Chapter 67: Writing Is Just Like This

A Mercedes S60 was parked beneath the overpass, two intersections away from the main gate of Maofang Middle School. Passing students would occasionally cast curious glances at it.

In truth, very few people in this small county actually understood or paid attention to luxury cars, yet the oppressive aura emanating from pure wealth remained palpable.

Cyclists passing by gave it a wide berth of eight feet, practically veering into the motor vehicle lane. A single scratch would wipe out an entire year's worth of earnings.

Inside the vehicle, Qian Yarong turned around with a helpless expression and glanced at her sleeping daughter.

Lu Siwen, who should have been bursting with morning energy, was curled up against the car door like a small kitten, lingering fatigue still evident on her face.

She looked less like she had just slept through the night and more like... she had spent the entire night partying.

She must have stayed up late reading miscellaneous books again; Qian Yarong knew her daughter's habits all too well.

Even so, when they were leaving, Lu Siwen had insisted on parking beneath this specific overpass so she could wait for "Classmate Zhai" to go to school together. Yet, by the time the car arrived, she had fallen fast asleep.

As Qian Yarong was contemplating how to handle the situation, she spotted the very boy Lu Siwen was waiting for, walking toward the overpass while tossing a deck of playing cards into the air.

With a flick of his finger, the cards spun and fluttered upward before gracefully flying back into his hand.

She had to admit, it was certainly a visually striking display.

It was bound to be an infallible trick for captivating young girls, Qian Yarong thought to herself, unable to suppress the reflection...

Combine that with some micro-fiction writing contest... what high school girl could possibly withstand such a test?

"Siwen? Siwen?"

Lu Siwen gave no response. Seeing that the young boy was about to walk out of range, Qian Yarong had no choice but to roll down the car window and call out, "Classmate Zhai? Hold on a moment..."

Zhai Da turned his head, tucked the Joker card back into his pocket, and walked back down toward the street level.

"Good morning, Auntie."

"Siwen was waiting for you, but she seems to have fallen asleep."

Zhai Da glanced back into the car, waiting for the rest of the sentence...

*So what?* he thought. *You're the one who should wake her up... I can't exactly get in there and take a nap with her.*

Looking at Zhai Da, Qian Yarong felt a subtle shift in her thoughts and smiled as she said, "She might be tired from studying for the TOEFL last night. This child... with only a few months left before she goes abroad, she's probably feeling a bit anxious."

Though it sounded like a simple explanation, she was seizing the opportunity of Lu Siwen being asleep to subtly reveal certain details.

The underlying intention went without saying.

Zhai Da understood instantly, though he was hardly surprised.

Going abroad fit her family background perfectly; these days, anyone with even a modicum of financial capability planned their children's futures along this exact path.

Zhai Da held no strong opinions on the matter. As for whether a girl as pristine as a blank sheet of paper could withstand the successive waves of shocks waiting for her in the outside world, frankly, it was not his place to offer an opinion.

At least, it made no sense to voice such thoughts right in front of her mother.

"What about Classmate Zhai? Have you decided on a direction for your college entrance examination applications?"

Zhai Da shook his head. "We fill out the applications after receiving the scores. It will still be early enough to decide once the results are out."

Hearing the commotion from the backseat, Lu Siwen rubbed her eyes. Qian Yarong timely brought the conversation to a close.

The moment Lu Siwen laid eyes on Zhai Da, she snapped fully awake. She glanced at the Longines Crescent watch on her wrist, quickly stepped out of the car, and grabbed Zhai Da's sleeve as she headed toward the school, leaving Qian Yarong behind with a casual "Goodbye, Mom."

Watching their brisk, retreating figures, Qian Yarong revealed a faint smile.

She was not a bad mother, but perhaps she was a pragmatic one. Since they were destined to walk different paths, drawing a brief measure of friendship from each other was its own form of happiness; she could even accept a fleeting spark of romance.

So long as it did not interfere with her grand blueprint for Lu Siwen's life.

A meticulously seamless blueprint.

Up on the overpass, Lu Siwen was still immersed in the excitement of last night—or rather, the excitement brought on by what she had read. "Classmate Zhai, I finished reading *The Long Journey of Lvtü*. It is so brilliantly written!"

"How could you write something so profound and specific? You seem to know so much about hospitals and patients... You must have done a tremendous amount of research, right?"

Zhai Da nodded absentmindedly. "You could say that."

That movie had merely provided a basic framework, and he could not remember every single detail clearly. Most of it came from the half-year he had spent revolving around hospitals after Yu Xiaoli was diagnosed with cancer in his past life.

It was hardly a pleasant memory.

