The Martial Arts Stunt Double of the Entertainment Circle – Chapter 3
by Little PandaAt Tuoba Yan’s height of 1.67 meters, 105 jin1 wasn’t fat at all, but she had the misfortune of a body type that showed weight easily, with a frame slightly larger than the petite and cute standard required by idol auditions. The current aesthetic trend favored pointed chins and large eyes, while her classical oval face was unpopular, so she didn’t even pass the preliminary round and was perfunctorily dismissed.
Humiliated and devastated, Tuoba Yan fell seriously ill after returning home, and before fully recovering, she began frantically dieting.
At first, Qiao Chunyi didn’t dare stop her from dieting, but after about half a month, Tuoba Yan—who had already dropped ten jin and was still unsatisfied—enrolled in an extreme weight-loss program online, declaring she would fast for two weeks!
Qiao Chunyi could sit still no longer. She repeatedly and earnestly admonished her daughter, buying many of Tuoba Yan’s favorite foods, but Tuoba Yan wouldn’t even glance at them. She found Qiao Chunyi annoying, installed three large mirrors in her bedroom, and every morning upon waking would examine her figure in the mirrors, practice her walking posture, carefully analyze her facial expressions, and smile at herself from every angle. Anyone who saw it would find it chilling.
Tuoba Jiao pursued a sweet and innocent style, which didn’t suit the tall and curvy Tuoba Yan, but driven by an obsession to surpass her younger sister, Tuoba Yan bought professional broadcasting textbooks to practice her pronunciation, even downloading numerous idol dramas and recreating the female leads’ lines with various tones, talking in her sleep as she endlessly shifted her voice.
Watching her daughter visibly thin by the day, her complexion turning an ugly sallow, yet her eyes shining with near-mad intensity, Qiao Chunyi—no matter how carefree she normally was—could not let this continue. She forcibly took Tuoba Yan to the psychiatry department, where she was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa and severe schizophrenia.
When lucid, Tuoba Yan initially knew to be obedient and take her medication, crying that she wouldn’t compete with Tuoba Jiao anymore and wouldn’t make Mom angry, but when her illness flared up, she was the same as before. She secretly looked up information online and learned that risperidone, one of her prescribed medications, caused weight gain. So Tuoba Yan put on a docile and well-behaved act to deceive Qiao Chunyi, and after she left, would stick her fingers down her throat to induce vomiting, purging both food and medication.
The diary entries stopped about a week before Tuoba Yan’s suicide. The content in the latter half was disordered and incoherent, some places soaked with tear stains, while other passages were abnormally elated.
Tuoba Yan closed the diary and massaged her aching temples. Tuoba Yan was pitiful… yet truly selfish.
She had such a wonderful, doting mother, yet didn’t know how to cherish her. In her previous life, Tuoba Yan had so yearned for familial love, but her mother died young, and her father was foolishly loyal to the Foolish Emperor. Her entry into the palace had been entirely orchestrated by her father. Later, when she suffered grievances and tried to summon him for an audience, wanting to recount her difficulties and hardships, she was lectured by her father on the great principles of ruler-minister and husband-wife duty, and gradually she gave up hope.
But the dead were gone, and all Tuoba Yan could do was to properly continue Tuoba Yan’s life, taking Tuoba Yan’s place in honoring Qiao Chunyi, so that this unfortunate woman could live the peaceful life she had always dreamed of.
Tuoba Yan’s body had already improved significantly. Seeing that Qiao Chunyi wasn’t around, with one hand she set up the bed tray she used for meals on her bed, gripped an ordinary Hero-brand fountain pen, and focused on writing.
She was a driven perfectionist by nature. When she first started writing with a pen, she was unaccustomed in every way, producing characters that were crooked like crawling insects. Although no one criticized or laughed at her poor handwriting, Tuoba Yan still felt deeply ashamed. She asked Qiao Chunyi for a stack of cheap exercise books and several simplified Chinese copybooks in various styles, insisting on practicing for at least three hours every day.
In just a week, the exceptionally intelligent Tuoba Yan recovered her former resolute calligraphic spirit, and her vigorous, forceful fountain pen script made Qiao Chunyi click her tongue in amazement. This silly mother didn’t notice her daughter’s drastic change at all, and specifically asked Tuoba Yan to write a few inspirational lines so she could show them off. Now the entire floor of nurses and patients knew that Room 23 had a pretty young girl skilled in pen calligraphy.
