The door into the courtyard swung open.
The heat and the chirping of the cicadas came straight at one's face. The vast sky was so blue that it looked white. The sky was cloudless. Even the sky in the mountains looked cleaner than the one in the city.
The sun, however, beat down all the same. There was the smell of baked soil and grass in the air.
Standing outside of the crude door, Gu Nian stretched out languidly. She looked away from the blinding sun, through the distant mountains and finally ended up looking at the tree branch that was sticking inside of the courtyard over the wall.
Gu Nian sighed spiritlessly. Her voice so light that it disappeared in the breeze.
"That was truly what you'd call the middle of the woods."
***
"You. First you said you didn't want to write it. Now when someone else said they'd do it, you want to fight over it. Why is it that you just want to cause us problems?"
In front of the familiar window, next to the familiar table, the familiar Assistant Director Lin was holding onto his familiar old tea cup.
Gu Nian was battered by the script for two days and beat down by the sun on her way over. She was even more dispirited that she was the previous time. "By the same taken. You wanted us to write it. Now that I have put in so much of my time and effort and am already half way through, you want to call the whole thing off. Is it fun to toy with us like that?"
"You are quick with your words." Assistant Director Lin found that both upsetting and funny at the same time. He lifted up his eyes and said, "You sure you want to fight this battle with the director this time?"
Gu Nian lifted her hand and pulled down the bottom half of her face.
Assistant Director Lin, "What was that? You just want to make a face at me?"
Gu Nian, dispirited, said, "No. I wanted to show you the dark circles under my eyes. For the sake of adding this character, I was even writing in my dreams. My dark circles are so back they could almost reach my knees – if you are in my shoes, would you just turn around and leave now?"
As much as Assistant Director Lin wanted to stop himself from laughing out loud, he failed.
Gu Nian's screenwriter team was hand-picked by him. He has seen Gu Nian's script. She was still very young and her dialogs have room for improvement but, other than that, her overall ability in story architecture and giving her characters flesh and blood were very outstanding.
To put it in a more pragmatic way, even though the little girl always looked sleep deprived, she was, nevertheless, a pretty good. She has a somewhat lazy and peculiar personality with some street smart. She wasn't entire a dim-witted person who didn't understand how the world worked nor was she someone who was so sleek that she had lost her unique personality. She was a very likable person.
All in all, he has a very good feeling about her future; which was why he has been so tolerating of her.
"Fine. I'll hook you up with the director one more time," said the assistant director as he stood up. "It is up to you to convince Director Geng though."
"Thank you, Director Lin."
"Judging by the time, the filming is almost over and the director and the others are probably going to heard to the canteen. Let's head over there together and see if we can run into Director Geng."
"Okay."
What they called the temporary canteen was several connected local residences rented by the production team. As opposed to the one that Gu Nian was staying at, these ones were two-storied.
And the canteen was on the second floor.
As they walked up the wooden stairs, Gu Nian could feel that each plank was squeaking under her weight, telling the stories of how they hadn't been maintained properly over the years. All they needed was the lucky one who'd fall through one of them and fall straight to the first floor.
One that would sacrifice himself for the benefits of the others.
Once she realized that, Gu Nian immediately pulled out herself phone and was about to text a reminder message to her precious son. Before she was even able to type her first word, she heard a surprised "Eh?" from the assistant director.
Gu Nian looked up.
Assistant Director Lin looked inside of the canteen and mumbled to himself. "Zhuo Yixuan is eating here today too?"