Chapter 1 The End of the Reality Show

A week ago, after the live recording of the "I'm a Writer, Roast Me Freely" segment, the No. 7 contestant's lounge.

Feng Bujue, who hadn't written a single word in the final round, was undoubtedly eliminated. After chatting with the other contestants for a while, he returned to the lounge with a cheerful expression, drinking canned coffee. He was just waiting for the interview to end so he could take the subway home...

Before long, Oscar, accompanied by two cameramen and one each for lighting and sound, knocked on the door of the lounge.

Feng Bujue answered the door, and after they all entered, they began setting up the camera positions and adjusting the lighting.

Oscar shook Feng Bujue's hand as soon as he came in, acting like he was meeting a visiting leader: "Hard work, hard work, hard work..."

Feng Bujue said, "No, no, you've worked hard..." He paused and asked, "Eh? Don't you have seven interview segments to do?"

"No, no, I'm only interviewing you," Oscar replied. "This is the director's rule; I'm responsible for interviewing the eliminated writers. The remaining six will have their segments recorded by the editors or assistant directors."

"Oh, oh." Feng Bujue nodded.

In the lounge, there were several pre-measured fixed camera positions. The two folding chairs where the writer and host sat during the interview were lying askew in the corner, with lines painted on the floor to precisely mark where the chairs should be placed. The crew members worked efficiently for a while, and the preparations for the interview were quickly completed.

Oscar, holding a manuscript, sat opposite Feng Bujue, with his back to the camera, and said, "So... shall we begin?"

Feng Bujue replied, "Sure." He was the one eager to go home, so naturally, he wanted to finish recording as quickly as possible.

"When you received the invitation from the program team, were you nervous, or... under pressure?" Oscar began asking questions according to the prepared interview script in his hand.

"No."

"Then did you hesitate?" Oscar continued. "After all, you're already an established writer. Hearing that you'd be competing with other writers on this stage, did you find it a bit strange?"

"Compared to them, I'm just a nobody, what's there to hesitate about?"

"Haha..." Oscar laughed. He picked up the portable player beside him, tapped it a few times, and placed it in front of Feng Bujue. The screen showed a previously recorded video. "Back then, why did you give this episode such a title?"

"Probably because I had a premonition of the subsequent developments..." Feng Bujue replied.

Oscar continued, "Let's take another look..." He fast-forwarded a few scenes. "Why did you write such a passage in the first round?"

"Why couldn't I write it?" Feng Bujue replied with a smile. "Just like you said at the time, the three keywords—war, hero, character—are hard to come up with unexpected answers for, so I wrote about a character that no one would think of."

Oscar nodded, advancing the progress bar at the bottom of the player screen. "When the voting results were announced that round, what place did you predict you'd be?"

"Last place, probably..." Feng Bujue said. "I already said it was a bit too much of an overcorrection."

Oscar continued, "In the second round, I noticed that there wasn't a single word on your workstation."

"Because the outline was all in here." Feng Bujue lightly tapped his temple with his finger.

"You came up with that story in just a few minutes?" Oscar asked.

"Actually... I only started making it up on the spot the moment you announced the answer," Feng Bujue replied.

"That's what I thought." Oscar laughed. "Haha... But to get second place even with improvising, it shows you're really talented."

"This kind of thing wouldn't have such a good effect if I did it a second time, right?" Feng Bujue said. "This time, it was because the audience had never seen my kind of quirky approach, so it made a particularly deep impression, and I got a lot of votes. If other contestants try to imitate it in the future, they might be out of luck."

At this point, Oscar turned his head and made a gesture. The two cameramen paused the recording, and the sound engineer also lowered the microphone. "Let me ask a personal question... Director Fei quietly chatted with you for a few words after the second round. What did you talk about?"

Feng Bujue would obviously not mention the words "behind-the-scenes manipulation". He replied with a calm expression, "Oh, that time... he thought that if I kept messing around like that, I'd definitely be eliminated, so he talked to me about the revival match beforehand. Afterward, we chatted about Fight Club, Schubert, and topics like syphilis."

The corners of Oscar's mouth twitched a few times. He signaled for the crew to continue recording and dragged the progress bar on the player again. "In the third round, did you really finish reading the whole book?"

Feng Bujue smiled triumphantly. "When you came in, I noticed... you hid my envelope in the inner pocket of your jacket, right?" He pointed to Oscar's suit. "Since you came prepared, you can try it out."

