I turned reality into a romantic comedy.

"What are you doing? Who have you been chatting with?"

"No, no... Let me check the time."

Feeling a little guilty, Chen Xi put her phone away again, then pouted and steered the conversation back on track:

"There are just too many outsiders coming to our house for the New Year this year. It's one thing for Sister Shen to come, since her family situation would just be a nuisance to her. But Lin Mu is coming too. If Lin Mu comes, Xu Youwei will definitely join in the fun. That makes one, two, three, three."

"It's not like we're outsiders, is it? I even spent Chinese New Year at Mu Mu's house last year."

"Tch, even the best of friends are still just friends, and outsiders are still outsiders. Am I wrong? I've seen your family since I was born. When I was just old enough to remember things, my parents took me to your house to pay New Year's greetings and call you grandpa, grandma, uncle, aunt, and you—brother, brother."

Whether it was because Chen Junqian made a birthday wish and called him "brother" all day long during his birthday celebration this year, or for some other reason, Chen Xi occasionally started using this reduplicated term of address again, which had been sealed away for two years. Right now, she called him twice in a row, sounding a bit coquettish and a bit dissatisfied. After saying that, she fiercely bit the straw in her mouth and gulped down the red beans inside.

Perhaps because she had just met Lin Mu and heard her say that she would be coming to her house to celebrate the New Year together this year, Chen Xi suddenly remembered that Lin Mu's favorite drink was also red bean milk tea. When she drank the cup her brother bought, she unconsciously used more force and chewed it with a crunching sound.

"Yes, yes, everyone knows you're my sister. I wouldn't treat other people like this."

"That's another lie. You've been managing other talents just as much these past few years, haven't you? Lin Guo aside, Sister Shen is the best example."

For Chen Xi, Chen Junqian's mouth had long been considered the number one lie in Guo Ning's ten major lies, so she rolled her eyes slightly and began to list his sins:

"In this winter break, which is not even halfway over, you've already gone to Shanghai with Zhu Wenyun, and then went to Lin'an to pick up Sister Shen. You'll also spend the New Year with Lin Mu and Xu Youwei... What about me?"

Because the last three words were spoken so softly, Chen Junqian didn't hear what his sister was saying at first. When he asked again, Chen Xi was already sulking and silent. It wasn't until they had walked a while longer and were almost at the Yunqi Jinyuan residential area that she finally spoke her mind:

"Does my brother only like girls who are very unfortunate? Or is it that only girls like that would get my brother's attention?"

When she asked this question, Chen Xi inevitably thought of herself again. After all, the period when she and Chen Junqian were closest was precisely when her mother started a business, and her family was in chaos. She moved into Chen Junqian's house temporarily. Considering what Shen Nianqiu said tonight and Chen Junqian's attitude, it was inevitable that she would have such thoughts.

"Of course not. If I were to date, I would only date mentally healthy people."

Intentionally stopping in his tracks, Chen Junqian turned earnestly to his sister, and also to Gu Linguo, who would surely find out the content of their conversation later, and said:

"Yes, it was like this before, it is like this now, and it will be like this in the future."

P.S.: Thank you for reading and subscribing.

PS2: Well, there were a lot of interesting things that happened on my blind date today, but I got back too late, so I'll share them with you next time.

Chapter 133: The Crown Prince and the Crown Princess (Two Chapters Combined)

Unlike when Shen Nianqiu first and only visited Guoning a year and a half ago, Zhu Wenjun did not move, but the layout and size of her home had changed considerably. They rented the two adjacent rooms, which saved Zhu Wenjun from the trouble of having to share a room and bed with her grandmother after entering middle school. At the same time, the extra study not only helped alleviate the pressure of her growing collection of books, but also gave Zhu Wenjun a relatively quiet and private environment for reading and writing.

