The Writer and the Reader

[A cold-faced, black-hearted yet soft-hearted author gong x a sweet, resilient linguistics student shou] Ten-year age gap, raising a child Yan Yubo has read danmei novels for eight years. He's seen all kinds of styles and writing, but he's especially devoted to one author, who writes under the pen name "Linlie." That author loves writing hurt/comfort stories with physical suffering. Yan Yubo just happens to love reading them. He's been a fan for as many years as he's been reading, but the author has never held a single signing, and Yan Yubo hasn't even gotten the simplest interaction from him. His only "contact" came when the author's literary website held an event and the author ran a giveaway. Yan Yubo won. So one Friday during the school term, Yan Yubo held the little dog charm he'd won in his left hand and scrolled through the website with his right, looking at the only landscape post "Linlie" had made in the past six months. He decided to go visit the place the next day. Unfortunately, as soon as he got off the high-speed train and rushed to the spot, a torrential downpour suddenly began. He had brought an umbrella, but he'd given it to someone else. The man in the suit slowly turned the umbrella handle in his hand and looked at the boy in front of him, soaked through but showing no sign of complaint. "You gave me your umbrella. How are you getting back?" Yan Yubo smiled carelessly. "Didn't you just say on the phone that you had something to do? Anyway, I'm traveling here, so I'm in no hurry to leave. I can stay a little longer and enjoy the rain." "What's your name?" "Me?" Yan Yubo thought meeting someone in a strange place must be fate, so he answered honestly. "Yan Yubo." The next day, after returning to his dorm, Yan Yubo saw the red dot on his special-follow notifications and happily clicked to check it. All he found was a picture of an umbrella posted by Mr. "Linlie," accompanied by five characters: "A thin gift along the way." One second later, Yan Yubo: ??? Three seconds later, Yan Yubo: !!! * The second time Chen Linhan saw Yan Yubo in H City was the year Yan Yubo graduated from university. At the shop, the boy told him frankly that he was an orphan. He'd visited before, liked the scenery, and planned to move here for work someday. It was raining again that day, but this time he didn't ask for his umbrella. Instead, he took Yan Yubo straight home. Perhaps because he was alone in a strange city, Chen Linhan felt that the boy had been especially nervous ever since he entered the house. Especially when they discussed the fact that he hated "stalker fans" more than anything. He had the distinct impression that the boy's eyes were red and he was about to burst into tears. But he could only write. He couldn't read minds, so he got up to heat a cup of milk for the boy, then told him with a cold face: "If you run into trouble in this city, you can come to me." * After an unexpected problem with his rental, Yan Yubo had been living at Chen Linhan's place for a while. One night, after returning to his room, Yan Yubo typed out a question on the fan forum with trembling hands. "Can someone explain: if an author writes stories with physical suffering, does that mean... he likes physical suffering in real life too?" It took him a long time to work up the nerve to write and post it. The next day, curious to see what people had replied, Yan Yubo opened the fan forum and found only a cold notification waiting for him. Message: You have been permanently muted by the forum moderator. "..." He looked down at the bite marks on his collarbone, turned to glance at the fingerprints that hadn't yet faded from his butt, threw away his phone, and freaked out. "What do you people know?!" How to read this story: * The gong is an author, and the shou is a reader. * No real-life inspirations or allegories. This is just a product of sudden inspiration, probably a short bedtime read. Please read before starting, and note the content warnings: Fans of either the gong or shou should enter with caution. No character-bashing. A brief description of a story I'm planning to write, "Don't Ask If It's Love," is below. Feel free to bookmark it if you're interested. [Gentle but ruthless iron hand x short-tempered, sharp-tongued, fragile beauty] Older man/younger man, age gap still undecided. Cen Weiyi has a sharp, venomous canine tooth and likes to "bite" Qiu Lang every chance he gets. As a result, he's been slapped across the face plenty of times. Even so, he still says: "Teacher, can you stop with all that love nonsense?" Theme: Carry courage in your heart and keep moving forward.