"Gu Ran!" a staff member shouted.
"Over here!"
Gu Ran stood up and was about to enter the auditioning room when the girl who had asked her for her autograph suddenly stood up and shouted, "Gu Ran, you can do it! You're the best!"
With that, she even formed a huge heart above her head
Gu Ran was speechless.
The audition room was small, with only three people in it. Each had their own nameplate with their engraved name in front of them.
Producer, director, and screenwriter.
They all looked very young.
Gu Ran walked to the middle. After giving all the occupants in the room a quick bow, the director asked, "You are Gu Ran? I was under the impression that you wanted to audition for the role of Mother Chen. Today's audition is for the role of Zhou Yao, lead female character. What are you doing here?"
Mother Chen was the mother of the male lead. Her presence came mostly through memories and flashbacks, and was overall not a significant figure in the show. She was also the fifth female character that Gu Ran was supposed to play.
"I looked over the script and liked Zhou Yao's character very much, so I wanted to try it for myself."
The director frowned and cocked his head at the producer, who nodded. "Then let us try the second scene."
Half an hour later, Gu Ran came out of the audition room. The actors waiting for their turns outside all looked at her, wanting to gauge something from her expression. However, Gu Ran had put on her sunglasses and covered half of her face before leaving.
When she reached the lobby downstairs, Yu Xiang's call came.
"How did it go?"
"They didn't say anything. Told me to go back and wait for the notice," Gu Ran replied honestly.
Yu Xiang frowned. Such an official statement meant that the odds were against her. "Then, how do you feel?"
"I feel… if they don't like me, then there's no need to act in this show. I'll definitely fail!"
Yu Xiang :"…"
"Cut the crap and get back to reading the script!" Yu Xiang hung up.
Gu Ran shrugged helplessly and was about to put her phone away when it rang again.
"Hello, Yu Xiang." Gu Ran thought it was Yu Xiang again.
"Gu Ran! So you still know how to answer the phone! Where have you been these past few days!"
Gu Ran's expression changed drastically. She took the phone away from her ear and took a look. It was an unfamiliar number.
Feng Cheng, Mother, and the Gu family's phone numbers had long been blocked by Gu Ran. These days, they tried to contact her through other numbers. As long as Gu Ran did not know the number, she would not answer the phone.
She had thought that it was Yu Xiang who had contacted her again. She had accidentally and unknowingly let Mother slip past her defences!
"Don't you want me to rot and burn away? It's such a shame that I am larger than life and am currently still living my best life out here!"
"You better have the decency to show your face at home, you hear me!" Mother spit pure vitriol from her side of the phone.
"I have little objections to going back. The only problem here is that I will anger you to death!" With that, Gu Ran hung up the call.
Gu Ran stood there on the street for a long while. There was no taxi wherever she looked. She squinted her eyes, but with the strong sun shining overhead, it would be impossible to look past its rays even with sunglasses on.
In the end, even if it was done with much reluctance, she took out her phone to make a taxi booking.
The only problem was that the car would only come in ten minutes.
Gu Ran found herself a shaded spot under a pillar to wait, and took out her phone to browse the internet in boredom in the meantime.
The last time she'd posted something on Weibo was well over a month ago. The moment she signed herself back into her account, notifications started pouring into her feed. Opening up her private messages, she found that they were all hate mails with the intention of flaming her, all from different people.
Gu Ran deleted them all, the proceeded to delete all of her previous posts, including her anonymous and dumb love confession post to Feng Cheng.
All the deep passion she'd carried herself with in the past seemed like such a joke now! And now that she had decided to make a clean break with her past, these things only served to hurt her eyes if she had not decided to get rid of them!