Chapter 45: “Twenty-Four” Part 1

There was an unreliable theory about forgetting that claimed once someone started dreaming frequently about another person, it meant they were in the process of forgetting them.

But Li Qiao had told Kong Liyuan that there was no psychological evidence to back up this idea.

So Kong Liyuan stuck to her belief in Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve—forgetting was merely a failure to retrieve a memory, but long-term memories always existed. With the right cues, those memories could be pulled back to the surface.

Forgetting and avoiding memories were no challenge for Kong Liyuan. On the flip side, she handled the art of “remembering” with equal finesse.

In the past, the cues her subconscious had latched onto were June 21st, dawn, burning, and 37 Degrees. Those hints painted a scorching white palette, dry and oppressively heavy.

After turning twenty-four, the cues she recognized expanded to include California lupine, Buzz Lightyear, a fox, Little Bird, and “have a safe trip.” These carried a vibrant spectrum of colors—orange, purple, red… and the mingled hue of blood, like a bizarre, dreamlike summer night from long ago.

Among them, the two easiest to grasp had unwittingly become “twenty-four” and “have a safe trip.”

Winter Storm had premiered in the winter.

By then, Kong Liyuan was already filming Blue Book in Chongqing’s narrow, twisting old alleys.

The weather there was often overcast with rain and fog. She wore a blue scarf day and night, embodying a young mother named Zhang Yu who had been driven to the brink and turned into a killer.

Zhang Yu’s story unfolded in 2003, spanning a long timeline that left the entire narrative fractured and oppressive.

At first, she was the tough, foul-mouthed owner of a hair salon, scraping by with her nine-year-old daughter. Zhang Yu could unleash a torrent of profanity behind an innocent-looking face or play the fool to catch the tiger when needed.

The story kicked off when she and her daughter stumbled upon a bizarre murder. Two ordinary people from the bottom rungs of society were inexplicably dragged into the fray and forced to fight back amid escalating clashes.

After her daughter was killed and her body carved up into pieces to feed the birds, Zhang Yu—wrapped in the blue scarf her daughter had bought her for Mother’s Day—underwent a profound shift in her psyche during her desperate flight. She hatched a meticulous revenge plan and slit the throat of the mastermind behind it all.

This was Kong Liyuan’s second film after her official debut. Winter Storm hadn’t hit theaters yet, and in 2017—when summer blockbusters dominated the industry—the only impression she left on the public was a brief clip from Life and the fact that she was Jiang Man and Kong Yan’s only daughter.

The Blue Book crew wasn’t stacked with big-name directors or writers, and the production budget was modest at best.

But instead of splurging on traffic-star leads, they took a bold gamble: a refreshingly original script that would shine if the lead could carry the role, paired with Zhang Yu’s gritty, resilient character. They cast a newcomer.

Kong Liyuan nailed the audition and flew overnight to the misty, rain-soaked streets of Chongqing, becoming the blue-scarved Zhang Yu.

Li Qiao only learned about it after Kong Liyuan joined the set. By then, Li Qiao had dropped her gentle facade around her, speaking bluntly about everything instead.

She was the only person Kong Liyuan could really talk to, often seeking confirmation from her that California lupine was indeed California’s state flower, blooming wildly across hillsides.

During one trans-Pacific video call, Li Qiao stared at her in surprise for a long moment, her gaze as if she were looking at someone else. Finally, she recovered and asked,

“I thought you wouldn’t take this path again.”

Winter was closing in. Kong Liyuan, blue scarf around her neck, stood in front of an old-fashioned hair salon that looked like it was from the last century. She lit up a Red Wine Burst-Bead Cigarette with a filter marked in graduated lines.

The crew had wrapped for the day. A fine drizzle fell from the gloomy sky, and the street shimmered with oily reflections from nearby shops.

She wore a common black padded jacket, sat on a low stool with her hair casually tied up, her pale skin accented only by a vivid slash of lipstick. She lifted her eyelids faintly and said to Li Qiao on the screen,

“I’ve been having dreams lately.”

“Oh, those dreams again? No big deal,” Li Qiao replied, picking up a pint of Häagen-Dazs.

Kong Liyuan stared blankly at the swirling smoke, her dark lashes casting shadows over her eyes. She fell silent.

Li Qiao sighed on the other end of the glitchy connection, the sound stuttering in and out.

Like Kong Liyuan’s dreams, which came in fragmented pieces that never quite connected, yet the painful memories kept looping relentlessly.

She watched the frozen image of Li Qiao, took a deep drag that burned her lungs, exhaled a plume of white smoke, and gave a faint smile.

By the time the signal cleared, Li Qiao’s Häagen-Dazs was gone. Her voice crackled through,

“Hey, the way you’re smiling now… it’s like you’ve become a different person… something like that. Full of allure, soft yet innocently seductive.”

Kong Liyuan absently ran a hand through her hair and smiled again. “Like Zhang Yu?”

With that, she turned toward a small mirror by the hair salon’s door and tilted her chin up slightly.

