Prologue

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It was three o’clock in the morning. Jia He bought her plane ticket and then shut down her computer.

She had worked with this story editor for three screenplays, and it had finally been her turn with this drama to do the overall outline. From the act breaks to the actual script, their entire team had worked hard and pushed through for three months, and now it had passed the director’s review without a hitch. Naturally, then, she could breathe out in relief, and she had booked a ticket to Sanya, planning on letting herself have a thorough rest for a few days. After all, when filming commenced in a week, she would need to stay in frigid Hengdian[1] for three months. If she didn’t let herself slack now, she would not get the chance later.

All of a sudden, her mobile phone began vibrating with all its might, interrupting her yawn.

“I have one piece of good news and two pieces of bad news. Which do you want to hear first?” the producer, Qiao Qiao, excitedly cried.

“The bad news.” Jia He turned on her computer again and began swiftly searching for the folder that contained the screenplay. A phone call at this hour from the producer, needless to say, must have to do with the script.

“All right, then, this time you have to listen to the good news first.” Evidently, Qiao Qiao was treating her as thin air. “The lead actor is set. It’s your idol.”

The words slipped unthinkingly from Jia He’s mouth. “Nicholas Cage?”

“Please! We’re filming a Chinese ancient period drama, O great screenwriter!”

“I’ve been totally into him lately. I’ve watched his Lord of War countless times already.” Jia He’s eyes shone brightly as she thought of that uncle-age man, and she began to gush, “You don’t even know. I already liked him back when he was popular on YouTube—”

“Yi Wenze.”

Two words only, but they successfully managed to choke everything off in her throat.

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Yi Wenze?

Jia He had just clicked open the screenplay, but now she was completely stunned. “You’re not joking, are you? Such a silly drama?”

“Congratulations, you have finally realized this drama is silly.” Qiao Qiao was chortling merrily on her end of the line.

Jia He let her little bit of teasing slide and, feeling lightheaded, pressed, “It’s really Yi Wenze?”

“Of course. We just settled that.” Qiao Qiao continued, “It’s now time for the bad news. He has some opinions on the script, and just now he gave the director his thoughts on how it should be changed. And so, the first piece of bad news is that your vacation time has come to an end. The second piece of bad news is, you must be done making all the changes before shooting begins. While I’m at it, I’m throwing in an extra sentence for you: he’s really professional and also really picky, so you’re going to have some wicked suffering in the three months that you’re on location with the cast and crew.”

The Yi Wenze on her computer desktop was smiling his signature smile at Jia He.

Her eyes glued to that desktop, Jia He completely did not pay attention to that last sentence from Qiao Qiao, nor was she aware that Qiao Qiao had already hung up. She merely stared fixedly at that idol whom she had liked since middle school, her mind utterly blank.

She had an entire folder of celebrity photographs, all of them shots of Yi Wenze. She also had another folder filled completely with Microsoft Word documents, all of them news related to Yi Wenze since he began his career in the entertainment industry. Regardless of good or bad press, she had saved them all. Of course, she was not crazy to the extent of young girls nowadays who will chase after a celebrity all the way to the airport to meet his flight or the film set to try to visit him. Furthermore, owing to her occupation, most of the time she would present herself as being uninterested in celebrities so as to demonstrate her professionalism… The reality, though, was that, apart from Yi Wenze, every celebrity in her eyes was but an unimportant passerby whose appearance was as short as the blooming of an epiphyllum flower, which flowers only once and briefly.

In the bottom right corner of the computer screen, a window suddenly popped out.

It was a notification that a new email had come in. Jia He clicked it open in passing. And then she saw the email that had been forwarded by the director.

The forward was… the feedback that Yi Wenze had given for the script.

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[1] Hengdian World Studios is a film studio located in the town of Hengdian, and is the largest outdoor film studio in the world, with replicas, not facades, of both the Forbidden City and the Old Summer Palace, as well as themed areas such as streets of Hong Kong and Guangzhou, grottoes, riverside town, etc. Movies and television dramas alike are filmed in this place.