Former illustrator Lin Wei fell into severe depression because her creations were plagiarized and emotionally betrayed by her boyfriend Lu Zhe. She attempted suicide and was sent to a rehabilitation center. In the white room wrapped in the smell of disinfectant, she was like a butterfly trapped in the fog, silently fighting against the physical pain and the cognitive distortion of "she is worthless" - and Lu Zhe's fake visit was just an intensification of mental control.
By chance, she found an old photo tucked in an old book: a woman in a blue shirt holding a little girl with braids, standing under the old locust tree that appeared repeatedly in her dreams. The pencil words "Waiting for you to come home" on the back of the photo are like a key opening the keyhole of a forgotten childhood - she was once a child "abandoned" by her mother, and now she is the creator whose life was stolen by her lover. The two traumas are entangled in her memory.
Chen Yan, an ancient book restorer, broke into her world because of his work. He carried the "survivor's guilt" of his mother who died of depression, but he was touched by the broken butterfly she drew on the waste paper. The two got close to each other in the resonance of trauma. Chen Yan helped her piece together the truth about her childhood, and Lin Wei's paintings became the glimmer of reconciliation between him and the past.
When the secret behind her childhood placement (clumsy protection from domestic violence) and the complete conspiracy of Lu Zhe's plagiarism (even Chen Yan's mother's posthumous work was not spared) were revealed one by one, Lin Wei finally understood: she had never been abandoned, it was just the pain that enveloped the light. She picked up a paintbrush, used broken butterflies as bones and locust trees as soul, and reconstructed her own shore in the painting - it turns out that healing is never about erasing scars, but about allowing the broken self to grow new wings in the cracks.
Intent: to heal,