Waiting after leaving

On the afternoon he learned his grandfather wanted to sell the old house, Bai Shunan received news of the reshoots. He was overcome with excitement. He always hated sudden things, but when he thought about meeting Lu Jinfeng tonight, the excitement didn't last long. He booked his train tickets, struggling with the choice of date.

The moment he first heard about selling the house, he thought about going back tomorrow, but when it really came to the decision, his thoughts started playing tricks on him, and he finally made the decision for tomorrow but then thought about changing it.

By the evening, the uncertainty was still lingering in his heart. He saw Lu Jinfeng earlier than he expected, and the combined feelings were almost reaching the level of regret.

Bai Shunan had never expected this. Since their last separation, he always felt that something would be different when they met next time. He originally thought it would be a relief, because the two of them said goodbye out of their willingness to separate, everything was made clear, and after a period of buffering, he once came to the conclusion that Lu Jinfeng was no longer so "important", and even looked forward to meeting Lu Jinfeng to verify his guess.

He looked at him and felt satisfied. The sounds he heard were so shallow and lonely.

After Lu Jinfeng noticed him, he stopped looking at him.

Bai Shunan sensed something was amiss with Lu Jinfeng from his subtle movements. He took a step forward, his former contentment betrayed by discontent. With a destructive arrogance, he approached Lu Jinfeng. As he drew closer, Li Xuanyue approached, interrupting his steps. Bai Shunan, in time, saw something amiss with himself from this discontent, a loss of control he hadn't anticipated or considered acceptable.

"Did he encounter something while filming?" Bai Shunan looked at Lu Jinfeng's figure walking away and asked Li Xuanyue.

"Why do you ask?"

"He seems a little out of form."

"He's been like this all the time."

Lu Jinfeng, who had changed his clothes, walked out. Bai Shunan looked at him with a layer of questioning inquiry involuntarily. After filtering out that layer of doubt, the indifference he was used to in the past habitually occupied his eyes, revealing an indifferent look, and sometimes a hint of anxious eagerness in his eyes. It was this eagerness that should have been hidden that made him unable to help but pay attention to Lu Jinfeng. The questions were about to come out, but he swallowed them back into his heart again and again.

The night and people passed in a hurry. Bai Shunan finally waited for the chance to touch Lu Jinfeng. He kept looking at him, his movements hurried as if he was afraid that the person in front of him would disappear. He tried to use the calmness of being in the role to ease his heart that was about to be overwhelmed by confusion. His eyelashes trembled slightly. He saw the brows that Lu Jinfeng frowned slightly when he came back to his senses. The pain that flashed in his eyes at that moment was reflected in his eyes. He saw it clearly, his heart ached, trembling again and again, and raised his hands to hug him.

He opened his mouth, about to ask a question, but his words faltered. The emotions that had troubled him before seemed to vanish in an instant with the hug, unable to disturb him any longer. It was as if he had finally found a place of peace and release. He turned and kissed Lu Jinfeng on the cheek, finding the true moment, and hugged Lu Jinfeng tightly.

He depended on him, as if he had fallen into a bottomless pit and found a chance to live in the An family. Everything was so incredible. Even if he fell deeper, he could still get the message of being alive.

Lu Jinfeng gradually began to respond.

Everything seems to be reappearing and reconstructing.

When the hug ended, the memory faded unrealistically due to the haze of the aftermath, transforming everything into a hollow feeling, as if the previous hug had never happened. Trying to look back at that moment, he found that the memory faded too quickly, too beautiful to be forgotten the faster. He repeated the words once more, trying to recreate that momentary feeling. This time, there was a soft voice: "Are you happy?"

Lu Jinfeng looked at him, placed his hands on both sides of Bai Shunan's cheeks, stroked his cheeks with his fingertips, his eyes lingering on his lips, the lips he had just kissed. Lu Jinfeng pursed his lips slightly, a few smiles passed across his face, he wanted to kiss him, raised his eyes to look into Shunan's eyes, the sparkling light was not sure whether it was moonlight or tears.

In the dark night when all sounds began to come, he responded softly.

…

Bai Shunan changed the train ticket time to five days later, and he took advantage of these few days to clean up the house.

He carried his luggage and returned to the home of his youth, the setting sun shining behind him. As he entered, he noticed something was missing from the house, a feeling of relief yet a subtle unease. Grandpa stood in the hallway, his back to him, staring ahead, as if bidding farewell to this house.

Bai Shunan was facing the changes. Grandpa turned around and said, "Shunan, you're back. You should have come back earlier. Shunnian left this morning. It's strange that you two brothers never meet."

During the five days of cleaning the room, Bai Shunan deeply felt his procrastination, which was a laziness developed over a long period of time. The procrastination here was intentional on his part.

He knew he would come back, so he didn't want to meet him.

…

The overexposed light shines on Jiang Yingshan, and the camera gently accompanies her.

Li Xuanyue looked at the clip playing in a loop on the computer. At first, she was thinking about how to modify it. Maybe it was because of her cold. Now she didn't understand what she was thinking or how she was thinking.

She recalled the moment she first met Jiang Yingshan, the child who had accidentally wandered into her camera lens. What was going through her mind before she could even see her face clearly? She remembered one of the reasons she chose "Light and Shadow" as the title of the film: a line from an unfinished book: "All the changes, all the charm, all the beauty in life are made up of light and shadow."

A person walked in front of her camera and she pressed the shutter.

After seeing her clearly, light and shadow appeared before my eyes.

She chose the heroine.

She remembered that night when she stood downstairs of Ahua's building holding a bottle of wine, and she remembered the girl who stood in the distance watching her, waiting for her to say "let's go home", and she remembered the girl who followed her until she returned to her home.

She walked to the window and watched her leave.

Li Xuanyue couldn't deny it, as she had already noticed it by then.

Li Xuanyue lowered her head, and she couldn't calm down once she paid attention to her breathing. She raised her eyes tiredly and looked at the person on the screen. Now she recalled these things in a retrospective manner. Her original intention was to sort out one night a few days ago. She opened the door of the hotel and saw the place where she should sleep tonight, and there was another person lying there.

As soon as she walked in, Jiang Yingshan sat up straight and waited for her. She was still wearing the same dress she wore to the dinner party in the evening. Compared to that time, it was a little looser now, revealing one shoulder. Li Xuanyue once again found that the red color really suited her, and made her eyes look brighter.

Li Xuanyue sat on the sofa. She looked at her calmly, seeing her expression, not shy. Her eyes, lingering and bright, followed her closely. Li Xuanyue walked over and gently tugged at her sleeve. A faint thought, like the sincere words of love she would say in the future, floated in her mind. She slowly covered her exposed shoulder, lowering her eyes and saying, "I won't be staying here tonight. Don't wait for me."

After hesitating over various color and music combinations, the final decision was never clear.

She looked at the time, stood up, pulled open half of the curtains, opened the window, and the wind and snow poured in. She sighed, looked down helplessly, and saw the figure waiting for her again.

She was wearing heavy clothes, with most of her face buried in a red scarf, sitting quietly on the bench.

This time when their eyes met, Li Xuanyue did not quickly close the curtains with anger as usual. She stood there, seemingly in a trance, but she was always looking in the direction of Jiang Yingshan.

After a while, she closed the curtains again as she had done the other day, but once again left the windows open.