I Was Taken by the Female Lead After Transmigrating into a Book - Chapter 110

What Li Ran truly died for might always be a mystery.

Bai Feifei was also thinking about this question after the scene ended.

She pointed to a simple black line in the script: “Li Ran looks directly at Fu Sang.” She had highlighted this line with an orange pen. This was also the last line of the scene where Li Ran’s character finished filming in Luoshui City.

She hadn’t been able to see the final clip on the monitor, but on set, she had a face-to-face scene with Li Ran.

It was hard to say what Li Ran was thinking before he died. Bai Feifei wasn’t him, so she didn’t know.

She asked Huo Wu, “Isn’t this a huge point of contention?”

Huo Wu glanced at the script and nodded. “Yes.”

She paused and looked at the script, which Bai Feifei had filled with dense markings.

When she was using the first half of the script, Bai Feifei’s script, while full of notes, didn’t have any strange symbols. This time was different. The pages in the back didn’t look like they had been marked yet, but when the script was closed, every “Wu” character was connected from the left-side “woman” radical to the vertical-and-hook stroke of the “none” character to form a perfect heart symbol. It was a very systematic rainbow of seven colors.

However, the characters for Huo Wu didn’t appear often on every page. On some pages, there weren’t even enough words for Bai Feifei to use all seven colors, so for the missing words, she would draw a separate heart in the margins.

Huo Wu flipped through it for a while. Some of the hearts were round and chubby, while others were thin and long. In the middle and later parts, Bai Feifei had even turned the simple heart drawings into a cartoon strip.

“Your habit of doodling in textbooks really has been practiced since you were a child.” Huo Wu handed the script back to Bai Feifei and said with a smile, “I still have a few of your high school English books at my place. From the looks of it, your drawing skills haven’t regressed at all.”

Bai Feifei smiled humbly. “You flatter me.”

She also felt helpless.

She was forced to start from kindergarten with the body of an adult. Her parents claimed they wanted her to have a beautiful and complete childhood and believed that children had to interact with other children to make friends. So Bai Feifei’s request to skip grades was thoroughly rejected, and she could only hatefully start from the beginning. Every new day she didn’t meet Huo Wu was a disaster for her.

Because she had no direction, no goal to strive for.

So, to pass the time, she could only keep drawing in her textbooks. After all, the only games available on phones back then were probably things like Snake and Tetris.

Huo Wu curled her lips. “You deserve the praise.”

It was a coincidence, really. When Bai Feifei was being slandered and rumors were flying everywhere, the “evidence” they used, of course, included her school textbooks and grades. But because Bai Feifei’s grades were exceptionally good from childhood, there was no way to attack them, so her textbooks became the target.

But the best way to break a rumor is to turn the slandered content into a medal of honor.

With Bai Feifei’s permission, Huo Wu had once taken the drawings she made in high school to participate in a competition and had fortunately won several awards related to technology, environmental protection, and fantasy.

When her grades were announced at the same time, those slandered doodles and her criticized attitude toward studying would become the misunderstood epitaphs on the path of a genius.

Because of the historical background and the nature of the characters, Bai Feifei, as the lead actress, wore little to no makeup throughout the entire show. At most, she would have some light touch-ups and apply sunscreen. Huo Wu’s makeup was mostly limited to her time working at the Night’s Eve bar. When she was working or studying, she also appeared with a bare face.

While waiting, Bai Feifei took a moment to look at her eyebrows in the mirror and thought, It’s good, it’s good.

Li Ke had once said that because of Fu Sang’s characteristics, she couldn’t even have her eyebrows drawn. Not to mention things like colored contacts or lipstick. Even lip balm was a luxury for Fu Sang at this point in the story, and even if she used it, the camera would give a close-up to the expired year on the package.

At that time, Bai Feifei was glad that both she and Huo Wu had naturally thick eyebrows. Otherwise, it would have been too ugly on screen. The original body’s owner had a rebellious phase and was a “no-brow alien” for a while. All of her eyebrows were shaved off, and she used various colored eyebrow pencils to create all sorts of bizarre styles.

Looking at her photos without eyebrows, from Bai Feifei’s perspective, it was like looking at a completely different person who had an almost identical face but no blood relation.

