SM Chapter 44

Chapter 44: Ye Lai, is the Child from the Sixth Floor

Sheng Mingqian faced the mirror, shaving off the stubble that had grown overnight. His handsome face showed the inevitable signs of a sleepless night, with bloodshot eyes and prominent dark circles.

The assistant placed a new cell phone and two suits on the nearby sofa. Noticing Sheng Mingqian’s poor complexion, he asked, “Director Sheng, didn’t you rest well last night?”

Sheng Mingqian glanced at himself in the mirror and grunted in acknowledgment, only saying he had something to deal with last night.

“Which suit will you wear today?” The assistant pointed to the two suits beside him. “Should I call the stylist to do your hair?”

“No need for a stylist.” His hair was never long, and he didn’t need any special styling like actors did. He picked up the new phone and then grabbed a suit, heading into the dressing room with quick, eager movements, as if hurrying to an event and wanting to leave quickly.

Before the event started, the main cast and screenwriter came to Sheng Mingqian’s lounge to greet him. Sheng Mingqian could tell what they were thinking as soon as they walked in. Before they could speak, he said directly, “Don’t ask me personal questions. No comment.”

“Hahaha, Director Sheng won’t let us talk, even his phone is unreachable,” the screenwriter said with a smile, patting his shoulder. “Director Sheng, don’t keep such a stern face. We won’t ask, but I can’t guarantee reporters and the audience at the event won’t.”

The people beside him chimed in, “It’s inevitable. They’ll definitely ask.”

The audience and reporters below the stage for the promotional event were numerous. Many of the interactive segments in the middle were pre-arranged, and the questions on the host’s script had been communicated in advance, including how to ask and how to answer.

But the final round of questions from reporters and the audience was free-form, relying entirely on the main creative team’s improvisation. At first, the reporters asked questions related to the movie. But the last reporter didn’t ask about the movie; instead, he asked about the recent hot topic on the internet regarding Sheng Mingqian and Ye Lai’s divorce.

“Director Sheng, can you comment on your relationship with Ye Lai? Ye Lai announced the divorce last night, but you haven’t responded. Did you really marry for five years and then divorce?”

As one reporter asked, others took advantage of the opportunity to raise their own questions.

“Director Sheng, was a third party involved in your divorce from Ye Lai?”

“You were photographed with Qin Zimo going in and out together recently. Is Qin Zimo the reason for your divorce?”

“What about Zhou Ran? Your relationship with Zhou Ran has always been a mystery. Fans have said all sorts of things. Can Director Sheng respond to that?”

Although it was a free-question session, they weren’t unprepared. They had anticipated possible emergencies and developed response plans in advance.

The host, holding a microphone, cut off the questions one after another, saying, “Thank you, reporters. Today, we will only answer questions related to the movie. We won’t respond to personal questions. Please focus on the movie. Thank you for your support…”

As soon as the event ended, the staff blocked the reporters chasing after Sheng Mingqian. With a dark face, Sheng Mingqian quickly left under the staff’s escort.

As soon as he got into the car, Sheng Mingqian threw off his suit jacket and flung it to the side, tearing off the tight tie around his neck. He pressed his Adam’s apple and took a deep breath, finally closing his eyes and leaning back against the seat.

The sun outside penetrated the layers of clouds. The light illuminated Sheng Mingqian’s undulating and profound profile. Soon, the ray of light was blocked by dark clouds, and Sheng Mingqian’s expression became gloomy again.

The assistant, holding a stack of documents, opened the car door and met Sheng Mingqian’s sharp, torch-like gaze. His breath hitched. He thought he had done something wrong and cautiously asked, “Director Sheng, what’s wrong? Is there something you need me to do?”

Sheng Mingqian lowered his eyelids and looked at the sky through the dark tinted glass. The already gray sky was even darker, making it hard to breathe.

“Did those reporters leave?” he asked.

“Not yet. They’re still interviewing other people. Are we leaving now? There’s a gala tonight.”

Sheng Mingqian fastened his seat belt and pressed his forehead, trying to relieve the fatigue and irritability. “I have other important things to do this afternoon and evening. I won’t go to the gala. Let Lin Han attend in my place. Drive to Angel’s Home Orphanage.”

He had promised Xiao Yu on the phone this morning that he would visit him after school at noon to show him the photos of the Director Jiang Ying and Ye Lai on his phone. Xiao Yu had asked him three times before hanging up the phone, and he couldn’t break his promise.

After seeing Xiao Yu, he had to go to the hospital as soon as possible. The Director Jiang Ying’s condition wasn’t optimistic. The director of the oncology department had seen her medical report last night and privately told him to prepare the patient’s family mentally, but he hadn’t told Ye Lai this news yet.

Life is small, and birth, aging, illness, and death are normal, but such words are easy to say. The pain of it only known, when it truly comes to the closest people around you, can you truly understand.

–

–

Sheng Mingqian, who usually kept his phone on silent, received a constant stream of calls as he browsed the internet with the new phone brought by the assistant.

He rarely used these things, and he hadn’t mastered many of the functions. He had to ask the assistant driving the car from time to time after clicking on something.

The live videos of the film promotion event had already gone viral on various websites. The video of him leaving the event with a dark face had the highest number of shares.

Sheng Mingqian didn’t care about these things. He quickly scrolled past the related topics, only looking for information with the names “Ye Lai” in them. Finally, he stopped at an unremarkable piece of information with a low number of shares.

