She didn’t know where she was going until she got there. The Meteor Garden. The rusty gate. The rotunda.
Her mother was crying in the kitchen. Her brothers were asking if they would have to move. Shancai stood in the doorway, the rain soaking through her school uniform, and felt something inside her break. meteor garden -2001-
“You did,” Shancai said, her voice only cracking once. “But you don’t know him.” She didn’t know where she was going until she got there
She learned that his mother, Dao Ming Feng, had given him the cello when he was eight, then smashed it against a wall when he refused to practice scales for eight hours a day. He’d secretly rebuilt it with parts from a junk shop. He learned that Shancai’s father ran a failing street-food stall and that she had memorized every menu item’s cost down to the penny. The rotunda