After I died, they cried in the live studio

Chapter 198 Gazing at the Stars
At the launch ceremony of the Centaur colony spacecraft, two special film copies were embedded in the bulkhead of the "Starlight," carrying the essence of human civilization: one was the original silent film from 1907, and the other was "Perpetual Motion of Star Trails," a collaborative work by film enthusiasts worldwide in 2100—each pixel digitized from "human glimmers" such as a newborn's first cry, a dying person's last smile, or a stranger's helping hand. As the spacecraft broke through the boundary of the solar system, Sang Jiyue's virtual image appeared on the central control screen, playing the ending of their last film: the two elderly people's hands resting on the carvings in the cellar of their old house, with the background music of "beginning" and "end" in different languages ​​over the past century, eventually merging into a continuous buzzing—the eternal heartbeat of the film projector.

In the more distant future, when an alien civilization accidentally captures these fragments of light and shadow traversing interstellar space, they may, in the instant of decoding, see that there were once two lives on Earth who spent their entire lives proving that the most brilliant star trails in the universe are never the trajectories of celestial bodies, but rather the indelible "us" written by humanity with love and courage in the passage of time.

At this moment, the winds of the Dunhuang desert still blow across the ruins of that old house. As a carbon-based life probe passes by, its sensor suddenly lights up—beneath the collapsed fragments of the starry sky ceiling, the reflections from two shards of glass form a cross-shaped starburst, much like a clapperboard that never ends, waiting for the next person to pick up a camera and continue telling the story of light.

The story of Sang Shuwan and Sang Jiyue continues in the light and shadow. From the Dunhuang star map to the interstellar spaceship, they use their love to weave a star trail that transcends time and space, making every ordinary moment a footnote to eternal starlight.

Sang Shuwan stared at the monitor, her fingertips crumpling the storyboard. In the shot, her younger sister, Sang Jiyue, was applying lipstick to a reflective coffee spoon, the small diamond ring on her ring finger reflecting a cold light—it was a makeup test shot that should have belonged to the female lead. The assistant director leaned over: "Miss Jiyue said this scene needs to 'show the character's vanity through props,' do you think we should…" "Take off the ring." Sang Shuwan pressed the walkie-talkie, her voice drowning out the hum of the air conditioner on set, "This rural teacher character can't even afford lipstick, she won't wear real diamonds."

In the dressing room, Sang Jiyue smiled softly at herself in the mirror. She slowly removed her ring, her fingertip tracing the "starburst" logo on the script's title page—the production team's logo, designed with elements of the Dunhuang murals at Sang Shuwan's insistence. Her assistant entered with a steaming cup of coffee: "Sister, the audition for the female lead in 'Rainforest Star Trails'..." "Have them send the materials to my apartment," Sang Jiyue interrupted, breathing on her glasses, her fingertip drawing crooked starbursts in the mist. "I remember my sister saying that this role needs 'the light of fireflies in the eyes'—let me demonstrate what real light is."

On the day of the opening ceremony, a sudden downpour began. Sang Shuwan was squatting in the mud adjusting the camera position when she suddenly saw Sang Jiyue walking towards her in waterproof boots, the hem of her white gauze dress stained with mud. "Do you need me to get into character beforehand?" her younger sister's voice was sickeningly sweet. "The director said this crying scene should have 'water droplets seeping from the roots of the eyelashes,' so I practiced for half an hour last night." "No need," Sang Shuwan said without looking up. "You'll be rushing into the rain to save a drowning child later, remember to make sure your makeup is ruined by crying, and don't let the mascara clump." She paused, stuffing spare film into a waterproof bag. "Also, don't try to use eye drops—I only need real tears in my shots."

Sang Jiyue, playing a village woman, was supposed to fall into a mud puddle during the downpour, but she skillfully avoided the water as she fell, her snow-white skirt barely touching the mud. Sang Shuwan abruptly ripped off her headphones: "Stop! Are you acting in a palace drama?" "But sister," Sang Jiyue knelt in the mud, artificial tears still clinging to her eyelashes, "real people instinctively protect themselves when they fall, especially since she's holding a child—" "Real?" Sang Shuwan suddenly laughed, grabbing a handful of mud and smearing it on the camera lens, "Why didn't you mention realism when you were reciting numbers to the green screen? This scene needs the 'suffocating feeling of mud splattering between eyelashes,' not a staged red carpet shot!"

