“Why would I?” she shot back. “No one would believe me. They think you’re carved from ice and money.”
“Because she was wrong,” Shancai said, her voice breaking at last. “About you. About everything. You’re not ice. You’re just… scared.”
For a long moment, he just stared at her. The setting sun slanted through the broken dome, illuminating the dust motes dancing between them. He didn’t threaten her. He didn’t call for his F4 backup. He just looked at her like she was a ghost he’d been expecting. meteor garden -2001-
Shancai’s first instinct was to run. Self-preservation was her strongest skill. But her second instinct—the one that got her into all the trouble at school—was to stay. To witness.
“You’re the wild vegetable,” Dao Ming Feng said without looking up. “I thought I made myself clear.” “Why would I
“You have guts,” she said softly. “Guts are useful. But they are also fragile.” She reached out and touched Shancai’s chin with one cold finger. “I am going to give you one chance. Walk away. Forget you ever saw him. And I will forget your father’s noodle stall exists.”
“Wild vegetables grow anywhere,” she said. “Even in meteor craters.” “About you
Her real name was Dong Shancai, but everyone called her Shancai—"wild vegetable"—a name her mother said would keep her humble and tough. At sixteen, she was tired of being humble. She was tired of the cramped Taipei apartment she shared with her parents and three younger brothers, of the uniforms she had to starch herself, of watching the popular girls at Ying Qiao High School glide through the hallways in their designer sneakers.
Dao Ming Feng stood up. She was taller than Shancai expected. She walked around the desk, her heels clicking like gunshots. She stopped inches from Shancai’s face.
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.