Pushing open the mottled courtyard door, Lin Yanqing and Zhou Huaiyu met again under the hanging flower gate. She is the promising chief translator of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he is a taciturn intangible cultural heritage restorer, and he is also the boy next door who was briefly cared for by her.
A sudden property rights agreement forced the two to "live together." He remembered all her habits - the temperature of her coffee, her favorite brand of candy when she stayed up late, the little movements she made when she was nervous by twirling her sleeves. She gradually became addicted to this silent appropriateness, until she discovered that the meticulous "life record" had already exceeded the normal scope.
"Let's get married by agreement." He said lightly, "I will help you keep the ancestral home that my father cherishes, and you will help me get rid of family control."
Marriage has become a new round of game. She mediates at the international negotiation table, and he restores time on ancient artifacts. When she lost her temper in public for the first time to defend him, when he shielded her from the family humiliation but only said "it's easy" - something started to get out of control.
Until that rainy night, she opened the secret cabinet in the west wing and saw seven years of her life that had been meticulously filed: every boarding pass, every work briefing, even the scraps of paper she discarded... And the computer screen was showing evidence of interference with her transfer process.
"Yan Qing," he stood at the door, soaked to the skin and his eyes were horribly bright, "now you finally belong to me."
Under the sugar coating of marriage first and love later, there is a life-and-death game between pathological possession and rational order. When the translator begins to translate the silence of his lover, and when the restorer tries to repair his distorted feelings - what this courtyard house witnesses is a long negotiation about salvation and self-rescue.
