novelinnhs Chapter 12: Time Flies
Chapter 12: Time Flies
September 6th, Beijing, Badaling Student Military Training Base.
The bus swayed and climbed the winding mountain road for more than an hour, and the freshmen on board gradually went from being excited to silent.
Some people got carsick, some fell asleep, and some breathed on the window to write.
Liu Yu sat in the last row by the window, next to Xin Hao. The two sat side by side, their backs straight, a stark contrast to the students around them who were slouching.
"I know this road well." Xin Hao looked out the window at the receding hillside, his tone carrying the calm of someone who had been there before.
Where were you when you were a member of the armed police?
"Hebei, at the foot of the Yanshan Mountains. That place is much more remote than here; there's no cell phone signal at all." Xin Hao paused. "What about you? What's it like in XJ?"
"The Gobi Desert, an endless expanse of Gobi Desert." Liu Yu leaned back in his chair. "On the first day I arrived, I stood at the entrance of the barracks for half an hour and couldn't find a single tree."
You'll get used to it.
"I'm used to it."
The bus finally stopped.
The instructors were already lined up on the parade ground, all dressed in green camouflage, their hats pulled low, their faces as stern as iron plates.
The new students, dragging their suitcases, filed off the bus, chattering and laughing. Suddenly, an instructor yelled, "Quiet! Line up! Stand by your class! Anyone who talks again is the first to be thrown out of line!"
The entire playground fell silent instantly.
Liu Yu and Xin Hao exchanged a glance, both seeing the same meaning in each other's eyes: That's it?
...
The next two weeks were a devastating blow for them.
Liu Yu naturally woke up at 5:50 a.m. to do morning exercises, which required getting up at 6 a.m.
Folding the blanket into a neat square is as natural to him as breathing.
He stood at attention for half an hour, conceiving the plot of a new script in his mind, and time passed by unnoticed.
Five kilometers of cross-country running? When he was in the army, he ran twenty kilometers with weights, but five kilometers without equipment is just a walk.
But the other students in the same class didn't have it so easy.
On the first day of standing at attention, some people started swaying after less than ten minutes. After twenty minutes, a female student from the performing arts department fainted.
The instructor helped her to the shade of a tree, then turned and shouted at the rest of the group, "Look at you all! You're all like wilted eggplants! You can't even pass the first hurdle of university; how are you going to make movies later?"
Wang Chaowen stood next to Liu Yu, beads of sweat rolling down his face, his legs visibly trembling.
"Brother," he forced out the words through gritted teeth, "aren't you tired?"
"Not bad," Liu Yu said without changing his expression.
During military training, Liu Yu did notice some people.
It wasn't through deliberate observation; for example, there was a tall, thin boy in the queue with fair skin. Liu Yu only matched the name with his face after hearing others call him "Zhu Yawen."
Zhu Yawen, the one who was later marketed as "walking hormones".
Liu Yu didn't have a deep impression of him in his previous life, only knowing that he was an actor who had acted in many plays. Now that he saw him in person, Liu Yu felt that the marketing claim wasn't too exaggerated.
There was another boy, tall and handsome, whom some people called "Luo Jin".
Luo Jin.
Liu Yu had a deep impression of this name, not because of any movies he had acted in, but because of his past life.
After the 2017 Lantern Festival Gala, Hunan TV arranged a dinner party, inviting several of its partners and artists to have a casual meal together.
Luo Jin and his later wife Tang Yan were both there. Liu Yu provided transportation for that meal, several Mercedes-Benz vans, and the drivers were all from his company.
During the dinner, Liu Yu chatted with Luo Jin for a few minutes and found him to be a very honest and straightforward person who didn't put on airs and spoke without beating around the bush.
Later, when Luo Jin and Tang Yan's child went out, he even gave a like to their post on WeChat Moments.
Luo Jin, who is now standing on the training ground, is in his early twenties. His face still has a youthful look, and when he stands at attention, he raises his chin a little too high, making him look stubborn.
"It's so good to be young," Liu Yu thought.
However, he didn't go up and chat with them, firstly because it wasn't allowed to switch classes or train during military training, and secondly because he felt it was unnecessary.
The best time to get to know someone is not when you take the initiative to approach them, but when they need you.
.....
On the last day of military training, the instructors lined up on both sides of the bus to see them off.
The stern-faced instructors, who had been wearing long faces for the past two weeks, suddenly became gentle, and some even had tears in their eyes.
Some people on the bus cried, some leaned against the windows and waved wildly, and some shouted, "Goodbye, instructor!"
Liu Yu didn't cry; he admitted that he was momentarily dazed.
He remembered the day he was discharged from the army, when his comrades stood in the truck bed singing, snowflakes drifting in and landing on their shoulders. What was that song called again? "Camel Bells."
"Sending off comrades-in-arms on their journey, silently shedding tears..."
Xin Hao sat next to him, looking out the window, and suddenly said, "Was it like this when we were discharged from the army?"
"Pretty much. Except she didn't cry."
"You didn't cry, but others did?"
"The squad leader cried."
Xin Hao was silent for a moment: "My class monitor cried too. A big, burly guy, he hugged me and wailed. It was embarrassing."
The two sat side by side on the bus, neither of them speaking.
The mountains outside the car window receded one after another, and the sunlight shone on the bare rocks. Autumn comes early in Beijing; by the end of September, the leaves on the mountains had already begun to turn yellow.
……
After the military training ended, life suddenly became peaceful.
Classes, after class, cafeteria, dormitory, library.
Liu Yu's life is as disciplined as military management. He gets up at six o'clock every day and goes to bed at eleven o'clock at night, with his time in between divided into precise blocks: attending classes, reading professional books, writing scripts, exercising, and sleeping.
His grades in his major courses were so good that it was hard to believe he was an older veteran.
In the "Film and Television Project Management" class, the teacher mentioned a case: a film project's budget exceeded its target, leading to the withdrawal of investors and the project failing.
Liu Yu raised his hand to speak, analyzing the problem from three perspectives: cost control, risk contingency plans, and contract terms. He then proposed a "phased capital injection" solution.
After listening, the teacher paused for two seconds, then said, "This student's answer is even more complete than the standard answer in my lesson plan."
The students next to him all turned to look at him, their expressions as if they had seen an alien.
Liu Yu sat down without changing his expression, thinking to himself: If you had been in the business world for twenty years, this little thing would be nothing.
He also knew that he wasn't there to show off his superiority; he was there to lay a foundation.
In his previous life, he had only observed the film and television industry from the sidelines and had never systematically studied its professional knowledge.
He needs to learn all the hard knowledge from scratch, including production processes, budget management, distribution contracts, copyright law, and tax planning.
Fortunately, the library at Beijing Film Academy is a treasure trove.
Many of the old film materials from the 1960s and 70s, production archives from the golden age of Hong Kong cinema, and translations of foreign film and television management books are simply unavailable elsewhere.
Liu Yu pounced on it like a hungry wolf, borrowing five books every week, reading them, and then borrowing more, in a continuous cycle.
The librarian, a woman in her fifties, noticed he came so often that she couldn't help but ask him one day, "Young man, which department are you in?"
Department of Management
"Why are management students reading screenwriting books all the time?"
"Because no one helps me revise the script I write."
The older sister was amused and extended his loan for another week.