To say that she was excited was putting it mildly. An Ning was not merely pleased or cautiously optimistic. She was genuinely, unmistakably thrilled.
Acting was not something she did to pass time or to chase applause. It was the one thing that had remained constant through every turning point of her life in this world. When she stood before a camera, when she slipped into a role and allowed another soul to breathe through her, the world made sense in a way nothing else ever did.
She loved the quiet before a take, that fragile moment when the set stilled and every sound faded into expectation. She loved the weight of a script in her hands, the countless possibilities hidden between lines of dialogue. She loved the slow process of understanding a character, first on the page, then in her heart, until emotions stopped feeling borrowed and began to feel real.
