With hair and makeup completed, Qiu Mian boarded the vehicle and headed to the set.
The project he was currently filming was a costume idol drama titled Youth in Thin Spring Gowns. Because the IP originated from the platform’s own novel library, its exclusive online broadcast rights had been secured even before shooting began, reflecting a high level of confidence. The production values, including costumes, makeup, and set design, were by no means cheap, and both the director and screenwriter had notable works under their belts.
As for the main cast, Qiu Mian couldn’t properly evaluate their looks or acting skills, but they were all moderately famous rather than complete newcomers, so their professional proficiency shouldn’t be too terrible.
In the drama, he played a deep and taciturn imperial guard of the Marquis’s estate. As a subordinate to the male lead, he had a substantial amount of screen time. While mostly serving as a background character, he also had his own distinct storyline, continuously searching for the enemy who had slaughtered his entire family.
The male lead and the second female lead, a willful and arrogant princess, were childhood sweethearts, but the male lead only viewed her as a younger sister, remaining oblivious to her affectionate overtures. The guard played by Qiu Mian was forced to take over this troublesome task, frequently intercepting and escorting the princess. Through this back-and-forth, they gradually developed hidden feelings for each other.
However, as the plot progressed, Qiu Mian discovered that the culprit who had harmed his entire family was actually the princess’s own father. Trapped by deep-seated grudges, he successively killed the princess’s master and older brother, and even went so far as to turn against the male lead, transforming into a half-villain. In the end, after the princess blocked a poisoned arrow for him, paying off the blood debt, he experienced a sudden awakening of conscience, embraced her corpse, and committed suicide.
Judging from the script, the character’s difficulty level in the early stages wasn’t high. It mostly required wearing a deadpan expression, acting as a background prop and a protector, and occasionally exchanging ambiguous glances with the princess.
However, in the later stages, the plot suddenly turned heavy, and personal struggle became the focal point. It required displaying complex emotions of inner pain, entwined love and hatred, yet a resolute refusal to turn back, giving the character a multi-dimensional depth. Therefore, it definitely had certain demands in terms of acting skills.
The shooting schedule didn’t follow chronological order. This was Qiu Mian’s second week on set, and they were currently filming the dark second half first. His emotional inner monologues and the scenes from the previous few days, specifically killing the princess’s older brother, the young prince played by Mi Chun, had all been performed quite well, earning a couple of words of praise from the notoriously strict Director Mai.
Today, however, perhaps because he had arrived late, Director Mai was clearly in a foul mood. “Hurry up with the actions! Don’t dawdle and waste time. If we NG a few more times, we won’t even need to eat lunch.”
The crew fell into a dead silence. The lighting and camera crew silently adjusted their positions. Qiu Mian glanced at the script, set it aside casually, walked to the appropriate spot in front of the lens, and signaled that they could begin at any time.
Director Mai’s tone softened slightly. “Let’s go.”
If nothing else, Qiu Mian was extremely efficient during filming. He didn’t forget his lines, didn’t break character into laughter, didn’t fizzle out at the last second, and didn’t put on affected airs. Although his acting occasionally fell short of perfection and required the director to guide him through a scene, he could quickly adjust to the right state and cleanly nail that part.
This left Director Mai with a good impression of him, especially when compared to Mi Chun, who forgot his lines every day, possessed zero acting skills, and had gotten his role through back-door connections. Qiu Mian looked pleasing in every possible way by contrast.
Yet today’s Qiu Mian seemed determined to cause him trouble.
“CUT!”
After the eighth interruption, Director Mai finally lost his patience. “Qiu Mian, what is going on with your state today? Haven’t you been acting quite well this whole time? Why are these interaction scenes with the princess so stiff and cold? Relax! Be natural! We need to build up an atmosphere of ambiguity! When she lowers her gaze to look at the rabbit, you silently watch her; when she raises her head, you’re supposed to casually look away. It’s a very simple scene! Why is the transition so wooden?”
Qiu Mian listened quietly to the director’s lecture without refuting him, though he knew the exact reason why.
The scenes filmed over the past few days were all close-up emotional outburst scenes that only required him to brew expressions on his own. But now, having reached the scenes where he had to flirt with the princess, featuring many two-person frames, mutual gazes, and surreptitious glances, his weakness was fully exposed.
