Water and Fire
The water flooded over him, and with the long-awaited "cut" sound, without warning or time to recover, Bai Shunan passed out. The concerned greetings from others, along with his consciousness, were drowned by the waves. When Bai Shunan arrived at the set that afternoon, he learned that the director had decided to adopt the plan previously proposed by Li Suiwen.
The floating feeling gradually sank to the bottom. Bai Shunan opened his eyes with a warm breath, and suddenly had an illusion that it was tomorrow. He looked at the light shining through the curtains and sat up.
Not long after, he walked out of the tent and saw Li Suiwen sitting in front of the fire. Bai Shunan walked over to her and sat down.
"Awake, how are you feeling? Are you okay?"
"fine."
"I didn't expect that you'd just finished filming over there, and we'd also be wrapping up here." Li Suiwen looked at Bai Shunan, his eyes filled with loneliness and tenderness. The mixed feelings between them had dulled the brilliance in his eyes, but not the stubbornness within. "After we separate this time, let's keep in touch. I won't suddenly disconnect again."
Bai Shunan lowered his eyes to look at the flames. After a one-second pause, he said softly, "Okay."
"Are you afraid of water?"
"I can't say."
"Your feelings seem to be flat, which is what attracted me to you in the first place." Li Suiwen pulled the blanket tighter around her. "Later, I realized that you just didn't realize it. You didn't know why you were feeling bad, and you didn't know why I was feeling bad. I'm really distressed now. When I first accepted this film with you, I thought we'd have a role together..."
Li Suiwen curled her lips, propped her cheek with her hand, and looked ahead boredly, "Although there is a scene, it's just a rival scene."
"I'm not the right person for you."
"Well, I know. That's not what I meant by those words. I wanted to say something else." Li Suiwen was silent for a moment. She turned her head to look into Bai Shunan's eyes and met his gaze. "You've fallen in love with Lu Jinfeng again."
"Why do you say that?"
"Many times, you didn't dare look at him." Li Suiwen looked ahead, gazing at the pitch blackness in the distance, where a road lay. "I noticed it the other day when he came to visit. After you and he came back from your stroll in the forest, I finally had the time and opportunity to see and appreciate your time together. At first, I really thought you didn't want to see him. I thought you didn't want to, that you hated him as much as I did."
Li Suiwen fell into deep thought for a moment, and after a few breaths, he said, "So it's not like that. You're completely drawn to him. You just seem not to be looking at him, but in fact, you pay attention to everything he does. When he wants to drink water, he needs to look at you. I thought he had a twitch in the eye, but I didn't expect you to hand him the water without even looking at him the next second."
At this point, Li Suiwen smiled silently. She shook her head and pursed her lips. "I still remember how proud Lu Jinfeng was when he drank the water. He looked at me like a fool. Stop, you're not with him, are you?"
"No."
"That's fine." Li Suiwen calmed down and continued, "He's cold, and if he gets closer to you, you should take off your coat and cover him with it. Come to think of it, I'm quite impressed that you were able to avoid his constant gaze on you. It's impossible to do that without trying deliberately."
"I don't dare to look at him." Bai Shunan tried to reveal his feelings. Such moments rarely happened to him. The strange feeling that was hard to escape was revealed in his weird expression. He frowned, adjusted his breathing, and calmed his mind.
"So you don't look at him, or rather," Li Suiwen warmed herself by the fire, suppressing her sleepiness as she raised her hand to rub her face, "you just don't look into his eyes, but you still look at him. You've coaxed him so much that he doesn't even realize he's being coaxed, and even you don't realize it. Even I've almost gotten used to it."
Li Suiwen smiled, a flicker of conflict and reluctance in her eyes. She sighed softly, "Sometimes, seeing him holding your hand, I feel it's a normal thing... Do you love him?"
The smile on her lips faded, the moonlight softened the contours of her face, and the firelight illuminated everything with a rich, deep glow. She remembered that night, when Lu Jinfeng sat there, almost falling asleep, oblivious to the surroundings, holding Bai Shunan's hand with both hands, his head lowered and nestled in Shunan's shoulder. On the verge of drowsiness, he slowly closed his eyes...
