Chapter 46

Chapter 46

Around 7 o'clock, the nanny van dropped Shi Tuo off at the law firm building. It was unclear if he had fallen asleep, but he hadn’t moved much during the ride. After they arrived, An Ye gently nudged Shi Tuo's foot with hers.

He paused for a second before reacting.

So, he definitely hadn’t fallen asleep. As a graduate of a prestigious film academy, An Ye referred to this kind of delayed response as "foot acting."

Luckily, he wasn’t shameless enough to take off his eye mask and still act like he was groggy. He squinted his eyes and glanced out the window. Then, he fumbled through the pockets of his down jacket and threw a whole bag of strange-flavored candies at An Ye.

“Let’s go,” he said, bending down to get out of the car and waving at her from outside.

He dashed into the law firm, dressed all in black.

An Ye looked down at the bag of colorful, dopamine-filled, odd-flavored candies. After the driver started the car, she sent a message to Shi Tuo.

Little Goose: “Let me buy you some scarves and ties. I just can't stand it. You look like an old black-and-white TV.”

Shi Tuo replied quickly: “You can, but I have a condition.”

Little Goose: “? I think you've grown a lot bolder over these ten years. Is that how your height came about?”

Shi Tuo: “I’ll buy you a set of dining chairs. That bar counter you eat at is really inconvenient.”

Little Goose: “?”

Little Goose: “A six-person table, four chairs, white. If you want a bigger one, I’ll throw it out.”

Shi Tuo: “Image.jpg”

A white six-person dining table, the same brand as her bar counter set.

Little Goose: “okok.jpg”

She didn’t even realize it, but this was the first emoji she’d sent Shi Tuo since their reunion, and the first one in five years, apart from the red envelopes she had sent him.

Shi Tuo didn’t reply after that.

An Ye locked her screen and put on her eye mask to rest.

Shi Tuo sat alone in the empty office on the twelfth floor, his finger tapping on the little goose emoji, zooming in, then zooming out.

The smile at the corner of his mouth hid the redness around his eyes.

Due to the weather, Director Yang's new movie had a one-day break, but the weather didn’t improve. After a whole day of rain and sleet, Bai Gang City welcomed the second heavy snow of the year. By the next morning, the entire city was blanketed in white snow.

Even the indoor summer scenes had to use special effects, as the snow could be seen through the windows.

Director Yang cursed and moved the shooting location indoors. His original plan to let An Ye first portray Alin's main personality had to be disrupted. Usually, An Ye didn’t need to worry about her acting, but now she entered an endless loop of NGs.

"Cut!" The seventh take was called, and the set fell silent. Director Yang glared at An Ye, expressionless.

An Ye returned his gaze with the same expression.

A few times, Director Yang seemed on the verge of cursing but held himself back. Finally, frustrated, he slammed the megaphone onto the ground, pointed at An Ye, and walked straight into the makeup room.

An Ye pressed her lips together and followed him in.The door hadn’t even been fully closed when Yang Zhengyi threw his phone onto the table with a loud slap.

"This is the expression you came up with, how come you can’t smile once the camera’s on?" He waited until the door was fully shut before shouting.

On his phone was the photo An Ye had sent him last time, where she was smiling sweetly.

In his heart, Yang Zhengyi always thought of An Ye as a gem he had discovered. He was particularly strict with her, but also extremely tolerant.

He would never publicly scold her, nor would he let his bad temper or swear words spill onto her. But he demanded perfection in her acting—just one less degree of excellence was unacceptable.

An Ye stared at the photo for a long time, then smiled at Yang Zhengyi with the exact same smile from the photo.

Yang Zhengyi shouted again, "You can do it, why can’t you now?!"

"But I don’t understand." An Ye's voice was a little hoarse after three hours of filming the same shot.

Yang Zhengyi’s voice grew louder each time, "What do you not understand? You’ve been complaining about the script from the start, and we’ve been shooting for over a month now, and you still don’t get it! What’s so hard to understand?!"

An Ye pursed her lips.

In truth, both of them knew where An Ye was stuck. Today’s scene was about Alin’s personality that had a romantic mindset—Xiao Jiao, who falls in love with a model on a street advertisement board. She had never seen the model in person but was madly in love with her.

She would steal the posters, the life-sized standees, and every time she saw a new poster, she treated it like a coincidence. But she never paid attention to the model’s private life.

Until one day, she saw the model in person at a mall, while the model was shooting for a coffee ad. Sunlight hit the model’s face, and a light breeze tousled her hair. Xiao Jiao, seeing her face, smiled the same way An Ye had smiled in the photo she had sent Yang Zhengyi.

An Ye didn’t understand why Xiao Jiao would smile that way in that particular scene.

"She shouldn’t have fallen in love with the real person," An Ye said. "I don’t even understand why she would love this model. If Alin’s personality splits represent emotional projections from different periods of her life, then Xiao Jiao should be Alin’s representation of love."

