Forgetting Each Other in a Sea of Smoke and Porcelain

[A warm-hearted, resilient young man & an aromatherapy girl & a wicked angel]

Coming of age & redemption & forgetting

If you have already sworn an oath to your first love, but fate leaves you to survive a disaster with someone else, where does your love go from there?

Everyone knows that Saint Louis is home to an aromatherapist who can heal emotional anguish. Revered by all, she must live in seclusion as a vegetable farmer to keep the outside world from disturbing her fragrant garden. As the aromatherapist’s daughter, Nan Xun must keep her identity a secret and act like an ordinary girl around Mo Peixi.

There’s nothing wrong with being ordinary, but the sudden arrival of Barbara turns ordinary into a sin.

Nan Xun thinks Peixi will fall in love with Barbara, but Peixi shields her from Barbara’s dazzling light.

Later, the Mo family’s fortunes collapse, and Peixi leaves home to shoulder his family’s responsibilities. Before they part, he and Nan Xun make a promise by the Misty Porcelain Sea.

Peixi: When I come back, will you marry me?

Nan Xun: What if you fall out of love with me?

Peixi: Then I’ll give you a pair of boxing gloves and let you use me as a punching bag.

Nan Xun: No. If you fall out of love with me, give me a forgetfulness incense burner so I’ll never remember you again.

After setting off, Peixi unexpectedly discovers Barbara hidden inside a shipping container in the hold of an ocean liner. They escape from the traffickers’ gunfire and endure the despair of India’s slums and the ravages of war on Africa’s Selrich Island.

Peixi thinks he’s on a one-way road, never to return, but in the end he makes it back to Saint Louis after all.

Years later, by that same beautiful sea, Nan Xun says through her tears, “Peixi, please keep the promise you made me.”