The film crew wrapped up at 3 a.m. Sang Shuwan rubbed her temples in the editing room, suddenly noticing something odd about Sang Jiyue's eyes in the footage—in a close-up shot, the light flashing in her pupils perfectly matched the angle of the star map mural in the old house's cellar. A news notification popped up in the lower right corner of her computer: #SangJiyueDunhuangCharityTrip#, accompanied by a picture of her making a heart shape with her hands against the desert starry sky, a bronze star-shaped ring on her ring finger.

“Sister, this was made by a local old craftsman.” Sang Jiyue stood in the doorway at some point, twirling a ring on her finger. “They say that starburst marks can preserve the passing moonlight—just like some directors always think that film is more important than the actors’ breathing.” As she turned around, a strand of hair brushed against the editing table, and a dried lavender leaf slipped out of her pocket—the very same one that Sang Shuwan had tucked into her storyboard.

Outside the window, the night wind of Dunhuang whipped up fine sand and slapped against the glass. Sang Shuwan picked up the lavender and suddenly remembered that rainy night twenty years ago when they were fighting for the last roll of film in the cellar of the old house. Her younger sister had also rushed in like this, soaked to the bone, with a drop of water dripping from her hair, landing right in the center of the starlight mark, like a tear that would never dry.

Sang Shuwan held the dried lavender leaf in her hand, her fingertips touching the fine veins on the stem—it was a piece she had torn from a treasured specimen album twenty years ago when she was filming in Antarctica. Her sister was always like this, taking away what she cherished most without a sound, only to return it casually at some point, with a chilling warmth.

"The firefly effects in 'Rainforest Star Trails'," Sang Jiyue suddenly spoke, leaning against the doorframe and playing with her ring, "The investors thought it was too dark and suggested redoing it with CGI. They said that today's audiences prefer starlight that can illuminate the entire screen."

The air in the editing room froze instantly. Sang Shuwan whirled around, her chair scraping against the floor with a screeching sound: "You promised not to touch my shots!" She knew all too well the weight of those words—this three-year project, every firefly was captured on location in the rainforest, and each frame was hand-colored in post-production, all to present a "breathing flicker in the darkness."

Sang Jiyue raised an eyebrow: "The investors are also the producers of 'Twin Flowers,' and they feel..." She deliberately dragged out the last syllable, "...that my sister's artistic ideals need a more 'approachable' way of expression."

The computer screen suddenly lit up, displaying a revised version from the special effects team. Sang Shuwan stared at the swarm of fireflies in the scene, their brightness amplified, like countless cheap LED lights running rampant in the rainforest, and a wave of nausea washed over her. She grabbed the storyboard from the table and threw it at her sister. From between the yellowed pages fell shards of glass they had collected when the cellar collapsed—shards they had used to carve their first starlight onto the film canister.

"What exactly do you want?" Sang Shuwan's voice trembled with suppressed emotion. "From stealing the lead role in 'Cosmic Dust' to now interfering in my post-production—are there never enough scenes between us?"

Sang Jiyue bent down to pick up the broken glass, her fingertips tracing the starlight marks: "You always say that the camera has a life of its own, but look at the film set now," she suddenly laughed, a hint of ruthlessness flashing across her exquisitely made-up face, "your film camera is about to be replaced by AI scanners, your 'real tears' have become a laughing stock for new actors, while I—" she held up her ring, the bronze starlight gleaming coldly under the blue light of the monitor, "I am using your own way to let more people see the light."

At four in the morning on the Dunhuang film set, Sang Shuwan sat alone in front of the monitor. Suddenly, the replay button was pressed, and a clip from three days ago appeared on the screen: the moment Sang Jiyue fell in the mud, she instinctively used her arm to protect the head of the "drowning child"—the action was clumsy but real, reminding her of the way her mother protected them in the air-raid shelter before she died.

