In the Shanghai darkroom in 1937, Lin Shutong, a photography studio apprentice with abnormal color vision, could always glimpse the afterimages of other people's fate from the negatives. In the quantum laboratory in 2012, genius researcher Cheng Yan was trapped in the never-ending folds of space-time due to an experimental accident. When the consciousness of the two people exchanges on time at 7:07 every Sunday, a misplaced love that subverts the laws of physics begins.
The second button of Cheng Yan's shirt always breaks off at critical moments. It is the remains of the last lab coat before his mother disappeared; Lin Shutong's pocket watch always stops at 7:07, with a love poem written in developer hidden on the dial. Separated by eighty years of time and space, the two used the Fibonacci sequence to calibrate pocket watch gears, used film scratches to transmit coordinate codes, and weaved a thrilling symbiotic contract amidst war and radiation.
When the developer in the darkroom boils, Cheng Yan's protective clothing will seep out the lines of the street scenes of the Republic of China; when Lin Shutong touches the nuclear magnetic resonance equipment, the quantum cloud in the laboratory will materialize into cheongsam buttons. When Cheng Yan tampered with history in order to rewrite Lin Shutong's death, it triggered the space-time echo of the Hongkou Park bombing; and Lin Shutong's forged "evidence of mother's survival" actually caused the 2012 collider to spew smoke from 1937.
In the end, a cyanotype photo of the Republic of China was unearthed from the debris of the explosion in 2012, and a titanium alloy pocket watch was unearthed from the rubble in 1937. The choices of Cheng Yan and Lin Shutong will be forever sealed in the folds of time and space at 7:07 on Sunday - where there are unfinished wedding photos, unsent love letters, and the last kiss between two souls before quantum decoherence.
Purpose: A novel about misplaced life and pure love