The red string tied beneath the locust tree got tangled with the wrong fate. With blood blurring my vision before the mourning hall, he gripped my fingertips and said, “When I grow up, no one will ever lay a hand on Ye Lingling.”
Later, warm light twined our threads beneath the Three Lives Tree. Our fingertips met. “We’ll face everything together in this life.”
The ugly child who hid in the shadows and handed out paper dolls blew himself up to shield a wealthy young lady from a fatal arrow. The ghost bride who guarded a coffin for three hundred years watered the Ghostly Bloom with blood for tears. And when the mermaid’s heartstone in his chest began to burn, even the sea took sides:
He took her to see coral beneath the waves, and the ocean wrapped her in a film of water so she could breathe. Fish surrounded her in a glowing school, smiling as the tides slowed to let her tie her hair ribbon. Even on the day he shattered the hypocritical immortal sect, the waves carried her steps so the blood would not stain her skirt.
So what if the red string was tied to the wrong fate?
He was a ferocious orphan, like a wild cub, who carved tenderness from himself to protect her. She was the only softness in his life, gripping his bloodstained sleeve as she accompanied him on his journey to immortality.
The bitterness they chewed through, the fierce passion they burned away, the resilience tempered in blood: in the end, it all wound back around their fingertips.
“This time the string was tied right. It was us. Even the sea has borne witness: this is fate.”
(They always protect each other / childhood sweethearts / bond with the sea / obsession becomes legend / happy ending)
Any resemblance between the surnames or names of characters in this story and those of real people is purely coincidental.
It's good to watch, it's good to watch, but some scenes change so quickly.