This novel is adapted from the song “You Are My Light.”
In a word: One night in Hengdian, I chased the light and met you.
Su Wan is a prop master in Hengdian. She has repaired countless lamps, but the most precious one was smashed by her father before she fixed it. Lin Shen is an extra who has spent ten years playing bit parts. He has played countless dead men and has been waiting all this time to hear someone say, “You deserve this.”
Their meeting wasn't exactly romantic: a reflector fell on his head. She rushed over to apologize, but he got back up and continued filming, leaving her with just one comment: “The lighting's not bad.”
Later, she discovers that he isn't rude, just bad with words. When she cries, he crouches beside her and offers a tissue. When she's working late into the night, he waits for her with a kerosene lamp. And he carves a water stain on the ceiling that he's been staring at for ten years into a wooden bird and gives it to her.
The nights in Hengdian are long. She repairs lamps, and he acts. She chases the light her father left behind, while he chases the moment someone finally sees him.
“The light isn't at the edge of the sky or somewhere high above. It's in the way you look at me.”
This is a story about waiting, being seen, and two kerosene lamps.
