Love Locked Amid the Flames of War

Chu Muge: Meeting the right person at the wrong time is a trial fate has set for us.

Wen Mobai: In a time of chaos, how can we afford to indulge in romance? The world is in turmoil, bones lie in heaps. All I want to protect is our country, and you.

In these turbulent times, with the fate of our country hanging in the balance, we are surely destined never to find peace together. But neither of us will accept our fate. Even the storms of a chaotic age cannot extinguish two burning hearts.

She, Chu Muge, is as her name suggests: gentle and clever, she makes everyone around her feel at ease. Born the daughter of a merchant family, she is determined to become a Western doctor who promotes new medical techniques.

He, Wen Mobai, is upright and rebellious. Ink is black, but he insists on being the one streak of pure white in all that darkness. Born the son of a merchant family, he has no interest in business and only wants to be a journalist who spreads new ideas and saves the people from backwardness.

I still remember the year we first met on a train. Perhaps the moment we both reached out and our eyes met, it was already fated that we would endure hardship, drift from place to place, and struggle to keep the love we found.

But I have no regrets. If we could start over, we would still choose to meet. (This is a companion piece to A Pear Garden's Drunken Dream.)