Xia Yue rushed over in a whirlwind, bowing repeatedly in thanks, only to be called back by her belated manager to prepare for the unfinished emotional conflict scene. Better that than face the director’s scolding after the break.
Around four or five in the morning, after the set had cleared, the rain had stopped. The suburban road stretched wide with sparse traffic, while the damp streets bustled with busy crowds.
A white horse still stood there, along with two people.
Farther off, at the end of the road, a faint light glimmered—the first glow of dawn, reminiscent of an inexhaustible fate.
Fu Tingli couldn’t explain why she hadn’t gone with the others. She felt tied by a faint thread, unable to move, yet willingly so.
She held the ginger tea in her hand, now nearly cooled, and almost offered it to Kong Liyuan. But her outstretched hand retracted midway.
Suddenly, she blurted out, “Shouldn’t I offer you a cigarette right about now? It’d feel more fitting.”
Kong Liyuan was stroking the white horse she held by the reins. At those words, she seemed amused.
Her casually pinned-up black hair fluttered in the wind, strands loosening with her laughter. Her features sharpened clearly, piercing the hazy light and shadow in an instant.
After chuckling for a moment, she looked at Fu Tingli and asked, “Do I strike you as someone with a serious smoking habit?”
Their back-and-forth felt like two needles singed by fire, stabbing fiercely into their pent-up, suppressed emotions until they spilled out.
All absorbed by the approaching dawn.
Fu Tingli knew her ginger tea had gone cold, but after some pondering, she handed it to Kong Liyuan anyway.
“Since Teacher Kong doesn’t need a smoke, how about some tea instead? Perfect for warming up in winter.”
Once Kong Liyuan took it, she added, “This is the cup you just gave Xia Yue. It might be cold by now.”
“You didn’t have any?” Kong Liyuan took a small sip.
“I did.” Fu Tingli shoved her hands into her pockets. “I finished a cup before coming over.”
Kong Liyuan nodded and fell silent, sipping the ginger tea quietly.
Fu Tingli watched her just as quietly.
Kong Liyuan still wore Ayang’s rain-soaked clothes from her escape, her loosely pinned black hair disheveled. Her aura was dejected, her face pale—much like Kong Liyuan four years ago.
But the Kong Liyuan of four years past had still carried a sharp edge in her eyes, along with a burning wildness.
Now, playing Ayang, Kong Liyuan’s presence seemed even more fluid after four years of refinement. It felt more restrained, more tolerant… or perhaps a beauty more palatable to the masses.
They were different all the same, Fu Tingli thought.
Then she wondered if Kong Liyuan was cold, dressed so lightly. But what if she shrugged off her own coat right now? With so many people around, it could spark rumors—especially if someone dug up those California stories and twisted them.
Just then, Rong Wu hurried over and draped a down jacket over Kong Liyuan’s shoulders. Kong Liyuan kept her eyes lowered, sipping the ginger tea steadily.
Once Rong Wu walked away, Fu Tingli buttoned her coat back up, one button at a time. A cup of cold ginger tea—what was there to like about it?
Suddenly, Fu Tingli wanted to light a cigarette for Kong Liyuan. Something scorching, to burn away all the suppressed bitterness clean.
“Ayang meets this white horse right on this road,” Kong Liyuan said abruptly.
“Huh?” Fu Tingli blinked, caught off guard. After a pause, she replied,
“Yeah, and soon, at dawn, we’ll shoot your confrontation with the white horse—”
She broke off mid-sentence.
So Kong Liyuan had been standing here on this road during the break, holding the horse, simply to prepare for the next scene.
Fu Tingli had skimmed this part of the script. It had no dialogue—just pure expressions and body language to convey intense emotion.
This was a pivotal scene, the film’s climax and turning point. For the fingerless Ayang, it marked her rise from rock bottom, stepping back onto the road.
The white horse appearing on the road served as the emotional pivot.
It sounded absurd, even bizarre.
Yet it brimmed with raw self-examination and inner conflict—the director’s signature style and a massive test for any actor.
Kong Liyuan had finished her tea. She stroked the white horse’s damp coat and murmured softly,
“Does she find it more unbelievable… or more exhilarating?
When she climbs onto the white horse’s back, covered in wounds and soaked clothes—what runs through her mind?
Is she climbing up of her own accord? Or to escape her debts and her sister, fleeing it all?”
Lost in thought, immersed in the role, Kong Liyuan seemed different somehow.
Like someone who needed help.
