There is a hollow in Shen Du's chest that makes a sound when the wind passes through it.
He is a "compensator" - at the expense of his most precious memories, he enters the regretful world of others and helps them feel relieved. Every time he makes amends, he forgets a part of his late girlfriend Cheng Nian: her smile, her voice, her favorite flowers. The costs add up, until her very existence is an echo in the void.
The world is composed of seven levels of regret: miss, betrayal, life and death, truth, reincarnation, origin, and hope. Lao Zhou waited for his wife in the waiting room for twenty years, and his pocket watch always stopped at 11:59; twelve-year-old Xiao Jiu collected every treatment ticket stub, and the last page of his diary read "Mom, I love you too, but I'm afraid you will cry if I tell you"; Su Mian engraved the name of her partner on the back of the badge, rubbing the words "I don't forgive you, but I understand you" day after day...
Shen Du saved his regrets for them at the cost of forgetting Cheng Nian. But there is always a line of handwriting left by her on the yellowed pawn ticket deep in her pocket——
"Password for pickup: I still remember you."
She forgot everything, but remembered that "he was important."
He forgot about her, but the echo in the hollow never stopped.
Forgetting and remembering, price and hope - a person forgets everything, but still walks towards the light. Because some memories fade, but the echoes never.
Concept: Being forgotten is not the opposite of existence, being remembered is. Every time Shen Du makes up for someone's regret, he forgets a part of his late lover Cheng Nian - her smile, her voice, her name, until she becomes a hollow in her chest. But those "forgotten" did not disappear: they turned into the lines of records on the pawn ticket, the echoes in the regretful world of others, the door that Lao Zhou finally walked out of, the light that Xiao Jiu transformed into, and Su Mian's name engraved on the back of the badge. The work thus constructs a metaphor about "reverberation" - Cheng Nian forgets everything, but remembers "he is very important"; Shen Du forgets Cheng Nian, but the sound of wind in the void never stops. The real existence is not what you remember, but what you leave in the lives of others. When the pawn ticket in the final chapter was wet by the rain and the five words "I still remember you" became brighter and brighter, the answer had already emerged: regret cannot be eliminated, but it can be seen again; memory will eventually fade, but the echo will never. Everyone's existence will leave a mark in the lives of others - that is all the evidence that we have lived, that is hope itself.