She abruptly ripped out the film and held it up to the work light. Through the fine lines, she could see the mud clinging to Sang Jiyue's eyelashes, overlapping with the raindrops on her mother's eyelashes during a downpour. Suddenly, a computer notification sounded—an apology from the special effects team: "As per your request, the fireflies' original brightness has been restored to 87%. Also: Ms. Sang Jiyue purchased 200 old-fashioned softboxes at her own expense, saying that 'some lights need to be adjusted slowly.'"

When Sang Shuwan got up, she noticed a metal box in the corner of the editing table. Inside was a nearly empty tube of mascara—she recognized the brand; it was the first professional makeup product her younger sister had bought with her hard-earned savings when she first entered the industry. A note was pressed against the bottom of the box, the writing blurred and dried by water: "I've tried 27 kinds of eye drops, but none of them are as real as the time you yelled at me and made me cry."

As dawn broke, Sang Jiyue walked into the film set wrapped in a down jacket, her eyes showing obvious signs of staying up all night. Just as she was about to speak, Sang Shuwan handed her a hand warmer: "The rainforest scenes will take three hours to film, so use this for now." She paused, then added, "Back in Antarctica, I stuffed my last hand warmer into the film bag."

The younger sister's pupils suddenly contracted, then she laughed out loud, pulling two rolls of film from her pocket and waving them around: "The film processing plant said that old film is about to be discontinued, so I asked someone to scavenge these from the scraps at the lunar base." She suddenly leaned closer to the lens, her fingertips brushing over the mud marks that Sang Shuwan had smeared on yesterday, "But now it seems that someone has already learned to tell stories with a rough feel."

In the morning mist, the crisp sound of the clapperboard startled the lizards on the sand. Sang Shuwan looked at Sang Jiyue in the viewfinder—she was kneeling in the mud adjusting the "child's" position, her skirt completely soaked, and her eyelashes clung to droplets of water, whether rain or tears, she couldn't tell. As the first ray of sunlight pierced the clouds, she suddenly remembered the star map mural in the cellar: the most brilliant star trails were never deliberately drawn paths, but rather the unintentional web of light woven by two stars shining brightly in the universe.

“Keep this position,” she said into the walkie-talkie, her voice trembling without her even realizing it. “In thirty seconds, a swarm of fireflies will fly past from the left rear—they are real fireflies, we’ve been waiting for three months.”

Sang Jiyue looked up, and their eyes met between the camera lens and the reflector. In the distance, the wind in Dunhuang stirred up waves on the sand dunes, much like the old film reels they had watched in the cellar during their childhood, each frame carrying the sands of time, yet forever flowing with unfinished dialogue in the gaps of light.

Looking at the trembling water droplets on Sang Jiyue's eyelashes in the viewfinder, Sang Shuwan suddenly remembered her mother's hands clutched before her death, with fragments of paint from the Dunhuang murals still embedded in her fingernails. As the clapperboard fell for the third time, the swarm of fireflies indeed swept across the screen as expected—the biomimetic habitat that the team had built in the rainforest over three months was now sprinkling like gold dust onto Sang Jiyue's mud-covered hair.

"Cut!" Her voice was half an octave higher than usual. "That look in your eyes... do it again." She knew that the tearful look in that instant was already moving enough, but some almost obsessive instinct made her unwilling to admit it. Sang Jiyue, lying in the mud, looked up, her hair sticking to her cheeks, and suddenly laughed: "Sister, do you remember when we were little, sneaking through Mother's film reels, getting trapped in the cellar by a sandstorm? You gave me your last sip of water, and licked the dampness off the film yourself."

These words, like a fine needle, pierced the ice that had remained between them for twenty years. Sang Shuwan turned around abruptly, pretending to adjust the tripod, but knocked over the film canister beside her. The scattered film rolled past Sang Jiyue's fingertips, and she suddenly grabbed one of the rolls, her voice as soft as the wind blowing through starlight: "The scrap film from 'Cosmic Dust'... You actually kept it."

That happened ten years ago. To win the lead role in this art film, Sang Jiyue deliberately injured Sang Shuwan's wrist before the audition. But while her sister, with a cast on, insisted on filming the last scene, she suddenly turned down all offers and disappeared into the sands and mists of Dunhuang. At this moment, the fingerprints on the film reel are already blurred, but you can still see the traces of tears smudged at the corners—the empty shots that Sang Shuwan secretly reshot in the editing room.

