Next to the university town, Chen Mo guarded the printing shop that was on the verge of bankruptcy and was worried about the skyrocketing rent. A midnight order broke the deadlock - a shadowless woman in a cheongsam handed over strange banknotes and asked for a glowing brass box to be sent to the west city scrap station. The payment was enough to cover three months' rent.
The moment he took the order, his life was torn open: the copper box in the takeout box hid a mystery, the figure of his sister who had been missing for half a year appeared in a strange multimedia message, and in the mirror of Warehouse No. 3 Of the scrap station, there stood a "shadow" exactly like him, replicating his pain and memories.
The landlord urging rent, the old lady delivering medicine, the firefighter breaking in... These everyday faces gradually reveal their strange purposes across time and space. Chen Mo was forced to get involved in the gap between reality and alienity. He discovered that his ability to hear objects "speak" at midnight was the key to solving the mystery: the copper box concealed the truth about his sister's disappearance, and the death of his parents was also closely related to the substitution game of "Shadow".
When the real rent bill overlaps with the alien "life bill", and when the shadow in the mirror begins to devour his life, this game whose rules were written under the old locust tree ten years ago forces him to make a fatal choice between saving his sister and keeping himself.
Intent: The overall discussion of "self, survival, and memory" is wrapped in a fantasy shell, allowing readers to see the struggle and perseverance of every ordinary person in the puzzle of life in a suspenseful and thrilling way.