I'm back
The next day, Lu Xinyang didn't get to eat the hand-shredded chicken he had been craving because the crew stuffed a phone into his hand while he was asleep and asked him to hold it for fifteen minutes. When he woke up, they announced that his time for the day was up.
At the same time, the announcement was made, which almost made him sick: "Let's shoot a few more takes today. We'll definitely be done tomorrow."
Always, always, always, it is that sentence that keeps repeating——
"The filming has been completed. I will go back tomorrow."
"I won't lie to you this time, it really is tomorrow."
"Tomorrow, of course."
"Tomorrow."
"tomorrow."
In fact, he couldn't go back tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or the day after that. Life marched on as it should, but he was stuck here, with no end in sight.
Lu Xinyang squatted in the deserted studio in a dejected mood. He hadn't dared to contact Ji Rongyu for three days, and he didn't even realize that he had been disconnected for more than three days.
Now he doesn't go anywhere. He's on set the moment he opens his eyes in the morning, and walks back to his bed with his eyes closed at night. He even knows the script, which only has a few dozen words, by heart. I don't know if this is progress, but he's also realized that the pain presented in the script is a little thin, lacking a thrilling resonance.
Director Gao said that the emotional outburst in this scene must be a feast, and Lu Xinyang's own skills are not enough to lead such a performance, so he can only rely on passively entering the role.
Lu Xinyang also knew that the director was deliberately creating conditions for him to immerse himself in the role, allowing him to personally experience a round of chaotic and disordered collapse, but this unhesitating understanding was precisely the biggest stumbling block in front of him. Even his anger was scattered. Even if Director Gao personally jumped out to be a target for the villain, he was unable to concentrate his emotions and accurately penetrate the bull's eye.
This scene was shot countless times, and the director repeatedly changed the shooting techniques and scene construction. He tried to throw Lu Xinyang into the mountains, thick fog, iron walls and blank papers, but the final effect still missed his fictional target.
Under the camera, Lu Xinyang was sunk into the water for the countless times. There was a blazing sea of fire on the shore, and the plastic props were unscrupulously producing a disgusting burnt smell in the raging fire.
He opened his eyes and looked at the red water. After a brief blank in his mind, the voice of Fu Qianyu, which he had memorized by heart, disappeared from his ears. He subconsciously wanted to go back to the source of the voice and find it again, and then... he suddenly smelled the scent of Ji Rongyu.
Lu Xinyang was sure that it was the best smell he had ever had. The wonderful fragrance was mature in his memory and flowed vibrantly throughout his body, making him not feel cold at all even if he soaked in the river at night.
But he soon thought again, this fragrance was growing steadily in Ji Rongyu's room, and the stories written by Ji Rongyu also blossomed and bore fruit in the warm fragrance, so how could the fruits it produced fall into the stinking burnt fire?
His floating feet instantly stepped firmly on the ground. Lu Xinyang threw away the camera and ran straight towards the sea of fire. Amid the exclamations of the people around him, he ran to the shore in one breath, picked up the fire hose hidden on the ground and started to put out the fire.
The others were stunned for a moment before they reacted. Seeing that the director didn't stop them, they followed suit and cleaned up the mess.
After the fire was extinguished, Lu Xinyang stood in the billowing smoke and turned around, soaking the director.
Director Gao wiped the water off his face and waved his hand expressionlessly, saying, "Rest. Let's get lunch boxes first."
When I looked up again, Lu Xinyang was already walking on the water.
He walked upstream until he could no longer see anyone around. Then he sat down in the waist-deep water and put his hand down to gently touch the surface of the water.
As his hands waved, the river water was slowly shaken. His expression was so focused and absorbed, as if he really wanted to shake the other self on the water back to the person he was worried about.
"I'll be back soon..." He spoke silently, repeating the words he had broken his contract with many times. When he repeated it for the third time, his newly grown wisdom teeth once again bit through his mouth, and the smell of blood burned his heart intermittently.
Once again, he stood by the roadside, dragging his suitcase, only to be told "tomorrow" again. Without a word, Lu Xinyang returned to his sleeping quarters, locked the door, and ignored countless printed filming notices shoved under the door. Even when someone banged on the door, he ignored them.
