Ding Jia hid her pity behind a practiced smile.
"The doctors say I'm all better, so I can't live here forever," she said lightly. "But you'll get to leave soon too, okay? Just keep listening to your doctors."
A flicker of envy crossed Tang Yuan's face before she caught herself, hugging her doll tighter. It broke something small in Ding Jia's chest. This was supposed to be the age for endless playgrounds and scraped knees, not hospital corridors and porcelain dolls for company. She ruffled the girl's thinning hair gently and said her goodbyes when Lin Lin called her over.
Mask and sunglasses on, bodyguards flanking her, she and Lin Lin slipped out through a side exit to avoid the press camped at the main entrance.
Lin Lin had no intention of letting her dive straight back into work. Out of the dozens of scripts that had flooded in the moment news broke of Ding Jia's recovery, she'd narrowed it down to five for Ding Jia to choose from on the ride home.
"I'm surprised a romance drama made your shortlist," Ding Jia said, flipping through the first summary.
"Not that kind of romance. That one's from Director Wen — you worked with him two years ago. Big-budget passion project, and he wants you for the female lead." Lin Lin handed over a pen without looking up from her phone.
Ding Jia kept flipping until one cover caught her attention. "...A horror film?"
"That's Shen Ru's." Lin Lin said it like it explained everything.
"Wait. Shen Ru? As in, the Shen Ru?" Ding Jia flipped the script open, scanning the unfamiliar title. "Illusions of Time: The Alibi Series? I've never even heard of this. Are you sure?"
She was, by any honest measure, Shen Ru's biggest fan in the building. How had she missed an entire release? She was someone who even owned one of the first prints of his debut work back in high school.
"Idiot. You were in a coma," Lin Lin said flatly. "It dropped while you were out. Huge hit — the studio bought the rights almost immediately, and apparently you're the first name on the author's approval list."
The heck. This was a sin. An unforgivable sin. She ought to go straight to the bookstore instead of going home!
Ding Jia opened the first page, showing the summary and character breakdown.
Female lead. Attractive. Strong actor. Persistent. And then — original?
She read it three times and still had no idea what it meant.
"What does 'original' mean here?"
"Apparently the author insists on actors performing their own action scenes. No stunt doubles."
"...Isn't that a little extreme?" Most actors relied on stunt teams for a valid reason. training for months still didn't make someone a professional when the stakes were real injury.
Lucky for her, she happened to fall into the small percentage who didn't need much of a stand-in: a black belt and years of strength training from earlier roles had seen to that. Still, the demand struck her as needlessly harsh.
"I haven't read the contract terms myself, but I did read both books for you," Lin Lin said. "You can handle it."
"...You have a lot of faith in someone who just got discharged."
"If you don't trust my judgment, choose a different script."
She didn't. By the time the car pulled up to her apartment complex, she'd already decided — Shen Ru's horror project, or nothing.
"Auntie kept the place spotless the whole time you were out, so don't worry about dust," Lin Lin said, handing her a black mask as she climbed out of the car. "Also, I had your fan gifts delivered upstairs. Good luck with all of that."
The elevator required a specific keycard, one of the small luxuries of living in a high-security complex. As Ding Jia approached her door, she heard movement from the apartment across the hall — the one that had sat empty for as long as she'd lived here. Oh well, that'd be probably a year ago.
"Seems like someone finally moved in," she murmured, unlocking her own door and stepping inside.
What greeted her was less an apartment and more of a small mountain range of gift boxes and bouquets, stacked nearly as high as her unused Christmas tree. She spent the better part of the evening sorting fan letters into bins, stuffed animals into the spare room, flowers into every vase she owned.
Hours and several hundred pulled-out hairs later, she reached for one more box and tore the wrapping away — only to freeze at the sight of a porcelain doll staring back at her with eyes like polished black marble.