Meteor Garden -2001- May 2026

“Why do you keep coming here?” he asked one evening. The rain was pounding on the rotunda’s dome, a deafening drum.

“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.”

When they finally broke apart, the rain had stopped. A single shaft of moonlight broke through the hole in the dome, illuminating the zodiac mural above them. The archer. The scorpion. And the scales, perfectly balanced. meteor garden -2001-

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.

Now the woman looked up. Her eyes were Si’s eyes—the same deep, dark brown—but where his held a storm, hers held a frozen wasteland. “Excuse me?” “Why do you keep coming here

Si. Dao Ming Si. The name alone was a weather event. He was the monsoon that flooded your basement, the typhoon that tore down the power lines. He was the youngest heir to the Dao Ming Group, a fortune so vast it had its own gravitational pull. He and his three friends—the charming Hua Ze Lei, the flamboyant Mei Zuo, and the loyal Xi Men—were known as F4, the four princes who ruled Ying Qiao like a feudal fiefdom. To cross them was to invite social annihilation. Red tags would appear on your locker. Your desk would be thrown from the window. Your life, as you knew it, would end.

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. “Guts are useful

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.