What Should I Do If the Aloof Movie Queen Is Too in Love With Me? - Chapter 8

At 2:30 PM, Ji Youyi returned to the set only to find she had returned far too early.

Because the set was arguing over the script yet again, and again, and again.

What they were about to film was a sweet point in the drama.

After her rebirth, the female lead visits the male lead’s manor, only to be framed by the supporting female character, spraining her ankle. The male lead then carries her to a couch to apply medicine. The villainous female character stands by, gnashing her teeth in rage, highlighting the sweetness of the protagonists.

The problem lay in this carry.

“I really can’t carry her!” As soon as Ji Youyi entered the set, she heard “Sesame Paste” shouting. “She’s so heavy, how is it possible to pick her up?”

The female lead, Wen Yang, stood to the side with her head bowed, her hands clasped awkwardly behind her back.

The man in the suit was roaring at her: “Did you not listen to me? I told you so many times before joining the cast: fast, fast! Do you not understand human speech? Don’t you know how fat you are? You still have the face to eat?”

A group of people surrounded them, trying to mediate: “Mr. Wang, calm down.”

The director was coaching Sesame Paste, his tone like he was coaxing a child: “Maybe your posture isn’t quite right. Ah, of course, your performance itself is already excellent. To achieve this level without having acted before is already very good. I’m saying, just maybe, it’s possible you haven’t found the technique. Here, watch me. Carrying someone requires a clever knack…”

Sesame Paste threw a fit and refused to work: “It’s not my problem. She’s too heavy. How am I supposed to carry this?”

He looked at Wen Yang and rolled his eyes. “Seriously, eat less, you fat pig.”

Ji Youyi had originally been squatting beside Li Zhulan watching the excitement. As she watched, she suddenly stood up and walked toward the center of the storm.

Li Zhulan saw that Ji Youyi’s entire aura had changed and hurriedly called out in a whisper: “Little Ji! Little Ji!!”

Come back! Don’t look for trouble!!

Ji Youyi happily squeezed into the crowd, her bright eyes looking toward the director: “Director, when are we starting? If we still have to wait a while, should I run through the lines with the leads first?”

“Go away, get out of here.” The director wished he could beat her to death. Couldn’t she see that running through the scene was exactly where the problem started?

“Oh, you want to explain the scene to the male lead, right?” Ji Youyi stood in the middle of the crowd, perfectly shielding Sesame Paste and the suit-man on the other side.

As if she couldn’t read the room at all, she took Wen Yang’s stiff arm and said to the director, “Then I’ll go through it with the female lead first.”

“Teacher Wen, in a moment I’ll stick my foot out to trip you. Please be very careful not to actually crash. Just lift your leg and hold it; we’ll film the separate shot of you falling in the next take. Hmm… after that, I should be watching the male lead carry you away. Since it’s inconvenient for the male lead, I’ll do it!”

Ji Youyi’s mouth moved fast, and her hands moved even faster.

Just as she finished saying “I’ll do it” in a brisk tone, she reached out and picked Wen Yang up in a horizontal princess carry.

Her posture was relaxed, her movements light; she even gave a little bounce while holding her.

The entire set fell silent, leaving only Ji Youyi still smiling as if no one else were there: “Teacher Wen, are you a fairy? Did you grow up drinking dew? How are you so light?”

Wen Yang lay in Ji Youyi’s arms, her cheek pressed against Ji Youyi’s shoulder, not daring to move a muscle.

The awkwardness and humiliation were walled off by a warm body temperature. Wen Yang’s tense body gradually relaxed.

Ji Youyi was very thin; her slender arms pressed against her, feeling hard and bony. She wasn’t actually very comfortable being held, but the tears in her eyes suddenly crashed down fiercely.

She buried her head and bit her lower lip hard to keep herself from sobbing out loud.

As for Li Zhulan, her soul had already flown away.

As expected of her Childhood Sweetheart. Offending the female lead’s side in the morning and the male lead’s side in the afternoon. Very good, very good.

This morning, the female lead’s side just made her delete a huge chunk of her scenes; in a moment, someone from the male lead’s side would surely come over and tell her to write the Childhood Sweetheart to death immediately.

