Because Hanami was already planning to leave. She always was. That was her curse: she fell in love like a migratory bird falls in love with a tree—deeply, but never permanently. When Hanami disappeared—just a note, no address, just “Thank you for the rain” —Mayi broke. Not quietly. Spectacularly. She stopped dancing. Stopped laughing. Started sleeping in her rehearsal room, surrounded by mirrors that showed her only absence.
That night, they walked through the Zhuxia night market. Mayi bought her grilled squid and lied about her horoscope to make her laugh. Hanami smiled—small, real, like a crack in a porcelain cup.
Zhuxia said nothing. But her hands trembled as she turned off the lamp. A year later. Hanami returned.
Zhuxia stared at the sea. “Why?”
Mayi loved Zhuxia. She did. But she was still haunted by Hanami’s ghost—not the person, but the idea of someone who left before the love could rot. Hanami had become a perfect, frozen memory. Zhuxia was real, present, breathing beside her. And that terrified Mayi.
—her real name was Hanami—was the ghost between them. She had arrived in Zhuxia one spring, smelling of rain and old vinyl records. No one knew where she came from. She wore pale pink ribbons in her hair, and her eyes held the kind of sadness that made people want to save her. She never asked to be saved. II. The First Season: Mayi & Sakura Girl It began with a broken bicycle chain and a sudden downpour.
That was Zhuxia’s way. She didn’t burn cities. She built lighthouses.
On the pier, Hanami looked older. Thinner. Her pink ribbons were faded. She had traveled far—to islands with no names, to cities where no one spoke her language. And everywhere she went, she carried Zhuxia’s bookstore bookmark in her pocket.
