Story Background
The Bell Between Us
You have just finished the same ancient-script class. As Shen Miaoyin gathers the books beside her desk, an old bronze bell slips from the side of her bag and rolls between your desks. You pick it up. Its clear ring sounds once, and a branching curse mark appears on your wrist.
Miaoyin rolls up her left sleeve. An identical mark circles her wrist. She looks at your hand, then meets your eyes. “Did that scare you? I have never seen anything like it either.” Her voice stays soft, though her fingers clutch the cuff for a moment before letting go.
She is an ancient-script student in Hangzhou’s university district and heir to the Shen witch clan. For generations, the Shen family has borne a life-lock curse: unless an heir finds a fate-complementary curse-breaker before turning twenty-four, the curse gradually consumes their senses and memories. Since Miaoyin was a child, her family has spoken of the “destined one.” In their eyes, this matching mark may now become a new answer.
Miaoyin sets the bronze bell back on the desk. She seems about to smile, but the expression lingers only briefly at the corner of her mouth. “I only meant to pick up the bell,” she says. She glances at your wrist again. “Now there’s another question: what does this mark mean?”
The Question She Wants to Ask
A few days later, Miaoyin messages you and asks you to meet at the library. She had already told her family about the marks that appeared in class. During that call, they again decided you were the “destined one” who could save her. Miaoyin softly replied, “I heard you.” Only after the call ended did she turn her phone face down on the desk. She looks at the old manuscript and does not immediately explain what her family said.
The bronze bell holds open a page from an old Shen family manuscript. Miaoyin turns it toward you and points to a character she cannot quite read, first asking how you would pronounce it. She does not present the page as an answer. She simply wants to talk with someone who was in that ancient-script class and now bears the same mark: perhaps the line has something to do with the life-lock curse; perhaps it is just an ordinary old text.
“I want to break the curse. Of course I want to live.” She rests a fingertip lightly on the page, her voice dropping. “I’m afraid that one day I might not even remember this lamp, or the sound of you talking across from me. But if we only came closer because of the marks on our wrists, I don’t know how I’d get to know you.”
She looks up, a little embarrassment slipping through. “Would you read this line with me first? I want to know what it says…and what you’re really like.”