One day, her beloved older sister, Jiang Yongqing, goes missing.
The next day, the author she likes and her pen pal, Shu Jiang, goes missing too.
The rain has fallen for two straight days, and the dampness seeps into her bones. Jiang Xiyu turns over the pages of a book, warped and wrinkled from the moisture, feeling lost.
“She asked me if I had ever met Jiang Yongqing.”
“She understood that to learn the truth, she needed my guidance.”
She and Shu Jiang exchanged letters every week, but she had never mentioned her sister’s real name.
This new book, finished long ago, seems to have anticipated her questions.
Jiang Xiyu understands that to learn the truth about her sister’s disappearance, she needs the book to guide her.
Following the footsteps laid out in the book, she begins to see the world anew.
It is eerie, absurd, chaotic, beyond reason, and far above her.
She had never seen anything supernatural, nor had she ever encountered anything outside the bounds of her understanding.
Only when others called her crazy did she realize that ignorance was her sole shield.
*
When she was seven.
“Mom, why do snails come out whenever it rains?”
“Snails have a lot of water in their bodies. The sun is so strong that it can hurt them, so they prefer to come out and look for food when it rains.”
“Oh, I get it!”
The next day, a drowned snail appeared in the Jiang family’s fish tank.
Please note:
1. The female lead is the sole protagonist. The male lead is barely a supporting character.
2. The setting is Chinese-style cosmic horror. The story is fictional, and any offense to real-world folk customs is purely unintentional.
3. The world in the story is relatively underdeveloped.
Theme: There is always someone beyond you, and a world beyond the sky. Be content with what you have.
