C2—Back To The Past

 After the long silence of darkness.

  Zhou Yuhe heard the sounds of chattering around him, very, noisy.

  He tried to hold his five fingers, but he could still move them. The image in front of his eyes also gradually became normal from darkness, and what appeared in his vision was a white A4 paper with many words densely written on it, and the eye-shaking white color made Zhou Yuhe frown.

  I, am I still alive? Where is this? A hospital?

  String after string of questions popped into his head, and Zhou Yuhe lifted his head to see his surroundings clearly.

  This place seemed to be a large audition hall, and the reason why this could be discovered was because there was a banner pulled over the large LED screen directly in front of it, which read “The audition site of “Goodbye, the Youth We Walked Together””. On the stage below the banner was a long office table with three seats for a middle-aged man who looked like a director, and another elegant woman dressed in artsy clothes and glasses, while the seat on the far right of the table was empty.

  The audition hall was quite large, and the theater that looked like it could seat hundreds was now densely packed, and sitting in the seats waiting to be called were one beautiful, handsome young man after another, all leaping with ambition.

  ’Goodbye, Our Youth Together’…the title of the play was familiar.

  Zhou Yuhe’s thoughts were suddenly pulled back to the spring of his nineteenth year. He had just debuted less than a year ago, and because of… some personal matters, he hadn’t been able to get any good resources despite his amazing looks.

 It was a youth drama that was a huge hit back then, and because of the unexpected popularity of the lead actor, the drama’s ratings were sealed, the topic exploded, and it was the worthy king of the drama in the second quarter of ’14. Not only did it create countless popular segments, Male lead 1 and 2 also went down in history as classic characters in youth films. Nineteen-year-old Zhou Yuhe was also fortunate enough to participate in this youth drama, but only as a school bully.

  He actually had the opportunity to play the role of the second male lead Xu Chang.

  He remembered that it was at this audition that director Cai Rongxi, after watching him play the school bully, turned on the microphone and calmly asked him, “If you were to play Xu Chang, would you be willing?”

  A startled Zhou Yuhe hesitantly refused, because offstage, Ceng Ang was watching him, and they made an appointment to let him play the role of Xu Chang.

  Ceng Ang, an artist under the same manager as him, was also the first boyfriend he dated, and before that, he had only had one worthless relationship. For this lover, naturally, he was obedient to his words.

  Zhou Yuhe blinked his eyes, coming back from his memories, how could he go back more than twenty years ago? Was this a dream?

  He examined everything around him with a cool, almost cold, glare, and then looked down at the paper script in his hand, filled with audition lines, recruited roles with selected passages, and a cup of his favorite milk tea from his youth in his right hand…

  It was all too real.

  Zhou Yuhe, as if he had a divine understanding, placed the script on his lap, pulled out an iPhone 5 from his own trouser pocket, pressed the home button, and the screensaver clearly displayed the time: the 12th of February 2014.

  It was at this time that he realized that his hands holding the phone and the milk tea was so fair and slender, well boned, with no burn marks on them at all…

  Zhou Yuhe’s hands shook with fear, and half a cup of milk tea in his hand spilled on his white t-shirt and the script on his thigh.

  Zhou Yuhe put the script and milk tea on the seat with his hands and feet and went to the bathroom to clean up in a bit of a mess.

  Although he had been forewarned, when he really saw this face in the bathroom mirror, the inner shock was self-evident.

  It reflected an exquisite and flawless teenager, with skin as white as gelatin, young and tender, with no traces of burns, yet not at all feminine. It had something to do with his nearly 1.8 meters in height and his upright, handsome features.

  The long eyebrows, phoenix eyes, high nose, thin and ruthless lips, sharp and perfect jawline, exquisite to the point of speechlessness, slightly raised corners of the eyes to give his eyes originally forbidden indifference with a touch of seductive sexy and amorous.  

   This was a melancholy with the dense water vapor, perfect like a young man from the ancient poetry scrolls.

  This was nineteen-year-old Zhou Yuhe.

  He turned on the faucet and jerked several handfuls of cold water on his face to calm his unthinking brain.

  He could never have imagined, in any case, that after a change like that, instead of dying, he would return to the past.

  Back to the beginning where everything hadn’t happened yet, with a chance to start over.

  Unbelievable.

  Zhou Yuhe stared at the nineteen-year-old boy in the mirror, wanting to scream and vent, but eventually calmed down.

  After all, he wasn’t really nineteen years old, and the real Zhou Yuhe was already a man in his late fourties.

  After a brief moment of shock, he grew to accept it all.

  He stood farther away and examined the teenager in the mirror again. It was still early spring, and the teenager was wearing a grey British college cardigan jacket over the white T-shirt that had been soiled by Milk Tea, and a slim black straight-legged trouser, which was simple but clean and clear, taking full advantage of a pair of long legs.

  Such a face, such a temperament, frankly speaking back then he didn’t really make good use of it. Zhou Yuhe had a bad temper when he was young, because he grew up in a single-parent family, and his mother, a university professor, was against him going into the entertainment industry, he ran away from home before he was an adult, he was always used to protecting himself like a hedgehog, indifferent and unemotional, and he would ignore everyone, which in the eyes of the uninformed could easily be interpreted as playing a big game and being black-faced.

