At sixteen, after both her parents die, He Xinghua is pressured by her relatives to give up her family fortune and ends up in the slums of Country Y. For two years, she scrapes by painting on the streets and playing piano in restaurants, until one rainy night she finds the mysterious Chinese man Ling Yexuan in an alley, stabbed twelve times. This bloodied stranger stirs the loneliness she has long kept buried, and tending to him through the night in her humble home becomes an unexpected turning point in her dark life. When his wounds become infected and he develops a high fever, she spends half a month’s savings to fetch Arthur, a disillusioned, alcoholic former doctor. The three of them fight for life in squalid surroundings. The brutality of flesh torn open beneath a scalpel stands in stark contrast to the steam rising from a bowl of plain rice porridge. A sketch capturing the doctor’s focused expression allows lost souls to feel the warmth of life again. In this corner where light and darkness intertwine, three broken souls quietly begin to weave the possibility of redemption.
