2023

That day had been exhausting beyond belief. By the time it was finally over, Chi Xiaoman at last made it to bed. Half-dazed, she suddenly remembered what Song Yingying had once said about Neon—

“Your script doesn’t have a single standout point, not a single controversy hook, and nothing that mass audiences will really feel. The two female leads don’t even have a decent intimate scene in the whole thing. The story is old-fashioned, the road movie format is niche, the characters are immature, the tone is depressing, and there’s so much industry commentary in it…”

“A script like this gets hundreds of copies tossed into the trash outside every film company in Beijing every day.”

“It’s just an ordinary story. Forget about investing in it; once it’s actually filmed, your name, Chi Xiaoman, will be tied to this trashy movie for the rest of your life.”

“And do you know what people will say if this gets out?”

“They’ll say you’re making films to help people launder money and hope you get caught fast; they’ll say you’re crazy and trying every trick in the book to make money…”

“Yes, those are only rumors from black fans right now. But rumors spread, and who knows when someone will start repeating them as if they’re facts? You’ve been in this business for so many years; you can’t not understand that.”

“Chi Xiaoman, do you still not understand what kind of person you are?”

“Do you know how many of the nearly one hundred million fans you have are following you because they dislike you, want to curse you, and are just waiting to screenshot everything you say and do so they can twist it out of context?”

“Do you know every frame of what you shoot will be magnified and judged?”

“In this situation, what actor would dare join your crew, knowing every frame could be picked apart and condemned? What investor wouldn’t be afraid of never recouping their money, and still dare back you? Fine, you can invest in yourself and film it yourself; then when you end up bankrupt making a garbage movie that becomes an old, stubborn stain on the industry, your star career may not even be as smooth as it is now.”

“Chi Xiaoman, as your agent, I’m giving you this responsible advice now.”

“You’re already thirty this year. What dream of gambling everything and fighting the whole world are you still trying to chase? No one will support you; everyone will think you’re both stupid and ridiculous.”

Actually, Chi Xiaoman had never insisted on directing it herself. If she could find the right director—someone whose style and ideas matched the project—that would be best. Then there’d be no need to add her own name and invite people’s disgust.

If she couldn’t find one, then she would have to do it herself. Worst case, she still wouldn’t put her name on it in the end.

That had been her plan when she went looking for producers. She hadn’t expected the whole thing to be exposed like this.

It was Lang Lang’s script, and she didn’t dare hand it over to a team that worshiped “the market above all else.” The film market today wasn’t what it used to be, and the people with the most say had never been the kind to think about “respecting art.”

Besides.

Chi Xiaoman had never said she wanted to defy the whole world, and she had never thought she had to make something earth-shattering.

Call her gambling everything if you wanted.

Call her foolish if you wanted.

She just felt that Neon was not a story that deserved to be talked about that way.

It was a good story.

Maybe in terms of market value and mass appeal, it wasn’t all that outstanding.

But that didn’t mean it had no value.

And it certainly didn’t mean it wasn’t even worth filming.

She also felt that in the ten years since then, there had been so many things she had failed to do. Ten years later, she wanted to try again and see whether she could do it this time. It would also be a way of answering to the twenty-year-old version of herself, and to Lang Lang, who had believed in her until the very end and was willing to put the script in her hands.

Besides.

This wasn’t that ridiculous, was it?

Just before falling asleep, Chi Xiaoman thought vaguely.

Anyway, whatever happened.

She was willing to bear every bad outcome of her choice.

Of course, under one condition.

That she would be the only one.

-

When she woke up, Chi Xiaoman still felt exhausted.

It had been like this for a long time. Sleep was no longer rest for her body; instead, it felt like torture.

From dawn until daylight.

By now, the sun was already shining straight onto her eyelids.

The television she had left on the night before was still on. It was still playing one of the old Hong Kong movies she used to love, with the protagonist speaking Cantonese under blue skies and white clouds, acting out love and hate that felt very far away from her.