That unremarkable blog post was a rebuttal to an article written by someone claiming to be Ye Lai’s middle school classmate. The article listed various misdeeds from Ye Lai’s middle school days.

Sheng Mingqian clicked on that information, reading it carefully, word by word.

I really couldn’t stand it anymore. I thought about it for a long time before deciding to post this. No one bribed me, and I’m not a paid internet commentator. I’m just an ordinary person. I read a few lines of the content posted by the person claiming to be Ye Lai’s classmate, and it was all nonsense, pure fabrication.

I am Ye Lai’s classmate, a real classmate. The funniest thing is that the little article even included a notice from the school, a record of Ye Lai receiving a major demerit. This kind of thing is actually very easy to verify. At least make it seem more plausible. The name on the notice is Ye Lai, but… Ye Lai wasn’t called Ye Lai during middle school. I don’t know if Ye Lai changed his name later or if it’s just a stage name. Ye Lai was called Fu Ruige back then…

Ye Lai was called Fu Ruige back then.

There was a long paragraph of text after that, but Sheng Mingqian’s eyes stopped on that sentence. He couldn’t read another word.

Fu Ruige, the three Chinese characters were still unfamiliar and awkward, but from the moment those three words entered Sheng Mingqian’s eyes, something in his body rapidly expanded, exploding into fragments at its peak.

Sheng Mingqian’s gaze slowly lost focus on the screen, eventually becoming completely blank.

After a long time, the blankness regained color. Sheng Mingqian picked up the shattered pieces, piecing them together, and the truth was laid out before him—

Ye Lai is Fu Ruige, and Fu Ruige is the child from the sixth floor.

Ye Lai, is the child from the sixth floor.

Ten years ago, those memories he couldn’t see in the hospital rushed to the top of his head again. The child’s words, his hoarse, torn voice, reappeared.

I’m not a girl; I’m a boy.

I’m better. I’m just here to see you. Happy New Year.

Mr. Sheng, I’ve seen the movies you’ve made.

You have to grab the sunlight yourself to get it, but I can’t.

Then we can look forward to next spring together…

About the child on the sixth floor—

The nurse said that he came to the hospital by himself. He looked crazy, was covered in wounds, and only wore a thin shirt in the dead of winter. His clothes were tattered, and his body was covered in frostbite.

The nursing assistant said that the child was malnourished, nothing but skin and bones. He always kept his head down and his back hunched, his cheeks sunken. He looked like he had just been dug out of the ground, and he had a earthy smell about him…

Sheng Mingqian was surprised that he still remembered those words, and remembered them so clearly. Every sentence that flashed through his mind felt like a scorching brand being pressed into his body again.

But he couldn’t place those dirty and cruel words on Ye Lai, even if it was just a glancing touch. The words, the moment they touched the name “Ye Lai,” would rub against each other and explode with immense force, pressing down on his chest and causing his fingers trembling as he held his phone.

Also, what did an earthy smell smell like?

Sheng Mingqian thought of the black mud after the rain, the dark corners without sunlight, covered in green moss, where wet bugs crawled, trampled by people.

How could the person who looped his arms around his neck, who would look up and smile as he asked for a kiss, have an earthy smell?

Ye Lai always had the scent of the shower gel at home, faint, sometimes milky, sometimes lime, sometimes rose sea salt…

Scents have memories, they are engraved in the bridge of your nose at the time, spreading and extending deep into the body, and finally merging into you unintentionally.

Sheng Mingqian just recalled it and felt those subtle scents swirling around his nose, milky and moist, lime elegant, rose sea salt vibrant, with hooks.

Those were the scents on Ye Lai’s body, and there was no earthy smell at all.

But the facts didn’t seem to change because of the scents. The truth was still moving in the direction he least wanted to see, the direction he had never associated with.

No, to be precise, it wasn’t that he had never thought about it at all. That night in Finland, listening to Ye Lai read “The World on the Bough,” a few sentences in the book evoked his association. He asked Piao Zhengyang to check the information about the child on the sixth floor.

Ye Lai slept soundly in his arms that night. The sound of the phone call didn’t affect him at all.

When Ye Lai was reading, it was “I.” The “I” in the book had long hair, and he imagined Ye Lai with long hair, and at the same time thought of the long hair of the child on the sixth floor.

But the idea that Ye Lai was the child on the sixth floor was too absurd. How was it possible? They didn’t look alike at all, so that idea flashed by, so fast that it hadn’t even taken shape yet, and it had already been completely rejected by him before he could capture it.

…

But now, Sheng Mingqian’s wishful denial in his heart was meaningless.

After all, he had been making movies for so many years, and he had a very high sensitivity to words, but the abilities he had cultivated in the past were now all ineffective. Every word that flashed in his mind required a huge amount of mental energy to understand its surface meaning, and that was just the surface meaning.

What kind of tragic story did those familiar words combined together support behind them? Sheng Mingqian didn’t dare to guess.

Sheng Mingqian’s hand on his knee moved after a long while. Sure enough, the pain could only be truly felt when it descended on you. He felt like his chest had been chiseled open and hollowed out by a sharp hammer, with a bloody hole running through it. His heart ached and stopped for a moment, his legs felt empty, and his hands were sore.

What exactly had the child on the sixth floor experienced?

What exactly had Ye Lai experienced in the past?