Chapter 80

“Little Gu, you...” Lin Zhi set down the coffee and turned his head away, unable to bear looking at her. “Your..."

Gu Yanqiu’s expression stayed faintly cool. She waved him out.

Lin Zhi bent slightly. “Then I’ll head out first.”

Gu Yanqiu turned the mirror on her desk toward herself and stared at her reflection—the lips were full and red, almost dripping with color. She let out a long sigh.

...She had almost been late for work today.

Fortunately, the weather was gradually turning cooler. She had a thin silk scarf around her neck; as long as she lifted it with one hand, it could cover half her face. That would keep the rest of the company from seeing. As for Lin Zhi? He came and went from her office all the time; there was no way to hide it, so let him be. It wasn’t like this was the first time.

Lin Yuewei’s learning talent... Gu Yanqiu thought about it and honestly didn’t know how to describe it. In any case, she was much less careless than before. Lin Yuewei had a straightforward personality; after Gu Yanqiu gave her the study materials, she not only read through them with unusual enthusiasm all night, she even treated it like a shared study session.

Ding dong——

Gu Yanqiu unlocked her phone and saw a video Lin Yuewei had sent in WeChat. The title read: Get your skills up! These kissing techniques are a must-know.

Gu Yanqiu: “..."

She set her phone aside for the moment, opened her computer, logged into WeChat on the web, turned off notifications, and started working.

When she finally finished one portion of her work and opened her chat with Lin Yuewei again, the entire page was already full of messages:

Goddness teaches you kissing techniques; if you still feel nothing after this, come find me

[ Kissing Collection ] Deep-Dive Tutorial: Kissing Techniques for Deep Kisses

[ Kissing Collection ] Advanced Edition: 20 Small Tricks for Kissing

[ Kiss-Trick Master ] Kissing Techniques Exposed

Blushing, heart-racing — Kissing Lesson

Kissing — How Many Techniques Do You Know?

...

Gu Yanqiu scrolled upward in one sweep and estimated that there were well over twenty messages. Mixed in among the shares were a few lines of text:

[Two Trees: I collected all of these last night. Watch them together; they’re more convenient than the written version]

[Two Trees: I’m going to work now. See you tonight]

[Two Trees: Mwah]

After some thought, Gu Yanqiu still didn’t dare reply, worried that Lin Yuewei would ask for her thoughts after watching them. Compared with Lin Yuewei, Gu Yanqiu was much more thin-skinned; she simply couldn’t discuss this sort of thing so openly.

Fortunately, once Lin Yuewei got busy, she was completely absorbed and wouldn’t bombard her with messages.

***

Lin Yuewei had sent all the videos in her favorites to Gu Yanqiu, then tossed her phone aside and opened the laptop on the coffee table. Playing on it was a police drama from more than ten years ago; by today’s standards, the cast was packed with veteran actors.

Although she had asked Shao Yasi to help her check her lines, Lin Yuewei didn’t plan to have Shao Yasi review everything. Otherwise, for a thirty-five-episode drama, wouldn’t Shao Yasi basically be acting in it herself? Lin Yuewei would feel bad about that, and besides, it would do more harm than good to both her future acting career and her current growth.

She dissected the old drama piece by piece: the lines were one part, the acting another, the pacing a third. She broke each sentence down to analyze it, but she couldn’t simply imitate the performance. Back when they were on Actor Trainees, they had performed classic pieces onstage, and every mentor had said not to imitate someone else’s acting; instead, they had to learn how to act themselves. They could absorb experience, but they could not copy.

Lin Yuewei had always been unsure where the line between those two things lay. Right now, she was still feeling her way across the river by touching the stones. Sometimes she vaguely felt she had brushed against the truth of acting; other times, an invisible wall blocked her and she couldn’t go any farther.

Line by line, Lin Yuewei followed along with the people in the drama, trying to find the speech rhythm a police officer should have. Her expression was exceptionally composed and calm; she could say the same line a thousand times without the slightest impatience she usually showed in daily life.

Lin Yuewei narrowed her eyes and pressed pause. She studied the expression on the nonexistent criminal in front of her, as if she could already see panic surfacing on his face; unhurriedly, she added, “Who told you we don’t have evidence?”

