After the crew of [Where Are You?] signed the contract with them, Lin Momo and Lin Cheng not only received a contract and a script, but even their originally ‘D-category’ actor credentials was changed to ‘B-category’.

Lin Momo had an excited smile on her face from the time they left the crew all the way to when they reached the place where the two of them lived for this week. She looked at the script and their new IDs over and over again, refusing to let them go.

Seeing the happiness on Lin Momo’s face, the landlady smiled and asked, “Little Momo, what good thing happened to you today?” 

“Auntie, I got hired for a job. Look, here it is!” Lin Momo Mo ran over and couldn’t wait to share the script of her new drama with the landlady.

Looking at the title on Lin Momo’s script, the landlady was quite surprised—although she was not an actress herself, the guests who come to eat and sit in her restaurant everyday were all involved in one filming crew or another, and she could hear a lot of information from the conversations of those people.

The landlady has heard of this particular production team. She heard someone say that although it was not as good as those big commercial dramas with strong investors, this drama has a very good reputation and has veteran actors on board. She heard that it was an artistic film purely intended for winning awards.

The landlady was a little surprised. She didn’t expect that the father and daughter would be able to take on such a drama after going out for only a day. Moreover, although Lin Momo’s role was not that big, she was still one of the protagonists in the drama

“This is a very good thing indeed,” the landlady said with a big smile on her face. After a pause, she looked at Lin Cheng and said, “Wait a minute, I will cook you some good dishes, just think of it as a celebration for you!”

The landlady personally went to the kitchen to prepare several big dishes for Lin Cheng and Lin Momo.

Although the landlady firmly refused to let them pay after the meal, Lin Cheng and his daughter still insisted on paying.

“You are running a business, there is no reason to lose money,” Lin Cheng said and handed the money to the landlady.

Lin Momo also nodded and said, “And Auntie, since we accepted this script, the salary for me and my dad is super high, so you don’t need to worry that we won’t have money this week.” 

… … 

As soon as Lin Momo said this, the audience in the livestream channel all laughed:

[Oh my god, Momo still thinks that the salary of 2,000 yuan is too high.]

[No, no, Momo doesn’t think she’s well paid—she thinks she’s super well paid!]

[When Momo talked about her high salary… I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it, hahahaha.]

[I love Momo, but this is really funny.]

… …

The landlady didn’t know that the ‘super high’ salary that Lin Momo mentioned was only 2,000 yuan. Hearing what Lin Momo said, and thinking about it some more, the role that Lin Momo would play was a protagonist after all, so she thought that Lin Momo’s pay would really be impressive.

So, the landlady nodded, smiled at the father and daughter in front of her and said, “Okay, I’ll accept some payment from you, but it won’t be that much, I’ll just let you pay the cost of ingredients.” 

The landlady finally accepted Lin Cheng’s money but she only took half of the money and returned the other half.

… … translated by Maela @ whitemoonlighttranslations.com

The father and daughter went back to their room together. After Lin Momo changed her clothes, she couldn’t wait to read the script.

Some of their neighbors were in the common living room outside. Lin Momo didn’t want to disturb other people, so she stayed in their own room to read.

The lights in the room were a little dim. Lin Cheng wanted to remind Lin Momo to pay attention to her eyes and stop reading. However, seeing the look of intense concentration on Lin Momo’s face, Lin Cheng thought for a while and ended up not bothering her after all. Instead, he went to their landlady to borrow a desk lamp.

With the desk lamp, it really was much easier to read! Lin Momo smiled at Lin Cheng.

“Dad.”

“Hm?”

“What’s this word?” Lin Momo asked Lin Cheng, pointing to a word she circled on the script.

Lin Momo knew a lot of words, but there were still some words here that she hadn’t learned or seen in school.

“‘Ninety’, the same pronunciation as the word ‘hat’,” Lin Cheng said, paused, and then explained to Lin Momo, “This word refers to the age of someone eighty or ninety years old. Elderly. Put together like this, it’s the name of a place: ‘Elder County’”

Listening to Lin Cheng’s words, Lin Momo nodded, stared at the word and whispered “Elder, Elder County…” several times, and wrote down the word carefully.

“What about this one?”

“The word is ‘high’, see, the three pieces of ‘soil’ are stacked together like this.”¹

Lin Momo nodded again and marked the pinyin of the word ‘high’ on the script.

“What about this…”

…

The script for ‘Xu Duo’ doesn’t have much content. She has read all the new words in it, and has finished reading the script.

Because there were very few lines in it, although it was called a script, Lin Momo actually felt like she was reading a story.

“Dad,” Lin Momo called Lin Cheng again.

“What is it?”

Lin Momo turned to look at Lin Cheng and asked, “Did Xu Duo live with her parents and younger brother later?” 

The script only wrote that ‘Xu Duo’ was found by the police, but no more was said about what happened after that. Lin Momo was now curious about how the story ended.

Taking Lin Cheng’s hand and shaking it, Lin Momo continued to ponder matters out loud, “I don’t know whether their family went on to live where the parents worked, or whether they went back to their hometown in the countryside.

“I think Xu Duo seems like she would prefer to live in her hometown. She doesn’t seem to feel comfortable with the environment in the city. She doesn’t seem to like those kinds of buses, well, she doesn’t like city food stalls either…

“But if her mom and dad want to work in the city, Xu Duo would probably be okay to stay and live in the city with her parents.

“I don’t know if her brother’s illness has been cured…” 

As she said that, Lin Momo suddenly smiled and said, “It’s already been two years since her parents took him away, he must already have been cured. So, if Xu Duo stays in the city, she will have to rely on her younger brother to teach her many things he has learned.

“But Xu Duo is so smart, I’m sure she will be able to adapt to the new environment soon.”

Lin Momo kept talking by herself, her words full of her beautiful imaginations about ‘Xu Duo’s’ life after she was reunited with her family.

It was clear that in Lin Momo’s opinion, at the end of the script, when ‘Xu Duo’ was found by the police, the police uncle would definitely have helped ‘Xu Duo’ find her family.

Looking down at Lin Momo’s happy expression, Lin Cheng’s eyes moved slightly and he didn’t speak at all.

Serve as Contrast Team in a ‘Dad with Baby’ Show translated by Maela @ whitemoonlighttranslations.com

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FOOTNOTE:

1. Chinese characters are pictograms in a lot of ways. Lin Cheng is saying that the character for ‘high’ 垚 has the radical for ‘soil/earth’ 土 stacked one on top of the other. ↩︎