The scene opens on a dusty road in a “beautiful country” where a woman in her twenties cradles an infant girl wrapped in a sky‑blue shawl. Two young men bearing M‑16 rifles approach her at a makeshift checkpoint of concertina wire. The woman, trembling and sweating, hums as rain begins; the soldiers, one with black hair and the other with a yellow mustache, interrogate her. The infant watches a hovering Huey helicopter. The narrative shifts to a dim garage where five men sit around a table, drinking vodka from shot glasses stored in bullet casings, waiting for a door to open. A stooped white‑haired man leads a macaque, its fur stained with alcohol and morphine, to the table. The women’s name is revealed through a scarred tag on the boy’s chest: she recognizes the initial “C” and remembers a market called Go Cong where she bought a sky‑blue shawl for her daughter.

Lan recounts her own past: born the seventh child, called “Seven” by her mother, she fled an arranged marriage to a man three times her age at seventeen. She stole lotus stems to poison her husband’s tea, escaped through night streets, and was given pearl earrings by her mother before fleeing. A rice‑cake seller asks her name; she adopts “Lan” (Lily) after tasting the rice cake. She later gives birth to a daughter, Hong (meaning “Rose”), and reflects on the cyclical trauma of war.

Back at the checkpoint, the soldiers’ rifles glint; the boy with the olive tag, his green eyes and blond hair, asks “No, step back.” Lan, unable to read the tag, knows it signals a name and remembers the letter C. The soldiers prepare to eat the macaque’s brain, believing it will cure impotence. The monkey is tied, its screams likened to a fishing rod. Lan, soaked in rain and urine, presses Hong tighter to protect her as the soldiers threaten violence. The boy watches Hong’s cinnamon‑tinted hair, imagines possible fathers among his comrades.

The ritual proceeds: the men drink, cut open the macaque’s skull, and consume its brain while chanting “Yoo Et Aye… No bang bang.” Lan repeats the chant, pleading for the soldiers not to shoot. The rain intensifies, the Huey returns, and the checkpoint scene dissolves into a flash of memory. In the garage, a makeshift altar holds framed pictures of saints, dictators, and martyrs. The light flickers once and stays on as Lan stands in a circle of her own urine, symbolically on the “period of her own sentence.” The soldiers resume their posts, the checkpoint opens, and Lan walks forward, her daughter’s mouth darkened by rain, while she contemplates the year 1968, the Year of the Monkey, and the continuity of trauma across generations.