She pressed her lips together, reined in her expression, and let a trace of disdain appear on her face; the corner of her mouth tipped with irony as she said it again, unhurried and calm: “Who told you we don’t have evidence, Zhao Liunian? You are suspected of intentional murder, deliberate dismemberment..."

Lin Yuewei enunciated clearly and traded lines back and forth with the “criminal,” finishing her scene from Mist City. At last, she finally coaxed the final words out of the criminal’s mouth. Her fountain pen scratched a line across the white paper in her hand with a grating hiss, as if delivering the suspect’s final judgment. Suddenly, she lifted her eyes to sweep over the “criminal’s” expression and said, “Suspect, the evidence is conclusive. What else do you have to say?”

She straightened the file folders in her hand, pushed her chair back as she stood, and nodded toward the two police officers beside her. “I’ll leave the rest to you.” Ignoring the hysterical screams behind her, she walked without looking back toward the interrogation room door.

Lin Yuewei thought this take was pretty good, so she rewarded herself with a bite of fruit; it was only a tiny piece, no bigger than a fingernail, skewered on a toothpick.

She unlocked the phone screen that had been ignored for two hours. As expected, Gu Yanqiu still hadn’t replied. She didn’t believe Gu Yanqiu hadn’t seen it; she must have seen it and deliberately not answered.

Tsk.

If she had the guts to look up all those materials, why didn’t she have the guts to discuss them with her? Even if she stayed silent and hid away, Lin Yuewei knew she definitely watched them.

So stuffy.

No, Lin Yuewei corrected herself accurately; for now, she was only stuffy, not sexy.

Since the silent little gourd wasn’t replying, Lin Yuewei didn’t push it. She only had ten minutes of rest before she had to continue; teasing was pointless anyway, since she still couldn’t kiss her.

Taking advantage of the break, Lin Yuewei flopped onto the sofa, feeling her shoulders and back relax all at once. She let out a comfortable sigh. Holding her phone up in front of her eyes, she casually scrolled through Weibo.

She first searched her own name in the input box and checked the live results. Aside from the fans’ repeated reposts, the latest normal post mentioning her name was from yesterday; it was a video share, hmm... a CP edit with Shao Yasi.

The show had ended so long ago, yet there were still new CP fans getting into it. That was kind of amazing.

Lin Yuewei kept scrolling and didn’t see anything useful, so she searched her own main page. Hmm... the latest post was from several days ago, with only a few comments.

Then she searched Shao Yasi’s. The latest one was from more than ten hours ago, and there were a lot of fan reposts and comments. That alone showed how important exposure was for a newly rising celebrity.

As for whether Lin Yuewei felt unbalanced, she could honestly say no. She would only be happy for Shao Yasi. Starting off on the right foot like this, she hoped everything would go smoothly from here on out.

She was looking at praise for Shao Yasi from people who clearly weren’t fans when the name of the person herself appeared in the notification bar at the very top of the screen.

[Shao Yasi: [audio file]]

[Shao Yasi: Okay, listen to this]

Lin Yuewei replied in seconds.

[Two Trees: That fast?]

It had only been one night.

[Shao Yasi: Of course, because I’m a genius hahahaha; done in minutes]

[Two Trees: Thank you]

Shao Yasi didn’t reply again. At this moment, she was leaning diagonally against the back seat of the nanny van, her phone held loosely in one hand. Her eyes were already closing of their own accord, and a thin, steady snore slipped out. The agent sitting beside her shot a glare at the assistant. The assistant looked aggrieved and said softly, “When I went to knock on the door this morning, the blanket on her bed hadn’t even been moved.”

The agent moved over, bent down, and tilted her head to make out the name of the contact on Shao Yasi’s phone; her expression darkened.

Lin Yuewei again.

No wonder this morning she had suddenly asked her what two unrelated actors were usually like. Those two actors were the officially announced male and female leads of Mist City. As far as she knew, after Fang Xiaoxiao’s accident, the one who had taken over the second female lead role was Lin Yuewei. She had guessed right away that this was about finding out information for Lin Yuewei.

