In the seventeenth year of the Republic, Jinling lay shrouded in mist and rain.
Shen Jinse had just turned eighteen when her father handed her over to a stranger waiting at the end of the red carpet: Si Huanian, owner of the Huanian Trading Company in Shanghai. He wore a fine suit, and his gaze was gentle behind gold-rimmed glasses. No one saw him brush his fingertip over her palm, cool to the touch.
After their wedding, Si Huanian was endlessly tender. He booked out a dance hall for her birthday and sent her crates of jewelry. In public, he held her by the waist and smiled with easy grace. But whenever night grew deep, he would pin her in front of the vanity mirror and ask softly, “Jinse, do you remember a poor scholar who knelt outside the Shen residence three years ago, begging to see the second young lady?”
She shook her head. She truly didn’t remember. He would smile, the corners of his eyes reddening, then lower his head and kiss her neck.
War engulfed half the country, and the Shen family fell overnight. Jinse knelt before him, tears streaming down her face, begging him to save her father and brothers. Si Huanian crouched down and wiped her tears away with his thumb. “Back then, the Shen family gave me a moldy pastry. It took me three days to work up the nerve to throw it away. Guess what I thought about during those three days?”
She didn’t guess. She didn’t want to.
That night, the life growing inside her turned crimson and soaked through her lotus-colored qipao. She fled into the rain, amid the roar of artillery, leaving behind a broken magnolia hairpin and seven words: Si Huanian, may we never meet again in another life.
Later, Si Huanian went mad. He dug up the entire courtyard of his old Jinling residence and planted magnolias there. Every year, when the flowers bloomed, he sat on the swing clutching a memorial tablet of sandalwood, murmuring, “Jinse, this year’s magnolias are as lovely as they were the year you came of age.”
But the swing was empty. Only the wind passed through its bare ropes, wailing like the cry no one heard on that rainy night: Save me.
She said the sweetness he gave her was arsenic. He said that long before she knew who he was, he had already wagered his life on her.