  This was the first time he’d ever been in the entertainment industry. It was only after breaking up with Ceng Ang that he opened his eyes to the world, but unfortunately later he met Ji Chen and took on numerous bad movies. Even though he had acting skills, the trials and tribulations of bad movies were gradually becoming more and more ordinary, even if there were occasionally one or two classic works, he couldn’t salvage the reputation of the king of bad movies among the passers-by, box office poison.

  It could be said that the years when Zhou Yu could have been the most popular were completely wasted.

  Go back in time, and again, more than twenty years back, Zhou Yuhe.  

This was necessarily not the will of God. 

  Zhou Yuhe shook off the water stains from his hair and looked at the young man in the mirror again with a determination in his eyes that he had never had before.

  He turned around and left the restroom.

  Who knew that as soon as he turned out of the restroom, a handsome looking youth stopped him in his tracks.

  Although the youth was handsome, his eyebrows were always slightly jealous, and the ambition couldn’t be hidden.

  Ceng Ang…

  Zhou Yuhe mused in his heart about the name that had once torn his heart and gnashed his teeth.

“What?” Zhou Yuhe’s voice was neither cold nor hot.

Ceng Ang had long been accustomed to the indifferent appearance of the boy, and for a while, he didn’t notice it. He just spoke to him according to his original plan, “The audition will begin soon, do you remember what I told you? I? The people who watched this audition, except for a few dark horses, as long as you don’t try Xu Chang’s role, I will definitely be able to pick it, and Brother Yang will try to help me fight for it.”

   Brother Yang referred to their manager Yang Yu.

   Zhou Yuhe glanced at the other deeply, the calmness in those eyes was shocking, “I know.”

“What’s your attitude? Do you want to fight again?” Zhou Yuhe’s eyes easily angered Ceng Ang. In this relationship, Ceng Ang had absolute dominance. If it weren’t for the fact that they were outside, Zhou Yuhe wouldn’t dare to talk like this. He must have changed his attitude towards him.

Generally, when he heard “arguing”, no matter how indifferent on the surface, the young man had to lower his head softly to comfort him, but Zhou Yuhe just sneered today without answering and walked around him.

 Ceng Ang was so angry that he yelled.

   Zhou Yuhe couldn’t help but sneered when he heard the person behind him vaguely threaten to break up again.

   This section with Ceng Ang was also a bad fate.

 Ceng Ang was not gay, he only accepted his confession after he realized that Zhou Yuhe was interested in him, and only after he swallowed his nausea.

  Zhou Yuhe wasn’t a good character, but he was indeed a beautiful face in full bloom, so at first, the company gave him the best resources among the newcomers that year, but later, these entered into Ceng Ang’s pocket.

  In the first two years of love, Ceng Ang drained Zhou Yuhe of all his value like a parasite, from an eighteenth-tier newcomer to a second- or third-tier famous youngster, while Zhou Yuhe was still standing still.

  Before getting the role of Xu Chang, Ceng Ang had been obedient and gentle to Zhou Yuhe for a while, and when the character burst into popularity, he kicked him out without any delay.

  Thinking back on these grim past events, Zhou Yuhe was not as touchy and dark as before, his appearance was, as usual, only some hidden cold air diffused from his body.

  Fifteen years of miserable circumstances were enough to smooth out all the edges and corners of a person.

  He’d even been through ups and downs like that, so what was a little thing like that, and the auditions hadn’t even started yet.

  Just wait and see.

  Zhou Yuhe laughed and returned to the audition venue.

  As soon as he showed up from the entrance, his eye-catching appearance caused many people in the venue to discuss.

  Zhou Yuhe ignored those probing gazes and squeezed back into his original third row, picking up the script that had been spilled by Milk Tea again, a familiar feeling came over him, and every line on the script was intimate.

  He was really back.

  ”Quiet, quiet, auditions will now begin. Students who had their numbers called please come to the stage.” Just as Zhou Yuhe appearance was being discussed, the stage director Cai Rongxi turned on the microphone, the noisy scene was suddenly calmed down by this big director called “the father of youth”.

  A needle drop could be heard after he spoke.

 Ms. Fang Lin, the screenwriter next to him, pointed to the empty space on the far right, as if asking whether she should wait or not.

   Director Cai looked around the scene and saw no one, so he shook his head and turned on the microphone again: “Go ahead, number 1.”

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7 Replies to “C2—Back To The Past”

  1. Thank you for the translation ❤️
    This story seems interesting.

  2. It seems Zhou Yuhe wasn’t a good judge of character. Both of his lovers were trash.

    Thanks for the chapter!

  3. Thank you for translating 🙂

    Now on another note. I feel like an mistake has been made in regards to his height. Most probably won’t care about this and really shouldn’t either xD. But it was mentioned that he was around 1.5 meters in height while implying he’s tall. 1.5 meter is not tall and it’s actually shorter than most people. So im a bit confused

    1. Hiya, I combed through the raws, then corrected myself, it’s 1.8 meters.

  4. How is he a teenager if he was in his late forties yet went back 20 years???

    1. i corrected it to more than, thanks for pointing it out.

  5. Wow, that boy really had shitty taste in lovers (or rather greedy assholes wanted to take advantage of him), I feel sorry for young Zhou Yuhe 😭 At least he can avoid those pitfalls now

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