Chapter 149: “she’s Cha Eun Sang” And 【aftereffects】
Sitting back down in writer Kim Eun Sook’s office again, Lin Xiaolu no longer felt the nervousness and panic from the previous time.
After all, she had already repeatedly watched the complete version of this drama in the future world of 2025.
It could be said that, aside from Kim Eun Sook herself, she was probably the person in this time-space who understood this work the most.
After Lin Xiaolu entered the door, she quietly sat for more than ten minutes before the office door was slowly pushed open by someone.
Kim Eun Sook walked in wearing a simple black jacket, and the moment she saw her, a faint smile appeared on her lips, “Good morning, Yoona.”
“Good morning, writer Kim Eun Sook.”
Lin Xiaolu immediately stood up, bowed a standard ninety-degree bow, her tone respectful yet not servile.
“No need to be too polite, have a seat.” Kim Eun Sook smiled slightly, sat down behind the desk, then asked with concern, “You came so early, have you had breakfast?”
“I ate some bread on the way.” Lin Xiaolu nodded lightly.
“Mm.” Kim Eun Sook responded softly, then shifted her tone to the main topic, “You should already know the reason I asked you to come today, right?”
As she said this, her expression showed a hint of regret, “Originally, I wanted to give you more time to prepare… but the situation has changed, so I had to call you over temporarily.”
“It’s okay, writer Kim Eun Sook. You giving me this opportunity has already made me very satisfied.”
Lin Xiaolu said this very sincerely, after all, Kim Eun Sook’s willingness to delay deciding on the female lead because of her alone was enough to prove that she had already been placed in a very special position.
Actually, Kim Eun Sook, who came from a grassroots background, also clearly understood what an opportunity meant to a young person.
Precisely because of this, after the initial audition, she had left room for Lin Xiaolu.
Thinking of this, Kim Eun Sook looked at her, her tone becoming serious, “Then let’s not waste time. How about we do a formal audition right now?”
“Sure.” Lin Xiaolu nodded, her expression as serious as ever, with even more determination in her gaze.
Seeing her composure and confidence, Kim Eun Sook couldn’t help but reveal a smile of expectation, then stood up and said, “Alright then, let’s go. The people from the TV station happened to arrive today too, they’re in the conference room over there. Let’s head there together.”
Lin Xiaolu immediately stood up and followed behind her.
Along the way, she began to adjust her emotions and breathing rhythm, as if making final preparations before entering the battlefield.
As the staff pushed open the conference room door, Kim Eun Sook walked in first, while Lin Xiaolu slightly lowered her head and followed silently behind.
Looking around, there were already three or four formally dressed middle-aged men and women sitting inside, their expressions focused, one of whom was the producer from SBS TV station, Jung Sang Hoon.
“Sorry to keep everyone waiting.”
Kim Eun Sook said with a light smile, then led Lin Xiaolu to the conference table.
“This is Im Yoon Ah. We’re still considering her, so we asked her to do an audition today.”
“Oh, Yoona from Girls’ Generation, everyone knows her.”
Jung Sang Hoon, the SBS TV station producer sitting at the table, smiled slightly, his words polite yet enthusiastic, “We’re really looking forward to the live performance.”
Lin Xiaolu also smiled slightly, bowing another ninety degrees, “Nice to meet you all, seniors. Please take care of me.”
“Come, Yoona, stand over there.”
Kim Eun Sook gestured with her hand toward the empty space behind the conference table, where a chair was placed, clearly set up for the audition scene.
Diagonally opposite was a camera with its red light on, the lens pointed directly at her.
Lin Xiaolu walked over slowly and stood beside the chair.
She took a deep breath, as if pressing it deep into her body.
“You should know which scene to audition, right?” Kim Eun Sook asked.
“Yes.” Lin Xiaolu nodded lightly, her voice not loud but firm and clear.
Kim Eun Sook nodded lightly, “Good, you can start whenever you’re ready.”
The moment the words fell, the entire conference room seemed to be hit with a mute button. The air felt as if it had condensed with a layer of thin frost.
She didn’t start right away, but slowly lowered her eyelids, as if she were really standing in that empty school corridor, facing the male lead who had shown up uninvited.
……
“What right do you have to come find me?”
Lin Xiaolu’s voice rang out, carrying a trembling stubbornness.
She wasn’t deliberately acting; she was just recalling, just restoring.
Restoring the anger and anxiety in the hotel room when she faced Lin Xiuyuan and he suppressed his temper time and time again.
“Who do you think you are? You think one sentence from you and I have to go back to Korea? I… I have my own life. Why should I go back with you?”
As she spoke, water began to well up in her eyes, tears gradually accumulating.
