She rose from her seat, closed her eyes for a breath, and let the character settle over her like a second skin.
When she opened her eyes again, something in her gaze had shifted. Flat, distant, faintly confused, as though she were staring at something only she could see hovering in empty air.
In the book, there's a scene easily glossed over by most readers: the temple-raised orphaned girl, dragged along by a grieving client and her young daughter to a festival she has no real interest in attending. A child offers her ice cream. She almost refuses out of habit before something in the girl's earnest face changes her mind.
She bites into it and freezes, overwhelmed by a sweetness and cold she has never once experienced in a life spent among spirits, praying and grief. For a single unguarded second, something close to a real smile crosses her face.
It's barely two paragraphs in the original text. But it's the first time, in the entire story, that her emotion belongs entirely to her — not borrowed from a ghost's memory, not colored by someone else's pain. Just purely hers.
Ding Jia held that moment in her body for less than a minute — a faint widening of the eyes, a softness at the mouth that looked almost startled by its own existence, gone again just as quickly as it arrived.
Then she sat back down and waited.
Please let this be enough. Please.
Shen Ru said nothing for several seconds. Long enough that her stomach started sinking — had she picked the wrong scene? Misread the character entirely?
Then, finally, he turned to Director Gu. "I'll send the final approval to your email this afternoon."
She blinked. That was it? He wasn't even going to address her directly?
She swallowed her irritation, mentally filing several uncharitable thoughts about her idol's manners, when he spoke again.
"Ms. Ding." He stood and extended his hand. "I look forward to seeing your take on Li Xinyi. Good luck."
She felt she was at the top of the ferriswheel. All her irritation evaporated on the spot.
"I won't disappoint you, or the readers," she said, shaking his hand with considerably more enthusiasm than professional decorum strictly called for.
She'd entirely forgotten she'd been quietly cursing him thirty seconds earlier.
The moment the audition ended, she rushed straight to Lin Lin's office to share the news, repeating it in three different ways before her manager finally cut her off.
"I heard you, the first time."
"I'm just excited! My comeback project is literally one of my favorite author's books."
"Strange man, that one," Ding Jia added, settling onto the office sofa. "His casting process is the most unusual I've ever seen."
"Oh? I thought you'd be too busy being dazzled by his face to notice his personality. He was quite popular on set during the supporting cast auditions."
"..." Should she mention she'd briefly mistaken him for some kind of deity upon first sight? Absolutely not. Lin Lin would never let that go.
"A good face means nothing without a good personality," she said instead, a touch too quickly.
Lin Lin's eyes lit up immediately. "Was he rude to you?"
Ding Jia nearly choked on air. "He wasn't—" He was. "—I just think he has an unusual temperament."
"So you're disappointed your idol's a little odd?"
"Not really. Writers tend to be eccentric anyway."
Lin Lin let the topic drop, though clearly only for now. There would be plenty of time to pry once filming actually started.
Ding Jia headed home not long after, craving something sweet enough to count as rebellion against her meal plan. A nearby convenience store popsicle later, she noticed a small crowd gathering near the park and, fueled by curiosity and sugar, wandered closer.
"Poor thing, she looked so young."
"Did someone call the police already? Should we ask building security to tighten things up?"
Police? She tried to peer through the crowd but only managed a view of the backs of several dozen heads. She'd nearly given up entirely when something warm and wet brushed against her ankle.
She looked down to find an enthusiastically wagging tail attached to an extremely familiar dog.
"Arthur! I told you to stop sneaking off!"