In the empty little room, Lu Xinyang sat alone on the bed, hugging his pillow. He felt like he didn't want to do anything, but then his eyes blurred and the empty mineral water bottle beside the bed slammed heavily against the wall. He looked down at the deformed and scratched bottle that bounced back, then picked it up and put it away. Ji Rongyu liked the house to be clean and tidy, and there was no littering on the floor.
The phone was still in the hands of the staff. Lu Xinyang turned on the computer and found the chat history between him and Ji Rongyu.
Long passages of voice messages were almost always followed by a row of red dots. Previously, they were mostly chats on mobile phones, and these voice messages were still shown as unread on the computer. Now he clicked on the row of small red dots one by one.
"It's sunny now, let's dry the quilt, and let myself dry too."
"I just helped my grandfather apply medicine. He said his neck and shoulders hurt. Then I found out he hadn't taken his medicine today and had secretly hidden it in the closet. The old man next door took him to another doctor to take his pulse and asked the doctor to prescribe some health-preserving medicine. He wrote a prescription. He hasn't even finished his medicine here, but he's already rushed to get the prescription there. What kind of person is he... Oh, I mean that doctor."
"No, it's fake."
"What are you talking about? Why divide five months by three hundred?"
"Go and rest for a while. You're dizzy."
"Go to sleep if you're tired."
Ji Rongyu's voice spanned thousands of miles and could still take root and sprout fully in this narrow and cold little room. Lu Xinyang listened quietly and felt that the disgusting poisonous fire had finally been extinguished at this moment.
At night, after listening to the last five-second voice message, Lu Xinyang finally walked out of the room, carrying his computer. The assistant director outside the door stopped raising his hand mid-air, looking at him with a worried look on his face, but he just said in a muffled voice, "Let's go."
When he returned to the set, the staff in various departments became less active. Some even hoped that he would go on strike for a longer time, because even they could not stand the days of shooting waste films all the time and making no progress.
The director arrived late. While others were preparing, Lu Xinyang stood in the water without even taking off his headphones. He traded his computer for his phone, just wanting to hear Ji Rongyu speak again, but suddenly found a voice message with a red dot at the end of the chat history.
The first to last and the second to last are tied, both lasting five seconds.
Lu Xinyang was stunned for a while before he thought that he might not have paid close attention when switching between the computer and the mobile phone. He glanced at the familiar length and thought he had heard it before, thus missing out on a small fish that had slipped through the net.
It was as if the river water was staggering back into his heart. Lu Xinyang didn't know why he held his breath. He timidly clicked on the second to last message. It said: "I bought you some delicious chocolate."
Then the penultimate video played automatically. He heard silence for the first three seconds, and then a familiar voice emerged in the last two seconds, saying very softly, "I missed you a little."
Lu Xinyang covered his eyes and slowly squatted down. He curled up his legs and pressed them against his chest, his lips tightly clenched.
The director, who was originally very uninterested, suddenly jumped up from the small stool, set up the lights himself, and quietly and nimbly carried the camera over.
Staring at the Lu Xinyang he'd never seen before, he felt a moment of daze. This wasn't how he'd imagined acting at all, but when he thought about it, being isolated and helpless, yet still caring about someone, the feeling that filled him wasn't necessarily resounding anger... perhaps it was longing, memories.
Fu Qianyu has someone he can't forget, and he is determined to find that person after more than ten years of separation and unfamiliarity. It is precisely this point that Lu Xinyang can resonate with him, which is why there is this unexpected but just right highlight.
Director Gao stretched out his hand to the side, and his assistant immediately brought out a blank sign that had been prepared long ago. He wrote a few words on it, then raised the sign high and shook it vigorously a few times to attract Lu Xinyang's attention.
The sign read [Let's go, the car is waiting for you at the intersection], followed by a large arrow. Lu Xinyang looked at it in a daze at first, and it took him a long time to stagger to his feet.
The camera took a long close-up of the much thinner face, squeezing out every last bit of Lu Xinyang's acting value, and the director finished the work with satisfaction.
At this time, Lu Xinyang came over dripping wet. He asked in a hoarse voice, "Can I go now?"
"Okay."
"real?"
"real."
Lu Xinyang swept his eyes across the entire set, and saw that the recording and lighting equipment were turned off one after another, and the props were dismantled one by one and stacked into boxes. He paused, then turned around and ran away without even going back to get his luggage, for fear that if he was delayed any longer, the director would change his mind and continue to detain him here.
His running was like some kind of fuse that tore away the dull night, and the set suddenly erupted in screams and cheers. The crowd, which had been suppressed for a long time, first turned into a mad beast and galloped like thousands of horses, and then the crazy collision and hitting sounds were pieced together into a large-scale handheld pole dance performance. The director asked his assistant to follow with a flashlight to send Lu Xinyang off, and then immediately exported the content he had just filmed and sent it to his colleagues who opposed him.
Come and see, did you see it? If he hadn't used all sorts of torture methods, how could Lu Xinyang suddenly come to his senses and act so well?
Wen Zhuo, who was still staying up late, was the first to see the good news. He didn't dare to say directly that it wasn't a sudden enlightenment or that he missed his boyfriend too much. Instead, he asked hesitantly, "Director, you're not going to cut my scene in too, are you?"
He vaguely remembered that he had filmed a mysterious shot of smiling against the light, and he was very immersed in the role. Now he suddenly got goose bumps when thinking about it. If this shot was edited together with Lu Xinyang's gaze in the promotional trailer, it would be a big misunderstanding.
"What misunderstanding? Who misunderstood? Lu Xinyang?" Director Gao cursed sharply, "His brain is so wide open, how could he have the nerve to misunderstand?"
"Director, you sound a lot like Teacher Ji right now, you know... And I'm afraid the audience will misunderstand," Wen Zhuo sighed helplessly. "We've already deleted the romance scenes from the script. If you deliberately mislead people in the trailer and they come expecting romance and then find there's none, they'll definitely be mad at you."
Director Gao sneered, "Are you helping him or yourself? Even if I edit them together, so what? There are so many people who have committed trailer fraud, and I'm not the only one. Do you think your personal affairs are affecting your work?"
"Besides, even if I didn't commit fraud, wouldn't I still be criticized? Do you know the current climate? Even the censorship allows homosexuality, and we're actually going back and filming a bromance? If I tell anyone about it, will I be able to save face?!"
Wen Zhuo whispered, "But my wife is about to give birth, and I'm going to post on Weibo to share the good news with everyone... If you cut it carelessly, it will only embarrass you even more."
"Even you're threatening me???" Director Gao was furious. "Alright! Stop treating me like a fool! I don't have any grudge against you. Don't I know what I should and shouldn't do?"
After hanging up the phone, he was still breathing heavily when he raised his speaker and shouted, "The overtime pay for this time will be deducted from the male lead's salary! We'll order a big meal to treat everyone tomorrow when we get home!"
The cheers suddenly became louder.
The male protagonist didn't care about the salary at all at this moment. He was just afraid that the director would call someone to ambush him on the road, stop the car and take him away.
Lu Xinyang rushed to the airport late at night, bought a ticket, and boarded the fastest flight. Looking down from the pitch-black night sky, the clusters of lights gradually dimmed as the sky began to brighten. He thought that even if the director had a golden cudgel, he wouldn't be able to stab him again. He could finally send Ji Rongyu that message:
【I'm back. 】
A few hours later, the plane landed and the sunlight brightly bathed the entire Shangchuan Airport. Ji Rongyu stood at the arrival gate in slippers, smiling at the crowd and opening his arms to him.
Lu Xinyang rushed over as fast as he could and hugged him tightly: "I miss you so much, I miss you so much, I miss you so much, I miss you so much..."
"Me too," Ji Rongyu said, "I love you too."
"Not only do I love you, I'm also going to change jobs and professions. I won't do this job anymore," Lu Xinyang couldn't wait to get rid of all the bad things that made him sad. "I'll never go on business trips again, never have online romances again, never work overtime again, and never be so far away from you again..."
Ji Rongyu's lips trembled slightly, and he held him tighter with both hands: "That's it, I can't think of any other job you can find."
"It's okay, I can learn slowly," Lu Xinyang said with red eyes, "at worst I can just continue to be a three-good cleaner!"
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