These weren’t forced tears, but emotions fermenting from the depths of her heart, layer upon layer of pressure building, bit by bit breaking through the dam of feelings, finally overflowing naturally.
—She thought of that night, in the Roppongi hotel room, Lin Xiuyuan approaching time and again, stopping time and again, the provocation and edging in his gaze as he clearly drew near yet deliberately pulled away, leaving her emotions stirred up with nowhere to go.
That out-of-control anger, grievance, unwillingness—all now transformed into the character’s emotions, pouring into every word and phrase.
“You… do you know, I don’t even know where I’ll sleep tomorrow, yet you tell me ‘I’ll take you home’…”
Lin Xiaolu’s voice choked, her fingers gripping the hem of her clothes tightly, tears sliding down her eyelashes, dripping at her feet, without any trace of affectation or sentimentality.
She hadn’t deliberately performed a “crying scene,” but at this moment, her eyes held forbearance, stubbornness, and a little… unspeakable longing and reluctance.
—Like looking back at that moment when Lin Xiuyuan reached out on the Shibuya street but didn’t hold her, instead taking Sulli’s hand.
“If you really want to help me… then don’t say these words that make me feel even worse.”
After saying this, her gaze shifted from despair to a very faint plea, slightly lifting her head, gradually looking toward the direction of the “male lead,” light seeming to flow in her eyes.
It was the emotion of “I’ve already lost everything, but if you come over now, I’d still want to go with you.”
Perfectly matching the “hesitation to speak” that the script needed to express.
Complex, forbearing, yet deeply affectionate and moving, performed by Lin Xiaolu without any flaw.
……
The air froze at this moment.
The evaluators sitting behind the conference table exchanged glances, and producer Jung involuntarily leaned forward, as if wanting to see more clearly.
Kim Eun Sook sat there, her expression gradually shifting from initial calm to subtle appreciation, then shock, and finally a flash of surprise and approval in her eyes.
Moments later.
After finishing this segment, Lin Xiaolu slowly exhaled, wiped the tears from her eyes with her hand, and bowed to the front, “Thank you everyone.”
The room was silent for a second.
Then came producer Jung’s first words.
“Acting skills beyond expectations. I’ve always heard others say Yoona you lacked a bit of spark, but now it seems it’s not like what they say.”
“The eye acting is also very full. Actors with light in their eyes are good actors.” Someone nearby chimed in.
Kim Eun Sook nodded lightly, her lips curving slightly, her voice gentle yet affirmative, “Yoona, compared to last time, your acting has improved several steps. It seems you’ve really been working hard on your skills lately. Watching just now, I had the feeling that you really… understood this role.”
Lin Xiaolu listened to their evaluation, lightly pursing her lips, her hands clasped tightly behind her back, her heart pounding, yet carrying a long-lost sense of solidity.
This was the opportunity she had grasped with all her strength at the intersection of two time-spaces.
Thinking of this, she softly replied, “This is all thanks to the opportunity writer Kim Eun Sook gave me, allowing me time to truly get to know this script and the world of the female lead.”
At the same time, the image of Lin Xiuyuan in her mind became clearer, and suddenly she felt an impulse to see him right away.
Meanwhile, the discussion in the conference room hadn’t fully dispersed. As Kim Eun Sook was about to stand up to suggest a short break, producer Jung suddenly seemed to remember something, paused, and looked at Lin Xiaolu.
“Yoona, could I trouble you one more time?”
Lin Xiaolu was stunned for a moment, then nodded, “Of course, please go ahead.”
Producer Jung looked at Kim Eun Sook and smiled, “Actually, writer Kim mentioned you to us before, saying you had a crying scene that really moved her, so she strongly recommended you to us.”
Hearing this, Kim Eun Sook smiled with pursed lips and nodded. Lin Xiaolu’s crying scene last time had indeed given her a bit of surprise.
Producer Jung continued, “So I’m very curious too. Miss Yoona… could you do an improvised crying scene? No need for a set scene, we just want to see your emotional expression.”
“Of course not forcing you to cry,” producer Jung added, “Just want to see what kind of impact you can bring when you’re truly immersed, because from the script’s direction, the female lead’s crying scenes could be a highlight.”
“Sure.”
Lin Xiaolu stood in place, nodded lightly, then lowered her eyes.
At this moment, the conference room fell into brief silence.
This time, Lin Xiaolu didn’t use the hypothetical scenario Lin Xiuyuan had mentioned before, namely after Jung Soo Yeon left the group, the group performing at Tokyo Dome stage, as an anchor point.
Now, she had a new anchor point.
A more real scene, even closer to future reality.
She recalled the shattered future of 2025. Recalled the team torn into pieces, friends she could no longer see, one departure and ending after another.
