The Audition

Chapter 12 Because of his job, Chihong Chen had to keep up with reader trends — which meant scanning the rankings constantly. Sometimes he'd accidentally drift into the women's fiction section, so by pure chance, he'd picked up a certain kind of knowledge.

He absolutely did not go looking for that genre on purpose! Xuan Leron's build seemed to fit the... no, wait. His male lead wasn't an O...

But maybe he could use that framing for the vibe? Meek office worker O vs. cop-flower female A — actually kind of perfect...

Was it wrong though? ...Was it right? ...Could it even be written well? Chihong Chen didn't have the skills for that kind of delicate work, and he wasn't bold enough to claim he did.

After thinking it over for a while, he made a decision — Step one: search online for reference videos, then bring them to Sang Yu. That included high-liked Douyin clips of female A and male O dynamics, plus audience reactions to that pairing.

Young people loved it! Chihong Chen ran over to loop in Sang Yu. Sang Yu heard him out and got curious: 'Oh?' What? ... Sang Yu had just unlocked a whole new world.

Those Douyin videos Sang Ying had liked before — some of the top comments had been confusing. Now it all clicked. Honestly, the more you saw of it... it was fine.

The dynamic was just a role reversal. Easy enough to get. Chihong Chen said: 'We're going for the vibe, not actually making the four leads go full ABO — the source material isn't like that.

What do you think?' Chihong Chen tried his best to be direct, then watched Sang Yu's reaction carefully. He still believed it: even if Sang Yu didn't care about ratings, he owed Sang Yu a real return.

And this was a marketing hook. At least young people — young women especially — would click on it. He wasn't sure Sang Yu could get on board, since the setup had its limits...

'Sure, fine.' Sang Yu had no objections. One note though: keep the interactions from getting slimy. The male lead gets rescued by the female lead in a crisis moment, gets pulled in close — that kind of couple moment was acceptable.

But the female lead couldn't turn greasy. Sang Yu said: 'Don't push the female lead into male stereotype territory. She's a woman.

I mean — Chihong Chen, you get what I'm saying?' Some male leads really did perform oily... tongue pressed against the cheek, licking their teeth, smirking like a villain. They thought it was charming.

But when Sang Yu watched dramas, he couldn't get into it at all. Was that normal human behavior? Female A, male O sounded novel, but at the end of the day it was still two people falling in love, right?

In real life, he'd never seen a woman doing that tongue-licking chin-stroking thing. Maybe some did, but that kind of move looked bad on anyone — and on screen it was even more cringe-inducing.

'Oh — oh, I get it!' On that point, Chihong Chen already had a take. There'd been a big-budget male-lead drama in Domestic Entertainment that had crashed recently, because the male lead performed... too delicate.

Every shot, every acting choice, was clearly calculated toward 'this will definitely get clipped by fans, so even while coughing up blood I need to hold my composure' and 'this is the ship highlight reel moment, so I need to look good' — all of it deliberate and obvious.

There were even video essays on Bilibili breaking it down. Chihong Chen had taken notes: the male lead's O energy should emerge naturally through contrast in the couple's dynamic.

You can't just slap a 'soft and fragile male lead' label on him and call it a day. Too much of a good thing ruins it. Overdo it and the audience's gut reaction turns sour.

Once that was clear, it was time for step two. 'Sang Yu, you know I'm terrible at writing romance — I'm just not that type.

Best to bring in a professional, work on it together with me.' Sang Yu nodded. Someone who specializes in female A, male O?

Fair point. Chihong Chen's later romantic subplots weren't as heavy as the fake-human arc in his earlier work, but they were still bland enough to be forgettable.

Chihong Chen looked genuinely guilty: 'I don't have anyone in mind. Could you help find someone on your end...?' His own circle was too limited.

Most of the authors he'd added were male-fiction power-fantasy writers. Some had alt accounts dipping into women's fiction for the money, but none of them wrote that kind of material.

