Those polished character illustrations had only been pushed out because she knew publication was right around the corner, she had forced herself to finish them.
But that didn’t mean she was doing a sloppy job.
It was just that, compared to Tang Hengzhi’s work, they looked rough at a glance.
Knowing that was one thing. Being scolded outright like that still made Lin Sanyuan feel a sense of defeat she couldn’t shake off.
“I never thought I could compare to Teacher Qiufeng. It’s just that she didn’t send me the artwork, and the deadline is coming up, so I…”
“Didn’t you contact her?” the editor cut in.
Lin Sanyuan said nothing.
Normally, when a resident artist provided illustrations for authors, it was a paid arrangement, with a percentage taken from the publication fee.
As for how much, that was something the author and the artist negotiated privately.
After the New Year, when Lin Sanyuan received her first publication payment, Tang Hengzhi had never brought this up. Anything involving money made Lin Sanyuan uneasy, she truly didn’t know how to negotiate something like that.
So she simply defaulted to the highest split on the platform, thirty seventy.
She took three, Tang Hengzhi took seven.
After all, without those main illustrations, her work might not have sold as well.
She had asked Tang Hengzhi for a bank account number, but got no reply. Later, she could only send money in batches through WeChat, but none of it was accepted.
In that case, the only way Lin Sanyuan could interpret it was… maybe this was Tang Hengzhi taking care of an ex out of old feelings?
Then how could she possibly bring herself to urge her again for the artwork?
“In a situation like this, why didn’t you contact Teacher Qiufeng? Do you even know that if you miss the deadline, you’ll have to pay a penalty?”
“The penalty… about how much would it be?”
The editor almost laughed in exasperation. “So you’d rather pay the penalty than even consider contacting Teacher Qiufeng?”
“I’m not close with her.”
“Then tell me, who in the group are you close with? Aren’t you all just online colleagues? What, do you need to meet in person, swear brotherhood and make a blood oath before it counts as being close?
Speaking of which, you really should’ve come to the company’s annual party last week. Teacher Qiufeng was there too. It was such a good chance to get familiar with her, and you insisted on going to a parent meeting for a kid instead. Couldn’t the child’s father have gone?”
The sudden information made Lin Sanyuan freeze. Her mind buzzed.
“You’re saying Teacher Tang… she went to the company’s annual party?”
Her heart suddenly started racing.
“Yeah. Didn’t she say in the group that she was going? Didn’t you notice? Anyway, there’s no point talking about that now. Go find a way to contact her. There are only two days left before the deadline. I don’t care how you do it, you have to get this sorted.”
The call ended quickly.
Frowning, lost in thought, Lin Sanyuan lowered her head and started scrolling frantically through the group chat.
With over a hundred people, there was endless chatter. She scrolled hard for more than ten minutes before finally finding a familiar profile picture buried in the crowd, with a simple, almost throwaway message, just like everyone else’s.
“I’ll be attending the company annual party too.”
Tang Hengzhi’s message had come less than a minute apart from when the editor had tagged Lin Sanyuan to ask if she would attend.
But since it was the first annual party, the group had been unusually active. After Lin Sanyuan replied that she would go, more than ten messages flooded in before Tang Hengzhi’s line appeared.
And Lin Sanyuan rarely checked the chat, so she never saw it.
Later, when she found out Qiao Lian had a parent meeting, she skipped the party and formally informed the editor in private.
Lin Sanyuan put her phone down, not daring to think any further.
…
Four in the morning, Huacheng Airport. In the faint light of dawn, a trace of blue seeped into the sky, while the world remained dim and quiet.
Summer was approaching, but the early morning wind at the airport was still sharp and cool.
Tang Hengzhi stood outside the vast, nearly empty airport, her back straight. The cold wind carried a damp heaviness that clung to the skin.
Occasionally, a car passed by. In the stillness of the city, the neon lights always gave off an illusion of silence and loneliness.
“Cough, cough…” Tang Hengzhi coughed softly, adjusted her mask, and took out her phone to call a ride.
After getting off the international flight, her phone had only just regained signal. Notifications sounded, there were unread messages.
Her eyes flickered. Her thumb brushed lightly along the edge of the phone before she finally tapped it open.
The message wasn’t from Lin Sanyuan, but from the editor in charge of the Puka platform.
It had been sent at five in the afternoon the previous day.
“Hello, Teacher Qiufeng. Sorry to bother you during your busy schedule. The second volume of ‘National Preceptor’ on our platform is about to be published. May I ask when you might be available to arrange the main character illustration for Li Fujin?”
Perhaps after waiting too long without a reply, the editor grew anxious. The second message sounded much more casual, trying to close the distance.
“Very sorry, Teacher. This should have been coordinated by our author, but our author Yeye is a bit introverted. She may feel she isn’t very familiar with you and worries that urging for the draft might offend you, so I’ve come to ask on her behalf. We urgently need your work to resolve this.”
Standing under the streetlight, Tang Hengzhi’s slender figure looked even more refined. Her gaze lingered on the phone screen, unfocused, her pupils stilled for a long moment.
With a somewhat numb expression, she began typing.
