Genius Playground

On the computer screen, the credits rolled from bottom to top, all members of the East Sea University Film Club.

At the end of the credits, the name of the head director, Xu Yan, floated up.

After that, the screen went black, and the East Sea University Film Club logo appeared. The video progress bar reached the end and stopped there.

Jiang Ran leaned back in his computer chair, lost in thought.

He’d finished watching it.

’How should I put it?’ he thought. ’Maybe it’s because I wrote the script, acted in it, and know it by heart... but it just feels so-so to me.’

"It’s mediocre."

Jiang Ran commented,

"But for a student film festival project, the quality is probably considered top-notch. You can’t compare it to a Hollywood movie, after all."

"It’s just... really hard to believe that a work of this caliber would be bought by a film company for the outrageous price of 12 million yuan, and that they’d go to such lengths to make everyone sign non-disclosure agreements."

Jiang Ran had been thinking about this for a long time after getting home.

The more he thought about it, the weirder it seemed.

The more he thought, the more suspicious it became.

No matter how you looked at it, this transaction, with its severely lopsided returns, was far beyond the realm of common sense.

"But why, exactly?"

He narrowed his eyes.

"What could possibly be so important that it would make that film company and the big-shot director so cautious, even to the point of insanity?"

"Could it be..."

After racking his brain, he could only think of one possibility.

’Could it be that, by some twist of fate, my script contained something I shouldn’t have written, something I shouldn’t have revealed?’

It was a ridiculous idea.

But other than that, Jiang Ran couldn’t think of any other reason to explain the sky-high "hush money" the film company had offered.

That’s right.

He didn’t see the 12 million—or the promised job offers at major companies and startup funding for every film club member—as "payment."

It was more like "hush money."

’Someone is trying to use this exorbitant hush money to cover up certain secrets, hide some kind of information, and eliminate any possibility of a leak.’

And you know what?

Following that train of thought, the logic was becoming more and more plausible.

Too many people were involved in the filming of the short film Genius Playground. In the East Sea University Film Club alone, nearly a hundred people had participated.

In modern society, getting 100 people to all keep a secret—to shut 100 mouths—is incredibly difficult.

The best way was to come up with a plausible reason and tie everyone’s interests to it, making those 100 people *want* to keep the secret.

"Using the non-disclosure agreement for an unreleased movie as a pretense for silencing everyone is actually a very clever method."

Jiang Ran continued to follow this conspiracy theory:

"If they had used any other excuse to take away the grand prize that the Genius Playground short film deserved, it definitely would have sparked dissatisfaction and suspicion."

"But by explaining it as ’maintaining suspense before the movie’s release and preventing spoilers,’ not only does it follow conventional logic, but it also makes the outcome more acceptable for the East Sea University Film Club."

But still...

Was it really necessary?

Jiang Ran scratched his head.

The script, and its prototype—the Setting Collection he had scribbled down randomly in middle school—were nothing more than the groundless fantasies of his teenage years.

Many of the concepts inside it couldn’t stand up to scrutiny and were even self-contradictory.

How could such childish nonsense touch upon anyone’s interests? How could it accidentally expose someone’s secret?

Could it be that in this world...

...there really are phones that can grant any wish, or diaries that let you travel through time?

"Forget it."

Jiang Ran laughed at his own ridiculous thought.

He could believe in traveling through time by relying on various physics-based devices.

Like a Positron Cannon.

Or the yet-to-be-seen Time Travel Machine.

Those were at least part of science.

But traveling through time with a diary?

That was the premise of the foreign film The Butterfly Effect. Back then, the middle-school-aged Jiang Ran who wrote the Setting Collection was just a copycat, borrowing ideas from all over the place.

A supernatural diary like that could absolutely never exist in real life.

If someone really believed you could travel through time by reading a diary, they might as well believe that a Death Note exists in this world—the kind where you can kill someone just by writing their name in it.

He shook his head, deciding not to dwell on such dark conspiracy theories anymore.

He was probably just overthinking it.

Maybe after a while, the Genius Playground movie project would be officially filed. Then they’d start revising the script, finding actors, assembling a crew, wrapping up filming, releasing it in theaters, making a huge profit, and then a sequel.

In any case, he had already received his full payment.

What happened next... had nothing to do with him.

He took out his phone.

And opened his mobile banking app.

Staring at that long string of numbers—12 million Dragon Country yuan—was an absolute delight to the eyes.

"Now that I’m a multimillionaire again, what should I do?"

He thought it over.

Jiang Ran decided to buy some things for his parents.

For his mom, he’d buy some gold jewelry or jade; she liked that sort of thing.

For his dad, he’d buy a car. The one Dad Jiang was driving now was already ten years old—it was old, beat-up, and broke down all the time.

He opened WeChat and made a voice call to Wang Hao.

"Yo? What’s up, bro?"

Wang Hao actually picked up instantly.

"I’ve got an exam tomorrow, I’m making a cheat sheet right now. Don’t bother me, ’kay?"

"You’re still not done with exams...?"

Jiang Ran grumbled.

"I’ve been home on break for a week already, and you’re still taking tests."

"Fuck! That’s just how it is at this shithole vocational college!"

Wang Hao cursed,

"Damn it, every single year our break starts late and school starts early. This damn school is definitely just trying to squeeze more tuition money out of us!"

"Aiyah, if you have something to say, spit it out! I was just getting in the zone with my cheat sheet. I even bought the finest-point pen, and my writing is as small as an ant’s. I’m gonna lose my touch in a minute!"

Alright.

Jiang Ran got straight to the point: