Chapter 542 - 253: The Magic Power of a Smile (Part 2)

However, due to technical reasons, the crying was dubbed later by the advertisement team.

The unique and aggrieved sobs of the little girl coming from the phone speaker startled both Koizumi Katsuko and Gu Weijing, who were having a meal.

"What kind of unconventional plot twist is this?"

Koizumi Katsuko raised an eyebrow.

In the heavily homogenized field of advertising, featuring a crying little girl is utterly baffling.

But no matter how you look at it.

Miss Sakai, who was waiting to skip the ad, found her anticipation aroused by this strange opening.

Gu Weijing was just reaching for mussels on the plate.

Not looking at the screen, he was startled by the sudden cry of the little girl, almost pressing his fingers into the still hot sauce.

Gu Weijing’s first reaction was that Little Moli might have been crying.

He turned to see Jasmine sitting next to them, her short stature barely revealing her head and half neck, focused on devouring a stack of white truffle rolls.

He then sighed with relief and quipped, "What? Starting off with a cry from a little girl, is this a book ad or a diaper ad?"

"Jasmine is more well-behaved than this little friend; she never cries."

Koizumi Katsuko patted Jasmine’s little head, smiling as she spoke.

With their playful banter, plus the initial seconds showing the trademark, time had already passed ten seconds.

The [Skip] sign appeared at the bottom right of the YouTube video.

"Hold on, let’s watch a few more seconds; it seems rather interesting," Koizumi Katsuko said to her boyfriend.

She did not skip immediately.

The unsatisfied curiosity was quite torturous for the heart.

When people see a particularly eye-catching title while scrolling through short videos, even if they absentmindedly swipe past it, they often rewind just to take a look. This is the reason.

And now, Koizumi Katsuko intended to see what happened to the little girl in the ad before skipping it.

Especially after a line of English appeared in the top left corner of the ad: [This advertisement content is truly collected, real scene captured, not dramatization].

Koizumi Katsuko’s curiosity about what the ad team was up to intensified.

It just so happened that the filming team was unwilling to play by the rules.

An ad isn’t a lengthy drama; the key is to be quick, accurate, and impactful, bringing across all the information to the audience in an extremely short time.

Just as they capture the audience’s interest,

the screen unexpectedly cuts to black like a movie trailer and swiftly flashes a line of golden text—

[This Easter, 130 illustration collections, 987 popular science books, 3753 youth and adult books, countless eternal literary classics, are here to meet you.]

Then it instantly switched back to the little girl’s shot.

At this moment, in the picture, a blonde girl handed a colorful storybook to the toothless little girl.

The little black girl nestled her head in her mother’s arms, cautiously taking the book.

The plot was simple and direct, requiring no voice-over or subtitles to assist; anyone could understand what was happening.

Yet the following few seconds of footage were akin to magic.

As that golden storybook passed between the adult’s and the child’s hands,

the crying gradually diminished,

eventually fading into silence.

The black girl quietly gazed at the illustrated cover in her hands.

The sorrow on her brow and eyes naturally melted away, dissipating across her cheeks.

Though the girl’s face still bore faint tear marks,

the final, unshed tear remained at the corner of her lips, while her eyes curved like crescent moons.

The ice broke,

and spring came with blossoms.

Such a dramatic facial expression change would have critics accusing a stage actor of overacting, saying the expressions were unnatural and the emotions disconnected if it were a performance.

But when everything is a genuine expression with no script,

what remains is only astonishment.

The little girl’s smile is the most touching image under the sky.

It’s rooted in the human gene’s inherent instinct to protect offspring—male or female, even the cruelest serial killer, as long as the last shred of humanity isn’t wholly extinguished, even they would be moved by such a smile.

"How beautiful,"

Koizumi Katsuko sighed, her face involuntarily showing an overflow of maternal expression.

That kind of naive, pure, and heartfelt smile.

Even if a Hollywood’s most renowned child star, McKenna Grace, were hired to act, it couldn’t replicate such an unadulterated effect.

This is a smile sufficient to pervade one’s soul, melting away Miss Shengzi’s heart.

"Very beautiful,"

Koizumi Katsuko felt that this smile inexplicably reminded her of a masterpiece by Dante Rossetti she saw at the Taylor Art Gallery in London, "The Smiling Little Angel"—in that painting, a beam of light from the heavens above shone upon the young girl’s rosy face, melting away the sadness within the painting, allowing joy to bloom from the heart.

"I’ve seen heaven, witnessed earthly goodness, observed holy light illuminating everywhere, and smiles naturally arise from the heart, pure and spotless," she softly murmured Rossetti’s religious-styled note scribbled in the painting’s corner.

In terms of meaning, Rossetti’s work is essentially a revelation painting, depicting so-called "divine revelation" or recording "moments of religious epiphany."