Fishing for the Moon in Soul's Galaxy

Amid a forest of steel and concrete, Lin Huai’s life was like the code he wrote: precise and repetitive, yet cold and lonely.

At the end of another exhausting night of overtime, the city lights swallowed the stars. By chance, he opened a social universe called “Soul” and fell into a galaxy of information, only to feel lost.

Then he entered a party room called “Radio for Strangers in a Corner of the City.” A woman’s voice, clear as a stream in early spring, with a distinctive rhythm and a husky texture, pierced the noise. Her name was “Nian Nian Bu Wang.”

She shared a painting called “The Falling Moon”: against a somber, deep blue background, a thin, sharp waning crescent plunged downward with grim resolve, surrounded by shattered starlight. That sense of a helpless fall miraculously illuminated the maze of stalled code in Lin Huai’s mind.

A kindred response to a late-night private message, a mutual understanding over feeling “stuck”: two souls steeped in loneliness and exhaustion experienced a strange, gentle resonance for the first time, amid a virtual galaxy of sound waves.

Lin Huai, “Huai Shui Wu Sheng,” is a meticulous, rational programmer accustomed to the world of code, where everything is black or white. But through the voice and brush of Su Nian, “Nian Nian Bu Wang,” he discovers the ripples of emotion and the poetry of everyday life.

Su Nian is a free-spirited illustrator and a soothing livestreamer who weaves worlds from sound and color, yet hides old wounds within. She longs for intimacy even as she fears it.

They begin by talking openly under anonymous names, sharing their struggles at work, the glimmers of light in daily life, and their late-night reflections. In Soul’s galaxy, they use voice and words to build a fragile yet precious bridge.