When Lu Chenfeng wakes up every day, it feels like he is standing in the middle of a river bed that has just dried up.
The traces of yesterday were silently erased, leaving only some fragmentary feelings remembered by the body, the warmth of the glutinous rice balls left in the palms, the light from a certain window until late, and the rustle of a pencil across rough paper. He suffers from retrograde episodic amnesia, and his memory is like a river that stops flowing every day. The encrypted note on his phone is his only bargaining chip in clumsy negotiations with time.
Then, Yu Nan appeared.
He talks little and his actions always precede his words. A bottle of ice water is handed to you, a breakfast appears at the door on time every day, and a plain instruction to eat and leave. He was like a silent rock, standing in Lu Chenfeng's world that was constantly being washed away, becoming the most stable navigation coordinate.
They spent the hot and humid summer vacation in the mountain city together, shared quiet afternoons in the air-raid shelter bookstore, and blew the night breeze on the rooftop. After school started, the hustle and bustle of basketball games, the pressure of monthly exams, the footsteps walking side by side in the corridor... These daily fragments were recorded by Lu Chenfeng in the simplest terms, while Yu Nan caught them one by one in his unique way.
Until a song called "River Plate" slowly sounded in the headphones one night. Until Lu Chenfeng discovered that his scattered paintings about the light and shadow of the old streets, the aroma of food, and the rusty door knockers could be pieced together into a warm file in the eyes of others. Until anonymous malice breeds in the corners of the campus, until the shadow of the childhood laboratory approaches again in the name of mother.
This river of memory dries up every day and starts flowing again every day. And Yu Nan said that he would like to be the river bed.
This is a story about forgetting and remembering, vulnerability and protection. It tells how two teenagers found the deepest strength to fight against time in their ordinary daily lives; it also tells how when a storm comes, those unspeakable words turn into songs, paintings, and tightly held hands.
When memory becomes a river, love is its unchanging river bed and course.
Concept: Love is an instinct that transcends memory and is the glimmer of mutual redemption.