Oscar smiled awkwardly, took out the envelope, removed the stack of A4 papers stapled together, and flipped to one of them at random, reading aloud: "He said with a proud expression, 'My foolish servant, your father is...'"

Before the other party could finish the sentence, Feng Bujue interjected: "Your father is a hunchback, your mother is a prostitute, your sister is mentally disabled, and you are fortunate enough to become a nobleman, that is, my servant. What more could you ask for?"

Oscar was genuinely surprised and said, "Teacher Bujue, your memory is amazing." As if he couldn't believe it, he flipped the stack of paper back and forth, confirming that he couldn't see anything from the back, and then said, "You could go on a talent show."

"Hehe... no interest," Feng Bujue said with a smile. He still seemed quite caught up in the novel and added a comment, "The writing in this book is indeed good, but the plot is too cliché and lacks highlights. Also, a small section of the story directly copies Hemingway's *For Whom the Bell Tolls*, just changing the era and characters, and replacing blowing up the bridge with an assassination. While reading it, I felt a bit familiar, and I understood when I saw the sentence 'No man is an island.' This guy basically didn't know how to continue writing when he got to Chapter 30, so he copied a section from another book, and then, after making up a rather boring story, he couldn't write anymore."

Oscar was stunned and thought: So you not only finished reading it, but you read it quite carefully...

"Are you really that... unwilling to write the final chapter of this book? Even if you just wrote something, it would get some votes, right?" Oscar asked again.

"I'm particularly unwilling to touch other people's works, especially unfinished ones," Feng Bujue replied. "This kind of novel gives me the feeling... like a child from someone else's family. This child hasn't grown up yet, and the parents abandon him, throwing him on the street to fend for himself." He shrugged. "Now you want me, an outsider, to pretend to be his parents and raise him. I'm not doing that. Since this child's parents don't cherish him, why should I bother? First of all, I'm not on the same path as these parents."

"Okay, I think I understand," Oscar continued. "Let me ask, what are your thoughts on being eliminated? Do you feel any regret? Do you regret your decision not to answer in the third round?"

Feng Bujue couldn't possibly say that he was playing just to get eliminated. He scratched his head and decided to say a few conventional things: "Um... I think it was good to be able to participate. Thank you to the editors of the program team for thinking of me, a nobody. Regret... it's okay, no regrets. As for regretting... since I did it, I won't regret it."

This interview lasted about fifteen minutes. There were quite a few things to record, such as evaluating the performance of other contestants at certain moments, and some standard questions and answers, etc.

Towards the end of the interview, Oscar looked at the script in his hand. All the questions had been asked, so he operated the portable player, "Before asking the last question... here's a vcr of all the other writers when they first came to *I'm a Writer*, a mixed-cut version, I hope you can take a look."

............

"A writer is..."

"A writer?"

"Um... to me it means..."

"A writer is..."

"Someone who uses words to build dreams."

"A job, but also a career."

"A disseminator of thought."

"Is my life."

"Is very ordinary, but also extraordinary..."

"Means a one-way street? Haha... cut that out."

"Saying that someone's writing is bad here and bad there, can you do everything well when you go to write it yourself?"

"Because I like writing, I naturally persisted."

"Everyone starts from the same place, and we are all pursuing the same dream. But many people take detours, or... give up halfway. But I think those who can persevere to the end, we will reach the same destination by different paths."

"You must always remind yourself that I am a writer. This is not a talent show, we are professionals, we are here to show how a writer should be, not to let people tell us how to write."

"If anyone can really write, then what do we professional writers do?"

............

Oscar continued, "According to convention, the writers who come to our program have to answer this question..." He paused. "Teacher Bujue, what do you think... what does the word 'writer' mean to you?"

After watching this not-so-long vcr, Feng Bujue suddenly felt that this was a difficult question to answer. "Let me think about it." He showed a very serious expression, something he hadn't shown throughout the entire recording of the program.

After a long silence, Feng Bujue finally opened his mouth and said, "I've thought about it."

The sound engineer held the microphone up again, and Oscar turned his head and said to the cameraman, "Give a close-up here." He turned back to face Feng Bujue and said, "Okay, please speak."

Feng Bujue said, "To me, a writer is... someone who can use words to change the world.

As long as you believe in this and be true to yourself, you can turn dreams into reality."