I'm not a literary giant

Chapter 2 A Premeditated Murder
Wang Zixu's workplace is no more than 800 meters away from his home, so it takes less than 10 minutes to walk home. He bought this house for convenience so he could go home at any time, but now he gets off work at : and often doesn't get home until after :.

It’s not because the company has to work too much overtime.

There is a yard downstairs from his house, but the property management doesn't take care of it. In the green belt there are shrubs that are almost as tall as a person. There are red and blue fitness equipment, and rust is creeping up on the places where the paint has peeled off.

This used to be a sandy land, but now it has been desolate for a long time, there is no sand on the ground, only mud. In summer, the yellow is shit and the green is grass, and in winter, the yellow is grass and the green is shit. Apart from the dog, he is the only one who comes here.

After get off work, he would sit on the squat machine, light a few cigarettes, and wait until his wife urged him to smoke before he slowly got up and went upstairs. The cigarettes he lit were Dafengshou, a local brand, which cost 3 yuan a pack. They were very strong, and it was easy to get a headache if you smoked too much, so he didn't feel bad about smoking as much as he wanted. He would hold the cigarette in his hand and let it burn quietly, thinking about some absurd things in the smoke, so that he could sit for a long time with three cigarettes.

The empty cigarette butts would be poked at the rusty iron pillar next to it and the smoke would be sucked up. Over time, the pillar became like a stegosaurus, with its back covered with cigarette butts.

Finally, the wife always calls: Why haven't you come back yet? Are you working overtime again? Working overtime every day? How about I report this to your boss and ask him not to arrange things after get off work? That's enough, I don't want to hear your explanation. Come back soon, come back soon, the food is cold...

He slowly stood up and walked towards home. Sometimes when his wife didn't call him, he would be even less willing to go home because he wanted to have some peace and quiet.

They have been married for three years and have no children. He doesn't want children, but she does. Sometimes she would look at other people's children with joy for a long time. Their disagreements are not limited to this one, including whether to eat coriander, how to put the toilet lid after going to the toilet, and how often to tidy up the closet. When these things become more and more, life begins to become boring.

After dinner, he would sit on his bed and read. Faulkner, Márquez, Camus, any writer who had won a Nobel Prize or was worthy of one. His wife would fold the clothes, put them at his feet, and say:
"I'm really tired. I have to cook, do the laundry, and go to the store every day. I'm really tired."

His fingers froze on the page, like a child who had done something wrong.

"You can quit your job at the store. It doesn't pay much and it's exhausting."

It took him a long time to say this. In fact, he had said this countless times. His wife had also said this to him countless times. He knew exactly what she would say next:
"How can I get so much money if I don't go to work?"

With a monthly salary of more than 4000 yuan and his wife's unstable income, they can barely make ends meet in this city, but according to his wife's plan, they will have a child next year. With this child, they will have many more unexpected expenses.

For example, "I can't go to the store during the months after giving birth, so I'll lose thousands of dollars." Then, "Giving birth is painful, I want a Caesarian section, but Caesarian sections are expensive, and I need postpartum care, which also costs a lot of money." And then "I don't want your mother to take care of me during the confinement period, or I'll get postpartum depression. Going to a confinement center will cost tens of thousands..." "And there's also money for the baby's milk powder, clothes, shoes, diapers..." "If I go to work, the elderly will have to help take care of the baby, so I have to give them something, right? I can't let them take care of the baby for nothing..." "When he grows up, he has to go to kindergarten, and he might get sick..." "I have to give red envelopes to the teacher during the Chinese New Year? He has to go to tutoring classes, right? I want him to learn piano..."

In short, this non-existent child had already caused him endless troubles before he even came into the world.

My wife has been thinking about this child for a long time, so long that she has already determined the child's appearance and facial features.

For countless days and nights, his wife described to him what kind of creature this child was: his/her eyebrows were like his, his nose was like his, his mouth was like hers, his skin was like hers…

If someone asks what their child looks like, the couple can draw the child for him or her. The child is so real that he or she feels that not having him or her born is akin to murder.

"You always go home and lie down, and you don't help me share the burden. How can your salary be enough to live on?"

His wife was still rambling on and on, her words making no sense. The more she kept on talking, the more tired he became, and the more he wanted to lie down.

He wanted to say, "I'm writing novels, and I can earn a lot of money." But he didn't say it, because he had repeated this sentence many times in countless days and nights. He even knew that after he said this, his wife would spread her hands and ask, "What about the money?"

This royalty, like the child, was non-existent, a fictitious product, so he could not get anything out of it. As a writer, he was not as imaginative as his wife.

He couldn't tell his wife what kind of money this was: it would be carefully packed in a white envelope, which felt comfortable and thick in the hand. The postman on a bicycle would deliver it, cut the envelope with a paper cutter, and a small blue receipt would fall out, with "Manuscript Receipt" written in blue bold letters on it.
Or after receiving a phone call, he rode his bicycle through the path covered with camphor leaves to the bank, where he inserted his bank card into the machine and entered the password with shaking hands. He entered it incorrectly twice, but succeeded the third time. He saw that the numbers on the bank card had inexplicably increased, and the extra numbers were the royalties.

Or one morning, his cell phone dinged, and a message box with a unique font said "You have a payment." After opening the software, he excitedly saw an official-looking payee name, followed by a long string of numbers of unknown meaning, and a striking number at the top.

All three of these ways are possible. There is also a fourth way. But he couldn't tell it. Because he had never received any royalties, when he told his wife about this, he was not decisive enough, which made her more suspicious.

At first, writing was a pleasant thing for him, but before he knew it, the most important thing became to quickly earn some royalties to prove himself to his wife.

He specifically searched for the prize money of the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was more than 600 million RMB. There is no higher royalty in the world than this. In addition, more importantly, the Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded every year.

Once a year, then if he lives to be 80, there will be more than 50 chances to get it. What exciting 50 chances! Whether it is written down or made into a movie, it will become an epic.

He began to study Nobel Prize-winning literature works in all aspects. Then something interesting happened.

When he read Faulkner, his writing style was like Faulkner's, with scenes constantly switching and characters' viewpoints shifting. Everyone seemed to be babbling like a mental patient and making incomprehensible comments. When he read Camus, his writing was like Camus, with everyone in his writing becoming a lonely, cold castle. When he read Marquez, he felt as if he was in South America, with the heat rising between the paper and ink, which could only be found in the rainforests of the southern hemisphere.

He felt that he had touched these shining great souls with his soul, and the Nobel Prize in Literature was no longer a mirage.

But before he got the 600 million, he needed a faster way to prove himself. That was to submit his novels to magazines. After trying five or six times, the novels he sent were not published, and there was no news at all. During this process, his excitement turned into panic, and he finally lost his confidence and began to doubt whether he was cut out for writing.

(End of this chapter)