When a heavy rain washed away the life of Lin Yan, a rising star in the design world, he clutched the sunflower seeds sent by his grandmother before she died and hid in an old house at the end of an alley deep in the old city. The walls here are peeling off like faded memories. In the flower field cultivated by his grandmother in the corner of the courtyard, only a few thin stems are left shivering in the wind - just like his soul that can no longer stretch out after being plagiarized.
Su Nianhe, the guardian of the courtyard, is the only "intruder" at the end of the alley. This girl, who always smelled of dried mugwort, would squat by the flower field and whisper, "It will take three rains before they grow." She would also silently hand over an old diary of her grandmother's when Lin Yan tore up the drawing. There is a yellowed note in the diary: "The roots of sunflowers that do not bloom will be more stable in the soil." It is just like Lin Yan picked up the brush again in the ruins and splashed loneliness and struggle on the canvas.
When the name of the plagiarist appeared at the inauguration ceremony of the city landmark, Lin Yan looked at the sunflowers that finally sprouted in buds in the corner of the courtyard, and suddenly understood the secret that Su Nianhe had hidden in the old things - that flower field was once full of the varieties that her younger brother who died young, and his brother's design manuscript was strikingly similar to his own plagiarized work.
The wind at the end of the alley swept over the unopened flower disks, gently intertwining two periods of time that had been let down. Lin Yan finally understood that some "non-flowering" is not withering, but life is waiting for an opportunity: to let the deeply buried roots hold each other, to let the unspoken pain scab, and then one morning, facing the light, it will bloom more dazzling than before. Just like those hopes that grow quietly in the corners of the city, they never need noisy proof.
