Chapter 32 Part 2

He asked, confused, "What's this for?"

Ruan Feng said, "I have a night scene tonight and really can't get away. Could I trouble you to take this to Teacher Qu for me?"

Lu Wen was taken aback. "That's not appropriate..."

"What's inappropriate about it?" Ruan Feng buttered him up. "Brother Lu Wen, I know you're a kind person. Please, just help me out."

Lu Wen's head was aching with worry. "It's really not necessary. The hotel provides fruit every day."

Ruan Feng was insistent. "But they might not have grapes."

That was true, but grapes weren't exactly a rare fruit. Did he absolutely have to eat them?

"Brother Lu Wen, I'll be frank with you." Ruan Feng said, carefully measuring his words, "I happened to find out that when Teacher Qu is sick, especially with a fever, he likes to eat grapes."

So that was why. Lu Wen gave Ruan Feng a complicated look.

He couldn't tell if Ruan Feng's feelings for Qu Yanting were genuine or just an attempt to curry favor, but he was certain Qu Yanting wasn't serious about Ruan Feng. Even if he had been in the past, he wasn't exclusive now.

People always craved the new and tired of the old. Qu Yanting's current attention was most likely fixed on him.

Ruan Feng, completely oblivious, smiled and asked, "Brother Lu Wen, what do you like to eat?"

"Huh? Anything's fine."

"Let's grab a meal someday when we both finish work early. My treat."

Lu Wen felt increasingly guilty, unsure of how to face Ruan Feng. He couldn't help but wonder if he bore some inescapable responsibility for Qu Yanting developing feelings for him.

As the saying goes, "I did not kill Boren, yet Boren died because of me." The current situation was that he hadn't seduced Qu Yanting, yet Qu Yanting was hopelessly infatuated with him.

Lu Wen felt tormented, his smile forced and guilty. "Ruan Feng... you're already calling me brother. Let me treat you instead."

"Sounds good, it's a deal!" Ruan Feng agreed readily. His assistant called him for a makeup touch-up, and he shouted back as he ran off, "Brother Lu Wen, thanks!"

At dusk, as the sun set and the evening glow was rich in the sky, Qu Yanting returned to the hotel after his IV drip. On the way, Ruan Feng called to say he had asked Lu Wen to bring a bag of grapes for him.

His room service dinner—a light meal of four dishes and a soup—had already arrived. Qu Yanting ate a few bites, then curled up on the sofa with his laptop to revise the script, occasionally fiddling with his wristwatch.

He typed out a line of text when he heard faint, approaching footsteps in the hallway. His fingertips paused over the keyboard; he guessed it was Lu Wen returning from work.

Sure enough, the doorbell rang.

Qu Yanting opened the door without looking through the peephole, only to find Lu Wen's manager, Sun Xiaojian, standing outside. He retreated half a palm's breadth, his grip on the doorknob tightening.

Sun Xiaojian was all smiles, his attitude infinitely better than Lu Wen's, and his tone was respectful. "Screenwriter Qu, sorry to disturb you. Have you eaten?"

Qu Yanting pursed his lips and hummed a "mhm," so faint it could have dissolved into the air.

Not daring to waste time, Sun Xiaojian handed over the bag and explained, "Screenwriter Qu, these grapes are from Teacher Ruan. He asked our Lu Wen to bring them to you."

Qu Yanting didn't understand why Lu Wen wouldn't bring them over himself and instead made his manager take this unnecessary step. The door to 6207 was closed. He asked, "Lu Wen isn't back yet?"

"He's back." Fearing it would be rude, Sun Xiaojian lied, "He was in a rush to use the restroom, so he went inside first."

Inside the room across the hall, Lu Wen leaned with his back against his door, the back of his head resting against it, hearing every word of the conversation outside. Qu Yanting was accepting Ruan Feng's grapes while at the same time asking about his whereabouts.

'What do you call this? This is what you call eating from your bowl while staring at what's in the pot.'

'What else do you call it? It's called trying to grasp with both hands and wanting both to be hard.'

Lu Wen couldn't accept it. He couldn't afford to get involved with him, so he would just stay far, far away.