"Why did you quit the production back then?" Sang Shuwan finally spoke, her voice muffled behind her dust mask. The sound of camel bells drifted from afar, mingling with the roar of the studio generators. Sang Jiyue twirled a strand of wet hair between her fingers, and after a long pause, said, "I found a medical report in your storyboard... Did you think that by covering it with lavender, I wouldn't be able to smell the medicine?"

The air suddenly froze. Those deliberately forgotten details suddenly resurfaced: the wig she secretly wore during chemotherapy, the painkillers hidden in her sleeve on the film set in minus thirty degrees Celsius, and the seemingly provocative coffee Sang Jiyue served after every argument, which actually contained vitamins. Sang Shuwan stared at the flickering light spots on the monitor, suddenly remembering the night the cellar collapsed; it was her sister who shielded the film she held with her body, while she herself was cut on the back by shards of glass.

"So you deliberately stole my role, ruined my scenes, and made everyone think we were mortal enemies?" A bitter taste rose in her throat. "Just to force me to get treatment?"

Sang Jiyue stood up, mud dripping down her skirt and revealing an old scar on her knee—a scar from when she shielded her from a falling light fixture. "Otherwise what?" She ripped off her mud-caked false eyelashes, revealing faint blue under her eyes. "You'd rather die buried with film, so I have to find a reason for you to live and see me make a fool of myself, right?"

Suddenly, a crew member shouted over the walkie-talkie, "Director! A swarm of fireflies is flying towards the camera!" Sang Shuwan turned around abruptly and saw thousands upon thousands of points of light surging towards her with the wind, weaving a flowing galaxy above Sang Jiyue's head. She instinctively grabbed the old film camera beside her, but Sang Jiyue pressed her wrist down: "Use this." What she handed over was a brand-new neural link camera, with tiny starburst patterns engraved on the inside of the lens cap.

As the first rays of sunlight pierced through the clouds, Sang Jiyue suddenly rushed into the frame, just like she had done in that torrential rain twenty years ago, tightly embracing the young actress playing the "drowning child." Mud splattered on her cheeks, but it couldn't extinguish the light in her eyes—that light pierced through the lens, overlapping with the viewfinder on Sang Shuwan's retina, converging at the terminal of the neural connection into an unprecedented warm resonance.

“Keep this composition!” Sang Shuwan’s fingers trembled slightly on the stabilization device. “Remember, this is not acting—you are the village woman who is desperately trying to save her child, and I…” She paused, and Sang Jiyue in the lens suddenly turned to look at her, her eyes filled with rain, starlight, and something she hadn’t said in a long time. “And I am the only one who can catch your gaze.”

As they finished work, Sang Jiyue suddenly pulled her into the prop truck. Moonlight streamed through a hole in the roof, casting starlight patterns on their touching arms. "Look at this." She pulled out her phone; in the album was a yellowed medical report, dated twenty years ago—it was her mother's breast cancer diagnosis, which Sang Shuwan had hidden in her storyboard, lying to her that it was just a common inflammation.

“We’re both stupid,” Sang Jiyue said, resting her head gently on her shoulder. “You used film to hide your pain, and I used arguments to hide my fear. But now…” she said, shaking the neural-linked camera in her hand. “Why not try hiding secrets in a new way? Like encoding what you want to say into the frequency of light.”

The night breeze in Dunhuang dispelled the last traces of summer heat. In the distance, a few candlelight flickered in the direction of the old house ruins—film enthusiasts were holding their monthly "Starlight Screening." Sang Shuwan pulled a shard of glass from her pocket, twirling it in the moonlight. The cross-shaped starlight shone perfectly into Sang Jiyue's eyes. Her younger sister laughed and snatched the shard, drawing a crooked starlight on her palm: "Next time we argue, we'll use this as a code—whoever draws the complete starlight first has to buy a special Dunhuang sea buckthorn juice."

The shutter of a film camera suddenly clicked. Sang Jiyue looked up and saw Sang Shuwan holding the old camera, the lens still covered in wet mud. "What are you doing?" She instinctively tidied her hair, but her sister grabbed her wrist.

"Don't move." In the viewfinder, the mud on her sister's face overlapped with the tear stains from the cellar years ago, but the starlight in her eyes was brighter than ever. "This is the heroine I want—with real cracks, yet forever able to reflect light."

