CH 81

An unremarkable but turbulent Spring Festival passed.

As expected, Xiang Wan was busy after the festival, working with Su Chang until almost April.

Yu Zhou’s new book was progressing nicely, with a good feel and decent feedback. When she had written half of it, there were comments below suggesting that they wanted the book to be adapted into an audio drama.

This was because of the success of “Shrine”.

“Shrine” became popular a bit later. After the second season ended, its reputation started to ferment, gaining considerable recognition among listeners.

Therefore, Yu Zhou’s new book carried certain expectations.

Yu Zhou thought these expectations were due to… the fact that it was her book, but that wasn’t entirely the case.

Before she realized this, Yu Zhou was very excited. When Su Chang and Xiang Wan were less busy, she told Su Chang that she was interested in a new collaboration model.

The idea was for her to first write the outline and episode plots of the new book, as well as the character profiles for each individual. Then, Su Chang’s studio would produce the audio drama.

The audio drama and the novel would be updated simultaneously. The audience would be able to learn about the character and plot through the novel in advance, but the subsequent storyline would be unknown to everyone.

Yu Zhou found this “semi-original” format to be both thrilling and interesting.

More importantly, she could discuss character interpretations and plot development with Su Chang.

Su Chang also expressed interest, though it was unclear whether her interest stemmed from the novelty of the format or something else. She indicated that she could act as a voice director, with Xiang Wan as the lead voice actress.

They decided to meet at Su Chang’s studio.

Su Chang’s studio was located in Jiang City Central Tower. The name itself implied that it was in a prime location. Yu Zhou rarely visited this area, which resembled a foreign city with its immaculate streets and scarce pedestrians. The towering buildings, with their reflective surfaces casting cold rays of light, made even the sunlight seem valuable.

In this fast-paced building, there were a few dark green umbrellas randomly placed. Urban youths with exquisite makeup gathered here to drink coffee, usually accompanied by someone across the table discussing contracts.

As a result, the coffee shops, which should have been a balance for the pace here, did not appear all that leisurely.

Jiang City Central Tower was a bit more upscale than Tianyin Building, but the scent was similar. Yu Zhou wondered if these high-end buildings all used the same wholesale fragrance.

After registering as a visitor, Yu Zhou arrived at the 18th floor. Both left and right sides were labeled “SC Studio.” The left half contained a reception area, offices, conference rooms and training rooms, while the right half contained recording studios.

Yu Zhou followed Su Chang’s instructions and went to the reception room on the left.

The decoration was simple, but Yu Zhou noticed the leisurely wine bar on the right side of the reception room, which was made of fish-belly white marble.

She sat down and waited for a while before Su Chang and Xiang Wan came over from the recording studio. Su Chang was wearing a wide-leg suit and had her sleeves rolled up while chatting with Xiang Wan. 

Xiang Wan was also wearing a beige casual suit, looking somewhat worried. She stretched out her hand and used her fingers to comb her long hair back.

This small movement… suddenly made Yu Zhou feel a strong aura.

When the two saw Yu Zhou, they both put away their work-mode and greeted her with a smile, turning back into the familiar Su Chang and Xiang Wan that Yu Zhou knew.

Su Chang dragged her chair back and sat down, feeling a bit apologetic but gentle, “We only have half an hour.”

“It’s fine.” Yu Zhou hurriedly said, taking out her outline, episode plots and character settings, handing one copy to each of them.

“Let me introduce you to the characters. This story is actually quite simple, with just two female leads. One is a little worker named Xu Zhizhi, who is not very ambitious and works in new media, but her career has reached a bottleneck. The other female lead is a little ‘O’ who fell from the sky, from the future world, named Du Ling. She is the only omegaverse person in this world. Due to her constitution, she enters a mating period every month, but there are no suppressants or Alpha to mark her in this time and space. So, she can only rely on having relations with Xu Zhizhi to ease the pain.”

Yu Zhou’s face was a little red.

Su Chang smiled as she looked at the script.

“Eh, of course, they didn’t start having sex at the beginning. I am not that forceful; after all, this is not a story on po18, but a light-hearted sweet romance. There will be some funny incidents at first. For example, Xu Zhizhi uses a method for cats to relieve their mating anxiety by patting Du Ling’s buttocks and even uses a fascial gun after her hand aching. This is in the second episode’s plot; you can have a look to understand the overall tone of the story.”

