Mid-January 1996.
After the Boston Celtics lost to the Chicago Bulls.
The underground exit of the FleetCenter Arena was completely blocked by the crowds leaving the stadium.
Hundreds of die-hard fans clung tightly to the police cordon.
" Kevin! Lift your head! Look here!"
" Finley! Sam Cassell! You guys almost tore those Chicago bastards to pieces tonight!"
"Next time, stop Jordan!"
Security guards formed a human wall, squeezing through the surging crowd to create a narrow path to the team bus. Garnett walked at the front, his oversized green training hoodie pulled down to its lowest point, the shadow obscuring most of his face.
Lin Qi lagged half a body length behind, his crisp black cashmere trench coat fluttering in the sharp wind blowing in from the underground passage.
He was initially looking straight ahead.
At the very front of the police line, two young figures, knocked askew by the Boston truck driver, came into his view.
The two guys were in a terrible state. One had brown hair, his cheeks were frozen like purplish-red liver, and he was clutching an old military green jacket tightly in his hand; the other, a tall guy, had veins bulging on his neck from shouting, and he was waving a deformed old Celtics baseball cap around his hand, hysterically yelling at Garnett.
" Kevin! Look here! Sign one for our Boston brothers! You guys played like real men tonight!"
Lin Qi abruptly stopped in his tracks.
He looked at those two youthful faces, weathered by hardship and even bearing a hint of poverty, and a strange light flashed in his deep eyes.
Matt Damon.
Ben Affleck.
At this point in time, they were not yet the Hollywood superstars who would later win Academy Award.
At this moment, they were just two working-class extras in South Boston, shivering in the cold, and constantly being rejected at auditions in Los Angeles.
Lin Qi raised his hand, his fingertips twitching slightly.
The security supervisor beside them understood immediately and, along with two burly men, roughly parted the crowd, pulling the two young men, whose ribs were nearly broken, into the cordon.
"Oh, damn it..." Matt Damon stumbled as he was dragged in, nearly dropping his pen.
Ben Affleck reacted even faster, wiping the rain off his face haphazardly and grinning broadly. "God, am I hallucinating from low blood sugar? We're inside?"
Lin Qi stopped in front of them, looking down at them and asking, "Want an autograph?"
"Of course." Ben handed over the baseball cap, his eyes gleaming with the typical Boston nonchalance. "Those lads may have lost tonight, but they pushed the 33-3 Chicago Bulls to the very last second."
Ahead, Garnett's massive body trembled slightly.
He turned around, snatched the pen from Matt's hand without a word, and slammed it into the brim of his hat. The pen tip scraped against the fabric, making a harsh, hissing sound.
After signing the papers, Garnett slammed his cap back into Ben's arms.
"Next time, I won't let that ball go in again. Never."
Ben paused for a moment, then gritted his teeth and said, "I believe you, Kevin."
Matt awkwardly handed over his old jacket, and Garnett signed his name in a flamboyant manner on the chest.
Lin Qi watched as the two young men clutched the autographs tightly to their chests, then suddenly put his hands in his pockets and asked casually, "Where are you two making your fortune these days?"
Matt hugged his jacket tightly, sounding somewhat unsure. "The actor, Mr. Lin."
Ben spat self-deprecatingly beside him. "To be precise, they're two Boston actors who're about to starve to death in their cheap Los Angeles apartments."
Lin Qi looked at Matt knowingly and asked, "If I remember correctly, you're from Harvard?"
Matt froze. "You... have heard of me?"
"I've heard a little. Harvard dropout went to Hollywood to become an actor." Lin Qi tilted his head, gesturing for the team bus to open its doors. " The Boston circle is small. But in my opinion, that's not exactly a smart career plan."
Ben chuckled wryly, wiping the cold rain from his face with the back of his hand. "Smart? Mr. Lin, if we don't get any more gigs, we'll have to use our Los Angeles rent overdue bills to start a fire next month."
Matt hesitated for a few seconds, his Adam's apple bobbing laboredly, as if he had made up his mind before speaking, "We wrote a script ourselves. A story purely about Boston. The protagonist is a math genius who works as a janitor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a psychologist burdened with childhood trauma..."
Lin Qi knew exactly what that was.
Good Will Hunting.
"Sold?" Lin Qi asked.
At this point, the light in the two young men's eyes suddenly went out, replaced by a sense of humiliation and anger at being insulted by capital.
Ben sneered, his eyes bloodshot. "It's been sold to Castle Rock Entertainment. The contract's signed, they paid six hundred thousand dollars. But the project's been halted by those suit-wearing bastards..."
Matt lowered his head, his knuckles slightly white from gripping his jacket tightly. "The studio office folks like the story, but they don't want us to play Will and Chuck. They want bigger, more bankable stars."
This vividly and somewhat cynically imitates the faces of Hollywood executives at the time:
"Listen, boys, we can film the script, but the lead role has to be Leonardo DiCaprio or Brad Pete. As for you two nobodys who can barely afford union insurance? Take your six hundred thousand and go back to your Boston countryside and rot."
A brief silence fell over the underpass. The two young men stood in the cold wind, as if awaiting their fate.
Lin Qi reached out and opened the bus door. Just before entering the carriage, he turned slightly and looked back at them.
"Tomorrow morning at 10:00 AM, gather all the contracts you signed with Castle Rock, copies of the scripts, and all related legal documents, and bring them to me in the team's basketball operations president's office."
He stood there completely stunned, even forgetting to breathe, his lips trembling. "Mr. Lin, you mean...?"
"If the script is as good as you're claiming, I'll pay for it and help you buy it back from those Hollywood misers."
Matt's breath caught in his throat; he felt as if he'd been struck by lightning.
Ben blurted out instinctively, his voice sharp with shock, "Mr. Lin! That's not some small matter of tens of thousands of dollars! Add in the upfront development costs, legal penalties, and the premium for the transfer terms, those bloodsuckers at Castle Rock will be asking for at least a million dollars!"
"I know."
Lin Qi stepped onto the bus steps, didn't look back, and closed the door.