Chapter 86: Senior Sister, I Want to See You

Senior Sister was sleepy, and her dorm room was on the sixth floor in the opposite building, but Junior Brother’s was on the fourth. She didn’t want to climb the stairs back to her own room, so she decided to borrow his bed.

This was completely reasonable, right?

Right?

There was nothing wrong with it.

Jiang Miao had no reason to refuse.

Seeing Su Huaizhou holding both sides of the ladder and climbing up step by step, his gaze naturally landed on her long, slender legs.

He didn’t know how many pairs of cropped pants she had in her wardrobe, but she wore a different pair almost every day.

Some were completely loose, some tapered at the ankles, and others were skin-tight.

Today, Senior Sister wore a pair of form-fitting cropped pants in dark blue, perfectly outlining her slender legs.

Especially as she climbed the ladder, her legs alternated between flexing and stretching, making it hard for Jiang Miao to look away.

But soon, he caught a glimpse of something when she lifted her arms, causing the loose sleeves of her T-shirt to shift. Startled, he quickly averted his gaze and looked away guiltily.

Su Huaizhou had a great figure, with slender and smooth arms, and the sleeves of her short-sleeved T-shirt were very loose.

Under normal circumstances, no matter how high she raised her arms, Jiang Miao wouldn’t have seen anything due to the angle.

But right now, with her climbing the ladder, everything lined up just right. Even though it was merely a fleeting glimpse, he still saw some scenery.

As Jiang Miao recalled the snowy mountain under the black clouds that he had unexpectedly caught sight of in the Youth Association’s office, his head started to spin.

It was really a case of ‘viewed from the side, it’s a ridge; viewed from the front, it’s a peak…’

Now, he was having altitude sickness.

Su Huaizhou, unaware of this, excitedly climbed onto Junior Brother’s bed.

She had thought it would be a long, long time before she found herself on his bed again.

Yet here she was, barely four or five days later, lying on his bed once more.

As this realization hit her, she scolded herself for taking the initiative yet again!

But now that she had already climbed onto his bed, it was impossible for her to go back down.

She could only comfort herself, thinking this would be the last time. Then she lay down happily, buried her face in Junior Brother’s pillow, and secretly took a few deep sniffs.

Su Huaizhou cursed herself while still enjoying his scent, feeling that she was really beyond saving.

Su Huaizhou turned over and lay on Junior Brother’s bed, covering her face and sighing.

At first, just holding hands had been enough to make her extremely nervous, but now, she yearned for more and more.

She wanted to try more things with Junior Brother.

But there were some things that couldn’t be done casually, even under the pretense of gathering material.

So Su Huaizhou could only continue to wait—wait until Junior Brother couldn’t hold back any longer and finally confessed to her.

She swore that if he confessed to her right now, she would only hesitate for a brief moment at most!

Then she’d agree!

Anyway, there was no way she’d be the one to confess first.

…

Below, Jiang Miao had no idea about the rich drama playing out in Senior Sister’s mind.

He watched her climb onto his bed and heard the frame let out a few creaks before settling into silence.

It seemed Senior Sister had already fallen asleep.

Jiang Miao calmed down. After finishing the duck leg rice she had personally delivered, he tidied up his desk, opened his writing software, and prepared to knock out today’s 3,000 words.

Today, his writing was progressing slowly.

It wasn’t because Senior Sister was sleeping above him.

It was because his novel was about to go premium. After finishing the part where the male and female leads ‘accidentally’ exposed their relationship in front of their moms, who already knew they were dating, the story entered a short transition phase.

A few days ago, he had just written the beginning of the devilish aunt, and the response wasn’t bad, but he couldn’t continue this kind of prank-based content long-term.

If he wrote about the aunt pranking her nephew every week, not only would it lead to reader fatigue, but it also wouldn’t make much sense from a logical standpoint.

Unless the nephew was in on the jokes, continuously pranking him wouldn’t work.

However, according to the story’s timeline, there was still more than half a month until the male lead’s birthday, and the development of the relationship had pretty much reached its peak until the birthday arc.

This meant he’d have to shift focus back to the professional lives of the male and female leads.

However, the real-life figures he had based his protagonists on actually had limited types of videos on Bilibili for reference.

If people simply watched the videos, then the male lead’s handicrafts and the female lead’s piano cosplay were naturally very captivating.

But translating this vivid imagery and music into a web novel wasn’t realistic.