Chi Xiaoman stared at the television for a moment, dazed. Only when she was truly too weak to keep ignoring it did she remember she hadn’t eaten much since yesterday. She also remembered she couldn’t keep pushing the rest of the schedule back for too long. No matter what, if she didn’t want to delay things, she still had to eat something.

Auntie A-Yun’s health had been poor these past few years. Last night she had been running around helping Chi Xiaoman, and she hadn’t rested well either.

Chi Xiaoman didn’t want to disturb her.

So she got out of bed on her own and, with some difficulty, made her way to the kitchen. Using one hand, she boiled water, tore open a packet, and made herself a bowl of instant noodles.

But one hand was never convenient.

No matter how careful she was, there were bound to be a few clattering sounds, along with noises that made her wince in pain.

Just as she finished pouring in the lukewarm water, Auntie A-Yun came out of the guest room rubbing her eyes. Seeing the mess by the table and the bowl of instant noodles that hadn’t even been properly covered, she frowned.

Chi Xiaoman hadn’t meant to wake her. “Did I wake you?” she asked apologetically.

Auntie A-Yun shook her head and came over to take away the bowl of noodles Chi Xiaoman hadn’t even had time to cover tightly.

“Hey—”

“You don’t have to. Go back and rest,” Chi Xiaoman said instinctively, reaching out to protect the bowl. “I can just eat this. Don’t waste it.”

But in her current condition, how could she possibly wrestle the bowl away from Auntie A-Yun, who was still nimble even at fifty-eight?

The noodles were carried off.

Chi Xiaoman could only tip her head back helplessly to meet Auntie A-Yun’s eyes, trying again to persuade her to sleep. “Honestly, there’s really no need.”

Auntie A-Yun ignored her.

She opened the instant noodles herself.

After glancing inside, she looked up at Chi Xiaoman and sighed.

Chi Xiaoman caught her meaning and guessed she was probably thinking: why didn’t you even add an egg for yourself?

So she curved her eyes into a smile. “I was too lazy to bother.”

Auntie A-Yun didn’t argue. She just worked in the kitchen and made her a steaming bowl of hand-pulled noodles instead.

The instant noodles that had been cooked partway weren’t thrown away either. Auntie A-Yun gave them a second life, then carried them out and set them down on the dining table.

A spacious top-floor flat in a prime Beijing location, bright and clean, with a sunroom; a neat dining table; two bowls of noodles.

One bowl was hand-pulled noodles with greens, shrimp, beef, and clams, topped with a soft-boiled egg.

The other was the instant noodles that had originally been undercooked and then reworked, with some of the leftover ingredients from the other bowl added in.

Auntie A-Yun said nothing more.

She placed the hand-pulled noodles in front of Chi Xiaoman.

Chi Xiaoman watched how quickly her hands moved.

Frowning, she also tried hard to keep her neck still and, one piece at a time, put the ingredients from her own bowl into Auntie A-Yun’s.

At first Auntie A-Yun tried to stop her, but after seeing that Chi Xiaoman was determined and worrying she might twist her neck if she moved too much, she let her be.

By the time the toppings had been more or less split half and half between them,

Chi Xiaoman finally ate her own bowl with satisfaction.

Auntie A-Yun’s cooking was excellent. Even something as simple as noodles became a feast to Chi Xiaoman.

After painfully lifting her head and slurping up her first mouthful, Chi Xiaoman hurriedly gave her a thumbs-up. “Delicious!”

Auntie A-Yun nodded.

Only after seeing her eat so happily did she finally start on her own bowl.

Chi Xiaoman let out a quiet breath when she saw Auntie A-Yun finally take up her chopsticks, then slowly went on eating.

Unlike before, she ate slowly now.

Each bite had to be chewed several times before she could swallow it little by little.

Auntie A-Yun, on the other hand, ate much faster than she did.

After finishing, she didn’t hurry away. She just sat across from Chi Xiaoman and looked at her quietly, gently.

Being looked at like that, Chi Xiaoman didn’t look back; she just smiled. “Auntie A-Yun, do you have something you want to say to me?”

Auntie A-Yun shook her head.

A few seconds later, she nodded.

