EDELWEISS: Alpine Edelweiss

1918, Vienna. Professor Frankl was sixty-three years old and saw off forty-two students in front of this window. They have blond hair, blue eyes, are the best at math, and are second in shooting. They all said "come back after graduation." Three came back. Two of them had broken legs, and one could no longer count. This spring, another young man with blond hair and blue eyes stood at his door. The professor didn't accept him. He pushed him to Switzerland. —— Zurich. On the banks of the Limmat River. Rose Wolfe was twenty-three years old and had lived alone in this city for five years. No friends. No acquaintances. No correspondence. She used the assets left by her father to live on an isolated island. Then she met a young man. Blond. Blue eyes. Poverty. Pretty. Clever. Standing in front of her, her eyes were filled with calculations and other things. —— Lucas Meyer is eighteen years old. He needs money. A lot of money. Mom's nursing home, next semester's tuition, the cost of survival in this city. He dismantled himself into assets and threw them into the fire one by one. He thought it was a deal. He thought he could figure it out. He thought—— Until that rainy night, he walked through the whole city with a high fever, fell down and got up again, just to say "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to break the appointment." Until she was half-kneeling on the bathroom tiles, her dressing gown soaked, feeling for his pulse. Until she held his hand and said: "You are no one's replacement." —— This is a story about survivors. A woman who witnessed burning and chose not to burn again. A young man who was almost written into the tragedy script and dragged out. A sixty-three-year-old man was waiting by the window for a reply. And those who did not survive to this day—— The "Holy Father" with gray-blue eyes died in the rose garden. The lieutenant with blond hair and blue eyes had an unfinished doctoral thesis in his pocket. Forty-two young men with the highest grades in mathematics were presumed dead. They used death to teach later generations one thing: You can be kind without being self-destructive. You can be great without dying young. You can survive. Live until you are gray-haired. Live your life. —— EDELWEISS The flower growing in the rock crack. Where the wind and snow are the strongest, it opens. [CP: Rose Wolfe × Lucas Meyer] The calm, sharp and controlling financial sponsor sister × the beautiful and calculating poor student [Reading Tips] 1. This is not a love story. But there is love in it. 2. This is not a war story. But the war was always in the background. 3. This is a story about "how not to die". And "how to live." — "Live and be yourself." ——That's enough. Intention: You can be kind without being self-destructive. You can be great without dying young. You can survive.