It is easy to ignore the gray of the real world when you’re the white. Ironically (or not so), this is a concept so deeply ingrained in the culture, it is within the subconscious.
Kuang, in this story, takes on an incredibly old trope: the guilty conscience of the actor is not worked through internally like we see so often nowadays; rather, it is an external attack on the individual that they must run from or fight. The Ancient Greeks called them the Furies.
Love is not an ideal that we chase like world peace. It is the things we do every day, the way we interact with the world around us, and how we present ourselves. I realized that love is actionable.
The story begins with 39 women and one young girl trapped in a cage like a large zoo enclosure, though the only visitors are the three guards who walk in sync, never acknowledging the prisoners or each other.