Xiao Tangqiu was already draped on Meng Xinghe in order to grab his laptop, but Meng Xinghe was taller than him with a longer reach, so he couldn’t grab it even after a long time.
He was about to reach out and claw Meng Xinghe in a fit of anger, but when he heard Meng Xinghe’s voice, he became stunned.
“…Shen Yuan?”
“This name is too perfunctory,” Meng Xinghe was still complaining with a smile, “Although I already knew you wouldn’t be able to pick a name, your name sense is really too mediocre. And the witch’s name, Lily Marlene or whatever… isn’t that a movie we watched together when we were in junior high?”
Xiao Tangqiu became dazed.
“All this Maria, Laura, Veronica, isn’t this the Fassbinder trilogy? Although foreign names are hard to come by, can’t you come up with a nicer name yourself? …What’s the matter? Why do you have such an expression of your spirit flying off somewhere on your face again?”
Xiao Tangqiu hesitated for a moment, then said, “How do I feel like… I might have met someone named Shen Yuan?”
“Oh? When?” Meng Xinghe casually flipped through Xiao Tangqiu’s settings with a nonchalant expression on his face.
“It should be… not long ago…” Xiao Tangqiu couldn’t help but get lost in thought, “Before we… it seems that a lot of things happened… many, many things… but I can’t remember anything now…”
“Have you seen this person in reality?” Meng Xinghe raised his eyebrows.
Xiao Tangqiu looked blank, “In reality… maybe not.”
Meng Xinghe touched his chin, “Is it a dream again?”
Xiao Tangqiu frowned slightly, “But that feeling is very real… It’s like I really once stood face to face with him… It’s so real, it’s as real as the car accident yesterday…”
When his words came to this point, he abruptly stopped talking.
“That car accident yesterday?” Meng Xinghe raised his eyebrows, “What do you mean?”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Xiao Tangqiu pursed his lips, the name “Shen Yuan” was as real to him as the car accident—the one that should have killed Meng Xinghe, the one that happened in his dreams.
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Dea… kjr atja gfjiis pera j vgfjw?
“Yxjs, rabq atlcxlcu jybea la, lrc’a atlr Vtfc Tejc j mtjgjmafg ogbw sbeg qfc? Pa’r cbgwji lo sbe atlcx tf’r ojwliljg, joafg jii, sbe’nf mjgfoeiis mbwf eq klat atlr qfgrbc. Aera ilxf jc jeatbg, sbeg qfc rtjqfr atf mtjgjmafg jcv mtjgjmafg rfaalcur, jcv fnfc jggjcufr tlr ojaf jcv ktbif ilof…” Zfcu Wlcutf rwlifv rboais, “Mbg jc jeatbg, lrc’a atf qgbajubclra atflg wbra ojwliljg oglfcv?”
Xiao Tangqiu pondered for a moment, “That seems to make sense… Show me my notebook.”
Meng Xinghe smiled and handed the notebook to Xiao Tangqiu. Xiao Tangqiu took it and looked at it. It really was his junior high school handwriting. It felt like he had met an old friend he hadn’t seen for a long time.
“Shen Yuan…” He said the name softly, the image of him biting a pen to choose the main character’s name back then appeared in his mind—
…What should the main character be called?
…Can’t be too ordinary, have depth! Have content!
…Can’t think! Can’t come up with one!
…Forget it, just call him Shen Yuan! It is very connotative when you hear it, and it’s the homonym of “abyss”!
…Just call him Shen Yuan!
At the same time, other images flashed through his mind, but before Xiao Tangqiu could capture them, those fleeting images disappeared.
“By the way, what about the ending?” Meng Xinghe suddenly asked from beside him. He turned the notebook to the end, “There are only settings in the whole piece. You have set seven instances, you also set the general background and NPCs of the instances, but what about the ending? Did the protagonist defeat the final boss?”
Xiao Tangqiu thought hard, “The ending? I forgot… but generally speaking, the protagonist will defeat the final boss, right?”
“You… Clearly, you’re just writing something casually in your notebook, but this can actually be a pit?” Meng Xinghe’s mouth twitched, “There’s no text, it’s just a setting, you can actually have a setting story pit!”
Xiao Tangqiu laughed dryly, “Generally speaking, after writing the settings, it is finished…”
Meng Xinghe rolled his eyes, then turned to look at Xiao Tangqiu’s bookcase, “Fine! I’ll see if you have written other novels, I just happen to be bored right now, I’ll come and read your masterpieces!”
“Hey, hey, do you have to look through my dark history like this?”
“What kind of dark history, don’t you write novels just for people to read?”
“Can’t I appreciate it myself?”
“Don’t be shy, who are we to each other?”
Xiao Tangqiu also rolled his eyes, but didn’t really stop Meng Xinghe, he picked up the notebook again and buried his head down.