Chen Junqian went to the hotel around nine o'clock in the morning to pick up his sister and then brought her over. Since everything was arranged in advance, there was almost no tension between Zhu Wenyun and Shen Nianqiu. After all, one of them was the storyteller and the other was the listener. The former needed the latter to depict all her feelings that she could not fully describe or accurately summarize in words, while the latter wanted to understand the way the other interacted with Chen Junqian and what she could learn or avoid from it. So they were quite in agreement.

However, Chen Junqian did not choose to stay there. This was at Shen Nianqiu's request. In her words, compared to Zhu Wenyun, who was a third party, she would be embarrassed to say some things and thoughts if the person involved was here. So, he was "kicked" out of the study in no time. It seemed that only after Zhu Wenyun's new book was officially published would there be a chance to glean some details of this conversation.

In fact, as time went by, Chen Junqian gradually had some ideas and thoughts about the promise he had made to Zhu Wenyun a long time ago, which was to ask her to write a book for him. If possible, he would like Zhu Wenyun to compile his stories after his rebirth into a book. However, he could not let her favor all the personalities and events and attribute them to only one female protagonist. This was originally a story with everyone.

After all, reality is not the novels that Zhu Wenyun has already written, nor will there be a perfect character who combines all the advantages of female protagonists while avoiding their respective personality flaws. These are merely emotional projections that Zhu Wenyun, as the author, consciously or unconsciously makes. Therefore, if possible, Chen Junqian, who has read all of Zhu Wenyun's works to date, would prefer that she use this new book as a starting point to try to depict those imperfect female protagonists.

Since this was definitely not something that could be discussed in a few hours, or even a day, Chen Junqian didn't foolishly wait outside. After confirming that the two people in the room had started chatting happily, he set off to attend to his own business. Every minute and second of a master of time management is extremely precious and cannot be wasted.

Until he brought Shen Nianqiu over this morning, the other party had not mentioned her parents again. Counting the time, it had been a full 24 hours since she ran away from home. It was really hard for Chen Junqian not to suspect that his sister's parents had called, but Shen Nianqiu had dealt with them by herself without informing him.

According to the message from the friend he had asked in Lin'an to keep an eye on Shen Nianqiu's family, no one had entered or left their house since Shen Nianqiu left yesterday. If Chen Junqian hadn't believed that his sister couldn't pull off that kind of high-level job, he would have almost suspected that she had committed some kind of illegal or criminal act like the extreme female protagonists in many youth angst novels, physically resolving all the family's troubles.

However, the person he asked for help soon replied, saying that a neighbor had seen the other party's parents packing their luggage the day before yesterday, seemingly going back to their hometown. This is how their family always does it, just like most families living in the city. Every year at the end of the lunar year, they would go back to their parents' home in the mountains in the countryside to stay for a few days. It's just that Shen Nianqiu was left behind, and it seems that this has been the case for more than one year.

So starting yesterday, all those claims about leaving notes or worrying about parents calling were just Shen Nianqiu talking to herself. However, Chen Junqian didn't want to define it as Shen Nianqiu lying. In a sense, it was more like self-deception. She was just left alone at home like every year, but she insisted on creating the illusion that someone cared about her.

Looking back now, this is probably a paradox that arose after his rebirth. On the one hand, the more Chen Junqian hoped that Shen Nianqiu could completely sever ties with his family like in his previous life, only changing the method from suicide to something else, the more he realized that precisely because his actions were completely different from those in his previous life, Shen Nianqiu would still have a trace of attachment and affection for his family. After all, he had relieved most of his mental pressure, and those resentments and melancholy would often fade away.

More precisely, it was the other party's extreme thoughts that shifted from the family level to the emotional level towards him, which was the problem that gave Chen Junqian a headache. This was because the current Shen Nianqiu was a plus version of the past Xu Youwei, whose emotional needs were so high that they were almost unbelievable. However, she had been suppressing herself because she could not bear the consequences of letting them all out. In terms of honesty, she was even less honest than her classmate Youyou.

