fang_chao

Core Introduction of "Broken Embers
A desperate fable that begins with "restoration", a life torn apart by fragments of memory.
Liu Xu held tightly the old-fashioned mechanical watch left by her father, which was her last shield against the world. However, her boyfriend Su Qing's accidental fall and her best friend Xiao Ran's unintentional leak of secrets caused her fragile defense to collapse with a thunderous crash. When the mysterious craftsman proposed to exchange her only youthful memory - the negative of her graduation photo - for the restoration of her watch, she thought it was the mercy of fate, but she didn't know that she had fallen into a deeper abyss: Su Qing had resold the negative to the black market for personal gain, and the restored watch was nothing but a disguise of lies. And the ensuing cyber violence was weaving her private fragments into a nosestring.
From the transaction of the "Time Craftsman" to the digital restoration of classmate Cheng Yu, every "hope" has turned into a more ruthless betrayal: the graduation photo was implanted with malicious images and spread all over the Internet, and the camera lens of the father was crushed by Su Qing herself in the warehouse. Those objects that carried love and warmth - the ticking of the watch, the smiling face on the film, the reflections of the father and daughter in the lens - eventually all turned into floating fragments in the river, sinking along with her trust in the world.
On a stormy night, willow catkins stood by the river, watching the last piece of glass shards carrying memories slip through their fingertips. When the "tick-tock" sound was frozen forever, and when all the cherished people and things turned into ruins, she finally understood: Some fragmentation is a judgment already written by fate. All she could do was to fall into the darkness that had devoured all the embers with her body covered in scars.
This is a cruel fable about "loss" - when memory becomes the original sin and repair is just a hoax, we will eventually learn to reconcile with the cracks in life or be completely swallowed up by them in the repeated crushing of hope and despair.

Broken embers

After Cheng Yu took away the photo fragments, he quickly got in touch with Liu Xu and told her that the restoration work was underway. Liu Xu looks forward to his news every day, as if that restored photo could take away all her pain.

However, a few days later, when Cheng Yu sent the repaired electronic files to Liu Xu, she once again fell into a cold abyss.

Opening the file, the main body of the photo is a restored graduation photo, which looks basically the same as the original one. But upon closer inspection, some corners and backgrounds of the photo have been implanted with some strange and disturbing images.

Some of those pictures are blurry family photos, but the people on them have been maliciously smeared or distorted. Some are fragments of diaries, the content private and filled with Liu Xu's personal vulnerability and pain. There are even some secretly taken photos that occurred in the daily life scenes of the willow catkins, documenting her private moments that are unknown to others.

These implanted contents are out of place in the original graduation photo, yet they are ingeniously integrated into it, as if telling Liu Xu that her beautiful memories have been contaminated and that her life is exposed to malicious prying everywhere.

What's this? Liu Xu immediately called Cheng Yu, her voice filled with terror and anger.

Cheng Yu's voice sounded somewhat flustered: "Impossible!" I haven't touched these places! I just restored the main subject of the photo!

However, the fact is right before our eyes. These unsightly records thus openly appeared in the graduation photo she once cherished.

What's even more terrifying is that almost at the same time, Liu Xu received a large number of text messages and emails from unfamiliar numbers. It was filled with this tampered graduation photo and words that attacked and humiliated her personally.

No wonder I was dumped by my boyfriend. I deserved it!

"Just by looking at her, you can tell she's no good!" "

Those vicious words came in like a tide, submerging the willow catkins. Someone anonymously spread this photo on the Internet, along with malicious defamation and human flesh search texts about her.

Cyber violence is overwhelming. Liu Xu feels as if she has been stripped naked and thrown onto the square, allowing countless pairs of eyes to scrutinized, judge and ridicule her with malice. Her privacy was exposed, her image was distorted, her pain was magnified and became the laughingstock of others' revelment.

Cheng Yu insisted that he had not done so, but the documents he provided and the subsequent cyber violence made Liu Xu deeply suspicious and fearful of him. She had no idea how all this happened or who was manipulating it behind the scenes. Is it Su Qing? Still that mysterious black market artist? Or perhaps even Cheng Yu was involved?

The feeling of being abandoned by the whole world and having nowhere to run made her cry until she was short of oxygen. She wanted to escape, only to find that the world was full of malicious eyes everywhere. All the beauty she once had has been polluted and destroyed.

Despair returns.