Every young girl can find herself in the characters of this story. - Satonaka Machiko, famous Japanese manga artist, on "The Free Bird Flies".

Content Volume 1: The girl Lin Xiaolu attends an art and design-focused middle school in the western Chinese city of Chengdu during the 1990s. During her elementary school years, she was labeled a "good-for-nothing" by her father and her homeroom teacher because she performed poorly in school and preferred drawing to studying. On the surface, she appears somewhat autistic, but behind her expressionless face lies a rich inner world of thoughts and a soul full of imagination and creativity. She is afraid of interacting with the more vivacious members of the human species and suffers from panic.