(note: i am not an expert on game or artist terms, and there happens to be a decent amount of those in this chapter, so please forgive me if i made any mistakes, and let me know if there's anything i should fix!)
“Why is this person as haunting as Xu Qing is?” Yan Xi ridiculed.
Xie Ning leaned over curiously and pointed at a line on the disc. “Isn’t it an English name after the ‘Directed by’?”
“Max, right?” Yan Xi explained. “This is Zhuang Yan’s English name.”
Xie Ning was surprised. “Seriously?”
Yan Xi hmphed coldly. “Of course. In university, Zhuang Yan studied Directing on the Media campus. After going overseas for additional studies, he’s been in the foreign entertainment circle. I heard he’s some sort of up-and-coming novel director. Max is the English name he gave himself; it sounds arrogant as soon as you hear it!”
Xie Ning tilted his head and asked, “You’ve looked him up?”
Yan Xi paused for a second. “What?”
Xie Ning leisurely said, “How’d you know this so well?” He even knew his English name.
“Why would I look into him?” Yan Xi met Xie Ning’s curious gaze, and suddenly felt like he couldn’t give an explanation that would defend himself. “What’s so worthy of him for me to look up? Do I even need to look for this sort of information?”
Xie Ning didn’t say anything, and put away the disc.
Yan Xi followed behind him, and rambled, “I only paid attention to him for you. But I really didn’t need to do any research, the rumors were spread everywhere!”
Xie Ning: “What rumors?”
Yan Xi hesitated. “......”
Xie Ning: “?”
“Ah...forget it!” Yan Xi sighed. “Everyone’s been gossiping about how you and Xu Qing broke up.”
Xie Ning recalled the phone calls he received recently, and nodded. “I know.”
Yan Xi continued, “Coincidence or not, Zhuang Yan came back to China. I don’t know how, but two things that were originally unrelated became linked in their eyes, and after being spread around, everyone is now saying that, because Xu Qing wasn’t able to let go of Zhuang Yan, you guys broke up.”
“Which is nonsense! You were obviously the one that dumped Xu Qing!” As he spoke, he got angrier and angrier. “I tried to explain it for you, but they didn’t believe me, and started talking about Zhuang Yan instead! A bunch of cunts!”
This group of people, although they can be said to be classmates and friends, are still, in essence, an exclusive group of wealthy children that normally don’t even bother with family issues.
Although Yan Xi’s family background is considered well-off, there’s a difference as large as heaven and Earth when compared to the other wealthy families. Families like his, who started from scratch, wouldn’t have been easily admitted into the group if not for Xie Ning's sake.
Even so, there were people who mocked Yan Xi behind his back, calling him Xie Ning’s attendant and saying he only knew how to follow him around.
If it wasn’t for Yan Xi worrying for Xie Ning, he wouldn’t have bothered with these playboys who didn’t do proper things and only knew how to eat, drink, and mess around.
Obviously, there were also some elites among them, and a couple of them that got along well with Yan Xi helped him out in the early stages of starting his business.
After listening to his long explanation, Xie Ning responded with an “Oh.”
What did he mean, Oh? Yan Xi was almost angered to death for him. “You’re not planning to make it clear to them?”
Xie Ning said, “It’s too much trouble. Let them say what they want to say.”
Seeing Yan Xi’s unkind expression, he added a phrase. “It’s annoying.”
Yan Xi was speechless.
“Young Master, can’t you be a little less enlightened and have a bit of human emotion?”
“But,” Xie Ning felt wronged, “There’s so many people I have to explain it to, one by one, that I would tire myself out.”
Yan Xi finally had nothing more to say.
Finally, he rubbed Xie Ning’s hair vigorously, feeling the softness, and was barely able to suppress his anger.
Xie Ning turned off the projector properly and searched up the director of <The Monologue>.
Just like Yan Xi said, the director of <The Monologue> was actually Chinese. His Chinese name is Zhuang Yan, and he had a magnificent resume; he was comparable to the Zhuang Yan that Xu Qing spoke so often of.
This movie doesn’t have much prestige on the Internet, but within the entertainment industry, it was making a decent amount of waves.
After all, he was a Chinese director whose work made it to the Cannes Film Festival.
Zhuang Yan was quite low-key after returning to China. Xie Ning searched him up casually a couple of times and didn’t find any pictures of him, but found his Weibo.
Xie Ning pressed “Follow”.
Yan Xi, who watched this whole process, “???”
“Why did you follow him?”
Xie Ning said, “His movie was made quite well.”
Yan Xi recalled the artistic film, with its exquisite pictures yet bland plot, and felt again the huge difference of aesthetic between him and his good friend.
“Whatever, as long as you’re happy.”
Xie Ning, who opens Weibo once in a blue moon, found out that he had gained quite a lot of followers.
The Christmas painting he drew last time was uploaded onto the Internet, and many people loved his art style, so someone dug up his Weibo.