“Okay,” they both flipped through the script, briefly looking at it. Xiang Wan looked at two pages, put it down and then picked up the character settings to browse.

“What is the progress of your current update?” Su Chang asked.

“Forty percent.”

“Will the follow-up be completely based on this outline?”

“Yes, because it will affect your production, you may need to work on the character designs and storyline first,” answered Yu Zhou.

She had a rough idea about the process of producing an audio drama; when discussing the script with the voice actors, even if it wasn’t complete, she needed to make sure the subsequent plot direction and character experiences were clear. She hadn’t finished writing it yet, but she wouldn’t make any significant changes either.

“Alright,” Su Chang nodded.

“I’ll handle the adaptation of the first half, and I can also approach the voice actors based on the plot summary, character settings, and the first few scripts. But you need to provide me with the drafts for the latter half as soon as possible, so that our screenwriter can work on adapting the latter half. The schedule for final production can only be determined after the script is complete,” she added.

Yu Zhou nodded in agreement, “Right, I’ll either finish writing it or I’ll write a simple version of the dialogues and scenes for each episode in the latter half so that there won’t be any discrepancies during the adaptation. Then, when I publish the chapter, I’ll add some more descriptions.”

“Why not…” Su Chang and Xiang Wan exchanged a glance, realizing they had the same thought.

“You could be the screenwriter.”

“Can I…?” Yu Zhou had never worked with such a studio before.

“You’re asking me,” Su Chang chuckled, only speaking half a sentence.

Her meaning was clear – if you ask me, of course I think you can.

Yu Zhou didn’t look towards Xiang Wan again, as she knew that Xiang Wan must also have faith in her ability. So she said, “I’ll think about it. I could try writing out the first two episodes first and you can discuss it with the professional screenwriters in your studio.”

“Okay,” Su Chang put down the script before picking up the character profiles and asking Xiang Wan, “Which character do you like?”

In terms of importance, it was definitely the main female lead, Xu Zhizhi. However, she guessed that Xiang Wan would choose Du Ling.

As expected, Xiang Wan said, “Du Ling.”

“Alright. For Xu Zhizhi, I might approach Chao Xin.”

“Miss Chao Xin!” Yu Zhou’s eyes lit up. Chao Xin had been the voice actor for a character she really loved in a drama – with a beautiful voice and outstanding skill.

“Let’s give it a shot,” Su Chang pursed her lips, “she’s not easy to book.”

When Su Chang says “give it a shot”, she often has an 80% success rate. Yu Zhou felt a little bit excited.

“She hasn’t done any baihe audio dramas before, so I don’t know if she’ll be interested, but…” Su Chang turned to Xiang Wan, lowering her voice to say, “I had dinner with her last week and she mentioned you. saying her daughter really likes the new game character you recently dubbed.”

The new character had only been released after the New Year but was already quite popular.

Having said that, she glanced at her phone, saying, “We should go back to the studio.”

Xiang Wan sighed and puffed her cheeks.

Yu Zhou felt amused by her girly behavior, which she hadn’t seen for a while. As such, she gave her a dry, teasing comment: “Keep up the good work, Xiang Wanwan.”

Xiang Wan smiled, looking a bit weary.

After seeing off the two, she waited for her taxi downstairs while idly browsing Weibo.

Surprisingly, she had received several private messages, all asking if her story “Pat Me Please” would be adapted into an audio drama, and whether the director and lead would still be Director Peng and Su Chang.

She remembered that before leaving the house this morning, she had mentioned in the group chat that she wanted to negotiate a new audio drama, but she hadn’t expected the news to spread so fast.

She replied to the messages, saying, “The production team hasn’t been decided yet.”

The other party responded, “Alright, thanks Chai Chai, I’m looking forward to it~”

Yu Zhou glanced at her ID, which read “You’re Su-ing me to death”. Yu Zhou’s heart moved and opened her profile page, sure enough, she was a fan of Su Chang.

She thought about it before checking the profiles of a few other people who had sent her private messages. They had all joined Su Chang’s Super Topic and three or four of them weren’t even her followers.

She suddenly realized that not all of the anticipation for her new story adapted into an audio drama was based on the story itself.

Perhaps much of it was because she’d had great collaboration with Su Chang, Peng Xiangzhi, and Xiang Wan, and they seemed to have a good relationship.

As the car arrived, Yu Zhou locked her phone and got in.