Summer, 1963. Eighteen-year-old Li Nuan arrived with a travel bag at Courtyard No. 95, Nanluoguxiang. Fresh out of nursing school, she had been assigned to the clinic at the steel mill. Her uncle was a deputy director in the logistics department, and he found her a little room in the courtyard. Behind a floral curtain lay the busy world outside; beyond it was her own small haven.
Her neighbor, Kang Guojun, was a demobilized soldier and deputy head of security. He was quiet and dependable. When she fell ill, he picked the lock and stayed by her side all night. The two naturally got together, met each other’s families, and set a wedding date. Just as everything seemed settled, the fiancée his family had arranged for him back home showed up. Li Nuan took off her silver bracelet, set it on the table, and quietly stepped aside.
Everyone in the courtyard thought she’d be down for a while. The very next day, Liu Guangqi knocked on her door. The second uncle’s college-educated son, secretary to the factory Party committee’s deputy secretary, and the courtyard’s much-admired rising star. They’d barely been more than acquaintances before, but now he showed up uninvited: bringing coal briquettes, fixing her window, making her brown sugar water, and discreetly smoothing over the trouble her younger brother had gotten into after fighting on the factory floor. Li Nuan gave him the cold shoulder, but he acted as if he didn’t notice.
She hated how forceful he was, yet whenever she was at the end of her rope, he always showed up at just the right moment. Only later did she learn that he had been reborn. In his previous life, he had married the wrong person and let his parents down. This time, all he wanted was to make things right. He had never meant to fall in love again, until he discovered someone in the courtyard who had never existed in his previous life.
