[You are fired.]
"What!? What are you talking about? Lady boss, suddenly calling me like this and telling me I am fired. Aish~ this is so degrading, boss... Do you really have to fire me over the phone?"
[Come to the office tomorrow to get your things. While at it, I will generously fire you in the most official manner possible.]
"This is unfair. I have been working for you for over a decade! Boss, you know I am very loyal to you."
[Sorry, but loyalty doesn't mean anything to me. Only profits.]
"And I am bringing you profits, right?"
[No, you don't. You are not competitive enough. As web novelists, though our standards are not as elitist as professionals, we do still have a standard.]
"Are you telling me I am not up to standard? Hah~ ! Aren't what am I writing trashy as the others' work? I do as you instruct me to do. I am even writing the genre I don't wish to write just because of you!"
[You just have no talent in writing. That is why I am firing you. While you are still young, you must find yourself a career that will suit your style.]
"But—"
[Goodbye…]
Hanging the phone on him just like that must be the pinnacle of rudeness. For a novelist like him, this is basically a death sentence. He is barely living on what remains of his budget since last month.
As a contracted novelist who gets a daily wage instead of a contracted amount of royalty, he is like the version of a slave black company employee in the industry of writing.
"This is just so f*cking unfair… I… Writing those shit against my will is torture enough, but this? This is just too much…"
Staring at his phone with dull eyes like dead fish, he realizes this must be the end for him.
"Should I return to the province and live the life of a farmer? Will I be able to write just enough to satisfy my cravings for writing?"
Farm work is hard work. Aside from being time-consuming, it also demands a lot of effort not just from the perspective of a farmer, but also from a businessman. In this time and age, farming is not as simple as in the feudal age's time.
While simple often equates to dumb, writing is not so different from farming.
Writing similarly requires hard work, time, and also the perspective of a businessman.
"That is how I end up writing that stupid novel anyway…"
Scrolling over the pages of the novel of his own making, Love and Magic, he realizes how low he is falling. For a guy who loves action, fantasy, and medieval stuff, it is disappointing how he even ends up writing on this hateful genre.
"It is not really my fault… It is the market's fault!"
Because of the rising trend of female readers, and the booming opportunity that comes from web fiction, the competition continues to get tougher and tougher. Female readers in particular are very critical of the things they read. The genres like romance, boy's love, and reversed harem sees an obvious rise in popularity over the past couple of years.
"I don't want to fall behind, so I end up reluctantly writing one… moreover at the insistence of my boss… I have no choice but to comply…"
It is not like a young man like him doesn't know romance. While boy's love sounds dangerous, it doesn't hurt to study it by referring to the works of others. Though reversed harem sounds just as challenging, nothing beats studying.
Reading over his own work, he realizes how horrible he actually is when it comes to writing something from a girl's perspective. Overly misogynistic— this is at least how he looks like to his readers. Most often, he feels like his readers are scolding him for undervaluing women.
Apparently, the main heroine is an airhead. The longer the story goes on, the more ridiculous the heroine becomes like suddenly becoming a side character! That is not where the ridiculousness end.
At some point in time, the author as if under the influence of drugs stupidly comes up with the idea for the main heroine to die midway and replace her with another heroine! Not content with the new heroine, the author then decides to kill the new heroine and replace her with a new heroine.
It repeats again and again until finally, the author decides to bring back the original heroine of the story through an overpowered resurrection setting.
It doesn't make sense!
As an author, he is pretty much done for. His dreams are dead, and his effort is all for naught. There is only one way for him out— to resign to this fate.
The young man, author, and now possibly a future homeless gives a final look to his novel. Deciding to find closure, he writes his self-review with a miserable one-star maybe in his blind attempt to save face.
[One-Star-Review by Trashy Author2223
It is definitely not the novel's fault. It is entirely on me. I am lacking in the genre of romance, boy's love, and reversed harem, yet I try exactly these three genres. I must be courting death. I have no excuses for myself. Just know that this novel didn't ruin me, instead, it is the other way around. I ruined the novel.]
Though he is in a slump and is approaching rock bottom until tomorrow, he remains steadfast to his principles. He loves writing, and while he might not be the best at it, he is definitely among the most passionate.
The self-entitlement of course is not permanent for someday, inevitably, his seemingly unbeatable confidence will suffer. "I can just start again! As long as I have my confidence, then I will be unbeatable!"
With the same hotheadedness since graduating high school, he blindly thrusts himself into the future.
"Like hell, that will work!" Hurling his phone to the wall, he decidedly goes ballistic. He hurls the chair, flips the table, and wrecks chaos on the things he deems inconsequently breakable like toothpicks, toothbrushes, pencils, and all sorts of freebie items.
"Oh, shoot… The phone will be kind of pricey." He picks up his phone finding lots of cracks in its screen. Thankfully, it is still functional. In the wallpaper of the phone is his lady boss's picture— the very reminder of how women are not just pretty faces.
Ignoring the sizable amount of boobs she has, and the mature beauty she exudes, she is pretty much the definition of a boss who strictly adheres to the principles of basic profiteering.
Recalling his boss who just outrightly fires him over the phone, he realizes he'd rather prefer women to simply be pretty faces. "My lady boss is so capable… Maybe if she's a little bit dumber, she would actually forget that I exist…"
No author will admit to himself that he is incompetent. Normally, no person in any circumstances will refer to themselves as incompetent.
For Hans, a very pessimistic person, this attitude of 'defeatism' is quite normal to him. Especially in times when he is in a slump.
Suddenly, the phone he is holding catches on fire.
"Eh?"
And from there, it reaches his arms to his elbows and shoulder, until finally, the flames spread on the apartment swallowing him like the savage teeth of hell.
"What the f—"
[You are fired.]