Chapter 10

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Chen Yu was a straightforward woman. Once she decided that Meng Kaiyan was the person she wanted, she wasted no time and finalized the casting.

The speed of it left Meng Kaiyan deeply unaccustomed. In the past, she had spent a considerable amount of time auditioning for nearly every production. Sometimes her parents even had to pull strings and call in favors before she could land a role with barely any screen time.

For once, Meng Kaiyan was at a loss. She asked in confusion, “Don’t I need to perform a scene?”

Chen Yu put away the camera. “To be honest, I wasn’t particularly satisfied when Rijia recommended you to me. But why did I still ask you to come here? Because your acting earned you this opportunity.”

Meng Kaiyan understood the implication: her appearance had not matched Chen Yu’s expectations.

Chen Yu suddenly stopped what she was doing and leaned slightly against the back of the sofa. “There was one scene you performed especially well. Probably… probably the scene where you met your parents. Rijia sent me three clips: the first scene you filmed after joining the production, that scene as the second, and your final scene as the third. She strongly recommended the final scene. And honestly, it was very good. Your eyes added a great deal, and you handled the details beautifully. But it was precisely because it was too good that I didn’t like it.”

Meng Kaiyan drew her brows together slightly.

“Don’t understand?” Chen Yu smiled. “At your age, it’s perfectly normal not to understand. In that scene, you weren’t the one in control. The character Cui Cui was controlling you.”

Meng Kaiyan’s lips moved. After several seconds, she could not help objecting. “But doesn’t that prove I had truly entered the role?”

“Is entering the role necessarily a good thing?”

Meng Kaiyan answered firmly, “Only by immersing yourself in the role can you perform it to the greatest extent.”

Chen Yu pointed toward the display shelves on the living-room wall. “See those six trophies at the very top? Not one of them was won by being completely immersed in a role. An outstanding actor must be the one directing the performance. You can approach a character in countless ways, but you must do so under your own control. An actor must have complete command of herself.”

Meng Kaiyan looked bewildered. “Shouldn’t you invest your own emotions in the process?”

“Of course you should! The character’s emotions are created by you. You can pour your own feelings into the character and project your inner world onto it. You can’t be happy when the character ought to be crying, or sad when the character ought to be laughing. You can’t have a full stomach when the character is so hungry she’s about to faint. But throughout the process, you must remain lucid. You must retain the ability to step out of the role at any moment.”

“You’ve already touched the edge of becoming a mature actor. You know how to bring together the similarities between yourself and the character and suppress the differences, but you still can’t control the degree of it.”

Perhaps she had thought of something, because Chen Yu frowned. “Acting is a fractured profession. If you don’t know how to control your emotions, you’ll pay dearly.”

Meng Kaiyan instinctively held her breath. Perhaps the room was too warm; tiny beads of sweat had formed all over her back.

“Many directors love it when actors are in this state. They don’t care whether you can pull yourself back out afterward. To them, the production comes above everything else. They care only about the performance. They’ll be thrilled to have you experience the character, thrilled to have you fall in love with a costar or fight with one. As long as you’re willing, they might even play matchmaker.”

Chen Yu sat down on the sofa. “But we actors can’t be foolish. We have to learn to protect ourselves. Performing the role well while remaining clearheaded isn’t a contradiction.”

“I saw that kind of control in your scene with Cui Cui meeting her parents. Your family background must be a good one—I could tell that your mother loves you very much.” Chen Yu shrugged. “That’s why you couldn’t completely lose yourself in Cui Cui. You had to shape her by finding common ground while preserving the differences, and you did it extremely well.”

Meng Kaiyan pressed her lips together. “I understand, Ms. Chen. Thank you.”

“There’s no need to thank me so soon.” Chen Yu smiled again. “If I’m bringing you into my crew, naturally I’ll be responsible for you. More importantly, the role I want you to play… well, it’s rather complicated. I’m honestly a little afraid that a young girl like you might get trapped in it.”

Meng Kaiyan’s eyes lit up.

Complicated? She liked complicated.

Chen Yu immediately understood. This girl was something of an acting fanatic.

Oh, dear. Acting fanatics were all extreme people—people who knowingly did what they ought not to do. Chen Yu both disliked and admired them.

—

Meng Kaiyan did not receive a character biography. Chen Yu simply sent her home.

Filming would not begin until after the New Year; starting before the holiday would be too expensive. Chen Yu only asked Meng Kaiyan to put on a little weight and keep it between 100 and 105. But she could not let her face grow rounder. If her face became noticeably fuller, she would have to lose the weight again.

The conditions sounded somewhat unreasonable, but Meng Kaiyan had no trouble accepting them.

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To be able to act in a film before reaching adulthood was something she had never even dared dream of.

That winter was bitterly cold, and going out to school every day was torture for her. Jian Zhenzhu felt sorry for her and drove her to school every morning.

As a result, the family stopped making breakfast at home. Meng Minghai ate at the company, while mother and daughter bought two McDonald’s breakfast cards and picked up breakfast there on their way past each day.

Before long, the new year was approaching.

The New Year’s celebration was held on the thirty-first. Meng Kaiyan sang and played a hugely popular English song, earning sixty Star Points in one sweep. It was far more worthwhile than exhausting herself running eight hundred meters at the school sports meet.

Why had her Star Points doubled compared with the previous year?

Meng Kaiyan carefully studied the reason and finally concluded that many people simply liked the song’s original singer.

“…”

All right. She seemed to have found a shortcut. Perhaps she could try it again next time.

The days after New Year’s passed in a blur. Before she knew it, winter vacation was just around the corner.