In that moment, Fu Tingli grasped a truth:
For Xia Yue, to some extent, she still had room to make mistakes. Each error was just experience, dismissed as a newbie’s growing pains, something others might overlook.
Even her emotional outburst from the backlash could be understood by some, despite the delay.
She was new enough, with talent pitched just right—not too much, just enough for leniency.
But it wasn’t like that for Kong Liyuan.
From birth, she had been the daughter of Kong Yan and Jiang Man.
From her debut, she had led the pack. Starting from such a height, every move drew scrutiny, endlessly magnified.
Living under lights a thousand times brighter than anyone else’s, she had to stay perpetually flawless, at peak condition every moment.
Even when Xia Yue flubbed take after take, Kong Liyuan couldn’t cite her father’s set visit as an excuse for her own shaky state. She couldn’t slip out of the emotion.
It would be the same even after Xia Yue nailed her shot. Kong Liyuan simply couldn’t say it. She had never been a Xia Yue.
Fu Tingli recalled Wen Yingxiu’s warning once more: Image management was an artist’s job.
The words weren’t as simple as she’d once assumed.
Because so many people needed an invincible Kong Liyuan.
She had no margin for error. She couldn’t afford to be mediocre or incompetent.
“She’s an artist.”
Dawn crept ever closer across the sky, nearly within reach.
Fu Tingli gazed at Kong Liyuan’s hazy profile and said softly.
“An artist?” Kong Liyuan turned to her, as if already understanding.
“Yes.” Fu Tingli wasn’t a trained actor and had no prior experience with this kind of work. She could only put herself in Ayang’s shoes.
If it were her right now—broken finger, career in the gutter, betrayed and alone, cornered on every side—and she spotted a white horse like this on the road? What would she do?
“If it were me,” Fu Tingli mused for a moment before saying softly,
“I think I’d crave this white horse.”
“Crave it?”
Even if her words weren’t precise, Kong Liyuan seized the core. “Crave its freedom from worldly burdens, just being a simple white horse?”
“Yes, I’d feel something like that,” Fu Tingli said. “When I read the script, that’s the impression it gave me.”
“And then?” Kong Liyuan prompted.
“Then—” Fu Tingli eyed the white horse thoughtfully.
“When Ayang finally climbs on, gasping for breath, utterly exhilarated.
In that instant, doesn’t she feel like her old self again—the spirited, free-spirited young sculptor?”
Kong Liyuan nodded, picking up the thread. “But when she realizes the white horse won’t carry her away, she’ll tumble off—fall even harder. And after that crash, her shift in mindset feels all the more natural?”
“In essence, she needs this white horse to shatter the desolation inside her.”
The part about falling off the horse wasn’t in the script. For this beat, it only said:
Ayang confronts the white horse and tries to climb onto its back.
The rest—a vast blank space—fell to the actor to fill. Clearly, these later ideas were Kong Liyuan’s own insights.
Fu Tingli watched that sparse line bloom into something rich under Kong Liyuan’s words.
No expert on film or character work herself, she had nothing more to add. She simply watched Kong Liyuan quietly.
As the furrow in Kong Liyuan’s brow eased, Fu Tingli found herself genuinely looking forward to the movie—not just for her name in the credits.
With sincere warmth, she said, “When it comes out, I’ll go see it specially.”
“Just this one scene?” Kong Liyuan replied offhandedly, still lost in thought.
Fu Tingli found it amusing that she would say something like that. Who watched a movie just for one scene?
She laughed until her eyes curved into crescents, deliberately waiting a moment before taking off her gloves and stroking the docile white horse trotting obediently at their side.
Its coat was damp, but its flesh was hot to the touch.
As if at any second, it might bolt down the open road.
Fu Tingli was waiting for Kong Liyuan to step out of her role.
“Can you ride a horse?”
After a pause, Kong Liyuan seemed to have finished thinking it over. Fu Tingli looked toward the voice and saw the other woman’s eyebrows slightly raised.
She seemed a bit more spirited than before.
“Of course I can.”
Fu Tingli’s tone inexplicably relaxed in response.
“Don’t forget, my mom is Kazakh. She’s a woman of the snowy steppes, and I’m no slouch either.”
“When I was little and went to the Northern Border—just a tiny thing, no bigger than a carrot head—the first thing she taught me there was how to ride.”
Mentioning the Northern Border again inevitably brought California to mind.
Amid the snowflakes drifting through the sky, they had talked about how beautiful the snow there was, telling Zhu Muzi it was just casual chat and that they wouldn’t actually go together.
Kong Liyuan keenly latched onto that keyword. After a moment of silence, she said, “So you haven’t been back there in years?”
