Chapter 425: Left Ear Listens to Comedy, Right Eye Watches Tragedy!
Jiang Ci sat in the third row, but he wasn’t looking at the big screen.
He turned his head slightly, using his peripheral vision to glance at Chu Hong beside him.
Under the dim light of the theater, his mother sat perfectly straight.
But Jiang Ci could see that her chest was heaving quite violently.
Chu Hong didn’t look at Jiang Ci.
Her gaze was locked tightly onto that agonizingly struggling figure on the screen.
In a daze, that face changed.
It was no longer her son Jiang Ci, but her husband Jiang Yanjun from twenty years ago.
How many late nights had Jiang Yanjun woken up from nightmares like this, covered in cold sweat, leaning over the bed to dry heave?
Back then, when Chu Hong asked him what was wrong, he always waved his hand and laughed, saying it was from smoking too much.
So it wasn’t the cigarettes.
It was this pain that churned up all his insides.
[Ding!]
[Detected extreme Heartbreak Value from a loved one +555!]
In her mind, the system’s notification rang out abruptly, piercing through Jiang Ci’s temples with a sharp throb.
555 points.
That number was ridiculously high.
It meant Chu Hong’s psychological defenses were being chipped away bit by bit by this brutal scene.
Jiang Ci sighed inwardly.
“I knew it… I should’ve let her watch Laughing All the Way,” he silently complained to himself. “Sure, that film was cheesy and cliché, but at least Mom wouldn’t be going through this torture.”
On the screen, the plot continued to advance as the scene shifted.
A dim, cluttered storage room, lit only by a sliver of light seeping through the crack in the door.
Jiang He was curled up in the corner, clutching a nearly empty ballpoint pen.
In front of him lay a crushed, stained cigarette pack paper.
He wanted to write a letter.
His hands shook like sieves.
The pen tip scraped across the paper, leaving only twisted, distorted lines.
“Mom…”
He wanted to write that word.
But with one stroke, the paper tore.
An overwhelming sense of defeat and loneliness engulfed him.
He gave up on writing and started drawing circles on the cardboard.
One, two, three…
Every single circle broke off at the very end, failing to close.
These were circles that couldn’t be completed.
This was also a home he couldn’t return to.
In the theater, small sounds began to emerge.
In the front row, a young girl wearing black-rimmed glasses pressed her hand firmly over her mouth, her shoulders heaving violently.
A choked sob leaked through her fingers, sounding especially clear in this quiet space.
Then came the sound of someone tearing open tissues.
The girl who had dropped her popcorn earlier was now crying so hard her makeup was completely ruined.
She watched as Jiang He tore up the cardboard covered in incomplete circles, stuffed the pieces into his mouth one by one, chewing and swallowing with force.
That desperate swallowing sound was even more gut-wrenching than the vomiting sound from before.
He was devouring his own longing.
That emotion he could never send, along with his dignity,
was chewed up and swallowed down into his stomach, becoming the nourishment to keep him in hiding.
“That look in his eyes…”
In the very last row, the lead veteran criminal investigator-the one who had given Jiang Wen advice on set back then-was now taking off his glasses and wiping the lenses with his rough thumb.
He leaned close to his comrade-in-arms beside him, his voice lowered to barely a whisper,
yet carrying an eerie, disbelief-tinged coldness: “Old Zhao, you’re a pro. Take a look at this kid’s eyes.”
“That’s the hollowness you only get after you’ve really… killed someone.”
“Where the hell are these current traffic idols getting their training? This doesn’t look like acting. It’s like he just got pulled back from some war zone.”
Old Zhao beside him didn’t say a word, just silently lit an imaginary cigarette, tapping his fingers gently on his knee.
Just as the audience in Hall Four was completely immersed in this suffocating, oppressive atmosphere.
“Hahahaha!”
“Holy crap, that’s hilarious!”
A deafening roar of laughter pierced through the theater’s thin, non-soundproofed walls.
It was coming from Hall Two next door.
Laughing All the Way was playing.
The character played by Shen Teng had probably just taken another comedic pratfall, or said some hilarious line, sending the whole audience into fits of laughter.
Just one wall apart.
This absurd contrast tugged back and forth at the hearts of every viewer in Hall Four.
Jiang Ci sat in the darkness, listening to the waves of laughter from next door, a faint smile curling at the corner of his mouth.
This was probably the effect that madman Jiang Wen had been aiming for.
Light and darkness had always coexisted.
Just as some people laugh in the sunlight, others must rot in the gutter.
This wasn’t contradictory.
In fact, this was the greatest irony of all.
“Damn it…” A guy in the front row cursed under his breath, unsure whether he was cursing at the noise from next door or at this miserable life itself.
He wiped his face, his eyes red, but he could no longer smile.
The plot pushed forward.
The most brutal “mud scene” arrived.
Lei Zhong, playing Cha Cai, wore shiny leather boots as he stomped one foot onto Jiang He’s face.
The dark, hollow muzzle of a gun pressed against Jiang He’s temple.
Click.
An empty chamber.
In that instant, Jiang Ci, playing Jiang He, lost control of his body from sheer terror.
A dark, wet stain spread across the muddy ground.
He was like a mangy dog with its spine broken,
uncontrollably hiccuping as he crawled through the mud,
licking Cha Cai’s shoe, mumbling incoherent pleas for mercy.
“S-sorry… hic… boss…”
This scene completely shattered the golden image of an “idol.”
Just then.
A cold hand suddenly reached over.
In the darkness, it covered the back of Jiang Ci’s hand resting on his knee.
Chu Hong’s hand.
Her palm was covered in cold sweat, damp and clammy.
She didn’t turn her head, still staring intently at the big screen, but the grip of her hand was strong.
Like a drowning person grabbing onto their last piece of driftwood.
Or like a mother desperately trying to pull her child out of that muddy quagmire.
Jiang Ci’s heart trembled.
He didn’t pull his hand away. Instead, he turned his hand over and held his mother’s.
That hand was rough, thin, but carried the warmth he knew best.
He could feel his mother’s hand trembling slightly.
[Detected extreme Heartbreak Value from a loved one +888!]
The number surged again.
Jiang Ci took a deep breath, forcing back the bitterness rising in his nose.
This was only the beginning.
On the screen, the scene shifted.
A luxurious villa, an exquisite long table.
A birthday cake with a “26” candle was brought out.
The sweet, cloying scent of cream seemed to float through the screen,
mixing with the stench of mud from before, creating a nauseating contrast.
Cha Cai cut off the biggest slice and handed it to Jiang He, who was still covered in filth.
“Ah He, today’s your birthday.”
“Take a bite.”
And on the floor beside the cake, a pool of stark, glaring blood was slowly spreading.
Jiang Ci felt his mother’s grip tighten, her nails digging deep into his flesh.
“Here it comes.”
He said to himself.
The sweetest cake, and the coldest knife.