“I remember this,” Lin Feng whispered, watching the clip on a monitor. “I hadn’t eaten in two days. I’d slept in a bus station. My mom had just… she’d just told me she was cutting me off. Said I was chasing a ghost.”
“Four seconds,” he said. “I figured four seconds of air, and then nothing. It felt… quiet. That’s what I wanted. Quiet.”
He laughed—a hollow, broken sound. “My manager texted. Said I had a 5 AM call time for a makeup test. And I thought… I can’t. I can’t do that to the crew. They’d have to find a replacement. They’d have to reshoot. It would cost millions.”
There were fifty people in the audience.
“They think they know me,” he said finally. “They’ve consumed me. Like a product. Open the box, take a bite, throw away the wrapper.”