Sang Jiyue suddenly laughed out loud, took out half a lavender leaf from her pocket, and gently tucked it into Sang Shuwan's storyboard: "Remember next time you quarrel, don't hide the token in the film canister again—I'm afraid that one day an archaeologist will dig it up and think we are spies who use plant specimens to pass information."

In the distance, the beams of the film screening swept across the sand dunes, casting overlapping shadows behind them. Like two flowers stubbornly growing in the desert, their roots intertwined with each other's wounds, yet their branches stretched out towards the sun. The wind whistled through the ruins of the old house, gently etching an unrecorded moment into the starlight of time.

Sang Shuwan tucked the storyboard with the lavender inside into her camera bag, her fingertips brushing against the roll of discarded film from "Cosmic Dust" at the bottom. Sang Jiyue suddenly pointed to a distant sand dune: "Look, fireflies are resting on your starburst patterns." As the two turned, they saw the points of light converging on the starburst patterns they had carved in their childhood, like film rekindled by time.

“We’re filming a cave scene tomorrow,” Sang Jiyue suddenly spoke, her voice so soft it was as if she didn’t want to disturb the specks of light. “The production company found a popular spot for social media check-ins, saying it would save them 30% of the budget.” She kicked away the gravel at her feet, revealing a corner of an old clapperboard buried in the soil. “But I know of a wild cave where the fluorescent moss on the walls looks just like the quantum light effects in ‘Letters from the Moon’… but we have to hike through an uninhabited area.”

Sang Shuwan raised an eyebrow: "When did you start caring about camera aesthetics?" "When I discovered that some old fogies would rather starve to death in the desert than use a drone to shoot a panoramic view," Sang Jiyue bent down to pick up the clapperboard, the engraving of "Scene 37 Starburst" on the wood still embedded with grains of sand from twenty years ago, "someone has to be a bodyguard for idealists."

At three in the morning, the two of them, carrying their equipment, ventured into the mountains in the dark. Sang Shuwan's film camera hung around her neck, making a soft clicking sound with each step. Sang Jiyue suddenly stopped, her flashlight beam sweeping across the rock face—in a certain recess, there was half a film canister embedded, the star-shaped engravings on the inside of the lid exactly the same as those in the cellar of their old house.

“It’s a fragment of a silent film from 1907,” Sang Shuwan said, her fingertips trembling slightly as she used a flashlight to identify the scratches on the film. “It was taken when my great-grandfather first came to Dunhuang… He said the starry sky here could cure the lens’s ‘homesickness’.”

Sang Jiyue didn't speak, but took out a marker from the side pocket of her backpack and engraved half a star on the edge of the film canister: "Now it's complete. Just like you always say, every crack is waiting for the light to pass through."

The fluorescent moss in the cave appeared eerily blue-green in the lens. Sang Shuwan knelt on the slippery rocks, adjusting the camera position, when she suddenly heard the sound of tearing fabric behind her. Turning around, she saw that Sang Jiyue's skirt had been snagged by stalactites, yet she was still holding up the reflector to maintain the angle, her ankle already scratched and bleeding.

"That's so stupid," she ripped off the first-aid kit and threw it over. "Would it kill you to use a drone for lighting?"

“The light in your lens can lie,” Sang Jiyue said, biting the knot of her bandage as she knelt in the mud, “but my hands can’t.” When she looked up, the eerie light of the moss reflected in her eyes like flowing star trails. “Do you remember when you were little, secretly drinking your mother’s developing solution? You said it was magic that could make light visible.”

The shutter clicked suddenly. Sang Shuwan looked at the scene in the viewfinder: a tattered skirt soaked in a puddle, blood droplets mingling with mud and slowly spreading, while Sang Jiyue's face was softly outlined by the light of the moss, her eyes red as if kissed by fireflies. It wasn't any scene from the script, yet it made her throat tighten—this was the reality she had always wanted to capture, a reality imbued with pain and warmth.

