Chapter 6

After Zhou Siyou, several more people cycled in and out of the audition room.

When the last person finally left, Zhong Qing, by the window, covered her eyes wearily and didn’t say another word.

Little Lin at her side was fretting.

“Little Director Zhong, you don’t think…” she ventured haltingly, “they’re all—all—all unsuitable, do you?”

“Not quite that bad,” Zhong Qing said quietly.

After a moment’s thought, Zhong Qing sat up straight and lifted a stack of cards from her bag.

While the actors had waited their turn, she’d had her assistant ask each of them to write out their interpretation of the character. Some had written long passages; some had handed the card back blank.

Leafing through the cards, Zhong Qing’s expression still barely changed.

The script she’d given the actors covered only the first third, including the audition scene and the heroine’s background.

The heroine and the male lead were husband and wife—and had once been teacher and student.

During her school days, the heroine had suffered school violence, and the male lead had entered her life in the role of “savior.”

A student gone cold and gray, a young, handsome music teacher reaching out to help—by all appearances, a textbook romance. Many of the actors had read it exactly that way.

A small minority had sensed something off.

“A poisoned romance.”

In the waiting room, assistant Little Lin had seen someone roll her eyes at a friend. “Teacher-student before husband-and-wife? That’s an outright violation of professional ethics, no?”

Little Lin had paused at that, and on instinct jotted down those two women’s numbers and names. Number sixteen, Zhou Siyou. Number ten, Ji Mingxin.

Sure enough, in a pile of cards all singing “the male lead died, the heroine must be devastated,” the cards those two had submitted stuck out like sore thumbs.

Ji Mingxin: If a character has been hurt, shouldn’t her first instinct be resistance, or striking back—not how to compromise?

Zhou Siyou: Don’t presume a perfect protagonist. After enduring all that, what gives anyone the right to demand I be kind?

Seeing Zhong Qing single out those two cards, Little Lin was bewildered.

Then she heard Zhong Qing continue, “Ji Mingxin can’t carry a lead’s scenes. As for Zhou Siyou—” Zhong Qing frowned. “They say her acting is top-shelf among the new starlets. In my view, it’s thoroughly mediocre.”

Little Lin froze, unsure how to respond.

…One wrong word felt like it could blow the whole thing up.

She took a deep breath and stammered, “W-well, she is young, after all, and experience and such… er, as for acting… of course you’d look to the seasoned actresses. He Shuning, Pei Li…”

But Zhong Qing suddenly laughed and tossed out two cards. “He Shuning. Pei Li. And what exactly did their character interpretations amount to?”

“An actor’s first step is a clear understanding of the character. I already gave them the character’s history—and if they still can’t feel her circumstances, then there’s no reason to work together.”

Little Lin was not the only assistant in the room.

The other few were scattered around sorting props, but all had their ears pricked. Some were studio regulars; some had been sent by agencies to help out. The tangle of connections among them made it anyone’s guess whether one might run off to leak news.

Sensing the mood souring, Little Lin hurried to smooth things over. “Oh, Teacher Zhong, actors come in two kinds: the technical kind and the method kind. Some people don’t grasp a character at first, but once the director walks them through a few beats, it all clicks—progress flies after that, you know…”

Zhong Qing sighed. The sound that came out was like a sigh—or like a cold laugh.

Little Lin didn’t quite dare speak.

Having just finished sorting her materials, she hurried to report to Zhong Qing: “Teacher Zhong, I’ll head out first?”

“All right. Thank you for your hard work today.”

After a few more pleasantries, Little Lin bustled out of the audition room.

Who’d have thought she’d walk straight into Zhou Siyou at the door.

At the moment of collision, Zhou Siyou was clearly a bit startled too.

Her eyes faintly stunned, the hair at her forehead blown askew by the wind.

“You…”

Little Lin instinctively stepped back, clearing the way. “Teacher Zhou, are you here to see Little Director Zhong?”

“…No. I’m not here for her.”