For now, all that can be hoped of is that this exchange with Zhu Wenyun can relieve some of Shen Nianqiu's mental stress. As for whether these two girls with dual D-level adaptability will eventually reach some strange resonance and cause the doctor and patient to turn into a ward riot where the doctor goes crazy, Chen Junqian doesn't want to think too much about it. Anyway, he feels that Zhu Wenyun's writing has this level of infectiousness. Even Lin Mu himself often goes back to look at her debut work from back then, lying on the bed with his little feet up, showing a sweet smile at the description of the nine-and-a-half-yuan scene.

Oh, this is also one of the pieces of information Chen Junqian got from Lin Mu's parents. It's true that information between childhood sweethearts' families is transparent to each other. Chen Junqian even knows exactly what position the other person is in every night when she sleeps, hugging the squirrel pillow he gave her. This is because the other person's mother would also take embarrassing photos of Mu Mu every morning when she just woke up, with her hair sticking up like a tuft of hair, and share them with their family.

In this respect, he should have said one less thing to his sister last night: he would rather have a healthy relationship with Mu Mu than with Shen Nianqiu. However, considering that such a statement would seem too presumptuous and would be explosive for both Shen Nianqiu and Mu Mu, who had no romantic feelings at the moment, he decided not to say it.

So if he changed his mind last night and said he preferred to play with his sister rather than Gu Lingguo, would that destroy the relationship between the two best friends and trigger a chaotic situation for him in the blink of an eye?

Although these were just random thoughts popping into Chen Junqian's mind, they represented his current level of understanding. After all, if a safe zone for "being able to date" were to be drawn up, Shen Nianqiu and Zhu Wenyun would definitely not be included. At the very least, it would have to be at the level of Youyou now, otherwise, it would undoubtedly lead to a bad ending with a major explosion of interpersonal relationships.

If we take Shen Nianqiu and Zhu Wenyun separately, Chen Junqian is actually more willing to believe the latter, who has indeed hit a wall and suffered a loss once, and has had two serious heart-to-heart talks with him. Otherwise, he wouldn't have let his sister go this time. He was hoping that she could convey the thoughts they had discussed during the New Concept Writing Competition not long ago, such as their views on love, to Shen Nianqiu. It could be considered a kind of mentorship.

Taking advantage of the current one-on-one situation between the two, Chen Junqian finally had time to turn his attention back to Gu Linguo, the last member of the problem children trio, and assess his adaptability rating.

As the most unique female protagonist who can get A's or D's, and whose adaptability rating changes drastically every moment rather than every day, observing the other party's adaptability rating has become one of Chen Junqian's daily routines. And today...

Personality adaptability A, speech adaptability A, action adaptability A.

Yes, that's only natural.

After all, he was about to take her to do what she liked and was most interested in.

----------------------------------

Luo Hongyu didn't really think much of having to work overtime on the 29th of the twelfth lunar month. After all, there were so many predecessors in the world who had to work overtime on New Year's Eve. So after casually liking a post, he followed the blogger, who was supposedly from Guoning, for a long time. The blogger's newly released post, "Sitting in the office building today, I felt that it was so lively outside, it felt like the New Year," returned to his post and began to wait idly for the pre-arranged customers to arrive.

As a sound engineer who graduated only a few years ago, Luo Hongyu, a local from Guoning, never expected that he would find such a good job in his small county town. He thought that he had only been away from his hometown for a few years when Sanzhixiongxu Company, which has now become the number one company in the domestic nut industry, suddenly emerged. Now, it is preparing to continue to cultivate and develop the value of the IP itself and launch related animations. That's why it recently set up a professional animation production department, and that's when he was recruited.

However, today's project is not related to our company's animation production.

Luo Hongyu was initially curious about how his boss had formally assigned him this task, which was theoretically outside his job scope. However, after making some inquiries within the company, he learned that it was a private project of the company's "crown prince" and "little princess," or rather, a whim of three middle school students. It's true that money is a good thing. At an age when he was still watching anime, the other party was already able to put their interests into practice, and they were using professionals and equipment.