Suddenly, she felt her breathing grow heavy, her chest weighed down like a thousand pounds.
She closed her eyes, just for a second.
When she opened them again, the emotions had seeped into her blood.
……
At first, she just stood there, gazing toward a nonexistent direction, her eyes full of daze and disbelief.
“She’s… gone?”
One sentence, as if talking to herself, yet like a stone dropped into deep water, rippling outward.
Her voice was a bit hoarse, as if she had cried all night or could no longer speak much.
“I… I haven’t given her that doll yet. She said she wanted that one… I haven’t had time to tell her the photos from a few days ago turned out blurry… She hasn’t seen my newly dyed hair.”
As she spoke, Lin Xiaolu’s hand began to lift, as if trying to grasp something, yet grasping nothing.
“Why… did she not even say a word to me, and just… just…”
She bit her lower lip hard, her voice starting to choke, breathing rapid.
Tears swirled in her eyes, yet she was still struggling to keep them from falling.
“I thought… as long as we lived well, we could… keep going like this…”
At this point, Lin Xiaolu could no longer continue.
Ever since learning of that future, the “parallel dimension” in her heart had become an unhealable rift: the team disbanded, friends died, familiar figures vanishing silently from her life one by one.
She didn’t understand why fate was so stingy.
Parting in life and death really didn’t just happen in movies and scripts.
This was perhaps Lin Xiaolu’s condensed summary of her own future in 2025.
Thinking of this, her knees weakened slightly, almost unable to stand.
Her whole body seemed pierced by reality in an instant, yet still struggling not to collapse.
“She won’t come back, right?”
Lin Xiaolu looked ahead, her eyes clean and clear, yet filled with despair.
She seemed truly like someone who had just lost a close friend, standing before reality, desperately trying to convince herself it was a dream, yet having to accept reality’s cruelty.
They could no longer travel together, no longer drink beer late at night, no longer huddle on one bed laughing and gossiping about youth and memories.
Tears finally slid down, rolling uncontrollably down her cheeks, her lips pale, her whole body like sinking underwater, even breathing becoming a struggle of instinct.
At this moment, Lin Xiaolu was no longer “acting.”
She was that one, who had personally experienced loss and grief, “Her future.”
……
The conference room was dead silent.
Even seasoned directors and producers seemed pulled into that sorrowful, broken world by her, unable to extricate themselves.
Kim Eun Sook blinked lightly, as if trying to control her own emotions, afraid that one blink would let tears fall.
As a screenwriter, she could empathize with emotions more than anyone.
A few seconds later, Lin Xiaolu slowly reined in her emotions, taking a deep breath. Tears still hung on her eyelashes, but she stood straight again.
“Thank you.”
This time she didn’t bow, but softly uttered those two words, then looked at everyone.
She knew that in that moment just now, she had given her most authentic emotions without reservation.
The air still seemed to echo with her words “She won’t come back, right,” making hearts feel stuffy, unable to let go for a long time.
It was also at that moment that Kim Eun Sook suddenly looked up, and with a tone of absolute certainty, looked at producer Jung and the two middle-aged men beside him, “She is Cha Eun Sang.”
Producer Jung didn’t refute, just nodded.
The two directors nearby also nodded silently in agreement.
This scriptless crying scene had thoroughly moved them.
A few more minutes passed.
Lin Xiaolu pushed open the door and left this conference room that had nearly exhausted her, and the moment she stepped out, her whole body was like surfacing from underwater, finally able to breathe.
Standing at the doorway, she took a deep breath, a long-lost relaxed smile appearing on her face.
The sword of Damocles that had hung high above her head, ready to fall at any moment, had finally quietly disappeared.
Although the contract wasn’t signed yet, based on Kim Eun Sook and the producers and directors’ reactions just now, this female lead role should be settled.
She breathed a sigh of relief and walked toward the studio exit. What could be done was done; the next task was to wait for the notice.
Or rather, wait for the contract.
But just as she reached the door, she suddenly saw a man walking in from outside with a girl.
That familiar figure made Lin Xiaolu freeze in place.
The other person also saw her and slightly bowed, “Hello.”
Lin Xiaolu quickly returned the etiquette, “Hello.”
The man in front turned back and called, “Shin Hye, come on in.”
“Yes~ oppa.”
The girl responded lightly and cheerfully, then smiled slightly at Lin Xiaolu and hurried to catch up.
Lin Xiaolu stood there watching her back, silent for a moment before turning to leave.
Although she felt a bit guilty for snatching the other’s role, people are selfish. Given another chance, she would still go for it, with no regrets.
Moreover, compared to regret, Lin Xiaolu now missed one person’s figure more.
The aftereffects of method acting were slowly emerging.
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（PS: 145 is still being edited, wait until tomorrow.）
