Chapter 027 (1/2)
The Complete Guide to the Use and Care of a Personal Assistant
Translator: Jury
Editor: NomNom
First Published on Chaleuria
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Chapter Twenty-seven
“Does it make a difference?”
Su Yuyang replied with a faint smile and kept walking, but he’d increased his pace.
Before, Ling Miao would have retorted, “Do you think there’s a difference between eating food and eating trash?” but this line didn’t seem suitable for the situation and Ling Miao also had a lot on his mind, so he was silent for a while before catching up to Su Yuyang.
Upon returning home, the two didn’t exchange a single word; Su Yuyang went to his bedroom and Ling Miao to the study, both shutting their respective doors, and isolating themselves from the outside world.
Time passed quickly and Ling Miao’s phone rang.
Hearing the sound, Ling Miao figured out the cause—it was the alarm.
Ling Miao shut off the alarm, got up, and walked out of the study.
“Ling Miao!”
Ling Miao was preparing dinner in the kitchen when Su Yuyang’s shout rang in his ears. Ling Miao flinched and the vegetable knife sliced across the pad of his index finger.
“Hss—” Ling Miao inhaled sharply and watched blood bead on the wound. He frowned and stuck his finger in his mouth.
The wound was probably pretty deep; the blood didn’t stop. Su Yuyang’s shout came again.
If Su Yuyang’s earlier shout was thunder, this shout was an erupting volcano.
If Su Yuyang was this anxious, Ling Miao thought, something serious must have happened. Ling Miao quickly took care of the wound and rushed to Su Yuyang’s room.
Ling Miao stood in the doorway and hesitated.
“Su-ge?” Ling Miao called, testing the waters.
Su Yuyang turned his head and looked at Ling Miao. A thick layer of ice seemed to have frozen over his eyes; eddies of icy air shot toward Ling Miao and wrapped him in an icy cocoon.
“Come here.”
Su Yuyang’s steady voice, laced with warmth, melted the freezing air surrounding Ling Miao, but Ling Miao’s heart was still beating furiously. Ling Miao walked with halting steps to Su Yuyang’s side and glanced at Su Yuyang’s monitor. The first thing he saw was a novel, open to reading view. With one glance, he understood why Su Yuyang had called him over.
“I’ll fix it right away.” Maybe he felt he needed to leave the area of low atmospheric pressure—after Ling Miao said his piece, he turned and walked away. Su Yuyang’s hand shot out and caught ahold of Ling Miao; he tugged, and Ling Miao stumbled and fell onto Su Yuyang’s bed.
“Let go!”
Ling Miao felt that something bad was going to happen and his heart instantly went cold.
Su Yuyang wasn’t looking at Ling Miao’s face and so didn’t guess what Ling Miao was worried about. Su Yuyang’s voice, devoid of the rise and fall of emotion, fell on Ling Miao’s head: “Did I tell you you could leave?”
“That…” Ling Miao had shut his eyes, but he could still feel a shadow falling over his head.
Ling Miao opened his eyes and averted them from Su Yuyang’s thoughtful gaze. Su Yuyang laughed: “You like my bed that much?”
“Fuck!” Ling Miao shot to his feet, disdainfully brushed himself off, and said coldly: “Who likes your bed? Who knows what kinds of fluids are on these sheets.”
“Mm, it definitely has my sweat,” Su Yuyang blandly replied.
Su Yuyang’s ‘obliviousness’ had once again defeated Ling Miao, who stood up and said sincerely: “I’m sorry, Su-ge, that I didn’t check your newly published chapter in time and made such a rookie mistake. I’ll go and fix it right away.”
“You even know this is a rookie mistake?” Su Yuyang said disdainfully. “Then do you know that if typos or other issues that make reading hard for the reader appear in the text, readers can complain? And do you know that if more than sixty percent of a chapter’s readers complain, the subscription fee on VIP chapters¹ needs to be completely refunded to the reader?”
“Don’t you have a three-hour time window to edit?” Ling Miao said indifferently.
“Three hours?” Su Yuyang sneered and Ling Miao’s heart clenched—this chapter had been published at 10 o’clock in the morning and it was now… 6:23 p.m.!
“I…” Ling Miao didn’t know what to say. Anything he said right now would be wrong. Ling Miao hadn’t seen how many subscriptions Su Yuyang had for this chapter, but he had done the math before and Su Yuyang had about 20 to 25 thousand subscribers. Ling Miao pulled out his phone. If they all paid the lowest subscription price Su Yuyang would still get about $720 in fees.
720……
$720 (US$106) was not a small sum to Ling Miao, who felt as if his heart was being cut with a knife. He lowered his head and glanced up toward Su Yuyang.
Prior instances where the Great Author’s chapters were refunded due to reader complaints about too many typos and ‘’ characters² (aside from dividers) did exist.
“$720 to Su Yuyang is just a paltry sum, but if Su Yuyang is trying to use this opportunity to teach me a lesson, he might really make me pay for it. The important thing now is to…”
Ling Miao raised his head sharply and asked in a panic: “Hey, Great Author, will you have to refund your subscribers?”
“I’ve already refunded them.” Su Yuyang opened his author’s dashboard; he didn’t let Ling Miao see his subscriber count, but he showed Ling Miao the news feed—Chapter 850 of your work, Massacre of the Nine Heavens, has been reported by readers for an excessive number of typos. After investigating these reports, we request that you refund the subscription fee to the readers, per site rules.
“Su-ge… I…” In a moment, Ling Miao felt that he had entered an icy wasteland; his lips were numb to the point they could not make a coherent sound.
Ling Miao stuttered, ‘I…’ for quite a while, but couldn’t say anything more, so he shut his mouth and waited for Su Yuyang’s decision.
Su Yuyang closed out of the author’s dashboard and the window automatically refreshed to the reading pane. Even in just this section Ling Miao could see three ‘’s, and as for typos—even though Ling Miao was reasonably confident there weren’t any, he couldn’t be a hundred percent sure.