The sound of gurgling water came to Luo Yu’s ears, his world seemingly soaked in icy water.

He began to struggle, but his body lost strength due to lack of oxygen. Even so, his hands were waving as hard as he could to grab the life-saving straw in this void.

But his body sank deeper and deeper, and the boundless darkness covered over his head.

You c an fi nd t he la te st cha pte rs at ( th e bl mu se . c o m )

Someone was still smashing the glass window, bang after bang, determined and frantic.

Thank you… don’t bother anymore… don’t be dragged down yourself…

Luo Yu touched the vibrating glass with his last strength, just like the last beating of his heart.

“Bang, bang, bang——bang, bang, bang——”

Luo Yu suddenly woke up and opened his eyes to find a patch of bright light above the swaying water surface.

“Luo Yu! Luo Yu, I know you are in there! Come out and let’s have a good talk.”

That voice seemed to have traveled through a decade to his ears.

Luo Yu sat up suddenly, hearing the sound of water splashing back down into the water after breaking its surface. He wiped away the water droplets on his face and found that he was sitting in a bathtub!

What happened? Why was it a bathtub?

He was clearly sitting in the car heading to a certain heavyweight film festival. After more than a decade of ups and downs, he finally got a nomination for Best Supporting Actor based on his own strength, and according to the organizer, this award was 80% his.

But when he was passing along the riverside avenue, in order to avoid the paparazzi, his car accidentally ran off the road and fell into the river.

He still recalled the loud sound and huge impact when he fell into the water, which almost knocked his soul out of his body. The river water poured in, and on top of this extremely bad luck——the buckle of the seat belt and the hem of his suit were stuck together, unable to be disentangled at all…

He didn’t expect that the award-winning film that had been produced after his decade-long accumulation would become his parting work.

But why did he wake up in a bathtub now?

And this bathroom seemed unfamiliar at first glance, but gradually… a familiar feeling came to his heart.

Wasn’t this the small apartment he bought with a loan more than a decade ago?

“Luo Yu, I have tried my best. This is the most significant role I can get for you so far. If… if you are not willing to even take this role, I really… really don’t know what to do.”

The woman outside the door sighed deeply. It was the kind of helplessness after experiencing many layers of pressure, and it was also the last tolerance for the person on the other side of the door.

Luo Yu turned his face sideways and looked at the door in disbelief.

He had thought of this moment countless times in the past ten years, and regretted it countless times. He had willfully let down the other’s efforts and hard work, and also rejected the opportunity to make a comeback.

“Is it… Sister Cui?” Luo Yu’s throat bobbed, and a certain kind of expectation surged into his heart, boiling and burning like the wind fanning a fire.

After hearing his response, Sister Cui’s shoulders trembled obviously and she said loudly: “Besides me, how many sisters do you have?”

Luo Yu’s fingers clasped the edge of the bathtub so hard that they turned white.

What was going on? Why would he return to his old apartment from ten years ago? Sister Cui, the manager who had become extremely disappointed with him and left long ago… Why was she outside his door?

“Sister Cui, please sit on the sofa for a bit. I… will clean myself up and come out, okay?”

Sister Cui outside the door was stunned for a moment, and said half-jokingly: “I thought you had long given up on caring about your image, yet you are still willing to clean and dress up? Is this a courtesy for my sake?”

Luo Yu took a deep breath, calmed down and said, “If I don’t maintain my image, don’t even mention the directors, Sister Cui yourself will even look down on me.”

Sister Cui’s eyes suddenly turned red and she let out a laugh, “It’s good that you know. I’ll wait for you however long as you want.”

After saying that, Sister Cui returned to the living room, but as for Luo Yu’s sofa… there was really no place for her to sit.

Wrinkled clothes were waddled into various shapes, boxes of instant noodles, and unfinished lunch boxes from convenience stores were left laying around in a disorderly manner, and there was even a rancid smell.

Sister Cui finally managed to clean up a piece of pure land. As soon as she sat down, she found a cigarette butt in the gap of the sofa.

“Luo Yu! How many times have I told you! Don’t lie on the sofa and smoke. What if the ash falls and causes a fire!” Sister Cui couldn’t help shouting.

If it was normal, the other would either remain silent or ask coldly, “What does it have to do with you?”

But this time, the person in the bathroom said loudly: “I’ll quit smoking——except when a role requires it, I won’t smoke anymore!”

Sister Cui blinked her eyes and pinched herself hard again. The pain stung so bad that her face almost wrinkled into a prune. But looking at the red mark on her arm clearly reminded her that this was not a dream.

Luo Yu stepped out of the bathtub, and the feeling of his feet touching the ground was so unreal. He leaned on the sink with both hands and looked at himself in the mirror. A blurry outline was reflected in the mist. His heartbeat was racing. He didn’t know what kind of himself he would see.

He stretched out his hand to wipe away the fog on the mirror, revealing a downcast but clearly attractive face.

Somewhat long bangs covered his eyes, which were dim and dull, and made him look sleepy. The stubble on his chin had not been shaved for who knows how long, and the whole person seemed to be an encyclopedic image of the word “depression” in capital letters.

“Cui… Sister Cui…” Luo Yu shouted.