Qu Yanting took the grapes to the kitchen and rinsed them under cold water. The three large bunches filled an entire basin. A single grape was large enough to fill his cheek, its juice sweet and its pulp soft yet firm.

When Qu Yanting was a child and had a fever, his father would pick a bunch from their grapevine at home. In spring and summer, he would chill them in the refrigerator for a while; in autumn and winter, he would just rinse them under cold water, giving them to him to soothe his throat.

In the seasons when the vine was fruitless, his father would buy grapes and lie, telling him he'd picked them. Every single time, he believed him.

Qu Yanting sat on the floor in the space between the sofa and the coffee table, eating as he edited the script.

His phone rang. It was Ren Shu, who had returned from Beijing the previous night. The ringtone momentarily made Qu Yanting lose his appetite. He procrastinated until the very last second before answering on speakerphone.

After some friendly greetings, Ren Shu, unaware that he was sick, asked if he hadn't gone to the set today because he was exhausted from the past few days.

"I'm fine." Qu Yanting disliked complaining or sharing bad news. "As long as I haven't delayed your work."

Ren Shu's voice filled the living room. "Don't be like that, man. In such heavy rain, a live shoot, you finished everything in one night, even the establishing shots. Man..."

Qu Yanting said, "What?"

"What do you mean, what? It was awesome!" Ren Shu laughed heartily. "Yanting, if you had your own dedicated crew, your directing would be even better."

Every director has such a crew, including cinematography, lighting, art direction, and editing. Everyone is familiar with the director's style and methods, and there is an artistic rapport between them.

Qu Yanting was silent for a few seconds, then spoke with a self-deprecating laugh, "What would a screenwriter like me need a crew for? Doing work for you is more than enough."

Ren Shu chuckled. "Worn out? Then I feel bad bringing this up."

Qu Yanting understood. "What is it?"

"It's about scene 78." Ren Shu sounded a bit hesitant. "Could you possibly revise it tonight? I want to let Teacher Yang Bin wrap up early."

Yang Bin played Father Ye. He was a special guest actor with very few scenes and was scheduled to wrap up this weekend. The veteran actor was famously dedicated, but he suffered from rheumatism and asthma, and the cold weather was making things very difficult for him. Ren Shu had found out and couldn't bear to see him suffer, so he wanted to let him leave the set early.

Qu Yanting glanced at the document page and agreed at once. "Okay, I'll email it to you tonight."

"That's great! You're a true brother!" Ren Shu's voice boomed through the phone. "As soon as I get the script, I'll go find Teacher Yang, run lines with him, and we'll start filming tomorrow morning."

Qu Yanting repeated quietly, "Tomorrow morning?"

Ren Shu answered, "Yeah, we're basically squeezing it in. That way it won't affect the other scenes."

That meant not only did the script have to be revised tonight, but the actors also needed to memorize their lines. Qu Yanting looked at Ye Shan's lines in the document and asked, "What about Lu Wen?"

"I almost forgot about him. We'll have him join." After saying that, Ren Shu added, puzzled, "But it's strange, I've never run into him at the hotel."

'Of course you haven't,' Qu Yanting thought.

To save time and effort, he offered a compromise, taking the task upon himself. "How about this, I'll handle him."

Two hours later.

Lu Wen was soaking in the bathtub, the water on a circulating heat mode. His arms were draped over the edge, the muscles gleaming with a layer of water.

He leaned back, his head pillowed on a towel, annoyed. He sang amidst the faint steam, "I truly want complete release, to escape your control, to start life anew, to find that happy, unflinching new self of mine..."

An incoming call interrupted him.

His phone was vibrating on the vanity. Lu Wen stepped out of the bath, naked, and walked over on the bath mat. It was an unfamiliar but normal-looking number, not likely a scam. He answered, "Hello, who's this?"

"It's me."

Qu Yanting's voice.

Lu Wen shivered and frantically pulled on his bathrobe. Too many thoughts raced through his mind in those few seconds. 'Why is Qu Yanting calling me? What's his motive? He couldn't last a single day without seeing me?'

He calmed himself, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Wh-what is it?"

Qu Yanting said, "Come to my room."

The author has something to say:

I'll organize the superstar's song list some other day (just saying).