Blue Cocktail chapter 30
Cheng Shuo didn’t linger in the bar for too long. When he left, evening had already fallen, and the bar was becoming busier. Lu Huaiqian was increasingly occupied with the growing number of customers. Staying in the bar wouldn’t be of much help to Lu Huaiqian, and Cheng Shuo had no plans to drink tonight.
Once he home, he felt hungry, so he used the electric cooker he had just bought to cook instant noodles in the kitchen. He cracked an egg, considering it a source of protein, and added some green vegetables and carrot cubes. His dinners were often makeshift, solving the problem of hunger with a one-pot meal, saving him from washing an extra dish and maximizing efficiency.
After leaving the kitchen, Cheng Shuo proceeded to the bathroom without a moment’s pause, and then swiftly entered the bedroom, leaving only the ceiling light on. From now until bedtime, he had uninterrupted discretionary time, and having control meant freedom.
He grabbed his phone, opened WeChat through muscle memory, and his inner self seemed to be vaguely expecting something. However, there were no messages.
Refresh.
No new messages.
He clicked on the unchanging profile picture of someone, and there was still no sign of activity.
Cheng Shuo didn’t know why. Perhaps, in his subconscious mind, he expected a message from Lu Huaiqian tonight. After all, he had received an apology letter from Lu Huaiqian in the afternoon. It would make sense for Lu Huaiqian to follow up in some way. But wait, why should he care if Lu Huaiqian messaged him?
With a furrowed brow, Cheng Shuo pressed the lock screen button, tossing his phone aside. He didn’t care whether Lu Huaiqian would contact him or not.
Seated at the desk, Cheng Shuo decided to spend his evening with his stylus.
Drawing required a certain touch. If he didn’t draw for a while, his hands would feel unfamiliar. He had experienced this firsthand, so despite the lack of commercial assignments recently, he couldn’t neglect his board drawings. Practice sketches, though lacking the rewards of commissioned work, allowed him to follow his whims. At least, he didn’t have to repeatedly modify his art to cater to the aesthetic preferences of a client.
Cheng Shuo believed he needed to draw something he was interested in, visually impactful, and capable of diverting his attention—at least enough to stop him from checking WeChat. After some consideration, he decided to draw a romantic adult scene. It was his specialty, after all.
He quickly created a couple setting, a domineering and restrained top and a flirtatious and provocative bottom, seductively entwined.
Yes, sometimes being an illustrator required some writing skills. Quickly establishing character settings, the setting for the story, personal traits, and idiosyncrasies, Cheng Shuo thoughtlessly picked an engaging plot. He didn’t like to jump straight into explicit activities. The foreplay needed to be done thoroughly for it to be interesting. It should involve dominance and control, explicit affection, and subtle aggression, all while maintaining aesthetic appeal.
His familiarity with the human body was quite renowned in the industry. Many common poses could be drawn with stability and precision, requiring minimal adjustments. After a few strokes, he had outlined the main character’s posture and demeanor.
In a manga, characters’ actions and behaviors should serve the plot. Cheng Shuo, meanwhile, extracted some of his yellow waste from his mind. Soon, he devised a storyline.
Because of his playful drawings, some of his fans once assumed that he must feel great while sketching explicit scenes. In reality, the most enjoyable part was when he fabricated the scenes in his mind. The actual process of putting pen to paper, out of a sense of precision, made Cheng Shuo unconsciously struggle with the reasonableness of the poses. Were these poses possible for the human skeletal structure to achieve?
Quickly progressing to the crucial part of the plot, Cheng Shuo transformed into a machine for repeated deduction and modification. The bottom, wearing the top’s shirt, due to the difference in physique, the shirt barely covered the upper thigh area. Seated on the top’s lap, facing each other, a few buttons had come undone, and the shirt’s collar hung diagonally on the bottom’s chest, revealing half of their shoulder and collarbone. Cheng Shuo cleverly used the shirt’s folds to conceal critical areas—masterfully playing with the enticing ambiguity.
In one go, he sketched the entire plot. Since it wasn’t a commissioned piece, the lines didn’t need to be too clean. A quick cleanup and simple coloring were sufficient. Cheng Shuo skillfully added dialogue, including some angry sex and dirty talk. Cheng Shuo admitted that “dirty talk” was one of the few English words he could remember by heart. Finally, he added a watermark and posted it on Weibo.
Before long, he received dozens of new comments. Sketches drawn on a whim always garnered more enthusiastic responses than carefully crafted commissioned works. Cheng Shuo understood this phenomenon; he had seen it many times.
Entering the comment section, Cheng Shuo started reading from the first comment.
NotRankedFirstInTheWholeSchool: In my lifetime, I finally see Lao Si getting kinky again. This drawing really resembles the style I loved back when I first entered the fandom. /Crying /Crying /Crying
The reason this fan said this was that Cheng Shuo had drawn many out-of-canon fanart pieces early on. He had done various couples from movies and anime, including some peculiar and niche pairings. Occasionally, he would spontaneously collaborate with the fanfiction authors, creating small theatrical scenes.
Sometimes, inevitably, he drew scenes where applause was given for love. After repeatedly testing the bottom line of website censorship, he summarized a set of unique approval rules. Due to his exceptional human figure drawings and excellent sexual tension, he gained quite a number of fans.
