Before her family could drain the last drop of blood from her, Chi Dianyuan dragged her suitcase to Linshui Town, covered in bruises.
There, she met Qi Jin, a young mechanic who had been rotting away in the depths of an old alley.
He was mired in the muck, yet fought to lift the white butterfly out of it. He repaired everything in town that could be repaired, then stuffed every cent he earned, still smelling of rust, into her schoolbag.
On an early summer night, the cicadas had just begun to sing.
With red-rimmed eyes, Chi Dianyuan grabbed his calloused hand. “When the college entrance exams are over, let’s be together, okay?”
Qi Jin tore his hand away. “I never even made it into high school. I’m just a junkyard mechanic! Get close to me and you’ll start to stink, too!”
Before dawn, the boy vanished without a trace.
It was only years later, when she opened her old diary, that she understood why he had left. Knowing he was trapped in the muck, he used the last of his strength to lift her toward the free sky.
Years later, the mechanic who had clawed his way up from the bottom became a prominent figure in the automotive industry. But fate can change in an instant. A carefully orchestrated business scandal left him bankrupt and behind bars.
Stripped of all his glory, the once-proud star fell back into the familiar abyss.
His former prosperity faded, and everyone avoided him.
But she took all the strength she had built up over the years and went out alone, doing everything she could to help.
Back then, he had made a bridge of his own flesh and blood to carry her out of the mire. Now she would give everything she had, even if it meant standing against the whole world, to bring home the boy who had once lit up her life.
Home.
Theme: A resilient story of young people from the bottom of society lifting each other up and saving each other, growing through desperate circumstances. Even when mired in the muck, they can still turn their hearts toward the light.
