Yan Yan

Su Yan looked up at the small hotel in front of her, gritted her teeth again, and dragged her suitcase to the hotel gate.

After opening the transparent plastic curtain, the first thing that caught Su Yan’s eye was a counter painted with yellow paint. Behind the counter was a middle-aged woman with curly hair wearing a khaki polka-dot skirt. She was watching a TV drama on a mobile phone without earphones while eating melon seeds. Feeling someone was coming in, the woman lazily raised her eyelids. “The film crew or yourself?”

Su Yan: “The film crew, 306.”

The woman lowered her eyelids again and pouted her chin towards the hotel staircase.

From the woman’s attitude, Su Yan understood that she didn’t want to help her with her luggage, so she dragged her suitcase and walked towards the stairs.

The 28-inch large suitcase plus a heavy travel bag—it took a lot of effort to carry the things up to the third floor, and she was sweating profusely and panting halfway. After standing at the stairs for a while, Su Yan began to drag her suitcase and search for her room in the corridor.

Before opening the door, she took a deep breath. Although she was mentally prepared, she was still shocked by the appearance of the room when she turned on the light—there were no windows, the walls were damp and yellowed, and several places were peeled off. There was even a green mold in one corner of the room, and the concrete floor had several cracks. The bed sheets were white, but they had turned yellow over the years, and there was a musty smell in the room. A simple folding table was placed in the corner of the room, and a blue plastic chair was placed in front of the table.

Su Yan stood at the door in a daze for a long time before accepting the reality in despair.

She kept her suitcase in the room and went out to search for a supermarket. After walking for a few minutes, she found a small supermarket. Then she bought a bunch of cleaning tools, detergents, and disinfectants. After returning to the room again, she started cleaning, mainly the bed. After all, it was the place to sleep at night. She took off the bed sheet and pillowcases and replaced them with her own that she brought from home. After tidying up the bed, she went to tidy up the bathroom, cleaned the sink and toilet carefully, and then put the hand sanitizer next to the sink and put a disposable seat on the toilet.

When she was away from home, the accommodation environment affected her mood very much, so she didn’t sleep well that night, and she got up early the next day and left the hotel before 7:30. After eating breakfast from a small shop, she finally entered the set before nine o’clock in the morning. 

On the first day of filming, the entire crew was not late, and the filming started on time at nine o’clock. Luckily, the first day of filming went smoothly; neither the actors nor the director expressed their intention to change the script, so it gave Su Yan the illusion that everything was going well until the next morning when the second female lead entered the group with her own screenwriter.