After browsing through the resources that had already been sent, compared to the low-cost 3D animation format that their company was trying, this hand-drawn black and white stop-motion animation format did indeed look like the work of a few middle school students. However, putting aside the roughness and inexperienced storyboarding, the story's art style and the arrangement of the dialogue still had their merits. Now, all that was missing was the post-production work of dubbing, audio-visual synthesis, and editing, which was what he was going to do today.

"Hello, Teacher Luo. I've brought some people with me. I'm so sorry to trouble you to work overtime on the 29th."

Just then, Luo Hongyu heard a polite greeting from in front of him. It was Chen Junqian, whom he had met several times during the animation production stage. He was said to be the only son of one of the company's founding partners and could be considered the company's heir. Behind him was a girl who seemed to be about the age of a middle school student and had been curiously looking at the various professional equipment around her since entering the recording studio.

"Hello, hello, this must be the actor who came here today to participate in the dubbing? I'm Luo Hongyu, the sound engineer here. You can just call me Teacher Luo."

Having worked in recording for several years, Luo Hongyu had seen voice actors from the youngest to the youngest. Moreover, Chen Junqian had brought her over, so even though she was just a kid with no prior experience and probably just playing around, Luo Hongyu still maintained his politeness and manners and greeted her warmly.

"Hello, Teacher Luo, I am Gu Linguo."

Gu Lingguo, who was brought to this place by Chen Junqian for the first time, was also visibly nervous and excited. In fact, she had seen such professional recording studios in the animations she had watched, but it was her first time to personally walk into such a place and use it in a while. As a result, her breathing became a little disordered, and she had to take several deep breaths to calm her heartbeat down.

After nearly half a year of club activities, the animation, with Lin Mu and Chen Junqian in charge of funding, setup, equipment, and personnel, and Xu Youwei in charge of original artwork and Chen Xi in charge of the script, has finally reached the last step of voice acting. This is also the reason why Chen Junqian brought Gu Lingguo today. After all, in the initial work allocation of the club, it was decided that she would be responsible for most of the voice acting and narration work.

After briefly introducing the equipment in the room, Chen Junqian led Gu Linguo to the other side of the control room, where there was a huge glass window. Outside the window was a separate room, which was the core of the entire recording studio—the recording booth.

The recording studio was empty except for a high stool, a huge curved pop filter, and a tall stand. At the top of the stand, a microphone encased in a black visor stood silently, gleaming with a metallic sheen. It looked more professional and imposing than any microphone Gu Lingguo had seen online before; it could even be described as gleaming coldly.

"Lin Guo will go in and put on her headphones in a bit, and then I'll be with Teacher Luo in the control room."

"Well, I see."

Following Chen Junqian's arrangement, Gu Linguo walked into the recording studio alone. All the small sounds outside were completely shut out. Through the glass window, she could only see Chen Junqian, who had already walked into the control room, seemingly talking to Luo Hongyu. However, she couldn't hear anything; she could only see his lip movements.

Just as Gu Lingguo lowered her head to flip through the script containing the voice-over lines, the door to the control room was pushed open from the outside once again. However, the footsteps and voices of the people entering did not reach her ears, even though she was already in an absolutely soundproof environment.

Luo Hongyu in the control room heard the commotion. He was about to say something like, "Isn't there a 'Do Not Disturb' sign outside?" but he immediately swallowed the words back when he saw who it was.

If Gu Lingguo were to look up at this moment, she could probably tell from Luo Hongyu's lip movements that he was muttering a complaint to himself:

'Oh, the Crown Princess has arrived too.'

P.S.: Thank you for reading and subscribing.

PS2: A funny story about blind dates: When you're chatting with your blind date about history and are suddenly amazed to find that she actually knows about the obscure history of the late Tang Dynasty, the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, be sure to ask her first if she's watched "The Legend of Qin".

