After I died, they cried in the live studio

Chapter 203 Hot search again

At the end of the highway, a flock of sandhill cranes flew past in a V-formation, the film reels tied to their wings shimmering in the sunlight like a flowing constellation of stars. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in New York, a hacker girl was inputting data from cow mammary glands into a conglomerate's gene bank. On the screen, the digitally contaminated gene chains were rearranging themselves under the influence of silver halide particles, growing into DNA double helices with the patterns of film reels.

This is a war about memory and texture. As the digital torrent tries to drown all images with warmth, there are always those who know how to develop with milk, send messages with butterflies, and encode with bear paws. And deep in the grasslands of Montana, new film is being conceived in the warmth of cows. The next story will quietly begin when the first drop of milk spills onto the film.

As the truck bumped along in Badlands National Park in Dakota, a strange red light suddenly illuminated the dashboard—not a malfunction warning, but a tiny film scanner embedded in the panel detecting a special silver halide reaction. Sang Shuwan pressed the clutch, and the headlights pierced the twilight, illuminating the winding silver streaks between the jagged rock formations ahead—hundreds of arrows cast with developing solution, pointing towards a natural darkroom deep within the canyon.

“It’s uranium ore in the rock strata developing.” Sang Jiyue touched the fluorescent liquid seeping from the rock wall. Her fingertips touched not only radioactive minerals but also silver halide particles suspended in them. As they climbed over the fossil-strewn cliff, a cave surrounded by stalactites suddenly appeared before them. The tips of the stalagmites hanging from the cave ceiling were icicle-shaped film, each one preserving images from different geological eras: Triassic ferns stretching out in front of the lens, mammoths treading across the Pleistocene snowfield, and the first arc light in Edison’s laboratory in 1877.

On a stone platform in the center of the cave sat an old man dressed in deerskin, his hair and beard woven with 16mm film, and a magnifying glass made from dinosaur bone hanging around his neck. “The rock strata are natural developing tanks.” He tapped the shale beside him with a bone knife, revealing layers of black and white film inside. “The conglomerates wanted to blast the mountain to build a digital mining farm, but they didn’t know that every rock contained the memory of light.”

Sang Shuwan raised the camera, and the fluorescence of the uranium ore in the lens resonated strangely with the film emulsion. Suddenly, dynamic images appeared on the fossils on the rock wall: a meteor streaking across the night sky 65 million years ago, overlapping with the firelight of the conglomerate's satellite explosion in 2025. The old man handed over a roll of film sealed with resin, the core of which was engraved with hieroglyphs of the Sioux tribe. The translated formula for the developing solution was a modified version of D-23, adapted to the humidity of the rock strata.

“Look at this.” The old man pointed to the star map on the cave ceiling. It wasn’t ordinary rock texture, but the Pleiades star cluster’s trajectory inlaid with silver halide particles. Sang Jiyue’s thickness gauge showed that the arrangement of these particles was exactly the same as the film records of the Roswell incident in 1947—the so-called “alien spaceship” back then was nothing more than a weather balloon carrying groundbreaking film technology.

In the dead of night, the muffled sound of explosives detonating echoed outside the cave. As the conglomerate's excavation robots broke through the outer rock wall, the Sang sisters were fixing newly developed film with uranium fluorescence. When the laser beam swept across the cave, a miracle occurred: all the film in the rock crevices developed simultaneously; the radioactivity of uranium activated silver halide that had been dormant for centuries, and the entire canyon suddenly transformed into a giant projection room, where the roars of dinosaurs and piano music from the silent film era reverberated between the rock layers.

"They're here!" The old man shoved the dinosaur bone magnifying glass into Sang Shuwan's hand, then lunged towards the melting uranium ore developing tank. Sang Jiyue saw the robot's digital eyes explode in the bright light, turning into countless flying binary fragments. The moment those fragments touched the film emulsion, they were transformed into developable silver halide particles, adhering to the film like dust.

As the truck sped along the collapsed mountain road, the badlands in the rearview mirror glowed, each tumbled rock reflecting the light and shadow of a different era: a cartwheel of pioneers passing through a 1970s punk rock concert, steam trains and maglev trains crossing time and space. Sang Shuwan pulled out his pocket watch; the uranium ore particles on the dial were decaying, revealing a new code: 200 feet underground on the Great Plains, search for a projector lens made from mammoth bone.

