Aurora kept looking at the document after saving it.
The male lead's profile took up just under a page.
The female lead's didn't exist yet.
She opened a new document.
FEMALE LEAD — PRELIMINARY CASTING PROFILE
Mia leaned across the desk to retrieve a few sheets of paper.
"Finished?"
"One."
"Thomas asked for both."
"I can count."
"Just making sure."
Aurora shot her a look.
Mia smiled without looking up from the documents.
Aurora turned back to the screen.
She entered the character's playing age.
Then stopped.
For the male lead, she'd had too many characteristics to choose from.
For the female lead, she didn't even know where to begin.
It was absurd.
She knew that girl.
She knew her habits, her reactions, even her most questionable decisions.
And yet, whenever she tried to describe her, all she could think of were the things she did around him.
She reopened the novel.
The first few pages.
The new house.
The noises coming from behind a closed door.
The girl who called the police.
Aurora slowly lowered her gaze.
She remembered that evening.
Not just what had happened.
She remembered the frustration of being ignored, the fear she'd tried to downplay, and, above all, the humiliation she'd felt when she realized she'd been wrong.
Leon hadn't made things easy for her.
But she hadn't done much to make them easier, either.
"Aurora?"
She looked up.
Mia was watching her.
"You've been staring at that page for five minutes."
"I'm thinking."
"I can see that."
"Then why are you asking?"
"To make sure you're still here."
Aurora shook her head and started typing.
Expressive. Spontaneous. Curious. Occasionally clumsy.
She read it back.
It sounded like a description of a girl destined to trip over things for the entire series.
She deleted the last part.
"Don't start again," Mia commented.
"This is a different kind of deletion."
"Of course it is."
Aurora ignored her friend's smile.
She wrote a second sentence.
The actress must convincingly portray both the character's curiosity about the male lead and the discomfort caused by his behavior.
She studied it for a few seconds.
Then added:
She must maintain an identity of her own, even in scenes she shares with him.
That one stayed.
Mia was called away by Rachel shortly afterward.
They needed to compare two versions of the same scene and decide which changes to submit to Leon.
Aurora stayed at her desk.
She worked on the female lead's profile, returned to the male lead's, and reviewed the requirements of the scenes planned for the auditions.
She tried to imagine two actors facing each other.
A young man capable of commanding a room without speaking.
A young woman capable of holding her own in that same room.
That was the problem.
Finding two suitable faces wasn't enough.
They had to exist as individuals, too.
When she finally looked up, most of the workstations were empty.
She checked the time.
She'd stayed longer than intended.
She reread both documents from the beginning.
The male lead's profile was precise.
There was still something wrong with the female lead's.
Not because it was incomplete.
Because it continued to define her through the reactions he provoked in her.
Aurora leaned back in her chair.
She didn't want that to happen on screen, too.
She'd read enough screenplays to know how easily a female lead could be reduced to someone who simply waited to be chosen.
And she wasn't going to direct that kind of story.
She sent the documents to the printer.
Leon was standing by the printer.
Aurora recognized him before he even turned around.
He was holding several pages and checking the last one.
She slowed slightly.
Leon collected the two sheets that had just come out of the tray.
"These are yours."
He handed them to her.
"Thanks."
As he passed them over, his gaze settled on the first page.
Then on an underlined sentence.
The actor must be able to make silence feel intentional, not empty.
"They're the profiles for Thomas," Aurora explained.
Leon nodded.
She could have gone back to her desk.
He could have returned to his work.
Instead, Aurora looked at the documents.
Then at him.
"Could you read them?"
Leon raised his eyes.
"Now?"
"It's only two pages."
"I didn't ask how many pages there were."
Aurora pressed her lips together slightly.
"Do you have time?"
He checked his watch.
"Yes."
Leon's office was lit mainly by the lamp on his desk.
Beyond the glass walls, the sky had already begun to darken.
Aurora sat down across from him.
It wasn't her first time in his office, but until now she hadn't paid much attention to the objects around her.
A gym bag beside the cabinet.
Two books stacked on top of each other.
A charger left near the edge of the desk.
Little things.
Things that didn't seem to belong to the Leon she saw in meetings.
Or perhaps they did.
Perhaps she was the one who kept dividing him into different versions of himself.
Leon began reading.
Aurora waited.
After a few seconds, she folded her hands in her lap.
Then unfolded them.
"They're not final."
"I know."
"Thomas wants them tomorrow."
"You prepared them today."
"I was just explaining why there might still be things to revise."
Leon lifted his eyes slightly.
"Aurora."
She stopped.
"I'm reading them."
She lowered her gaze.
"Right."
Silence settled over the office again.
This time, she decided to respect it.
Leon finished the second page.
Then returned to the first.
"This works."
He pointed to a line.
Aurora leaned forward.
It was the one about silence.
"The rest?"
"It's usable."
Not exactly a compliment.
But she hadn't expected Leon to celebrate.
"I'm less convinced by the female lead's profile."
He picked up the second page.
"Why?"
Aurora already knew the answer.
It was precisely what bothered her.
"Because it feels like everything she does revolves around him."
Leon reread a few lines.
"To some extent, it does."
Aurora looked up.
"It shouldn't."
"In the novel, sometimes it does."
His answer caught her off guard.
Not because it was offensive.
But because Leon hadn't tried to defend his own work.
Aurora looked at the page.
"It can work in a novel. On screen, it risks becoming repetitive."
"Then change it."
"I don't want to change what happens."