"But what’s the point of Xiao Jiao falling for the model? The first time she saw the model's face was on a chocolate ad. Is it because that chocolate was forced into Alin’s mouth when she was bullied as a child, so Xiao Jiao fell in love with the model?"

"That should have been fear, not love. When the model appeared in person, at that very moment, Xiao Jiao’s fear should have materialized. Why would she smile like that?"

"Because the model’s face covered her fear, and it took all her attention," Yang Zhengyi repeated the words he had said many times before. "The model isn’t her fear. The model is her salvation—the materialization of her ability to forget her fear."

"So when she sees the model, her fear is completely covered, and she only sees the sunlight and the wind blowing through her hair. That’s why she smiles like that!"

An Ye remained silent.

"Dammit, you just can’t understand why this thing can redeem fear, can you?!" Yang Zhengyi finally couldn’t hold back and cursed. "And you still want to act in a romance drama? In a romance drama, people fall in love at first sight, just by looking at each other’s face, and they abandon their wives and children!"

An Ye: "...That’s a drama with ethical themes."

Yang Zhengyi: "...If you argue one more time, I’ll throw you out!"

An Ye shut her mouth, returning to her previous pursed-lips state.

Yang Zhengyi rubbed his forehead, feeling like today’s deadlock wouldn’t be broken. He sighed heavily. "Xiao Jiao’s scenes are crucial. They can’t be changed. You have to get through this part."

"Today is just the beginning. Xiao Jiao is the most well-adjusted personality among Alin’s personalities. There are still many scenes ahead that involve full emotional development. If you can’t get past this, how do you plan on playing the rest?"

An Ye looked down at the photo of her smiling on her phone.

"This smile, when did you smile like that?" Yang Zhengyi pointed at the photo on the phone. "I’ll give you one hour to think about it."

"If, after one hour, you’re still in this state, then just be a puppet, don’t argue with me about character understanding. I’ll tell you to smile, you smile. I’ll tell you to cry, you cry! Understand?!"

This was the final ultimatum."But..." An Ye still argued, "If it were Alin, she would never forget her fear just because of a model on a chocolate wrapper."

The way the world worked couldn’t be that simple. Alin, who had been bullied and traumatized since childhood, leading to her eventual personality split, couldn’t be that simple.

"So, how do you think she could forget her fear?" Yang Zhengyi coldly asked, countering her.

"Fear can’t be forgotten." An Ye paused for a moment, then said, "Even if someone helps her cover her fear in that moment, it’s only for that moment."

Yang Zhengyi stood up, pointed at An Ye, then walked out.

"A group, one hour break," someone shouted from outside.

An Ye stared at herself in the mirror. She still held the same smile on her face, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes.

She rubbed her face.

One hour...

It had been a long time since the director had locked her in the small black room. This time, it was different. Before, it was because her emotions were off, and the director would ask her to calm down. But now, she could fully portray all of Xiao Jiao’s emotions, yet she couldn’t infect herself.

Perhaps another director, another actor, could have faked it. But the ability to infect others wasn’t guaranteed in every shot. When Xiao Jiao saw the model, the scene was very beautiful, and all she had to do was smile, and it would be infectious. But Yang Zhengyi wasn’t just any director, and she wasn’t just any actor.

So she got stuck.

She rubbed her face again and opened her phone to look at the photo she had asked Shi Tuo to take for her.

She didn’t know why she smiled like that in the alley behind the amusement park. Her focus at the time had been on not letting Qing Ze use her too thoroughly, and she really hadn’t interacted much with Shi Tuo. She didn’t even know why she smiled at him.

It seemed like it was because she had told him to stand on the left at the beginning, but he had stood on the right to block Qing Ze, and then she had glared at him, telling him to move back to the left.

It was his expression that made her smile.

Shi Tuo had been irritated. In that narrow alley, acting as a human shield and being treated like that made him upset, so his expression was awful.

An Ye sighed and locked the screen.

She suddenly realized the reason she couldn’t get past this part.

Shi Tuo was that model, that box that had once covered her fear in her naive days.

Because of this box, she had smiled that way when she came back, but she still didn’t understand why she smiled like that.

Ten minutes passed.

An Ye closed her eyes and thought through all of Alin’s experiences, including the ending where Alin, who firmly believed she hadn’t killed anyone, saw her best personality, Xiao Jiao, dismembering a body in the surveillance footage and breaking down.

Alin didn’t escape fear. She just temporarily left it.

Just like her, smiling briefly in that alley.

So it should be very beautiful.

Because fleeting things are the most beautiful: youth, beauty, even life, are most beautiful when they burn brightly.

An Ye covered her face.

The reality shattered, and she once again connected herself with the fictional character in the film. She felt herself floating again, watching this makeshift makeup room from mid-air. She saw Alin, covering her face, leaning against the back of a chair.