The script progress was looking good, but if the romance arc needed reworking, that would take time too — would it delay The Demolition Office's shoot date? They were originally set to start filming next month!

'Keep polishing the script for now. I'll handle the rest.' Sang Yu wasn't bothered at all. Sang Yu added: 'The romance arc doesn't take up that much of the overall story.

Revising it won't eat up too much time.' 'That's true, but it depends on the specific writer we find.' Chihong Chen wasn't going to make promises he couldn't keep. 'Alright, I'll go find someone first.' Sang Yu had somehow developed a mild case of completionist brain — since The Demolition Office's side quest was already open, might as well collect all the achievements: 'Full Clear,' 'Perfect Run,' 'Collector's Title.' Totally normal, right?

Every problem solved felt like clearing a difficulty checkpoint, stacking up XP. The more he played, the more hooked he got.

Sang Yu had his assistant start searching on one end, while he wasn't sitting idle on his end either — he ran his own search first. What did he search?

'Female A male O fic rec compilations.' That way he could follow the thread — find the work, find the author, right? Sang Yu thought he was a genius.

Very pleased with himself... And honestly, it wasn't wrong. The genre looked niche, but there was no shortage of fic recs — covering all kinds of sub-types.

Original works and fanfic both. Original works usually came with full ABO worldbuilding. Fanfic covered everything: anime characters, drama characters, real people — all of it.

Sang Yu's eyes were spinning. After a moment's hesitation, he picked a fanfic based on a male-lead drama he'd watched before.

At least he knew the source material. It was serialized on Weibo, so he could read it right there in the search results.

Most original works required downloading a separate app. Sang Yu hadn't read women's fiction before, so he was only now realizing how many platforms there were for this stuff.

So he'd get to the original works later — start with this one. Sang Yu read, fully immersed. Hmm... Just the first page, and the writing style was already distinct.

Different from the power-fantasy source material. In the original, the male lead's fiancée was basically a plot device — her death existed to push the male lead onto the path of revenge.

The male lead fell for someone else along the way, but would occasionally think back on his fiancée. The author had written an 'OOC disclaimer' at the top, claiming creative freedom, and had gone back to the root of a plot point that had always drawn criticism — rewriting it from scratch.

The story was about a time-traveler who woke up just before the fiancée's death and fought to protect the person they loved. Because the fear of losing that person again was so overwhelming, even when the younger lover asked to take the submissive role, they agreed.

The prose was good. The author knew how to write emotional shifts. The opening locked in the story's melancholic undertone — the hazy, fog-wrapped grief of a man who had lost his closest person once before.

There were no blunt, in-your-face intimate scenes. It ran on stream-of-consciousness, atmosphere cranked all the way up...

Like the story itself — that fog-wrapped feeling, the sadness, the two of them out of sync, but both desperately clinging to each other anyway. ... Sang Yu read all seven chapters in one go.

Definitely OOC, but it pulled him in hard. The author hadn't finished it. Sang Yu: '...' He didn't usually read this kind of ship fic, but this author was genuinely good.

Hard to believe it was just a fanfic. Built entirely on the source material's foundation, but the creative expansion was next-level.

Even some of the original story's plot holes had been patched up naturally as the story developed, made sense of. That level of craft — seriously impressive.

Scrolling down, the comment section was full of delighted praise — 'The world cannot exist without fanfic writers'; 'Teacher, you can't see yourself in a mirror because gods have no reflection'; 'I'm begging you, teacher, write a little more — even a tiny bit — consider it feeding your chickens, cluck cluck —!'; 'Where did KM go?

No updates in forever. Can I get chapter 8? I can't survive without it, wuwuwu!' Huh? No updates in a long time? He checked the timestamp — the last chapter, number seven, had been posted three months ago.

Maybe something came up in real life. Sang Yu figured he'd find a few more fics to read, and by then his assistant should have tracked down several authors — maybe even a dozen or more — and put together a wide-net spreadsheet to hand over.

