Breaking the Precepts

Adorable, bratty princess & gentle big puppy

Princess Xuanhe has been pampered since childhood. She's never suffered a slight or heard a harsh word, until the Emperor orders her to marry someone she doesn't like.

Unable to fight the arrangement, Xuanhe hears there's a powerful monk on Qingping Mountain in Hangzhou, so she sneaks out of the palace to have her fortune told.

The monk lives mysteriously in a small courtyard. Everyone calls him the Pockmarked Monk, and Xuanhe assumes he's an ugly man with a head full of pockmarks.

Then, while fleeing the people sent to drag her back to the palace, she barges into the monk's courtyard.

Pear blossoms fall like rain in the courtyard. She sees a refined young man in a long robe, his hair loose, his tea-colored eyes clear yet empty.

It turns out the Pockmarked Monk isn't pockmarked, and he isn't even a proper monk. His master says his cultivation isn't sufficient, so he can't be considered a monk.

He says his name is Aku.

Xuanhe forcefully settles into Aku's little courtyard, where love blossoms beneath the pear tree.

-

Aku is blind, but his heart can see. He writes fortunes for others and predicts their lives.

He can divine the future of everyone in the world, except his own.

So when the young woman barges into the courtyard, Aku panics. He inches forward with his bamboo cane until the girl grabs his monk's robe. "You can't see me? Your loss. I'm absolutely gorgeous."

Aku can't divine her marriage fate. Whether his eyes are open or closed, all he sees is a vast and indistinct blur, because her fortune contains him.

Later, someone takes the girl away. Crying, she clutches his monk's robe and says she doesn't want to marry that man.

Aku still stands in the courtyard, holding his bamboo cane and reciting sutras day and night.

He says, "All conditioned things are impermanent, all tainted things are suffering, all things are without self, Nirvana is peace. All tainted things are suffering, all tainted things are suffering, all tainted things are suffering, all tainted things are suffering, all tainted things are suffering..." But his mind is a confused haze, filled with her sobs and the hand clutching his robe.

Aku knows he can no longer be a monk. His senses are impure; he cannot accept that all conditioned things are impermanent, nor can he believe that all tainted things are suffering. His master was right: he was never suited to be a monk.

The very first time the girl clutched his robe, when his heart began to race, he had already broken his vows.

-

When blind, his heart could see; when his heart went blind, his eyes could see.

Aku looks at Xuanhe and thinks she was right. She really is absolutely gorgeous.

-

Princess Xuanhe has fled her arranged marriage, taken away by a monk.

Theme: The world is vast, and somewhere out there is someone right for you