Mabel was stunned there. The woman sized her up and down for a while, then asked suspiciously, “Why aren’t you at school at this hour? How did you get in? What are you trying to do?”

Mabel tried to get up and muttered a few words, wanting to leave, but the woman grabbed her and took her straight to the security office to hand her over to the police.

When Mabel’s mother arrived at the security office, Mabel was being watched over by a female police officer in the office. Mabel’s mother was furious. She first rummaged through Mabel’s backpack, then slapped Mabel hard and scolded angrily, “Skipping school and stealing money—what are you trying to do? Are you crazy?”

The female officer was startled and quickly tried to stop Mabel’s mother, but Mabel’s mother wouldn’t let up and tried to hit Mabel a few more times. The officer had no choice but to wrestle with her. By the time the officer finally managed to calm down the angry mother and turned around, she found that Mabel was already gone.

She hurriedly chased after her, but unfortunately, Mabel had already disappeared.

Mabel escaped from the security office and hailed a taxi to rush to the rural hospital. By now, it was gradually getting dark. Sitting in the car, Mabel was very worried and silently said to herself, “Mabel, hang in there, you must hang in there!”

But unexpectedly, halfway through the journey, the taxi driver stopped the car, turned around, and asked suspiciously, “How much money do you have?”

Mabel took out her wallet to show the driver. The driver frowned and took all her money. “Your money only gets you this far.”

She was forced out of the car, and by then it was clearly past five in the afternoon. Gritting her teeth, she decided to take a shortcut over the mountain toward the hospital. The mountain path was hard to walk; sometimes branches scratched her little face, sometimes she stumbled over rocks, and she staggered along in a sorry state.

Finally, when it was completely dark, she arrived at the hospital. The real Mabel there had already been in pain for more than twenty hours, and could only moan in a weak voice that no one else could hear: “Grandma, come back soon… I’m so scared, I don’t want to die… Grandma…”

“Mabel” rushed to the bedside, reached out to hold that bony hand, and whispered, “I’m sorry, Mabel, for making you suffer…”

……

Seeing this, Ian Murphy couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief—what a good short script. It fits mainstream values: family, trust, hard work, and the soul-swapping idea is excellent. There aren’t many scenes, so it doesn’t require much from the actors’ skills, and the overall cost is very low. The only drawback is that it’s too short; at most, it could be filmed into a twenty-minute episode, nowhere near enough for a whole season.

What a pity. She was a bit regretful and was about to close the script, when she suddenly noticed there was another scene at the end…

A funeral hall? Is this just one last melodramatic moment, letting Mabel cry in front of her grandmother’s memorial?

Feels a bit unnecessary!

Although the writer is clearly a talented up-and-comer, are they still lacking experience?

She muttered to herself, but couldn’t help turning the page to read on.

……

The timeline jumped thirty years ahead. In the funeral hall, Mabel was now a beautiful middle-aged woman, her black hair coiled into a bun, dressed in black mourning clothes. The portrait on display was of Mabel’s mother, Mrs. Hashimoto, her expression numb and pained.

Mabel bowed her head to see off the guests who had come to pay their respects, then turned to look at the portrait, her face expressionless. A voiceover sounded: “More than twenty years after my father died of food poisoning, my mother has also passed away. She spent the last ten years bedridden, unable to move, tasting the warmth and coldness of human relationships, and died as painfully as Grandma did. It’s really so…”

She stared blankly at the portrait for a while, then slowly turned her head, looked around the empty funeral hall, and a faint smile gradually appeared at the corners of her mouth. She took out a handkerchief, tied it into a ball, and gently tossed it in her hand, softly humming an old nursery rhyme: “One, two, three, wrap them in cloth, the seventeen- or eighteen-year-old sister, holding flowers and incense in her hand, the sister is going to…”

……

In an instant, even Ian Murphy, a gender equality elite of the 1990s, felt the hairs on her back stand on end!

What does this mean—was the body returned or not? Could it be that Grandma betrayed her at the last moment? Didn’t want to die? Wanted to take revenge on her son and daughter-in-law?

What happened to the promised warmth and trust? Is this a twist ending? It’s a bit hard to accept—such a good child was inexplicably harmed, and by someone she trusted?

No good deed goes unpunished. So upsetting!

Still, this script is definitely interesting!

Chapter Five: The First Unlucky One

Ian Murphy was reading the script, completely absorbed. Sitting across from her, Ryan Chandler gradually relaxed—he had been worried that Murphy wouldn’t understand the script, or that she wouldn’t be interested in it.

You can’t be too careful—scripts and novels are two different things.

Except for some magical realism works, novels usually have a clear timeline, which fits people’s reading habits. But what he handed over was a scene script, which completely ignores the timeline.

In a scene script, maybe in one scene the lovers are sweetly showing affection, and in the next, they’re hurling insults and stabbing each other with knives—the time gap might be ten years, but as long as these things happen in the same setting, they’re put together for the convenience of the actors and for the director to adapt into a shooting script.