“Mom, you’ve worked hard!” Xiao Qin acted like a pampered daughter and threw herself into Auntie Ren’s embrace.
Auntie Ren rubbed her daughter’s head and sized me up while I stood there awkwardly.
“How’s your English?” Auntie Ren suddenly asked.
Eh? Why do you suddenly care about my English, I do remember that you said you would recommend me for a role if my English is up to par! I am not interested! I came here today with a different objective!
Besides, my English grades are as shit as usual! Last week during a test, one of the questions was to write an English essay on penguins, but I thoughtlessly wrote about ‘QQ’! (TN: QQ is a social media platform that uses a penguin as its logo) What’s embarrassing is that I was not the only one who wrote it, Xiong YaoYue also believed QQ was the right answer, so I was criticized along with her!
Right when I was at a loss for words, the main actor arrived on the scene. However, it was not Ai Mi, but a happy-go-lucky young man with flax-colored hair, dark brown eyes, and Latin characteristics. I am not good at estimating ages of Westerners, but this person should be around 18, no more than 20 years old.
He was currently a bit taller than me (But who knows about the future), he had sturdy muscles on his shoulder that was probably trained in a gym (this usually does not equate to actual battle strength). His costume seemed like it was a mix and match, like a Chinese explorer who sailed to the West to borrow a blanket from Native Americans, and then proceeded to cut off a strip to use as a headband. Then he had a pair of jeans that looked like it was ground with a mortar, paired with a dragon embroidered on his chest. Honestly, I cannot tell which region of the world his tailor came from at all.
Is this what foreigners mean when they say ‘Oriental’? But I have to admit that although it was mix and match, it did not look bad, and it brought out the actor’s passion and enthusiasm.
Auntie Ren walked in front to direct his movements, but I did not understand anything since they only spoke in English.
Xiao Qin came at the right time to help explain:
“My mom told Kyle to be careful of number 7’s revolving elbow hit… oh right, the actor’s name is Kyle. He’s the main male lead, an American. My mom has a pretty good evaluation of him, she said that he worked the hardest out of all the young actors.”
He is the main male lead of this film? I remember Ai Mi was the main female lead, and the male and female leads are supposed to become lovers! So that means this kid is feeling up my sister every day? I don’t know why I have this weird feeling in my heart!
“About that, Ai Mi and Kyle actually doesn’t have a lot of physical contact. I read a bit of the script my mom brought home, and I thought the setup of the film was strange: Although Ai Mi looks like the female lead, she’s actually antagonistic loli in the first part, and she only turns good in the second part. In the current storyline, Kyle is mainly dating the secondary female lead and the secondary male lead….”
Wait, wait, wait! What did you say! The part about Ai Mi was not hard to understand since it was a pretty common plot line, but what do you mean when you said the male lead dates the secondary male lead?
“Ahhh~~~ Did I use language that you don’t understand?” Xiao Qin made a correction in a hurry, “In layman’s terms, it’s homosexuality! Nowadays, everyone is doing gay stuff, so the director thought he wouldn’t get good ratings if he doesn’t add any gay love!” (TN: Honestly, I think I translated it as a movie, but they were using a word that could mean both movie or TV show, I think in this case it might be a TV show.)
After a slight pause, she said with worry: “Although that’s the case, please don’t go along with the flow and be gay, okay? I’ll definitely satisfy you more than a gay lover!”
When we were still talking, the fight between Kyle and the warriors who were standing on the set wall had started. The warriors advanced based on Auntie Ren’s arrangement. It looks like they were bullying one person with numbers, but they were actually being sent to receive a beating.
Even though there were no sound or special effects, this scene looked a bit fake. But Kyle was able to carry a bit of the Oriental charm in his movements even though he has not been studying for very long, no wonder Auntie Ren praised him.
If it was not a fist, it was a kick, and the warriors all jumped backward off the wall after receiving a ‘heavy hit’ and landed safely on a cushion off the scene. I saw a thin steel wire attached to one of the warriors who was sent flying to the sky.
The last warrior who jumped on the wall caught my gaze.
First of all, he did not have a steel wire attached to him, and he was able to use a beautifully executed 360° front flip to land on the wall. He had a great balance and positioning, and it made the harmless weapon in his hands seem dangerous.
Secondly, he had a long braid of hair behind his helmet which I did not like. Why do foreigners always think boys wear braids, females bind their feet, and will always stay that ignorant and uneducated?
Although his actions were beautiful, a minor character will always be a minor character. After exchanging three blows with Kyle, he was struck on the waist with a punch and he threw himself onto the safety mat like the others.
Kyle’s punch was pretty good, was it the result of Auntie Ren’s teachings?
My ears basically became a decorative item since I was only surrounded by English speakers. Xiao Qin was giggling as she became my personal commentator.
“Ye Lin classmate, did you know? Kyle is actually obsessed with Oriental culture, he even invited four Chinese teachers to learn Chinese.”
“I even heard he often asks for guidance from Ai Mi to learn Chinese!”
That’s not strange because even though Ai Mi’s Chinese writing looks terrible, her speech is at a tenth grade level and should definitely be enough for a novice American.
“But it seems like Ai Mi isn’t willing to teach him and keeps saying Kyle is wasting her time… Also, when the crew was in America, Kyle liked the trend of getting a Chinese character tattoo, and he wanted to tattoo the ‘serve‘ word based on Japanese samurai…”
Since Kyle knows the word ‘serve’ represents Japanese samurai, then he was probably influenced by anime or Samurai Shodown.
“But the tattoo artist doesn’t know Chinese and Kyle lost the paper with the word written on it. At the time, Ai Mi was nearby so Kyle asked her to help him write the word that represents samurai… As a result, Ai Mi wrote the word ‘hemorrhoid‘, he thought it looked pretty similar so he delightfully asked the artist to tattoo it on him…”
—— Hemorrhoid? Even though I am your brother, I still feel you went a bit overboard! Usually, people learn the ‘serve’ word before they learn ‘hemorrhoid’. You probably wrote out the wrong word intentionally!
“So…. that word is still on Kyle’s arm and no one wants to be the one to tell him…”
Xiao Qin stuck out her tongue as if she thought Ai Mi’s prank was interesting.
After the scene ended, Kyle wiped the sweat on his forehead and actually imitated martial artists and did a fist cupped bow to the other 12 warriors and they responded with their greetings. It was a harmonious scene.
I still did not remove my bias against Kyle, “Hmph, why’s he putting up an act even after he made everyone wait so long?”
Xiao Qin explained to me cautiously: “Actually… the previous scene was supposed to be Ai Mi’s scene. Because she threw a fit and hid her costume, it took a long time for them to find it. That’s why they had to wait a long time, and in the end, they decided to shoot Kyle’s scene first…”
When she saw that I wanted to meet Ai Mi, Xiao Qin said: “I’ll take you to her.” Then she took advantage of the opportunity to hold onto my hand.