Trading Starlight

Your lifespan remains unchanged, but joy and sorrow no longer concern you.

Shi Xi is a restorer at the government's memory-editing bureau and an anonymous appraiser in the underground black market.

For six years, she has rejected every digital archive, hiding her memories of her father in the deepest part of her biological memory.

Those seven minutes and twelve seconds beneath the stars are the line she would sell seventeen chapters of her past to protect.

In this future city where everything has a fixed price, she is an anomaly.

She does not trade in love or sell sorrow. She guards that tiny place, waiting for the starlight to shine.

Theme: When everything has a fixed price, refusal does not mean standing still and holding on. It means losing something and slowly building it back, bit by bit.