Chapter 134: Now it is... (Two chapters combined)

The office is always the easiest place to gossip, and Luo Hongyu's department office is no exception. After all, everyone needs some fun topics to make the boring and tedious time more interesting. In Guo Ning's company, the hottest gossip topic is naturally the affairs of Chen Junqian and Lin Mu.

After all, many of the people working in Guoning are locals like Luo Hongyu. After years of constantly making his name known, Chen Junqian has become the most famous "other people's child" in the area. It's estimated that many parents don't even know the mayor's name, but they can clearly recite many things about Chen Junqian. In addition, since they work in the company, they can see him often, so the gossip about him naturally spreads.

It was under these circumstances that the title of Crown Princess, which was commensurate with Chen Junqian's title of Crown Prince, was quickly bestowed upon Lin Mu, who always acted with him and seemed to have a good relationship with him. The reason it wasn't given to Chen Xi was that everyone knew she was Chen Junqian's sister, so they usually joked about her as the little princess. After all, her biological father was the real top three executive of the company, but he was currently stationed in a branch office in another city.

However, these were just jokes that some employees would make in private when they were bored at work. They would never say them out loud in front of Chen Junqian and Lin Mu. So after muttering this to himself, Luo Hongyu prepared to greet Lin Mu, who had suddenly walked into the control room, just like he had done with Chen Junqian. But he saw Lin Mu make a shushing gesture at him again.

It turned out that Chen Junqian had been watching Gu Linguo in the recording studio, worried that she might be nervous or underperform because of her first dubbing job today. He didn't notice that Lin Mu had gently pushed open the door behind him. So Lin Mu had the idea to play a prank on him. He quietly slipped in from behind and reached out to cover Chen Junqian's eyes.

It's fortunate that Chen Junqian is sitting in a chair, otherwise the height difference might be even greater if he stands on tiptoe. Mu Mu, who hasn't played this kind of childhood game with her childhood sweetheart in a long time, didn't follow the usual routine of asking "Guess who I am." Rather, she had long felt that this kind of game was completely unreliable. After all, you can recognize a voice just by listening, so there's no need to guess.

However, if you keep your eyes closed and don't ask, the other person will start guessing first.

"Didn't you say you were going back to your hometown with your parents today? How come you still have time to come here, Mu Mu?"

Well, the only people who could come to this place at this time like company employees are Lin Mu and Chen Xi. After thinking about it for a bit, their identities become obvious. The main reason is that Lin Mu's younger sister, who is a year younger than him, is usually not so childish and wouldn't do such childish things.

"We officially set off this afternoon. Then I heard from my dad that Qianqian was going to use the company's recording studio this morning, so I came here specifically to see what was going on."

Even after Chen Junqian revealed her real name, Lin Mu showed no intention of letting go. Instead, she began to expand the range of her finger movements on her childhood sweetheart's face, like when she would run to his seat after class and half-squat down to lean on his desk from behind, resting her head on Chen Junqian's shoulder. It was unclear whether she wanted to give Chen Junqian a set of eye exercises or was simply tracing his facial features with her fingertips.

"As you can see, we are having Lin Guo try voice acting."

Following Chen Junqian's gaze, Lin Mu then turned his attention to the recording studio, which was separated from them by a layer of soundproof glass, and saw Gu Linguo hurriedly looking down, pretending to look at the dubbing script in her hand.

If we go back a year, Lin Mu would probably have performed a formulaic breakup with Chen Junqian by now. However, she has recently become more accustomed to this and no longer feels embarrassed or flustered about maintaining such close contact with her childhood sweetheart in front of others. She is probably only as reserved as before in front of her parents and family.

"This looks interesting, I want to take a look too."

"Okay, then Mu Mu can sit there."

Okay.

