A Faint Glimmer

The times are turbulent, the fighting never-ending, and everyone in Shanghai lives in fear.

Shen Wei grew up an orphan in an old bookshop. She has beautiful handwriting and a perceptive mind, and barely makes ends meet by transcribing manuscripts. She has seen both the splendor of the foreign concessions and the starving corpses in the alleys. She learned early to keep a low profile and struggle to survive amid the upheaval. She never dared hope for salvation. All she wanted was a peaceful life and to preserve the little bookshop her ancestors left her.

Until she met Lu Mangzhou.

He is a principled underground intelligence agent, outwardly an urbane businessman who moves among various factions, living by the knife and treading carefully at every turn. When they first met, he was covered in road dust and took shelter in her old bookshop to evade a search. Silent and aloof, he radiated the distance of someone who had survived life and death. Shen Wei was wary, but her heart softened all the same. She gave him warm water and concealed his whereabouts.

Over time, the old bookshop became his temporary refuge. He had seen betrayal and scheming countless times, but in Shen Wei's calm, gentle eyes, he found a moment of peace. He never spoke openly of his mission, instead protecting her in silence: driving away the thugs who harassed her, secretly paying off her onerous levies, and warning her to find shelter on the eve of an air raid.

Shen Wei gradually sensed the danger he kept hidden, but she didn't back away. She knew nothing of the grand cause of nation and family, but she was willing to help him in whatever small ways she could: transcribing coded messages, organizing scattered intelligence, and using her utterly unremarkable position to create a small safe haven for him.

In a war-torn world in ruins, they are both ordinary, insignificant people, powerless to change the course of events or end the fighting. Yet the little moments of tenderness they share are glimmers that refuse to go out in the dark. He puts his life on the line for his country and people; she waits for him to come home, holding on to her gentle devotion. With smoke rising everywhere and the road ahead uncertain, they may be unable to control their fate, but they are willing to be the one light in each other's darkest hour that never fades.

In these troubled times, all are as insignificant as ants. How fortunate that in this endless night, you are my glimmer.

Theme: Republican-era romance