The next day at 2:30 PM.
In a familiar café at D University, the five individuals—Nan Rongyu, Nan Rongzhou, Li Xingyu, Jiang Miaomiao, and Qin Lü—stared at each other awkwardly, complete strangers to one another.
They all shared the same question in their minds.
Where was Director Shao Yichen, the most important person? Why hadn't she arrived?
These five people didn't know each other, with the director being their only common acquaintance, and then the director... had simply stood them up.
Under these circumstances, what was the point of continuing this meeting?
The atmosphere was extremely uncomfortable.
Seeing everyone's silence, Li Xingyu sighed and took the initiative to break it.
"I'll call the director and ask what's happening," he said, picking up his phone, dialing a number, and putting it on speaker.
The others sitting around the table collectively breathed a sigh of relief, silently thanking Li Xingyu for dispelling the awkwardness.
They all stared at the small phone as if it were their only hope.
Fortunately, the director hadn't completely gone missing. After the call rang for nearly a minute, just when everyone thought it would automatically disconnect, it finally connected.
"Hello, is this Li Xingyu?" Shao Yichen's voice sounded somewhat urgent. "I'm stuck in traffic!"
Li Xingyu: ...
Aren't you still living in the D University dormitory and haven't moved out yet? How could you be stuck in traffic inside the university?!
But after some thought, he figured that such a serious person as his senior wouldn't use being stuck in traffic as an excuse—if she said she was stuck in traffic, then she must truly be stuck in traffic. As for why she was stuck in traffic, perhaps she had too many graduation-related matters and wasn't on campus this morning, having gone to handle other business.
In any case, it was absolutely impossible that Shao Yichen was lying.
Shao Yichen continued speaking on the other end: "Anyway, once I get through this traffic, I'll head straight to the café! It won't be more than half an hour. Could you please inform the others my phone is about to die so anyway goodbye—"
With that, the call abruptly ended.
Listening to the "beep beep beep" from the other end, Li Xingyu stared at the "Call ended" display on his screen and shrugged helplessly.
"So that's the situation," he said, hanging up and putting away his phone. "The director won't be able to make it for at least half an hour."
The atmosphere grew even more oppressive.
New team members like Jiang Miaomiao and Qin Lü, who had never worked with Shao Yichen before, even began to seriously wonder whether this film crew was legitimate or if it was some new type of scam operation.
"But I don't think the director would want us to just waste time," Li Xingyu said after surveying everyone's expressions and deciding the situation wasn't acceptable. He paused briefly, then continued.
Although his role in the film was technically just the third male lead, with theoretically minimal importance in the crew, he had unconsciously taken a leadership position in this discussion. Due to his natural demeanor, the others didn't even notice anything unusual about this.
"Actually, I've been studying the script carefully during this time," Li Xingyu pulled out a printed version of the script with neat handwriting annotations surrounding Shao Yichen's scrawl-like writing. "There are certain elements the director didn't explicitly include in the script, which we need to interpret ourselves. We creative team members might as well use this time to exchange ideas."
"From this perspective of leaving room for discussion, perhaps Sen—Director Shao Yichen's late arrival might even be intentional," Li Xingyu ultimately concluded. He smiled slightly and looked at the others, "So, shall we use this time while the director is absent to share our thoughts?"
❀⋆｡°✿☆❀✿°｡⋆❀
Shao Yichen indeed wasn't stuck in traffic.
But leaving this table of people staring awkwardly at one another certainly wasn't intentional either.
She had simply... overslept.
The single-player game "Frozen Starriver" had been released yesterday, with exciting gameplay and an engrossing plot. Shao Yichen had stayed up all night to complete it, losing track of time. After defeating the final boss, she glanced at the clock to find it was already 6 AM.
She abandoned the game and collapsed onto her dormitory bed in a coma-like sleep, accidentally ignoring her alarm's sound.
Li Xingyu's ringtone eventually woke her, and with her mind still foggy, she instinctively made excuses to handle the situation. Only after hanging up did she realize she had overslept and needed to hurry over.
She leaped out of bed and began rapidly washing up and changing clothes.
If she had heard Li Xingyu's absurd conclusion that "Senior deliberately arrived late to give us space for free discussion," she would have been bewildered about how she had become such an all-knowing, infallible figure in Li Xingyu's eyes, and how this junior brother had such a serious problem with overthinking.
Don't doubt your first instinct! I really am just in the school dormitory!
❀⋆｡°✿☆❀✿°｡⋆❀
Let's return our attention to the five creative team members at the café.
Li Xingyu undeniably possessed leadership qualities. With the director absent, the two lead actors should have been guiding the discussion, or at the very least, the cinematographer—the role second only to the director but above everyone else—should have been responsible for conducting the meeting. However, with his composed demeanor and thorough understanding of the script, Li Xingyu successfully sidelined everyone else in the crew, becoming the discussion's leader.
