Global Film Emperor

Chapter 442 Bad News

"Teacher Zhang, I've noticed you've been leaving the school gates quite often lately. Did something good happen to you?"

"Huh? That's not true..."

She had no classes that morning, and she chatted with another female teacher in the office. She wasn't good with words, and she could only passively defend against the female teacher's constant verbal attacks, which led to her being defeated step by step.

She was reading a book, her fingertips touching the raised lines on the paper, reading very slowly. She only answered her colleagues' questions intermittently until the conversation suddenly turned to her recent activities. She was momentarily distracted, forgetting where she was in her reading, and vehemently denied that she had been behaving strangely lately.

"The cafeteria lady said you've been taking food out of school lately, Ms. Zhang...you're not dating anyone, are you?"

Once a woman passes middle age, her gossipy nature usually increases exponentially. For a female teacher whose activities are limited to school and home, and who spends her days teaching and chatting, these kinds of emotional issues concerning young girls are most likely to excite her.

Seeing that Teacher Xiao Zhang started to stutter and her expression became awkward, the middle-aged female teacher's expression changed from curiosity to undisguised excitement. She had a premonition that there was going to be some big gossip to hear today.

As the rosy color of Teacher Zhang's face gradually rose from her neck upwards, reaching her climax in a very short time, she let out a soft sigh. It was as if her brain had overheated and short-circuited, causing her to completely shut down and go blank. Leaning back in her chair, even her embarrassed expression disappeared.

She was numb.

Of course she knew what the word "love" meant, but she never thought that the word would one day be associated with her. That's why the female teacher was able to stir up a fierce tsunami in her heart with just those few words.

"I...I...I...I didn't."

"Teacher Zhang, you don't seem to be telling the truth. Being in a relationship is a good thing! You're at the age where you should be dating, there's no need to hide it. How long have you been dating?"

The female teacher, now over forty, had completely lost her dignified image as a teacher and was just like an old woman. When she heard about this, her eyes gleamed with greed. She clung to the edge of the table, her head almost touching Teacher Zhang's desk, and watched with a smile as Teacher Zhang kept twisting the hem of her clothes with her small hands, looking completely panicked.

She hesitated for a long time, weaving many lies in her mind in an attempt to deceive the gossiping woman. But perhaps she wasn't very bright and couldn't come up with a perfect lie. The lies she came up with could be easily exposed by the female teacher without her having to say them. So, she kept her legs tightly together, her jeans rubbing against each other, and finally gritted her teeth and revealed the truth.

"Really, no... It's just that I'm overthinking things..."

"This...Teacher Zhang, do you like her?"

Hearing this, the female teacher also began to hesitate, wondering if it was appropriate to ask any further questions. If she were to say that, given their years of working together, Ms. Zhang was in a relationship, it would be enough for her to gossip and get a positive answer to satisfy her curiosity. But the problem was, judging from her current state, it was probably unrequited love. Asking any further questions felt inappropriate.

"I don't know either... I just feel like he knows so much, he's so amazing..."

There are many paths a woman can take to love. It could be love at first sight, captivated by a man's looks and physique; it could be love that grows over time, a habit of spending every day with him; or it could be money and power, a fascination with the security of being protected by a strong person. But the most taboo kind of love is love that stems from worship, because this path makes it too easy for a woman to lose her self-respect and dignity.

This is not good news for Teacher Zhang. So the female teacher began to worry. After all, the fact that she took her meals out of school every day was a good example. If she wasn't giving them to a man, would she be feeding them to the dogs? If she only had a slight liking for a man, it wouldn't be worth having an invisible girl bring him meals so often.

She decided to keep asking, no longer driven by her burning curiosity, but simply to ensure that this naive girl wouldn't be deceived. A man worthy of a woman's admiration would certainly be shrewd and insightful.

Of course, if she heard an answer that could be basically defined as taking advantage of a girl's body, she wouldn't openly stop it, because a girl who is gradually losing her self-respect and modesty will absolutely not listen to reason.

She will choose to call the police...

"What's his name?"

"Lu Ze".

"His name is quite grand, and he's even associated with a big star... So what does he do for a living?"

"They're opening a beer house right next to the store in the neighborhood..."

"Oh, I think I remember that..."

The man was a beer seller, an answer that surprised her. Did he even make money selling beer? She didn't know. In her mind, beer was just a cheap drink, costing three or four yuan a bottle, sold in small shops. Perhaps individual beer shops would be cheaper, since they did wholesale.
However, considering her previous assumption that the man must have a story, and recalling the artistic plaque at the store entrance she had passed by before, she did think that the man might actually be something special. Seeing that Ms. Zhang had calmed down but was still somewhat hesitant, she knew it was time to stop there; asking any further would only annoy Ms. Zhang.

