Work Text:
next time,
we will hold each other through more
than quiet vigilance, allow our fingers to touch
as we lift the prayer bowl
—Cindy Kuang, “At Meng Po’s Bridge of Rebirth”
（一）
At the end of hell, Luo Fumeng thrusts a bowl of soup into Liu Qianqiao’s bloody hands.
It’s been an eternity since she’s been offered something to drink, and even longer since she’s been offered mercy like this. The ceramic of the bowl is cool against her burning skin, soothing, as if to say: You have suffered enough. The first time Luo Fumeng offered her mercy, Liu Qianqiao refused. Her skin had already closed over the knife—to take it out would have meant reopening the wound, bleeding herself dry. Freedom was unthinkable. When Luo Fumeng went mad, Liu Qianqiao knew at last that there could be no freedom for people like them—that there was nowhere for their suffering to go except deeper within. That their pain, splintered deep beneath their flesh, could slumber but would never die, would always remain.
But now, they are dead—if they want to live again, there is no choice but to accept, to forget. In the bowl, the liquid swirls, fog-like and amnestic. Liu Qianqiao inhales—smells osmanthus and daylilies and acrid venom, intertwined. Each note is a memory like bitter earth, waiting to be washed away.
Liu Qianqiao thirsts. For mercy; for absolution. She tips the bowl back, drinks it all. A single drop rolls down her chin, then disappears—smooth as liquor, thin as smoke, sweet as a dream.
（二）
Liu Qianqiao’s next life is just as hard as her last, if not harder still. She’s seven when her parents sell her for a bowl of rice that’ll only last them three days; fourteen when her master’s death leaves her on the streets with less than the clothes on her body. You’re lucky that you’re pretty, says the madam who gives her a new set of clothes and a place to stay, only to take everything else away. Five years pass in a drunken haze; slowly and steadily, she drifts away from humanity. At night, when the ghosts cry, she dreams of heartache and misery and a desolate valley, the only home she’s ever had.
She doesn’t remember her past life, not really. The only evidence that remains is a twinge in her chest and a tickle on the left side of her face, unmarred. There are no scars, no memories. Just smoke and fog and dreams half-dreamt, half-déjà vu. And beyond the fog: the hazy shape of a life lived, a life unlived, a life yet to come.
Life comes with the first spring wind in Liu Qianqiao’s nineteenth year, dressed in red. That year, the world blooms like it never has before, as if the eighteen years that came before were nothing but hibernation. She has never known spring the way she knows it then; will never know it the same way again. It speaks to her in the bloom of the dancers' sleeves; in the sway of their willowed limbs; in the sunlight fractaled on the planes of their faces, veiled in crystal rain. Spring whispers, saving grace—sanguine, sanative, sacred.
Winter subsides with the final turn of the lead dancer’s hand. Liu Qianqiao wakes, and—for the first time in twenty years—yearns.
“Teach me,” she blurts, imprudent in her impatience.
The woman’s gaze cuts through her like a scythe. Liu Qianqiao is sundered, too awestruck to remember her place. Chin upturned and eyes downcast, the woman asks, “You are?”
Humbled, Liu Qianqiao bows her head; censured, she shakes—like a leaf in the wind, waiting to be blown away.
“Look at me,” the woman says, in a voice she’s never heard come from the mouth of a woman—more command than request, sinuous and unyielding as the silk of her dress. She must look startled, because when the woman speaks again, the words are softer, more restrained. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
And—Liu Qianqiao has heard those words a million times before, a lie so twisted and worn it’s been shaped into its own opposite, the only way it rings true. But this time, it doesn’t ring. This time, it sings, and sounds like mercy.
She looks up, and is saved.
（三）
Luo Fumeng looks different in this life, though Liu Qianqiao can’t say how. She doesn’t remember what she used to look like—only knows that she looks familiar, and yet unfamiliar too. She studies her when she thinks she isn’t looking, eyes wide and reverent, combing through the details for memories that never surface. She makes new memories instead—memorizes the curve of her lip, relaxed; the line of her nails, blunt; the shine of her hair, dark as ink and earthbound.
Luo Fumeng pays a pretty penny to take her under her wing. Debt is all Liu Qianqiao has ever known, but this time it feels different. There is no obligation in the bend of her knees, in the bow of her head. She does not know duty, does not know loyalty—but she learns them the same way she learns to sing and dance, guided by Luo Fumeng’s gentle hand. The sun rises, the river flows, the songbird sings; and so Liu Qianqiao follows, surely and selflessly.
She’s too old to be the most talented entertainer, but when she dances every movement is a prayer, a proposal, poised and waiting to be answered. If Luo Fumeng notices, she doesn’t show it—never gives more than honest praise, polite suggestion. But every time her hands touch Liu Qianqiao’s skin, it’s an act of remembrance—the fog thins; the light illuminates. The answer falls, silently, into place. Inch by inch and piece by piece.
（四）
When Liu Qianqiao dies, there is nobody left to mourn. Anyone who might have follows her, one after another, into the underworld—Yu Qiufei, Gu Xiang, Luo Fumeng—a line of ghosts and monsters finally sent home.