On the way back, a sandstorm suddenly struck. Sang Jiyue, protecting the waterproof box containing the film reels, was overturned on a sand dune by the strong wind. Sang Shuwan rushed over to hold the box down, but saw a metal box fall out of her sister's arms—it contained media reports from film festivals over the years. Next to each interview about herself, there were annotations written by Sang Jiyue in red pen: "This dialogue sounds like she's reading a film reel instruction manual," "This shot is hiding her dark circles."

"I've told you so many times, don't leave this trash behind." She turned her face away, the sand and dust blurring her vision.

“Trash?” Sang Jiyue wiped the sand from the corner of her mouth, then suddenly laughed until tears streamed down her face, leaving streaks of sand on her cheeks. “These are the only things I can understand, your love letters to movies.” She grabbed a handful of sand and threw it at the camera lens. “Do you know why I always compete with you for roles? Because only when I stand in front of your lens can I see—the world in your eyes is more fragile, and more dazzling than anyone else’s.”

After the sandstorm, the two found wind-eroded stone fragments on the dunes, with naturally formed patterns that resembled starbursts. Sang Shuwan put it into her camera bag and heard Sang Jiyue whisper behind her, "Actually, I've always been jealous of your film camera... It can capture the shape of light, while I can only spend a lifetime learning how to stay in your shaky lens."

Back on set late at night, the monitor was playing back footage shot during the day. When the scene of Sang Jiyue falling flashed by, Sang Shuwan suddenly pressed the pause button—she saw her sister, in the instant of weightlessness, instinctively look in her direction, her eyes filled with unconcealed trust and dependence, just like the little girl who trembled while clutching her clothes when the cellar collapsed twenty years ago.

“We’ll reshoot this scene tomorrow.” She placed the stone slab on the storyboard, the starburst pattern perfectly overlapping the lighting diagram in the script. “No reflectors, no special effects. Just natural light, coming from the angle you’re looking at me.”

Sang Jiyue raised an eyebrow: "Is this considered favoritism, great director?"

“No,” Sang Shuwan turned the stone slab, aligning the starlight with the lens, “this is to give all those standing in the light—a chance to see each other.”

Outside the tent, the starry sky of Dunhuang slowly unfolded behind the clouds. The shadows of the Sang sisters were reflected on the canvas, sometimes overlapping, sometimes separating, but always stretching in the same direction. Just like the camera and the stage in their hands, one capturing the trajectory of light, the other refracting the temperature of light, ultimately, in the developing solution of time, together they created an indelible footnote to their love.

Sang Shuwan stayed in the editing room until the early hours of the morning, the clicking of the film camera mingling with the distant argument between Sang Jiyue and the voice actors. She stared at the starlight effect on the wind-eroded stone fragment that had been deliberately preserved on the screen, then suddenly reached out and pulled out an iron box from the deepest part of the drawer—inside was the film her mother had not finished before her death, with wet paint fingerprints still on the edges.

"Looking at Mom's belongings?" Sang Jiyue pushed the door open and came in at some point, her hair still damp with setting spray. "The restorer said last time that the Dunhuang star map in this roll of film has a 0.3-millimeter error compared to the engravings in the old house's cellar." She sat down next to her sister, her fingertips lightly brushing the edge of the film. "Do you think she did it on purpose back then? Just like how we always look for flaws in each other's shots."

Sang Shuwan didn't speak, but inserted the film into the projector. The old beam of light projected onto the wall, showing a young mother running with a camera in hand, followed by two stumbling little girls—it was their first time seeing the starlight in the desert. Sang Jiyue suddenly laughed: "You see, my childhood habit of trying to steal the spotlight was definitely innate." In the footage, the five-year-old was pushing her older sister behind a sand dune, then opening her arms wide towards the camera, oblivious to the lavender specimen hidden behind Sang Shuwan.

“Actually, I’ve been reading your diary.” Sang Jiyue suddenly spoke, her voice as low as the scratching of film. “You said that every time you got angry with me, you were afraid of becoming like Mom—trapping yourself in the lens and not even noticing that your daughter had a fever.” She picked up the dried lavender flowers on the table and gently rotated them in the beam of light. “But do you know what? Mom’s last words before she died were, ‘Go touch the sand, don’t let the lens block out the starlight.’”