Sang Jiyue suddenly rolled down the window, letting the sulfurous air rush into the car. In the distance, on the grassland, countless points of light flickered with the vibrations of the rock strata—the underground film archive, sensing the battle on the surface, was using emergency lights to form Morse code. The car radio crackled with static, but the laughter of children could be faintly heard, mixed with the clicking sound of film passing through the shutter—a live broadcast from the depths of the plains of an "underground screening."

As the first meteor streaked across the night sky, the truck tires rolled over a mound of earth. Sang Shuwan got out to investigate and discovered it was a mammoth fossil exposed on the ground, with half a roll of 19th-century wet plate film embedded in its tusks. She carefully pulled out the film, and in the moonlight, the emulsion layer revealed a herd of bison that had not yet fully fossilized. In the reflection of the bison's eyes, she could even see the headlights of modern film preservationists arriving on their way.

Ahead on the highway, a rainbow, drawn with developing solution, stretched across the sky—a masterpiece created by the reaction of uranium ore in the rock strata with rainwater. Sang Shuwan hung the dinosaur bone magnifying glass on the rearview mirror, and suddenly her grandmother's smiling face flashed in the lens—not a memory, but a real-time image. She was developing new film in some unknown darkroom, and the background noise of an old-fashioned telephone dialing could be heard, while the sound coming from the receiver was the heartbeat of the Sang sisters at that moment.

This is a dialogue of light and shadow spanning millions of years. As the corporation's robots carve digital tombstones on the surface of the rock, a new story unfolds from the mammoth bones deep underground. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in New York, a hacker girl has cracked the code of the uranium ore in the rock, transforming it into a virus for the digital world—a beautiful error that automatically generates silver halide grain noise in all binary files.

As the truck entered the vast plains, Sang Jiyue saw a black wave surging on the horizon—not a storm, but tens of millions of monarch butterflies taking flight with new coded messages on film, their silver halides on their wings forming a flowing galaxy under the moonlight. And in their trunk, the developing solution packaged in mammoth bone was gently agitated, like the sound of ancient glaciers melting—the prologue to the next legend.

Under the neon lights of Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, Sang Shuwan disguised his truck as a prop van, hiding a projector in boxes of fake blood at the rear. Sang Jiyue frowned at her phone screen, which displayed a newly received encrypted video: a top-tier celebrity acting on set with a digital body double, yet kissing a film trophy while accepting an award, while the executives of the conglomerate sitting in the audience wore suits embroidered with binary code.

“They’re filming a digital remake of ‘The Faded Age.’” Sang Shuwan pulled out her grandmother’s clapperboard, the wooden edges still bearing coffee stains from the 1968 film set. “But the real film master should be hidden in the underground film library at Universal Studios.”

At three in the morning, they sneaked into the film set. In front of the green screen, a popular celebrity was reciting lines to thin air, while a digital engineer behind him used a laser pointer to outline the virtual opponent. Sang Jiyue noticed a corner of film peeking out of the camera assistant's pocket—it was the original live-action film that had been replaced, with traces of real rainwater still on the emulsion layer.

"Action!" The moment the director shouted the command, Sang Shuwan wedged the star pendant at the camera shutter. A miracle occurred: the green screen suddenly developed an unedited image—the popular celebrity's expression was as stiff as a wax figure, while the stunt double standing behind him was using his eyes and micro-expressions to complete the entire emotional arc.

“This is true acting.” Sang Jiyue raised a thickness gauge and scanned the pile of discarded film. The instrument showed that these discarded film reels contained the real sweat of the actors who had filmed for ten consecutive hours in the pouring rain. “The conglomerate used AI face-swapping technology to steal the stunt double’s performance data.”

Chaos erupted on set. As the digital engineer attempted to erase the camera's memory, Sang Shuwan had already inserted the real film stock into the portable projector. The beam of light pierced through the dry ice sprayed from the smoke machine, projecting a close-up of the stunt double onto the ceiling—the tearful gaze of the character, erased by capital. The extras in the audience gasped in surprise; they recognized the girl in the image—the newcomer who had been forced out of the industry three years prior due to online bullying for her "poor acting skills."

