Ten years ago, a sudden maritime accident changed the fate of several teenagers in Lanjiang City. Ten years later, 28-year-old marine documentary photographer Cheng Wu returned to her hometown for work but unexpectedly reunited with her former best friend Jiang Wanchao - someone she thought had long disappeared in her life.
Cheng Wu spent ten years trying to become a strong enough person who would never lose control. She is good at photographing other people's stories, but she always avoids her own sea. And Jiang Wanchao's return was not to question the past. She had become an independent writer with her own career and life, but when she set foot on this land again, she discovered that the memories she thought she had let go of were only covered by time.
At the same time, investigative reporter Lu Chenzhou began to re-investigate the shipwreck that was defined as an "accident". He discovered more and more doubts, and the memories of everyone who witnessed it were different - they didn't lie, they just stood in different positions and saw different truths.
As the past and present timelines intersect, the complete picture of that summer ten years ago gradually emerges. The deepest differences between Cheng Wu and Jiang Wanchao were also re-exposed: one thinks love is commitment, and the other thinks love is honesty.
The waves will not flow back, but many years later, when they stand in front of the sea again, they can finally admit that that summer has hurt them and made them who they are today.
Purpose: This work uses the ten-year shipwreck and the entanglement of the three protagonists to explore the lifelong price of youthful choices, dismantle two contradictory loves: blind protection and unreserved honesty, overthrow the clichéd narrative of "love can heal each other", and ultimately conclude that self-reconciliation is the only salvation in life. The sea is an image throughout the entire text. It is not only the place where tragedy occurs, but also a mirror that reflects people's hearts. It symbolizes freedom and pain, forgetting and remembering, and reminds everyone that the past cannot be rewritten, but people do not have to be trapped in the choices they made back then.