“I already sent Li Fujin’s character illustration via email a week ago. Was it not received?”
Even after sending the message, she didn’t realize it was four in the morning.
By her usual habits, she would never reply at such an inappropriate hour.
Even when her schedule was irregular and she checked messages late at night, she would normally wait until working hours the next day to respond.
Realizing this, Tang Hengzhi pressed her lips together, but she didn’t have the energy to withdraw the message. She stood under the streetlight in a daze for a long time, even forgetting to call a ride.
The morning wind made her eyes dry. She coughed again, her shoulders trembling slightly, when her phone chimed once more.
About ten minutes had passed.
Editor Chen had actually replied.
“I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry, Teacher, I missed the email!”
On the other side, Editor Chen was practically screaming.
She wished she could dig a hole in her bed and disappear.
As a web editor, she managed a whole group of comic artists, and every day there were also countless submissions from newcomers. Messages were impossible to keep up with.
Ever since the platform gained Tang Hengzhi’s backing, exposure had increased, and the number of submissions had surged. Her workload had doubled.
She hadn’t ignored it on purpose. Normally, when a platform artist submitted work, it also needed to go through the editor for review.
But who was she to review Tang Hengzhi’s work?
Could she even understand it well enough to judge?
She hadn’t received the character draft for the first volume at all, maybe Tang Hengzhi had contacted the author directly, or something else had happened, and it went straight to publication.
Who would have thought that for the second volume, Tang Hengzhi would actually follow procedure and submit it to her?
At the time, with so many drafts to review, she hadn’t even opened it. It was just a single image, not even a compressed file.
She had thought it was some joke submission from a comic artist and ignored it.
It took her a full ten minutes to find the original file. This was the end of her, she might as well be taken away by a monkey.
And she had even scolded Yeye because of this.
Tang Hengzhi mechanically typed “It’s fine,” then deleted it before sending.
After a moment, she typed another line.
“The author said she isn’t familiar with me?”
The moment the message was sent, a bitter taste spread slowly from the back of her tongue.
Editor Chen replied almost instantly, “Yes, she didn’t want to trouble you. This was my oversight. Please don’t take it to heart. I hope you and Yeye can have a pleasant collaboration in the future.”
Tang Hengzhi’s gaze settled on the word “pleasant,” and she found it ironic.
Beep, beep.
A horn sounded. White headlights approached from afar, and a red BMW stopped in front of her.
The window rolled down slowly. He Wenyu, with her wine red wavy hair, rested her arm on the window, relaxed and charming, smiling with effortless allure.
“Well, standing here alone in the cold wind? Want me to give you a ride?”
Tang Hengzhi lifted her eyelids. “What are you doing here?”
He Wenyu said, “You disappeared without a word for days. I almost called the police. If I hadn’t asked Xiao Qiu, I wouldn’t even know your grandfather fell and broke his leg. You, honestly, going abroad without telling anyone.”
Tang Hengzhi knew she had gotten the information from Xiao Qiu and didn’t say much. She opened the door, got into the back seat, and closed her eyes, her voice tired.
“It wasn’t a fracture. They lied to get me back.”
“Oh? Family pressuring you to get married?”
Tang Hengzhi said nothing.
He Wenyu turned to look at her. “Why are you still wearing a mask after getting in? Afraid I’ll take advantage of you?”
Without opening her eyes, Tang Hengzhi said, “If you don’t mind catching a bad cold, I can take it off now.”
“Forget it, you’d better keep it on.”
Poor thing. Even with a bad cold, she was dragged back and forth by her family.
But if she was that sick, why rush back home like this?
She was usually so timid. Even staying in Huacheng, there hadn’t been any progress between her and Lin Sanyuan.
Tang Hengzhi kept her eyes closed. She couldn’t sleep. Her throat felt so dry and painful it seemed about to split, as if a dull axe was hacking at her temples. Each breath brought a faint burning pain in her chest.
Her head spun badly. Still, she couldn’t help taking out her phone and instinctively opening Lin Sanyuan’s Moments.
As expected, there was nothing. It was even set to only show posts from the past three months, she couldn’t even see that post about buying a snowboard anymore.
She rarely updated her Moments. Not only did she dislike socializing in real life, she was the same online.
It made Tang Hengzhi feel more than once that the connection between them was too fragile.
Even though she had tried her best to step into her work circle, it still couldn’t change the reality.
The reality that they were not close at all.
Today, Editor Chen’s message had cruelly pulled her back to that truth.
Tang Hengzhi had been following the publication progress of “National Preceptor” all along.
She had never expected Lin Sanyuan to take the initiative to ask her for the character illustration, so she had prepared everything a week in advance, leaving enough time for the publishing process.
When it came to Lin Sanyuan, Tang Hengzhi had always been careful, restrained, never crossing the line.
She knew that when it came to relationships, Lin Sanyuan resisted, even feared, any approach that was too direct or intense.
If they could use voice chat, she would never switch to video. If they could type, she would never send voice messages.
Tang Hengzhi even knew about Lin Sanyuan’s texting anxiety. After not seeing her for a year, she probably didn’t even remember her anymore.