The film suddenly jammed, freezing the moment the mother turned away. Sang Shuwan saw a detail she hadn't noticed twenty years ago: tears welled in her mother's eyelashes, yet her smile shone so brightly in the backlight. She suddenly remembered the night the cellar collapsed, when Sang Jiyue cried out, protecting the film: "Sister's lens can't break!" At the time, she thought it was just willfulness, but now she understood that her younger sister was learning from her mother, protecting her starlight.

“Let’s go to the old house tomorrow.” Sang Jiyue suddenly stood up and kicked over the film canister at her feet. “The investors want to demolish it and build a film studio. The bulldozers will arrive the day after tomorrow.” She bent down to pick up the scattered film, which was unusable footage shot in the cave yesterday. Sang Shuwan hadn’t noticed that when she adjusted the camera position, she had captured her sister’s reflection in the shot.

Dunhuang was exceptionally quiet before dawn. Only fragments remained of the old house's starry sky ceiling, with shards of glass bearing the shape of crosses gleaming faintly in the sand. Sang Jiyue squatted in front of the starry sky carvings, tracing the crooked lines they had carved twenty years ago with her fingertips: "Remember? You said this was a door connecting two universes, but I insisted on carving it as a cross, saying that this would seal all the bad emotions inside."

Sang Shuwan took out a stone shard from her bag and placed it in the center of the carving. The morning light shone through the ruins, casting a complete starburst pattern on the shard, perfectly matching the carving on the ground. Sang Jiyue suddenly smiled and pulled a lipstick from her pocket—a luxury item she'd bought when she won her first award, but had never used. "Here, great director," she said, handing over the lipstick, "to touch up Time's makeup."

As the first rays of sunlight blanketed the sand dunes, a new mark appeared beside the star-studded inscriptions on the ruins of the old house: two overlapping stars, with a crooked pen between them. Sang Shuwan raised her film camera; in the viewfinder, Sang Jiyue was making a peace sign at the inscriptions, her lipstick drawing clumsy light trails on the sand. This time, she didn't deliberately avoid showing her sister's shadow with the lens; instead, she pressed the shutter, letting their silhouettes be embedded together in the starlight and shadow.

“You know what?” Sang Jiyue waved the lipstick in her hand, “The bulldozer driver just said they dug up an iron box under the foundation. There were two rolls of film inside, one is a silent film from 1907, and the other…” She suddenly leaned closer to the camera, the grains of sand on her eyelashes trembling in the light, “is a video of two fools fighting over film in a downpour. The resolution is so low it looks like a mosaic, but it’s clearer than any AI-restored footage.”

The roar of a helicopter echoed in the distance; the film studio's reconnaissance team had arrived. Sang Shuwan grabbed a stone shard and a lipstick, pulling her younger sister deeper into the desert. The wind whipped at their clothes, the film camera rattled against their chests, and Sang Jiyue's laughter, mingling with the sand, reached their ears: "Sister, don't we look like we're filming an escape movie?"

“No,” Sang Shuwan turned her head and saw the lavender in her sister’s hair trembling gently in the morning light. She suddenly remembered the words in her mother’s diary, “This is our new movie—no script, no storyboard, only light, and people chasing the light.”

Their footprints traced crooked paths on the dunes, quickly smoothed over by the wind and sand. But in some higher dimension, perhaps an eternally running projector is weaving this fleeting moment of running, laughter, and the grains of sand on their eyelashes—along with the film reels buried beneath the old house and the lavender etched in the starlight—into an unfading star trail. That is the universe belonging to the Sandals, where the lens always holds unfinished stories, and the light always lies ahead.

Sang Shuwan's film camera suddenly hit a rock, and the shutter release cable snapped and flew into the sand. Sang Jiyue staggered and caught her, and the two rolled on the steep sand dune, finally falling into a rare oasis—a mirror-like lake hidden among the reeds, its surface reflecting the still-fading stars.

“This is the filming location for ‘Letters from the Moon’!” Sang Shuwan parted the reeds, and sure enough, there were marks left on the rocks on the lake shore from back then. Twenty years ago, in order to film the scene of “stars falling into the lake,” she led the crew to search in the desert for three whole months, but before filming began, Sang Jiyue’s agent reported her for “illegal exploration,” causing the filming to be delayed. At this moment, as the moonlight spread across the lake, she suddenly noticed a detail she hadn’t seen back then: there was a series of messy footprints on the sandy shore, smaller than anyone’s shoe size in the crew.