After initially establishing the discussion topic before the director's arrival, he first guided everyone through self-introductions, including names and crew positions, allowing the previously unacquainted individuals to become familiar with one another.
Of course, Li Xingyu's successful takeover was partly due to the leads' inaction. But this couldn't be helped—after all, Nan Rongyu and Nan Rongzhou hadn't even finished reading the script.
Yes, though they had indeed received the script from Shao Yichen and recognized they might truly become the film's lead actors, they still harbored some hope that perhaps Shao Yichen would suddenly quit the industry, or some bigwig would bring in capital and take over their roles.
Additionally, Shao Yichen's dog-scratch handwriting was truly difficult to read, and her writing style followed a self-created minimalist school. After flipping through just two pages, the two second-generation rich kids—as academically underachieving as the previous life's Shao Yichen—found their brains and eyes inadequate for the task. Coincidentally, Shao Yichen's game character was still bouncing around in "Zone Ten," inviting them to continue playing together, so they naturally treated the director's requirements as a reprieve and happily went off to play ranked matches as a trio.
Once they put the script aside, they never looked at it again.
Therefore, when they saw today that Li Xingyu had not only read the script but read it multiple times, and not only read it multiple times but also made detailed notes, the two rich heirs were shocked.
—How could there be such a dedicated actor!
—It turns out we're the toxic elements in the entertainment industry, using our wealth to squeeze out others' positions!
A sense of guilt spontaneously arose in their hearts. From this moment, they truly acknowledged from the bottom of their hearts that they were indeed going to be the leads in a film, and that they were far from adequate, both in terms of effort and acting skills.
Also from this moment, they developed for the first time a desire to perform well in this film and not drag down the other team members.
❀⋆｡°✿☆❀✿°｡⋆❀
Li Xingyu naturally had no idea the two leads' thoughts were so heavy. He didn't even know these two leads had never acted before, merely assuming they were minor figures in the entertainment circle.
But he was surprised that the two leads were twins.
In the script, Li Xingyu played the role of Yuan You, a friend of the deceased who requests the police to reinvestigate the jumping case.
Meanwhile, Nan Rongyu and Nan Rongzhou played the roles of the police officer investigating the case and the deceased who had jumped to his death, respectively. One character connected the clues of the explicit investigation line, while the other connected the clues of the implicit line about past events, making them worthy of being the film's dual protagonists.
—But the script never mentioned that the police officer and the deceased looked so similar they might be confused with each other!
Li Xingyu carefully recalled the script once more, ultimately confirming there was no such description! Not even a hint of such a suggestion!
Of course, in the plot, the police officer and the deceased had minimal risk of being confused due to different clothing and existing in different timelines. But for a mystery thriller, when audiences see the two main characters looking so similar, countless speculations would inevitably arise in their minds.
Are the police officer and the deceased the same person? Is there a blood relationship? Why do the other characters in the film seem not to notice their similar appearances?
And if they watched the film's ending with such curiosity, they would find... the film didn't mention any of these things at all.
They were truly just... two people who looked very similar.
And the characters in the film were genuinely blind to the overly similar appearances of the police officer and the deceased.
But was this possible?
After seeing the South twins' appearances, Li Xingyu instantly began questioning everything.
He certainly wouldn't doubt the genius director Shao Yichen; he was doubting whether his understanding of the film had been flawed from the beginning.
But in the brief time of a single meeting, he couldn't thoroughly reinterpret the film's content, so he could only suppress his doubts and continue the discussion.
Li Xingyu had no idea that this was actually a massive plot hole Shao Yichen had deliberately created in the script to lose money. To create this hole, she had even put some effort into the early script writing, hoping that when filmed, there would be a corresponding contrast between the two main characters.
Look! These two main characters look very alike! They're twins! There must be some earth-shattering secret hidden here!
She wanted to create this mysterious atmosphere from the beginning of the film, forcing viewers to overthink and fill in the gaps...
And then let the mystery they imagined become an eternal hole.
As everyone knows, most people who watch mystery thrillers are mystery enthusiasts.
What do mystery enthusiasts need? Challenging puzzles, logical deduction processes, and astonishing solutions.
Shao Yichen's script clearly only had the first element.
As for the deduction process and solution? Nonexistent!
But Li Xingyu wouldn't see it this way. In his eyes, Shao Yichen's script absolutely couldn't have problems. If there were problems, it meant they hadn't yet understood the director's deeper intentions. And since they were in precisely this state, the only thing they needed to do was find the true solution the author had hidden in the script!
Author's Note:
Li Xingyu: I can definitely solve the mystery Director Shao Yichen has left behind.
Shao Yichen: It's just being half an hour late, please stop filling in my plot holes, I'm begging you!
Second update!