When Shi Yang saw a restorer working in a museum, that hand was so steady that she made a decision no one could understand. In her second year of college, she switched from oil painting to cultural relic restoration.
On the first day in her new department, she knocked over Lu Zhixiu's tray, scattering shards of porcelain across the floor.
On the second day, she got the restoration notes he'd spent three months writing wet. Lu Zhixiu said only two words to her: “Get out.”
He was recognized as the restoration department's genius: quiet, steady-handed, and able to sit at a workbench for ten hours without saying a word to anyone. He was the coldest person Shi Yang had ever met, and the one with the steadiest hands.
They shared a restoration table. From barely speaking to understanding each other without a word, he corrected her technique by tapping the back of her hand with a restoration knife, while she stayed up late with him repairing one silent artifact after another.
Only later did Shi Yang understand that Lu Zhixiu wasn't just restoring objects.
He was restoring the part of himself he had sealed away.
And she was the one who entered his world.
This is a quiet, slow-blooming story that unfolds amid the scents of old paper and mineral pigments.
In the course of this story, they each put themselves back together.