“It’s me.” Sang Jiyue squatted down, her fingertips tracing the cool lake water. “The day you were reported, I secretly came here to measure the light for you. The moonlight’s reflectivity on the lake is 17%, and the dew at five in the morning will cause the starlight to refract seven layers of spectrum—I recorded all these data in the storyboard, and later…” Her voice trailed off, “Later, your assistant said that you burned that storyboard.”

Sang Shuwan turned her head sharply and saw the starlight shimmering in her sister's eyes. Memories suddenly flooded back: that stormy night, she had indeed burned the mud-stained storyboard, but in the ashes she found a half-burnt page with the words "17% moonlight + dew = starlight tears" written in pencil. At the time, she had thought it was just a script supervisor's scribbling, but it turned out…

"Why didn't you tell me?" Her voice trembled.

“Because you said,” Sang Jiyue picked up a pebble and threw it into the lake, the ripples breaking and then gathering again, “a director doesn’t need other people’s light, he only needs the eyes to capture the light.” She suddenly laughed, her shoulders shaking with laughter, “but I clearly saw you crying in the desert, holding the film canister in your arms like you were holding a drowning child.”

A dark shadow of an owl suddenly swept across the lake. Sang Shuwan pulled out the film from her waterproof bag—the footage shot today at the ruins of the old house. As the projector's beam swept across the lake, miraculously, a scene from twenty years ago appeared in the water's reflection: her younger self squatting by the lake, adjusting the equipment, while on a distant sand dune, a figure in a white trench coat held up a reflector, refracting moonlight into the lens—it was Sang Jiyue, who should have been attending a brand event a hundred kilometers away.

"So you already knew how to create starbursts with reflectors." Sang Shuwan's fingertips traced the light spots on the film, angles that she couldn't get right back then. "So the famous 'meteorite shower' shot in 'Cosmic Dust' was actually manually reflected by you using fragments of mirror in front of a green screen?"

Sang Jiyue turned her face away: "Anyway, you'll just call me 'opportunistic'."

“No.” Sang Shuwan suddenly grabbed her wrist and stuffed the film into her palm. “This shot should be credited to you.” The wind on the lake lifted their hair, which intertwined into starlight shapes in the beam of light. The roar of a bulldozer came from afar, but it was broken into tiny fragments of light by the ripples on the lake.

As the first rays of dawn painted the sand dunes crimson, they buried a new "time capsule" by the lake: Sang Shuwan's old storyboard, Sang Jiyue's broken lipstick, and the roll of film that recorded the twin stars. Sang Jiyue drew a crooked star on the capsule lid with her lipstick and suddenly said, "Actually, I'm very afraid of the dark. When I was little, I would hide in the cellar to watch film, and I always felt that those swaying shadows would devour me. Until one day you said, 'Light remembers every heartfelt moment'—so I desperately wanted to become light, so that I could illuminate your lens."

Sang Shuwan put his arm around her shoulder, inhaling the lingering lavender scent in her hair. In the lake, their reflections overlapped, forming a complete starburst pattern. The sound of the bulldozer grew closer, but suddenly stalled a hundred meters from the oasis—the driver said the compass on the dashboard suddenly pointed to the center of the lake, as if drawn by some mysterious light.

“They’ll never find this place.” Sang Jiyue gazed at the fading starlight on the lake. “Some lights can only be seen by those who are willing to run.” As she turned, the morning light fell on the wrinkles at the corner of Sang Shuwan’s eyes, like that tear that never fell back then. “For the next movie, let’s write the script together. Let’s call it ‘Twin Stars,’ shoot it on real film, no AI, no buying trending topics, just shoot…”

“Just film the tears trembling on human eyelashes.” Sang Shuwan continued, taking out her mother’s old film from her bag. “And, the way two fools chase the light in the desert.”

On the lake, the shadow of an owl swept past the last morning star. Beyond the distant sand dunes, the film studio's colorful flags were already planted, but no one noticed that two meters below their designated grounds lay the starlight marks of two girls—coordinates of light more solid than any reinforced concrete, waiting for the next shutter to click, to continue telling the never-ending story of love and courage.