Cheng Che stood rooted at the entrance for about five seconds, then took a deep breath and let it out.
What was there to panic about?
Dozens of eyes followed him around school every day. He had even faced the girls' camera flashes. Why would he be afraid of this?
There were just a few more people, that was all.
He straightened his back and stepped inside.
At the makeup station, Yan Ruanning sat in front of a mirror while a tall, thin female stylist worked on her hair.
Her gaze traveled through the mirror and landed on Cheng Che's face.
Seeing how quickly he had suppressed his flustered awkwardness, she curved her lips slightly.
This kid adapted pretty well.
"Hello, Sister Ruanning." Cheng Che walked over and greeted her dutifully.
"Mm, sit." Through the mirror, Yan Ruanning pointed to the empty seat beside her. "Get your makeup done first. I'll walk you through your scenes before we shoot. Don't be nervous. It's very simple."
"Oh," Cheng Che said, setting the tennis bag on his shoulder down beside his feet and taking a seat.
He had barely warmed the chair before a slightly plump makeup artist bustled over.
She was in her forties, with a dozen brushes tucked into her apron pocket that clinked as she walked.
She bent down, brought her face close to Cheng Che's, and studied him for less than two seconds before her eyes lit up.
"Oh my, an actual high school student." Sister Liu reached out and pinched Cheng Che's cheek. "Look at this skin, tender as a freshly peeled egg, fair and luminous. Back when I was young, I wouldn't even have dared stand next to you."
Her sudden move left Cheng Che stiff from head to toe, every hair on the back of his neck standing up. He looked as though someone had struck his immobilization acupoint.
Still not satisfied, Sister Liu lightly brushed the backs of her fingers against his cheek again:
"So fair and smooth, not a single pimple. With a foundation like this, what makeup do you even need? Comparing yourself to others really can anger you to death."
"Ahem." Yan Ruanning coughed twice beside them, unable to suppress the laughter in her voice. "Sister Liu, stop teasing him. He still has school tomorrow. Leave the boy a way to survive."
Sister Liu laughed heartily and pulled two brushes from her apron:
"All right, no more teasing. His face doesn't need much work. A little base, tidy up his brows, style his hair, and we're done."
As though granted a pardon, Cheng Che slowly slid his back down against the chair.
But a second later, he realized he had still been too naive.
"How old are you?"
"Eighteen."
"An adult, then. Legal now. Got a girlfriend?"
"...No."
"Oh? Looking like this, and no girlfriend? Surely not. Do the girls at your school have bad eyesight?"
"Sister Liu..."
"How are your grades?"
"Okay."
"How okay? What's your rank in your year?"
"Uh, top two hundred."
"Oh, a little academic ace, too. How many people in your family?"
The corners of Cheng Che's mouth began twitching.
Sister Liu kept questioning him without pausing her hands, sweeping a little brush over his face, her eyes never leaving his features.
From the way she carried on, Cheng Che felt she would love to dig out his household register and question him about three generations of ancestors.
He answered intermittently, looking like a prisoner under interrogation, and nearly let slip that his dad ran a breakfast shop.
Yan Ruanning's hair was finished, and she was leaning back in her chair drinking water. As she listened to the exchange between the older woman and the boy, her expression grew increasingly interesting.
Especially when she heard which school he attended, she raised an eyebrow slightly and gave Cheng Che another look.
Spring City No. 13 Middle School.
Quite a coincidence.
Once his makeup was done, Cheng Che stood and studied himself in the mirror for a while.
There really wasn't much difference.
Sister Liu really hadn't done much to him, only two things:
She had lightly styled the fringe over his forehead, making him look considerably neater and sharper; then she had swept some concealer over the faint bluish shadows beneath his eyes.
"All done. Off you go." Sister Liu clapped her hands in satisfaction, as though admiring her handiwork.
The filming location was an empty classroom at the end of the corridor.
Cheng Che followed Xiao Zhou inside and froze again.
He had thought shooting a music video meant setting up a camera, filming him a few times, and calling it a day.
But the setup before him clearly said otherwise.
Three cameras, an enormous reflector, two crew members holding boom microphones, and a middle-aged man in a baseball cap sitting behind a monitor, watching the screen while speaking into a walkie-talkie.
That must be the director.
"Cheng Che, you're here." Yan Ruanning walked over from the side, a bottle of water in her hand, her tone casual. "Your scenes are really simple. First scene, you enter the classroom and walk straight over to sit by the window. Second scene, you stand in front of the windowsill and look outside. Just those two shots."
Cheng Che nodded. "No lines?"
"None. Just let your mind go blank." Yan Ruanning looked him up and down. "Especially in the second scene, you need a sort of... lost feeling. Like you're sitting in a classroom, but your heart has already drifted somewhere else."
Isn't that just me in class every day? Cheng Che thought.
I know this one.
The director glanced up at him without saying much, then called through his megaphone, "All departments, get ready! Actor, take your position!"
Cheng Che went outside the door.
"Three, two, one, action!"
He pushed the door open and walked in.
He had taken only three steps when the director called, "Cut."