Xie Ning is not skilled at socializing, and rarely engages on these sorts of platforms. He made this Weibo account with Xu Qing. Before, he had uploaded some of his referenced works, but he only opened Weibo once every couple of months, and eventually abandoned it. The number of followers also dwindled to a saddening amount.
Xie Ning’s personality is wantless, and painting is one of his only hobbies. After finding out he was obsessed with painting, they were ecstatic. Not only did they not discourage him from it, they contacted many great teachers and masters for lessons.
Xie Ning has both talent and passion, and has learned all sorts of art styles at least once. Later on, when he found out about digital tablets, he was even more devoted to it.
Yan Xi’s game company, at the start, was making desktop games. However, the desktop game industry wasn’t prosperous, and the company was half dead.
Fortunately, Yan Xi had a keen eye and quickly entered the mobile game industry with a progression mobile game known for its art style. <Mobile Phone Lovers> is all the rage, and takes up a good amount of the cake that is the mobile game industry.
Xie Ning is the original artist of this game.
The success of <Mobile Phone Lovers> is 30% from business, and 70% from its elegant art style. Including the in-game apparel that was launched afterwards, all of it is loved by the public.
Xie Ning quickly made a name for himself within the gaming industry for his original art.
Afterwards, the well-known game company FeiFan invited Xie Ning to participate in the new project <Record of Mountain and Sea> as a concept artist.
<Record of Mountain and Sea> uses the monsters in the “Classic of Mountain and Sea” as a background, and is a large-scale gacha card mobile game, with hundreds of card characters. Xie Ning only helped them design a couple scenes and characters.
The game was available for public testing in June of this year, and exploded at an unimaginable speed. It’s become a phenomenon-level mobile game thus far, and one would definitely find this game on the phone of a game-loving youth.
The SSR card, PiXiu, that Xie Ning designed has become the most favored and popular game character. Players love the character endlessly, whether it’s in its original form or an anthropomorphic form.
There’s even more fanart of PiXiu on the Internet, and thanks to the game’s popularity, many fanartists found themselves attracting a ton of fans.
As the original concept designer, Xie Ning has been very low-key. Except for people in the industry, nobody else knew that he was PiXiu’s designer.
Xie Ning’s urgent Christmas draft in the beginning was for <Record of Mountain and Sea>.
He wasn’t the original poster artist at first. There was most likely a dispute, and FeiFan Games floundered about before they reached out to Xie Ning, offering double the price because of the time constraints.
Xie Ning pulled a rare all-nighter for this poster, and it resulted in not only the client being satisfied, but also the players, who loved it very much.
Less than a day after the poster was posted onto the game’s official Weibo, the comments exceeded ten thousand, and continues to grow.
Xie Ning doesn’t care about how many fans he has, but he was happy that his work was well-received and well-liked.
Other than <The Monologue>, Xie Ning owns two other movies by Max--that is, Zhuang Yan--although <The Monologue> most famous one. Zhuang Yan has filmed a good amount of movies abroad, and there are a couple more that Xie Ning wasn’t able to purchase in China.
However, when he saw how disinterested Yan Xi was, he lined up the rest of the movie discs and arranged them neatly on the shelf.
On this winter night, the wind was scarily strong, and whistled past like a knife.
Xie Ning accompanied Yan Xi to the garage, but once he heard the howling wind, hesitated and said, “It’s so late. Why don’t you spend the night here instead?”
“It’s fine. It takes an hour to get to my company from your place. It’ll kill me to wake up so early in the winter.”
“Then just get there later,” Xie Ning said. “As the boss, being late won’t result in a pay cut.”
Yan Xi said, in a serious and upstanding tone, “I want to lead by example!”
Xie Ning looked at him doubtfully.
“Okay, okay.” Yan Xi raised both of his hands like he was surrendering. “There’s an important meeting tomorrow, and the shareholders will nag me to death if I’m late.”
Xie Ning said, “Then be careful on your way home.”
Yan Xi walked to the back of his car, and suddenly took out a bear plushie from the trunk. It was about as tall as Xie Ning, and it was unclear how he could stuff it into the trunk without Xie Ning noticing.
“For you.”
Xie Ning held the bear in a daze. “What’s this?”
“A Christmas present, and a housewarming present,” Yan Xi said. “You can hug it in your sleep at night, since it’s warm.”
Xie Ning said, “I don’t hold things when I sleep.”
Yan Xi said, “Then just put it on the bed as decoration. I thought you liked these sorts of plushies, since you brought some dolls on this move.”
Xie Ning paused, remembering the man from that day. “I got them from claw machines.”
Yan Xi said, “The rabbit that’s at the head of your bed is the same? It’s pretty cute, and looks like you.”
This was the second time someone had said this to him. Xie Ning hesitated, and said, “It seriously looks like me?”
Yan Xi smiled suddenly. “When rabbits are anxious, they bite people. Why can’t you learn how to bite people as well?”
“...Go away.”
“Then I’m really going.” Yan Xi obeyed, getting into his car and opening his window. “Merry Christmas.”
Xie Ning waved at him. “Merry Christmas.”
