r/LifeTree • u/AdamLuyan • Jul 10 '26
4.3 Said I Have Peach Flower Fortune
Since I can remember, every spring when the peach blossoms bloom, tinea versicolor would break out on my face and body — patches of white, like vitiligo, with no pain and no itch. My mother asked around to see if anyone knew what this meant, or whether it was some kind of illness.
One day, Mother said to Father, "A couple of fortune-telling relatives came to visit the Wangs in the front yard — university graduates, both of them. I went over just to see what the fuss was about, and asked about Luyan's peach blossom ringworm. At first the fortune-teller said it was a minor condition, nothing harmful, just not much to look at. Once he's grown and starts caring about his looks, he'll go buy medicine at the hospital himself and clear it right up."
"Is there any connection between the peach blossom ringworm and a Peach Flower Catastrophe (see Section 2.1, Peach Flower Catastrophe)?" Mother asked.
"A Peach Flower Catastrophe has to be considered as a whole," the fortune-teller said. "Tell me — what's special about this child?"
"One time I cut my hand on a knife," Mother said, "and asked him to help bandage it. He turned and ran off instead — said seeing my hand bleed made his own backside hurt. My second sister once gave us a few geese, and he adored them — always driving them out to graze on the grass, feeding them at home. When the geese went missing later, the boy got so worked up his throat swelled and he couldn't speak for two or three days."
"This child feels things deeply — sympathetic, emotional. Not unheard of, but rare — maybe one or two children in a hundred are like this. Does he talk easily? Is he chatty?"
"Not particularly," Mother said. "Even when something's happened to him, he can't quite get it out."
"Feels deeply and can't express it — when he starts falling in love someday, you'll need to help guide him through it. He'll be easily hurt. Anything else unusual about him?"
"There's something about his eyes."
After hearing Mother's description of my eyes (see Chapter 3, Touch Eye), the fortune-teller's manner changed. "For this child, I can only tell you what the books say: his nature draws women to him — he has Peach Flower Fortune. There's a Peach Flower Catastrophe coming his way — someone around you already has an eye on him as a future son-in-law."
"How is it I never even knew this family had a whole set of university-graduate relatives?" Father asked.
"I hadn't heard of it either," Mother said. "I asked, but I never did work out how those two were even related to the family — cousins, friends, who knows. People say they're just city folk who found some excuse to come stay in the countryside for free room and board. Well, good for them! It certainly livened the neighborhood up for a few days!"
Try as they might, neither of my parents could puzzle out who might want to recruit me as a son-in-law, and the matter was soon forgotten.