My name is Jiang Li, and I am a playwright who works in a dilapidated theater on the outskirts of the city.
The script "No One Applauds", which I wrote for three years, was rejected time and time again by the employer. They say that it can't be driven without traffic, and no one will watch it without sweet pets, but this is a confession I wrote for this impetuous era. It is the phrase left by my father that I have kept for ten years: "The drama must be true, and the person must be straight."
I thought it would just rot in the drawer until Shen Zhiyi opened the iron door of the theater at three o'clock in the morning on that autumn night.
The top idol who lives under the gaze of millions of people, the star who was ridiculed by the entire Internet as a "traffic vase", word for word, recited the thoughts that I locked in the cracks of the script and did not dare to show to anyone.
He said that he wanted to play this role and play his true self for once.
We honed our lines in an empty theater until dawn, hugged secretly in an empty storage room, walked side by side two meters apart on the street in the early morning, and hid the love that cannot be expressed in words in every line of the script.
He was the only light I chased when I was trapped in the torrent of reality; I was his only outlet during the eight years he was trapped in capital and contracts.
But we have all forgotten that the world under the spotlight can never tolerate pure sincerity.
The siege of capital, the abuse of fans, and the overwhelming online violence have trapped us in place.
In the end, at a nationally broadcast press conference, he said expressionlessly in front of countless cameras: Jiang Li and I only have a working relationship and have never had a personal relationship. The love affairs reported online are just hype.
On the premiere stage, which was filled with applause, I finished reading the exclusive ending that was written only for us, then turned around and burned all the script manuscripts that I had written for three years.
The play has come to an end, and our story has come to its final chapter.
Later, he became an award-winning actor and guarded that empty theater year after year; I went to a small seaside town in the south and became an ordinary Chinese teacher, never writing a line again.
We live in the same world, but we live as parallel lines that never intersect.
In the final chapter of the script, there is no more you and me.
In the end, no one applauded this love that no one knew about.
Purpose: In the current era, the influence of large companies and the "fan circle" culture on the private lives of artists themselves has caused be love