Seeing Chen Junqian adopting a serious work attitude, Lin Mu obediently let go of his hand and sat on the sofa next to the control room, resting his chin on his hand and looking at Gu Lingguo in the recording studio with great interest, wanting to see what the specific dubbing was all about.

After all, for children, the most direct way to judge whether an animation is good or not is through its visuals and sound. Since many of the animations they watched in their childhood were imported foreign cartoons, such as the three giants of the animation world that they and other children in after-school care voted for: "Jackie Chan Adventures," "SpongeBob SquarePants," and "Lilo & Stitch," all of which were not domestic animations, they all had to undergo localized dubbing after being imported. As a result, when Lin Mu grew up a bit and watched the original English versions, he felt a little uncomfortable because the voices didn't match the characters.

Seeing that Lin Mu also looked quite interested, Luo Hongyu, the sound engineer, also slowed down his pace as much as possible. Gu Lingguo, who came to participate in the dubbing work, was also a newcomer who had never been exposed to this industry before, so he treated her like a child, explaining each step in detail to the two people in the control room and the recording studio.

In the recording studio, Gu Lingguo had a screen in front of her playing a sample video. Although it looked like a motion comic at best, it was all the result of Xu Youwei's hard work for more than half a year.

"In theory, we should first watch the sample and go over the timing of the lines and the characters' lip movements. However, because this film is in a different format, we can skip this part. Hmm... Mr. Gu, why don't you read the sample a little bit yourself to get a feel for it?"

This was the first time in her life that someone had addressed her as "teacher." In a sense, Gu Linguo's feelings at this moment were not much different from those of a cute anime fan who had suddenly stumbled into a contemporary comic convention more than ten years later and realized the truth that "among three people walking together, there must be one who can teach me." Upon hearing this, she nodded vigorously, trying her best to put aside the intimate actions of Lin Mu and Chen Junqian that she had just witnessed, and refocused her attention on the script she was holding.

If Chen Junqian were to look at the system's rating of Gu Linguo's romantic comedy adaptability in his mind now, he would find that the most important aspects of her personality, speech, and actions have dropped from A to B+.

There was nothing she could do. It was clearly part of Gu Lingguo's plan to create a unique time and experience for her and Chen Junqian that no one else could participate in. Even when Chen Xi wanted to come along and watch the fun, she made excuses to avoid it. But who knew that this childhood sweetheart would suddenly appear out of nowhere? What happened to going back to her hometown today?

The main problem was that she couldn't hear what the two people in the control room were talking about at all. The professional soundproof environment she had just enjoyed suddenly made Gu Lingguo start to feel anxious again. She really wanted to know as much as possible what the other person was saying to whom every second. Otherwise, she wouldn't have asked Chen Xi to give her a spy game-like live broadcast at home yesterday.

Thinking of this, she almost subconsciously wanted to click her tongue again, but the microphone in front of her had already been turned on, and any slight movement on her side would be transmitted to the ears of the people in the control room without any error. So Gu Lingguo could only suppress her anxious mood and start reading the lines written by her best friend.

Although Luo Hongyu himself said that the first time was mainly to let her familiarize herself with the process and the feeling of dubbing, Gu Lingguo still tried her best to express the emotions and transitions of the lines based on the vocal techniques she had learned in the past six months.

As for Chen Junqian and Lin Mu in the control room, the feeling was slightly subtle. They couldn't help but think of the conspicuous bag that raised its hand in class to actively respond to the teacher's call to "read the following paragraph with feeling" and then began to immerse itself in its own world with dramatic intonation. Gu Lingguo's current performance was somewhat similar to this situation.

"Forehead……"

The sound engineer, Luo Hongyu, also felt a bit strange. It was the first time he'd encountered a new voice actor who seemed to know a little, but something just didn't feel right. He felt a surge of emotion welling up inside him, unsure how to express it. Finally, Chen Junqian, who was closer to Gu Linguo and understood why she was behaving this way, took the initiative and shared his thoughts with the girl wearing headphones in the recording booth: