stjorthotic Chapter 81 officially begins airing.
Chapter 81 officially begins airing.
Duan Lei turned off the lights, drew the curtains, and turned the room into a simple "private cinema".
He's not the type to binge-watch dramas. As a seasoned bookworm who's frequented suspense forums for seven or eight years, his expectations for domestic suspense dramas have long been dragged down to negative levels by the various padded-out productions. But tonight is different—"The Hidden Corner," written by Early Spring Tea.
This name is legendary in the suspense genre.
Duan Lei first encountered the name "Early Spring Tea" in an issue of "Tales of the Tang Dynasty" last year. The short story, titled "Grandma," was about a grandmother and granddaughter who swapped souls, and the ending twist sent chills down his spine. He flipped to the table of contents to find the author's biography, which contained only one name: Early Spring Tea.
Later, he read several short stories, including "The Old Corpse in the Countryside" and "Monkey's Paw," in the collection of short stories "New Year's Goods Shop." Each story gave him an indescribable feeling of familiarity and strangeness—like the skeleton of European and American and Japanese suspense, but dressed in an authentic Chinese coat, making it neither outdated nor out of place.
He even suspected at one point that this early spring tea might be the pseudonym of a famous writer.
Later, someone posted on the forum that Early Spring Tea had also written a TV script for a famous director, called something like "The Hidden Corner".
Duan Lei immediately memorized the name.
The first episode aired at 8:00 PM sharp.
Duan Lei placed the tablet on the headboard and put on his headphones.
As the opening theme begins, eerie electronic music accompanies rapidly flashing images—a green wall, the backs of three children, and a person standing on a mountaintop with outstretched arms.
He paused the video and turned off the comments.
He wanted to watch it cleanly, even though there weren't any comments to begin with.
In the first five minutes of the first episode, Zhang Dongsheng takes his parents-in-law hiking. He takes photos of them on the mountain, adjusts their poses, squats down, and says with a smile, "Are you done yet?"—then he pushes them off the mountain.
Duan Lei sprang up from the head of the bed.
This middle-aged actor acted so well! That cunning smile that hid a knife before he pushed the person was so convincing.
At the end of the first episode, the three children inadvertently captured Zhang Dongsheng pushing someone in a photo they took at the scenic spot. The camera then cuts to Zhu Chaoyang's enlarged photo, showing a blurry figure standing on the edge of a cliff with arms outstretched.
Duan Lei felt his heart skip a beat. This kind of "unintentional act of filming evidence" setting is not new in suspense works, but the narrative pace, character portrayal and camera language of this drama made him feel that this was not like the kind of old lady binding smelly feet domestic web drama of the past, but more like... more like an American drama.
He thought of many of Netflix's great works.
Good news: This drama has absolutely no resemblance to domestic TV dramas.
Better news: the stitching is all done on fast-paced foreign TV dramas.
Then he remembered that Early Spring Tea had mentioned in an interview that he had studied the narrative rhythm of many famous works when writing the script. Duan Lei added a point to Early Spring Tea's score in his mind—not simply because it learned the fast pace from American TV series, but because it learned it and then told a truly authentic Chinese story.
It was almost 10 PM when Duan Lei finished watching the second episode. He took off his headphones and sat in the dark for a while to calm himself down. His mind was filled with Zhu Chaoyang's eyes—the eyes of that unknown young actor, who possessed a tranquility beyond his years. And Pu Pu, the way that little girl looked up at people from the stairwell, her gaze indescribably beautiful.
He opened the forum and found that the entire suspense section was flooded with posts about "The Hidden Corner".
"The tea in early spring is truly amazing; every character in this script feels like a living person."
"Does anyone else think Zhu Chaoyang is a younger version of Zhang Dongsheng? His eyes are so similar."
"I swear I've read the short story 'Early Spring Tea' somewhere, it's called 'The Human Chair,' and the ending twist felt like being hit on the back of the head."
Duan Lei replied to that post: "The short stories before 'Early Spring Tea' were all suspenseful. If he can stretch the tightness of short stories into twelve episodes, with each episode having a suspense hook, then he will be a god in the domestic suspense genre."
