Burning Embers: Copper Coins Bind Acacia

The rainy season in Suzhou has no end. After Su Nian'an married into the Gu family, she discovered that something was wrong with the city - flower pots were broken at the same time every day, white steam rose at the same second every day, and even the rain stopped at a fixed time: at three o'clock in the afternoon, the sun appeared for seventeen minutes. And he would go out every Wednesday night and come back with scorch marks on his sleeves. There is a building outside the city with the windows always closed. There are only stairs in the building, and on each floor there are people repeating the same scene. "Don't go alone," he said. She asked why. "Because you'll get lost," he said. There is a burned book in the suitcase. There is an old photo in the attic with the words "The Seventeenth Year of Jiaqing" written on it. The old man selling sugar paintings said: Miss, you smell of fire. Some things were either forgotten or covered. He said nothing. She just brought a pack of plum blossom cakes back every evening and put them on the table. On rainy nights, she held her hand in her palm and struck a match that could never be lit - the blue sparks lit up and went out. Stroke seven times, still the same. Until she walked into the sixth floor of the building, saw the fire, saw herself, and saw him kneeling on the edge of the flames and blocking her with his dead body. It turns out that this city is the embers of two souls who refused to leave after a fire burned out. And waiting is not a gap in the story. The waiting itself is the story.