Spring deepened in the Grand View Garden. Dai-yu, walking among the fallen blossoms, saw petals scattered on the muddy ground. She wept — not for the flowers, but for what they represented: beauty trampled, purity soiled, a life too brief.

She gathered the petals in a silk pouch and buried them under the flowering crabapple tree. As she wept and chanted, Bao-yu approached, hidden behind a rock, and heard every word of her poem.

Her voice carried across the garden: 'The blossoms fade and fly across the sky. Who pities the red that fades, the scent that dies?' Dai-yu sang of flowers, but she was singing of herself — of a love that could never be, of a world that would crush her fragile spirit.

Bao-yu, overwhelmed, collapsed behind the rock. When Dai-yu found him weeping, she understood. In that moment, no words were needed. Two souls, destined to suffer, recognized each other.