After posting it, he felt he had exaggerated a bit, but upon reflection, it didn't seem so exaggerated after all.
This show is just that good.
The next day at work, Duan Lei ran into Sister Zhou from the same department in the company's break room. Sister Zhou usually only watched palace dramas and variety shows, but today she was actually talking about "The Hidden Corner".
"Did you see it? That Zhang Dongsheng took me hiking. Yesterday my husband said we were going to climb Fragrant Hills this weekend, and I said, 'Are you trying to push me down?'" Sister Zhou said, her face beaming.
Duan Lei was stunned for a moment, then smiled.
The fact that someone like Sister Zhou was watching a suspense drama meant that the show's popularity was even greater than he had imagined. He returned to his workstation with his cup, opened Douban, and found that "The Hidden Corner" had already received a rating of 9.0.
His heart skipped a beat.
What does a 9.0 rating mean? In the past five years, very few domestic online dramas have even scored above 8. He glanced at the short review section; five-star reviews accounted for two-thirds, while one-star and two-star reviews made up less than one percent. The title of the top long review was: "Finally, domestic suspense dramas don't insult the audience's intelligence anymore." The first reply below it was: "Screenwriter Early Spring Tea, I'll remember that name."
Duan Lei gave it a thumbs up and read the long comment again. When he read the part about "Zhang Dongsheng's smile before he pushed the person reminded me of a saying—all malice is disguised as kindness," he put down his phone, leaned back in his chair, and stared at the ceiling for a while.
He thought of tea in early spring.
Who exactly is this person? Is he male or female? How old is he? There are many different opinions on the forum. Some say he is a screenwriter in his forties, some say he is a returnee from overseas, and some say he is a university teacher.
Duan Lei had previously read a post suggesting that "Early Spring Tea" might be written by a young person because its writing style possessed a sharpness and unconventionality that didn't belong to older screenwriters. However, others countered that such insightful observations into the darker aspects of human nature couldn't possibly be written by a young person.
Some people suggested that since Zaochun Decha debuted in the essay contest of "The Great Tang Dynasty Ghost Stories", he must be quite young, which made netizens laugh.
Which author doesn't have a bunch of pen names?
Duan Lei didn't know who was right or wrong, but he knew one thing—the naturally bad kid who hid the corpse in "Summer, Fireworks, My Corpse" written by Early Spring Tea had the same feeling; the two works were practically from the same lineage.
The character Zhu Chaoyang in "The Hidden Corner" reminded him of the feeling he had when he watched "Grandma" last year and empathized with his granddaughter: oppressive, suffocating, and powerless.
It's clear that Early Spring Tea is really good at writing about children.
When Duan Lei got home that evening, he watched the first two episodes again.
He started a new thread on the forum titled "Frame-by-Frame Analysis of Details in the First Episode of 'The Hidden Corner'", and spent two hours taking screenshots, annotating, and writing analyses of the details from the first two episodes. Finally, he added a line at the end of the post: "Early Spring Tea, if you are reading this post, I just want to say—thank you."
After posting, he refreshed the page and found that dozens of people had already replied.
Some praised his detailed analysis, others added details he had missed, and still others commented "Early spring tea is awesome." Duan Lei read through them one by one, a smile unconsciously creeping onto his face.
In fact, Duan Lei wasn't sure if his analysis was reliable. He was just an ordinary viewer who liked suspense and a reader who was repeatedly amazed by the works of Early Spring Tea.
He didn't know the mysterious screenwriter's true identity, nor what his backstory was. But he did know one thing—in those years when domestic suspense dramas were flooded with shoddy productions, Early Spring Tea's works were the kind of good stuff he was willing to pay for, stay up all night for, and rewatch repeatedly.
This is enough.
As night deepened outside the window, Duan Lei silenced his phone, put on his headphones, and started watching "The Hidden Corner" again. The opening theme song played once more, and he leaned back in his chair with a smile on his lips.
"What other surprises does the early spring tea hold that we, its readers, don't know about?"