Zhou Siyou’s manner turned unexpectedly gentle. She raised a hand to hold the door half-shut, looked at Little Lin, took out her phone—and then, abruptly seeming a little embarrassed, dropped her gaze and pressed her lips together.

“Little Lin, you… could I add your WeChat?”

“Huh?” Little Lin’s mind blanked.

But the face before her was simply too beautiful and her expression too earnest, and it left Little Lin floating a little off the ground.

With a chime, the WeChat add went through.

Zhou Siyou then said: “Could you pass along Little Director Zhong’s WeChat for me?”

Little Lin: “…”

All that, and she was after Little Director Zhong after all!

After the auditions, Zhong Qing didn’t hand down a choice right away.

Not even a vague indication.

She had simply gone home, drawn the heavy curtains, hugged her laptop, curled up on the sofa, and begun working through one film after another.

In her eyes, every auditioning actress had problems. The only differences were how many, how large, and how hard to fix.

The skilled ones fell short in understanding; the ones who understood fell short in execution.

She wasn’t familiar with these actresses, so the clumsiest method at hand was to watch their work.

By the time she got to Zhou Siyou, night was already closing in.

In the dim room, the loading bar spun.

In truth, compared with the other actresses, Zhou Siyou’s filmography was pitifully thin.

For one, her career was young; for another, her resources truly were brutal to behold.

Still, Zhong Qing—more symbolically than anything—clicked open Zhou Siyou’s debut work.

It was a film shot overseas, its localized title 《Anti-Hunt》, its original English name more direct still: KillMen.

Made while Zhou Siyou was still studying in North America, a collaboration with another professor at her academy—a commercial film of daring subject matter, eye-catching, attention-grabbing, showy.

The film had made a decent splash abroad and was set to be brought back home—until, with one snip, it was banned, on grounds of subject matter.

The reason was nothing else. Judging by the title alone, it was a small film paying homage to Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill and its aesthetics of violence—or, put another way, a hybrid offspring of erotic art and campus youth. Its heroine carried an air of blood-mad frenzy beyond all reason from start to finish, which naturally did not align with mainstream ideology.

In a word: the subject matter was daring, and the powers that be didn’t like it.

The film’s protagonist had suffered violence in her school days, a video of her violation circulated online. The movie opens with revenge: her bullies from those years erased one by one, and the ones who spread the video meeting their ends too.

In short: a blood-drenched vendetta. Stand in my way and die.

Ethically, a bloodthirsty protagonist defies mainstream values. But there are always creators who, in art’s name, refuse to be chained by ethics.

At the film’s end, the protagonist puts the black school uniform back on and stands in the rainy night, letting the downpour wash the blood away.

Fresh blood on her face, muddied tear tracks in her eyes.

You couldn’t quite call it vengeance won.

Because every viewer understood: even with the dregs purged, a life doesn’t necessarily escape its nightmares.

As she was thinking, the progress bar on the laptop flashed complete.

Zhong Qing’s face was mirrored in the pure-black screen.

Truthfully, she no longer needed to watch. Zhong Qing already knew how Zhou Siyou performed in this film.

An expressionless girl standing in the endless flow of a street, like a lifeless machine—alive only in the pair of Bluetooth earphones at her ears, their blue light flickering faintly, the sole sign of any pulse.

Zhou Siyou’s hands were a pianist’s hands.

Yet when those hands picked up a blade, there was—astonishingly—a kind of elegance in them too.

Shrill screams, leaping notes, her enemies collapsing beneath the snow-white piano.

On the black-and-white keys, it was the killer playing 《Für Elise》.

Art? Perhaps it was art.

Did the protagonist’s soul ascend? Zhong Qing didn’t know.

It was revenge, yes—but the blood on her hands was real nonetheless. And if a life can be threaded through by nothing but the word “vengeance,” then what comes after vengeance can only be bewilderment and despair.

And in the closing storm, the despair in the character’s eyes was too deep and too true—that was why every viewing left Zhong Qing feeling faintly unwell.

