On the seventh night of the seventh lunar month, her mother, who had been missing for seven years, called Jiang Yao's name outside the door. She refrained from opening the door. After dawn, Aunt Zhao next door disappeared from the lease, work accounts, and everyone's memory, as if she had never lived on Sophora Flower Street.
Nineteen-year-old Jiang Yao soon discovered that the next person whose name would be erased was herself. In order to keep the job of the small courtyard and the embroiderer, she could only write a marriage contract with Chen Yan, a poor porter who carried the old registration of a criminal household: money and work were divided, and no one could sign for the other.
But just as the marriage certificate was registered, Jiang Yao became a "subordinate household".
There was another knock on the door. This time, it was her new name that was called.
