radicalducati Chapter 25 Choi Jinri 2016
Chapter 25 Choi Jinri 2016
Jiang Yan snapped out of his daze and quickly bowed, apologizing, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
He stepped into the elevator, the car filled with the faint scent of gardenias.
The elevator doors slowly closed behind him. The middle-aged man glanced at Jiang Yan's employee badge again and added indifferently, "Be more careful next time."
He then turned around and continued to say to Choi Sulli, "What I just said, you should think it over carefully. Chief Kim's meaning is very clear: this opportunity doesn't come around every day."
Choi Sulli kept her head down, her fingers tightening around her elbows.
The middle-aged man opened the file bag in his hand, pulled out a few pages and handed them over: "There is a sex scene in the third act of the script, which is quite explicit, but Director Kim said that a body double and lighting can be used to handle it, so it won't be too difficult for you."
He paused, then lowered his voice and added, "The investors have high expectations for the box office, and Kim Soo-hyun's team is already coordinating the release schedule."
Choi Sulli didn't take the pages. Her lips moved as if she wanted to say something, but in the end she just gently bit her lower lip.
This action is exactly the same as when the older children snatched the pickled radish from the hill behind the orphanage years ago.
Jiang Yan felt something surging violently inside his chest, making his ribs ache.
He gripped the gift bag tightly, took a deep breath before the middle-aged man could speak again, and suddenly squeezed between the two men.
"Pound Hamida!"
His voice was so loud it echoed in the elevator, startling even himself.
The middle-aged man was taken aback by his sudden action, and almost dropped the file bag in his hand.
Choi Sulli also raised her head, her eyes still filled with a sense of bewilderment and exhaustion that she hadn't had time to hide.
Jiang Yan tried his best to make his voice sound surprised and enthusiastic, putting on an incredulous expression: "Choi...Choi Sulli sunbaenim?! Is it really you?! Oh my god, oh my god...I'm your fan! I've been watching every drama and variety show you've been in since Busan!"
He babbled incoherently, his voice trembling slightly from deliberately raising his voice. He clutched the gift bag tightly in front of him, pushing the middle-aged man back half a step.
The middle-aged man frowned as he was jostled, and impatiently raised his hand to press down on Jiang Yan's shoulder, trying to push him away: "This employee, you..."
"Senior, could you sign this for me?" Jiang Yan pretended not to notice the hand behind him. He quickly pulled out a pen and the newly acquired SM employee badge from his coat pocket, turned the badge over, and handed it to Cui Xueli.
Meanwhile, with his back to the middle-aged man, he kept winking at Choi Sulli, saying, "Please write this to Kang Yeon from Busan! I've really liked you for a long time!"
Choi Sulli was stunned.
She looked down at the employee badge the young man was handing her; it was still reflective from the plastic wrap, with five gold-stamped characters neatly printed on it.
Her gaze shifted from the name tag to his face, meeting the anxiety that couldn't be hidden in his dark eyes and his exaggerated winking.
Jiang Yan.
Jiang Yan, from Busan.
Choi Sulli's lips parted slightly, and a hint of disbelief flashed in her beautiful almond-shaped eyes.
For a fleeting moment, Choi Sulli felt as if she had fallen into a vortex of time.
After the other person left the orphanage that year, she ran back to that hillside behind the mountain countless times, sat under that crooked persimmon tree, and stared blankly at the winding mountain road below.
Later, she went to Seoul, from trainee to debut, from f(x) to actress, from Choi Jin-ri to Choi Sulli.
She never saw the boy again, the one who fought for her, stole candy for her, and carried her up the mountain.
She thought that the boy had long since disappeared into the past, becoming a nameless shadow in her hazy memories.
But now he was standing right in front of her.
When she least wanted to be seen, when she was at her most vulnerable and helpless.
Like a fool, he winked and handed her a work badge, pretending not to know her with his clumsy acting, and pulled her out of that suffocating conversation in the most awkward way.
Choi Sulli lowered her eyes, her fingertips trembling slightly as she took the pen.
The pen tip grazed the plastic film, making a soft scratching sound. She wrote down the name that had been hidden behind "Choi Sulli" for many years, stroke by stroke.
【Cui Zhenli, 2016.3.19】
Then she looked up, handed her employee ID back, and gave a genuinely relaxed smile.
"Thank you, Jiang Yanxi."
The middle-aged man frowned, scanning her reaction and Jiang Yan's profile back and forth. He couldn't figure out what was going on, but his years of professional experience made him realize that it was not a good idea to keep pressing for script discussions when the artist was emotionally unstable.
He closed the file folder again, put it back in his briefcase, and said in a restrained but indifferent tone, "Shirley, you need to think carefully about the movie. I have a meeting later, so I'll be going now."
The elevator doors stopped on the fourth floor, and he walked out without looking back.
The cold white light in the corridor squeezed in through the cracks in the door, and was gradually cut off as the elevator doors closed.
The elevator car suddenly fell silent, with only the soft hum of the air conditioner and the rhythmic breathing of the two people.
Jiang Yan turned around and looked at the woman in front of him, who was already more than half a head shorter than him.
Just as he was about to say something, his gaze went past her slender shoulders and saw the things on her body that he had missed earlier.
In his vision, Choi Sulli was covered by a very thin but extremely vast gray mist, which seemed to seep out from every inch of her skin, so thick that it almost swallowed her whole.
Jiang Yan didn't know what this meant, but the gray fog gave him a very bad feeling.
Beneath that grayness, he saw something more: several dark red lines were wrapped around her throat, the same lines as the one on the verge of losing her voice that he had met at the convenience store that day, but hers were denser and deeper, as if dozens of cuts had been made on her vocal cords.
There were several very faint blue spots of light on the inside of her forearm, long and slender in shape, as if some kind of pressure had been repeatedly applied there.
What made his heart clench most was that the green light above her head, which should have represented vitality, was now constantly shedding tiny fragments of light from its edges, like a flower whose petals were beginning to wither.
Jiang Yan's gaze finally fell on her eyes. Her almond-shaped eyes were smiling, but deep inside they were filled with weariness.
"Just now..." Choi Sulli spoke first, "Thank you, otherwise that person would have been talking about it all day."
Jiang Yan took a deep breath, swallowing back the question "Are you alright?" and all the overwhelming heartache that surged within him. He adopted a relaxed tone that he only used when sunbathing in the courtyard of his old home in Busan, and scratched the back of his head with a silly grin.
"Oh dear, I just joined this big company and don't know many of the rules. I was so excited to recognize you! I hope I haven't caused you any trouble?"
Choi Sulli watched his incredibly clumsy performance and suddenly burst out laughing.
The elevator doors opened with a ding on the first floor.
Choi Sulli stepped out of the elevator first, then turned to Kang Yeon and said, "You should have my phone number. Contact me tonight. I'm leaving now."
Without waiting for Jiang Yan's response, she turned and walked towards the door.
After taking a few steps, she suddenly turned back and looked deeply at Jiang Yan, as if she wanted to etch his current appearance into the depths of her mind.
Then, without looking back, she walked into the sunlight.