"Tell me more about that day, okay?"
"Weren't you both asleep that day? I don't know if he woke up early or wasn't asleep, but I saw him gently kiss your cheek." Li Suiwen finally spoke out about the incident. The matter that had been weighing on her heart for days didn't bring her relief after speaking it out. Instead, another long-suppressed worry surfaced. Her eyes revealed her inner worry. She was worried about him, but she couldn't express it. The selfishness accumulated from past pain made everything seem insincere, leading the conversation in a direction that was contrary to her heart. She seemed to be questioning, "Will you be with him?"
"I don't know." Fire surged in Shunan's eyes, illuminating them deeply. A gentle rustling sound echoed in his ears, and he recalled something he clearly remembered but pretended to have forgotten. "We knew each other before, a long time ago, when we were classmates. One time, I passed him and he said 'sorry' first. I turned to look at him, and he walked into the dusk. I always think back to that scene, and I always wonder if he had looked back then, something would have been different."
Li Suiwen was speechless for a moment, more like a chaotic, ominous thought wreaking havoc on her language system. She didn't know which sentence to speak first. A flicker of clarity flickered in her thoughtful eyes, as if she understood some of Lu Jinfeng's peculiar behavior. She thought she didn't care, but she was tormented by a deeper obsession from the past, and then attacked by another obsession. Suddenly, a breeze blew, and her chaotic mind was greeted with a sobering message. "Do you think you will fall in love with him?"
"...I thought it would be a burden, that he would become a burden to me." Bai Shunan shook his head. After a long while, he spoke, "I didn't expect that I would become a burden."
Li Suiwen recalled the time she spent with Bai Shunan several years ago. She no longer felt confused about this side of Bai Shunan. "I've always been curious about how you became a fan of him."
"All I needed at that time was him, only him," Bai Shunan's voice became softer and softer, forming a contrast with the sound of his heartbeat, "it could only be him."
"What about next?"
Bai Shunan looked at Li Suiwen, his thoughts brought back to the past. For a moment, he was speechless.
Li Suiwen waited for a long time but Bai Shunan didn't speak. "What are you thinking about now?"
"I thought of my dad. I thought of him just now when I was in the water."
Li Suiwen frowned slightly, puzzled by the direction of the conversation. "Why?"
"I often see my father's body, standing in one place, staring at me."
Li Suiwen was silent for a moment. "Have you ever seen it with your own eyes?"
"I was nearby when my father was pulled out of the water." When Bai Shunan spoke about this for the first time, his expression remained calm, but his words became increasingly incoherent. "I was watching from the side and recognized him at first sight. I thought I wouldn't be able to recognize him. He really looked like an orange tree..." In the end, all that remained of his life was his most devastated appearance after death.
"I was standing so far away, but it felt like I was standing right in front of him."
The dark blue scarf is embroidered with a light pink name. When Mom knits a towel for Dad, she always chooses his favorite color, and when embroidering his name, she always chooses her favorite color.
"I'm going to get some sleep."
Li Suiwen said inappropriately: "You just woke up."
Bai Shunan chuckled softly at this, "I need to clear my mind for a while."
"Aren't you going to solve it?" Li Suiwen didn't understand what he was asking for a moment.
"I haven't been able to solve my problem." Bai Shunan remembered something, and the smile on his face did not fade, "Even though I have a friend who is a psychologist."
He turned and walked forward, repeating in his heart, "I don't want to." Only when he entered the tent, closed his eyes and lay down did he murmur a complete sentence, "I don't want to face him like this."
…
"Would you like to play a guest role?" Zhan Song remembered a phone call he had made before.
"What?"
"It's about the crew you invested in not long ago. The director wants you to play a ghost. What do you think? Are you interested? Although I don't think it's very suitable, it depends on your willingness."
Lu Jinfeng looked at the script of a Sino-foreign co-production movie on the table in front of him, which was scheduled to start shooting soon. He sat there thinking for a long time, so long that Zhan Song thought he didn't hear what he said clearly. So long that when Lu Jinfeng said the word "forget it", Zhan Song didn't react to what he answered for a while.
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