don't fob me off with lazy formulas. And don't fob yourself off, either.”
Holding the manuscript, Shen Miaomiao stared blankly at the devil of an editor before her.
Evening sunlight slanted through the tall windows, falling across Lu Chen's handsome profile. His gold-rimmed glasses reflected a gentle light. For a moment, this harsh, fussy editor who struck terror into every author's heart actually looked... damnably handsome and kind?
“What are you looking at me for? Take it back and revise.” Lu Chen raised his eyes to hers.
“Oh! Yes, Mr. Lu! I'll get right on it!”
Like a startled rabbit, Shen Miaomiao fled the office with the manuscript in her arms.
Back at her desk, her heart was still beating a little fast. She turned to page four, looked at the two lines Lu Chen had added in red, and remembered the author in the next team whose manuscript had been rejected after five revisions, leaving them to walk out in tears...
Lu Chen acted as if she annoyed him to death. Yet he'd actually... revised her dialogue himself?
Shen Miaomiao touched her faintly warm cheek and gave a little huff. “Hmph... Stubborn jerk. Sure, he's sharp-tongued and a pain... but he might actually have a point.”
At that moment, a tiny crack quietly opened in her resistance to this devil of an editor.
Midnight came.
Shen Miaomiao sat obediently on the sofa and sent her revised Chapter Four to L.
[Anonymous User 9527]: L, my longtime fan... I was wrong. (Kneeling apology GIF.) Devil Lu really put me through the wringer in his office today... You were right about everything. I really let it go to my head.
[L]: Good that you've realized it. Did he make you cry?
[Anonymous User 9527]: Of course not! But something amazing happened. Devil Lu tore into me today, sure, but he actually took a red pen and rewrote two lines himself! They're so good!
[L]: Really? What did he change?
Excitedly, Shen Miaomiao sent him Lu Chen's line, “The earth is round. Go around it and it's still on the way,” followed by a flood of praise.
[Anonymous User 9527]: Look! Isn't that perfect?! Devil Lu is usually such a pain, but that move today... Suddenly I feel like he might not be as awful as I thought. He's even got a little professional charm!
On the other side of the screen, Lu Chen sat in his study, reading the messages she'd sent. At last, he let the corners of his mouth rise without trying to hide it.
[L]: Oh? So... you're starting to change your mind about your devil of an editor?
[Anonymous User 9527]: Just a teeny bit! A teeny, tiny bit! You're still number one in my heart, L, my longtime fan who helps me so selflessly!
Looking at the words “You're still number one,” Lu Chen gave a low chuckle. His long fingers tapped a message onto the screen.
[L]: In that case, our great author Shen, to build on that teeny, tiny change of heart... how about we act out a scene tomorrow at midnight in which the hero personally helps the heroine revise her proposal?