Furthermore, she couldn't judge his character based on just a few words or a day's understanding. She could only pray that Ms. Zhang would be able to control herself and not sleep with a man out of admiration. If, by some chance, the man really did have a powerful family background, Ms. Zhang's heartbreak would be secondary; her life might be ruined.

The bell rang, and the noise of students rushing out of the classroom suddenly filled the entire corridor. The teachers should also go to eat. The two went downstairs together. When the female teacher saw that she was carrying a lunchbox again, she could only sigh silently. She shouldn't care about this, nor did she need to. She could only hope that Teacher Zhang would fall in love with a decent person.

……

"Today I just had the first round of negotiations with the talent we're looking to bring in. They're very interested, so I think the deal is pretty much done. The second round of negotiations should be to discuss the compensation."

"Okay, you can handle this. You don't need to go through me. Bye."

Lu Ze hung up the phone, reached out and touched the lame dog that had been shedding fur like crazy lately, handed it some catnip, and watched as it gradually got into the swing of things and its gaze began to wander. He smiled gently and continued with his work.

Recently, he has been having great ideas, and the performance style he wants to write about in the book is gradually taking shape. This performance style, which has not yet been formally established, has been temporarily named "Interactive Method" by Lu Ze. In short, it requires that the relationship between the actor and the character be one of opposition, rather than one of unity.

It requires actors to first establish the basic framework of the character, and then fill in other details to perfect the character. It places very high demands on the actor's ability to write a biography. Then, the actor must put himself in the character's shoes to deduce the actions the character should have taken.

Simply put, it's about creating a "real" person, and the actor needs to befriend the character and constantly communicate with them to empathize with them and understand all the emotions the character experiences in a scene, thus meeting the performance requirements.

This differs from the Method Acting school. It does not pursue the idea that the actor is the character and the character is the actor. It also does not separate the actor from the character as the Expressionist school does. It allows the actor to freely detach their thoughts from the character and make them completely unrelated in real life. The difference from the Mei Lanfang system is even greater. It is not a stylized performance form and is not centered on the actor.

Hmm... actually, it would be more accurate to call it a method for developing multiple personalities.

However, none of that matters. Lu Ze doesn't care how many people will learn the new performance style he proposed. On the contrary, he hopes that others won't play like him, otherwise they will be close to becoming obsessed. His purpose in writing this book is simply to gain recognition from the academic community. As for how many actors regard this book as the new bible for actors, it is actually not important to Lu Ze.

His train of thought was disrupted by Mickey's phone call, and it became difficult to get back into a good state of mind to write the book. He glanced at the time and realized it was already noon. Feeling a bit hungry, he got up, poured cat food for the lame cat who was drooling all over the table, and started thinking about what to eat himself.

"boss……"

The door was pushed open, and she walked in, holding a pink insulated lunchbox. Lu Ze had seen her like this many times before. It started because he had mentioned that he didn't like cooking when he was alone, and she had taken note of that. The next day, she brought him some food from school so that he wouldn't have to worry about meals.

The two could already be considered friends, so Lu Ze didn't stand on ceremony. Also, the food at Jinxiwang Cafeteria was quite good, with one meat dish and two vegetable dishes, and it tasted very good. So, after a while, he got used to eating there.

Lu Ze had asked her if this would cause her trouble, but she refuted him decisively, so Lu Ze never said no again.

Today's meal consisted of braised pork slices, shredded potatoes with green peppers, and stir-fried cabbage with vinegar. She folded the food into her bowl instead of using her lunchbox. The two were quite at ease; one sat quietly in the corner listening to music and reading a book written in Braille, while the other sat at the table, quietly eating the communal meal. During this time, the two rarely spoke to each other.

After finishing the meal, Lu Ze washed the lunchbox and bowls together, returned the lunchbox to her, and then continued to work on his book writing, scratching his head several times in the process.

While professional books for actors don't need overly elegant writing, they do need to be concise and to the point, conveying the most accurate meaning with the fewest words possible. In this respect, Lu Ze is indeed not very good.

At 1:30 p.m., she got up, said goodbye to Lu Ze, and returned to school to prepare for teaching. Lu Ze received another phone call a dozen minutes after she left.

Picking up his phone, Lu Ze glanced at the caller ID and his heart sank. He wiped the caller ID with his fingers, as if trying to erase the caller's name to something else, but this wasn't magic; it was just normal life. Finally, he closed his laptop, lit a cigarette, and then answered the phone, asking in a deep voice.

"Hey?"

"It's me, my mom is gone."

"I'll be there right away."

"..."

(End of this chapter)