Chapter 51

Chapter Fifty-One

It probably won’t get any better.

An Ye also glared at Yang Zhengyi, unwilling to give up, and asked again, “You want to shoot two versions?”

“Yeah.” Yang Zhengyi held a tea mug, letting the steam bathe his face, squinting with a strange sense of satisfaction as he nodded. “We’ve got the money now, and the shooting schedule’s going well.”

So he was getting itchy.

An Ye kept glaring at him.

The other version’s script, rewritten three times by screenwriter Zhu Sa, was beyond An Ye’s comprehension. It was a suspense film about a murderer with dissociative identity disorder—why make such drastic changes to a secondary personality obsessed with romance? In the latest version, A Jiao’s storyline had turned into a complete love story.

Zhu Sa said A Jiao represented hope—she was the only one among A Lin’s personalities who had light and a future.

But A Jiao ended up killing someone.

So in An Ye’s understanding, this was just another classic Yang Zhengyi film—offering hope only to crush it with his own hands, a kind of dramatic handling he was good at, and a kind she could understand.

But in the version Yang Zhengyi now wanted to shoot, A Jiao didn’t kill anyone in the end.

When A Lin, babbling and strange, drew everyone’s attention and made them all believe that one of her other personalities had committed the murder—when she was locked in a mental hospital, and the victim’s family subjected her to every kind of humiliation and accusation, suffering every kind of torment—the ending had A Jiao holding the model’s hand in her hallucination, smiling as they walked toward the light.

This was something An Ye couldn’t understand.

She felt that if all art films developed like this, she’d better stick to films with more slicing and dicing.

At least she wouldn’t feel so awkward acting in them.

“Can’t act it?” Yang Zhengyi looked at An Ye’s face full of numb resistance.

He was quite surprised. He’d been very worried about her odd state after wrapping yesterday, but by the time he saw her again this morning, that had disappeared. Today’s scenes had all gone smoothly. She’d used a lot of rarely-used acting techniques in that gambling-addict personality, engaging the audience while still keeping herself intact.

That really surprised Yang Zhengyi. So after they wrapped today, he shared in advance what his team had discussed all night—wanting to give her time to prepare, since a major emotional arc was coming up.

When it came to playing positive emotions, An Ye always had a weak spot. She grasped conflict and darkness very quickly, but when it came to familial, romantic, or friendly feelings—she was… immature.

She didn’t seem to understand emotional needs.

If you talked to her about emotional scenes, she’d argue the logic. Like: how can you fall in love after just one meeting? Or: if your parents treated you like that when you were young, why would you still become like them when you grow up?

For example, she couldn’t understand A Jiao’s love at first sight for the model on the chocolate wrapper.

And when she couldn’t understand something, even if she knew how to act it, she’d come off awkward.

So Yang Zhengyi planned to lock her in the makeup room and really talk her through this scene.

From a perspective she could understand.

“You can think of the word love as a kind of solution,” Yang Zhengyi said. “Don’t think about all the meanings humans attach to love—it’s just a method.”

He gave her an example: “A Jiao falls in love with the model because of the chocolate wrapper—because the model solved her fear.”

An Ye frowned.

“We’re not going to discuss whether this method is reliable or not. Let’s just follow a logical path of understanding,” Yang Zhengyi said, tapping her gently and taking a sip of tea. “Try to understand the thought behind this method. Being bullied is A Lin’s nightmare, and to solve that nightmare, she came up with many approaches—and falling in love with the model solved it.”

An Ye’s brows scrunched into a half-formed, hesitant furrow."When people experience prolonged pain, they always try to find ways to escape it. The more 'normal' ones escape through travel, reading, watching movies and dramas. The more extreme ones turn to love, hurting others, hatred, or even ending their own lives to get away."

"Their ultimate goal is all the same—to escape pain."

"A Lin is the same. Because of her pain, she split herself into five personalities. Each one carried a small part of what she had gone through. When even that method couldn’t help her escape, she sought out a new one."

"The self-destruction in the first version was her way of escaping. The turn toward the light in the second version is also her way of escaping."

"Does it make a bit more sense when I put it that way?" Yang Zhengyi looked at An Ye.

An Ye hesitated for a long moment, then nodded slightly.

"As for why A Lin would choose that method," Yang Zhengyi paused, "it’s because, among all her possible endings, that was the only one that looked toward the light, that seemed bright, that held the possibility of happiness. She had no other options left."

An Ye furrowed her brows again.

Yang Zhengyi could tell she was starting to sort through the logic, so he didn’t press further. He hugged his tea mug and continued steaming his face.

This was the line of reasoning they’d spent all night working through over the script—it could withstand scrutiny.

Technically, it wasn’t necessary to go this deep with an actor. But he’d always had this my-daughter-is-in-the-business sort of feeling toward An Ye. He hoped she could go further.

At the very least, the next time she took on a romance film, she wouldn’t go asking the director and screenwriter whether love at first sight with that kind of man was a bit ridiculous...

"You know this..." An Ye had gone over the script in her head several times before she finally spoke, "It’s really... philosophical."

That strange feeling of suddenly seeing the logic clearly, but also feeling like nothing was actually resolved—how philosophical.

Yang Zhengyi was amused by the complicated expression on her face and said, “I’m actually really curious. Were you top of your class when you were in school? I remember you studied liberal arts, right? Why do you care so much about logic? If it’s not logically sound, you just can’t act it?”

“I was a terrible student,” An Ye smiled without elaborating. “You know my college entrance exam scores.”

Yang Zhengyi waved his hand. “Those scores don’t count.”