That feeling was truly very strange.

“Babe, what are you looking at on that black phone screen?” Fu Xiaoxiao leaned over. After a long time, she couldn’t see anything. “I thought you had a privacy screen protector. It’s so dark. Why don’t you turn on the camera to look in the mirror?”

From Bai Feifei’s perspective, the image on the phone was still there, but no one else could see it.

Bai Feifei calmly placed her phone down and replied, “My phone’s about to die. I was just checking my eyebrows. I don’t need to turn on the camera.”

Upon hearing this, Fu Xiaoxiao brought her nose almost to Bai Feifei’s face to inspect her eyebrows inch by inch. After a moment, she rubbed them with her fingertip and said, “They’re perfect!”

Bai Feifei also knew they were good, but sometimes it hurt a little.

The cameras used by the entire Li Ke crew were excellent. When there was a close-up of a person’s face, he would yell “Cut” even for a single stray eyebrow hair. He would then proceed to scold everyone from the makeup artist to the stylist. Not a single thing that didn’t fit Fu Sang’s identity and environment could be overlooked.

So, most of her eyebrows were plucked with tweezers.

The next scene was one that Bai Feifei and Huo Wu would film from different perspectives. They were both on set, acting toward the camera. They couldn’t see each other’s faces, but they had to maintain the same emotions. In post-production, a lot of medium and long shots would be added.

“This scene is a flashback, addressing the car accident that night,” Li Ke said, his dark pupils staring intently into Bai Feifei’s eyes. “It’s a confrontation scene, but there’s no dialogue. Don’t show superficial expressions of surprise, fear, or contemplation. You are Fu Sang. You need to give me the state that Fu Sang should be in after experiencing that night.”

Bai Feifei felt a little stressed and nodded hesitantly.

Li Ke didn’t give Huo Wu many instructions. He just said a few simple words and left.

This scene still used the same set as before: the empty police station corridor, the old red wooden chairs, and the white walls with green paint.

Bai Feifei sank into her thoughts, forcing herself not to think about everything that happened with Huo Wu on that rainy night. Instead, she pushed everything aside. All her thoughts were pulled back to the scene in a few short seconds.

She was repeatedly asking herself a question: Am I really innocent? Who can prove my innocence? When the script hasn’t given any clear answers and all the evidence points to Fu Sang being the deep-thinking murderer, who can prove her innocence?

But soon, Bai Feifei suddenly thought of the criminology novels Huo Wu had found for her.

Every suspect, even those who surrender, rarely confess to everything at the beginning. They will try every possible way to exploit legal loopholes, giving their all and pushing all their chips to try to get a reduced sentence.

People who are arrested and cooperate with the interrogation are a different story.

But these people, without exception, almost never cooperate with the interrogation. Not knowing, not admitting, not cooperating—that’s the reaction they would give in that situation.

And what made them stick to this belief was, “I know I’m guilty, but I firmly believe I’m innocent.”

This was a very contradictory belief, but Bai Feifei seemed to have a profound realization. She became even more convinced of a certain belief she’d held from the beginning.

I am innocent.

This thought laid the foundation for her performance. She couldn’t see what Huo Wu looked like. A fixed camera blocked most of her view. Her gaze became unfocused. Following the content of the recent interrogation, all her thoughts were gradually pulled back to that day.

It was just a very ordinary day. After school, she was supposed to wait for Wu Ling at the entrance, but she received a text from Wu Ling saying she couldn’t make it. So Fu Sang decided to go find her herself.

This was a decision that didn’t match her usual behavior, but sometimes a decision is made so suddenly. Maybe it was because she considered the difficulty of walking in the rain, or maybe it was some other unspoken unease. Fu Sang wanted to find Wu Ling. She wanted to make sure she was safe and that nothing had happened to her.

Even if her going there wouldn’t help, at least with one more person, they could discuss things.

That was her original intention. She opened the small umbrella that had been with her for many years. The rainbow-colored sections made her stand out among the many high school students, and she quickly caught the attention of the gang of punks who had already made her their target.

The umbrella in her hand hindered her escape. Due to the continuous rain for days, it was already dark. While escaping, Fu Sang kept her last bit of rationality, abandoning the umbrella in an alley that was completely different from her escape route.

