"Midnight Rain, Return of the Substitute" tells a suspenseful story entangled with time and secrets.
Mr. Lin Shen was awakened by the same nightmare at 3:17 in the morning. The corridor in the dream, the nursery rhymes behind the iron gate, and the sudden appearance of his grandmother's relics in reality - an oil-paper umbrella that was supposed to be burned with the funeral, overlapped strangely. As calls and text messages from the canceled address continue to approach, the familiar nursery rhyme, the secret under the willow tree in the river bend, and the inexplicable mark of an umbrella bone on his chest gradually reveal a truth that has been buried for twenty years: the person who drowned when he was twelve years old may not be the person he remembers, and his current "aliveness" is just an illusion obtained by his grandmother through a taboo "substitution" ceremony.
With the backlash of the substitute and the shadow of the past approaching step by step, the water in the river bend, the bones of the oil-paper umbrella, and the clock running backwards all tell the same cruel law: when the borrowed life is finally over, the third rainy night is the time to return it.