At that time, Cheng Shuo was a freshman. In the first semester, he even joined the student union, but in the next semester, he resigned from the student union. He rarely walked with his roommates on the way to and from classes, always sitting in the last row of the classroom and frequently visiting the studio corner.
In reality, he was practically in a state of zero social interaction. If it weren’t for his face, he might not have been remembered by anyone in the class for a whole semester. Most classmates probably remembered him as a reclusive, aloof, solitary figure—silent, unsociable, and not good at socializing. Who could have imagined that he would now have hundreds of thousands of Weibo followers and cruise the internet in style.
After accumulating a certain number of followers, Cheng Shuo began considering the issue of transformation. He wanted to go down the commercialization route, which meant his works had to focus more on quality than traffic.
As a result, he rarely drew fanart, especially explicit scenes within fanart. Because of this, he lost many old fans, and some netizens who used to be fans but turned against him criticized him, accusing him of forgetting his original intentions.
However, Cheng Shuo wasn’t very concerned because when he used to draw fanart, he was mocked for only drawing borderline content and riding on the popularity of fanworks. Since he couldn’t please everyone no matter what he did, he didn’t care about malicious comments, as long as he felt he was doing what he believed in.
Scrolling down, Cheng Shuo noticed quite a few long-time lurker old fans commenting under this Weibo post, still hoping for him to produce content. Whether it was fanart or original works didn’t matter; what mattered was the essence.
There was another fan comment: “I treat Lao Si as family, but why does Lao Si treat me as an outsider? I want to see the original uncensored version. Pity.”
Cheng Shuo replied: “What I posted is the original version. /doge”
After reading all the comments, he picked a few clever and humorous replies to respond to. Checking the time, it was already past midnight. Exhaustion suddenly hit him, and his eyelids began to fight each other. Cheng Shuo couldn’t help but yawn.
He quickly packed up his notebook and graphics tablet, then collapsed onto the bed.
Suddenly, he remembered that he hadn’t set the alarm for the next morning.
Cheng Shuo couldn’t be bothered to get up, so he lazily reached out and fumbled on the bedside table. As expected, he found his phone. Lying flat, his arms hung in the air, he operated the screen with a series of actions, and the alarm was set.
Then he should have tossed the phone aside, turned off the light, and started a peaceful sleep. However, for some unknown reason, at that moment, he thought of someone.
By the time he realized it, he had instinctively clicked into his chat with Lu Huaiqian.
Quietly watching for a few seconds and finding no new messages, Cheng Shuo suddenly felt quite bored. He was caring about something he shouldn’t care about. Just as he was about to exit the interface, a line of text suddenly appeared at the top:
[The other party is typing…]Could it be that he was so tired that he started hallucinating?
Without realizing it, Cheng Shuo brought the screen closer to his eyes. As a result, his fingertips trembled, and the phone directly hit his face, making him yelp in pain. Turning half sideways, he picked up the phone with his right hand and couldn’t stop rubbing his eyes with his left hand. This time he held the screen firmly, bringing it to his eyes to read—
Still those seven words along with an ellipsis.
He’s really editing a message.
Well, the business at Blue Bar is good, especially at night. Cheng Shuo remembered that Lu Huaiqian had mentioned before that the bar closed at one in the morning. Since Lu Huaiqian was a typical night owl, it made perfect sense for him to be online at this time.
Cheng Shuo sat up slowly from the bed, placing the pillow behind his back. He was curious to see what Lu Huaiqian wanted to send him.
Since he’s currently typing, it should be coming soon, maybe within a minute. No problem, he could wait.
Five minutes later.
Cheng Shuo stared at the motionless chat box, beginning to feel foolish. He had wasted five minutes of his life, thinking that Lu Huaiqian was too busy, busy enough to type a message for him at this hour. Now it seemed that it was more likely a WeChat bug or Lu Huaiqian accidentally touching the screen.
Had enough, going to sleep.
Cheng Shuo placed his phone upside down on the bedside table and reached out to press the switch for the ceiling light.
The bedroom suddenly plunged into darkness.
Shortly afterward, the phone vibrated twice.
Cheng Shuo: “…”
Could it be a message from Lu Huaiqian?
Never mind, who cares.
After half a minute, a hand quietly emerged from under the duvet, turning on the ceiling light.
Cheng Shuo told himself that the reason he picked up the phone was that he forgot to set it to silent. In case someone uninteresting sent a message in the middle of the night, it might disturb his sweet dreams. In any case, it absolutely wasn’t to read Lu Huaiqian’s text.
As he thought this, he unlocked the screen and directly opened WeChat.
The Unscrupulous Tycoon, Mr. Lu: I’ve read the letter you wrote to me. Are you willing to be honest with me? I’m very moved~
Following the text was an expression of a Samoyed holding a red heart-shaped pillow, accompanied by the words “Love you.”
Huh?
Was he willing to be honest?
Cheng Shuo briefly recalled the contents of the letter—
“I’m very sorry for what happened because of what He Yin did to me. I considered it an unforgivable act. The incident occurred at the amusement park. So when she suggested in the letter to rebuild the amusement park for me as compensation for what happened back then, I was infuriated. But you are innocent. I shouldn’t have vented my anger on you or said those hurtful words. I’m sorry. Inside the velvet box are cufflinks, my apology. I hope you like them.
Cheng Shuo smiled helplessly at first, feeling that it was quite typical of Lu Huaiqian. However, gradually, the smile on his face disappeared, and his gaze slowly became unfocused, losing its focus.