People often look back on life's many twists and turns only when the fallen leaves return to their roots. Those who pray in the darkness of their youth seem always to dream of a flawless miracle in the future, only to be battered and bruised by its sudden arrival. One false step, and they may plunge into an abyss, lost forever. But even so, they keep going as before, undaunted and tireless. At seventeen, you and I still cannot shoulder the shackles of fate. Our frail shoulders can bear nothing but hope for the future, and even when everything lies in ruins, we press bravely on.
At seventeen, a story unfolds in the rainy season. In the days between summer's end and autumn's arrival, it is tucked between the pages of memory, breathtakingly beautiful.
Five years later, in Egret Town, down an ancient alley, blue-gray flagstones glisten beneath a fine slanting rain. A woman's dark hair falls like a waterfall, speckled with mist. In her hand lies a rusty iron lock, steeped in the past and marked with the footprints of time, sharp and clear.
Five years. Had the time passed quickly? she wondered. She looked up, her bright eyes calm as water and clear as jade. On the brown doorframe, the bright red couplet from years ago had long since faded to yellow and white. Weathered by wind and sun, it looked like one conspicuous scar after another, clinging to the pitted wooden frame, mottled and worn. Higher up, in the corner, a tarnished copper plaque bore faded blue numbers in seal script, barely visible through layers of cobwebs: Number Seventy-Eight.
This was the fifth year since Mu Zi left, and her first return in five years. It was raining that day. Egret Town was still just as it had always been: ancient, winding alleys, almost every one paved with those evocative blue-gray flagstones. Even today, when asphalt roads ran rampant, the flagstones seemed perfectly at home in this unremarkable little town. Treading softly upon them, one could almost hear the silence and grace of a thousand years ago, when flowers bloomed by the road and drifted gently to the ground.
She counted the falling petals, one by one...
Mu Zi lowered her eyes slightly and closed them. She stepped onto one flagstone, spread her arms, then took another step forward. The fourteenth flagstone to the left of the front door was the largest.
She felt the drizzle. She felt the memories.
In town, white mist hung lightly in the air, and a veil of rain blurred the view. Old houses, old roads, new faces.
Premise:
