WAITING FOR THE BEGINNING

1. An Unremarkable Ending - Part 1

The pregnant Lee Ping Ping hesitates outside the hotel's bustling entrance - brandishing a full regalia of world's most expensive cars, men and women paired in trendy high fashion and a platoon of service workers smiling, nodding and doing the customer's bidding.

This has always been her favorite venue for weddings, even for a muggy August season.

The floor length summer vest and the loose dress hide her pregnancy well. At twenty-one year old, she looks more like a college student and not a widow, bearing the child of another - her first love.

She's come to keep a promise and to say goodbye - to the city of her happy youth.  This is the second time she's come to the hotel today. The first time, it seems fate when the screen displayed a congratulation message with her best friend's name and tomorrow's date for the nuptials.  Not more than five years ago, here at the same hotel, she said to De Ai, "of course I would be making a special train for your gown.  Who else would do that?"

Back then, she would have never expected that she wouldn't be around to be the maid of honor; nor would she expect to be in a position where she could not keep that promise.  Then again, that was the year when she turned sixteen - she hadn't yet died and lived under a fake identity, only to die again.

She adjusts the heavy bag on her shoulder - the bag filled with expensive white silk and organza.  The bag represents half of her travel money.  Perhaps this is a bad idea.  As far as De Ai is concerned, Ping Ping has been dead for almost four years.

But her main concern is not facing De Ai.  No.  It is De Yi - De Ai's older brother and Ping Ping's first love, the father of her child.  At their last encounter, he said he could never see her again - he couldn't have his heart broken for the third time.  Because she loves him and has for all of her life, she agrees with him - they cannot see each other again; his heart will break again, now that she is leaving the country for good.

She pivots just in time to see the cars pull up and De Yi exits the lead car.  She turns around and sees everything in the sliding doors before her.  Following De Yi out steps a lovely woman, Chen Hua.   She hooks her arm around his in a familiar and intimate manner; that gesture punches straight to Ping Ping's heart.   

More cars pull up with the wedding party - surrounding her friend De Ai, who looks even more gorgeous than ever.  And she looks happy - every bit the bride about to marry her first love.

Ping Ping mutters to herself - march up those stairs.  Do what you came here to do.

Mingling in with the crowd, she disappears into the spacious lobby and rests on one of the long benches in a secluded corner.  Ping Ping waits for an opportunity.  

De Yi can see the girl as the car pulls up to the hotel.  He wishes his sister had not selected this venue for the wedding - it holds one of his most precious memory of Ping Ping. One of the many memories that now brings him nothing but pain.  But his sister De Ai knows nothing of his secret romance with Ping Ping. 

The woman appears as if an apparition.  A lone figure on the steps.  Such a familiar stance.  But it cannot be her.  She is too curvy - her breasts too big and her hips too wide.  His hands, his heart remembers every feature of her body - supple and skinny, more like a gangly teenager.

When that girl pivots, he leans forward in his seat - his heart constricting oddly.  Perhaps he hopes. Hidden behind a pair of sunglasses too big for her face, she looks  away just as quickly.   Still, she exudes a purity, a kind of separate beauty.  And too young to be pregnant as evidenced by her profile when she turns.

Then the moment is broken by the Chen Hua next to him - when she casually puts her hand on top of his.  He steps out of the car to politely put distance between them.  She closes it just as quickly by wrapping her bare arms around his; he disentangles himself, not even bothering to check her hurt expression.   He's trying to make up his mind about that woman.  But when he looks again, she is gone.