Chapter 157: Let Her Understand Exactly What She Missed!

Chapter 157: Let Her Understand Exactly What She Missed!

Wu Chen’s asking price could only be called outrageous. Unbelievable.

Coming from an established songwriter with a smash hit already behind him, the figure might have made sense. Even inflated on the reasoning that Song Xuan came from money, was only playing at music, and would not miss the expense—that too would have been understandable.

But Wu Chen had only just graduated from Donghai University.

And he had majored in computer science.

He had dashed off a song like that and dared to ask a hundred thousand yuan—one hundred times her original offer. To Song Xuan it meant one of two things: either Wu Chen was mad, or he had come here specifically to have fun with her.

“One hundred thousand,” Wu Chen repeated, smiling. “Student Song, all you have to tell me is whether you accept. That’s all. There’s nothing to negotiate on the price. I have several other songs, and they’re all the same.”

“Of course I don’t accept,” Song Xuan said.

She really did have a good temper. Convinced though she was that he was toying with her, she felt no anger. Only her smile had thinned a little.

“Then there’s nothing more to discuss.” Wu Chen gestured toward her. “The notebook.”

Song Xuan was startled.

That was it?

He was finished?

Was this some game of playing hard to get?

In Song Xuan’s memory, every person who had ever come to have fun with her had wanted the same thing in the end: to get near her, to become someone she knew.

So however the conversation went, not one of them had ever ended it of his own accord. Unless she said there was nothing left to discuss, they all looked prepared to keep talking with her until the end of the world. Writing a song and trying to sell it to her was only a way of approaching her, a pretext for getting a chance to speak.

Still surprised, Song Xuan handed the notebook back.

Wu Chen took it and began to tear out the pages with the song on them—then stopped.

“I don’t think Student Song is the sort of person who would plagiarize someone else’s work. We’ve only just properly met, but I can trust you that far.” Smiling, he closed the notebook and passed it back to her. “I won’t tear them out. It’s a nice notebook. Two pages missing and it wouldn’t be perfect anymore.”

He stood. “That’ll be all.”

He smiled, turned, and walked away.

He actually left.

Without one unnecessary word.

Song Xuan stared blankly after him as he pushed open the café door and stepped outside. At last she pulled the mask at her chin back up over her face and murmured, “Weirdo.”

She looked down at the notebook in her hands.

She opened it and read the song again.

It really was very good. Like the other good songs she had been given before, it had all sorts of strengths.

But that was all it was.

Nobody could control public taste with any precision. Whether a song succeeded depended above all on whether the public liked it. Whether the song itself was good came second—or rather, being good was only the foundation on which success became possible.

So although Song Xuan thought Wu Chen’s song was good, she did not think it would become popular. More precisely, she thought the odds were extremely low.

She had been disappointed too many times. She no longer dared hope for much.

Whatever else happened, she would never pay a hundred thousand. And she would certainly never plagiarize it either. She would simply leave it in the notebook and look at it now and then.

What Song Xuan did not know was this:

The song Wu Chen had written, “Antidote for the Soul,” was guaranteed to become a hit.

And not merely a hit. It would explode overnight.

There was no uncertainty in it at all.

It would be a hit.

Because Wu Chen had tested it.

Wu Chen had been trapped on July 7 for a thousand years—three hundred and sixty-five thousand days and nights. He had done nearly everything imaginable, and naturally he had once thought of becoming a celebrity, if only for a day. Everything reset…