Why Is She the One?

The deceptively timid but secretly ruthless Republican-era painter Chu Li × the sunny yet depressed young violinist who studied abroad, Li Tang

Li Tang came across a fragment of a painting from the Republican era. There should have been two people in it, but after a fire, only one remained: a woman in a blue qipao, holding an umbrella in the rain. Of the person beside her, only a corner of their clothes could be seen.

On her way to a concert, Li Tang got into a car accident. As she hovered between life and death, she was pulled into the painting fragment.

She entered Beiping as it had been in those days and met the painter who had created the work.

That day, rain fell just as it did in the painting. She said to the other woman,

“My name is Li Tang. Li, as in dawn.”

Li Tang played her a violin piece, noble and elegant, all the more at odds with this bleak, lightless world.

Li Tang did not see how Chu Li gazed up that day, transfixed by the bombers roaring overhead. Accompanied by Li Tang’s music, they made a dirge for the living.

Li Tang had thought that once the other woman finished the painting, she would be able to go home, so she put on the blue qipao herself.

Later, the war spread, and Beiping grew perilously vulnerable, but the other woman still had not completed the second figure in the painting.

Li Tang saw her throw herself into the war, condemning the invasion in words that seemed to bleed. Even knowing these were only the painter’s memories preserved in the fragment, she could not stand apart from them.

She stopped insisting that the other woman finish the painting and stayed by her side. What she had learned told her what lay ahead, but she could not change it, so she told the other woman that they would win in the future.

Li Tang knew what year the war would end, but she did not know that the painting had been frozen in the year before its end.

The other woman fell ill and hid it from Li Tang. She opened the unfinished painting and, using blood as ink and her finger as a brush, struggled to complete it.

It turned out that the woman in blue had always been Li Tang, and the person standing beside her had always been the artist who painted her.

Li Tang pushed open the door and saw the other woman coughing up blood. She tried to support her, but heard her say,

“Li Tang, it’s time for you to go back. Go and see what it looks like when dawn arrives for me.”

Li Tang should have died in the car accident, but Chu Li, trapped in the painting fragment, chose once again to save her.

I hope that when we meet again, it will be in a time of peace...

Theme: Do not cling to a separation that is inevitable.