After all, the mediums were different. One was text, while the other was video. The differing forms of expression of the two determined an inherent gap in how the content could be conveyed.

So, just as Jiang Miao’s novel approached 150,000 words, he encountered his first major bottleneck since he started writing it.

How could he continue advancing the plot along the career paths of video production while avoiding the limitations of not being able to display the visual effects that video could easily portray?

According to conventional urban fiction writing, there was actually a solution to this problem.

The key was to introduce a rival—a craftsman content creator who would provoke the male lead. As a temporary antagonist, he would mobilize his fans to attack the male lead.

Subsequently, uninformed bystanders would side with the villain. The male lead’s fans would find themselves outnumbered and overwhelmed.

Negative emotions were suppressed.

Then the male lead would counter with a brilliant new video of his exquisite new work to slap the villain in the face.

A few of the male lead’s fans would start to fight back, and the neutral people would begin to change their attitudes and instead criticize the antagonist.

Even some of the antagonist’s fans, who had already been somewhat annoyed by his behavior, switched sides and became haters.

The situation reversed quickly. The antagonist lost fans in droves, and without a solid fanbase, his management company abandoned him.

Of course, at this point, it was possible for the antagonist’s management company to try and give him one last push. They could unite the other content creators in the company to gang up on the male lead.

From here, it was the familiar scenario of the big and small ones showing up and acting all high and mighty.

The career plotline was clear, and he could easily use the face-slapping routine flexibly to sustain the first million words of the story.

If he had the desire to keep the narrative going, it was entirely feasible to introduce stronger opponents until the male lead eventually acquired all of Bilibili and created the world’s largest video website.

This kind of repetitive formula in urban fiction had long become a well-honed technique for countless urban fiction authors over the past decade.

As long as authors followed this method, even if the character development was a bit weak or the plot logic was a bit flimsy, the novel’s performance could still be strong. Sёarch* The NovelFire.net* website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

After all, although there were readers who thought critically while reading, the number of readers who just read for entertainment was far greater.

Jiang Miao knew this very well.

But he also knew that one of the main reasons he started this novel during summer vacation was because, as a reader himself, he had grown tired of this same old routine.

This was why he was experimenting with this slice-of-life novel.

Instead of following the typical face-slapping trope, he explored a method to capture other emotions from his readers.

Things like the shyness of love, the sourness of dog food, the sweetness of a first hand-hold, and the heartbeat of a hug…



The small details of the interactions between the male and female leads became the foundation of his slice-of-life writing style.

This was also his understanding of slice-of-live novels.

Otherwise, just writing about the male and female leads falling in love, but the core remained the typical face-slapping style of urban novels, then it wouldn’t truly be slice-of-life.

Unfortunately, slice-of-life stories were still a niche genre on Xidian.

There were only about a dozen or so slice-of-life novels with outstanding results.

There was very little Jiang Miao could draw inspiration from. He needed to explore most of it on his own.

As a result, his writing efficiency noticeably slowed down as his novel was about to go premium.

From one o’clock to two-thirty, he had only written about half a chapter’s worth.

But he was so absorbed in his work that he didn’t even notice Senior Sister had already woken up from her nap.

…

Jiang Miao had two mechanical keyboards, one with brown switches and one with blue.

He preferred the crisp sound of blue switches, finding it pleasant to listen to.

But since they were quite loud, he was worried about disturbing Senior Sister’s nap, so he had switched to the quieter brown switches before writing.

After he entered writing mode, deeply focused on planning and progressing the characters’ career plotlines, he became so engrossed that he barely noticed anything happening around him.

He didn’t even notice that Su Huaizhou had woken up and secretly peeked her head out to watch him write.

Looking at the diligent Peach Jam typing away so seriously under the bed, Su Huaizhou watched with great interest.

Jiang Miao had written before in the Political Work Group’s office or during debate matches, but he was unwilling to let Su Huaizhou watch him from the side.

Plus, while the noise from the surroundings never really affected his writing, it did prevent him from focusing as intensely as he was now.

This was the first time Su Huaizhou had seen Junior Brother so serious and focused.

But after watching for a while, she noticed that his writing speed seemed slower than usual.

It wasn’t that his typing was slower, but he frequently wrote a long string of text, only to delete it all.

After this constant back-and-forth of typing and deleting, there weren’t many words left in the end.

This made Su Huaizhou frown.

She stretched her neck out from the head of the bed and squinted her eyes, wanting to see what Junior Brother had written so far.