Ha… haha… hahaha…

Anyone with a brain could hear the sarcasm in Ji Youyi’s words. Sesame Paste was, presumably, a person.

His face flushed red: “So what if I can’t pick her up? I’m not a professional actor; I haven’t learned those techniques of yours. I can’t carry her, so what?”

“You are such a strange person. I didn’t even mention you. Don’t you know that interrupting other people’s work is very rude behavior?”

Ji Youyi blinked her eyes, looking very surprised. “But is it true you can’t carry her? For real? Why? I’m 1.6 meters and 80 jin and I can carry her; is your body even weaker than mine? Then you need to eat well. Doesn’t the crew have Sesame Paste sponsorship? I made two cups today and I have so much strength after drinking them. Have you not had any yet? Then go drink some quickly. That stuff strengthens the body; the effect is great. If you had drunk it earlier, you wouldn’t have to lose face like this now.”

“Pfft—” Somewhere in the distance, a few crew members couldn’t hold it in, and a burst of muffled laughter rang out on set.

Ji Youyi acted as if she didn’t hear it and continued with a distressed look: “But if you really can’t learn it, sigh, what can I say? The gap between people is indeed… sigh. Then you can only beg the director to see if it can be changed to a close-up.”

The step was offered, and Director Hu immediately took it: “It’s not impossible to just film a close-up. How about we film it like that?”

He bowed his back slightly, asking Sesame Paste with a consulting attitude.

Sesame Paste was so angry he was practically charred. He pointed at Ji Youyi: “Film it however you want, just one thing: she is not allowed to be on camera.”

As long as the boss was happy, everything else was a minor matter.

“No problem!” Director Hu let out a huge sigh of relief, picked up his walkie-talkie and started scolding, “Stop dazing off! Prepare, prepare, prepare to film!”

After finishing, he turned around and saw Ji Youyi, unable to resist scolding again: “Why are you still holding Teacher Wen? Put her down quickly!”

This living ancestor!

Ji Youyi gave an “Oh” and gently set her down.

Wen Yang kept her head down in silence. From Ji Youyi’s angle, she could see her eyes were red and water droplets were hanging from her chin.

“What are you crying for? I’ll go call the makeup artist to touch up your makeup.” Ji Youyi’s lips curved slightly. Her voice lost its previous perkiness, leaving only tenderness.

She reached out to wipe the moisture from her face and whispered in a volume only the two of them could hear: “Silly girl, the road is long. Walk slowly.”

Tossing and turning like this on the first day of filming caused the crew’s progress to be compressed to the extreme.

Ji Youyi gave a rough look at the latest schedule. The crew would have to pull at least six consecutive big night shifts to catch up.

However, none of this had anything to do with Ji Youyi, because her scenes had also been deleted to the extreme. Her next scene was in a week, and she would wrap up immediately after filming it.

Fantastic.

After Ji Youyi removed her makeup and changed her clothes, she went to the production manager to get a box lunch. She wrapped it tightly in a plastic bag and put it in her bag, intending to have it as tomorrow’s breakfast. Then she picked up her bag to go to her appointment with Fang Ruohan.

Fang Ruohan was dressed more formally than their last meeting; her previous high ponytail had been replaced by a more serious bun.

As soon as Ji Youyi saw her, she lunged forward and gave her a bear hug: “Baby, are you here to open a World Government Summit?”

“What are you talking about?” Fang Ruohan was amused by her. “Was filming smooth?”

“It couldn’t be smoother,” Ji Youyi said with genuine emotion. “In the morning, I had a heated discussion about storyboards with the director; at noon, I leaned on the screenwriter’s shoulder to read the script together; in the afternoon, I took the opportunity to princess-carry the female lead. You have no idea, our female lead is fragrant, soft, and super cute.”

Fang Ruohan laughed out loud: “Are you there to film, or are you there to hit on girls?”

Ji Youyi tilted her head and bantered back: “Can’t it be both?”

The two girls walked down the street arm-in-arm, chatting and laughing, finally picking a barbecue shop to sit down.

Fang Ruohan was driving and couldn’t drink. Prices in D City were cheap; the two of them ordered a table full of skewers for a hundred yuan and had a blast eating them with Coke.

After they were full of Coke and skewers, they said their goodbyes at the barbecue shop. Ji Youyi walked slowly from the lively night market back to the quiet guesthouse.

