Unemployed youth Lu Xiaoxing, to supplement his rent, opens an urban temporary substitute agency with savvy partner Lin Xia, taking orders to substitute for people at parent-teacher meetings, putting on a front at weddings, and fending off urged marriages on blind dates, relying on acting to resolve all kinds of embarrassing predicaments. Witnessing truck driver Lao Wang, working groom A Qiang, forced blind-date participant A Tao, and others hiding heartache beneath respectability, during a crying-mourning commission, he touches upon his own knot of escaping returning home. His father suddenly falls seriously ill, and Lu Xiaoxing—who once wanted to hire someone to fulfill filial piety for him—suddenly awakens, bravely returning home to face his family. In the end, he shuts down the substitute agency, changing it into a life-companionship agency, no longer helping people disguise and escape, but instead accompanying all living beings to face real life directly.