Old Film, New Fire

At nine the next morning, before the lights in Hawthorn Screening Hall had fully warmed up, Xu Zhixia had already set a tripod in the center of the last row. Lu Chen had raised the rolling shutter halfway so the morning heat would not pour inside, leaving a narrow seam of light. Dust floated in that seam like fragments shed by time. "You're really filming?" "Really filming." Xu Zhixia was adjusting the sound recorder and didn't look up. "Not just the cinema. I want the whole street. The people, the shops, the sounds, the smells, and why all of it deserves to stay." Lu Chen leaned against the doorframe and said nothing. He knew that once she was in work mode, she locked herself into a transparent shell: calm, precise, impossible to interrupt.