Working Life: Secrets Hidden in the City's Corners

A strange, hard-to-place smell always hangs in the tin shed at the freight yard east of the city: machine oil mixed with sweat, with the occasional metallic tang of rust.

Whenever Wei Mulin's metal prosthetic leg crushes the gravel, it reminds him of all the things hidden here and left unsaid: the work injury scars Old Zhou hides beneath his uniform, the bone fragments still lodged in Fu An's broken leg, and the old wooden chest Aunt Zhang always keeps locked in the staff room. Only when blood vines crawl out of a freight container and coil around the necks of the night-shift workers do they realize that their missing coworkers, withheld wages, and buried injury compensation claims have all been turned into fertilizer to force the vines to grow.

Amid the sharp clang of iron wrenches striking gears, this band of people who have stumbled and bled will dig the buried truth out of the city's hidden corners, while protecting the unspoken loyalty they share. After all, in the mire of life, the roughest bones often shelter the warmest hearts.