21 The Butterfly Moment

Without realising it, they both fall onto the large velvet-covered bed. Half undressed, their snow-white shoulders and necks are entwining in a wave of desire.

A blossoming pear tree is not as beautiful as his jade-like body; the peach petals in spring are no match for his shy blush.

Yuan Ge can no longer hold back the lust within him, fervent waves of desire rushing through his heart and body, pounding wildly against the boundaries of his sanity. With a whoosh, he tore open Rong Qing's robe, his lips searching hungrily, raining kisses all over his body, his hands peeling and stroking, eagerly exploring the nakedness beneath…

Outside the window the trees are swaying and the leaves are rustling in the autumn breeze.

Just as they are engrossed in the tender love and erotic fever, Rong Qing suddenly lets out a shrilly cry, "You! How could you be so cruel!"

With these words, tears are pouring out of his eyes, flooding his beautiful face and wetting Yuan Ge's cheeks as well. Yuan Ge is shocked, and when he looks more closely at the face in front of him, which only a moment ago was deeply affectionate, he sees that the tears have somehow turned into blood, and two hideous wounds have appeared on the wrists of the arms that are wrapped around him, and blood is gushing out from those wounds, drowning Yuan Ge in a bed of blood instantly.

Yuan Ge's mouth is filled with the metallic taste of blood, as if he is being choked, and he can no longer breathe as he slowly sinks into the hell of the pool of blood. As his consciousness drifts away, Rong Qing's face, which has been flitting about, becomes clearer and clearer. Yuan Ge finally sees that the face is actually identical to the face of the porcelain bumping boy he met today at the pond…

"Qingqing!"

Yuan Ge lets out a startled cry and sits up with a jolt.

There is no fish pond in front of him, no study, no velvet sheets, no mahogany bed. He is still lying in his own bed in his own bedroom. There is a faint glimmer of morning light outside the window at the moment, but the room is still too dark to tell what time it is.

Yuan Ge could hardly believe that such vivid and realistic scenes turned out to be just a dream - a dream in which Rong Qing's emotions seem to soak into his bones, his blood was hot and sticky, that lingering passion can still be felt in his hair and skin, and that suffocating fear is so real that it is actually frightening…

Yuan Ge wipes off the cold sweat on his forehead, his heart still palpating with fear, and checks his watch. It is only half past five in the morning. What is this dream all about? Why is Rong Qing's face, which was so close as if he was right before him, exactly the same as the boy he met last night? Just as Yuan Ge is pondering this bizarre dream, he is suddenly startled by an uncomfortable wet and slippery feeling in his underpants -

"Holy shit! What the fuck is this? I'm fucking wasted! I'm fucked!"

Feeling depressed, he hurriedly takes off his underwear and throws them into the washing machine along with the bed sheets. Yuan Ge thinks back on his dream in frustration, completely confused as to why he would dream about a stranger he just met, let alone befriended, and actually did something so embarrassing and ambiguous with him in his dream... However, no matter how bad he is feeling, everything he saw in the dream remains so clear, so vivid and so provocative in his mind. Every scene in the dream is so dramatic and emotional that it is easy to be fully immersed in it.

Yuan Ge suddenly has an inspiration, a sort of light bulb moment. The question that troubled him before he went to bed last night now suddenly has an answer - what this script lacks is not a sense of greatness or historical significance, but how to convey the kind of rollercoaster of twists and turns of emotion in the characters. Poignant, melancholic, lingering, intense, tragic … Rong Qing's every delicate expression of such emotions in his dream is exactly what he has been searching for these days!

The more Yuan Ge thinks about it, the more excited he becomes. Not only does he become wide awake, but his mind is also busy mulling over the scenes in the dream. If he were to film these scenes, how should he structure the story or switch between subplots, such as the fish pond scene at the beginning of the dream, which is rich in detail and very useful in presenting different layers of the characters … Yuan Ge rushes to his desk and begins to write down all the details of the dream in his project folder. When he finishes, he couldn't help but admire himself.

I'm such an extraordinary director, even when I'm dreaming I can dream at such a high level! What a boy genius am I!

After recording the dream in detail, Yuan Ge suddenly feels that he can no longer be sure whether the Rong Qiuchen he has met last night by the water is also just a part of his dream.

"Zhuang Zhou dreamed that he was a butterfly."[1]

Yuan Ge laughs at himself, washes his face and looks at himself in the mirror, remembering his own startled cry when he woke up as well as Rong Qiuchen's stunningly beautiful face in his dream, then he is inspired again and decides to give the film a beautiful new name - "Qingqing"[2].

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[1] This is one of the most famous stories of Zhuang Zhou, an ancient Chinese philosopher. Once he dreamed that he was a butterfly, and when he woke up, he was unsure if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou.

[2] Here is another play on words. "Qing" is the given name of the male protagonist "Rong Qing" in Yuan Ge's film script, but when this Chinese character is repeated as "Qingqing" it becomes an affectionate term of endearment, a term of endearment formerly between husband and wife or between close friends.