Work Text:
“Cucumber-bro,” Shang Qinghua said, “I cannot possibly express the magnitude of my longing for air conditioning. Summer without aircon sucks.”
“And why are you complaining about this on my floor?” Shen Qingqiu asked, disdainfully. “Also, the magnitude of your longing? If you know words like that, then why was Proud Immortal Demon Way written so shittily?”
“Uh, for the audience?” Shang Qinghua said. “Do you have like, any idea what the basic reading comprehension of my typical reader was like? I did some statistical analysis at some point, okay!! In chapters that I didn’t use the word cock at least thirty-nine times, I lost, on average, five readers!”
Shen Qingqiu shuddered.
“You were the one reading,” Shang Qinghua pointed out.
“I miss whiling away my days with shitty webnovels,” Shen Qingqiu said, and flopped backwards onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling.
“I miss Canada,” Shang Qinghua said.
Shen Qingqiu sat back up and looked at him critically. “What, the country?” he asked.
“I was planning on travelling there,” Shang Qinghua said. “I mean – some day.” He waved a hand. “When I’d actually managed to save some money over the meagre amounts PIDW got me.”
“Why did you write PIDW if it paid so badly?” Shen Qingqiu asked.
“Anything’s better than a Corporate Nine to Five,” Shang Qinghua said. “If you had the choice between writing trashy harem porn and sitting in an office all day, which would you pick?”
Shen Qingqiu made a face, and elected not to reply.
“Canada then,” he said. “Why Canada?”
Shang Qinghua shrugged. “Don’t know. I watched a documentary about it once when I was like, twelve? And then became obsessed with it.”
“Wait,” Shen Qingqiu said. “Is that what the chapter where they used maple syrup as lube was about?!”
“Look,” Shang Qinghua said defensively, “I was starting to run out of papapa ideas.” He perked up. “Did you ever use any syrup or foods as –?”
“No,” Shen Qingqiu said, and hit him on the nose with his fan.
“Ow!” Shang Qinghua made, then perked back up. “– is that No you haven’t, or No you’re not telling me?”
“It’s No, change the topic or I’ll hit you a second time,” Shen Qingqiu said darkly.
Shang Qinghua drooped. “I swear you’re only ever this mean to me!” he complained. “I thought we were best friends, Cucumber-bro!”
Shen Qingqiu glared at him. “And why would you think that?” he asked. “We’re stuck here because of you.”
“Well…” Shang Qinghua said, and flopped down from his previous cross-legged position to lie on his back. “Your floor is very clean,” he remarked.
“Thanks,” Shen Qingqiu said. “Binghe cleaned it.”
After a moment of silence, Shen Qingqiu said, “I miss air conditioning too.”
“Yeah,” said Shang Qinghua.
“Why couldn’t you just have written like, a magic xianxia version of it in? It gets so horrendously hot here in summer!” Shen Qingqiu complained.
“I didn’t even write Canada in, bro,” Shang Qinghua said. “Do you know how hard it is to visit a place that doesn’t canonically exist?!”
“Your worldbuilding sucks,” Shen Qingqiu said, disdainfully.
“No need to tell me,” Shang Qinghua said. “I was too busy writing papapa to do worldbuilding that wasn’t directly related to the papapa.”
“Wait,” Shen Qingqiu said. “Canada was related! You’re telling me you had a whole chapter using maple syrup as lube and you didn’t write in Canada or a canonical equivalent of it?!”
“Look!” Shang Qinghua said, sitting back up. “You try writing ten thousand words a day! Things slip through the cracks, okay!”
“You’re the worst person I know,” Shen Qingqiu said.
“I’m your best friend and only confidant,” Shang Qinghua said. “Who else would you talk to about aircon? Nobody here knows what that is! Or who you really are!”
“So I’m stuck with you just because we technically come from the same place and I don’t want anyone to figure out I’m not the real Shen Qingqiu?” Shen Qingqiu grumbled. “That can’t be right.”
“And because you were my dearest reader,” Shang Qinghua said.
“You hated my comments,” Shen Qingqiu pointed out.
“I didn’t! They made the discussions livelier! They were just – annoying, sometimes!”
“Because I was right.”
“Because you were being pedantic about a 10k words a day stallion protagonist harem revenge novel,” Shang Qinghua said.
“Ugh,” Shen Qingqiu made.
“See it positively!” Shang Qinghua said. “Technically, I’m the God of this universe, so you’re talking to God right now. Isn’t that fun?”
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Sheng Qingqiu said.
“I wrote this universe,” Shang Qinghua said.
“And you couldn’t even come up with a Canada-equivalent to explain your maple syrup!”
“I wrote this universe at rapid speed on fifteen coffees a day, three obsolete excel spreadsheets, and very little food that wasn’t cup ramen?”
“You’re the worst possible God known to man,” Shen Qingqiu said. “I miss spreadsheets.”
“You miss spreadsheets?” Shang Qinghua asked.
“I used more than three to keep track of all the shit you did in PIDW. One for the inter-harem relationships, one for the revenge-character relationships, one for the harem-revenge relationships, one for the magical items, one for the monsters, one for demon politics. And one called ‘Worldbuilding – Not Otherwise Specified’ that was like, a catch-all. And let me tell you, you contradicted yourself a lot.”
Shang Qinghua stared at him. Finally, he said, “Lol. You used more spreadsheets than me to keep track of my novel.”
“I’m not exactly surprised by that,” Shen Qingqiu said, derisively. “Also, did you just say lol out loud?”
Shang Qinghua shrugged and flopped back onto the floorboards. “Do you want to start co-writing smut with me? Maybe if you help me with the worldbuilding, we can corner the market enough to rob Liu Mingyan of her smut throne.”
“I’m not helping you write RPF smut about me,” Shen Qingqiu said. “I still can’t believe you wrote maple syrup into your shitty webnovel, but not Canada.”
“You’re never going to let that rest, are you?”
“I think it sums up PIDW rather effectively,” Shen Qingqiu said.
“Well, what can I say! I made an oversight!”
“You made several oversights,” Shen Qingqiu scoffed. Then: “Would you like some ice cream? It’s not air conditioning, but it does help. Binghe came up with a new recipe the other day.”
“God, yes,” Shang Qinghua said.