SM Chapter 53

It’s truly absurd.

Ye Lai never imagined Sheng Mingqian would come up with such an absurd divorce agreement, even after the divorce, he still stipulated in the agreement whether he could film bed scenes.

He had even forgotten where he put the divorce agreement. That night after signing, he tossed it aside. He didn’t read a single word when he signed, only putting his name at the signature line.

In Ye Lai’s eyes, those few pieces of paper declared the end of his relationship with Sheng Mingqian. In that muddy relationship, he had tentatively probed for so long, his feet still sinking into the deep pool, without the peace he desired. He thought he would never look at it again in his life.

After finishing the night scene, Ye Lai searched for a long time at home but couldn’t find the divorce agreement. Since moving to his new apartment, he had barely touched anything besides his daily necessities.

He had three large storage boxes filled with scripts from previous acting roles, along with some books he usually read and various contracts. When organizing, he had put everything together, and the divorce agreement must have been mixed in there as well.

Ye Lai sat in the middle of the living room with the three storage boxes in front of him. He had no choice but to search them one by one.

Sheng Mingqian had been waiting at the film set and followed him back home that night, saying he wanted to explain the contents of the divorce agreement and offered to help him search.

“The divorce agreement you wrote is invalid,” Ye Lai said, opening the lid of one of the storage boxes and starting to rummage through it. While searching, he glanced at Sheng Mingqian out of the corner of his eye.

“You’ve already signed it, how can it be invalid?” Sheng Mingqian searched another storage box.

“Sheng Mingqian, what kind of divorce agreement is so bizarre? A divorce is a divorce. Why would you still have control over me after we’re divorced?”

“You didn’t raise any objections at the time,” Sheng Mingqian retorted.

“Of course, I didn’t raise any objections because I didn’t even read it.”

“You really should have taken a look back then,” Sheng Mingqian said calmly, then reminded Ye Lai, “This habit isn’t good. If you’re signing a contract or agreement with someone else, not reading it could easily put you at a disadvantage.”

“You…” Ye Lai choked on Sheng Mingqian’s words. A breath rolled down his throat, impossible to swallow or spit out, stifling him so he could only gasp for air, grinding his teeth as he said, “I appreciate your reminder.”

Sheng Mingqian sensed that Ye Lai was angry and, fearing further provocation, wisely shut his mouth, focusing on searching the storage box in front of him.

Several books were stacked on top. It turned out Ye Lai loved reading Kafka. Many bookmarks were clipped in the books, clearly not just used as bookmarks. Ye Lai must have liked collecting bookmarks. Next to it was a transparent box specifically for storing bookmarks.

Sheng Mingqian carefully counted them. There were leaves, dried flowers, thin bronze sheets, and all sorts of cartoon bookmarks, even ceramic ones.

Ye Lai liked writing with fountain pens. A pen case held two broken fountain pens that he still kept. It turned out his favorite flower was the *Hesperantha*, with its large, showy blooms.

Ye Lai also enjoyed photography. Two photo albums contained pictures he had taken himself: insects, plants, animals, sunrises, sunsets, rising tides, city nights…

Sheng Mingqian, as a director, possessed a unique sensitivity to photographic lenses. Discarding the distracting thoughts that enveloped him, Sheng Mingqian could immediately see the expression in Ye Lai’s eyes when he took those photos: apprehension, confusion, fear, and a great deal of sadness.

Ye Lai only took photos when he was sad.

Sheng Mingqian glanced at Ye Lai, who was still seriously searching his storage box.

The more he looked, the more he felt that he had shown too little concern for Ye Lai over the years. The boxes were full of Ye Lai’s things. He now felt like a blatant voyeur standing on the shore, curious about everything he saw, as if a few more glances would allow him to understand Ye Lai better.

But with each glance, Sheng Mingqian’s regret and torment grew even more.

Underneath the photo albums were several scripts. Ye Lai hadn’t acted in his films for the past five years, but the storage box contained all the scripts from the films he had made during that time. It was obvious that the scripts had been read many times.

Sheng Mingqian randomly opened a page. Next to one of the characters in the script was a note, Ye Lai’s interpretation of that character. Not every character was marked; Ye Lai had only annotated one of them.

What was Ye Lai thinking when he read these scripts? Was the character he marked the role he wanted?

In five years, the only role Ye Lai had ever asked him for was rejected.

However, if Ye Lai still wanted to film “The World on the Bough” now, Sheng Mingqian thought, he would still refuse.

He couldn’t bear it when he didn’t know Ye Lai was Bai Yusheng, but now that he knew, he could bear it even less. Just the thought of Ye Lai reliving that pain and darkness in front of the camera filled his heart with rage that threatened to explode.

