Scab and Light

Lin Wei's life is an old piece of cloth that has been torn repeatedly - her patriarchal parents regard her as a cash cow, and her younger brother's tuition fees and the family's mortgage all fall on her shoulders in her early twenties. She is used to wrapping herself in indifference. The burn scabs on her fingertips, the calls from her mother that she refuses to answer late at night, and the piggy bank hidden at the bottom of the closet are all her weapons against the world. Chen Yu's lens only captures broken things: cracked rocks on the seashore, shadows in hospital corridors, and blurry inscriptions on tombstones. The trauma of his parents' early death caused him to suffer from depression, and self-denial wrapped around his heart like vines. He was afraid that his darkness would engulf anyone who came close. On a rainy night in a convenience store, he took a picture of her wiping her tears from behind, and she clutched the ointment he left behind. The two people, covered with scars, met in a corner of the city. They were like two mutually repelling and attracting magnets. When licking each other's wounds, they would carefully avoid each other's scabs; but the fear engraved in their bones caused them to push each other away again and again - Lin Wei was afraid of being abandoned and always turned around when he showed tenderness; Chen Yu was afraid of being a drag and deliberately said harsh words to force her to leave. Their love is not a grand confession, it is a bowl of hot wontons shared during overtime nights, it is her who is the only one who shines under his camera, and it is her determination to secretly save money to treat him. But the knife of reality never stops: his mother comes to collect debts, he harms himself when he suffers from depression, and the two blame each other due to fear, which cuts each other's sincerity with blood.