I’ve always believed that writing a book is a very personal thing, like a man’s or woman’s underwear. You can let your imagination run wild about what’s underneath based on their appearance, demeanor, and fashion sense, but you can never say for sure if they’re wearing low-rise, mid-rise, high-rise, or seamless.

But some people still want to uncover your true self through your words and style, just like how men and women ultimately can’t resist finding out what kind of underwear the other is wearing.

More than one person has seen my writing and told me, "Your stories are so withdrawn, so lonely, so full of resentment. You must be a total literary hipster in real life, huh?"

And I say, for fuck’s sake, bro, do you even know what a literary hipster is? That’s a group of ambitious youths who let their ideals soar through words late at night! And what am I? I’m fucking working lonely overtime at the office late at night. To make sure my boss sees how hard I’m working, I fucking chug coffee from the company machine like it’s a water cooler. And you have the gall to call me an ambitious youth!

What kind of ambitious youth? The kind who curls up in bed at midnight listening to the *Magical Ah You* ending theme, thinking, ’If only I hadn’t played that promotion match’?

Or the kind who finally works up the courage to take that girl’s hand and loudly confess, "Actually, I love you, you love me, Mixue Bingcheng sweetie-sweet!" and thinks that would have made everything okay?

But I didn’t have the courage. So all I could do was watch her get together with someone else, consoling myself with cheap beer. ’Liking someone is actually simple,’ I’d think. ’The key is just daring to say it out loud.’

I met a girlfriend online while working overtime. She’s a sophisticated woman, five-foot-seven, utterly alluring in black stockings and bewitching in high heels. Sometimes she’s a playful girl, other times a sultry vixen.

Her favorite thing to do is make dirty jokes about my underwear.

Later, after she found out about my part-time job as a web novelist, the jokes went straight to Hell. For a while, she even started getting handsy.

I’d say to her, "Do you have any idea how long it took me to tame this pair of underwear? And you want to just see it, even take it off, so easily? Do you understand what this means to a web novelist?"

She would just tilt her head, feigning innocence, and say she had no idea.

"It’s better that you don’t," I’d sigh. "Just like how I don’t know if you like me or love me, if I’m driven by logic or lust, or if our being together is anything more than a coincidence."

It’s just like the relationship between readers and authors. We’re all second-guessing and blaming each other, each side thinking the other doesn’t know shit about plot or story. But deep down, we all love the story. It’s like your mom, always nagging you about one thing or another, but when you get home, there’s always a steaming hot meal and a caring look in her eyes.

Her finding fault with this and that is her way of loving you. The day she stops nagging, it’s either because she’s disappointed in you or she’s gotten too old to speak.

So I hope that, as long as I’m still writing, my readers go silent only because they’ve gotten too old to talk—or because they’re dead—and not because they’ve become disappointed in me.

Take the comments, for example—the praise, the sarcasm, the ridicule, the suggestions. I actually read them all. The reason I don’t reply is that I genuinely don’t know how.

For every person who says something nice, am I supposed to pop up and say, "Thank you"?

That would be too pretentious. Besides, I don’t deserve it.

And for every person who says something bad, am I supposed to argue my case with them?

No, absolutely not. "To each their own Hamlet," as they say. I can’t control other people’s opinions, especially since I’m no Shakespeare, and I couldn’t write *Hamlet*.

Besides, this is a book with a very distinct personal style. I only write for three people: me, my readers, and the money in my readers’ pockets.

Some people say my writing style is just showing off, that I’m flaunting a literary flair that isn’t even that impressive.

All I can say is, I’ve been writing this way since I started in middle school. It was true for my last book, *Ghost Slayer*, and it’s been my style ever since I first sat down at a keyboard in ’15 and typed out my very first novel.

Just like Tudou typed out "Fighting Spirit, Third Stage," I typed out "Ah Bin’s high school grades weren’t..."

Okay, fine, I’ve forgotten the first line I ever wrote. But what can you do? A person’s memory is like mycelium—it loves to devour the light of the past.

And I really don’t think I have any techniques or prose worth showing off. I just keep writing, almost numbly. After my day job, I’ll work on two books until dawn, sometimes squeezing in a few short stories just to indulge my own fantasies.

To maintain my writing speed, I stick with the style that’s most comfortable for me—a style that feels like jerking off to Saika Kawakita while reading prayers by Shakespeare.

But if you don’t like it, all I can say is... I can change. Because I’m just in it for the money. I’m not just after the money in your pockets; I’m coveting all your property, and your lover’s, and your family’s, and your friends’ too.

People say the plot isn’t gratifying enough? Fine, I’ll change it.

People say the pacing’s too fast? I’ll change it.

People say they don’t like my style? I’ll change it. Ever since the second trip into Prole, I’ve been trying to make the style funnier and more gratifying, more in line with typical web fiction. I want to avoid readers finding it obtuse or thinking I’m just showing off and trying to sound deep.

And it seems to be working. At the very least, my active readership has stabilized, and a lot fewer people are cussing me out.

Some people say they’re afraid of the author catching "literary hipster disease." To that, I have to say I’m no literary hipster. I understand that I’m writing power-fantasy fiction, and that kind of fiction is supposed to be enjoyable.

If it weren’t necessary for an emotional shift and character motivation, I never would have written that "protagonist-torment" arc that some of you crucified me for.

Secondly, if I really had the kind of literary hipster disease you all imagine, I would have gotten it out of my system during my cringey "eighth-grader syndrome" years back in middle and high school.

All those short stories and long novels—full of rants and raves, shit-piss-and-dick jokes, tearful sorrows, and manic highs—I finished writing all of that long ago and tossed it onto the trash heap of memory.