Second Life

Gui Du has lived through too many lifetimes.

Across her endless cycles of reincarnation,

she learned things no mortal should ever touch:

how to read the patterns of a soul,

how to kindle a guiding lamp on the far bank of the Yellow Springs,

how to make herself a bridge,

and smuggle a consciousness back from nothingness into the mortal world.

Jian Xiao is the soul she smuggled back.

One body after another held her,

again and again she broke and was mended.

They shared secrets, shared sins,

shared a desolate grave no one else knew about,

where every discarded body they had used was buried.

Gui Du is the creator, Jian Xiao the creation,

or perhaps

they are each other's manufactured dreams.

As the last body begins to crumble,

the final vessel sleeps upon the moon.

A seed sprouts into a road,

leading toward a long-planned reunion,

and toward a farewell neither can escape.

What we call falling away

is merely the prelude to another beginning.

[Content Warnings]

- The story is bleak throughout, with death imagery from beginning to end.

- The relationship between the two female leads is unequal, involving control and dependence.

- Includes depictions of bodies crumbling, being replaced, and other forms of bodily transformation.

- The reincarnation ending is open-ended, not a traditional happy ending.

- The protagonists' moral outlook lies outside conventional norms.

Theme: Falling away is not the end, but the prelude to another beginning.