Smile Code (Lost Laughter) 失笑 - Zhu Le 祖乐

37

A screw cannot cry, or it will rust.

Trapped in the sofa, with a soft one-meter-five wide space on either side of Gu Yi, Xu Guanrui on the left and Liang Daiwen on the right, both wanted to whisper to her. Normally, with a limited mental capacity and a penchant for direct expression, Gu Yi was genuinely confused at this moment-talking about love should be a challenge, but dealing with these friends was especially taxing on her brain.

Lu Ming, holding the script with satisfaction, said, "I didn't have much confidence going into this, but thanks to Liang Daiwen and Xu Guanrui, it seems to have turned out pretty well. You two really have your own styles-one cold and hard as ice, the other passionate as fire."

Enough with the compliments, I'm still sitting in the middle!

"Xu Guanrui is really emotional. After finishing this part, I even wondered if it was a bit too explicit. But you reminded me that love is inherently crazy and reckless. Now, we're the ones bound by reality. I was even thinking of closing the Rongmao Theater. With the annual rent of a hundred thousand, it's a bit too extravagant for someone like me, still in debt. But now, I feel like money can always be earned again, but keeping your passion here for me to experience 'being alive'-that's worth it."

This statement made everyone in the room feel a bit melancholy. Lu Ming, tall and big, sat on a small stool, lower than everyone else: "They say middle age is the beginning of the downhill path. At first, I didn't understand. With a family, a career, and healthy parents, what's scary about the downhill? As long as I keep exercising, my body can handle it. But then I realized the 'downhill' meant that everything I have in the future will gradually slip away, and everything is speeding up on me. No family, no reputation, relying on my parents and being looked down upon, dealing with young people in a small theater, gaining some envy and closeness from them because they don't know my circumstances." He let out a sigh. "I'm not really expecting love anymore. I can only write about it in scripts. With you friends, I always think of 'downhill'-calculating the countdown to when you all will disappear."

The deep, heartfelt lines in the script were Lu Ming's final fantasy about love as a single man. Gu Yi understood this as well. From Guan Xingxin's expression, she knew he was keeping his distance from her, and in this competition, he had suddenly given up. Thinking back to the time when Lu Ming had entered the police station for the second time, Gu Yi quietly opened Weibo. On April 2, Lu Ming had posted, "On my way to see my daughter, not sure if she'll like these gifts."

Of course, he never saw her. Deleting it would be embarrassing, so he kept it. Maybe reality had worn him down, or maybe the lines in his script had reminded him that his love was no longer pure. In any case, he gave up. Feeling sad and unsure how to change the subject, the stool suddenly snapped with a loud crack. Lu Ming sighed. "See, misfortunes never come singly."

The group laughed in unison. Yu Dule, feeling confident in his position, propped his chin up and enjoyed the scene with great amusement: "Xu Guanrui's acting is much better than Liang Daiwen's, don't you think, Uncle Lu?"

Liang Daiwen looked at his phone: "It's already online chatting. If they see an ugly photo, they'll start to dislike it. I can't really relate to that feeling."

Gu Yi looked at Liang Daiwen's profile. He must have been in middle school when he first went to an internet café, and back then, Liang Daiwen's emotional judgment system had already started to malfunction. This meant that the memories of his first love were all before the digital age.

Xu Guanrui was eyeing Liang Daiwen with a strange look. Gu Yi knocked on Liang Daiwen's head: "I'll teach you a way to understand it. From now on, just use metaphors. If something doesn't make sense, compare it to something else. For example, one day you'll see someone you like, and it'll feel like facing a storm, and then you'll know love has come."