The Romance Extras Turned Out to Be a Yuri Story - Chapter 66

“Is this money for me?”

Shuhe looked suspiciously at the woman across the table.

Wearing sunglasses and holding her head high, the woman said, “I’ve bought the rights to your novel. I’ve hired a director and a team to handle the filming. My only requirement is that Female Lead 2 must win and end up with the Male Lead!”

She took off her glasses, an arrogant look on her face. “I heard your rent is about to expire. You made a good amount of money from this book, but is it enough for you? I heard you’ve been dragging your feet on the side story (fanwai), and half your earnings are being held by the website. You don’t want the Male Lead and Female Lead to be together anyway, do you? So why not let Female Lead 2 take the win and write the story you truly want to write?”

Shuhe’s fingers curled up. She might shine brightly online, but in reality, she was socially anxious.

Facing the other person’s aggressive demeanor, she swallowed and said, “I’ll think about it.”

“Is it that this amount of money isn’t enough?” The woman slammed down another pile of cash. “How about now?”

Shuhe was stunned by the mountain of money in front of her. Who carries that much cash these days? She highly doubted the woman’s sanity, but seeing such a pile of cash was still shocking.

“No,” she waved her hand. “It’s not about the money.”

“Then what is it about?” The other woman still held some respect for Shuhe, as she was the one who created that world.

“It’s…” Shuhe was embarrassed to say, “I didn’t expect this novel to become so popular when I first wrote it.”

“Hmm, isn’t being popular a good thing?”

Shuhe sighed. “Although I shouldn’t be too bothered by money, I really need to consider the matter of Female Lead 2 taking over.”

“So, why?”

Lin Luoluo saw a face identical to her own asking the question persistently. Shuhe rubbed her nose before telling the truth.

“I was originally a yuri (girls’ love) writer, but I switched to romance at my editor’s suggestion. This book is an expansion of one of my original yuri short stories. The original characters are the same; I just added a male lead. When I got to the side story, I truly couldn’t write anymore. It felt as if the characters I created had come alive, and they were resisting my pen.”

“How does that relate to the adaptation?”

“The Female Lead and the Female Supporting Character were originally a couple.”

“What?! Me and her? Absolutely impossible!”

Shuhe looked blankly at the woman across from her. The woman was agitated, slamming the table and standing up.

“Don’t fob me off with such ridiculous excuses! I’m paying the money, you just adapt it the way I want!”

Shuhe found the other person unreasonable.

She tightened her lips and stopped speaking.

Lin Luoluo looked around and asked the system: [Isn’t that me?]

System: [It is you.]

[Then who is inside my body?]

[It is also you, the original Female Lead 2.]

Lin Luoluo gasped. [How did she get here? And occupy my body?]

This was simply unbelievable. A character from the book had actually come to the real world and was standing before the author.

[What does she want?]

[She wants to win and become the Female Lead.]

This scene felt incredibly familiar.

Lin Luoluo recalled what Sang Jing had said: the Female Lead of $A Marriage of Convenience with a Tycoon was Lin Luoluo, and the Male Lead was Gu Beichen. So this was before the novel was adapted into a TV series. She watched it all in disbelief. She was witnessing the past, which meant the future, as Sang Jing had said, would be a TV series where the Female Lead 2 took over.

[How do I go back?]

Lin Luoluo clenched her fists.

[Unravel the secret of the world’s chaos.] The system replied.

Lin Luoluo watched the author stand up. “I’m sorry, madam, I don’t think a collaboration would work for us.”

Seeing the author reject her, the other person grew anxious.

“Don’t you want to adapt your own work? Don’t you want to see your work turned into a film or TV series?”

Shuhe shook her head. “I still prefer writing novels. Being a scriptwriter isn’t for me.”

“Thank you for the coffee.” Shuhe left a cash note, turned, and walked away. Lin Luoluo was forced to follow, seeing the twisted, jealous expression on her own face from behind. She never thought she’d see such an expression on her own face one day.

After leaving, Shuhe slumped her shoulders and muttered, “What a mess. I thought I’d run into something good.”

She stretched her neck, took her “back-rider” to the supermarket to buy groceries, went back, cooked a good meal, and after eating, sat down in front of her computer again, staring blankly.

The document was still open. After zoning out for a while, Shuhe saw the little penguin icon in the bottom right corner of her screen flashing continuously. The familiar message about chasing the next update made her head ache. It shook again, and Shuhe gripped the mouse and clicked open the dialogue box.

Editor Wuchen: Where is your side story (fanwai)? Do you know the readers are going crazy! I went online today and had to ban several people. If you keep messing around like this, do you still want your manuscript fees?

Shuhe: …

Editor Wuchen: Speak! Is the side story written? I don’t need to teach you how to appease your readers, right? Think about your future copyrights; you don’t need to turn away money, do you?

Shuhe: Still writing.

Editor Wuchen: Send it over for my review when it’s done.

Editor Wuchen: Since you’ve decided to switch genres, do it properly. This book might be popular, but that doesn’t mean your next one will be. Focus on this one, make good money, and then you can naturally write what you want.

