A Prompt

Your love still linger

Shancai didn’t succeed. She had spent terrible months since she and Daoming Si had been separated. It wasn’t a voluntary decision, they had literally been torn apart. Both had been brought to hospital after their mutual determination to starve. Indeed to two completely different and opposite places.

She had had no chance to talk to him again after she had been released from hospital at home. Instead she received an official lawyer’s letter on behalf of Daoming Feng with a filed injunctive relief. She was no longer allowed to face Daoming Si up to 100 meters for the rest of her life. And she had to sign it otherwise she would have been punished by a severe financial penalty, she definitely couldn’t afford. So Shancai gave in.

Ah-Si was forced to marry the heiress of the HE-group, her so-called friend Xiaozi, Shancai ever thought she was never fit to hold a candle to her. She had earnestly tried to avoid watching the wedding, but it was inevitable, as these news had been spread everywhere like advertisement for pets’ nutrition. On Weibo, QQ and on other common yellow press media it was handled as the sensation of the year like the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan.
The confrontation with Ah-Si’s and Xiaozi’s pictures caused a steady pain in her little heart.

Her heart suffered as if somebody had wrapped an iron chain round it and the view of the wedding photos of Ah-Si and Xiaozi, made the chain squeeze her heart excruciating. Ah-Si looked deathly pale with an absentminded gaze, his face as cold as ice showing no emotion as though it were carved from stone or being numbed by drugs. Xiaozi on the opposite was hard trying to make it up with most excessive plastic fake smiles.

Shancai knew deep in her aching heart, it wasn’t his fault and she also knew that he couldn’t be happy after all.

She didn’t blame him but she couldn’t stand this situation either. She had to react, to quit, to move forward, to do something whatever what. No chance to stay as she was. All their mutual friends, unbearable to meet them again. Even her intimate talks to her best friend Xiaoyou became virtually impossible as Xiaoyou was going to be engaged with Ximen, a best buddy to Ah-Si. Shancai would always be a misfit when they would met. No more harmless girls stuff to be chattered together, too much common grounds with the past.

The heavy weight of unspoken words everywhere, of trying to act as normal and relaxed as possible, not to mention him towards her – impossible!  Torments of Tantalus to her and a Sisyphean struggle for the others – impossible! And Shancai didn’t want to hear gossip about her lost love. She had to overcome.

She made up her mind and left China. She must move forward, she was Shancai, the weed! And she wanted at least to try and find her luck abroad. Nothing else to lose. With her studies finished and her award as special price winner of the legendary Chinese cooking event she applied with a Chef de cuisine in France. And to her utmost surprise Monsieur Michel LeGrand prized with 2 Michelin stars accepted her at once.

Monsieur LeGrand acted – besides from his famous cooking - as a talent scout. He always searched for new uprising talents and a Chinese one was interesting anyway to him. Maybe there was a new food line to be created, Chinese and French nouvelle cuisine way of cooking combined. He already gathered ideas about it.

After she had received her visa, she bid farewell to her parents, yet only to a few friends. She blocked almost every other contact to her former friends, especially to F4 and also to Xiaoyou which wasn’t easy to handle, but unshirkable from Shancai’s point of view. Both shed a puddle of tears when the time came to say good-bye. Her best friend understood very well that Shancai needed a newstart, refreshed without ballast. At least Xiaoyou was able to force a promise off Shancai to send her a sign of life at times.

So Shancai moved to Paris, the French capital which seemed to be a town compared to Shanghai, she thought, when she arrived.

M. LeGrand’s restaurant was situated very close to the center of Paris and with a lot of luck Shancai had found a small room in a flatshare. Initially she couldn’t rather afford the rent for her tiny room. But she worked hard, was eager to learn and improve and so she did. In M. LeGrand’s eyes Shancai was lottery win of the finest. At least he learned as much from her as she did from him. Besides the Nouvelle cuisine Shancai was also bent on cramming the French pastries. And amazingly soon she became M. LeGrand’s right-hand “man” because he evaluated her stunning talent and her strong will to improve.