SM Chapter 12
by VolareChapter 12: I’ll Handle It (Minor Edit)
Beautiful moments are never easily amplified and extended. The brief warmth after dinner was shattered by dawn, and Ye Lai was also dragged back to reality by the first ray of sunlight in the morning.
The rain outside had stopped, and the sun, washed clean by the rain, shone clear and pure, pouring into the bedroom. Compared to that light, Ye Lai’s voice still seemed to linger in the gloomy rain and fog of last night.
“The centipedes I often see have forty legs, red heads and black backs. The round, knotted abdomen of the ants is a deep dark red, like blood after it has dried. Scorpions appear the least frequently. I haven’t seen that poisonous creature for three days now, and I even miss it a little. I’m not sure where the abyss of that longing comes from. The creaking of the old iron bed scares away those things with venom in their bodies. The cracked ground seeps with black water mixed with the stench of muddy soil, and a few wet insects occasionally crawl out of the slowly flowing black water. I can’t distinguish between day and night. The sour, rotten, decaying smell that penetrates my nostrils stimulates my nerves, like the smell of a corpse, although I’ve never smelled a real corpse, but I can’t find a more suitable adjective. I crave for a more intense smell to appear, just like I crave for tomorrow…”
Ye Lai leaned against the headboard, holding a book in his hands, reading. Stray strands of hair on his forehead covered his eyelashes, blocking the emotions in his eyes. The sound of his reading was as bleak as the words themselves.
Sheng Mingqian had already gotten up and was sitting on the sofa at the head of the bed, replying to the Screenwriter’s messages on his phone. Hearing Ye Lai’s voice reading, he put down his phone and turned his head to look at him on the bed.
“You’re reading this novel?”
The novel in Ye Lai’s hands was “The World on the Bough,” published a year ago, and the movie that Sheng Mingqian was about to film.
“Yes,” Ye Lai inserted the bookmark in the middle of the page he had just read. “I saw it in the bookstore three months ago and bought it. I read this story first, and then I heard you were going to film it.”
Sheng Mingqian’s long legs were wrapped in suit pants, crossed together. His fingers propped up his chin, and there was no particular expression on his face. “You like this story, so you want this role?”
Ye Lai closed the book. The cover design was very simple: a pure black background with a few stiff white lines depicting the shape of tree branches. Under the branches was the back of a boy. Readers could already smell the dark undertones of the book from the cover without even turning the pages.
He looked at the back on the cover and shook his head. “This novel is too depressing. I wouldn’t say I like it. I just think the characters in it are very…”
Ye Lai paused, thought for a moment, and then continued, “How should I put it? The characters in it are pitiful.”
“What about you?” After Ye Lai finished speaking, he raised his head and asked Sheng Mingqian, “Do you want to film it because you like this story?”
Sheng Mingqian stood up, tidied his shirt cuffs, and began to button them. “It’s a subject matter I haven’t tried before. I want to film something different this time.”
“Do you like the protagonist in it? What’s the protagonist’s name again?” Ye Lai said, flipping the book open again.
The novel was written in the first person, and the entire story was described by “I.” Ye Lai’s mind was stuck for a moment, and he couldn’t remember the protagonist’s name. He flipped through the book and finally found it in a dialogue.
“Found it. The protagonist is called Bai Yusheng. Will you like this protagonist?”
Sheng Mingqian stood by the bed, with his back to the light from the window, looking down at Ye Lai. “I don’t like people with overly gloomy personalities, but in some corner of this world, there are indeed such people, so I want to film them.”
Ye Lai flipped through a few more pages, his eyes following the lines of text, but he didn’t read them aloud. As he read, he said, “The last role I played, Chi Wen, I felt like I could enter Chi Wen’s world. When I read this novel, I can also enter the protagonist’s world.”
“So you want to film it?” Sheng Mingqian asked.
Ye Lai didn’t like chatting with Sheng Mingqian in this position. He lifted the blanket and got out of bed, took out clothes from the closet, and said while putting them on, “Our five-year marriage agreement is almost up. We started because of a movie, and now we’re about to separate, so I still want to film one more with you, as a final commemoration.”
Seemingly casual tone, Ye Lai’s voice half-smiling, half-faint trembling air sound, but his voice was too small, laughter and trembling were pressed in the rustling sound of dressing, can not set off more fluctuations.
The conversation ended there, and neither of them continued.
Sheng Mingqian was still the same as before. After answering a phone call, he left without even eating breakfast.
Ye Lai went downstairs, leaned against the refrigerator door and drank a can of ice Beer. After thinking about it, he still made himself a cup of milk and cereal. This was the fastest breakfast he had become accustomed to.
After working out in the gym for an hour and swimming in the pool for half an hour, Ye Lai’s strength was completely exhausted. He lay on the lounge chair by the pool, the sunlight overhead was dazzling. Ye Lai squinted at the deep blue sky, his brain entering a brief state of emptiness.
Like his fascination with the pleasure of making love with Sheng Mingqian, Ye Lai was equally fascinated by this moment of emptiness, not needing to see anything, not needing to think about anything, time flowing naturally.
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Ye Lai’s schedule was packed for the next two weeks, with two commercials to shoot and a variety show to record. Zhang Yihao had also gotten him a youth idol drama. Although it was a small role, Ye Lai felt very secure to still have work in this industry.
Lin Han had already sent him a message that the audition time for “The World on the Bough” was in a month and a half. There was still plenty of time. Every day after work, Ye Lai would go home and read the script and the novel.
The script didn’t make too many changes to the original story of the novel, but it made appropriate deletions and adjustments to the larger parts of the novel, and the entire storyline didn’t change.
When he had work, Ye Lai would move back to his apartment. One reason was that the villa was too far away, and it wasn’t convenient to go anywhere. The second reason was that he felt too lonely living in such a big house by himself. It didn’t have any life to it, and without any life, he would feel uneasy.
His apartment was a one-bedroom apartment of fifty-something square meters that he bought after three years of work. Although it was small, it was enough for Ye Lai. He lived alone in a small house just right.
If Sheng Mingqian wanted to return to the villa after work, he would usually call him in advance. The two of them still maintained a certain tacit understanding in some areas.
Often in the time periods before that, they would truly be like two unrelated people in this world, walking on their respective tracks, parallel to each other, not interfering or disturbing each other.
Compared to the black, white, and gray sexless decorating style of the villa, Ye Lai’s apartment was much warmer. The curtains, carpets, and floor lamps were all carefully selected by him. The bedroom wasn’t big, and the bed was naturally small, and the feeling of emptiness lying on it wasn’t as strong.
Ye Lai lay on the bed and rolled over to the edge of the bed, grabbing on with both hands to keep himself from falling off.
He laughed in his heart again. If Sheng Mingqian slept on this small bed with him, they would have to keep hugging each other so they wouldn’t fall off if they turned over.
But Ye Lai was just thinking about it. Sheng Mingqian knew the address of his apartment, but he had only driven to the entrance of the community to pick him up twice. He had never come up to see it in all these years.
Sheng Mingqian grew up in a wealthy family with a happy and complete family. His parents now lived abroad, and Sheng Mingqian would go to accompany them for a period of time after each movie he filmed.
And him? He didn’t know who his parents were and had lived in an orphanage since he was a child. Every now and then, he had to stand there and be selected. When he was little, he wanted to have his own small house. He was satisfied with this small house and small bed, so how could Sheng Mingqian be willing to squeeze in here with him?
Really, it’s easy to overthink when you’re alone.
No, Ye Lai quickly denied in his heart. It’s not overthinking, it’s wishful thinking.
Thinking too far ahead, Ye Lai shook his head and climbed out of bed, sat down at the desk at the head of the bed, looking at the script and novel on the desk, the deep black depths of his eyes were the calm after the rain.
After a while, Ye Lai lit a cigarette for himself. The ashes fell on the script. Ye Lai quickly patted off the ashes, extinguished the cigarette, and then opened the script, found a pen and slowly marked a key scene, just wrote two lines of character annotations, the phone on the table lit up.
It was a text message. The sender wasn’t saved in his contacts, it was a strange number.
Ye Lai ignored it and continued writing. After a few seconds, the phone lit up again, still a message from that strange number. Ye Lai put down his pen, opened the phone and froze after just one glance.
The text message contained two photos that were obviously secretly taken from a hidden spot. Although the photos were very dark, Ye Lai could still recognize them. The pitch-black background in the photos was Sheng Mingqian’s Jing Wan Villa, and the person in the photo with his back to the direction of the gate was him.
The photos were very blurry, and it was clear that they weren’t taken with a professional camera, so it shouldn’t be a professional paparazzi following them, just a cell phone with average pixels.
The second photo was still blurry, it was a side view of Sheng Mingqian getting out of the car.
Ye Lai didn’t wait any longer and directly dialed the number that sent him the text message, but the phone only rang once after it was connected and then hung up.
“Who are you?”
“Why are you taking photos?”
“What do you want?”
Ye Lai sent three messages and waited for a while, but besides the first two photos, there was no new information.
Ye Lai bit his lip, his mind desperately searching through his memories. The night of the photos was when he had just returned home from the Pub after drinking with Ning Yuan.
Suddenly, the face of the designated driver flashed before his eyes. Ye Lai didn’t remember the exact appearance of that face, but as soon as the designated driver got into the car, he asked him if he was the celebrity with the last name Ye. That designated driver probably recognized him. Although he wasn’t very famous, he could still be seen on TV, and if they had seen his movies from a few years ago, the probability of recognizing him would be even greater.
Ye Lai called back, but the phone was already turned off. He stared at the photos in his phone and secretly speculated, was it that designated driver? What did he mean by sending these two photos? Extortion? Exposure? Or just a simple prank?
Ye Lai couldn’t figure it out and directly forwarded the two messages to Sheng Mingqian. Sheng Mingqian’s phone call came right after.
“Mingqian, did you see the text message? Someone might know that I’m with you now, and they also know our address. What should we do now?”
Ye Lai said in one breath, gripped his phone and held his breath. He couldn’t say why, but when he received that person’s message, the excitement in his heart was something he couldn’t ignore even if he wanted to. Someone had peeked into their secret, but Ye Lai never wanted this to just be a secret.
He had fantasized in his heart that the paparazzi would follow and photograph him and Sheng Mingqian, and one morning he would suddenly wake up to find entertainment news filled with the news of his marriage to Sheng Mingqian.
Just thinking about those things made Ye Lai’s heart beat faster. At this moment, he was looking forward to Sheng Mingqian’s reaction.
“I’ll handle it.”
Ye Lai could tell that Sheng Mingqian was probably on the film set. Sheng Mingqian’s voice sounded much calmer in the midst of the chaotic and noisy background noise.
Ye Lai waited for a while, confirming that Sheng Mingqian had only said these four words.
He’ll handle it, how was he going to handle it?
Ye Lai was just about to ask when he heard someone urging Sheng Mingqian to start work. Sheng Mingqian said another sentence, “Don’t pay attention to that person,” and then hung up the phone in a hurry.