Their neighbor Tao Qin barges into the photo studio, clutching a wedding portrait.
The daughter who called her Mom just yesterday calls her Auntie today. The husband who shared her bed for ten years calls the police, claiming a strange woman broke into his home. There is no record of their marriage registration, and the bride in their portrait is fading away.
Qi Buyi wants to preserve evidence for her, but discovers that her own identity records are beginning to fail, too.
She rushes home to find a woman she has never met standing inside. The stranger has complete identification documents and childhood photographs, and even calls Su Fangyi “Mom,” just like she does.
Her mother says only, “You can't both stay here.”
Then a death confirmation record from eighteen years ago comes to light.
Name of deceased: Qi Buyi. Person who confirmed the death: her mother.
In Yanzhou, disappearing does not mean dying. Someone in the hospital has lived two lives. The subway runs into stations that do not exist on any map. One school has kept an entire graduating class from finishing for eighteen years. More and more people are being erased by the world, and those left behind do not even know who they have lost.
Someone has preserved a medical record for eighteen years. Someone guards a classroom, hoping only to see the students graduate. And someone believes that saving the entire city means abandoning some of its people.
Qi Buyi only wants to prove that she is alive. Until she discovers that what has been crossed out is not just names, but also the people countless others have loved, the homes they have defended, and the tomorrow they have spent their lives trying to preserve.
As two incompatible histories begin to engulf Yanzhou, she must face a question: if saving herself means making another real, living person disappear, what should she do?
And her name has never appeared in the register of survivors.
