One Less Star in the Night Sky

Chapter 12: Star Scout

Chapter 12: Xing Tan (lit. Star Scout)

Back in my past life, while I had completed writing a few stories, there were many other exciting and enthralling plot ideas that I had no choice but to throw to the wayside. These stories had so much potential to be developed into full-fledged novels, but unfortunately, I did not have the time to write them.

One such story, which I had in my previous life painstakingly plotted, planned and researched for weeks, was preliminarily titled "Lost in the Flurry of Time". It was at its core a rebirth and revenge historical novel, encompassing the usual tropes of such stories. In 2022, rebirth and revenge novels and dramas were almost a staple of most people's reading lists or watchlists; but this may not necessarily be the case right now when we were ten years into the past.

Based on my brief reading of other web novels today, the existing trend of novels contained the classic themes of "dominant CEO and Cinderella", "rich man, poor woman" or "gender-bender/cross-dressing", coupled with usual tropes of "enemies to lovers", "amnesia", "green tea second female lead" and "second lead syndrome". As such, my analysis was that rebirth-revenge stories and romantic tragedy xuanhuan or xianxia stories relating to reincarnation and soulmates searching for each other across time and multiple lifetimes would be considered fresh and original in the present.

Perhaps, it was because of the free food and drinks supplied to me by my "cousin" or the cosy environment of the café or my excitement of writing a novel while physically present in Beijing, that I was able to finish writing six chapters of Lost in the Flurry of Time in a span of five days. It was not my style to write hundreds of chapters. Thus, six chapters out of an average of forty chapters was a considerable achievement. Of course, it helped that this was a story that I had previously done plenty of planning for and research on.

It was a Friday afternoon and the café was quiet—apart from a foreign couple, who looked like tourists, there was only one other older lady enjoying a cup of hot coffee while reading a book. Yu Sifan guessed that it was currently the examination season, which was why his regular customers didn't appear.

His guess was actually correct. My WeChat group chat with Tan Qing and Du Shanshan was full of lamentations and complaints about the finals that was taking place this week and full of excitement about their plans post-exams. One such plan was visiting Yu Sifan's café. Since hearing that my friends were interested in dropping by, Yu Sifan had been trying to use me to get Tan Qing's band to perform at his café. This was the reason for the free bento lunch sets over the past few days that I had been writing in the café.

The mouthwatering bento lunch sets came from "Dusk Bistro & Bar", the asian-fusion restaurant just down the street, which by night would morph into a casual pub. Today's set came with short grained white rice, topped with a piece of grilled salmon filet with teriyaki sauce that was encircled by edamame beans, buttered corn and roasted cherry tomatoes.

Just as I was about to get started on the third paragraph of my seventh chapter after shoving a spoonful of rice, fish and corn into my mouth, I noticed a familiar looking youth on the street outside with a guitar bag slung over one shoulder. He stood in front of the glass folding doors and seemed to be staring at a sign that was affixed on the glass. As I was sitting right by the glass folding doors today, I was able to get a clear view of his face.

Scrutinising his appearance, doubts surfaced in my heart. It couldn't be so coincidental that I had run into the nation's prince of OSTs, could it?

A tall, lean and athletic build. A slim face characterised by a sharp jawline, slender monolid eyes and high nose bridge. He had a unique look that was not only captivating but also very memorable. I couldn't be wrong. It was definitely him—Deng Zixuan.