Tuoba Yan felt somewhat helpless about it, but if it could make Mom happy, it didn’t matter.
She recalled the boxing routines she had learned in the past, and with flowing, vigorous strokes, transcribed them character by character in traditional script onto paper. Qiao Chunyi came bustling in carrying a paper bag, her face beaming with joy: “Yanyan, look what Mom bought for you!”
Tuoba Yan capped her fountain pen, casually put away the exercise book recording her martial arts manual, and dragged out a plastic stool from under the bed for Qiao Chunyi:
“That’s so out of the blue, how am I supposed to guess?”
Qiao Chunyi sat on the stool, took the water cup Tuoba Yan handed her, and gulped it down: “See for yourself.” She shoved the paper bag at Tuoba Yan.
Tuoba Yan opened the kraft paper bag. Inside was a dainty white box, and upon opening it, she found a pink-and-white smartphone, exquisitely cute.
This was truly a godsend. The phone Tuoba Yan had used before was broken when she had her episode, and Qiao Chunyi used an outdated flip phone of some off-brand. Every day, Tuoba Yan watched the nurses, patients, and visiting family members coming and going, nearly every one of them holding a smartphone, and she had been coveting one for a long time. She had long heard about all the magical features of phones—high-definition photography and video recording, downloading books and videos, communicating with people thousands of miles away through social apps…
Under Qiao Chunyi’s guidance, Tuoba Yan clumsily set up the phone. Seeing genuine delight finally appear on her daughter’s face, Qiao Chunyi felt the money was well spent. Her daughter’s personality had changed drastically since the suicide attempt, and while Qiao Chunyi was happy, she also worried somewhat—fearing this might be the brief calm before the storm. After all, Qiao Chunyi hadn’t failed to notice the occasional flashes of gloom in her daughter.
At last she was showing a bit of a child’s demeanor. Qiao Chunyi was filled with joy.
Tuoba Yan installed the SIM card and held down the power button to turn on the phone. The crisp, vivid screen delighted her so much she couldn’t put it down, turning it over and over as she explored it. Qiao Chunyi wasn’t very clear on how smartphones worked either, so the mother and daughter huddled together, following the instruction manual to connect to the hospital’s free Wi-Fi.
Now those boring magazines from the original host finally lost their appeal. Tuoba Yan had heard from fellow patients that smartphones could download e-books to read. At first, she encountered all sorts of pushed Mary Sue novels and harem power fantasies, which left her worldview thoroughly shattered, but gradually she learned how to find reliable historical texts to download.
Tuoba Yan couldn’t find the name of the Great Yan Dynasty on search engines, and the historical texts she downloaded made no mention of such a dynasty ever existing. But after being disappointed for a few days, she let it go. Why dwell on that place of heartbreak?
Early that morning, Qiao Chunyi bought breakfast for Tuoba Yan and left for work. After finishing her IV drip, Tuoba Yan called a nurse to remove the needle, then leisurely put on her hospital gown and went downstairs.
Yuchuan Hospital was the most renowned hospital in Yuchuan City. The hospital’s rear courtyard was beautifully landscaped, with over a dozen towering old trees, an environment that truly deserved to be called a chorus of birdsong and fragrance of flowers.
Walking all the way to her destination, several elderly patients convalescing at the hospital lit up when they saw her: “Little girl, why are you so late today?”
Tuoba Yan smiled: “It’s not that I came late, it’s that you all came too early, Grandpa Li. Have you eaten?”
Old Man Li snorted angrily: “Don’t talk to me about eating. I’m already full from being angry at those little bastards.”
“You Old Man Li, weren’t you so capable? Didn’t you run your household like a military regiment? Didn’t you always boast that if you said east, the younger generation wouldn’t dare say west? And now look at you!” Grandpa Lin, whose face was ruddy and bright, gloated and mocked him. “Just you wait, you’ll get more of this. Serves you right for being a tyrant and hitting children!”
Several old men teased Old Man Li. Old Man Li rolled his eyes in anger, too annoyed to deal with these frenemies: “Little Yan, you should teach me the next form today, right?”
Tuoba Yan said: “Then I’ll have to test you.”
The author has something to say:
Please leave comments, everyone! Don’t let me play solo QAQ
0 Comments