XIU XIAOCHEN DOESN'T KNOW WHAT LOVE IS.
It is a complicated concept, where the frivolity of the human mind transcends the predicted stroke of his pen on the graphic tablet. People in real life aren't as lucky as they are in his manhuas. Real life, though far greater than what the greatest imagination can build up, is mundane and frictionless. Like a clockwork of soulless routines and dull textbook psychology.
Xiaochen likes playing a fictitious matchmaker. A conceited CEO with a sweet hearted baker, a clumsy artist and an arrogant pianist, a heartbroken single parent and the chirpy education major with a nose ring, the list stands endless. Conjuring up scenarios in his head, the meet cutes, the slow burn friends to lovers, painful misunderstandings and nights spent alone, crying tears of honeyed heartbreak.
Xiaochen enjoys those heartbreaks, because he knows the two will end up together. And when they do, he has to draw five chapters of them having the tearful, first night sex.
It's aggressive and his hand hurts, but the readers love it.
Xiaochen, or Xius, is unpredictable. He doesn't have a release schedule. It makes his fans hate him and love him. Getting a chapter notification at the most random of times is something they all despise, because they don't know when that notification will ring up again. And his updates make people cry. Xiaochen can't say he doesn't love reading the curse words and violet-tinted vexation thrown in the comments section. He craves those reactions as the sole source of inspiration, lustrous attention, in his otherwise dull life.
Xius is enigmatic, sporadic, made of watery love-making and a spring of spontaneous ideas. Xiaochen is a boring twenty five year old with a degree in animation and art and a part time job in a Caffeination outlet. It's a coffee/cake shop, like any other ones, but just for the rich.
Not the best of the jobs, definitely not the best of the places but a paradise for Xius. He has seen everything in that little corner of the world, from young girls making out in the washroom to a wife throwing boiling coffee on the face of her husband's paramour (this went in Xius' story) to a closeted gay homophobe rejecting a cute boy with purple highlights (also went into a story), to lovely young couples bantering over what cake should they choose.
Everything. It goes straight into Xius' stories.
"Here's your macchiato, Ma'am," he says to a teenage girl, settling a delicate tray on the table before her. "And a vanilla latte for your friend."
Xiaochen doesn't drink coffee himself. It's a mystery how he pulls all nighters without coffee but he himself can't (and hence his characters never meet in a coffee shop because they never drink coffee either.) He can't make coffee, for goodness sake. The coffee thrown on the paramour was made by him, and lacked coffee (yes, he can make coffee without adding coffee) — "that bastard put in cocoa instead," words of his manager— so he works as a waiter and mans the counter.
The girls ignore him and resume their chatting, as he silently waits for them to take a sip and give their verdict. Whether they want it re-done or not.
"Did you see the last chapter?" Says the girl with the vanilla latte. "I cried."
Xius' ears perk up.
"No," the girl with macchiato squeals, "why what happened? Did they get together? Finally? Ah no, don't give me spoilers. I'll read it myself."
"Siqi broke up."
"What! Oh my gosh no!" The girl with macchiato clutches her face with her sparkly gel polished nails; a bitter cry of siphoned agony and borrowed angst. "You liar… no, they can't…"
Xius smiles. Siqi's battling Alzheimer's. It's time she breaks up. Yuan Yang should be destroyed, nonetheless but there's a whole lot of fun with that plot, isn't it?
The girl clutches her phone and opens the app, running on free wifi from the coffee shop. She places her hand on her mouth, ever so slightly, as the pictures scroll down on her humongous screen. Teenage girls. They seek solace in heartbreak, because when they take off their pretty headbands in their dark, dark hair and sparkly earrings, they're simply school students buried under homework and college entrances.
Xius merely gives them a love life. Shows them what a lover is, with merely illusions projected on a quaky screen of delusional dreams. One of these days maybe, the boys will find him and beat him up because he has raised the standards so high.
His job there is done. He bows low, invisible to the passionate chatter of the two girls. Walking away, his mind wraps itself around the thoughts of how Yuan Yang should behave. He is an eccentric young man, with a temper a bit too shallow and head in the clouds. Falling in love was a choice for him and he chose to make that happen, hence, he won't let his love burnout without a battle.
The end is tragic and Xius knows it, but how?
Should there be a death or should there not, is the question. Also, it's been over three and the update for his latest work, In fond songs of a lullaby, is still in the drafts. He should wait before releasing the last chapters of the last work, I will meet you by the star's end. Once it's wrapped up, he will wait until January to release the next story because… contest guidelines say that the story submitted can only be started and finished within the span of the year.
It's a stupid rule but choosing between being able to enter in a contest, or giving his reader more content is actually easy. The readers don't care. The contests do.
There is a thin film of restlessness when he returns behind the counter, ready to take the orders of more customers. He doesn't know why, but maybe it's because of those girls.
The coffee maker next to him starts abruptly and Xiaochen flinches. "WeiWei," he whispers, partially relieved to see his co-worker beside him. "Make some noise when you walk," he says, "announce your presence."
WeiWei turns to him with a nonchalant look in her caramel brown eyes. "Will it make a difference?" She asks, jet black eyebrows raised in sassy perfection.
"People won't get scared."
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