Lan Tong had recently been busy developing her social-media account. Meng Kaiyan did not learn until just before the final exams that Lan Tong’s TikTok followers had surpassed one hundred thousand.

At the time, Meng Kaiyan was reviewing her lessons at Lan Tong’s home. After seeing her profile, she exclaimed in amazement, “That’s incredible! A hundred thousand followers in two months. You have the potential to become a major influencer!”

“Hey, hey, hey—keep it down, keep it down.” Lan Tong shushed her, glanced around, and lowered her voice. “My family doesn’t know.”

“Why not?” Meng Kaiyan asked. “If you become famous, it’ll be hard to hide. Big data is terrifying.”

Lan Tong looked troubled. “My parents aren’t as open-minded as yours. They want me to follow the usual path: get into university, apply to study abroad for graduate school, then come back and find a regular job.”

Meng Kaiyan was puzzled. “What does that have to do with running a social-media account? You can do that while you’re at university or graduate school. The two things don’t conflict.”

Lan Tong patted her textbook. “The problem is that I’m doomed this winter vacation. I can already imagine how terrible my grades are going to be. If they find out I’ve become a beauty blogger, they’ll definitely blame that for my poor results.”

“Er… wouldn’t they be right?”

Lan Tong fell silent for a moment before reluctantly admitting, “Actually, they would!”

Meng Kaiyan spread her hands. “Then there’s nothing to be done.”

After that, neither of them had any interest in studying. They looked at each other, then eventually went to the dressing table and began rummaging through the cosmetics.

“Come on, I’ll do your makeup, and then you do mine.” Lan Tong was brimming with enthusiasm. “Kaiyan, your skin is so beautiful. The foundation glides on so smoothly when I use the brush. Why can’t I ever get my skin to look like yours?”

“If you could go to bed before eleven every night, drink only one cup of unsweetened milk tea a week, and avoid food high in sugar and oil in your daily life, your skin would improve too.”

“Then forget it.” Lan Tong stuck out her tongue as she used a makeup sponge to pat the foundation evenly into place. “Unsweetened milk tea is pointless, and going to sleep before eleven is absolutely impossible.”

Meng Kaiyan closed her eyes. “You get used to it. There’s an actress I met on set who eats nothing but salad and steak, or corn, sweet potatoes, and chicken breast. Just watching her makes me suffer, but she’s been eating that way for more than half a year.”

“That’s why I could never be an actress—not only because of my face, but because of my mouth.”

Lan Tong applied makeup quickly, mainly because there were hardly any imperfections on Meng Kaiyan’s face to conceal.

Meng Kaiyan had once had a few faint freckles, inherited from her father, but after undergoing a skin transformation, every one of them had disappeared.

Fortunately, neither Jian Zhenzhu nor Meng Minghai noticed. Gradually, both of them forgot that she had ever had those few freckles.

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At the end, Lan Tong sprayed setting mist over her face and reminded her, “Kaiyan, when you do your makeup in the future, make your eyes a little larger. It’ll look prettier.”

Meng Kaiyan studied her reflection in the mirror. The golden-brown eye makeup gave her a slightly rebellious air. She nodded.

New Year’s Eve.

By this time of year, Shanghai’s population seemed to be cut in half, while their residential community was livelier than usual.

It was an old neighborhood, after all, populated mostly by elderly people. Their children generally had time to return and reunite with them only during the holiday.

Jian Zhenzhu and Meng Minghai were both locals, but Meng Kaiyan’s paternal grandparents had been taken abroad by her aunt to live with her. Even during the New Year, they could only see the old couple over video calls.

Her maternal grandparents still lived locally, but they had divorced twenty years earlier and later started separate families. They no longer visited one another often, usually limiting their meetings to once a year, on the second day of the New Year.

On New Year’s Eve, Jian Zhenzhu raised her glass. “Come on, cheers! I hope everyone in our family stays healthy next year and that our lives keep getting better.”

Clink—

A year passed, and Meng Kaiyan welcomed a brand-new one.

What would the coming year be like? Meng Kaiyan did not know, but she looked forward to it. Once the New Year celebrations were over, she would be able to join the production.

Chen Yu was far too perceptive. Meng Kaiyan did not dare use the sixty Star Points at all, afraid that Chen Yu might notice something amiss.

On the first day of the new school term, Jian Zhenzhu requested leave for Meng Kaiyan. The homeroom teacher knew that Meng Kaiyan intended to pursue the arts-exam route, so he did not make things difficult for her.

After the Lantern Festival, Meng Kaiyan joined the film crew.

This time, the crew was much farther away. Where? Guangdong. The moment Meng Kaiyan stepped off the plane, she felt the heat and wanted to take off the thermal shirt beneath her down jacket.

Jian Zhenzhu was delighted. “This weather is perfect. Look at that sunshine—it feels wonderful.”

“Aren’t you hot, Mom?”

“Not at all. I’m not foolish like you. I checked the temperature before we came.”

Once again, they took a taxi to the set. This time, Meng Kaiyan was able to attend the opening ceremony.

She was thrilled and excited. It was her first time attending one.

Even Chen Yu had to be superstitious on an occasion like this. From a distance, she waved Meng Kaiyan over. “Come on, Little Meng. Light a stick of incense. You’re a child, and a child’s incense is supposed to be especially effective.”

“All right!”

Meng Kaiyan jogged over, took the incense, lit it, and bowed devoutly before placing it in the burner.

This was her first film. Everything had to go smoothly.

Meng Kaiyan prayed to every heaven and every earth, regretting that she had not gone with her grandmother to compete for the first incense of the New Year on the first day.

“May the gods and Buddhas bless us. May our ancestors bless us. May everyone who passes by bless us too.”

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