Mei-lian sat by the window, watching peach blossoms fall into the courtyard. At twenty, she understood that beauty was both her greatest gift and her cruelest curse.

Her mother had arranged a marriage to a wealthy merchant's son—a good match, everyone said. But Mei-lian's heart belonged to Zhi-qiang, a poor scholar who smelled of ink and old books. They met secretly in the garden, beneath the flowering trees, speaking of poetry and dreams.

When her mother discovered the affair, she showed no anger—only disappointment. "You are a woman," she said gently. "Your duty is to your family, not your heart."

Mei-lian married the merchant's son. Her husband was kind but dull, and she performed her wifely duties with quiet grace. Sometimes, late at night, she would wake weeping, mourning not her lost love but her lost self.

Years later, walking through the garden with her own daughter, she saw peach blossoms falling again. She realized then that she had become her mother—a woman who had once dreamed, and then had not.