ehess: 001-01

001-01

Li Dong was born in the mid-to-late 1980s, to parents who had experienced many hardships. When they were finally assigned jobs in the government, they felt as if civil servants had the most stable and secure jobs of all.

So naturally, after graduating from university, Li Dong was encouraged by his parents to take the civil service examination as well.

His girlfriend, however, whom he had been seeing for more than a year, was venomously against this. She detested his lack of personal motivation and ambition; a small, lowly civil servant could never provide her the life she wanted.

His girlfriend wasn’t a ruthless person, though. She did try to talk it out with him and lay it out to him clearly. “Either follow your parents’ paths and become a civil servant, or listen to me. We can start a business together in Bei Piao.

“What’s the good of being a civil servant now anyways?” she asked rhetorically. “Working as one, will it give your family status? Can you be promoted? Will you be able to afford a top-tier house in the city in the next three years?”

But Li Dong was too young at the time and merely wondered why his girlfriend was so materialistic. Oh, you have to buy a top-tier house in the city. What’s the point? Isn’t the living standard all relatively the same except for in the biggest cities? No matter where you go, it’s still the same small, developing nation that you live in. Can’t you survive regardless? 

If you are not reading from readerfeedertranslation.blogspot.com, this work was stolen.

Naturally, Li Dong disagreed with his girlfriend and rushed to fulfill the expectations of his parents. He tested to become a civil servant.

Since then, six to seven years have already passed in a flash. Li Dong had already bought a county house and had experienced many failed blind dates.

The dates often failed for various reasons: either Li Dong looked down on the woman, or the woman looked down on Li Dong. Or, more often than not, both.

As a result, Li Dong’s parents were particularly concerned and were aggrieved that they hadn’t encouraged Li Dong to persevere in his relationship with his beautiful and capable girlfriend from university. Had they married, perhaps they would have already had a son in elementary school.

But Li Dong himself is quite calm, not at all anxious. For this there are two reasons: the more you mature, the more you self realize, not to mention falling in love is impossible when it’s with the wrong gender.

So Li Dong’s own worries aren’t at all about trying to make the blind dates work, but rather trying to figure out how to come out to his parents. October 11 is International Coming Out Day, so he’s been waiting for the 11th to come around.

The 11th was just around the corner, and the numerous blind dates that Li Dong hated were seemingly endless. Now, it wasn’t just his parents introducing him to various girls, but even the boss, colleagues, and the moms of those bosses and colleagues have begun to shove girls his way. Li Dong was, after all, in his thirties this year, tall and confident with a handsome face.

Although he is only from a moderately large, second-tier city, he has a car and a house and thus is a romantic target for many ordinary girls. But those girls are often afraid to reach out because they’re afraid that they just wouldn’t be able to hold his interest. Thus, strangers will often think that Li Dong always has dozens of girls chatting him up on WeChat every day…

Which is completely untrue. If you are not reading from readerfeedertranslation.blogspot.com, this work was stolen.

Li Dong doesn’t even receive messages from his sisters, and all the potential romance from his blind dates dies out the day-of, not even the night-of. It’s always obvious from the get-go that Li Dong and whomever he’s meeting are completely unsuitable, even if he still patiently accompanies them to eat, drink, and relax.

It’s just in his character to be laidback, a good listener, patient, and self-assured. He prefers the relaxed, nonchalant life of admiring the flora and enjoying the simple things to studying financial management and playing the stock market.

Many girls will see this as being idle instead of being easygoing, however, and this is why they often look down on Li Dong. Looking good can only get you so far; money is what makes the world go round.

Recently, a young girl had come around his workplace and Li Dong’s boss had insisted on introducing them, so he reluctantly took the initiative to add the girl on WeChat. But thinking about it, after getting to know her, they may just be friends in the end, and it would be normal to add her on WeChat in that case. After adding her and chatting with her a bit, Li Dong breathed a sigh of relief after finding out that she wasn’t even looking for a boyfriend in the first place.

But then Li Dong realized that the girl was actually pretty interesting, and would share some pretty weird things all day long.

During China’s National Day, she posted a story in her friend group captioned: “The good books that made us cry in those years!” with a picture of a long list of books. Li Dong didn’t expect this girl to be an avid reader, and it really was a good list of books. 

