You Must Fall In Love

Chapter Fourteen

"So the story takes place way back. And I mean way back. Like, before the Qin Dynasty back. Before actual, factual, real-life history back."

This was dangerous. Judging by the tiny wobble in her voice, Jen was going into her history-nerd mode, but from the crazy light in her green eyes, Christine could tell that Jen was also going into her magic-nerd mode, the only thing more unstoppable than her history-nerd mode.

"Cool," she said, already inching back on instinct. "Before the Qing Dynasty. Nice."

Jen tsked, then shook her head.

"No, not the last one. Qin, not Qing. The first one. Mrs. Wee, remember?"

Somewhere in-between Primaries Three and Four, Mrs. Wee the Mandarin teacher had decided to teach an entire semester on the history of Imperial China, because SeeleHouse was a progressive school with a true international outlook, and if the children were going to get their government-mandated mother-tongue instruction they might as well learn a bit of culture while they were at it. Mrs. Wee had done this with a whiteboard marker, a box full of flashcards, and a whole bunch of grainy VCD rips, none of which sounded remotely Singaporean.

Mrs. Wee had only stopped when the parental letters about exam results and curricular relevance started coming in, but unlike Jen, who was gutted, Christine was immensely happy at this decision.

She didn't like hearing about dead people. Dead people were dead and had no possible help to give her, especially in her strange and very complicated life, unless they were ghosts.

Then again, the only living person who had ever managed to give her anything was Jen.

"No," said Christine. "Anyway, you didn't tell me it was going to be a Chinese story."

"But of course it's a Chinese story," blinked Jen. "Why do you think I was trying to ask your mom about it?"

Christine used her most eloquent face to convey just how she felt about that mention.

Jen caved.

"Okay, okay, alright. Come on, C, don't look at me like that."

"Whatever," said Christine. "Emperor. China. Cool."

"No, there wasn't any Emperor then," said Jen, like Christine was making an honest mistake as opposed to a dishonest one. "There was one before, probably, but not at this point. I think China was in one of its in-between periods. You know, those hundred, fifty-year breaks where the whole country falls into a million bits for a new Emperor to sweep up."

"Like the Three Kingdoms," said Christine, thinking back to the old PS2 games she had glared at for being unaffordable.

"Yeah!" clapped Jen. "Well done!"

This was rather difficult to understand, because from Christine's limited point of view, the biggest problem with the Three Kingdoms was that most of the things people believed about it were fictional.

"So did it actually happen, or..."

"Dad doesn't think that the story happened at all," said Jen. "He thinks it's completely mythological... which doesn't mean it isn't true, but does mean it operates on a different level from plain old magic history. Personally, I think if it happened in history, there's no reason to think that it didn't happen in prehistory, either."

"So it's a fairy-tale," frowned Christine.

Jen frowned back, as if trying to take issue with the word fairy. Then she gave up.

"Yeah, I guess you can call it a fairy-tale. Fairy-tales are just echoes of things that actually happen."

"Alright, Jen," sighed Christine. "Out with it."

"Sure," said Jen. "There were kingdoms back then, a whole bunch of them. One of them was called Liu — that's the same as Liu Bei's, only it was probably written different then. The Duke of Liu, who was only a Duke because he still thought of himself as loyal to the old Emperor, had a daughter called Ming."

Jen had elided the last tone out of a strange nominal respect, as Christine usually did when trying to shove Mandarin names into English. Without it, she couldn't tell a thing about which character Ming's ming might be, even though it strictly didn't matter. Some of her classmates had names that were pure transliterated Chinese, like Wei Shun or Li Hao, and she always had difficulty remembering the more arcane combinations. It was one of the curses of being lopsidedly bilingual.

"Míng for bright," said Jen, reading her face perfectly.

"Sure," said Christine, reminding herself that Jen was completely bilingual. "I'm guessing she was the most beautiful girl in all of China?"

"Not quite, but close," said Jen. "Ming was what we call a looker, which meant that every prince and general's son for miles around wanted to marry her. The King of Shao even banished his queen in order to entice her. Wrote a poem, too, which I did in fact save on my phone. Where is it? Ah, there."

Jen turned up the brightness and cleared her throat.

The winter river shines;

My heart weeps, but not for the cold.

The ice is as hard as your heart;

Sighing, I stare at my empty cup.

"Cool, isn't it?" asked Jen, passing her phone over. "It flows a lot more in Chinese. Not that I can, ah, actually understand Classical Chinese. Your mom can, though. Pretty sure it was part of her Taoist training."

Christine looked at the photographed grimoire page, a block of beautiful characters which made sense individually but absolutely none together. She decided to look at the translation to make herself feel less incompetent.

"I guess Ming wasn't a very nice person," she said at last, "if her heart was that hard."

Jen nodded, but it was an understanding nod, not an agreeing one.

"Some people hide away because they're scared of being hurt," said Jen. "I think Ming was just scared of being pretty."

"Boo-hoo," said Christine, tearing her gaze away from Jen's painted nails. "What a tragedy. Did she marry the King of Shao?"

"No," said Jen. "As a matter of fact, she didn't marry anyone at all."

"Imagine that," said Christine. "Why not?"

"Well, it's quite a simple reason, really," said Jen. "Do you believe in gods?