A hazy blue film coated the glass, tinting the face in it an eerie, murky blue.

She smiled once more. The reflection smiled back, dim and illusory.

But you could still make out the golden-dyed hair, the bloodless pallor of her skin, the hollowed cheeks, and the stark red of her lips.

“Like, like, like… yeah,” came Li Qiao’s fragmented voice through the phone.

Kong Liyuan turned back lazily, head slightly bowed, and smiled again. As she moved to end the call, Li Qiao’s signal finally stabilized, and she spoke clearly,

“Kong Liyuan, tell me—why are you making movies? I’m genuinely curious. You’re not the type who’s obsessed with film. How did you end up following that person’s lead and taking this road?”

Following whose lead?

For a moment, lost in Chongqing’s damp, chaotic streets and shadows after months there, Kong Liyuan blanked out. She couldn’t recall who Li Qiao meant by “that person.”

It wasn’t until she’d smoked half the cigarette, the ash piling into a roadside puddle, that a motorcycle roared past, splashing water. In the crushed, gray puddle, a face reflected back at her.

—Kong Yan.

Kong Liyuan recalled it all without a flicker of emotion. Ever since she’d returned from California covered in wounds, and Kong Yan had slammed those bloody photos of her coming and going from the police station onto the table, declaring he absolutely could not have a daughter like her.

She’d come straight to Chongqing and joined this production.

Kong Yan hadn’t shown up since.

So how could making movies be following his wishes?

For him, her entering the industry might have perks. But all he wanted was for her to be his high-IQ, highly educated, smoothly successful daughter—someone he could trot out to build his image or maintain the status quo.

A perfect accessory in his life, one who could only add shine and never a stain.

To him, his daughter didn’t need to be a real person, or enter showbiz, or even be Kong Liyuan herself. Just a label he could slap on.

But that label couldn’t have any mental illnesses, or incidents requiring her to walk into a police station bloody, or any imperfections.

So her first twenty-four years in the public eye had been “perfect.”

Without surprises, she would have stayed in that “standardized perfection,” her life flat and uneventful.

Like a dead specimen, beautiful only because nothing could mar it.

Starring in Winter Storm had been pure chance.

The clichéd setup happened in the summer of 2016, after a public graduation ceremony.

Kong Liyuan was set to join a venture capital firm in California when someone approached her.

It was Fang Mo, a director who had won awards at just thirty-three but vanished from the scene after publicly blasting industry nepotism a few years earlier.

At thirty-seven, with faded yellow hair streaked gray and a weathered face, Fang Mo’s eyes still held that sincere spark from her award-winning days.

She came with a script, saying she’d seen every public video of Kong Liyuan.

Her opening line: She thought Kong Liyuan matched the Winter Storm protagonist’s vibe perfectly.

She pitched Winter Storm as a film that stood apart from typical domestic productions in production, script, and core—from start to finish. Joining it would contribute to art films’ rise in the industry and pave Kong Liyuan’s path into movies.

A noble, heartfelt pitch.

Too bad Kong Liyuan had no interest then. She didn’t even like herself—how could some grand love for cinema motivate her?

Fang Mo let out another wry smile. She lit up several cigarettes one after another before finally smashing the butt into the ashtray.

She said bluntly that this crew was one she had painstakingly assembled with great difficulty. People in the industry, upon hearing about her scandal, avoided her like the plague. No one was willing to work with her.

Now, they were just missing one suitable lead actress.

But why on earth would that suitable lead be Kong Liyuan? Someone who had only shown her face briefly in an old film? What exactly made her suitable?

Kong Liyuan halted her steps as she was leaving. “Why do you want me?”

Fang Mo answered honestly. “I told you, your temperament matches exactly what I’m looking for. It’s true. You can take a look at the script first. If you’re interested, come audition. I believe you’ll surprise even yourself once you try it out. If it goes well, we can start shooting right away. And we don’t play the usual industry games—no hype, no forcing actors to entertain investors with drinks or dinners. You just show up, audition successfully, and then stay with the crew to film.”

Kong Liyuan asked again, “Isn’t it because I’m Kong Yan’s daughter? Don’t you have a publicity gimmick?”

Fang Mo gave a wry smile. “Have you seen the public footage from your graduation ceremony? Honestly, your school’s camera work was awful. It didn’t capture the strengths of your face at all.”

“Actually, your face is truly perfect for the big screen. It would be such a waste not to make movies. If you come film Winter Storm, I guarantee you’ll see a completely different Kong Liyuan.”

Throughout their conversation, she never once mentioned Kong Yan.

Kong Liyuan chose to believe her—to believe this female director who had vanished from public view after publicly denouncing the industry’s unspoken rules.

In some ways, she felt her own life already had nothing left to ruin.

So she flew back home for the audition. Fang Mo and the screenwriter seemed extremely pleased with her performance. They even directly named the as-yet undecided female lead “Li Yi.”

Liyuan, Li Yi—the gap between them seemed to require only a single flying bird.