Because she knew that despair belonged not only to the character, but also to…

With a jingle, her phone lit up with messages, a call log crowding the screen.

Though the thought was severed, Zhong Qing still stared at the screen, lost in thought.

She didn’t know whether giving her role to Zhou Siyou was right or wrong. After all, the character in this script and Zhou Siyou’s debut role were, to some degree, cut from the same cloth.

But…

Mechanically picking up her phone, Zhong Qing faced the laptop and pressed pause on instinct.

On the screen were Zhou Siyou’s emotionless eyes.

Zhong Qing suddenly recalled a tabloid piece about Zhou Siyou on the foreign internet.

“Zhou’s eyes are far too beautiful—like a leopard’s. When they fix on you, you shiver before you know why.” So read the article’s subheading. “A beauty that is natural, feral, and alive.”

Still musing, she swiped to answer.

“Hello?”

“Little Director Zhong, how’s the casting coming along?” The voice on the other end was a stranger’s, yet familiar as an old friend. “This is Boss Li’s assistant.”

“…Boss Li?”

Who was Boss Li?

“The head of your film’s largest investment firm—Li Yin. Oh, right, and Yu Ning is our Boss Lady. I’m calling because I’d like to discuss the casting with you…”

“…………”

It wasn’t until that night that Zhong Qing accepted Zhou Siyou’s friend request.

At the time, Zhou Siyou was slumped against the headboard, counting on her fingers, her eyes woeful and wan—The Little Match Girl in the flesh.

The instant the phone screen lit up, Zhou Siyou jolted upright.

“Zhong Qing has accepted your friend request. You can start chatting now~”

She flung a hand out to switch on the bedside lamp, then sprawled across the bed, hands trembling as she typed and deleted, typed and deleted in the chat box.

“Zhong Qing, what are you playing at? Acting like you don’t know me.”

…No. Delete.

“Well, well, Little Director Zhong, so busy running the world, huh? Friend request sent in the afternoon, accepted in the middle of the night? Think you’re something special?”

…No, no. What the hell is any of this!!

After agonizing forever and drafting dozens of opening lines, she still couldn’t bring herself to hit send.

Zhou Siyou face-planted into the pillow and flung her phone away in surrender.

Maybe Zhong Qing will message first? she thought.

Nursing that sliver of hope, Zhou Siyou scooped up the darkened phone, flopped onto her back, and stared blankly at the ceiling.

A long while passed. The phone stayed dead silent.

Zhou Siyou sighed in resignation.

She had no idea how she and Zhong Qing had ended up in this “if the enemy doesn’t move, I don’t move” stalemate.

Seven years ago, if you asked who was at fault—perhaps no one had done anything wrong. But that she had wronged Zhong Qing was an unspoken truth between them.

In the end, it was Zhou Siyou who owed her.

With Zhong Qing this cold now, Zhou Siyou didn’t dare overstep. Reuniting at all was already an unexpected grace; if all she could have was friendship… then friendship it would be.

It beat seven years of silence without a word.

Zhou Siyou was drowning in old memories, her thoughts going murky and heavy toward sleep—when her phone chimed.

Her eyes snapped wide and she rolled over at once.

Zhong Qing: “Are you free these next few days?”

…Huh?

Zhou Siyou, not quite following, didn’t reply at once, holding herself back with dignity as she waited for the rest.

But Zhong Qing said nothing more.

Waiting left and waiting right with no response, Zhou Siyou finally ran out of patience and moved to ask in return, “What for?”

But once inside the chat box, all she managed to tap out was a single “?”

Zhong Qing: “Are you free these next few days?”

Zhou Siyou: “?”

Zhong Qing: “…”

Zhong Qing seemed a little speechless.

She asked again: “Your current address. Send it to me, please?”

…Address?

Staring at the screen, Zhou Siyou’s brain crashed outright.

Yet when she lifted her hands, she was still maintaining that aloof, frosty pose.

Zhou Siyou: “?”

One minute. Two minutes. Five minutes…

Zhong Qing wasn’t replying anymore!!