“Look at this.” Sang Jiyue pulled open the costume of the popular star, revealing the motion capture chip hidden under his arm. “They use a digital performance system to generate expressions in real time, but they don’t know that…” She dipped the chip into the developing solution she carried with her, and dense code appeared on the metal surface—classic performance clips stolen from old movies, cut into pieces and implanted into the newcomer’s limbs.

As the alarm blared, the Sang sisters ducked into the prop warehouse. On the shelves, digitally restored classic film prints were heating up, the Audrey Hepburn smile on the film case rendered plastic-looking by AI. Sang Shuwan grabbed a can of authentic 1950s film restoration fluid and sprayed it onto the digital print. Miraculously, Hepburn's eyelashes regained their silver halide texture, and the nasolabial folds at the corners of her mouth revealed the butterfly shadows captured by the photographer years ago.

“They are creating counterfeit memories.” Sang Jiyue raised her phone to film the scene. On the screen, the artificial smoothness of digital restoration was clashing with the graininess of real film, creating strange visual noise. “It’s like an old photo generated by AI, which will never have the temperature of being soaked in developing solution.”

As the midnight bells rang, they finally found the entrance to the underground film library. The fingerprint reader on the combination lock suddenly lit up red, and Sang Shuwan pressed her grandmother's clapperboard against the sensor area. The coffee stains seeping from the wood grain revealed a set of Morse code—the biometric key that the film crew had designed to prevent the theft of film reels.

Deep within the film archive, the original copy of "The Faded Era" is locked in a bulletproof glass case, next to a digital master copy forged by the conglomerate. Sang Jiyue uses a thickness gauge to compare the two: the actors' eyes in the digital version are as empty as electronic screens, while in the real film, the grandmother's pupils reflect the lighting from the 1968 film set, with the filaments clearly visible vibrating.

“It’s time for the real protagonist to appear.” Sang Shuwan turned on the projector and aimed the stunt double film salvaged from the set at the beam. As the girl’s gaze swept across the film library’s surveillance cameras, all the digital cameras suddenly went blue. Instead of error codes, what scrolled across the screens was a line of words written in developing fluid: The real performance is beyond the camera’s reach.

Meanwhile, the giant LED screen on Hollywood Boulevard suddenly malfunctioned, replaced by countless old-fashioned projectors rising from the rooftops, projecting the stunt performers' live performances onto the clouds. Fans on the street gasped and raised their phones, only to find that their images automatically transformed into a film-like quality—a "silver halide filter" implanted in the cloud by the hacker girl, temporarily reminding all digital images of their origins.

As the truck roared out of the film studio, the real film reels in the trunk seemed to breathe, each frame carrying the atmosphere of a film set. Sang Shuwan pulled out her pocket watch, and for the first time, the second hand turned clockwise. The dial revealed a new code from the underground resistance organization in the entertainment industry: Next stop, the Hong Kong Film Awards. Bring three rolls of infrared film. Beware of those hands holding digital trophies.

Sang Jiyue rolled down the car window, and the night wind carried the distant sound of paparazzi shutters. But this time, those shots were no longer algorithmically optimized celebrity photos, but rather the silhouette of a minor actress practicing her monologue alone in an alley, the streetlight casting her shadow on the wall, much like an unknown extra in a film from the golden age—and this was the most authentic light of the entertainment industry.

The red carpet at the Dolby Theatre was bathed in a cool white light from LEDs. Sang Shuwan mingled among the photographers, watching the stars in the telephoto lenses walk on digitally projected virtual skirts. The sequins on their gowns were actually miniature screens, looping AI-generated perfect smiles. Sang Jiyue hid in the ventilation duct of the dressing room, scanning the digital trophy about to be awarded with a thickness gauge—a miniature camera was hidden in the hollow base, transmitting the winner's acceptance speech to the consortium's server in real time.

"Third row, sixth seat." The hacker girl's voice came through the earpiece. "The holographic projection of last year's Best Actress was actually a stand-in. The real film is in a hidden compartment under her seat." Sang Shuwan pretended to adjust the camera, her knee lightly touching the bottom of the seat. The moment the metal buckle popped open, the smell of developing solution mixed with Chanel No. 5 wafted out—the 35mm film in the sealed bag clearly recorded the real scene of the actress breaking down and crying on set because she was too immersed in the role, completely different from her elegant demeanor when accepting the award.

