The next morning, 8:50.

Gu Youran arrived at the Xingyao Entertainment Building ten minutes early.

As soon as the elevator door opened, she saw Yunye standing at the end of the corridor waiting for her.

"good morning."

Yunye walked towards him quickly, her black turtleneck sweater making her skin look even whiter.

She noticed the faint green shadow under Gu Youran's eyes and asked, "Didn't you sleep well last night?"

Gu Youran subconsciously touched his face and said, "I tried playing 'Unfinished Gift', but I always felt that the key change in the third bar wasn't natural enough."

Yunye's eyes suddenly softened, and he comforted her, "Don't worry, take your time."

At this moment, the door of the conference room behind him suddenly opened from the inside.

"Ah, you're here."

A woman with short hair stuck her head out.

She was wearing a distressed black leather jacket with seven or eight metal badges of various shapes pinned on it, and an unlit cigarette was casually dangling from her lips.

After seeing the person coming, she put the cigarette behind her ear, and her exposed arms were densely covered with musical notation tattoos, and some of the notes were specially tattooed in colors.

"Director Cen," Yun Ye said, turning sideways and making a gesture of introduction, "This is Gu Youran."

"I'm Cen Su, just call me Sister Su."

The woman grinned, revealing two sharp fangs, and a few fine lines appeared at the corners of her eyes.

"Don't be scared by my outfit. People who perform musicals tend to have some quirks."

The aroma of freshly ground coffee wafted through the conference room.

Cen Su plopped down on the swivel chair and opened his laptop. "Writer Yun said your adoptive father is Allen Kress?"

Gu Youran's fingers curled slightly on her knees.

The full name of my adoptive father coming out of a stranger's mouth was like a scabbed scar suddenly being opened.

"I heard him play at the Y Country Bar in 2007."

Cen Su cleared his throat and hummed a vague melody.

Gu Youran suddenly looked up.

This is exactly the passage in "Between the Strings" marked "Whisper of the Dead."

What shocked her even more was that the melody was exactly the same as the one her adoptive father hummed to put her to sleep deep in her memory.

Yun Ye whispered, "Director Cen is my senior at the Royal Academy of Music, and she was the first person to discover the true value of the music sheet left by your adoptive father."

Cen Su finally raised his head from the computer and looked at Gu Youran with sharp eyes.

"This movie tells the story of an orphan's musical struggle, which is, in essence, your own story. So you don't need to 'act', just be yourself."

She suddenly turned the laptop screen towards Gu Youran.

The screen shows a blurry old video:

Little Gu Youran was wearing a plaid shirt that was obviously one size too big. She was standing on a high stool at the bar, holding an acoustic guitar that was almost as tall as her in her arms.

Her tender fingers moved clumsily on the strings, and her forehead wrinkled slightly from the effort.

"This is your first public performance. You are seven years, three months and sixteen days old."

Cen Su's voice was unusually gentle. "You sang three notes wrong, but the audience cheered like crazy."

Gu Youran's fingertips trembled slightly.

Of course she remembered that day.

After the performance, her adoptive father hugged her tightly backstage, and his stubble tickled her cheeks.

He whispered in her ear, "Baby, wrong notes are part of music."

“This is where the movie starts.”

Yunye flipped open the script, "But not as a memory, but as a recurring dream you have now."

His fingers tapped lightly on the script, "Because this is the true starting point of your musical journey."

Cen Su turned the laptop towards Gu Youran again, "We need to focus on the last scene."

Her voice suddenly became serious, and even the cigarette tucked behind her ear swayed.

A high-definition video popped up on the screen.

Seventeen-year-old Gu Youran stood in the recording studio, wearing monitoring headphones and singing softly into the microphone.

Gu Youran immediately recognized that this was the recording footage of the first album she created for Han Jingchen, which was obviously provided by her agent Mai Wen.

"According to the information," Cen Su paused the video, freezing it on a close-up of Gu Youran singing with her eyes closed, "you will create five new songs every year from now on, compiling them into an album."

"But the strange thing is..."

She paused meaningfully, "You never appear in public, you only record in the studio."

Gu Youran's fingertips unconsciously stroked the edge of the teacup.

This was a secret agreement she made with herself.

Music is like her unspoken secret love, which must remain private.

"So," Gu Youran raised his head, his eyes flickering between Yun Ye and Cen Su, "Are you planning to put my entire life on the screen, like a documentary?"

Yunye quickly explained: "It's not a simple reproduction. What we want to show is..."

She chose her words carefully, "How a girl finds the meaning of life again through music after losing her loved ones."

"wrong."

Cen Su suddenly lit the cigarette he had been playing with for a long time and squinted his eyes in the rising smoke.

"I want you to write an ending for this story yourself."

She blew out a perfect smoke ring. "With your music, your way."

At this moment, Cen Su's pen suddenly stopped on a line of words on the schedule.

"Two to five every afternoon? And we can't shoot night scenes?"

She raised an eyebrow and tapped the tip of her pen on the paper. "Are you putting the crew on ventilators? It's such precious filming time?"

Yun Ye coughed lightly and explained awkwardly, "This was a special request from Mr. Shi from Gu Youran's family."

Her voice became increasingly quiet. "They said they wanted to ensure she had enough rest..."

Cen Su snorted and clicked on another video file.

"The male lead has been confirmed to be newcomer actor Shen Lian, a junior at the Central Academy of Drama."

In the picture, a boy in a simple white shirt stands quietly, with a hint of melancholy between his eyebrows.

Gu Youran was suddenly stunned.

The boy on the screen was silent and had his head slightly lowered, which was exactly the same as Han Jingchen whom she met by chance at the door of the bookstore when she was seventeen years old.

Cen Su closed his laptop and said, "The tentative plan is to officially start filming next Monday."

She turned her head and looked out the window. "The location is the Shiguang Bookstore in the old city."

She turned back and looked at Gu Youran with a burning gaze, "That corner bookstore that made your heart flutter at first sight and gave you inspiration for your creations."

Yunye opened his diary and wrote quickly on the paper with his pen.

"The estimated filming period is three months. However..."

She looked up at Gu Youran with a questioning look in her eyes, "Before that, you need to finish the final draft of 'Unfinished Gift'. After all..."

"After all, this is the soul of the entire movie."

Cen Su took over the conversation, "Especially the ending part, you need to personally complete the melody that was not completed that year."

She paused, "This unfinished work left by your adoptive father will become the most crucial ending of the movie."