Then she found her reading glasses, put them on, and typed on her phone.

After several years of practice, her typing speed could rival plenty of young people’s, and she had also learned a lot of online slang from Chi Xiaoman.

Even after all this time, quite a few people still found it strange that Chi Xiaoman had a fifty-something assistant who couldn’t speak. Didn’t that not help, but instead slow everything down?

But Chi Xiaoman didn’t think so, and she had never once regretted insisting to Song Yingying all those years ago that she wanted Auntie A-Yun as her assistant.

Auntie A-Yun finished typing and held out the phone, the large characters on the screen facing Chi Xiaoman.

“Teacher Xiaoman, thank you for eating with me today.”

Chi Xiaoman tilted her head to read it aloud, then curved her eyes into a smile. She set down her chopsticks and said quite formally, “Auntie A-Yun, thank you too for eating with me today.”

Auntie A-Yun smiled too.

Her smile wasn’t especially bright; like her personality, it was slow and gentle, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes glinting in the sunlight.

“Teacher Xiaoman, you’ve worked hard,” she typed after smiling for a while.

Chi Xiaoman assumed she meant what happened last night, so she only smiled a little absentmindedly and gave a small, strained nod as if to say no.

“It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t hard at all.”

Auntie A-Yun looked at her for a moment.

Then she typed, “Making movies will be very hard.”

To be honest, the letters on Auntie A-Yun’s phone were really huge. One sentence almost filled half the screen.

Chi Xiaoman looked at it for a while.

Her eyes actually felt a little sore from those words pressing at them.

After a long moment, she lowered her gaze and smiled. “It won’t be hard either.”

“It’s what I should do.”

After a while, she said, “If you promise something, you should see it through, right?”

Chi Xiaoman didn’t know whether Auntie A-Yun was the only one who didn’t think she was foolish. She also couldn’t say clearly what the greatest motivation and reason was for her still insisting on this ten years later.

Maybe it was obsession.

Maybe it was nostalgia.

She hadn’t failed to hear Song Yingying’s words, and she hadn’t failed to see the mockery and abuse online after the news broke.

She had even considered the possibility that after the film was made, the result might not be what she hoped for; she had also feared that in the end, she might be the one who destroyed Lang Lang’s script.

But...

“I still think Neon is a good story.”

Finishing the last few bites of noodles carefully, Chi Xiaoman smiled at Auntie A-Yun again and said,

“And I’ll make sure Lang Lang’s name appears on the big screen.”

“Only...” She began with that, but couldn’t continue.

Auntie A-Yun looked at her and didn’t keep typing, as if waiting for her to go on.

Chi Xiaoman smiled.

Looking into Auntie A-Yun’s eyes, she said softly, “It’s nothing.”

Only...

No matter what, the lead roles could no longer be hers and Chen Yue’s.

That didn’t need to be said out loud to be perfectly clear.

-

But if the movie was really going to be made, it would be no easy task.

Just the pre-production and setup alone would take a great deal of time: finding investors, producers who shared her vision and were willing to take the risk with her, actors with the right spirit, cinematographers, art directors, assistant directors whose style fit the project, a whole crew willing to be won over by Neon and convinced by the script... nothing could be missing.

Given the situation now,

she couldn’t even find a decent investor, let alone a producer who saw the script differently.

As for assembling the entire team quickly?

Not a chance.

But this had already been waiting for ten years.

Chi Xiaoman wasn’t in a hurry. She also didn’t want to spend so many years and so much effort only to end up with a makeshift crew.

Besides, her contract still hadn’t been resolved.

After the car crash, she rested for a few days.

Online, the uproar over “the news that she and Chen Yue were making a film” gradually died down and was buried under fresh gossip that appeared in the industry every day; no one was talking about it anymore.

Chi Xiaoman left Beijing without pause, took off her neck brace, replaced the plaster on her hand with a less conspicuous bandage, flew abroad to shoot an endorsement deal, then returned to China to attend platform events in different cities and promotional work for her previous production.

By the time she came back to Beijing, it was almost June.