"I didn't tell you to change the events."
Aurora fell silent.
Leon set the page on the desk.
"You can change what the audience sees."
She looked at him again.
That was an important distinction.
Aurora picked up the profile and turned it toward herself.
"If she goes to the library to study and ends up watching him, I don't necessarily have to build the entire scene around the fact that she's watching him."
"Exactly."
"I can show what she was doing before. Why she was there. What she loses when she gets distracted."
Leon nodded.
Aurora lowered her gaze.
It was a simple solution.
And yet, until that moment, she'd kept thinking about the female lead as though she needed to defend her from something.
She picked up a pen.
"May I?"
Leon gave a small nod.
Aurora crossed out a sentence.
Then wrote another in the margin.
The female lead must retain recognizable goals, even when her relationship with him becomes central.
She read it back.
"She can't walk into a room just to see whether he looks at her."
Leon watched her.
Aurora only felt the weight of those words after she'd spoken them.
For a moment, she saw a library again.
A table.
A boy wearing glasses, bent over a book.
And herself, searching for an excuse to stay a few minutes longer.
She lowered her eyes to the pen.
"At least, not all the time."
"She didn't always do that."
Leon's voice remained calm.
Aurora slowly raised her head.
He was still looking at the document.
He didn't seem to have attached any meaning to her words beyond the professional one.
Or perhaps he was simply good at not showing it.
"No," she said. "Not always."
Aurora added two more notes.
One concerned how the actress should handle moments of embarrassment.
The other concerned scenes in which the female lead made decisions without involving the boy.
Leon let her finish.
When she put down the pen, he read the new lines.
"Better."
Aurora leaned back in her chair.
Only then did she realize how tense her shoulders had been.
"There's one thing I don't want."
Leon looked at her.
"I don't want her to seem stupid."
"Why would she?"
Aurora pointed to the opening pages of the novel.
"She calls the police because of a punching bag."
Leon lowered his gaze.
"She doesn't know it's a punching bag."
"I know."
"She's just moved into an unfamiliar house. She hears banging noises, tries to find out where they're coming from, and no one answers her."
Aurora went still.
It was an accurate description.
Perhaps too accurate.
"She could have waited," she said.
"Yes."
"Or kept trying."
"That too."
Leon didn't seem particularly interested in deciding whether the girl had made the best choice.
Aurora rolled the pen between her fingers.
"Don't you think she's ridiculous?"
He looked up.
For a few seconds, he didn't answer.
"Not in that scene."
Aurora suddenly felt the need to look away.
It wasn't a confession.
It wasn't even a kind gesture.
Leon was simply explaining how he'd written a character.
And yet something about that answer affected her more than she wanted it to.
For years, she'd remembered that evening as one of the many occasions when he'd found her unbearable.
She'd never considered that he might have understood her reasons.
Or that he'd come to understand them later.
When he'd written the novel.
The difference mattered.
And Aurora didn't know which possibility she preferred.
"Neither do I," she finally said.
Leon lowered his gaze to the papers.
"Then don't direct her as though she is."
Aurora looked at him.
That sentence was different from the others.
He wasn't suggesting how she should write the profile.
He was reminding her of the responsibility she carried.
Aurora nodded.
"I won't."
She gathered the documents.
"Thank you."
"Send me the updated version."
"I will."
She stood.
She had already reached the door when she stopped.
There was a question that had kept returning to her mind since the meeting about the ending.
Because he doesn't tell her.
Leon had gone back to reviewing his documents.
Aurora watched him behind the desk for a moment.
She could have asked whether, while writing that scene, he'd thought about the evening when it had actually happened.
Whether he still remembered the expression on her face.
Whether he remembered how angry they'd been with each other.
But she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer.
"Leon."
He looked up.
Aurora parted her lips slightly.
Then changed her mind.
"Have a good evening."
"You too."
She left.
Back at her desk, Aurora reopened the female lead's profile.
She deleted two sentences.
Added another.
The actress must be able to carry a scene even when the male lead's attention isn't on her.
She reread the entire document.
This time, she recognized a person.
A girl with desires, flaws, ambitions.
Someone capable of making mistakes.
Someone who, despite everything, kept trying to understand.
Aurora saved the document.
She drafted an email to Thomas, attached both profiles, and copied Leon.
Before sending it, she opened her notebook to check one last note.
The sentence from the meeting was still there.
Written once.
Repeated.
Then crossed out.
Why doesn't he tell her?
Aurora studied it.
Until now, she'd been trying to understand the male lead's silence.
Why he didn't explain.
Why he pulled away.
Why he left her to search for answers.
But that evening, after working on the female lead's character, another question seemed just as important.
She picked up her pen.
Beneath the first sentence, she wrote:
Why does she keep trying?
She stared at the words.
She remembered all the times she'd sought Leon out without having anything to say to him.
Conversations started for insignificant reasons.
Questions he'd answered with a single word.
And others he hadn't answered at all.
Back then, she'd always found an explanation.
Curiosity.
Habit.
The desire to make living together easier.
Now, five years later, none of those answers seemed sufficient.
The sound of a door reached her from the corridor.
Aurora looked up.
Through the glass wall, she saw Leon leaving his office, his gym bag slung over his shoulder.
He stopped briefly to speak to someone.
Then continued toward the elevators.
Aurora followed him with her eyes until he disappeared.
She looked down at her notebook.
The question was still there.
She didn't cross it out.
She closed the notebook.
Then sent the email.