He couldn’t distinguish the facial features and expressions of his fellow actors; looking at her was practically no different from looking at a wooden puppet. Furthermore, he had no idea what expression a person harboring a secret crush was supposed to make. Even when the director demonstrated and explained the scene, it was hard for him to grasp the core points.
In other words, he could deliver stellar performances in personal monologues, inner thoughts, or scenes where he had to awkwardly act against empty air. But the moment face-to-face interaction was required, he appeared naive and pale.
Although a passable performance would suffice to muddle through, Director Mai originally thought highly of him and was thus willing to offer repeated guidance. Unfortunately, the effect was minimal, and by the end, even the director lost his patience. Coupled with Qiu Mian’s late arrival, a round of harsh criticism was inevitable, and they only managed to finish the morning’s tasks with great difficulty.
During the mid-session break, Qiu Mian casually picked up a working meal to eat. He was somewhat apathetic about food, and combined with the poor taste of the crew’s boxed lunches, he ate extremely slowly and deliberately. To others, however, this looked like he was deeply troubled and unable to swallow his food.
“Teacher Qiu Mian, is something bothering you? Oh my, everyone gets yelled at by Director Mai, don’t take it too to heart.” Seeing him take a hit, Mi Chun smiled with extraordinary smugness, making no effort to conceal his mockery. “It’s all because you didn’t rest well yesterday and got too tired, oh!”
Qiu Mian was a straightforward person. He put down his chopsticks and asked with genuine confusion, “Excuse me, where have I offended you?”
“Sigh, what kind of talk is that?”
Instead of being comfortable with a straightforward confrontation, Mi Chun acted all innocent and fake. “I was just wondering. We’re both newcomers, so why did Director Mai keep staring and yelling at me alone? I thought someone had pulled strings behind the scenes to help you out.”
“Oh, that’s because you couldn’t memorize your lines and wasted too much time.”
Although he didn’t get the answer to his own question, Qiu Mian was willing to offer Mi Chun some guidance. After all, while he couldn’t critique Mi Chun’s acting skills, he could at least hear that his line delivery was terrible.
Mi Chun’s face instantly darkened. “Hehe, I don’t need your reminder.”
He had originally come over to watch Qiu Mian’s gloomy face, only to find that Qiu Mian still wore that same aloof and indifferent look, which ended up making Mi Chun stew in his own anger instead. He stood there dumbly watching Qiu Mian finish his boxed lunch at a leisurely pace, throw away the packaging, wipe his mouth and hands, and wait for his touch-up, before finally squeezing out a sentence: “Where’s your assistant? How come you didn’t even bring one?”
“He stayed up all night, catching up on sleep.”
“What the hell. You and your assistant went out to play together?”
“Yeah.”
Mi Chun widened his eyes, seemingly shocked by Qiu Mian’s boundless stamina to pull an all-nighter and still come out to film.
Sister Wang couldn’t bear listening to them talk at cross-purposes anymore and laughed helplessly. “Assistant Wei had other things to do. Teacher Qiu Mian always gives him the morning off, but he should be here soon.”
As she spoke, a glaringly bright yellow head flashed at the doorway. He was wearing an orange T-shirt printed with custom letters to ensure Qiu Mian could recognize him at a glance.
Wei Pu was extremely familiar and immediately greeted loudly, “Hello, Teacher Mi Chun! Chatting with Mianmian?”
“Just saying a few words,” Mi Chun replied vaguely. Seeing that Qiu Mian’s assistant was dressed like a punk subculture style, he lost interest in engaging, turned around, and walked away with zero momentum.
Wei Pu clicked his tongue, leaned close to Qiu Mian’s ear, and whispered, “What was he here for? Didn’t bully you, did he?”
“No, he just consulted me on why Director Mai kept staring and lecturing him previously,” Qiu Mian said. “And I provided a friendly explanation for him.”
“According to my intuition, that’s probably not what he meant.”
Xiao Yang, the makeup artist’s assistant, finally dared to poke her head out and complain: “Obviously he did. Mi Chun’s words were loaded with barbs.”
“I knew it! Last time I saw his eyes, they were full of resentment.”
Qiu Mian was curious. “Huh? So where did I displease him?”
