Contract marriage / married first, love later / healing each other
Kunqu opera troupe leader x fire captain
Abandoned at the theater's entrance at the age of five, at twenty-five she is still holding on to Qingyin Pavilion, which is about to be demolished.
The developer gives her thirty days to move out. The troupe is struggling to weather the storm, and a demolition notice has been posted on the door. Yet an unsigned letter of recommendation is submitted to the provincial intangible cultural heritage review committee. She calls to thank him. After a long silence, he says, "It was nothing."
At her hospital bedside, Grandma Shen grips her hand and says with her last breath,
"Find a good man and get married. Grandma wants to see you in a wedding dress."
Su Nianjin calls the man she has met only once.
"Would you... marry me?"
There is a three-second silence on the other end.
"Where should we meet?"
In the great fire six years ago, his comrade Lin Yuan pushed Lu Heng out of the door.
His last words were, "Live for me."
Ever since, every day he has stayed alive has felt like repaying a debt.
He rushes to the front of every fire, putting his life after everyone else's, ready to be swallowed by the flames at any moment.
No romance, no family. He cannot let himself have a weakness. He treats his life as something Lin Yuan lent him, ready to return it whenever the time comes.
Until that phone call.
A contract marriage, each getting what they need.
She needs to put her grandmother at ease, and he needs a reason to escape his prison of guilt.
But what she never expected was this:
His back is covered in burn scars, and each one has a name: Worth it.
Wearing her opera costume, she runs to the edge of a fire, one foot bare, and shouts across the cordon, "I'm his family."
Buried beneath the rubble of a fire, his last thought is that he still hasn't told her she's the most beautiful person he has ever seen.
Before she dies, Grandma lays their hands together and says with a smile,
"One sings opera, the other fights fires... Wonderful, both of you."
When a make-believe romance turns real, does it mean a play, or life?
Theme: On two different battlefields, they recognize that their souls are alike.