On stage, the moment the host raised the digital trophy, Sang Jiyue loaded infrared film into a modified Polaroid camera. The instant the flash went off, the leather seats in the audience were revealed to be covered in tiny, gold-stamped lettering: "These seats were used to suppress protest signatures for the original 1973 film *The Godfather*." The faces of the conglomerate executives contorted in the red light, and the binary embroidery on their suit pockets suddenly leaked fluorescent developer, transforming into the abbreviation "Data Monopoly" in the lens.

"Now, let's present the Lifetime Achievement Award—" Before the host could finish speaking, the stage lights suddenly turned a dark red. Sang Shuwan pulled a miniature projector from under her dress and projected her grandmother's 1968 film diary, in which she refused digital retouching, onto the dome. On the screen, a young darkroom artist tore up an AI-generated storyboard, and film fragments formed the words "NO DIGITAL" in the air. Suddenly, the veteran actors in the audience stood up in unison, 16mm film reels falling from their bow ties and piecing together a snowy scene from "Citizen Kane" under the spotlight.

In the chaos, Sang Jiyue kicked over an ice bucket full of champagne, the golden liquid spreading across the ground like a developing pool. As the digital trophy fell into the pool, the camera on its base suddenly emitted smoke, revealing a metal core engraved with "Sector 47 Surveillance." A veteran actor, leaning on a cane, picked up the trophy fragments and chuckled into the microphone: "When our generation made 'Schindler's List,' we used real urns as props—digital technology can simulate weight, but it can't simulate the temperature of guilt."

Backstage in the dressing room, the conglomerate's security is hunting down the Sang sisters. Sang Shuwan hides in a wardrobe, her fingertips touching a hidden pocket of film reel lining a dress—it contains unreleased audition footage of a top star, who confesses to the camera that he's "afraid of being just a puppet of AI." Sang Jiyue stuffs the film reel into a ventilation duct, the inner walls of which are already etched with the blood-written vows of generations of filmmakers: Don't let the camera become a prison for data.

The awards ceremony livestream suddenly cut off, and screens around the world simultaneously displayed static. But on televisions in millions of homes, the static gradually coalesced into the texture of silver halide grains, and the electronic voice of a hacker girl, mixed with the sound of film reels turning, rang out: "Now playing for you the 99th Academy Awards, deleted by capital—" On screen, extras rushed into the venue wielding homemade film cameras, and the Best Picture award was given to an independent film shot using cell phone film mode. When the director went on stage, he smashed the digital trophy, revealing a box office manipulation chip hidden inside.

As sirens blared from Hollywood Boulevard, the Sandra sisters had already mingled with the reveling moviegoers as they emerged from the theater. In the night sky, the hacker girl projected a real film image onto the moon's surface using satellite signals. Beside Armstrong's footprints, her grandmother's star-shaped pendant was developing, each ray of light a forbidden line of dialogue. Sang Shuwan pulled out her pocket watch; the digital trophy fragments on its dial were oxidizing, revealing new coordinates: the Beverly Hills underground parking garage, where parking space B12 held the original soundtrack film of the 1927 film *The Jazz Singer*.

Sang Jiyue swirled the champagne glass in her hand. The residual developer at the bottom, reflected under the streetlights, revealed the secret of a rising director—every morning he would photograph his wife's sleeping face on 8mm film in his garage. "Digital is too fast," he once said in an interview, "Only the delay of film allows me to keep up with the speed at which her eyelashes flutter." On the highway, the headlights of film enthusiasts formed flowing symbols of film. In the trunk of the Sang sisters' truck, newly collected film resonated with fragments of trophies, emitting a low-frequency sound like the fluttering of bees—a dialogue between silver halide and metal, a tug-of-war between reality and illusion. And in the ruins of the Dolby Theatre, among the LED fragments swept up by a cleaner, a piece of glass suddenly developed a child's doodle: "I took a picture of the clouds with my mom's phone; will it fade like film?"

This is the moment of revelation in the entertainment industry. When all the carefully crafted digital skins are peeled away, what remains deep within the emulsion layer are always those imperfect yet authentic moments—such as an impromptu performance after forgetting lines, a genuine smile revealed during a NG (outtake), or the soft sound of film passing through the shutter from a dark corner when the lights go out.

