She felt coldness on her face all of a sudden. When she reopened her eyes, she saw snowflakes spiralling down from the sky. This was not the first snow of the year, but the first snow that she witnessed.
She reached out her hand, and a snowflake fell onto her palm. It was chilly and cold, but comfortable.
The snow is clean, right?
Without knowing how long she had been standing here, there blankets of snow had accumulated on her shoulders, her body and her hair. She sat up straight and cleaned off the snow on the gravestone. Then, she pondered over something before taking her cloak off.
She was shivering in the cold wind.
Under the fluttering of the snow, there was only her thin silhouette.
The wind almost blew into her bones, bringing her a bone-chilling kind of pain.
She covered the gravestone with her cloak. Tomorrow I’ll bring you dumplings, okay? She smiled, stroking the picture that was frozen in time.
“You will remain young forever, but what about me? I will grow old. Can you still recognize me when I’m all wrinkled and grizzled? But that would only happen after a very long time. I promise you that I will become the international best actress, then I will stop filming and come over to accompany you with single-hearted devotion, okay?”
The snowflakes fell on her, bit by bit. As if she did not feel any coldness that she could keep on soliloquizing. She was talking to the air and to herself, although nobody would reply to her.
When she got back, the housekeeper was shocked to see her like this. The housekeeper took over a woolen blanket promptly and covered her with it.
“Ahchoo…” Yan Huan sneezed. It seemed like she had caught a cold.
“It’s okay,” she smiled at both of the housekeepers. She really felt that she was okay, but her pale snow-covered face and her body that was as thin as paper made the housekeepers worry about whether she was really fit enough to get through this winter.
Yan Huan went into her bedroom. In a flash, the warmth in her room opened the pores throughout her skin. It was comfortable, but she was suffering at the same time.
Perhaps I’m sick. She forced a smile. Seemed like she really had to nurse her body and maintain healthy, or else she would not be able to continue filming.
Soon, the housekeeper brought up a bowl of ginger soup for Yan Huan.
Yan Huan took over the ginger soup and drank it sip by sip. Then, she laid down and drifted off groggily. But she slept lightly. Sometimes she felt as if her body was burned by fire, and sometimes she felt as if she was in the world of ice and snow, making her suffer a lot.
When she reopened her eyes, she noticed that Ye Shuyun was back without her noticing.
“Are you awake?” Ye Shuyun put her hand on her forehead, “You’ve perspired. You will recover after sweating it out.”
“Mom,” she called as she sat up and hugged Ye Shuyun, just like her mother who had taken care of her when she was sick during childhood.
“Hmm, no worries. It’s okay. Everything is going to be alright,” Ye Shuyun patted Yan Huan’s shoulder gently. She and Lu Jin had nothing but Yan Huan now. This was their last gratifying thing.
It was not long after that when He Yibin arrived.
“She’s fine,” he declared as he put down his stethoscope. “It’s just a cold. Don’t go out these days as it is freezing outside.”
“You have to gain more weight. Or else, you might have insufficient muscles and fatty tissue to retain heat.”
Yan Huan pinched her arm. Yeah, I should gain weight. I will not look good in the film like this.
After taking the medication, again she laid down and fell asleep. She felt much better now, perhaps it was because of the perspiration earlier.
Besides, Chinese New Year was just around the corner. This was their first new year without Lu Yi, and also their first lonely New Year. Anyway, Yan Huan still received a lot of red envelopes. She carried around a tall stack of red envelopes given by a lot of people, but none of them were from Lu Yi. Lu Yi used to pass her all of his red envelopes, and let her keep them because he knew that she had a habit of hoarding red envelopes. In fact, nobody knew that she kept those red envelopes because she was too lonely.
She put her red envelopes in the drawer and stayed indoors. It was freezing outside, and she was too thin to retain her heat.
She tapped her fingers at the edge of the table while drinking a glass of milk. Right now, she was sitting at the bay window and looking outside. The highest level of the Lu family’s house was the fourth floor, so it was considered as a high-rise building here. Such a height would be enough to get a clear picture of the scenery, but the courtyard outside the Lu family’s house was spacious and empty. There were only a few people and few cars. If it snowed, you could see an endless clean snowfield and some twigs that were bent as they could not sustain the weight of the snow.
It was rare to see people passing by, so it was another beautiful scenery here. Even if it was an empty space-time, it could become the scenery in one’s eyes.
If one’s mind was here, he or she should enjoy the view here.
Su Muran’s new year film was known as Legend of the Fox. They had only achieved 80 million box office on the release day, it was basically a flop.
Yan Huan was not surprised by it. There were a total of six new year films this year, and all of them were of high quality. Since Su Muran wanted to force herself in at this time, she could not gain much as there were too many contenders for the limited slots. The 80 million box office was already the highest in the month.
Su Muran was not a professional actress, as she required a stuntwoman for all her action scenes. She just appeared in the film without expressing her sincerity. How would the audience offer you box office then? A predictable plot, a familiar paralyzled face which showed no difference whether she was smiling or not. Although their publicity was so good that they had almost 100 million box office sales on the release day, but the box office did not rise further. The guaranteed box office was ten billion, but this film had just gained approximately three billion. And this still was not the revenue sharing of the box office. In fact, this film was the film that had lost the most money for the year.
This film was said to be able to shatter the box office record of the White Fox back then. But eventually, it turned out to be a joke.
The record of the box office income of White Fox was unbreakable.
Although Yan Huan was going to break her own record, she would not be silly as to shoot another fox movie. But what Su Muran and Lu Qin wanted was to catch up with the trend last year. Perhaps everyone would think that another fox-themed movie could be successful and ranked as the movie with the highest box office. But unfortunately, they failed. Not all of the foxes in this world could become a fox deity. There were silly foxes who did not turn into a deity as well.
Yan Huan turned on Lu Yi’s laptop and set aside the bowl of soup that she was carrying. Then, she browsed through the records of the box office of the New Year films this year.
There were really a lot of qualified films. It was a highly competitive market for New Year films this year, and the row piece rate of Su Muran’s fox movie had started to decrease already. The graphics were alright but the word-of-mouth was so bad.
