Chapter 8 - Trying the “Unlucky Sticker”! (1/2)

A week pa.s.sed.

That afternoon, Zhang Ye was sitting in his office, eating by himself.

His lunch was a bun, a bun and a bun. Finis.h.i.+ng three buns was enough to fill his stomach.

After a few days of exploration, he was now familiar with his job, the equipment and the interpersonal relations in his department. Zhang Ye learned quite a lot. But of course, all of that was self-learned. Tian Bin, who had been a.s.signed by the Leader to bring him around, had ignored him completely. After getting used to the work environment, Zhang Ye finished whatever was in hands, as he waited for an opportunity. He had not done a single program over the past week. It would even be good if he could be a stand-in host, but all of the eight radio hosts were each healthier than the last. No one got into a car accident or got struck by lightning. Hai.

“Little Zhang.” a person beside him called out.

Zhang Ye glanced over and said in a lukewarm fas.h.i.+on, “What is the matter?” He still remembered the feelings he had, when he had seen this person for the first time. It was of great shock. There was a moment that Zhang Ye’s mind unconditionally sprouted out a phrase?aliens have finally invaded Earth!

Right, go ahead and think what he looks like!

This person’s name was Li Si. It was a very native name. It was ranked alongside Zhang San and Xiaoming as the three most widespread names in the country. The reason why Zhang Ye gave him such an att.i.tude was because the person who had been speaking behind his back with the Tian Bin couple was this phone editor. He had even criticized Zhang Ye for his ugly looks. Just thinking of it made Zhang Ye want to laugh. Shouldn’t you look at yourself in the mirror first? No matter how I look, I am at most average. What about you? No matter what, you can only be described with a poem!

You are like the clouds in the sky.

You are like the thick haze.

You are like the bright moon.

You are like the dust in the wind.

?Uh, well you just aren’t like a person.

Li Si put down a bunch of A4 paper. “Brother Tian will be beginning a new novel on the program tonight. The last novel, ‘Ghosts at the Zero Point’ has finished recording and broadcasting yesterday. Today, we will begin with “Recalling Spirits”, and we have gotten the copyright for the story last week. The plan is to prepare for 50 episodes. This is the script for the first two episodes.” The phone editor’s job was generally to vet the listeners who call in during a live broadcast. However, nowadays, as it was mostly pre-recorded broadcasts, the phone editor’s job was to do some text editing for some programs. Tian Bin’s “Late-night Ghost Stories” had always been arranged, annotated and audited by Li Si.

Zhang Ye said, “Why are you giving me this?”

Li Si looked at him and said, “Help Brother Tian to edit a few paragraphs. These paragraphs are a little political and the standards for broadcasting and publis.h.i.+ng are different, so we need to edit it. Oh, I still need to mark up some words and other jobs. The program tonight will be broadcast live, so there isn’t enough time.”

Zhang Ye had been a.s.signed by the leader to be led by Tian Bin. Since he could not say no to this task, he took it and edited it.

In the afternoon, just before getting off work.

Zhang Ye had finished the editing and had also read the first few chapters of the novel. He found it average and very cliché. According to his understanding, “Recalling Spirits” was a very popular supernatural novel these days. The simplified Chinese edition had been selling like hotcakes; however, when Zhang Ye compared it to the supernatural Tomb Robbers novel in his mind, the difference was great. This world’s supernatural novels were weaker in entertainment value and continuous suspense to the Tomb Robbers novel. When Zhang Ye checked the web to gain some understanding, he realized that this world did not have anything similar to Tomb Robbers. No one had written it and the state of the novel industry was in its beginning stages and was lacking in richness.

Suddenly, Tian Bin arrived for work. It was common for those who had night programs. Usually the host who had caught up to the live broadcasts would only come to work in the afternoon or at night.

Zhang Ye handed him the prepared scripts, “It has been edited.” He no longer called him “Brother Tian”, as this fellow was a very vengeful person.

“Li Si gave the task to you?” Tian Bin read it once and said, “Oh, that will do. These modifications will do.” He did not say any niceties.

Li Si arrived at this moment and discussed the script with Tian Bin.

Just as Zhang Ye stood up to get off work, the work that he had been eagerly looking forward to for a week came.

An a.s.sistant from the editor team came looking for Zhang Ye. After seeing him, the middle-aged man quickly stopped him, “Little Zhang, are you getting off work?”

Zhang Ye responded, “Yeah.”