Reborn in 1997: Everyday Life

As she opens the long-sealed photo album, the resolve of the past turns to regret, and the red dress has crumbled to dust. Tan Yaoxian is forty-eight and nearing retirement. Usually cheerful and optimistic, today she is overcome with emotion by a song, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Every evening, she opens the vermilion window and looks expectantly at Min Min, the little girl next door returning from school downstairs. The well-behaved child is beaming today, holding up a math test with a score of 120 to share the good news. Delighted, Tan Yaoxian invites her to share some fruit.

Watching Min Min climb the stairs, Tan Yaoxian feels her worries vanish. She lives alone in a neighborhood where housing prices are sky-high, and only Min Min's company brings her a little warmth.

Looking back, she has lived through a failed marriage and the pain of a miscarriage, and even sent her ex-husband to prison. Now she is alone, with no children, and Min Min's company is her only comfort. Traveling may offer a brief change of pace, but the loneliness afterward is even harder to bear.

She dozes off on the sofa and seems to return to the old house of 1997, the place that shaped her entire life. When she wakes, she discovers that she really has gone back to the past, to that familiar yet strange home.

She looks around at the old things in the house, confirming that she has truly been reborn. She decides to change her fate and prevent the tragedies of the past from happening again.

When she hears her brother's voice outside the door, she excitedly opens it and sees him as he was when he was young. She tells herself to tread carefully and not suffer the same misfortune as in her previous life.

On that night in 1997, she decides to catch that scumbag herself and send him to prison, so she can get justice. Her gaze is firm and resolute, as if she can already see the first glimmer of victory.

Theme: Saving herself