Roses and the Other Shore at the Bridge of Helplessness

(This is all my own imagination. It isn’t realistic and makes no sense. Don’t think too hard about it.)

She is an apprentice Meng Po at the head of the Bridge of Helplessness.

She is a red flower of the other shore at its far end.

Meng Po wears a crimson gown, like a rose in full bloom.

The flower of the other shore sways and dances in the breeze.

They should have had nothing to do with each other and never been able to meet, yet they cross paths by chance.

She willingly becomes her medicine, and the other takes off her crimson gown for her.

From then on, an old woman stands at the head of the Bridge of Helplessness, and the red flower of the other shore is gone from its far end.

(A bad ending.)

She is an apprentice Meng Po, also called Rose. She loves red and wears a crimson gown every day, standing at the head of the Bridge of Helplessness to brew soup and send ghosts across so they can forget their past lives.

Rose’s soul is incomplete, so she cannot be reincarnated. She is kept on as an apprentice Meng Po, brewing soup while searching for the piece of her soul she lost. By a twist of fate, however, she sends the piece of her soul that was missing across the Bridge of Helplessness. It passes through the flowers of the other shore and is reincarnated.

Rose has no choice but to stay and continue brewing soup. Someone tells her that finding a certain medicinal ingredient will make her soul whole and allow her to be reincarnated, so she sets out to find this medicine, whose name and appearance are both unknown…

She is the flower of the other shore, a red blossom growing at the far end of the Bridge of Helplessness. She watches those who have forgotten their past cross the River of Forgetfulness and find new life.

She is one of many flowers of the other shore. She has always swayed in the wind, watching ghosts cross the River of Forgetfulness, until someone’s tear falls onto one of her petals. From then on, she gains a consciousness of her own.

Someone says that if she finds a certain person, she too can be reincarnated as a human. So she leaves the flower fields and sets out to find that person…

They both die in the year they fall in love with each other.