Sang Shuwan, carrying a glass of champagne, walked through the crowd at the Dolby Theatre's after-party, the crystal chandelier shattering into cold starlight in her pupils. Not far away, Sang Jiyue was surrounded by reporters, her fingertips caressing the emerald brooch on her collar—a prop that the director had personally pinned to Sang Shuwan's costume three years ago when she was vying for the lead role in "The Flowers of War," now gleaming faintly at her collarbone.

"I heard the two of you joined forces to expose the shady dealings in order to restart 'Project Silver Halide'?" As the microphone was handed to her, Sang Shuwan's smile was as precise as AI calculation. "It's just a mutually beneficial arrangement." Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced at the faint tattoo behind Sang Jiyue's ear, which perfectly matched the encrypted totem in the hacker girl's database. That bluish hue suddenly faded under the light, much like the burn mark on the back of her hand that quickly faded three years ago when Sang Jiyue splashed developing fluid on her makeup photo.

Backstage in the dressing room, Sang Shuwan locked the door, her fingertips tracing traces of developing solution on the mirror. The mirror reflected surveillance footage: Sang Jiyue was inserting a microchip into the trophy base, her movements identical to when she had switched Sang Shuwan's audition video years ago. Suddenly, the hairdryer reversed direction, the hot air carrying the acrid smell of burning film—the discarded film reel of "The Last Actress," which Sang Shuwan had burned the previous week, when Sang Jiyue had been shooting an advertisement in the next studio.

In the editing room late at night, two projectors lit up simultaneously. Sang Shuwan stared at her breakdown scene in "The Last Film Queen"—a long take that should have been hers, which Sang Jiyue had digitally replaced with a body double's back view three years ago. The pinhole-sized positioning hole at the edge of the film suddenly pierced her eyes. She overlaid the infrared film, and the overlapping area revealed a surveillance screenshot of Sang Jiyue bribing the script supervisor, dated the very day the crew announced she was "unwell."

On the misty set, Sang Jiyue handed over a script tucked inside a production sheet from the 1997 film *Titanic*, the keyframe parameters circled in red perfectly matching the underwater shots in Sang Shuwan's new film. "Don't you love 'realistic textures', sister?" Sang Jiyue tilted her head, her diamond earring brushing against Sang Shuwan's wrist, the bloodstain revealing faint teeth marks from their struggle three years prior. "This is the original data I had a hacker recover; it's much clearer than those old film reels you've hidden."

As the champagne tower collapsed at the celebration banquet, Sang Shuwan bent down to pick up the shards, her fingertips touching a miniature camera on the inside of the tower's base—the same model as the one in the digital trophy at the awards ceremony. She looked up at Sang Jiyue, who was drawing storyboards on a napkin with lipstick, the strokes identical to her mother's dying words. Those handwritings, which Sang Shuwan had locked in her safe, had just been copied using hacking techniques last week.

Outside the van, paparazzi flashes created a blinding net. Sang Jiyue suddenly grabbed Sang Shuwan's hand, her nails digging into an old wound on her hand: "Next month's Palme d'Or nominees, you wouldn't be thinking of hogging it all, would you?" The car's TV showed a news report about a director whose license was revoked for "using film." The film roll he was clutching was the very one Sang Shuwan had hidden in a secret compartment in the dressing room—a sample of "The Uncrowned." Sang Jiyue's earring swayed slightly, revealing the slightly ajar safe under the back seat—where Sang Shuwan's original storyboard manuscripts should have been locked.

Sang Shuwan's fingertips paused at the edge of the safe. In the reflection of Sang Jiyue's earring, she saw the dark emotions churning in her own eyes. Three years ago, on the day of her mother's funeral, there was a similar reflection—at that time, Sang Jiyue was hiding a copy of the will into her Chanel handbag, while the original's words "the estate shall be inherited by the eldest daughter" had been digitally altered beyond recognition.

