Chapter 21 - The Butterfly Moment
Without realising it, they both fell onto the large velvet-covered bed. Half undressed, their snow-white shoulders and necks entwined in a wave of desire.
A blossoming pear tree was not as beautiful as his jade-like body; the peach petals in spring were no match for his shy blush.
Yuan Ge could no longer hold back the lust within him, fervent waves of desire rushing through his heart and body, pounding wildly against the boundaries of his sanity. With a whoosh, he tore open Rong Qing's robe, his lips searching hungrily, raining kisses all over his body, his hands peeling and stroking, eagerly exploring the nakedness beneath…
Outside the window the trees swayed and the leaves rustled in the autumn breeze.
Just as they were engrossed in the tender love and erotic fever, Rong Qing suddenly let out a shrilly cry, "You! How could you be so cruel!"
With these words, tears poured out of his eyes, flooding his beautiful face and wetting Yuan Ge's cheeks as well. Yuan Ge was shocked, and when he looked more closely at the face in front of him, which only a moment ago was deeply affectionate, he saw that the tears had somehow turned into blood, and two hideous wounds appeared on the wrists of the arms that were wrapped around him, and blood gushed out from those wounds, drowning Yuan Ge in a bed of blood instantly.
Yuan Ge's mouth was filled with the metallic taste of blood, as if he was being choked, and he could no longer breathe as he slowly sank into the hell of the pool of blood. As his consciousness drifted away, Rong Qing's face, which had been flitting about, became clearer and clearer.. Yuan Ge finally saw that the face was actually identical to the face of the porcelain bumping boy he met today at the pond…
"Qingqing!" Yuan Ge let out a startled cry and sat up with a jolt.
There was no fish pond in front of him, no study, no velvet sheets, no mahogany bed. He was still lying in his own bed in his own bedroom. There was a faint glimmer of morning light outside the window at the moment, but the room was still too dark to tell what time it was.
Yuan Ge could hardly believe that such vivid and realistic scenes turned out to be just a dream - a dream in which Rong Qing's emotions seemed to soak into his bones, his blood was hot and sticky, that lingering passion could still be felt in his hair and skin, and that suffocating fear was so real that it was actually frightening…
Yuan Ge wiped off the cold sweat on his forehead, his heart still palpating with fear, and checked his watch. It was only half past five in the morning. What was this dream all about? Why was Rong Qing's face, which was so close as if he was right before him, exactly the same as the boy he met last night? Just as Yuan Ge pondered this bizarre dream, he was suddenly startled by an uncomfortable wet and slippery feeling in his underpants - "Holy shit! What the fuck is this? I'm fucking wasted! I'm fucked!"
Feeling depressed, he hurriedly took off his underwear and threw them into the washing machine along with the bed sheets. Yuan Ge thought back on his dream in frustration, completely confused as to why he would dream about a stranger he just met, let alone befriended, and actually did something so embarrassing and ambiguous with him in his dream... However, no matter how bad he was feeling, everything he saw in the dream remained so clear, so vivid and so provocative in his mind. Every scene in the dream was so dramatic and emotional that it was easy to be fully immersed in it.
Yuan Ge suddenly had an inspiration, a sort of light bulb moment. The question that troubled him before he went to bed last night now suddenly had an answer - what this script lacked was not a sense of greatness or historical significance, but how to convey the kind of rollercoaster of twists and turns of emotion in the characters. Poignant, melancholic, lingering, intense, tragic... Rong Qing's every delicate expression of such emotions in his dream was exactly what he had been searching for these days!
The more Yuan Ge thought about it, the more excited he became. Not only did he become wide awake, but his mind was also busy mulling over the scenes in the dream. If he were to film these scenes, how should he structure the story or switch between subplots, such as the fish pond scene at the beginning of the dream, which was rich in detail and very useful in presenting different layers of the characters ... Yuan Ge rushed to his desk and wrote down all the details of the dream in his project folder. When he finished, he couldn't help but admire himself.
I'm such an extraordinary director, even when I'm dreaming I can dream at such a high level! What a boy genius am I!
After recording the dream in detail, Yuan Ge suddenly felt that he could no longer be sure whether the Rong Qiuchen he had met last night by the water was also just a part of his dream.
"Zhuang Zhou dreamed that he was a butterfly."[1]
Yuan Ge laughed at himself, washed his face and looked at himself in the mirror, remembering his own startled cry when he woke up as well as Rong Qiuchen's stunningly beautiful face in his dream, then he was inspired again and decided to give the film a beautiful new name - "Qingqing"[2].
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[1] This is one of the most famous stories of Zhuang Zhou, an ancient Chinese philosopher. Once he dreamed that he was a butterfly, and when he woke up, he was unsure if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou.
[2] Here is another play on words. "Qing" is the given name of the male protagonist "Rong Qing" in Yuan Ge's film script, but when this Chinese character is repeated as "Qingqing" it becomes an affectionate term of endearment, a term of endearment formerly between husband and wife or between close friends.