In 2025, the novelist Zhu Chen stepped into the rumored "Thorn Mansion" with guilt for his dead sister, trying to find an ending to his story. When he was dying, he wrote a bloody letter in a blank diary.
In 2026, architect Liu Ling, who fell into a career low due to a work mistake, broke into the same mansion in search of inspiration. She opened the diary and saw a suicide note written by a man 365 days ago that was still wet.
A diary connects the 365 days between life and death. From then on, he used blood as ink to pave every way for her to survive in the past; she used tears as annotations to teach him how to solve every fatal situation in the future. They fell in love in a desperate situation and embraced in the jet lag, until they discovered the biggest secret of the mansion: the only way to survive requires one person to be trapped in time forever.
"When you read 'I love you', I will have been dead for a whole year." - This is a time love letter that can never be sent.
Purpose: "I want to write a love story that is an 'absolute loss'."
It's not sadomasochism, it's not a misunderstanding, it's just not worth it in the physical sense - two people can't even "live at the same time". One shed blood last year, and the other lights up next year, separated by 365 days and countless deadly rules.
But in this "no matter what choice you choose, you lose" setting, they still have to bet everything.
Zhu Chen risked his life to pave the road, not to get in front of her, but to push her out of this game. Liu Ling pursued the light in reverse, not to rewrite the past, but to prevent him from becoming a cold name in the files.
So the core of this story is not "love can conquer time and space", that would be too false.
It wants to write: When love can't defeat anything, what is left of love?
Choices remain.
On the wall destined to be reset, choose to leave blood stains. In the dark night when you are destined to receive no response, choose to send a signal. In the face of the absolute law of "impossibility", choose to do something "uneconomical".
It's like sending a letter that never arrives.
The letter ends up in a trash can, but the act of writing the letter is real.
This is probably what I want to write: In a game where I can't win at all, I still choose to spend my last bit of energy on you.
