In the seventeenth year of the Republic of China, Jinling was blurred by mist and rain.
When Shen Jinse was eighteen years old, her father handed her over to a strange man at the end of the red carpet - Si Huanian, the owner of Shanghai Tang Hua Nian Trading Co., Ltd. He was wearing a suit and leather shoes, and his eyes were warm behind his gold-rimmed lenses. No one saw him rubbing her palm with his fingertips, giving her a cool feeling.
After their marriage, Si Huanian was extremely gentle. He arranged a ballroom to celebrate her birthday and gave her boxes of jewelry. He held his arm around her waist and smiled in front of everyone. But late at night, he pressed her in front of the dressing mirror and asked softly: "Jinse, do you remember that three years ago, a poor scholar knelt in front of the Shen Mansion, begging to see the second lady?"
She shook her head, seriously not remembering. He smiled until the ends of his eyes turned red, and lowered his head to kiss her neck.
The flames of war burned through half of the country, and the Shen family collapsed overnight. Jinse knelt in front of him with tears streaming down her face, begging him to save her father and brother. Sihuanian knelt down and wiped away her tears with his thumb: "The Shen Mansion rewarded me with that piece of moldy pastry. I ate it for three days before I was willing to throw it away. Guess what I was thinking about during those three days?"
She didn't guess, nor did she want to guess.
That night, the bone and blood in her belly turned into bright red, soaking into the lotus color cheongsam. She fled into the rainy night with roaring artillery fire, leaving behind a broken magnolia hairpin and seven words - Sihua Nian, we will never meet again in the next life.
Later Sihuanian went crazy. He planted magnolias all over the courtyard of his old house in Jinling. When the flowers bloomed every year, he would sit on the swing holding a sandalwood tablet and murmur: "Jinse, the magnolias bloom as well this year as they did the year you and Ji."
But there was no one on the swing. Only the wind passed through the empty rope, whimpering, like the sound that no one heard on that rainy night - save me.
She said the candy he gave her was arsenic, but he said he had bet his life on her even before she knew him.