“Mostly because on the day you two shot your opposing scenes, he was frightened by your imposing aura, couldn’t even speak coherently, and NG’d too many times. You got praised by the director while he got scolded, and even the sugar daddy who shoved him into the crew got obliquely dragged into the roast,” Wei Pu popularized the lore. “The director couldn’t stand it and told him to read numbers instead of lines, but he even messed up reading the numbers. Everyone on set was snickering, except you didn’t laugh, which made him even more annoyed.”
Qiu Mian looked thoughtful. “So as long as I laugh at him next time, it’ll be fine.”
“Mian, that’s not the point.”
“Oh, so the point is Mi Chun has a sugar daddy?”
“That’s not important either. Forget it.”
“No wonder his acting skills are rather unique.” Xiao Yang wanted to listen to gossip, yet felt too embarrassed to directly speak ill of people, so she only dared to timidly mutter, “With a sugar daddy, why did they still arrange such a cannon-fodder role for him?”
“Sugar daddies aren’t stupid. Can you prop up a show by feeding leads directly to him? They haven’t loved him to the point of losing money just to shout cheers, right?” Wei Pu continued his lecture. “Minor roles with a bit of screen time carry less burden.”
“Oh oh.”
The two of them chattered back and forth, offending a good majority of the entertainment industry in a single breath. Qiu Mian listened next to them until he grew sleepy, and things finally quieted down when Xiao Yang went out to fetch milk tea.
“Teacher Qiu Mian, Brother Xiao Wei, please have some milk tea! And Master, sorry for the trouble today!”
“Thank you.” Qiu Mian reached out to take it, but was swiftly blocked by his assistant. Wei Pu lowered his voice and earnestly advised, “Mianmian, you need to watch it! You’ve gained two catties compared to last month.”
Qiu Mian narrowed his eyes. Wei Pu hurriedly retracted his hand and pulled out a small electric fan to blow air at him. “What I mean is, occasionally is of course fine.”
“Forget it, I don’t care much for sweet things anyway. If there were a spicy-flavored beverage, that would be great.”
He ultimately chose plain water. He genuinely didn’t have much of a sweet tooth for things like milk tea, but the weight gain required a different explanation: “It’s because I’ve been sleeping more.”
Wei Pu’s face showed joy. “Lately, it seems we rarely run into emergency incidents, and Brother Liang’s side has consistently reported things as normal.”
“Mm, got it,” Qiu Mian said calmly. “The official authorities probably dispatched a large number of powerful Dream Travelers to this vicinity. My average daily sleep time has skyrocketed from three hours to three and a half hours.”
“I think so too. Have you run into any during your dream travels?”
“No.” Qiu Mian showed a satisfied smile. “I hope they take on a larger share and drag my average daily sleep time up to four hours.”
After the intermission, Qiu Mian resumed filming his afternoon scenes. He hadn’t told his other colleagues about his prosopagnosia; only his assistant knew.
Wei Pu attempted to describe the changes in gaze when an aloof and cool guy harbored a secret crush, using a method Qiu Mian could understand, but unfortunately, the effect was minimal. After Director Mai fumbled through a few takes, he barely managed to patch together a semblance of suppressed affection from Qiu Mian’s calm expression and hastily rushed the take through.
“I checked your script, and tonight’s scene is the real blockbuster. A palace mutiny: you lead troops to intercept and kill the female lead, only to be counter-encircled by the male lead. Just as you’re nearly captured, you’re ambushed by the villain’s secret pawn, but the princess saves you at the cost of her own life. You cry out in heartbroken grief and confess your love at the parting.”
Wei Pu began playing the prophet of doom: “We’re done for. You wouldn’t be able to act this out even if you imagined the princess as a spicy-flavored beverage!”
Qiu Mian struggled slightly: “I can imagine it as an extra-spicy-flavored beverage.”
“Only a pervert would harbor a secret crush on an extra-spicy beverage!”
Wei Pu covered his face and sighed deeply, wondering if next time he should beg the manager not to take on roles with romantic plots, while simultaneously pondering how to make Qiu Mian portray this explosive burst of emotion. Suddenly, his phone vibrated.
He glanced at the notification and his expression instantly turned serious: “Brother Liang is calling you urgently. There’s a B-class dreamscape with a risk of spinning out of control.”
“Mm, got it,” Qiu Mian said calmly. “I’ll sleep a bit, keep watch.”
He leaned back casually, the folding chair supporting his body weight, and closed his eyes. The noisy sounds of the set gradually faded away. In less than two seconds, Qiu Mian stepped into the world of dreams.