“What’s wrong? Did you fall in the bathroom?” Sister Cui quickly stood up.

“I just want to ask how old… am I this year?” Luo Yu asked.

“Did you damage your brain in the water?”

“I just want to reflect a bit.” Luo Yu said.

“Okay, reflect on it! You are still three months away from turning 26! You are still young among third- and fourth-tier actors. As long as you don’t continue to be in a slump, you still have the possibility of turning things around! Although you prepared for the role for a long time only for it to be snatched away by He Mu, your performance still left a deep impression on the director during the audition. The director told me privately that he will definitely notify you of another opportunity! As long as you don’t run back into a dead end, it doesn’t matter if you are twenty-six or thirty-six, it’s still not the end of the road!”

Luo Yu stood dazed for three seconds, raised his hand to cover his eyes, and a smile appeared on his lips. 

Not the end of the road?

When he was young, he felt that being robbed of the role he needed to make a comeback by He Mu, a top star, and being belittled as “He Mu’s dupe” by his rival’ capital marketing, which led to ridicule by the public, being treated as junk and thrown away by the brokerage company he had sincerely trusted in, his Weibo being filled with attacks from anti-fans every time he went to audition for a role, unable to find a new brokerage company… He Mu let Luo Yu understand what it meant to be a champion right after debut, whereas Luo Yu never even made it to the starting line in the end.

After a decade of hard work in his previous life, constantly hitting a wall and constantly looking for new ways out, he understood that what he was facing at this moment was not a dead end at all, but a turning point.

It was just that in his previous life, he had too much self-esteem and didn’t know what was good for him.

The twenty-six year old Luo Yu had youthful capital, vitality, and endless possibilities for matching roles that the thirty-six year old did not have. It was just that at the time, he was living within the frame of labels and scripts designed by others and did not understand this fact clearly.

In this life, he must not bother with rotten people and charge forward courageously.

“Why is it suddenly quiet?” Sister Cui worriedly put her ear to the door.

At this time, the sound of the electric shaver could be heard, and the buzzing sound finally made Sister Cui exhale.

Soon, his chin became much cleaner, and the superior jawline appeared in the mirror.

Luo Yu smiled lightly, then picked up the hair dryer to blow dry his hair. He then found a hair pin and clamped the disheveled hair back from his forehead, revealing a clean and smooth forehead.

“Sister Cui, can you please help me get a change of clothes?” Luo Yu called.

“I’ll go look for it.”

Sister Cui opened Luo Yu’s closet and found that it was also a mess. She didn’t know how long it had been since it had been tidied up. She finally found a white T-shirt and loose casual pants and handed them through the crack of the bathroom door.

After Luo Yu took it, he quickly put it on.

He looked at himself in the mirror. He was 185 cm in height, with a straight back, wide shoulders and narrow waist. He was clearly a walking clothes rack. How many male stars had good-looking facial features but not a good figure like him. He was lucky enough to have natural good looks, yet he spent his time cosplaying a corpse in the tub, what a total waste.

He opened the bathroom door and strode in the direction of Sister Cui.

Sister Cui looked calm, but her clenched fingers revealed her anxiety at the moment. She didn’t know whether Luo Yu’s sudden change was just a fluke or a determination to rise up again.

“Sister Cui!” Luo Yu hugged her and tightened his arms.

This agent still maintained relations with him in the industry when he was negative and depressed, running around to find roles for him. Even if the brokerage company disbanded Luo Yu’s team, Sister Cui did not give up on him. It was a pity that he couldn’t live up to the support at that time, and failed to be worthy of the hard work of this iron lady.

Since he could live a new life, he would not let her hard work go to waste again.

“You… what’s wrong with you?” Sister Cui patted Luo Yu’s back dazedly.

“It’s nothing. Didn’t you say you negotiated a role for me?”

Luo Yu let go of Sister Cui and let her sit back on the sofa. He waved away the debris on the coffee table and sat across from her.

Sister Cui looked at the young man in front of her. He appeared indolent and casual, but also revealed a hint of mature calmness. She was a little unable to recover from her daze.

His eyes no longer look dispirited, but instead all the gloom was swept away, like a finely carved jade stone with the dust wiped clean and placed by the window, shining and brilliant.

The hope that was about to be extinguished in Sister Cui’s heart began to burn again.

“I… what I want to tell you is that there is a script called “Counterattack”. It tells the story of an undercover agent who goes deep into a criminal gang, deals with various forces, continuously gains the trust of the boss, gathers evidence, and finally takes down the gang in one go. The director Wang Daheng has been confirmed, the male lead is Lin Qiao, and the female lead is Li Lanyun.”

“En.” Luo Yu nodded.

You c an fi nd t he la te st cha pte rs at ( th e bl mu se . c o m )

“I know that Director Wang has a background in making specific TV series. His works are more streamlined and stereotyped, and young people and even middle-aged people don’t watch them.”

Luo Yu didn’t have a big reaction, which gave Sister Cui the courage to continue talking.

“I read the script… and it is indeed quite stereotyped. There is no captivating dramatic conflict. Even the lines can be guessed after hearing the previous sentence. Lin Qiao and Li Lanyun are not popular actors either… but because of the subject matter, it’s a guaranteed satellite television show.”

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