In order to avoid more blind dates, Li Dong went back home after being introduced to the first. His days as a bachelor were pretty boring, so he browsed the list of books sent by the girl and started reading a random one she linked.

Looking at it, he realized that it turned out to be a BL novel. But it was too obvious to Li Dong that it was written by a female author. Even if it was a real gay man living this, he would not enjoy this style of relationship. Then the plot practically made Li Dong want to blind himself.

The protagonist honestly seemed more like an object rather than a person with human rights. The protagonist was thrown around here and there by the scumbag, but still managed to maintain a deep love for him despite that because the scumbag had rescued him once.

“…” How the hell was this plot touching to the point of moving people to tears???

Li Dong skipped to the end to take a look. The protagonist and the scumbag were still blissfully together. For fucks sake… Li Dong quickly flipped forward a bit to see whether or not the protagonist ever abused the scumbag back a bit.

Nothing–even in the last chapter, the protagonist was still being abused and neglected constantly by the scumbag.

Li Dong abandoned the book that he read only the very beginning and end of and clicked on another link. Speechlessly, he finished the second book over the course of two hours.

“Xiao Yan,” Li Dong messaged to the girl in the WeChat input column, “let me ask you something…”

But he contemplated his question before deciding to vent his feelings in the comments section of the girl’s post instead.

 “What the heck went wrong with Book XXX? Can the protagonist at least retain a bit of autonomy and independent thought? Does he see himself as a dog? How can he love such a scumbag? I don’t think the book itself has issues, but the author definitely does!”

One commenter replied to Li Dong: “XX’s earliest works were all classic examples of scumbags and abuse. All this author’s books now just follow this narrative. The poster of the original question doesn’t seem to have the heart to read works like this, don’t read it.”

A second commenter added onto the one above: “Haha, everyone who has seen these will know that this is XX’s scumbag series. Each book portrays more and more abuse than the next, and it’s all both bodily and psychological abuse. If this original poster doesn’t like these kinds of things, don’t force yourself to read it. Some people might be scarred by this.”

It’s a pity that Li Dong didn’t see these replies, and simply continued to click into other linked novels after he sent out his original post. He was hoping to see some sort of normal novel with a  main character that would fight back after being abused and give the scumbag a bit of a beating, too.

Let’s not expect for the protagonist to start killing left and right, but at least don’t be such a softie who’s so cheap and easy with themselves.

Shouldn’t we, as human beings, be at least somewhat self-reliant?

Whether it is in life or in emotions, those protagonists just gave up whatever didn’t come to them. That way of thinking is as simple as a dog, and no one realistically really enjoys those types of personalities.

Li Dong knew that he was too pragmatic, and it was just a bunch of online novels. No matter how bad the scumbag acts, no matter how terrible the protagonist’s taste is, they are all just fictional characters that do not exist in real life.

But when he finished reading so many novels, no matter how he tried to cheer himself up, he was still so depressed that he wanted to vomit blood.

Li Dong wanted to jump into every novel just to give each protagonist a good pinch to wake them up a bit. “Where is that scumbag? You can find someone a hundred times better than him, why should you cling to him!”

But the protagonist is pretty good in other aspects of his character. He maintains a good and neat outer appearance, and he’s diligent and dedicated to his work. There are a few protagonists who are even independently rich or rich second generations, but when they find love, they become excessively stupid and simple.

No offense to the protagonist–Li Dong is only stating the facts. If you are not reading from readerfeedertranslation.blogspot.com, this work was stolen.

Li Dong thought to himself that if he had a net worth of tens of millions and had already traveled all over the world, romance would logically be the last thing on his mind.

So thus, after reading these books, he was depressed.

On the last night of his long vacation at home, Li Dong went to bed in his depressed mood.

Before falling asleep, he called home and chatted with his parents for half an hour. While chatting, he suddenly felt his eyelids twitch, so he ended the call and decided to sleep all of it off.

While he felt like he was half awake and half in a dream, Li Dong heard someone calling for him: “Second youngest, second youngest, why are you falling asleep here? Everyone is looking for you everywhere.”

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translator’s notes:

hey everyone! this is my first time ever translating a novel (this is the first chapter that i’ve ever translated) so do be patient and understanding of me if this chapter isn’t too quality.

thanks so much for stopping by, and i hope you stick around for more!\

also, if you would like to read all current chapters offline, there is a pdf version attached to the toc!

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