Lost Property Archivist

The least sought-after position in the city government service hall is in the Lost Property Archives, where no one ever comes by. It is piled with belongings left unclaimed for years across the city: faded wedding rings, dusty military discharge medals, torn medical reports, out-of-print childhood photo albums, and old train tickets spanning half a lifetime. Everyone sees only lost money and lost belongings. Only Xu Zhiwei, the lost property archivist, sees that what people lose is never just things. It is memories, fixations, regrets, and the selves crushed by life. Twenty-two-year-old Xu Zhiwei tends this overlooked post that everyone else despises. The pay is meager, nobody pays attention, and she is constantly urged to transfer. Her coworkers laugh that guarding a heap of junk is a dead end. But she insists on staying. She sorts through old belongings, traces their histories, and pieces together clues, helping a solitary old man find the only keepsake left by his late wife, helping a migrant worker who has wandered for half his life recover his youthful dreams, helping a girl neglected by her family find proof that she exists, and helping ordinary, nameless people reclaim the glory buried by the times. Every old object holds a story. Every story has its past. This backwater post that no one cares about becomes a shelter for an entire city's regrets. While the world chases excitement and splendor, she tends to the order of all things amid dust and trifles, and helps people find peace with their regrets. No System, no golden finger, no domineering CEO swooping in to save the day. An ordinary girl uses her own faint light to create a warm haven for millions of ordinary people.