“The qualification for the Palme d'Or,” Sang Shuwan pried open Sang Jiyue’s fingers, her nails pressing crescent-shaped red marks into the other’s palm, “requires genuine quality.” She pulled out a film canister from her suit’s inner pocket; the “1968” engraved on the inside of the lid suddenly felt hot—the year her grandmother refused digital retouching, and also the month Sang Jiyue was born. As the film canister slid into Sang Jiyue’s lap, she heard the other’s barely audible cold laugh: “Are you sure you want to gamble with the original footage of *The Uncrowned*? After all…”

The car slammed on the brakes at the intersection, and Sang Shuwan's head slammed against the bulletproof glass, a blinding red flash before her eyes. Across the street, an LED screen was playing a trailer for Sang Jiyue's new film. In the long shot of the female lead breaking down in the pouring rain, the reflection of a shop window in the background brushed past the developing tank Sang Shuwan had hidden in her darkroom. She pulled out a miniature camera from her cufflink and replayed the footage from inside the car: when Sang Jiyue took the film canister, the tattoo on the inside of her ring finger—the same silver halide tattoo as the hacker girl—was flashing directly at the camera.

In the darkroom at three in the morning, Sang Shuwan immersed the sample film of "The Uncrowned" into the developing solution. Suddenly, ripples appeared on the surface of the solution, and the figure of Sang Jiyue flashed across the corridor in the monitor screen. The sound of high heels overlapped with the electrocardiogram of her mother before her death in her memory. The film gradually developed to reveal the profile of the female lead, but in the instant her eyelashes trembled, the frame skipped—the close-up shot that should have belonged to Sang Shuwan was precisely cut out with a razor blade and replaced with the unusable footage from Sang Jiyue's audition three years ago.

"Want evidence?" Sang Jiyue's voice leaked from the ventilation duct, carrying the pungent smell of developing solution. "Why don't you take a look at the brown paper bag in the second layer of your secret compartment?" Sang Shuwan ripped off the lock, and what fell out wasn't the expected ledger, but her mother's prenatal checkup report—the date showed that Sang Jiyue should have been the stillborn of twins. Small print in silver halide ink along the edge of the report read: "They used digital technology to forge two lives."

In the studio, amidst a sudden downpour, Sang Shuwan watched Sang Jiyue complete her 37th take in the water. The double's long hair clung to her face, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the actress in her mother's portrait who refused digital face-swapping. As the clapperboard sounded, Sang Jiyue suddenly coughed, choking on water, but secretly slipped a waterproof memory card into Sang Shuwan's palm—it contained the original surveillance footage from the casting call for "The Flowers of War" three years prior. In the last second of the video, as the director pushed the red-headed script to Sang Shuwan, Sang Jiyue's hand was pressed on the delete button of the recording device.

"Next week's screening," Sang Jiyue approached, wrapped in a bath towel, water droplets mixed with mascara drawing cracks on her collarbone. "Don't you want to know why every single one of your films can be precisely located by the conglomerate?" She pulled open the collar of her bathrobe, revealing a burn scar on her left shoulder that was glowing—an "accident" when Sang Shuwan knocked over a developing lamp when she was seven years old, now emitting a blue light like a data stream from some kind of biochip.

As the van pulled back into Beverly Hills, Sang Shuwan pulled out her pocket watch. The digital trophy fragments on the dial had oxidized to ash, revealing her mother's handwriting underneath: "They didn't steal the film; they stole our birth certificates." Sang Jiyue gazed at the neon lights outside the car window, her fingertips drawing two overlapping starbursts in the fogged windowpane—one was Sang Shuwan's tattoo, and the other was the hacker group's latest operational code.

In parking space B12 of the underground garage, the concrete wall cracked under infrared light, revealing a safe embedded with twin film. The moment Sang Shuwan pressed her fingerprint on the lock, Sang Jiyue's palm pressed against the back of her hand, the teeth marks on their wrists perfectly matching the burn scars. As the door opened, two yellowed birth certificates floated out—Sang Shuwan's name was stamped "Invalid" in red, while in Sang Jiyue's photograph's place was an undeveloped film.

“They used us for experiments,” Sang Jiyue’s breath brushed against her earlobe, “using digital technology to replicate our souls, then sealing the real part into film.” The sound of gears turning came from deep inside the safe. Inside the lead box that popped out, lay two embryonic gene chips. One was engraved with “Sang Shuwan,” while the other’s name had been altered into gibberish by developing fluid.

A police siren sounded in the distance. Sang Shuwan tucked the chip into her cleavage, while Sang Jiyue swallowed the film into her hollow lipstick. Before they parted ways at the corner of the garage, Sang Shuwan suddenly grabbed the other's wrist: "If I ever die, remember to develop my ashes with silver halide." Sang Jiyue raised an eyebrow and chuckled. Water droplets dripping from her hair formed two overlapping question marks on the ground, quickly being crushed into flickering digital noise by the car headlights.

Sang Shuwan stood at the elevator entrance of the underground parking garage, the warmth of Sang Jiyue's wrist still lingering on her fingertips. The elevator mirror reflected her slightly disheveled hair; the emerald brooch tucked in her hair had somehow been replaced by Sang Jiyue's diamond earrings—thrown off during the earlier scuffle, now reflecting eerie data stream patterns under the light. She pulled out her pocket watch, and her mother's handwriting on the dial suddenly seemed to seep through fluorescent developer, blurring new clues on the metal surface: "Darkroom fire in 1968; your birth films were hidden in the film cabinet."

The moment the elevator reached the top floor, Sang Shuwan squinted from the bright light. The LED screen on Hollywood Boulevard was playing breaking news, Sang Jiyue's face filling the entire frame, with the caption "Wanted for allegedly damaging a digital trophy" in the lower right corner. Water droplets from the film set still clung to her lips, yet she held up a yellowed piece of paper in front of the camera—the altered birth certificate from Sang Shuwan's darkroom. A line of small red writing circled the edge of the paper: "Twin Genetic Numbers: SY-01 (Invalid), SY-02 (Activated)."

“Dear moviegoers,” Sang Jiyue’s voice, mixed with static, echoed through the street, “you think what you’re seeing is the real us? It’s just a perfect persona calculated by the conglomerate using AI.” She pulled open her collar, revealing a holographic image projected from the burn scars on her shoulder. In the image, a person in a white coat was implanting a chip into the back of an infant’s neck, and a banner on the background wall read “Silver Halide Project – A Digital Experiment of Human Emotions.”

Sang Shuwan slipped into an old film shop at the alley entrance. The shopkeeper was wiping down a 1927 projector. The glass window reflected a figure behind her—Sang Jiyue's wanted poster was billowing in the wind, its back marked with a route to an abandoned film studio drawn in developing fluid. As she pushed open the door, the doorbell rang with the click of old-fashioned film advance. Suddenly, a hand reached out from under the counter and slipped a roll of 35mm film into her pocket, accompanied by a note that read: "The crying scene from SY-01, they didn't cut it properly."

In the darkroom of an abandoned film studio, the developing solution was at an abnormal temperature. Sang Shuwan immersed the film in the solution, and after a few flickers, the image suddenly became clear: two swaddled babies lay in an incubator, and a woman in a white coat (who looked exactly like her grandmother in her youth) threw one of the chips on the ground and said to the camera, "Emotions are not data; they shouldn't be encoded." Then the image was covered by intense white light, and scorch marks appeared on the edges of the film—a record of the "accidental" fire in 1968.

“So we were both ‘failures’.” Sang Jiyue’s voice came from the ventilation duct. She climbed down the ladder, carrying a metal box containing the twins’ genetic reports. “SY-01 was supposed to be destroyed as a perfect template, but my grandmother switched it with real film.” She opened the box. Inside were two embryo models. One had film fragments embedded in its heart, while the other was covered with binary code.

The ground suddenly shook, and in the dust falling from the ceiling, Sang Shuwan saw her reflection—she didn't know when, but she had a chip scar on the back of her neck that looked just like Sang Jiyue's. The footsteps of the conglomerate's security guards could be heard in the distance. Sang Jiyue pushed the gene box to her and took out a modified Polaroid camera: "Take these to the Palme d'Or screening. I'll distract the pursuers."

"Wait!" Sang Shuwan grabbed her camera strap and discovered that it didn't contain infrared film, but her mother's final video recording. In the video, the woman on the hospital bed trembled as she held up the film canister: "They will use digital technology to replicate your lives, but the real soul..." Before she could finish speaking, the image was cut off by the conglomerate's interference signal, turning into static. The last frame flashed the door number of her grandmother's darkroom—it was room 307 of the abandoned film studio where Sang Shuwan was currently located.

Before the two parted ways at the end of the corridor, Sang Jiyue suddenly turned around and stuffed the encrypted USB drive given to her by the hacker girl into Sang Shuwan's palm: "If I don't come back, use this to hack into the conglomerate's film library. There's an unnamed video inside..." Her voice was swallowed by the alarm, and as her figure disappeared around the corner, Sang Shuwan saw that the chip on the back of her neck was getting hot, casting a butterfly-wing-like light and shadow on the wall—it was the logo of their mother's favorite film, "Rebecca."

At the Palme d'Or screening, Sang Shuwan mingled among the audience, tearing open her shirt collar. As the big screen began playing Sang Jiyue's "Wanted Documentary," the chip on the back of her neck suddenly resonated with the projector, and all the digital screens simultaneously displayed film footage of the 1968 fire. In the audience, veteran actors ripped off their bow ties, revealing the resistance organization badges hidden inside—silver halide totems made from modified film gears.

The moment the conglomerate executives rushed onto the stage, Sang Shuwan smashed the gene box against the LED screen. Amidst the shattering glass, fragments of film from the embryo model rose into the air, revealing, under the spotlight, the true performances that had been censored throughout history: actors' uncontrolled laughter during bloopers, directors' furious roars as they smashed storyboards, and a mother's unshed tears before her death. When Sang Jiyue's holographic image appeared on the dome, she was no longer holding a wanted poster, but two rolls of original film numbered "SY-01" and "SY-02".

“Look at these scratches, these stains,” her voice pierced the chaos of the hall, “this is what a human being should look like.” Sang Shuwan took out her pocket watch, and the film fragments on the dial suddenly pieced together a complete star pattern, while Sang Jiyue’s holographic image reached out to her—the moment their fingertips touched, all the digital equipment in the hall simultaneously went out of order, only the old-fashioned projector began to turn, projecting a blurry photo of the two sisters as babies onto the screen, with their grandmother’s handwriting printed on the edge of the film: “A true actor doesn’t need to be defined.”

Sang Shuwan clenched the film canister in her palm, her nails digging into the engraving of "1968". Under the dome of the Palme d'Or screening, Sang Jiyue's holographic image flickered, the data stream projected by the chip on the back of her neck weaving a silver thread between the two. A gasp came from the audience—the conglomerate's security laser sight was sweeping across Sang Jiyue's collarbone, while her fingertips were still loosely clenched towards Sang Shuwan, as if trying to grasp the untouchable warmth from the incubator thirty years ago.

“They’re here.” Sang Jiyue’s voice mingled with the static of film reels. The holographic image suddenly split into countless silver halide particles, each reflecting different times and spaces: a hair-pulling fight in the darkroom at age seven over a roll of film; a mirrored reflection of each other touching up makeup during an audition at age sixteen; and the bloodstained fragments exchanged in the van three days ago. Sang Shuwan’s chip on the back of her neck burned, memories flooding her heart like developing fluid—it turned out that the stinging pain during each embrace was the chip reading the other’s emotional data.

"Put the film into the projector." Sang Jiyue's figure suddenly burst out from behind the screen, her shoulders stained with the red dye unique to the darkroom. "Forget about the data codes, what we need to burn are the rules." She tossed her long hair, which was covered in developing solution, and as the ends of her hair brushed against the control panel, all the digital screens simultaneously played unedited footage from the set: Sang Shuwan's bare face after crying in "The Uncrowned," the long take of slapping someone that Sang Jiyue practiced three hundred times before she succeeded, and the lines her mother wrote on the back of her medical record with lipstick before she died.

The sound of the conglomerate executives' leather shoes rushed up the steps as Sang Shuwan pushed the original twin film reels into the projector. Amidst the whirring of gears, real smoke suddenly billowed from the screen—not a digital effect, but the acrid smell of burning film mixed with the rose perfume on Sang Jiyue's body. Sang Jiyue tore open the lining of her dress, revealing armor made of strips of film, each frame showing the eyes of characters they had co-starred in: "Remember our first collaboration on 'Twin Butterflies'? The director said our scenes together were like looking in a mirror."

“Because we were originally two variables in the same program.” Sang Shuwan pressed down on the back of her hand, and the scars on their wrists merged into a complete butterfly shape in the firelight. The projector suddenly jammed, and the film reel pulled out a half-meter-long silver chain, on which fragments of her grandmother's diary were developed: “They wanted to encapsulate emotions into data, but they didn't know that tears would corrode the chip.” Sang Jiyue smiled and pulled off the chip from the back of her neck, letting the data flow down her fingertips and form a puddle, converging on the ground to form the initials of their names.