She successfully drew away one group of people, but another group was still chasing her.

During her escape, she stumbled and staggered, having long lost her way forward. One building after another, all in a style she was familiar with but had never been to before, blocked her path. In her helplessness, she could only frantically search for a way forward under the light of one house after another.

She was almost caught several times. When she was finally about to escape that intricate alley, Fu Sang finally saw a path she was most familiar with and often walked on. She could escape now.

But the heavy rain had made her lose the sense of her body temperature. One of her legs was almost dragging on the ground, and she didn’t have the strength to run the one kilometer back to the house she shared with Wu Ling. Furthermore, there was almost nothing to hide behind on this path. She had nowhere to go.

She looked back at the “hunters” who were still chasing her. Like all prey, she could only frantically hide in an inconspicuous garbage dump that no one would want to go near.

She closed her eyes and cautiously watched from the gaps in the frame of a dilapidated piece of furniture… Across the road, as if by fate, a girl was walking away in the heavy rain.

But in the blink of an eye, it was as if she had imagined it.

But in that instant, the sound of a motorcycle engine tore through the sky, accompanied by the loud bang and explosion of a vehicle crash, completely startling the lights in all the buildings nearby.

In the brightness of the day, Fu Sang was certain that she had been saved for a brief moment.

Her thoughts returned, and all her reactions were displayed on Bai Feifei’s face. Her expression was different from the serious, indifferent one she had at the beginning. At this moment, she was even relaxed.

Looking at Huo Wu, who had appeared in front of her at some point, wearing a light blue uniform, she pursed her lips and showed a hint of a smile. After a moment, she said, “You know I’m innocent, don’t you?”

Or rather, the police also knew she was innocent.

Otherwise, an experienced team leader who had been working in criminal investigation for decades, no matter how much she calculated, she couldn’t have pulled off a deception under the nose of such a sharp and experienced veteran detective. Every case has a loophole. But no one could say that Fu Sang was a criminal because no one could have predicted that Wu Ling would suddenly break her promise that day, that Fu Sang’s umbrella, which she had for years, would be noticed on that day, or that Li Mingming would be called away by his father that day, causing that group of people to lose control and commit a heinous crime in public.

These were all coincidences that no one could have predicted or orchestrated.

The night was deep outside the window. A strange, old song suddenly blared from somewhere. The sound was so loud that a uniformed police officer on patrol in the corridor muttered, “That’s strange. How many times has that dance hall been reported? The sound is so loud you can hear it through the phone. Isn’t the fine high enough? Hey, Captain Liu! Want to join me…?”

The silent stillness in the room was broken. Wu Ling, who was standing above, got up and walked down. She loosened the handcuffs on Fu Sang’s hands so she could move freely but not escape.

Her touch was cold, and Fu Sang’s joints were so stiff from the cold. Wu Ling looked up and gave a signal to the camera, then took off her police uniform and draped it over Fu Sang’s slender shoulders.

The door was pushed open from the outside at just the right time. An old detective in his fifties came in, chewing on a duck neck, muttering, “Lingzi said you were smart and not easy to fool, and that you would expose yourself soon… but this is way too early.”

With that, he put the entire duck neck to the side. “You can stay here with us for two days. We’ll guarantee your safety and give you preferential treatment, okay?”

Bai Feifei nodded. The director should have yelled “Cut” the moment the detective captain came in, but Li Ke was slow to do so.

She couldn’t stop, so she said in a low voice, “Help me pull up the collar. I’m still a little cold.”

Huo Wu readily tightened the jacket for her. Her gaze was filled with affection.

It was only then that Li Ke slowly called “Cut.”

Huo Wu immediately and decisively took off the handcuffs and squeezed Bai Feifei’s wrists to get her blood flowing again, and then rubbed her arms to make them warm. After a moment, she pulled Bai Feifei into her arms and said softly, “You were so beautiful when you questioned me just now.”

Bai Feifei buried her head in Huo Wu’s embrace, inhaling deeply. After a moment, she let out a sigh, as if she was fully recharged, and went completely limp, lazily saying, “If I hadn’t figured that one thing out, this scene would have been really hard to act.”