Lakeside Villa is well-equipped with security measures, and its surroundings are excellent. The people that enter and exit have faces, but living alone usually feels a little empty and lonely.
Xie Ning didn’t think it was lonely, though. It was quite peaceful here, and there was nobody to bother him. He quickly took this opportunity to examine inspirations and sort out his thoughts.
These past two days, he finished watching Zhuang Yan’s movies, one by one, and suddenly felt something inexplicable towards this director.
Each movie had its own merits, but the picture design was perfect and exactly Xie Ning’s taste. Xie Ning paid attention to the staff listed, and noticed that the main art director was not the same person.
So it was because of Zhuang Yan’s personal style.
Xie Ning thought, Looks like we have similar tastes.
<The Monologue> was still the most outstanding out of these movies.
Xie Ning watched it a couple more times, and a couple of scenes were so familiar to him that he would even dream of them at night.
When Yan Xi took the time to check up on his good friend, and how he was living, Xie Ning was working on a draft. He let him in and had him watch TV in the living room by himself.
When he’s inspired, he usually is stuck in his own world, and might not hear it if someone yelled his name next to his ear. Yan Xi was well aware of this problem of his, and wandered around the living room happily before returning to the art studio to watch him work on his draft.
Xie Ning’s art studio was very large. A long table was situated in the middle to separate the room into two. On one side, there were painting tools and dazzling bookshelves, and there were a few drawing canvases on the ground.
The other side was relatively neat. There was a large blackboard on the wall, and a grid next to the blackboard to pin various drafts and other materials.
On the long table, there were notebooks, a digital tablet, and two widescreen monitors. There was also a monitor embedded into the wall.
It was messier beside the table. Various pens and papers were scattered around, and Xie Ning was sitting in a chair, bending over his painting.
Yan Xi looked over and down, and saw something that looked like a draft of a scene.
“Is this the concept art for a new game?” Yan Xi asked when Xie Ning put down his pencil.
“No,” Xie Ning shook his head. “I’m just drawing something random.”
He paused, as there was something he hadn’t said. This draft wasn’t an original painting for a game, but was an original picture for a movie.
“I want to take a break these days, so I’m not accepting new jobs for now,” Xie Ning said.
Yan Xi nodded. “It is time for you to get some good rest. There’s a lot of news about sudden deaths online, and you had stayed up late finishing the poster last time, so keep that in mind. Next time, don’t accept such a rushed job even if they offer you a lot. It’s not like you need the money.”
Xie Ning said, “The art director of <Record of Mountain and Sea> approached me himself, and I had a good relationship with him when we’d worked together before. Seeing how he was in such a hurry, I wanted to help him out with this.”
“The Christmas poster for <Record of Mountain and Sea>? So you were rushing that piece.” Yan Xi furrowed his brows, and suddenly thought of something. “It is in your style, but comments under the <Record of Mountain and Sea> seem to be tearing it up these days.”
Xie Ning was taken aback. “Tearing it up?”
Yan Xi nodded, and gathered up the information he’d heard from gossip before in his head. “It seems like <Record of Mountain and Sea> had originally planned for another artist for this poster, but the final version didn’t pass. This artist has a lot of fans, and started to fight in the comments after they found out.”
Xie Ning thought about it, and asked, “There was no sketch?”
Yan Xi said, “I don’t know.”
Xie Ning asked again, “Did they sign a contract?”
Yan Xi: “I don’t know.”
Xie Ning: “Did they pay him for the draft?”
Yan Xi said again, “I don’t know.”
“...” Xie Ning was silent for a few seconds. “Then what do you know?”
Yan Xi: “I’m not an artist or FeiFan Games, so how am I supposed to know these things?”
Xie Ning: “Oh, then I won’t ask anymore.”
No matter how you look at it, this was a dispute between FeiFan games and the artist.
Even if they started making a ruckus about it, what does it have to do with him?
Xie Ning got up to arrange and stack the scattered drafts on the table. His gaze landed on the draft at the top.
His fingers stopped for a moment, and he suddenly said, “Yan Xi, I want to draw for movies.”
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Author’s Note: Zhuang Yan will appear next chapter.
Translator's Notes:
desktop games - games that you download and install on your computer, like league of legends, WoW, etc.
Mobile Phone Lovers - name...pending? it sounds kind of lame...LOL
Record of Mountain and Sea -the name is most likely based off of "Classic of Mountain and Sea" (see below)
Classic of Mountain and Sea - an ancient book that compiled a wide range of geography, mythology, witchcraft, popular customs, etc (approachinese)
PiXiu - a chinese mythical hybrid creature, considered a powerful protector of practitioners of Feng Shui, and resembles a strong, winged lion. (wikipedia)
faces - the same face as "saving face" or "losing face", i believe!
draw for movies - i am unfortunately not a film or art nut, so i'm not exactly sure what he would be drawing--storyboards? helping with how a scenic shot should be filmed? or maybe zhuang yan does animation directing? LOL all in all, xie ning is just getting closer and closer to zhuang yan >:)
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