The night was colder than the day. It wasn’t that Ji Youyi didn’t want to walk fast, it was truly that her stomach ached.

Little Ji’s stomach seemed a bit more fragile than her own. So what if she had a gastric lavage a few days ago, had irregular meals these past two days, and just ate a meal of barbecue? How could it hurt like this?

By the time Ji Youyi returned to the guesthouse, she was covered in sweat. She found the stomach medicine Fang Ruohan had bought for her, swallowed it with water, and took a short nap wrapped in the cashmere overcoat that had already been reduced to a blanket before she finally felt a bit better.

The night was still long. After Ji Youyi showered, she lay in bed screening some crew recruitment notices she could apply for, then talked to Li Zhulan on the phone about the script until 4:00 AM before gradually falling asleep.

At 6:00 AM, Ji Youyi hit the alarm and got up on time. She finished breakfast in ten seconds, wiped her face with cold water, and headed out.

Today she was going to film that short drama called “The Cruel Tyrant’s Palm Pet.”

Calling it filming was more of an observation and learning mindset. She was very curious about how micro-budget film and television projects operated and wanted to see if she could film like this in the future.

There were only two filming locations: one was a rented ancient building for indoor scenes, and the other was a free street for outdoor scenes.

The entire crew had only a dozen or so staff members. The person who interviewed her the day before was the casting director, who had hurried away after supervising the leads’ makeup at the hotel.

Only when Ji Youyi arrived on set did she realize that she wasn’t just the casting director; she was also the crew’s prop master and lighting technician, and she had to arrive early to prepare the set.

Waiting times were long. The actors who weren’t up sat on plastic stools inside playing with their phones, but Ji Youyi, wrapped in her thick coat, ran outside with great interest to watch the filming.

Regrettably, even after observing for an hour, Ji Youyi couldn’t grasp the essence.

To put it bluntly, anyone could be a short drama director.

The images had no cinematic language; hints were given via close-ups. A single person speaking lines was a close-up; two people interacting was a medium shot. The actors had no room to perform; all emotional output was singular and direct, movements and expressions were exaggerated and formulaic, and the plot pacing was shockingly fast.

Finally, upon seeing the male lead holding the camera and roaring in agony, “Woman! Have you ever loved me!?” Ji Youyi turned away her aching eyes and asked the coordinator beside her: “Do people nowadays… really like watching this stuff?”

The coordinator, who was dozing off while playing with his phone, perked up instantly upon hearing the question: “Yeah, exactly this. It’s incredibly popular.”

He gave an example: “Do you know what the total movie box office was last year?”

“How much?”

“Forty billion. Nine billion of that was contributed by Meng Xingshu’s ‘Record of the River Journey’; the rest of the market was only a little over thirty billion.”

The coordinator asked again: “Then do you know the market size of our short dramas last year?”

Ji Youyi didn’t understand the economy of this world. Based on the coordinator’s tone, she guessed: “Thirty billion?”

Based on movie box office standards, that was already a quite large number.

The coordinator sneered and shook his head, holding up five fingers to Ji Youyi: “You can’t guess it. It’s fifty billion! Movies are finished. These days, who still watches movies? The future belongs to our short dramas!”

“I see. Thank you.” Ji Youyi didn’t say anything more. She smiled politely, straightened up, and continued watching the filming.

Short dramas and long dramas were filmed with different styles but required the same big night shifts.

It was nearly 7:00 AM by the time Ji Youyi finished work. She came out after changing her clothes, wondering whether to go back to the “Life” crew to scrounge for breakfast or just buy a steamed bun on the roadside, when she saw the phone in her bag vibrating non-stop.

Li Zhulan had called her three times.

Ji Youyi picked up. On the other end of the line was Li Zhulan’s panicked voice: “Little Ji! Are you up? It’s over, everything is over. The crew ‘exploded’! The crew ‘exploded’!!”

“Exploded” meant the core members of the crew had gone on strike or run away.

Ji Youyi didn’t hear clearly and asked: “What exploded? Who exploded?”

“Everything exploded!” Li Zhulan was about to have a breakdown. “The client ran away, the male lead ran away, the director, producer, and cinematographer… all! of! them! ran! away!”