Summer had arrived, and the city had grown hot. People on the streets were all wearing short-sleeved summer clothes. Yet somehow it didn’t seem any different from the last time Chi Xiaoman had returned here in the middle of her busy schedule; everyone was still in a rush, swallowed up by the air-conditioning of different office towers.

On the drive back from the airport to her residence,

Chi Xiaoman took the chance to contact a producer she had worked with before, only for the sunlight streaming through the car window to flash in her eyes.

After setting a meeting time with the producer and hanging up, she saw those streets glittering with gold.

The car turned a corner.

Chi Xiaoman caught sight of a familiar street sign, then looked at the tall buildings outside the window and froze for a moment before realizing this place had already changed from the old streets and old shop signs in her memory.

This was Felicity Road.

But it was not the Felicity Road she remembered.

Startled, Chi Xiaoman asked the driver to stop and let the others go back and rest first.

She pulled the brim of her cap down low.

Tightened her mask.

Then got out of the car and wandered aimlessly among the utterly unfamiliar high-rises for quite a long time, still unable to find the old Perfume Alley. Instead, she ran into the noodle shop she used to visit often.

The shop’s name was also rather interesting.

It was called Felicity Noodle Shop.

If she remembered correctly, the first time she came to Beijing, Chi Xiaoman had eaten her first meal here. She had been so happy then, delighted that she had arrived in Beijing and immediately found a place called Felicity Noodle Shop. She had thought, with wholehearted joy, that as long as she ate noodles from Felicity Noodle Shop, she would truly be happy one day and set out on a broad, smooth road.

Probably because the city’s planning hadn’t included the noodle shop, Perfume Alley over there had long since turned into high-rises, yet Felicity Noodle Shop was still the same old signboard with a red background and yellow characters from years ago, hung with a thick sheet of plastic that wasn’t elegant in the least and was stained with plenty of oil fumes, greeting customers coming and going.

At dusk, the setting sun turned into shadows beneath her feet. Chi Xiaoman stood at the entrance, stepping on her own shadow, hesitating to go in.

Ever since she had moved out of Felicity Road, she had never come here again. She had been afraid of being overwhelmed by memories; she had also been afraid of running into Chen Yue by chance.

But now.

She no longer had any chance of being overwhelmed by memories, and it was even less possible that she would run into Chen Yue here again—the Chen Yue who lived in Hong Kong, who had willingly gone to Nepal to volunteer, and who would never come back to Beijing, never come here.

Since neither possibility existed, and since this was only a chance encounter,

Chi Xiaoman decided to go in.

She kept her mask tight and her head lowered, lifted the plastic curtain, and wanted to find a corner to sit in, but the moment she stepped inside, she ran straight into the boss carrying noodles out.

Back then, Chi Xiaoman had always felt that if people wanted life to go smoothly, they should say more kind things and fewer discouraging ones. In the old days, when they often came here to eat noodles, that had been the same logic.

But those were hard times. They often ordered noodles without eggs; sometimes, when things were especially bad and there was little work, it was terribly hard, and two or three people would share one bowl. The boss felt sorry for them and would occasionally give them extra.

She didn’t know whether the boss would still recognize her.

Chi Xiaoman clutched her mask tightly, standing in the doorway and feeling nervous.

But when the boss saw her standing there without coming in, he simply delivered the bowl in his hand to a customer, wiped his hands on his apron from a little distance away, looked over at her, and asked with a smile,

“Back for noodles again?”

She hadn’t expected the boss to still recognize her.

Chi Xiaoman was a little dazed. She parted her lips, and for a moment she didn’t know how to answer.

But before she could respond,

she heard a muffled laugh from behind her.

And then she heard that familiar female voice, so familiar it seemed soaked into her bones, speaking clearly and slowly behind her with a trace of amusement:

“Mm. Still one bowl of egg noodles.”

[Author’s Note]

The eighth day of updating our Little Neon on time [sunglasses]

I’m back with our Felicity Noodle Shop’s Man Yue [glasses]

TL Note:

black fans (黑粉) = online haters who follow someone mainly to mock or attack them.