Director Chen seemed to quite like this suggestion, “Sure. You can carry his emotions. Let’s see how it goes.”
Lin Ran got up from his chair and walked to Xu Qichen’s side. He was very tall.
According to Xu Qichen’s setting, it should be 187cm.
Now he regrets it a bit. The oppressive aura of this man is really strong.
“You seemed very familiar with those sets of lines. Let’s act the scene following that monologue?”
Xu Qichen nodded, “That’s fine.”
He did not possess the ability to directly start improvising. Fortunately, the monologue just now created a scene in his mind in advance. So he could use that as the emotional foundation.
If Lin Ran had chosen an explosive scene from a later part, he would definitely not be able to enter the right state of mind immediately.
Lin Ran’s professional abilities were surprisingly good. His expressions changed in a flash.
In the blink of an eye, he was already the Nan Ke in the script, with a bright smile and fluent French.
“Hello sir, you just ordered a cup of Ice Mocha. Would you like anything else?”
Xu Qichen reacted, remembering the setting was in France.
He looked at Lin Ran and nodded involuntarily, then quickly shook his head.
However, neither he nor Ji Mengze could speak French, so he could only slightly embarrassedly skip over the short lines he should have said.
“Okay. That’s 2.25 Euros.”
Lin Ran’s propless performance was very good.
The angle of his smile was just right, entirely like a practiced coffee shop cashier.
Xu Qichen reached into his pocket to feel around.
He kept a constant subtle awkwardness on his face, which was seen by the director and the screenwriter.
Actually in this kind of ‘first meeting with crush’ scenes, this is the kind of awkwardness that is needed.
Xu Qichen reached out a hand to Lin Ran. Lin Ran naturally opened his hand and a pink crystal clear candy fell on his palm.
Lin Ran, who scored full marks on professionalism, nearly laughed out loud.
“Okay, please wait a moment.” Lin Ran walked to the side and started miming convincingly.
Xu Qichen lowered his head to look at his toes, then turned to look at Lin Ran’s profile, using Mandarin to substitute his French lines.
“Are you French?”
Lin Ran replied while ‘making’ coffee, “No, I’m Chinese, studying here.”
“Really?” A tone of pleasant surprise.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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“Tbeg mbooff.”
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Lin Ran’s eyes when he looked at him were straightforward and warm, like the sunshine in July.
At that moment, Xu Qichen felt unsettled from the bottom of his heart. He couldn’t tell why, but this feeling was scarily familiar. A thin layer of sweat appeared on his palm and the hand that held the paper cup slightly trembled uncontrollably.
“Thank you.”
Xu Qichen turned around.
The next scene is leaving the coffee shop.
His footsteps were slow, as though the bottom of his shoes were really stained with the melting asphalt from the road.
“Will you come again tomorrow?”
Xu Qichen turned around, astounded.
Lin Ran scratched the back of his head. “I mean, there’s an event in the coffee shop tomorrow. Since it’s summer, cold drinks are one-for-one.”
The way he said ‘since it’s summer’ sounded very nice. His tone was like he was speaking romantic words.
“You can bring a friend with you, it’s a very good deal.”
Xu Qichen looked at him and said in a sincere tone, “But I don’t have friends.”
The moment he said that, Xu Qichen regretted it. He wanted to bite his tongue. This was not in the script.
As expected, he lacked experience; mixing up real life and the scene while acting.
Lin Ran was stunned, but only for a moment. He walked around the nonexistent counter, stopped in front of Xu Qichen, and reached a hand out towards him.
Xu Qichen was stupefied. He raised his head and stared blankly at Lin Ran who was taller than him by half.
He had the temperament of both a boy and a man. The smile on his face was so sincere, almost making Xu Qichen forget it was an act.
Xu Qichen hesitated, but in the end he reached out his own hand.
The other party quickly shook his hand with vigour.
“Now you do.
Come tomorrow, I’ll treat you to Iced Mocha.”
“That’s enough.”
The moment Chen Anping called for them to stop, Xu Qichen withdrew his hand and thanked Lin Ran. Lin Ran too recovered his usual ‘just there’ smile and returned to his seat.
Qu Qing’s expressions were very different from her initial ones. Her smile towards Xu Qichen was from the bottom of her heart, but Xu Qichen was not sure if she also smiled at the other actors like that.
Chen Anping’s expression on the other hand did not change much.
The few of them said a few simple words, then Xu Qichen left the room.
Li Yun approached him as soon as he came out. “How was it? You were there for quite some time.”
Xu Qichen was mostly expressionless, saying honestly, “One monologue and one scene, but they didn’t say anything.”
Li Yun felt a bit disappointed, but this was also what she expected.
This project was simply too popular. Those who came to audition were all people whose name she could easily call.
Ji Mengze’s biggest advantages are his good looks and popularity, both of which the investors will pay attention to.
However, when it comes to this kind of literary films, his disadvantages are enough to let the directors directly reject him.
Li Yun symbolically patted Xu Qichen’s shoulder. “No matter what, it’s good to give it a try. There will be more opportunities like this in the future.”
Xu Qichen did not even hear Li Yun’s words, he was busy chatting with 0901.
“0901, these are all the system’s characters, you should be able to read their minds right?”
0901 replied without rushing: “In theory, it’s possible. But this requires you to pay 5000 points in exchange.”
5000? He only has 400 now.
Xu Qichen gave up the idea of using the system to find out more.
0901: “However, Mr. Xu, I think your acting skills are decent.”