But she wasn’t wearing her glasses today, so everything on the screen was a blur, and she couldn’t make out anything.

At this moment, Jiang Miao was a little tired from writing. He raised his arms and leaned back for a good, satisfying stretch.

The moment he tilted his head up, he saw Senior Sister squinting at him, startling him.

“Senior Sister, what are you doing?!”

“Uh…” Su Huaizhou quickly pulled her head back when Junior Brother discovered her peeping. “Nothing. I was just curious how much you’d written. I haven’t seen today’s releases yet.”

Then she moved to climb down from the bed.

Seeing her about to come down, Jiang Miao suddenly remembered something and reminded, “Senior Sister, check the bed for any of your hair. It’s better if you clean it up.”

“Huh?” Su Huaizhou was confused.

“Ahem…” Jiang Miao felt a little embarrassed. He sighed and explained, “When Wang Xin was sweeping the floor, he found some of your hair, and then our matter was exposed…”

Su Huaizhou: “!!!”

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“I didn’t find an opportunity… and now it just came up.”

The realization that Junior Brother’s roommate already knew she had secretly spent the night here made Su Huaizhou feel so embarrassed that she could die from shame.

With this thought, Su Huaizhou was about to die of embarrassment.

She quickly turned around and searched Junior Brother’s bed. She found a few long strands of hair on the pillow and then a few more in other spots.

She had thought her stay in Junior Brother’s room that night had been flawless.

Unexpectedly, her own hair had given her away.

“Senior Sister, losing so much hair might be because you’re staying up too late. You should try to sleep earlier,” Jiang Miao comforted from below.

“This is normal!” Su Huaizhou poked her head out from behind the bed curtain and retorted, “Girls with long hair loose strands easily while sleeping because they get caught under them.”

Jiang Miao: “…”

After finding all the hair strands, Su Huaizhou got off the bed, tossed them into the trash, and finally breathed a sigh of relief.

“Okay, I’m leaving now.” She walked towards the door.

But she remembered how Junior Brother’s writing had been going earlier, so she turned back and reminded, “If you run into any problems, remember to look for me. Even if I can’t help you solve them, having someone to talk to is better than bottling it all up alone.”

Jiang Miao was stunned for a moment. He opened his mouth to say something, but Senior Sister had already pushed the door open and left.

Jiang Miao turned back to face the laptop screen. The 965 words on it stood out starkly.

He sighed and scratched his head, feeling troubled.

Just advancing the plot according to the outline wasn’t that difficult.

But as the premium date neared, his standards for the quality of the content became higher and higher, and he wanted to write the best career plotlines he could.

Naturally, his writing speed slowed down because of this.

…

At around eight o’clock in the evening, Jiang Miao had finally managed to squeeze out 3,000 words and uploaded the chapters to the author’s dashboard.

However, he still had to keep writing since his novel was set to go premium at noon tomorrow.

He needed to release at least two chapters with 3,000 words total. Otherwise, he would be too ashamed to face his readers.

But right now, he had neither the mood nor the energy to continue writing.

He sat in front of his laptop in a daze. His hands had been on the keyboard for more than half an hour, but they had barely moved.

In his mind, he thought about just following the outline, quickly getting through this section of the story, and directly entering the birthday arc.

But he knew very well that if he kept pushing the plot like this, his novel would likely wrap up at around 500,000 words.

500,000 words in the domain of male-oriented web novels was hardly better than being abruptly canceled or dropped.

To put it bluntly, he wouldn’t be able to earn much money.

After all, it would mean that about a fourth to a third of the content was free.

If possible, Jiang Miao certainly wanted his novel’s plot to be engaging and enduring, continuing its vitality while ensuring its quality and quantity.

But as time slowly ticked towards nine o’clock, his mind was still in a jumble, and he could only squeeze out less than 1,000 words.

At this rate, forget about releasing multiple chapters. It was even a question if he could release his standard 3,000 words.

At 9:30 pm, Jiang Miao suddenly picked up his phone and opened WeChat.

[Miaomiao is Deep in Thought]: Senior Sister, I want to see you.

A minute later…

[Zhouzhou Loves Congee]: I’m downstairs.



Jiang Miao was stunned for a moment before getting up and going to the balcony to look down.

Su Huaizhou was already standing at the entrance of Building 31.

She was breathing heavily, probably from running down from the sixth floor of the opposite building.

As soon as Su Huaizhou caught sight of Jiang Miao, she smiled brightly and waved at him.

She didn’t look out of breath at all.