Ji Cheng'an, 21, never imagined he would inherit his mother's "Museum of Obsessions," a fantastical place that houses the world's unfinished obsessions. Unspoken apologies congeal into fluffy, curled-up beasts; deeply buried regrets turn into fluttering firefly butterflies. If allowed to wander freely, they devour people's capacity for happiness. As the museum's curator, he can see and touch these "embodied obsessions," but he is innately numb to emotion. Making specimens is a mechanical process to him, and the only things that keep him going are his determination to uncover the truth behind his mother's disappearance and the blank Obsession Journal she left behind.
Fu Zhihuai, a 25-year-old sculpture instructor, stumbles into the museum by chance and breaks its silence. He is a rare "resonant with obsessions": whenever he approaches an embodied obsession, he immerses himself in the joy and sorrow behind it. For years, he has been swept up in other people's pain, nearly to the point of suffocation. Yet Ji Cheng'an's emotional numbness becomes his only shelter from emotional overload. The two reach an understanding: Fu Zhihuai will help Ji Cheng'an understand the stories behind the obsessions, while Ji Cheng'an will shield Fu Zhihuai from the harm of being overwhelmed by emotion. As they weave specimen frames from moonlight grass and adorn eyes with emotional crystals, the cold-hearted curator gradually begins to feel the weight of emotion, while the closed-off teacher learns to live with his ability.
As the blank journal is awakened by the obsessions, the truth behind his mother's disappearance comes to light: she volunteered to become a specimen in order to contain a "colossal obsession" bearing the collective regrets of an entire town. Even more astonishingly, at the heart of this obsession is an apology Fu Zhihuai never got to say to his friend, who died of an illness when they were children.
Pei Leyi, director of the Folk Customs Museum, and his assistant Ji Zhimian, as well as Liu Shuobai, an observer from the future, and Xu Huaijin, a medical student, are drawn into the events one after another. The four pairs of partners each bring their own strengths to bear. In the end, Ji Cheng'an overcomes his emotional numbness and reaches out to empathize, Fu Zhihuai faces his past and finds reconciliation, and together they transform the colossal obsession into a warm "commemorative specimen," allowing regret to remain as a memory rather than a source of pain.
Theme: Using "embodied obsessions" and "specimen making" as fantastical devices, the story challenges the idea that obsessions are inherently negative and conveys the healing belief that "regret need not be erased; acceptance can turn it into a keepsake." Ultimately, it is a story of making peace with oneself and saving each other.
