A Bow at Dusk

There was a rumor in the streets of the capital that Suzhou in Jiangnan was home to a tailor shop called Qingyan Atelier. Even the coarsest cloth could be transformed in their hands. After Yuan Changliu was enfeoffed as Prince Yi, he led his friends Yu Long, Fu Zisu, and others to his fiefdom in Suzhou, where he met and grew close to Shao Qingyuan, the fourth daughter of Qingyan Atelier. Shao Qingyuan seized the chance to get close to Yu Long. When Yu Long had completely let down her guard and treated her with sincerity, Shao Qingyuan pulled out the dagger she had given Yu Long for self-defense. On the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the fifty-ninth year of Zhanghe, the day Shao Qingyuan turned seventeen, Qinghe marched north to attack Zhanghe, and Suzhou fell. From then on, Shao Qingyuan and Yu Long became strangers. Twelve years later, Shao Qingyuan saw Yu Long again. The woman was spirited and confident, daring to enter Guxiang alone. Looking up at Shao Qingyuan on the city wall, she spoke the words she had wanted to say on Shao Qingyuan's birthday twelve years earlier: