Chapter 55: No One Left the Theater

The photo retouching was completed quickly, because whether it was the two girls’ natural beauty or the makeup artist’s professional skill, both greatly reduced the workload required in post-production.

In this circle, post-editors were practically gods.
Most cosplayers relied on a triple combo of heavy retouching, extreme Photoshop, and filters to enhance visual appeal, after all, people blessed with natural beauty were far too rare.

So once this cosplay set was released, it immediately caused a huge stir within the small community.

In terms of quality, many veterans could tell at a glance how heavily a photo had been edited.
But this set was almost impossible to detect.

There was a fundamental difference between this kind of natural beauty and the kind polished up through cyber sorcery.

On top of that, both girls’ expressions and temperaments were perfectly aligned with the characters they portrayed.

It even made people wonder whether they had crossed over from another dimension.

This alone completely crushed those works that only captured the appearance but not the spirit.

From a popularity standpoint, this was originally just a niche circle, far smaller in scale than the mainstream entertainment industry.
So Lin Xiyue’s existing fanbase already counted as a colossal presence here, and the initial data accumulated through her fans was shockingly high within the circle.

Thus, in just a few short days, the cosplay first swept through the CP’s niche fandom, then took over the entire cosplay community, and finally flooded the broader ACG subculture sphere.

Generally speaking, celebrities from the mainstream entertainment industry and these subculture communities tended to look down on each other.
But this kind of cross-industry collaboration piqued the interest of many outsiders, achieving a certain level of breaking out of the niche.

As a result, the website “MoeDimension,” operated by Bai Lulu, saw its traffic skyrocket.
The servers even crashed multiple times, prompting the cloud hosting provider to call repeatedly, asking whether they were under a malicious hacking attack and if they needed protection services.

Looking at the daily site traffic multiplying by dozens of times over, Bai Lulu’s face nearly cramped from smiling.

She had known the results would be good.
She just hadn’t expected them to be this good.

Originally, MoeDimension’s daily traffic hovered around twenty to thirty thousand users.
Now it had suddenly surged past one million.
Although it would certainly decline after the hype faded, a significant portion of users would definitely remain.

Moreover, with the Bai family’s connections and financial backing, she easily secured collaborations with several well-known cosplayers in the circle.

She invested heavily to produce several additional high-standard cosplay sets as exclusive content, striving to fully capitalize on this wave of traffic.

The investment and returns were actually disproportionate.
There was a high chance she wouldn’t recoup her costs.
But Miss Bai was willing.
She simply wanted to grow her website, ideally to the point where it would become a mainstream giant platform.

Deep down, she had a premonition.
If she absorbed the losses now to build the site and seize control over traffic distribution channels, there would be countless opportunities in the future to earn back tenfold, even a hundredfold.

As for Lin Xiyue, she was naturally happy about it.

But her thoughts were now entirely focused on the movie, because that matter was far more important.

On the day the film Back in Time was released, the entire Lin Entertainment took the day off and booked a private screening at a cinema near the company to watch it together.

However, Lin Xiyue did not join them.

Instead, she dragged Xia Jinnian to a different theater, so they could observe the reactions and feedback of ordinary audience members toward the theme song.

Of course, there was also a small selfish reason.
This way, she could enjoy a private date with Jinnian.

After buying cola and popcorn, the two walked into the cinema and chose seats in the middle.

The audience present probably had no idea that the singer of the movie’s theme song was sitting among them, watching the very same screening.

As the film began, Lin Xiyue forced herself to focus.

In truth, she wasn’t particularly interested in youth melodramas that carried a faint whiff of self-indulgent sentimentality.
Especially not after having experienced real love, devotion, and the pain of life and death separation.

But no matter what, this was a film for which she had written lyrics and sung the theme song.
So she watched it seriously.

Only by the end did she realize why Director Li Yibai had such an excellent reputation.
He genuinely had skill.
The film he created wasn’t some pretentious, unrealistic fantasy of a moody literary youth, nor was it a shoddily produced, formulaic cash grab.

Even she found herself moved after finishing it.

Her originally cheerful mood was veiled with a faint layer of melancholy.
Beside her, Xia Jinnian had already begun wiping her tears.

“This kind of love that ends before it even begins is really a pity.
It’s over before it even starts.”

“Actually, that might be a kind of luck instead.
After all, they hadn’t fallen too deeply yet—just a bit of sadness.
Being forced apart after truly loving and staying together… that’s even more cruel.”

Lin Xiyue responded quietly, causing Xia Jinnian to freeze for a moment.

“How come you’re saying that like you’ve experienced it yourself, Xixi?
Quick, confess.
Did you secretly have a boyfriend behind my back?”

“That’s hard to say.
If I can write lyrics that profound, maybe I really did date someone.”

In the darkness, Lin Xiyue blinked teasingly.
Xia Jinnian immediately reached out and pinched her cheek.

“You little brat, Xixi!
Hiding something like that from me?
Not treating me as your best friend anymore, huh?”

“Hey, hey, hey?!
I was wrong, I was wrong!
I was joking!”

“Hehe, I know you were joking.
I just wanted an excuse to pinch your cheek.”

“You—?!”

Amid the playful bickering of the two girls, the film ended and the lights came on.
Lin Xiyue paused, momentarily blinded by the sudden brightness.

Usually, at this point when people were about to leave, the film’s soundtrack would begin playing.
Some movies had a dedicated ending song, but Back in Time directly used the theme song instead.

“Back in those hurried years, how many times did we say goodbye, only to delay after the farewell?”

“Who hasn’t loved before?
It’s not a grand debate of the seven emotions.”

…

The two girls’ voices seemed like a gate in time, instantly pulling the audience back into the youthful years within the film.

Though Lin Xiyue and Xia Jinnian’s voices and technique still carried a trace of youthful softness, that purity and sincerity perfectly matched the emotional tone of the song.

The audience members who had been preparing to leave unconsciously stopped in their tracks, as if guided by some invisible force, returning once more to the scenes they had just witnessed.

“Blame it not on that day being too cold, tears freezing into ice.”

“The spring breeze likewise failed to blow into the frozen photograph.”

These two lines were exquisitely written.
Performed by the two young girls, they were especially moving.
Enhanced by the theater’s surround sound, that sorrowful emotion instantly filled the entire cinema.

“If we meet again and our eyes aren’t red, can our faces still blush?”

“Like that year, hurriedly carving ‘forever together’—such a beautiful lie.”

As the song reached its climax, each note seemed to gently strike the listeners’ heartstrings, softly narrating an emotion difficult to articulate yet deeply resonant.

And in what should have been a moment when the hall emptied, not a single audience member left.
Everyone stood silently in place, watching the lyrics roll across the big screen, listening until the very last note faded—

And then thunderous applause erupted.