Meteor Garden -2001- -

She didn’t know where she was going until she got there. The Meteor Garden. The rusty gate. The rotunda.

And that was the lie they both chose to believe. Over the next three weeks, the Meteor Garden became a silent treaty zone. Shancai would find Si there after school, sitting on the edge of the dry fountain, the cello across his lap. He never played when she was there, not at first. He’d just stare at the chipped zodiac mural—the archer, the scorpion, the scales.

She learned that his rage wasn't power—it was a performance. At home, he was invisible. His sister was the genius, his mother the dragon, his father a silent portrait in the hallway. The only time anyone looked at him was when he broke something. He learned that Shancai’s stubbornness wasn't courage—it was desperation. She had no safety net. If she fell, there was no one to catch her. meteor garden -2001-

It was the first time he’d used her real name.

He looked at her, and for a second, the mask slipped again. “They’re not wrong,” he said quietly. “The money is real. The ice is just… maintenance.” The trouble began, as it always did, with a red tag. She didn’t know where she was going until she got there

“No,” she said. “This is my place.”

The summer of 2001 tasted like lychee popsicles and the metallic tang of first heartbreak. For Dong Shancai, it was the summer the world ended and began again, all within the overgrown, forgotten geometry of the old meteor garden. The rotunda

Dao Ming Feng’s smile was the scariest thing Shancai had ever seen. It didn’t reach her eyes. “Then you’ve just declared war, little vegetable. And I have never lost.” That night, the storm came.

And then he kissed her.

She ran.

“Wild vegetables grow anywhere,” she said. “Even in meteor craters.”