Perfect timing to reach out all at once. This time he was only looking for a romance-arc writer. Sang Yu didn't want to make it complicated, so he kept it simple — pay the author to write a commissioned piece.

A custom The Demolition Office female A, male O fic. Basically a targeted 'prompt' for the right skill set. Everyone who submitted would get paid regardless of whether they were selected.

If the writing style worked, they'd be invited to join the writing team with separate pay — Sang Yu had been a half-baked writer himself, so he knew exactly how much written work was worth. No reason to cut corners there. ...

An hour later. Sang Yu had read another one and was dizzy from it all. Part of him found the concept fascinating; part of him felt like the information density was genuinely overwhelming.

Or maybe it was just that the first fic — the one by 'KM Always Sleepy' — had set the bar so high that everything after it hit less hard on the romance front. If only he could find that writer.

Genuinely good stuff. · 'KM Always Sleepy' — also known as Yue Kemeng — was carefully feeding her grandmother, who could no longer take care of herself, a bowl of congee. Her grandmother was getting on in years.

Last year she'd accidentally fallen into a ditch, and just when she'd finally recovered, she fell again at home this year. The situation had been critical.

She'd spent over a month in the hospital before being discharged, but discharged didn't mean fully recovered — she still needed constant family care. Yue Kemeng had grown up with her grandparents after her parents divorced when she was young.

Her mother had moved to another city and gone silent. As for her father — he'd racked up debt with loan sharks, cleaned out her grandparents' savings and then some, and was hiding somewhere too scared to come back.

Yue Kemeng knew: whether he was around or not made no difference. She didn't care about him either way. Her grandfather had lost fingers to a machine when he was young.

He tended two small vegetable plots back in the village, selling produce for a little income. There was also a younger sister still in high school, right at the critical moment before college entrance exams.

Her grandmother kept telling her to go back to work. Yue Kemeng tuned it out. If she left, who would help? Yue Kemeng's salary was decent for a fresh graduate.

She sent money home every month, and this small household had kept running on careful budgeting. But one sudden fall shattered the fragile balance of that 'condemned building' of a life.

Yue Kemeng had seen it said online — some families can't absorb even a single unexpected blow. Maybe hers was one of them.

The anxiety of having no money, the worry for her family, a kind of panic she couldn't name... all of it had made Yue Kemeng visibly thinner in a short time. Every bit of her energy went into caring for her family and running food delivery orders to make ends meet.

The fanfic she used to write online for fun? Almost completely forgotten. She'd once been proud of that fic — because she'd never received so much praise and attention before.

Call it vanity if you want... She'd genuinely been happy. She'd planned to keep writing, but facing reality, those kind words couldn't pay the bills.

So she let it go. The last time she'd seen a reader asking for updates, she'd felt a flicker of secret joy that someone still remembered — and then fear, too scared to reply.

Too scared to promise when she'd be back. Too exhausted. Scared she'd never again be able to write the kind of words that even she found stunning when she looked back at them now.

So she buried her head in the sand and never logged back on. Which meant she had no idea — that Aurora Entertainment's official account had sent a message to her Weibo inbox, asking whether she'd be interested in taking on a commissioned piece. · 'KM Always Sleepy' never replied.

Cui Jin, as Sang Yu's assistant, naturally took it upon himself to solve problems for his boss without waiting to be told. Within his scope, he fully exercised his initiative and did what needed to be done.

So Cui Jin started digging for related leads, and found out that 'KM Always Sleepy' had once opened a fan group. It had since been disbanded.

Following another thread, he tracked down former group members, asked around through multiple channels, and got hold of 'KM Always Sleepy's QQ account number. Good news — no message verification required.

He could add her directly. · Yue Kemeng had just delivered a burger order. She wiped the rain off her face, then noticed a few red notification dots on the QQ icon.

She tapped it open: 'Hello, are you KM?' 'I'm an employee at Aurora Entertainment Co., Ltd., Television Drama Business Center — Liu Meng. Here's my work ID.' 'Paid inquiry: would you be available to take on a commissioned piece?'