Chapter 56 - King Guan's Test
Although Yuan Ge was feeling hot and sweaty from the central heating in the room as soon as he entered, he was only wearing the tacky company T-shirt Chow Mingrun had chosen underneath. Now that the young master Guan asked him to take off his jacket, he had no choice but to do as he was told, revealing the ugly pink underneath. Seeing the T-shirt, the towering CEO's stony face softened slightly as he gave a bemused smile and said, "You people at Dragon Dreams are rather different, and I will remember you now. This shirt suits you well. Your dress sense is quite, um, unique."
Yuan Ge cursed the damned Fat Chow a thousand times in his mind, but forced himself to calm down quickly. Unlike Chestnut and the others, he had come here to apply for the job of assistant director, not to audition for a role in the movie, but since master Guan had personally come to test his acting skills, he must not be acting on a whim, nor would he be so narrow-minded as to take offence at that bit of water just now.
Heart-wrenching, it seemed, was the key word for today's audition. The film must be so heart-wrenching both physically and emotionally that whoever Arthur Guan was searching for, whether actor or director, should have been able to convey that feeling to the fullest.
Thinking he had figured out the key, Yuan Ge quickly began to search his memory bank for the tens of thousands of movies he had seen and the heart-wrenching scenes that were most relevant to the current proposition.
A light flashed across his mind and the figure of a beautiful man in white suddenly appeared vaguely.. He hung from a tall tree, his handsome face haggard from days of exposure to the blazing sun, blood seeping from his dry, cracked lips. His thin and frail body seemed to have been broken from prolonged stretching, hanging helplessly from the tree, as soft as the passing wind, and twitching with pain. And on the execution table before him, the brutal killing continued, the blood of his kinsmen gathering in rivers of bright red. And the man in white witnessed such tragedies unfold before him, his normally gentle and compassionate eyes radiating a fiery karmic fire …
Yuan Ge could not recall exactly which film this scene came from, but his intuition told him that it was the most heart-wrenching and most in keeping with the imagery of King Guan's test. It was just that all the drama and emotions were not expressed through words, and he himself had to use the most direct action and facial expressions without lines to complete such a tragic scene.
So in the end, what Arthur Guan saw was Yuan Ge, wearing a tacky pink advertising T-shirt, not pondering too long about the plot arrangement, his hands raised as if literally tied by ropes and suspended high in the air, his two feet pointing to the ground like a ballerina, his whole body muscles tense like a tight guitar string about to break, and like a dying swan, noble yet tragic. His beautiful eyes, haggard from the prolonged torture, looked at Arthur defiantly, full of stubbornness and endless sorrow …
Arthur Guan had remembered his appearance the moment he was sprayed with water by Yuan Ge back in the second courtyard. It seemed that the young man's face could not simply be described as handsome. What attracted him more was a spiritual quality about him - a man who was still a child at heart after sailing a thousand times; an artist who was untouched by the murkiness of the world; a dreamer with a strong will and clear eyes. He has seen too many good-looking people, but only true genius and strength of character can make an artist stand out from the crowd and never fade away.
However, before Arthur could evaluate whether the stretched body in front of him was the result of years of professional dance training, Yuan Ge had already let go of his guitar-string-like pose depicting the fragility of life in an instant and collapsed to the ground like a puddle of spring water, the joints of his limbs and fingers seemed to be dislocated, his entire body was as soft as if it had no bones, and his facial muscles seemed to twitch involuntarily from the extreme pain. His eyes looked into the distant void before him, and his thin lips trembled gently as if he wanted to say something, but eventually fell silent again, as if only the lover who knew his heart beneath the city walls could hear …
The proud spine was broken, but he still stubbornly tried to lift his head, seemingly exhausted, but his gaze was as sharp as a knife, fixed on Arthur's face. His brow was furrowed in a tight frown that seemed to transcend death, yet still attached to the human emotions and the desires of the world.
"Exquisite, intense and vivid."
Arthur Guan gave a succinct and clear assessment the moment Yuan Ge finished his performance, and everyone else in the room applauded upon hearing his words.
He then stood up, walked over to Yuan Ge and whispered in his ear, "Your performance carried an innate sense of vulnerability, and a fragile and fleeting beauty. I also like the - how should I put it - 'foreign body sensation' you express when you frown."
Before Yuan Ge could catch what he meant, the corners of Arthur's mouth turned upwards slightly, and he had pulled back and turned towards the set stylist, saying, "Go dress him up. Let's see his costume looks."