Crimson Gambit

On the day the high school entrance exams ended, Li Boke and Lu Yi parted ways at the school gate. One went to a military high school, the other to a private school. They both thought that was the biggest change their lives would ever bring.

Until the world collapsed completely when they were twenty.

Consciousness gained mass, history grew teeth, and the deepest, most secret obsessions and passions in every heart broke free of their cages, becoming flames that consumed entire cities.

“Peace” and “unification” were nothing but splendid robes crawling with lice, wrapped around a planet that had never healed and was still festering.

This is a desperate love poem written for our “home planet.”

We love its battered face,

love the bones and glories buried deep in its soil,

love the “greatest and wisest species” it brought forth,

then watch helplessly as, in dream after dream of “unification,” it grinds everything we love to dust.

Lower your head and pretend everything can go on as usual.