Shuhe: I understand.

Lin Luoluo watched helplessly as the author stayed up all night, typing out the side story.

The side story was over 15,000 characters long, detailing how the Male Lead discovered the Female Lead was pregnant, and how their arguments and differences changed because of the child. Even the Male Lead’s mother grew fond of the Female Lead. The two lived a happy life.

After typing “The End”, Shuhe sat blankly at her computer. She let out a small laugh, sent the document to her editor, but didn’t go to sleep. Instead, she opened a new webpage, switched to her alternate account, and began writing yuri fanfiction based on her own novel. Perhaps it wasn’t fanfiction; perhaps this was the true story.

Lin Luoluo watched in a daze, feeling a sense of finality settle in her heart.

This was the true side story of the original book; she had no part in it. She was just the fiancé mentioned briefly by the Male Lead’s mother, barely appearing throughout the entire novel.

Lin Luoluo suddenly felt afraid—afraid that once she returned, her world would revert to the book’s proper track.

Hugging herself, her fingers crossed over, Lin Luoluo watched the sun rise outside the window. The author had fallen asleep slumped over her computer desk, her fingers still resting on the keyboard, having only written the opening of her fanfiction.

Gathering some unknown courage, Lin Luoluo tentatively pressed her hand onto the keyboard. The keycaps were lightly depressed, typing out a character.

She bit her lip and continued writing the story right after the author’s last sentence.

The day grew brighter, and the heat on her back woke the author.

Her fingers twitched, and she realized she had fallen asleep at her computer. After pouring herself a glass of water, Shuhe ordered takeout on her phone, yawned, and sat back down at her desk, slowly opening her eyes wide.

Had she written this many words yesterday?

Having stayed up too late, Shuhe couldn’t remember at all.

Did she type it while half-asleep?

Shuhe looked at the contents of the document, slowly scrolling down.

This yuri fanfiction was a continuation of the original yuri short story.

In the short story, she wrote about the two women having a brief encounter due to a spacetime overlap. Later, when spacetime returned to normal, the mailbox that served as the portal returned to normal, and the letters from Zhang Qiu in the other timeline stopped arriving.

Zhang Qiu had said in her letter that she would come to see her after the summer break.

But Lin Luoluo had moved house.

Later, both went to university.

By coincidence, their universities overlapped in spacetime.

Lin Luoluo went to the library to study. The same coincidence played out, and the two met again in the library, having broken through the spacetime barrier.

However, neither of them realized it, thinking the other was a fellow student.

They didn’t exchange names, but they both loved to sit at a table near the window, loved reading books by the same author, and would exchange reading lists. It wasn’t until Zhang Qiu handed a book to Lin Luoluo, and Lin Luoluo went to return it, that the librarian reminded her:

“Student, this book isn’t from our school. It says Longhai University on it. Did you pick up the wrong one?”

Though confused, Lin Luoluo thought Zhang Qiu had made a mistake.

Later, she asked for Zhang Qiu’s name. Although they only met in the library every day, they grew increasingly fond of each other.

Lin Luoluo began asking around her school for Zhang Qiu.

But there was no one—no one in the school by that name, and no one had ever heard it. Lin Luoluo started to panic. She even checked the library borrowing list, and the name wasn’t there either.

Her friend suggested, “Maybe it’s someone from off-campus pretending to be a student here?”

Lin Luoluo didn’t believe it; she felt Zhang Qiu wouldn’t lie.

She confessed to Zhang Qiu, and only after comparing their real-world information did they discover that they were people from two different timelines.

Two people from two different timelines fell in love because of a spacetime overlap accident.

Shuhe was supposed to continue writing after the short story.

She had only written the beginning, but the words now on the screen seemed to be fated. It was as if those two people were alive right beside her, like strangers passing by.

Shuhe changed the formatting and directly uploaded it to her fanfiction account.

After finishing that, her takeout arrived. Shuhe took the food and ate while reading the messages on her editor’s QQ account.

Editor Wuchen: Great! You can upload and mark it as finished! Your film and television rights have also been finalized. The other party wants to invite you to be the screenwriter. The resources offered are very generous. You’ll even have a senior screenwriter to guide you, and the work must be credited to you.

Editor Wuchen: It looks like the other party is a big fan of your book. How did you feel about meeting them yesterday? Can you do it?

Shuhe: Mediocre. Let’s forget about the screenwriting job.

Editor Wuchen: Didn’t you want to buy a house? The other party said that if you’re willing to take on the screenwriting job, the copyright price can be negotiated higher.

Editor Wuchen: You can’t write novels forever, can you? This is a rare opportunity.

Shuhe: I’ve never written a script.

Editor Wuchen: You’ve written a novel! It’s all the same thing. Besides, this work is originally yours; it’s better for you to adapt your own work than for someone else to mess with it.

Shuhe twitched her lips at the editor’s words.

Shuhe: During the meeting yesterday, the first thing they demanded was that the adaptation must have Female Lead 2 win. Do you still think they respect my work?

Shuhe: She could have just created her own original script instead of buying my novel. Why buy my work if she doesn’t like it? It makes no sense.

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