Although this was indeed something he wrote, because it was written several years ago, he had almost no impression of it. It was even unfamiliar as if he was reading something written by someone else. Only when he saw “Shen Yuan” did he feel an unparalleled familiarity with the name as if the man had been by his side not so long ago… As if the man had stood alive before him not too long ago.
Xiao Tangqiu was in a trance again, he couldn’t believe that his familiarity with “Shen Yuan” was just because an author should be familiar with the characters he created. But at this moment, “Shen Yuan” was really just a name and a character in his notebook.
Meng Xinghe flipped out several notebooks that Xiao Tangqiu had used to write novels. Although most of them were just settings and outlines, there were also a few notebooks with a few lines of story written on them.
“They’re all pits! Don’t you have a finished novel!” Meng Xinghe criticized Xiao Tangqiu in an old-fashioned tone, “Young man, you can’t be like this! You can’t become a great author like this!”
Xiao Tangqiu said without raising his head, “I don’t intend to become a great author. These stories are just for fun. Anyway, I didn’t intend to show them to anyone. It doesn’t matter if they’re pits.”
Meng Xinghe looked up and was about to criticize Xiao Tangqiu’s half-assed thinking, but saw that Xiao Tangqiu was still looking down at the notebook, and couldn’t help but wonder, “Why are you still looking at that notebook? What are you thinking about?”
Xiao Tangqiu was silent for a while before opening his mouth, “I was thinking… Could Shen Yuan actually not be my character, but a real person?”
Meng Xinghe looked surprised, “What sleeptalk are you saying? Do you think the protagonist in your story is a real person? Do you want to become the sculptor who fell in love with your own sculpture?”
“But I really think the name Shen Yuan is very familiar. It’s like I’ve heard this name mentioned countless times, and even I, myself, have called it countless times.” Xiao Tangqiu looked dazed, “…it shouldn’t be just a dream, could there be such a real dream? I even remember that he has two cats…”
“One is called Apollo, the other is called Dionysus?” Meng Xinghe raised his eyebrows, “The sun god and wine god in Greek mythology, the two promoting arts and the spirit of development mentioned by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy… I remember reading this book together when we were in junior high school.”
Xiao Tangqiu was stunned, “Have we read this book together?”
Meng Xinghe smiled, “You also said at the time that if you wanted to get pets in the future, you would have to get two cats, one black and one white. One called Apollo and the other Dionysus… Didn’t I say I have a good memory?”
Xiao Tangqiu was stunned again, “…I said something like this?”
“You did,” Meng Xinghe nodded, “not long ago you said that you would have a cat and a dog in the future, one named Schrödinger and the other Pavlov, but then you turned into a cat person through and through.”
Xiao Tangqiu, “…There’s such a thing?”
“Really, you. You always talk about this and that on a whim, and it doesn’t take long for you to forget it, so I have to help you remember,” Meng Xinghe rubbed his forehead helplessly, “If it wasn’t for me, what would you do?”
Xiao Tangqiu thought hard for a while and finally remembered that he did say that he wanted to raise two cats. But he didn’t take it seriously at the time when he mentioned it. He didn’t expect Meng Xinghe to remember it for him.
“Then you can’t leave me, stay by my side,” he stuck out his tongue at Meng Xinghe, “Let’s go to the same university! We can go to the same company in the future! After graduation, we can rent a house together!”
Meng Xinghe reached out and flicked Xiao Tangqiu’s forehead, and said with a smile, “Then you should study hard for me!”
Xiao Tangqiu pouted, “I’ve already worked very hard! You skip class and play games as often as I do… No! It’s obviously you who always drag me out of class to play games, why are your grades so good all the time? It’s so unfair!”
Meng Xinghe pointed to his forehead, and smiled wildly, “This kind of IQ is probably hereditary, right?”
Xiao Tangqiu rolled his eyes and got up from the bed, “I’m ignoring you, I’m going to the internet cafe to play games!”
“Didn’t you just say you didn’t want to go to an internet cafe?” Meng Xinghe raised his eyebrows.
Xiao Tangqiu brought along the notebook, “I suddenly remembered that I seem to have played this game before. Can it be that after playing the game, I mistakenly remembered that I had seen the protagonist in the game in reality, and then I subconsciously inserted the character when writing… I want to go to the internet cafe to find out if this game exists.”
Will he be able to remember dun dun dun
Shen Yuan is a name that cannot be forgotten
Thank you very much for the translation
Thank you for the chapter!
Aaaah 😱 Is this an illusion that the abyss demon uses to trap him? Or is it reality? Did Shen Yuan even exist???
When will he remember! I also feel lyk the chpt are getting shorter …idk y😭!!!!
Thank u for the chpt!!! Waiting for ur next update!!!!!🤩