To this day, he could still vividly recall the ceaseless beeping sounds in the ICU ward, and he could still read every single number and waveform on the patient monitors.

Although, tracing back the timeline, Yu Xiaoli was certainly in good health at the moment, he had already decided to find a way to take his mother to a first-tier city for a comprehensive medical checkup right after the gaokao, and ensure she went through it at least twice a year thereafter.

Unaware of what was passing through Zhai Da's mind, Lu Siwen eagerly asked, "In the end, Lin Manman and Lvtü successfully fought off the illness together, right?"

Zhai Da said nothing, merely casting a glance at her.

Lu Siwen covered her mouth in shock. "They didn't succeed? But they tried so hard!"

Zhai Da thought to himself: *I am the author... Whether they succeed or not is entirely a matter of a single line from me.*

If he went mad, he could just write that both of them were sent off to another world by a runaway truck.

For instance, in some web novels of his past life, there were even authors who wrote the protagonist staring into a mirror and getting handsome enough to die from it as the grand finale...

The story of *The Long Journey of Lvtü* was actually quite simple, originating from a real-life event in his past life, which had subsequently been adapted into a film.

Naturally, if one calculated the timeline, that real-life event had not even happened yet.

Lin Manman, a young uremia patient, suffered a daily deterioration in her health due to a prolonged low-quality lifestyle, coupled with the despair of waiting for a matching kidney donor. One day, when her stress reached a boiling point and her emotions completely collapsed, she recorded a "marriage proposal" video and posted it inside a terminal cancer support group.

If a suitable donor match could be found, she was willing to marry a terminal cancer patient as his wife and help him fight the illness. If he died, she would accept the kidney transplant in the capacity of his wife and take care of his aging parents.

Although lingering guilt over her own perceived immorality prompted her to quickly delete the video, it had already been seen by someone—the other protagonist of the story, Lvtü.

The subsequent narrative revolved around the two of them battling illness together, alongside the romantic sparks that ignited between them.

At the same time, it explored themes of illness and human nature, society and familial affection.

However, since Zhai Da was adapting a film, his version was bound to differ significantly. Film and literature operated through entirely different mediums, and he could not retain every minute detail, meaning his story shared at most a sixty percent resemblance to the movie.

The heroine's name had been changed, and elements conflicting with the era's sensibilities had been revised. For instance, since WeChat did not exist yet, the heroine's video was posted in a QQ group instead, and her promise included an additional pledge to "remain unmarried for the rest of her life."

Another crucial adjustment was that roughly half of the original film's runtime used "comedy" as its underlying tone to drive the plot forward—filled with various misunderstandings, slapstick humor, and the male lead's strange accent and even stranger personality. Transplanting these elements directly into a novel was impractical, as text could hardly convey something like a "strange accent."

Zhai Da downplayed the comedic elements, leaning heavily instead into the portrayal of tragedy. The male lead was stripped of his quirky, meme-worthy attributes, even after having a portion of his brain tissue removed due to a tumor...

Consequently, the ultimate trajectory of the entire story would become intensely melancholic.

The ending he arranged was one where only a single person survived, left to live on alone with resolute endurance.

After all, this was not a web novel; a tragically themed ending possessed far greater resonance than a happily-ever-after.

He imagined that young girls of Lu Siwen's age would probably cry their eyes out by the time they reached the end...

As a side note, novels tackling this particular theme primarily found their readership among young women around Lu Siwen's age.

Thanks to the effect of the [Literary Maiden's Pen], the system classified all this content as "original," infusing genuine emotion into the writing process and resulting in exceptionally high quality.

It vastly elevated the skill of a certain "copywriting planner" who had never written a full-length story before, making certain passages feel genuinely touching even to himself.

*I really am damn good at writing.*

He felt his literary proficiency now rivaled that of established authors—after all, he was essentially cheating.

Yet, realizing that Zhai Da intended to steer the narrative toward a tragic conclusion, Lu Siwen was utterly distraught. She was already completely invested in the story; Lin Manman and Lvtü felt as real to her as breathing people. She tugged at Zhai Da's sleeve and pleaded relentlessly:

"Make them succeed in fighting the illness! Please, I'm begging you!"

She had to admit, this aggrieved expression was quite pleasing to the eye, but...

"No way. The more tender the narrative is made to feel, the more the grand reunion illusion shines with a beautiful longing, and the harsher the blow when the reader is suddenly stabbed in the end—that's what gives a story depth, isn't it? Writing is just like that!"

Lu Siwen froze in place...

She genuinely wanted to check whether Zhai Da's mouth was running a fever of thirty-eight degrees Celsius.

How could he utter words of such chilling indifference?