[For kids x for adults]
Ao Ling gazed into the mirror, lost in a daze for a moment. Reflected behind her was a young boy with twin topknots and lips red as flames. He held her in his arms, his chin resting against the hollow of her cool shoulder. His long fingers toyed with a lock of her hair, soft as rosy clouds, making her turn her head and look at their intertwined figures in the mirror.
"Have you mistaken me," the boy said, his clear voice deliberately lowered, his warm breath brushing her ear, "for the one in the red bellyband again?"
His tone was three parts reproach and seven parts the unquestionable possessiveness of the little prince, the lotus-root-born child. It was as if the slightest wandering of her thoughts would be a heinous crime.
This tangled, ill-fated romance all began with that accident. A rift in space and time had flung her into a place that was both familiar and utterly strange, where she met someone who seemed to be an old acquaintance, yet wasn't quite the same.
·
Nezha deliberately tossed half a dismembered limb in front of her, hoping to see her lose her composure.
But to Ao Ling, the gory red was just a blurry image, and even seemed to give off the sweet, cloying scent of ketchup. She found it dull, nowhere near as lively as teasing the little panda pigs.
Back in the Dragon Palace, she sank into a shell bed that opened and closed with the waves. After a night of rising and falling tides, she woke to find the one holding her conch had become the child with the red bellyband and bright eyes again.
The next day, as the tide ebbed once more, the one holding the conch turned back into the gloomy boy who had used a severed limb to frighten her.
Nezha... So besides Jin Zha and Mu Zha, he had another brother?
A mushroom that lives for a day knows nothing of the months and years. Caught in this endless cycle of waxing and waning, she could no longer tell which was real and which was an illusion.
Ao Ling: So I have two childhood friends.
Theme: Which did you drop, the red lotus root or the white one?