“No.” Fu Tingli shook her head. “My mom hasn’t gone back in ages, and I’ve only been a few times as a kid with her.”
Kong Liyuan hummed in acknowledgment. “Do they ride horses in the snow there too?”
Fu Tingli replied, “Yeah, I learned on a snowy day, and riding through the snow makes the Northern Border’s scenery even more stunning.”
“Do you still want to ride?” Kong Liyuan asked again, tugging lightly on the reins in her hand.
Fu Tingli’s stroking paused. She looked at Kong Liyuan in some surprise.
“This is the crew’s horse. If I actually rode off, the director would fire me, right?”
Kong Liyuan smiled at her. “If you really want to ride, I can make sure she doesn’t fire you.”
“Better not.” Fu Tingli said, pausing before adding, “I’m not Ayang, after all.”
Reality wasn’t a movie. Riding this white horse once—or falling from it—wouldn’t trigger the next plot twist.
Kong Liyuan seemed to understand what she was thinking. In the faint light drifting toward the horizon, she gazed at her for a while.
She looked like she wanted to say something more, but just then, Xia Yue emerged from under the rain shelter, full of energy as she high-fived a deputy director with a loud smack, the noise crackling through the air.
Then she turned to search for them, and spotting them, waved enthusiastically with her arm raised high, grinning from ear to ear.
Fu Tingli smiled back that way too, her curved eyes bright and pure.
In the wind, she waved back.
“Xia Yue seems to have perked up,” she said with a sigh of relief.
“Has she?” Kong Liyuan didn’t seem to have noticed.
“Yeah, her little face was all crumpled like a bitter melon earlier. I was worried she’d be down for the count, but now she’s beaming like a New Year’s painting doll.”
Fu Tingli added with a sigh, “Youth is such a blessing.”
Kong Liyuan seemed to smile.
Fu Tingli glanced over and realized Kong Liyuan had been watching her the whole time—even while she was looking at Xia Yue.
The wind carried her smile over. Fu Tingli smiled softly too. “What’re you laughing at?”
Kong Liyuan didn’t hold back. “At you, laughing all day and calling someone else a New Year’s painting doll.”
“Are you saying I’m the New Year’s painting doll?” Fu Tingli caught the implication.
Kong Liyuan said, “Something like that.”
Fu Tingli stared at her for a moment before retorting, “I think Teacher Kong is the one handing out New Year’s treats, going to all that trouble to help Xia Yue.”
“What trouble did I go to?” Kong Liyuan asked.
“You moved up that tough scene of yours, shooting the horse encounter before building up the emotional conflict with Xia Yue. That’s got to be challenging, right?”
Kong Liyuan replied calmly, “I just wanted to get this scene over with sooner. Besides, I recommended Xia Yue for this variety show myself. If I didn’t clean up this mess, people would trash me online, saying I don’t give newcomers a chance and hit them with a hazing right off the bat.”
Fu Tingli knew Kong Liyuan would deny it, so she pressed on. “And that cart of ginger tea—wasn’t that to ease the tension on set and help Xia Yue relax?”
Kong Liyuan shot her a glance before denying it again. “The ginger tea wasn’t for Xia Yue.”
Fu Tingli thought this woman was so contradictory—doing good deeds but refusing to admit it.
With a sigh, she conceded, “I can’t win against you.”
Hearing the exaggerated tone in her voice, Kong Liyuan smiled again, looking at her. Then she glanced slowly at Xia Yue and let out a soft sigh before saying, “At her age, she needs to meet some good people in this industry.”
“Aren’t you a good person?”
“Maybe I’m just pretending.”
Fu Tingli didn’t buy it. “I think you’re the one pretending now.”
“It’s the truth.”
The wind carried the breath of dawn, tousling Kong Liyuan’s hair.
She casually smoothed back her windswept strands, her eyes downcast as she said very softly, “I don’t want to be a good person, but I have to pretend. Other people need me to pretend too. To keep being Kong Liyuan, I have to pretend.”
In a way, that echoed what Fu Tingli had grasped before.
But coming from Kong Liyuan, it felt like a different context.
“Whether you’re good or not…” Fu Tingli looked at Kong Liyuan and suddenly felt an inexpressible sadness. It was as if Kong Liyuan lived tangled in a knot of chaos.
She knew it wasn’t just Kong Liyuan—most people in this world were the same.
They had to navigate the chaos before understanding the world’s true nature, watching their high spirits grind into apathy until even their passionate hearts turned mediocre.
