John Brooks has a bad temper when he wakes up—sometimes he just grumbles, but sometimes he throws a real tantrum. The symptoms were already quite obvious when he was in elementary school. The family nanny never dared to wake him up, so missing the first class was a common occurrence, which led to a poor academic foundation.

Jason Wright entered the room without changing his expression, said nothing extra, rolled up his sleeves, and dragged three suitcases into the walk-in closet.

After hanging up three robes in a row, he couldn’t help poking his head out: “Superstar, counting the one you’re wearing, you brought four robes?”

John Brooks lay on the bed, chanting: “The gray morning robe is for getting up, the black night robe is for the evening, the white bathrobe is for after a shower, and the one I’m wearing is the actual sleepwear.”

“No wonder you’re a superstar,” Jason Wright said. “Most people just need a pair of boxers, but you make it so complicated.”

After unpacking, Jason Wright went to the bathroom to run hot water and squeeze toothpaste. The script was scattered on the bench at the foot of the bed, so he went over to tidy it up and fanned John Brooks’s feet.

John Brooks’s script was full of signs of being flipped through. If you opened it, you’d find—cartoon characters drawn in the blank spaces, a note after the male lead’s name saying “most handsome in the whole play,” and even a page where all the periods had been blacked out.

Jason Wright sighed in distress: “There’s a table read today. It wouldn’t look good if the director saw this.”

John Brooks sat up, his robe slightly open, faintly revealing the lines of his abs. He said, “Then I’ll sit in the back.”

“I woke you up at five thirty so you could sit in the back?” Jason Wright sounded like a mom pushing her son to get into Tsinghua University. “You’re the legitimate male lead. You need to show yourself more, so Director Ren will remember you for his next project, got it?”

John Brooks let out a cold laugh. He hadn’t seen his dad in two months, not even a phone call. If his own father couldn’t remember him, how could he expect the director to?

But he did remember something, and suddenly wasn’t sleepy anymore. He said, “Last night I ran into the guest staying across the hall. Guess who it was?”

Jason Wright guessed, “A gorgeous woman.”

John Brooks rolled his eyes. “It was the person Director Thompson picked up at the airport yesterday.”

Jason Wright was shocked: “What are the odds?”

John Brooks got up to wash up, and Jason Wright followed, asking, “What do they look like? Do they know who you are? What’s their name, are they a celebrity? Who do they play in the show?”

It was like a big math problem, and John Brooks only knew the answer to the first part. He replied, “Looks... definitely not an ordinary person.”

“That’s it?” Jason Wright asked. “You guys didn’t say hi?”

Just bringing it up made John Brooks annoyed. “I tried to talk to him, but he pretended not to hear.”

Jason Wright asked again, “You didn’t tell him you’re the male lead?”

“Of course I did,” John Brooks said. “Then he just went straight back to his room.”

Jason Wright was very empathetic and said indignantly, “Ignore him. He’s probably some well-connected guy who bought his way into the crew and now acts all cocky. You’re the male lead—who’s afraid of who?”

With a toothbrush in his mouth, John Brooks worried, “He’s not going to try to get more scenes for himself, is he?”

“Don’t worry,” Jason Wright said. “The head writer is the biggest investor. He won’t allow him to add scenes.”

John Brooks breathed a sigh of relief. “The head writer is great.”

The table read was held at the hotel booked by the crew. John Brooks left early, and when he arrived, the other actors hadn’t come yet. Only the stagehands were there, setting up name cards and bottled water in the conference room.

Table reads aren’t a one-time thing. They might happen several times during filming—sometimes reading through the whole script, sometimes just a key scene. It all depends on the director.

John Brooks’s seat was very close to the director. He’d always sat at the back of the class when he was in school, so he could slump over whenever he wanted, but now he had to sit up straight.

The actors arrived one after another, greeting each other briefly. There would be plenty of time to chat at the launch banquet anyway. Several directors and the camera crew also arrived, and soon the conference room was full. William Carter sat at the front, presiding.

John Brooks scanned everyone in the room, three times in total, making sure that the guy staying in 6206 wasn’t there. Unless there was some force majeure, the crew required everyone to attend. There was no way he was just sleeping in at the hotel.

Unless, his role didn’t require him to be there.

John Brooks thought, so he bought his way into the crew just to be a background extra?

William Carter spoke up: “Let’s get started as soon as possible.”

John Brooks withdrew his gaze and looked down, flipping open the script—the title was “The First Night.”

He played two roles in the show, a pair of twin brothers with very different personalities. The older brother was Edward Green, steady and introverted; the younger brother was Samuel Green, reckless and mischievous. One was calm, the other lively—contradictory yet complementary.

After their father passed away, their mother brought Edward Green and Samuel Green to live in Chongqing. Life wasn’t easy, but the three of them depended on each other and supported one another. The story starts in their senior year of high school and continues into college.

John Brooks was a poor student—restless, impatient—but he read the script all in one go.

He felt he was a lot like Samuel Green, in personality, behavior, even dreams.

John Brooks thought back to the audition day. There were two scenes: one where Samuel Green skips school and gets caught, delivering a long, twisted monologue to test his lines; the other where Edward Green looks at a photo of their father, with no lines at all, testing pure acting.

He played the first scene just as himself. For the second, he held a blank sheet of paper, pretending it was a photo, and thought of his own late mother, muddling his way through Edward Green’s part.