Menqi He

A sleeping man is awoken in the middle of the night by a phone call. On the other side, a mysterious man claiming his wife had committed suicide, forcing the awoken man to recall a distant memory of a girlfriend he once had.

Seventeen-year-old Xiaokui has spent her entire life in a small seaside town. A top student with a quiet passion for girl idol groups, she is well known throughout the neighborhood — as is her closest friend, Qiangwei, a brilliant math prodigy who recently transferred back from the city. At seventeen, Xiaokui’s world is one without romance, without a cellphone — just geography magazines and a giant television screen. In the stillness of her routine life, an unexpected “aurora” quietly descends upon this small town. Familiar faces. A familiar life. An endless sea, and a future that felt predictable at a glance — could life’s answers really be found through the endless pages of practice tests? The girls had so many questions. That summer, sitting on a weathered fishing boat, they imagined that if they could fix it, perhaps they could finally leave this place.