The story spans from high school in the late 1990s to around 2018. Han Ershui buried his adolescent secret love deep in his heart. He dropped out of school to work because his family was poor. Later, because his father was seriously ill, he was forced to "exchange marriages" and marry a mentally retarded girl from a neighboring village. Xiao Zhai dropped out of school due to family changes and her own rebellion, and went south alone, rising and falling in the tide of the times. She eventually gave birth to a child out of wedlock and became a single mother. Many years later, the two reunited on the ruins of their hometown. Facing the past crushed by the process of urbanization, they discovered that the fate of each other had never truly intersected, which in itself was the deepest irony of the times.