When An Ye took the college entrance exam, she’d just wrapped Lin Luo’s Amusement Park and hadn’t mentally come out of the role. She was like a sleepwalker through the whole test. Her scores weren’t high—just barely enough to pass the arts exam threshold. She almost had to retake the year.

“If you understand the logic, you’ll go back and think it over yourself?” Yang Zhengyi set down his mug, his fingers tapping on its handle. “People in this industry usually don’t like to talk about what’s in their hearts. Honestly, I didn’t really want to either…”

An Ye looked over at him.

“But you came out of one of my films. I’ve watched you crawl and fight your way through this industry for ten years. You’ve suffered, but you’ve also enjoyed the good parts. From not knowing anything at the start to now, where you watch what people say and hold back—you’ve made it, in a way.”

“Technically, there’s no need for an old half-retired guy like me to say anything more. And you—you may look easygoing on the surface, but what you’re really like inside... I bet even your mother might not be able to say for sure.”

An Ye’s expression calmed. Her gaze lowered. “I’ll still listen to what you say.”

She didn’t know what Yang Zhengyi was building up to, but he was one of the few people in the industry who knew about her hypersomnia, who knew her family situation.

He was, in a way, her mentor in the field.

She had always respected him deeply.

Yang Zhengyi tapped on his mug, hesitated for a long while, then finally said, “You need to change the way you act—or you’ll hit a ceiling.”

An Ye was taken aback.

“I’m not saying you’re bad now. You’re very good. Every Best Actress award you’ve won, you earned.”

“But other actors get typecast because of certain roles they’ve played. You—you’ve typecast yourself with your acting. Haven’t you noticed? You can’t play a positive character.”"Or rather, you can’t play someone who is truly living well."

"If I had said this a few years ago, it might have been considered a compliment."

"Drama, after all, always hinges on conflict. The characters in it need to create that sense of conflict by refusing to live a peaceful life—they have to stir up trouble. That used to be my favorite approach. It had to be extreme enough to reveal the truest facets of human nature."

"But now, maybe I’ve really gotten old. When I look back at those films of mine, I start to feel... maybe they went too far."

"Ordinary people don’t go through such extreme experiences, but their lives aren’t any better than the ones in my films."

"Negative emotions, the dark side of things, do activate a certain part of human nature. But they’re still too exposed. It’s like your acting—too sharp. Unforgettable at first glance, but it doesn’t settle in."

"You need to observe more of ordinary people’s lives—their joys, their sorrows, the mundane things. Let yourself find a place to be grounded."

"Once you reach that point, you’ll realize that all that philosophical logic I just went over with you—it won’t need to be analyzed."

"Jiujiu, you need to act as someone who is truly alive, not just someone who understands conflict. Because conflict exists so we can keep living—not to be destroyed."

An Ye had insomnia.

Her mind kept looping through the things Yang Zhengyi had said to her—things she knew were probably right, but she still couldn’t quite understand.

She knew she couldn’t play someone who was truly living well. Two years ago, she actually had a chance to act in a romance drama—a primetime series, a big-budget slice-of-life production. At the time, Yan Wan hadn’t yet revealed his true colors, and she was set to join the cast directly without even a screen test.

But it was the end of the year, and that whole year she hadn’t had any hypersomnia episodes. She was worried it might flare up during the shoot, so she voluntarily asked to do a test scene first, hoping to build rapport with the director so that if anything came up later, she could give them a heads-up in advance.

But after the test scene—there was no “later.”

The scene was simple: she was supposed to wait for her boyfriend—who had just confessed and was meeting her for their first date—at a café.

She blew it. During the audition, the director was half laughing, half crying, and told her, “That boyfriend is your true love. He’s not coming to kill you.”

...

An Ye rolled over.

The alarm clock on her nightstand already pointed to 2 a.m.

She sat up, thinking of messaging Chi Tuo on WeChat. Then she reconsidered and opened her email, sending a quick “are you asleep” to his private inbox.

Most normal people set their email notifications to Do Not Disturb during sleep hours. After all, if it’s a real emergency, no one would use email to get in touch. This way, if he was asleep, he wouldn’t hear it—and she wouldn’t feel like a criminal for waking up a fellow insomniac.

But one second later, her WeChat chimed.

Chi Tuo: [Your WeChat got hacked?]

Xiao E: [You’re seriously gonna drop dead. Even sleeping pills don’t work?]

Chi Tuo: [Had a lot of work today, just finished. Was about to sleep.]

Xiao E: [Oh.]

Chi Tuo: [???]

An Ye bit her lip as she stared at those three question marks.

She wondered why she had messaged Chi Tuo in the first place.She had been spending a lot of time with him lately, so she’d regained that feeling from ten years ago—whenever there was even the slightest stir in her heart, she wanted to tell him about it.

But after all, she wasn’t eighteen anymore. She couldn’t quite bring herself to type out something like What do you think it means to live well?—a line that sounded weird even just thinking about it.

She was already weird enough in front of Chi Tuo.

She had even scared him to tears...

Chi Tuo: [You at home?]

Xiao E: [? Yeah, the crew’s changing locations tomorrow. I’m not up until the afternoon.]

Chi Tuo: [Give me fifteen minutes.]

Xiao E: [??? What do you mean?]

Xiao E: [?]

Xiao E: [You live that close to me?]

Xiao E: [The apartments around here are pretty pricey, huh. You really hit the jackpot.]

Xiao E: [Or are you renting?]

Xiao E: [? Are you actually coming?]

Thirteen minutes later.

Chi Tuo: [Open the door, I’m outside.]