At thirteen, Lin Wanxing saw her dream of an education shattered in the muddy monsoon season of the south. Her own family treated her as a burden and squeezed every ounce of labor from her. From the assembly line at an electronics factory to the back kitchen of a restaurant, her heavy body became a shackle she couldn’t escape. Then, after a farcical attempt to force her into marriage, she fled north with three hundred yuan in savings.
The freezing nights in a Shijiazhuang rental, the smell of cigarettes at the convenience store in the early hours, and the clear, youthful voice in a game saying, “Stick with me,” became faint glimmers in her bleak life. Shen Chi, a northern boy four years younger than her, awkwardly and tenderly won his way into her heart, only to push her into the abyss again and again as reality pulled them apart. Their closeness in the game was an illusion, the sweetness of meeting in person was a bubble, and his indifference after her abortion was a cruel reality.
At last, she resolved to sever ties with the past. In a rental room in Hengshui, she tattooed the words “longing to be loved” onto her skin, then marked her collarbone with starlight that belonged to her alone. But the boy who had once discarded her as worthless came barging into the life she had painstakingly rebuilt, bearing belated remorse and burning tears.
This is a story of redemption and being redeemed. A branch from the south finally takes root in the north. Can the starlight that once burned to ashes reignite in his palm amid the push and pull of love and pain?
