You're My Belated Happiness - Chapter 3 Part 1

Translated by Team DHH at http://dhh-workshop.blogspot.com.

You’re My Belated Happiness

Chapter 3 Part 1

It wasn’t until she heard Shen Mingying’s warning that Ruan Yu decided to end the blind date and go directly home.

Since she was stuck in traffic, she opened the other story <Her Eyes Can Smile>. She randomly picked a few pages to read and discovered several scenes that were similar.

For example, the scene about fireworks on New Year’s day, the setting and conversation, even the inner thoughts of the male character, were all exactly like what she had written.

What was more surprising was that the other story described a scene where on a certain weekend, the female character held a pot of “tin canned flowers” as she was leaving school.

It was a popular potting method at Su City First High School at the time. The students grew one plant in one can, the plants could be chrysanthemum or watermelon or anything else. However, Ruan Yu’s tin can was different from the others; it held a sunflower and lavender growing in the same can.

Ruan Yu had read about this in her diary and written it into her story because it was good material to give the reader a feel for the time period. She didn’t expect the other story to write about it as well and with a sunflower and lavender as well.

There were quite a few examples throughout the other story. And since the other story was a short story, the story line went on at a much faster pace than hers, with scenes that came one after another which had all been published earlier than hers. The reason why she didn’t notice this story was simply because the author was a new comer without much exposure.

Damn it.

Liu Mao noticed that Ruan Yu’s face was growing darker and darker and turned his head to ask her while waiting for the traffic lights: “Miss Ruan, is there anything I can help?”

Ruan Yu shook her head.

Liu Mao probably knew about her occupation, but she had always kept a low profile about it. Not even her parents knew about her pen name. She certainly wouldn’t let her blind date, whom she had just met for the first time, know about it.

Besides, she didn’t think this would be a matter that needed the help of a lawyer.

Therefore she said: “I can take care of it for now. Thanks.”

Ruan Yu got out of the car at her apartment, thanked Liu Mao once again, and hurriedly went upstairs.

Within the roughly one hour time span that she spent getting back home, the comments under her novel and her Weibo account which had about two hundred thousands followers were both swamped with various posts.

In addition to all the abusive language and accusations, some of her readers also demanded an explanation from her as the post compared the similarity of various scenes made it so that her readers couldn’t really defend her.

There was a die-hard fan of hers posting an explanation which seemed to be somewhat helpful to her: The other author hasn’t come out so far, maybe that’s Wenxiang’s alternate account?

It was a common practice when publishing on the internet. Some authors would publish a story using an alternate pen name to test the waters. If the story wasn’t received well, then the author would just give up on the project. But Ruan Yu obviously didn’t do it.

The incident continued to escalate. Everyone was waiting for her to say something.

Ruan Yu read through the other author’s story quite carefully. She scratched her head and tried to cool her head down. After a while, she decided to contact the other author first.

The other author’s pen name was “Poem Writer”. The Weibo account was “A person who writes poems”, which was a new account with only followers in the single digits. The newest post on the site was four days ago, on Sunday evening: Time to go back to school. Sad.

It looked like this was a high school student.

Ruan Yu sent a message over, but didn’t get a reply.

She realized that it was Thursday today. If this author was at a boarding school, it was very likely that they didn’t have access to a cell phone at present.

Ruan Yu felt exhausted. She kicked off her high heels and lied down on her bed. Looking at the ceiling lamp above, her eyes grew out of focus and saw line after line vitriolic words floating by in front of her eyes-- --

[Plagiarist, don’t play dead. Come out and say something?]

[Even trash like this could get onto the most popular list? Get out of Jinjiang!]

[You’re quite good at adapting those scenes into yours. Those other novels of yours are also probably copied huh?]

People who left these kinds of messages were mostly people who didn't know her well. They had already come to a conclusion after viewing the scene comparisons. Though she was upset from reading all these negative comments, for now she was more anxious to find out how these two stories could be so similar? 

Translated by Team DHH at http://dhh-workshop.blogspot.com.