Why was this person so stubborn? She herself hadn’t even taken off yet, yet she was thinking of dragging someone else along in every possible way. Didn’t she know how much she weighed? After so many years in the industry, what hadn’t the agent seen? The least reliable thing in this business was the so-called friends who supported each other through the rookie stage. Once a career started to show signs of improvement, they were all competitors; they wouldn’t have time to stab each other fast enough. The deeper the feelings, the deeper the stab. Sometimes there were things beyond one’s control. Either make friends outside the industry, or wait until things were stable before making friends who knew how to maintain a relationship in this field of power and profit.

The agent flexed her fingers, furious enough to want to flick Shao Yasi on the forehead and call her a sweet fool with no guard up. But at the last moment, she pulled her hand back.

She stared at Shao Yasi for several minutes. In the end, she still sighed. Stupid she might be, but she was also one of the rare truly sincere people in this business. At worst, the agent would protect her a little. If anyone dared lay a hand on her, especially Lin Yuewei, she wouldn’t be easy to deal with.

The agent, feeling complicated, lightly tapped Shao Yasi’s forehead. The sleeping Shao Yasi immediately opened her eyes a little. Once she made out who was in front of her, she naturally laid her head on the agent’s shoulder and gave a nasal hum before continuing to sleep.

The assistant watched from the side and felt like something about the scene in front of her was oddly off.

Shao Yasi woke up from sleeping in the agent’s embrace. After sitting up properly, she sniffed, looked down at her phone, which had automatically locked, and picked it up to keep messaging Lin Yuewei: [The male and female leads in your crew are both pretty great, and I heard they have especially good temperaments and like helping newcomers. There definitely won’t be anyone bullying you. That’s what my agent said; she knows so much]

Shao Yasi glanced toward her agent as she said this, her face full of admiration, and continued typing: [My agent is really amazing. It would be great if you could sign with the same company as me. Too bad you went to Guoshi]

She often showed that kind of look in private; the agent was used to it. She pushed up her glasses and nodded gently. Shao Yasi didn’t see the coldness in the eyes behind those lenses.

If Shao Yasi wasn’t willing to keep an appropriate distance from her, then she would do it herself.

On Lin Yuewei’s end, receiving Shao Yasi’s message naturally put her much more at ease. The atmosphere on set was very important during filming; if it was a pleasant crew, it would be greatly beneficial for a newcomer like Lin Yuewei. After hearing that Shao Yasi had been excluded, Lin Yuewei had already had this worry vaguely in mind. Now Shao Yasi was no different from feeding her a reassurance pill.

Actually, by rights, Chen Xuan would also tell her these things. It was just that the time wasn’t right yet. Chen Xuan wouldn’t talk to her about it now; most likely she would only explain it in detail once they got to the crew. Lin Yuewei couldn’t say she was entirely free of misgivings about Chen Xuan, and Chen Xuan was also very busy, so it was naturally awkward to ask in advance.

She didn’t know how else to thank Shao Yasi. Too many thanks would seem pale and insincere, so Lin Yuewei simply invited her out for a meal next time. The moment Shao Yasi heard the word “eat,” she completely forgot the self-discipline required of an actress and rattled off every delicious thing in Yanning’s streets and alleys; Lin Yuewei agreed to all of it.

Shao Yasi only had that much time to play on her phone while in the nanny van. After that, she handed the phone over and used the makeup time to study the two scenes she had to film today.

Lin Yuewei compared Shao Yasi’s lines with her own. As she thought about it, she suddenly froze; a flash of insight passed through her mind, and the wall that had always stood in front of her seemed to loosen a little. She felt like she was about to grasp it, the door at the end of the path, what it meant for a performance to belong to herself.

Lin Yuewei sat motionless for half an hour.

Her phone rang. She jumped up irritably, didn’t even look at it, and silenced it directly before stuffing it quickly under the blanket.

“Sorry, the number you have dialed is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later, sorry..."

Gu Yanqiu lowered the phone from beside her ear and slowly furrowed her brows.

Author’s Note: Gu-zhong, because she was in meditation and wouldn’t answer my call, just you wait :)