BXBX NOVEL Chapter 82 - Eighty-Two: Story
Fang Xi felt like her heart was violently struck by a heavy hammer, causing every inch of her bones to throb in heart-wrenching pain.
‘He didn’t love her!’ Those four words were enough to explain the whole thing. Gao Bei was a fool, but so was Fang Xi. Fang Xi endured her heartache and slowly exhaled. “Yun Nan, let’s put this matter aside for now. We’ll recast and pick a new lead actress, ” she commented.
Yun Nan didn’t know her words had inadvertently torn into Fang Xi’s most secret emotional wound. She thought Fang Xi’s pale face was due to her anger at Gao Bei and hurriedly said, “Okay! Don’t worry; we’ll get through this.”
‘ We’re done for!’ Mika thought as he sat in his seat, almost pulling his hair out in stress. The creative team and backstage staff were all silent.
‘4:30 P.M.’ was a story written by Yun Nan for her adoptive mother; it was based on the woman’s true life experiences. When she was very young, human traffickers kidnapped Yun Nan’s adoptive mother and sold her to a family with three sons in the mountains. There, she wasn’t fed or clothed well and had endless work to do every day. At the age of five or six, what little memories she had left of her original home weren’t sufficient to help her find her way back.
That family bought her because they planned to marry her off in exchange for money they could use to pay their future daughter-in-law’s bride prices, or they could marry her to one of their sons if he couldn’t get himself a wife. Many girls shared the same situation in their village, all abused to varying degrees. During the winter, 4:30 p.m. was dinner time for all the families in the village, and only then could these girls take a breather.
Yun Nan’s adoptive mother told her the winter sun at 4:30 in the afternoon was as red as blood. Its rays painted the mountains and forests crimson as if heralding the coming horrors of the night and the heavens’ sympathy for these unfortunate girls.
Her adoptive mother managed to escape when she was sixteen. She met Yun Nan’s adoptive father, and they built a warm family together. Sadly, she couldn’t remember her hometown and never found her birth family. It was why she was so determined to help the lost Yun Nan find her biological parents; she didn’t want Yun Nan to share the same regrets she had.
‘4:30 P.M.’ does show the love between Yun Nan’s adoptive parents, but its story focuses more on the life experiences of the unlucky girls—victims of a cruel time and fate. It was a movie with a heavy and grave theme which was why Yun Nan got so upset when Yun Liu wanted to turn it into a romantic idol drama.
They chose Gao Bei to play the lead role because Yun Nan felt she looked a bit like her adoptive mother, and Mika saw the doe-like innocence Yun Nan had described in her story in her. Once you have the image of a character in mind, it would be difficult to change it. It would be no easy feat for the creative team to erase the previous lead role’s image design from their minds—a task akin to torture.
“Will we have to re-film all the scenes from the previous week if we recast?” Annie—one of the scriptwriters—asked tentatively. Yun Nan nodded and didn’t say anything.
“How about we use Al face-swapping software? That way, we can reduce our losses,” an editor suggested.
“Face-changing isn’t the problem here. The problem is: where are we going to find a suitable lead actress so we can film the rest of the movie,” Fang Xi uttered as she tapped her fingers on the table. Silence descended once more as none of them had a solution. Whether it was a face-swap or reshooting the scenes, they could deal with it, but they had no suitable candidate to play the lead role.
Someone knocked on the conference room’s door. “Come in!” the person closest to the door called out, but the door stayed closed. The man got up to open the door and muttered impatiently, “Whose delivery is it this time—”
He abruptly stopped talking when he saw the person at the door. “Excuse me, are you still hiring? I-I’m a competent worker. A-and you don’t have to pay me wages; I just want some food,” said a timid voice from the doorway.
Everyone—including Yun Nan and Fang Xi—looked toward the door. That was a line from ‘4:30 P.M.’ It was what Xiao He, the female lead, said to the male lead, Ah Feng, at the door of his shop after she had escaped and starved for three days.
Hong Can, the actor who played Ah Feng, was the first to react. He stood up, walked towards the door, and responded with the next line of the scene, “I’m not hiring, but I can offer you some food.”
The girl standing at the door in tattered clothes knelt and sobbed, “Thank you! Thank you!” Under her frayed headscarf, tears welled in her clear doe-like eyes and streamed down her face.
“Shi Xiu!” Mika exclaimed as he jumped to his feet. “What are you doing?” Yun Nan and Fang Xi also stood up in shock; they wouldn’t have recognized Shi Xiu —currently dressed like Xiao He in the movie—if Mika hadn’t pointed it out. Hong Can was likewise speechless as he helped Shi Xiu to her feet.
Shi Xiu took off her headscarf and smiled brightly at everyone. “How did I do? Was that okay?” she asked. Mika took a deep breath while Yun Nan and Fang Xi looked at each other, stunned.
Shi Xiu’s expression fell at their reaction. “Still no good, huh? Give me a chance! I’ll study the script again.. I think I can take on the lead role!”