As if to give the world another chance, she dies a hundred times over in the underworld—by scissors, by knives, by burning oil and scalding flame. She wonders if the devils would show her mercy if there was someone who would cry for her; or if that’s asking for too much, then at least someone who would pray for her. She doesn’t dare say a prayer for herself. Doesn’t even dare to think it. Can only grit her teeth and pay her debts, and hope that in the next life, the heavens will show her the mercy that hell cannot.
（五）
There is a noble Luo Fumeng is in love with, though Liu Qianqiao is sure that the noble isn't in love with her. She realizes the former when Luo Fumeng entrusts her with making the arrangements for their clandestine affair; realizes the latter when she figures out that what she’s really entrusting her with are the tears that stain her face every time she returns. Liu Qianqiao watches Luo Fumeng’s heart fracture and feels her own follow—every crack mirrored and made into her own.
She tries bringing it up once, but Luo Fumeng’s wounds are too fresh to touch, too raw to treat. It’s just as well; Liu Qianqiao isn’t sure she knows how to touch someone in a way that isn’t an act of self mutilation. She’s never had to care about the collateral, but now she can’t help but care—would rather never touch her at all than to shoulder the burden of being the killing blow. So she lowers her gaze and bites her tongue, and never brings it up again.
In the end, Luo Fumeng brings it up first. The moon is a sliver of a wound in the sky, half-healed. “He doesn’t want me anymore,” Luo Fumeng says at last, her smile weightless as the leaves beneath their feet. “They never do.”
Liu Qianqiao shifts forward, longs to shield her from the wind. But her frame, willowed and hungry, isn’t enough. Silence can only say so much; she’s exhausted the ways to speak without speaking, to touch without touching. All that is left is to reach into the space between them and say, "I do.”
The words fall from her lips and land at Luo Fumeng’s feet like an offering, an anchor set against the breeze. Luo Fumeng glances down at her outstretched hand, then back up, eyes widening in half-surprise, half-disbelief. Liu Qianqiao doesn’t breathe until Luo Fumeng rests her hand gingerly in hers, weighted with trust. She inhales. The burden is heavy, but sweet—like the weight of a peony, pliant in full bloom.
（六）
The bridge back to life is long and tenuous. Underneath, the river flows, shadowed in blood and hungry for sin. It would be so easy to fall in—there are no rails, no safety net. There is only a thin length of rope, glinting silver in the fog, a sliver of hope against the void.
Liu Qianqiao steps on. The rope flexes, grieved by unremembered sins. The fog rolls, thick and unforgiving, obscuring the path forward. She looks over her shoulder, searching for an answer, but all she finds is a woman with snow-white hair and poppy-red lips, gesturing for her to go. Liu Qianqiao misses without remembering, yearns without knowing why. The woman smiles—sunlit dawn, warm as spring. As if to say: Go, and I will follow.
Liu Qianqiao looks through the fog, and past it entirely. There is no choice but to cross. There is nowhere to go but forward.
（七）
In the morning, when the dew is fresh and the songbirds are still asleep, Liu Qianqiao remembers. Half-dream and half-memory, it comes back to her in shades of red and grey: a life dreamed, awakened by scalding flame. A life ruined, mended by bloodied hands. A life owed, and paid in untimely death.
A life promised, and taken unfulfilled.
Liu Qianqiao glances at the woman laying next to her, the pale of her skin lit in gold. Knows at once that she is the woman Liu Qianqiao promised herself to; knows at once that she’ll make the same promise again. In this life and the next, and all the ones that come after, no matter their shape or form. Songbird, river, rising sun—all of them are hers, hers alone.
“What are you thinking about?” Luo Fumeng asks, eyes blinking open, somnambulant in the morning glow.
“I’m just remembering a promise I made a very long time ago.”
“How long ago could it have been? You are still young.” She reaches for her, shoulder bones creaking. She stills, then laughs, sweeter than a dream. “Unlike me. I’m already an old woman.”
Liu Qianqiao smiles. “You are not.”
“I am, look at me.” She looks at her—sees a future in red and gold and vibrant viridian, demanding to come to life. “Look, even my hair is graying. I might die any second now. Tell me—will you take care of this old lady, even on her deathbed?”
Liu Qianqiao’s reply is immediate, swift as a summer breeze. “Yes,” she says, the taste of a promise still green on the tip of her tongue. Surely, selflessly. “I will.”
This time, she will make it right. This time, she will see it through. The songbird wakes, and sings—one life, one lifetime.
（八）
Luo Fumeng is waiting for her at the shore of the river between life and death.
They have gone through hell on earth, and now hell itself, too. Liu Qianqiao doesn’t know if she still has the strength to go on. She’s paid for her sins in blood and flame, but if she lives again she’ll have yet more to pay—her next life will almost certainly be harder than her last. After all, there is no second chance that doesn’t bear the weight of the first.
Liu Qianqiao’s first brings her down to her knees.
Luo Fumeng extends a hand; declares, “It will be better in the next life.” Liu Qianqiao almost believes her. "We will be better in the next life.”
Liu Qianqiao wants to believe her. “Even though we have wronged, and have been wronged all our lives?”
“Because we have wronged, and have been wronged,” she says, taking Liu Qianqiao’s hand in hers, “we have no other choice but.”
Liu Qianqiao stands up. There is no other choice but.