The lamp in front of the Buddha remembers their kneeling posture.
He said, wait for me. She replied, OK. Then one died in a pool of blood in the seventh year of Yongle, and the other spent five hundred years chasing that promise that was too late to land.
Each life forgets each other. In each life, I follow the amber light in my bones and blood and look back in the crowd - the city gate in the early Qing Dynasty, the trenches in the Republic of China, and the snowfields in Korea. He is always blocking, and she is always looking. From young ladies and domestic children, to bannermen and survivors, to comrades-in-arms, to passers-by. Identities changed again and again, but there was only one ending.
Until dusk five hundred years later, two strangers watched a sunset side by side on a bench in a city park. He said is there anyone here? She said no. Then there was silence, then darkness, and then everyone went home.
The lights finally went out.
It turns out that the Buddha's mercy is to allow you to meet each other, but not to allow you to recognize each other. Let the obsession learn to let go in forgetfulness.
That spring when we can finally walk separately.
