Pet King

Half of the calm day passed by in the blink of an eye.

From morning to afternoon, everything pretty much went on as usual. The store was busy, and there were people walking in and out.

Following the end of Dog Warrior’s airing, the fever brought on by the movie started to wane, too. But Famous would never be forgotten by people. It would only fade until its next movie blew up the box office again.

Zhang Zian ran back and forth between the two shops, helping clients choose their pets at the pet store one minute and helping the clients at the aquarium with their man-made decorations the next minute. Even his lunch time was really late in the afternoon.

Just because aquariums were slow moving goods, that didn’t mean they would be a burden. Their profit margin was relatively high since they were usually sold in a whole set. With the aquarium machinery, corals, sand, and aquatic animals sold in a package, they could usually sell them for thousands of dollars.

After he finished his lunch, it was already late afternoon. This time period was usually the quietest in the shop. Everyone was resting, and very few people came in at this time, even the ever zealous reporters. Besides, the weather wasn’t too good today. It had been cloudy for the whole period, and the threat of rain hung over their heads, so their customers were even fewer.

Wang Qian and Li Kun were playing mobile games in the corner. Lu Yiyun was focused on her drawing with Jasmine in her hands. Due to the fact that there had been too many customers recently, her illustration work had been piling up. Jiang Feifei next door was chatting with her classmates about employment, exams, love, and gossip—such topics that university girls liked to talk about. Even though she wasn’t that interested in those, it wouldn’t be good to seem too uncooperative.

Even the elfins were all napping. It was quiet in the room.

The ever-carefree Vladimir wasn’t in the shop either. Who knew where it had gone? But that was a common occurance too.

Seeing that there was nothing much to do in the shop now, Zhang Zian planned to return upstairs to take a nap and recharge his drained batteries.

Even the second floor was quiet. There were no sounds coming from the bathroom. Sihwa might still be asleep too.

“Pi, don’t always sit and stare at the computer. Everyone’s napping, so you should too. Resting never gets in the way of doing productive work.” Zhang Zian sat on his bed, getting ready for his nap.

But Pi didn’t reply to him with its usual “Cheep cheep,” and neither was it focused on typing. Instead it stared at the computer, spacing out.

Sensing that it seemed a bit off, his desire to sleep completely dissipated. He stood up again immediately even though he had already lay down, walking over to it to ask, “What’s wrong, Pi?”

Pi looked up at him, lost, and pointed at the computer screen, helplessness filling its eyes.

Zhang Zian took a look. The Chinese version of the Qidian Website was open. There were many fixed “Recommended” spots on the website. The more visible the spot, the more effective the advertisement—that, he already knew.

He thought initially that something had gone wrong with the website, but it seemed to be working normally.

“What is it, Pi? What’s wrong?” he asked again.

Pi finally came back to reality, taking the mouse to click on the author’s platform.

There was a message from two days ago, saying that at 2 p.m. today, its work would be put onto one of the “Recommended” slots on the website, and for it to continously update. If there was anything urgent, it should contact the editor in charge.

He looked at the time on the bottom right hand corner of the screen. It was already past 2 p.m.

Pi went back to the main page again.

This time, Zhang Zian finally understood. Pi’s book should have showed up on one of the recommended pages, but those spots were all taken by other books.

“Cheep, cheep?”

Pi gestured, meaning to ask, “Was there a mistake somewhere?”

Zhang Zian pulled a chair over, double-checking the time in the message and the novels on the “Recommended” slots. He gave it a thought before consoling Pi. “Pi, don’t panic. There might be some delay since it’s only a little past 2 p.m. Maybe your novel will only be updated later.”

These situations could happen occasionally. There were too many novels on the website, after all. Hundreds of thousands of books were updated every day, and the change of novels in the “Recommended” slots had to be personally done by the editors and staff. It was entirely possible that something might have happened to cause the delay.

Pi nodded, accepting his explanation, but it still continuously refreshed the webpage, its eyes staring at the position where its book should be appearing.

Zhang Zian had completely lost the urge to nap and sat by it, chatting occasionally, hoping to at least soothe some of its anxiety and uneasiness.

But even after half and hour of waiting, there was no change on the webpage at all.

Pi got more and more panicked, and even Zhang Zian couldn’t sit still anymore. There was a limited time they could have the “Recommended” slot, after all. They couldn’t just sit there and wait like idiots.

“Pi, contact the editors,” he suggested. “Didn’t the message say to contact the editors in case of any emergencies? Besides, the editors are there to help authors with their problems.”

Pi still hesitated.

“Then I’ll contact them for you.”

Zhang Zian knew that it was not familiar with interacting with people, so he volunteered to accomplish the task.

Pi jumped off the chair and waved its hand, asking him to sit before the computer.

Zhang Zian found the picture of the bald monk in its list of contacts. This was the editor in charge of Pi. Every editor had a few hundred authors under their care, and they were bombarded with work every day. They didn’t have time to chat with their authors, so Pi tried to not bother them.

He drafted a message summarizing the problem, subtly trying to hint at whether it was a mistake made by one of the staff, and asking them to take care of the issue on its behalf.

After the message was sent, he consoled it again. “Most likely it’s a member of the staff that missed it and forgot to put your novel up. We should be able to solve it soon.”

Pi nodded, but it was still nervous, and it couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t that simple.

Not too long later, the bald monk’s photo lit up, and the ping from the message box rang from the speakers.

“There’s a reply!”

Zhang Zian and Pi both perked up, immediately clicking on the message to open it.

The thing that shocked them both was that the editor didn’t reply to them with words or emojis. He had instead had sent a photo over.

What was with that?

Zhang Zian opened the photo, puzzled, to look at it more clearly.

The photo was taken with a phone. It was the front page of a newspaper.

He knew this newspaper. It was the most influencial newspaper in the entire country. The main headline was clearly printed out: “Ten Criticisms of Online Writing.”

Zhang Zian and Pi looked at each other. What was with the cryptic message?

Even though they hadn’t understood what was going on, the issue was clearly on this newspaper.

The photo wasn’t too clear, and it didn’t show the whole article.

Zhang Zian patted Pi’s shoulder, comforting it. “Wait here. I’ll go out to buy a newspaper. I’ll be back. Don’t worry, the world isn’t going to end.”