By day, Zhu Ning is an inheritance lawyer at Chengheng Law Firm. By night, dressed in a purple robe, she helps people settle what they left unfinished after death. She has a lamp with a measured supply of oil. Each ritual burns a little of it. Once it runs out, the lamp and its keeper will go dark.
Fu Zhao doesn't believe in ghosts or gods. After her grandfather dies, she fights over the inheritance while guarding the old mansion and the will's one command: "No one is to touch it." She hires a "master" who never meets the family and only replies by note to settle the old mansion's restless spirit. She also hires the cold-as-steel Lawyer Zhu to fight her inheritance case. She doesn't know the two are the same person.
All she knows is that Zhu Ning sleeps for a long time after every job. She remembers the incense ash scent clinging to Zhu Ning's cuffs, impossible to wash away. She only wonders why, though Zhu Ning is half a head shorter than her, everyone else in the room instinctively straightens when she steps forward.
Later, Fu Zhao discovers a line in Zhu Ning's black ledger: "For Fu Zhao: One, unfinished." It was written on the night Zhu Ning refused to handle the unfinished business Fu Zhao had brought her.
Fu Zhao doesn't believe in it. But she starts keeping track. How long Zhu Ning sleeps, how cold her fingertips are, when she stops saying, "This is my problem." She records every good deed she's done in this life under the same name.
On the night of the Winter Solstice, Zhu Ning's lamp is about to go out. Fu Zhao pushes the ledger across the table. "I've worked it out. I know how much oil is left in your lamp, and how much I've saved up. I know the numbers. Add my share to it. Will it be enough?"
A woman who believes in data makes a record of merit for a woman who believes in cause and effect. One does the work, the other keeps the books, and in the end, someone earns a merit for her.
Theme: One person does the work, another keeps the books. To be remembered is the deepest proof that you lived.
