Grudges in the Qing Palace

Moonlight spills through layers of gauzy curtains, gilding a fan with wine.

Another Mid-Autumn night. Faint maple-red hues, a lonely ghost lurking in the stillness.

Cloudlike flowers fall against her temples, orchids shimmer by the water, and butterflies dance, enamored with the hibiscus.

Tears fall like rain in the drunken dark. The palace willows grieve, their sorrow locked behind crimson walls.

“Drunk Beneath the Flowers: The Butterfly’s Lament”

A cold autumn night, flowers in the courtyard. A stick of incense burns, and a cup of tea steams.

Beneath the green lamp lie an ancient notebook and an old silver hairpin, intricately carved with twin butterflies and hibiscus flowers. What stories are hidden behind them?

Are they tragic, moving, bloody, or better left forgotten to the passing years...

Candlelight flickers as the breeze stirs the gauzy curtains, turning the yellowed sheets of paper.

On this page is a flower: the flower of the other shore, blooming beside the River of Forgetfulness. A few poignant wishes, or perhaps mere longings, lie beside it.

By the River of Forgetfulness stands the Stone of Three Lives. Pray that the bond will endure in the next life. Cross the Bridge of Helplessness and reach the Terrace of Looking Homeward. Even at the end, it is hard to abandon the ties that bind.

The Manjusaka blooms for a thousand years and withers for a thousand. It is destined to bear flowers without leaves, and leaves without flowers, forever apart, never to meet. Yet its fragrance holds a dark magic, able to awaken the memories of the dead.

It is both a curse by the River of Forgetfulness and a source of hope.

They say that once a soul crosses the river, it forgets this life, leaving all its love and hatred, all its gains and losses, on the other shore.

But what if a soul cannot let go of anything in this life, even as it scatters into oblivion?

Then all it can do is write in blood upon the Stone of Three Lives, secretly keep a flower of the other shore, refuse to drink from the River of Forgetfulness, and linger on the Terrace of Looking Homeward. It must remember that final backward glance, lock its heart around the one it loves in this life, and hope they will be waiting in the next.

“Three lifetimes of hardship, a thousand backward glances, a thousand near misses, all in exchange for one life of meeting, knowing, and staying together.”

If this wish comes true, I will have no regrets, even if my soul is scattered.