Living with Illness

In the 1950s, my grandfather married my Japanese grandmother, whom he had fallen in love with while studying in the United States, and they settled in the Chinese countryside. My grandmother had little experience of the world and a simple heart. Life in China seemed cursed, bringing her one painful, bitter experience after another until she became gloomy and sensitive.

Because my grandmother was Japanese, my mother's girlhood was filled with endless suffering. My grandfather's favoritism and my grandmother's avoidance led to terrible conflicts between mother and daughter, and between father and daughter, ultimately driving my mother to flee that despairing family. Later, my mother went through a doomed romance and eventually gave birth to me.

At first, I was just an ordinary country girl. But after losing my mother and grandfather one after another during childhood, I became an isolated, gloomy, silent, pessimistic, and despondent girl with serious psychological problems.

Later, when I was twelve, my grandmother returned to Japan. I went to live with Mr. Dongying, a childhood friend of my mother's, but deep down, I hated the man who shared my home.

When I was seventeen, I suddenly learned that my grandmother had died years earlier. I then developed amnesia, and a girl named Moriwara Aika took over my body...

The first part of this book, Living with Illness, is told from the perspective of Yi Gongchen, a novelist who has lost his way. It recounts the people and events that took place while my memories were lost and Moriwara Aika had taken over my body...