"When I was five, my father racked up gambling debts and was beaten badly by the collectors." "He wanted to t…
"When I was five, my father racked up gambling debts and was beaten badly by the collectors."
"He wanted to take it out on me. It was my sister who threw herself in front of me... The scar on her forehead—she got it that night."
"What about your mother?"
"Mother? She ran away long ago, could not bear father's violence. I don't blame her. Anyone would want to survive. Staying in that house... meant certain death for her."
"My sister could have run too, but I was too young. She couldn't leave me behind."
"So it was your sister who raised you?"
"Yes. Without her, I'd probably be nothing but a rotting corpse beneath the old tree at the village gate."
"That's why I have to find her. Even if all that's left is a pile of bones, I need to see her with my own eyes. And lay her to rest with my own hands."
Jiang Wei paused, his hands freezing for a moment. At some point, rain had begun to fall, turning the Mass Grave into a mire. His white robes were stained with mud, blotched like splattered blood. Not far ahead, the washed-out earth revealed the tip of a wooden hairpin, it's a broken plum flower. He had carved that hairpin when he was ten, clumsy and earnest, working days and nights, only to botch it. He had wanted to throw it away and start a new one, but his sister stopped him.
Smiling, she told him it was the most beautiful plum flower in the world.
Now they lay buried together in the mud. That flower, and the sister he loved the most.
Wood rots. Flesh turns to bone.