He had disagreed when the producers told him they wanted to postpone the film’s progress indefinitely, because he himself could no longer direct the filming, and he wouldn’t let anyone else touch it.

He just wanted to hide Ye Lai away.

Taking a deep breath, Sheng Mingqian closed his eyes and continued searching.

Underneath the scripts was a thick stack of paper. Sheng Mingqian only lifted a corner, but the four handwritten characters “The world’s branches” (“The World on the Bough”) stopped his hand. His fingertips brushed the edge of the white paper, cutting his fingers like a sharp knife.

It turned out that the original draft of “The World on the Bough” was written by Ye Lai, word by word, on paper.

Sheng Mingqian had seen Ye Lai’s handwriting before. Most of the time, Ye Lai wrote in cursive, the strokes flowing and connected, casual and free, so that only he himself could recognize many of the joined characters.

But the words on the manuscript were neat and precise, stroke by stroke. Although it was a manuscript, Sheng Mingqian flipped through several pages without seeing a single smudge or correction. Before writing each word, Ye Lai would repeat it in his mind, cherishing and valuing each one.

A piece of paper was clipped in the middle, not a manuscript page. The paper was filled with pen names, but not the pen name on the published book cover, “Bamboo trousers” (Zhúqiān, Bamboo Slip), but two other characters with the same pronunciation.

Zhúqiān, Chasing Qian.

The entire page was filled with only these two characters, and only these characters weren’t so neat. The strokes were sometimes fast, sometimes slow, the pressure light and heavy. Sheng Mingqian touched the paper, and could even feel the texture under his fingertips.

Sheng Mingqian finally understood the origin of the pen name “Bamboo Slip.” What was Ye Lai’s mood when he wrote these two characters?

Hidden within the pleasure was a reluctance that couldn’t be spoken, only secretly written on paper; tension mixed with the unease of anxious anticipation. His heart felt like it was tied with a thin thread, suspending him in mid-air. The fear that the thread might break at any moment would constantly follow and oppress him.

Even if Ye Lai knew that one day the rope would break and he might be shattered into pieces, he would still stand there and not want to leave. Did he often wonder what kind of posture he should maintain so that he wouldn’t look too pathetic when he finally fell?

Sheng Mingqian carefully looked at the content. In the manuscript, other than the pen name being what Ye Lai initially intended, the things written were also different from the published book. The name Jiang Yuanzhou never appeared, because Ye Lai used his real name — Sheng Mingqian.

“After it rains, the rusty smell in the basement is the strongest. In my stomach, it feels like someone forcefully stuffed in two giant turntables and is stirring them, day and night, without stopping. That smell lingers. If I had to describe it, it would be like the smell of fresh blood slowly drying up, and in the process, seeping back into my body, flowing back into the fresh blood, mixing together, and then corroding again…”

“I’m reading the newspaper more and more. I’ve almost memorized the contents of Sheng Mingqian’s interview. His face is being chiseled into my brain more and more deeply each time. As soon as I close my eyes, his dark eyes flicker before me. If I reach out, I feel like I can touch his eyelashes and the bridge of his nose, the warmth of his body temperature, making my fingertips feel a little warmer.”

At this moment, the temperature of Sheng Mingqian’s body was the opposite of Ye Lai’s words, gradually turning cold, so cold that his fingers trembled. He barely managed to reach the end, trying several times before turning to the next page.

The manuscript pages weren’t in order; the handwritten page numbers at the bottom were all mixed up.

“Having sex with him is addictive, addictive from the first time. I was scared the first time. He was drunk, pressing down on me and saying things I couldn’t understand. I’m afraid of close contact with others, but the scent on Mingqian’s body suppresses the rate at which my body decays. I like the scent on his body, like the ocean is filled with *Hesperantha*. We embrace naked, lying in the layered petals of the *Hesperantha*, sinking and rising, he makes me unable to free myself.”

“Seeing him from afar isn’t enough, not enough. I want to be closer, just a little closer, that’s all I need. I often comfort myself, it will be okay after a long time.”

…

“It hurts, my body hurts, everything hurts. The ice beer tonight didn’t alleviate the pain in my body, a black hole that can absorb and compress everything.”

Sheng Mingqian thought of that night before, when Ye Lai called his name and cried out in pain, scratching his own neck until it was broken. But he thought Ye Lai was faking it.

He even said, Ye Lai, your acting is good.

After holding his breath for a long time, Sheng Mingqian’s vision suddenly blurred, and after a bout of dizziness, he opened his mouth and took a breath, a blast of cold air drilling into his lungs.

The noise never stopped…