"No, no, too stiff." The director waved a hand. "Young man, you're walking, not carrying a shoulder pole across a single-log bridge. Relax. Just think of it as an ordinary day, and you're heading back to the classroom for self-study."
Cheng Che nodded and went back out.
The second take.
He pushed the door open and went in, trying hard to think "self-study."
But he could feel his arms swinging like a robot's, his knees barely able to bend.
He was only halfway there when the director called, "Cut," again.
"Drop your shoulders! Stop hunching them! Look ahead, don't keep staring at the floor!"
Cheng Che took a deep breath and went back out again.
Yan Ruanning stood beside the monitor with her arms folded, saying nothing, merely watching with interest.
The third take.
Cheng Che stood outside the door for a while, then activated [Total Concentration].
Wasn't he just supposed to act expressionless? Wouldn't turning this on do the trick?
He opened his eyes, pushed the door open, and walked in.
This time, he didn't deliberately try to "act" anything.
He simply walked.
His mind was empty, and his feet knew where to go on their own.
Sunlight streamed through the windows, casting two bright bands of light across the desks.
He passed through the bands of light, reached the seat by the window, and sat.
"Good! That's a take!" the director called.
Cheng Che blinked.
Before he had even processed it, the first scene was done.
A few crew members murmured on the sidelines:
"This newcomer's pretty good. Nailed his marks in one take."
"He really has that high school boy feel. So natural."
The director ignored them, eyes fixed on the monitor, replaying it once, then again.
"Second scene, get ready!"
The second scene involved standing in front of the windowsill.
Cheng Che walked to the window, hands in his pockets, body turned sideways, and looked outside.
Following Yan Ruanning's instructions, he needed to convey that lost feeling of being physically present but mentally elsewhere.
But just as he settled into place, the director suddenly rose from behind the monitor, eyes wide and round, staring at the screen for several seconds without speaking.
"Director?" the camera operator beside him asked cautiously.
"Don't talk." The director stared at the screen.
On camera, the boy stood backlit by the window. Outside, the sky was very blue, a few wispy clouds drifting slowly past.
The light traced a clean outline along his profile, his eyelashes slightly lowered, his lips gently pressed together.
The feeling was hard to describe.
Like a boy who had accidentally wandered into the shot, unaware he was being filmed, unaware of what he himself was thinking. Simply standing there so casually, he was already an entire story.
"Fuck," the director swore under his breath. "How is he this photogenic?"
Standing beside him, Yan Ruanning shifted her gaze from the monitor to Cheng Che by the window, then back.
The corners of her mouth lifted.
A natural.
He really was a natural.
Some people made a picture just by standing there.
Others acted their whole lives and never did anything beyond reciting lines.
This kid had absolutely no idea how good he looked just standing there.
"That's a take!" the director finally called, his voice several degrees more excited than before. "Fantastic! Ten-minute break, then we shoot from the third camera position!"
Sister Liu came up from behind the crowd, palms pressed together, stars filling her eyes:
"Oh, our Cheche was born to eat from this bowl! That profile, with the light falling like that-where's my phone? I need a picture for my wallpaper!"
Cheng Che walked over from the window, a little embarrassed by her words, and scratched the back of his head:
"Please don't, Sister Liu. I still have class tomorrow."
"Hahaha, all right, all right."
The rest of the shoot went extraordinarily smoothly.
They picked up several close and medium shots from different angles. The director called "That's a take" faster and faster, his smile growing broader and broader.
Even the previously stern director of photography gave Cheng Che a thumbs-up after finishing a set of close-ups.
"This kid's eyes can talk," he said.
Hearing that, Cheng Che turned his face away, a little embarrassed.
It was all the effect of [Stars Surrounding the Moon]. Everything wonderful about him was something other people filled in themselves.
At noon, the crew handed out boxed lunches to everyone.
Holding his boxed lunch, Cheng Che squatted at a corner of the corridor to eat.
Xiao Zhou ran over with a bottle of something to drink for him, saying Sister Ruanning had specifically requested it.
Cheng Che thanked Xiao Zhou and lowered his head to keep shoveling down his food, while mentally calculating how much money this boxed lunch had saved him.
The afternoon mainly involved Yan Ruanning's solo scenes.
With nothing to do, Cheng Che sat off to the side and watched.
At first, he found it novel. But the longer he watched, the less he could smile.
A thirty-second shot was filmed seven times over.
Different camera positions, different expressions, different lighting-the director kept picking over the details.
Yan Ruanning walked again and again, sang again and again, remaining in form throughout, never showing the slightest impatience.
Cheng Che suddenly felt this line of work wasn't easy either.
More exhausting than grinding practice questions.
Toward evening, the director filmed another atmospheric shot.
It was really just Cheng Che still standing in that same spot by the window, but showing only his back and the changing sky outside.
The implication was that "he had stood there all day."
Cheng Che didn't ask why. If the director told him to stand, he stood; if he was told to look, he looked. He could stand there, anyway.
Once filming ended, Yan Ruanning clapped her hands. "That's a wrap! Thanks for all your hard work, everyone. Next, we move locations-the tennis court."
Cheng Che perked up.
The tennis court.
His home turf.