Xu Qichen laughed bitterly. They’re probably restricted to this kind of crush situation…
Before he noticed, Li Yun had already dragged him out of the hotel.
Idol groups are different from other celebrities in that they live each day like it’s two and a half days. It’s 10:40pm now, but Xu Qichen still had to return to the company to rehearse with his group members.
After smoothing out half of the dance formations, the five of them sat in a circle on the floor of the rehearsal room to rest.
Bai Yi had a strip of Lozenges in his hand. He popped one out and threw it into his mouth, “For the past two days my throat’s been feeling like it’s about to smoke.”
Xu Qichen, who was sitting opposite him, reached out his hand, “I want one too.” Bai Yi popped out another and tossed it to him.
“How did your thing go?”
The taste of the Lozenge was strange; sweet and spicy, but he still liked it. “I probably won’t be selected.”
Ming Qi patted Xu Qichen on the back, “Aiya! How can it be so fast? Things like acting skills are just too mysterious. If all else fails, we’ll just accumulate it work by work.”
Jiang Ling on the other hand was straightforward. “It’s better that you failed, otherwise you might just get scolded again when the time comes. It’s uncomfortable to watch.”
Shen Huan threw his dripping wet towel on Jiang Ling’s forehead and scolded while laughing, “Focus on your own variety show.”
Because of his athletic talent and good figure, Jiang Ling was selected as a guest for the new season of an outdoor sports reality show. However, as he came from an idol group, no matter how masculine he was, there would still be people voicing their objection.
“My skin is rough and my flesh is thick, let them scold!”
Shen Huan kicked Jiang Ling once, then casually dropped himself on Xu Qichen.
When he was writing, in order to occasionally create some Asura scenes, and because intra-group CPs are necessities, Xu Qichen unhesitantly created Shen Huan’s devilish image.
But upon really meeting him, he found that he really couldn’t handle this kind of personality.
Without changing his expression, Xu Qichen shifted his legs. Shen Huan fell onto the floor and was crazily mocked by Bai Yi, “Your hair is full of sweat lah, still insist on wiping it on Mengze!”
Xu Qichen waved his hand and laughed: “No, it’s just that my legs ache.”
When it was time for the break to end, the five of them were pulled back to practice by the choreographer, and they only returned to their hostel in the later half of the night.
However, they were only allowed to sleep for about three hours because they have to shoot a magazine cover the next morning.
On the road towards the studio, Xu Qichen watched everyone messing around in the car and felt some strange emotion, but it wasn’t a negative one.
Since young, he was never very good at talking, so he always failed to establish any intimate relationships, and neither could he ever blend into the environment. Over time, he found that he didn’t really have any friends.
Suddenly having a new identity and a special kind of social relationship like ‘group members’ is really a novel experience.
He’s a little happy.
After being shot as a group, it was now time for each member’s solo shot.
Xu Qichen was allowed to rest for a while. He nestled on the sofa by the side, feeling sleepy and hungry, he picked up the tidbits on the coffee table and stuffed them in his mouth.
A female staff nearby covered her mouth and laughed: “So Ji Mengze completely doesn’t care about figure management ah!”
Xu Qichen’s mouth was stuffed with cake so he couldn’t speak and could only smile awkwardly.
But a voice came from behind. “Him ah! He can’t get fat from eating.”
With the voice came Li Yun, wearing a black suit. She sat beside Xu Qichen. Xu Qichen looked at her while chewing his cake slowly.
Li Yun sighed again, “Aren’t you worried about the audition at all?”
Xu Qichen finally swallowed. “It’s no use even if I’m worried.”
“Have you seen Weibo?” Li Yun took out her phone.
Xu Qichen shook his head. Since returning to the company, he had been rehearsing. There wasn’t even time to sleep, how could he check Weibo?
Li Yun handed her phone to Xu Qichen. “Yesterday I was still thinking of putting the news out first, letting your image be linked to the movie. I didn’t expect someone else to put it out before me.”
Xu Qichen looked at the phone. A few familiar marketing accounts posted Weibos together during the audition yesterday, the contents all similar; “Chen Anping’s new work, focus on homosexuality!”, “Director Chen’s new work supports LGBT groups!”, “Golden Trio Chen Anping, Qu Qing, and Lin Ran once again work together, aiming for XX Award”, etc., mostly putting the focus on the film’s theme and configuration.
Xu Qichen opened the full Weibo post, and saw that some celebrities’ names were hinted at or even mentioned in passing.
He reached out, opened the comments and pointed.
“You mean him?”
♥️ 😘 😚
Thank you for the update!
I felt that ‘no friends’ on a personal level lol
Mood
Xu Qichen: This is not in the script!
Li Yun: No this is right~
Thanks for the chapter<3
thanks for the chapter <3
Behold, subconsciously writing oneself into every storyline bears fruit! All of his reflexive, natural reactions are in character haha. That “but I don’t have friends” and “he’s a little happy” though, ahhh my heart… so straightforward and so much more impactful for it, I really love Xu Qichen (and this writing), I’m happy for what he has now. Once again, his personality is so comfortable to follow, even if he can’t predict everything he still rolls with it so well
Thank you so much for translating! <3
No friends…that hurts…
Thanks for the chapter~
Thank you for the chapter!!! ❤️❤️
thank you for the chapter!💕
No friends..😓 But Xu Qichen is doing fine. Just take it slow darling
Thank you for the chapter 😘💛💛
💜💜💜