Watching the young men and women frolicking on the screen, Li Shan couldn’t help but fall silent.
In truth, when he had first searched for Qin You’s name and discovered she only had a single youth idol drama to her credit, a sense of unease had begun to spread uncontrollably through his heart. After watching the fan-edited clips of her scenes, Li Shan lapsed into an even longer silence.
This girl… her acting was seriously lacking.
Even in an idol drama, where acting skills weren’t strictly necessary, she carried a trace of awkwardness and unnaturalness. Although the likable nature of the character masked this flaw, Li Shan, with his years of experience, wasn’t as easily fooled as the general audience. Aside from that drama, she had also appeared on a popular variety show with the cast. In a small “Scripted Murder Mystery” segment, her acting had been quite an eyesore…
Li Shan immediately grew restless.
He had originally assumed the role of Ling Yu was just a bit of eye candy, so he hadn’t cared that the director had cast a “vase.” But this character was no vase! Not only was she not eye candy, she was the complete opposite. Could a girl like this truly portray Ling Yu? At this point, he could only hope the director had a magic touch and could turn a piece of rotten wood into something miraculous.
Li Shan prayed silently.
***
Filming for the first episode of *Sleepless City* continued for another two days before finally wrapping up. Li Shan’s long wait finally ended as he headed to the set to begin work.
As fate would have it, despite his deep concerns about his scenes with Ling Yu, their first scene together was the very first one scheduled for the day.
For Fang Ziyu’s daily office scenes, Director Wang had rented an entire floor with floor-to-ceiling glass windows. While Fang Ziyu’s scenes were finished for now, the offices were still needed for other companies in the script. One office had been slightly modified to serve as the office for the Managing Partner of Tomorrow Capital.
While the staff hurried to finish the decorations, Li Shan sat in the black chair, centering himself and immersing himself in his character. Before long, Qin You appeared in the room.
This wasn’t the first time Li Shan had seen Qin You, yet he was still stunned by her appearance. Her makeup today was colder than before; both in tone and texture, it was less gorgeous and more profound and sharp. Her outfit was also intriguing—a trench coat that was black on the outside and red on the inside. It appeared cold and solemn, but the flamboyant bright red lining peeked through at the edges.
The costume design perfectly matched Ling Yu’s performance in this scene.
Li Shan marveled at Qin You’s profile. In terms of image, she truly looked as if Ling Yu had stepped right out of the script. He only hoped her acting wouldn’t be too terrible. Director Wang was a meticulous set tyrant who planned everything; Li Shan hoped the director had already explained the key points of the scene to her.
Li Shan sighed inwardly, bracing himself to repeat the scene dozens of times.
Once the costume designer signaled that everything was perfect, Qin You sat in the chair across from him. Only a metallic desk separated them, its surface reflecting the gloomy sky outside the window.
“Action!”
At the director’s shout, the set fell instantly silent. The first scene of the second episode of *Sleepless City* officially began.
Li Shan had entered his state long before the shout. He looked down at a blank piece of A4 paper, pretending it was the resume Ling Yu had handed him. Because his head was down, he didn’t see the moment Qin You got into character.
As soon as Director Wang’s voice fell, Qin You transformed into a different person.
Normally, Qin You was very low-key on set. Despite her striking appearance, she was more like a quiet ghost, always watching silently from a corner. If one could forget the shameless way she flirted with other people’s boyfriends in the leaked chat records, one might even say she had a restrained and silent aura. But now, that restraint vanished. Like a sword being drawn from its scabbard, Ling Yu appeared.
And she was showing her sharp edge.
While the person across the desk scrutinized her resume, a careless smile played on her lips. Her fingers tapped the edge of the chair out of boredom. She was like a young beast clad in an expensive human skin, ready at any moment to tear her enemies apart and make the world submit to her.
Li Shan missed that instantaneous transformation, but the onlookers saw it clearly. They couldn’t help but hold their breath. Even though they were on a film set surrounded by messy equipment cables, for that moment, they seemed to be facing Ling Yu herself—a woman ready to fight, ready to win, and always ready to make everyone else lose.
Unaware of the shift in the atmosphere, Li Shan gave the A4 paper a light flick and looked up with a polite but condescending smile. He was just about to say, “Welcome to Tomorrow Capital,” when he met her eyes.
Those eyes were like a bottomless lake. In the film industry, they were what people called eyes with a sense of story. Without saying a word or even curving into a smile, they made one feel there was too much hidden behind them, sparking endless imagination.
“Cut!”
The director’s dissatisfied voice snapped Li Shan back to reality. He realized he had actually frozen. He had simply looked up and met Qin You’s eyes, only to be sucked into a black hole, losing himself in a daze.
After the “Cut,” Qin You had already relaxed her posture and returned to her usual restrained self. Li Shan stared at her blankly, a surreal feeling welling up in his heart.
He shouldn’t have felt this way. Having been in the industry for so many years, he had been fortunate enough to act with seasoned actors and method actors alike. Whether it was a veteran with impeccable skills or an obsessed actor who couldn’t distinguish between person and character, he had been shocked before. The first time he encountered an actor whose skills far surpassed his own, he had been through a very awkward phase. He had failed to keep up with scenes, and he had been pulled so deep into a state that he forgot he was acting, believing he truly was the character.
He still remembered the first time he acted with Actor Gu. The other man played a fierce and evil criminal, and Li Shan played the victim. When filming started, he had tried hard to suppress his excitement, repeatedly reminding himself that the emotion he needed to show was terror. He didn’t want to play a victim who looked jubilant about being killed.
But as soon as the camera rolled, he realized his worries were superfluous. Actor Gu, who had been gentle and refined a second ago, radiated such malice that Li Shan’s legs were too weak to move. He was terrified, but he was *too* terrified; his character was supposed to be frantically trying to escape.
He had several NGs in a row before he finally got into the right state. Actor Gu had a good temper, and so did the director; they didn’t blame him. But their kindness only made him feel more ashamed. From that day on, his acting skills began to progress rapidly. Before that, though he had struggled in the industry, his acting had always lacked something. After that day, partly because acting opposite Actor Gu had enlightened him, and partly driven by shame and the stimulus of the experience, he worked with great determination and finally officially entered the profession of acting.
The feeling he had when facing Actor Gu back then was what he called a surreal feeling. He head first met someone with such talent; they could get into character in the blink of an eye and leave it just as quickly. When the director shouted “Action,” he became that fierce villain. When the director shouted “Cut,” he returned to being that amiable, somewhat slow-moving “good old boy.”
The feeling Qin You had just given him was exactly the same. The moment he looked up and met her eyes, he completely forgot he was acting. He felt that the person across the desk was Ling Yu herself.
But he hadn’t been prepared. He was like an actor who had been forcibly pulled into this chair representing power, desperately bluffing to play a big boss seasoned by the ups and downs of the business world.
He was, indeed, just an actor. He shouldn’t have felt a guilty conscience for simply playing a role.
But at that moment, he actually felt a sense of panic. He was terrified that his bluffing would be seen through. After all, he wasn’t really a person in charge of a fund worth hundreds of billions! He had completely forgotten he was just an actor. He felt like a fraud putting up a front, only to run into a rival who had truly fought their way up through the industry. The opponent could see right through him with a single glance.
What a strange feeling.