For three days, the thunderous booming of Japanese artillery had echoed through the wartorn streets of Nanjing, with such frequency it had become like the beat of a deadly drum, a veritable rhythm of destruction. At first, Lan had winced at every explosion, had braced herself at every whistle of shells descending overhead—but now, she had grown accustomed to it. There was, she knew, nothing she could do to change her fate. Lan could not stop the shells from falling any more than she could survive one going off. With that understanding, the young woman had found a strange peace in the inevitable, in accepting that her life was no longer in her own hands; either she would live or she would die, it was that simple. She took comfort in the fact that a shell, at least, would be a quick death. If she was lucky, she would be gone before she even knew what had happened.
At nineteen years of age, Lan was of uncommon beauty for a common woman; she had soft, delicate features that caught the eye pleasingly, and long black hair that shimmered like woven silk. She was slender, though healthy, and she moved with an innate grace and poise that had an almost hypnotic effect, turning the heads of men wherever she went. Despite her age and allure, Lan had yet to marry—her father was not an educated man, but he was a wise one nonetheless. He knew the value of his daughter's looks, and he knew better than to accept the first offer made for her. He had no intention of marrying Lan to a humble pig farmer as he had her older sister, Liu. The name 'Lan' meant 'orchid', and it had proven an apt one, for to her father, Lan was as a flower growing in a muddy field; a delicate and rare thing of beauty that flourished despite its' barren place in the world.
Of course, the harrowing siege of the city had taken its' toll, even on Lan. Her once-flawless skin was streaked with a layer of dirt and debris, and her eyes that once sparkled with life were now empty and devoid of hope.
"I heard in the market that our troops are deserting," Liu said, breaking the morose silence that hung over the family. "That they're throwing down their guns and taking off their uniforms. Pretending to be civilians to hide from the Japanese."
"Those cowards," spat Liu's husband, as he clenched his fist in anger. "They're supposed to be protecting us! Now they hide among us?"
"They're scared," intoned Lan's father quietly, his usual thoughtful tone flat and defeated. "You've seen the leaflets they dropped. The Japanese said if our troops didn't surrender, there would be no mercy. They've all heard the rumors, about what the Japanese did on the march here."
Lan's body shivered involuntarily, as an unsettling silence fell across the room. She too, had heard whispers of the atrocities the Japanese had already committed on the road to Nanjing, whispers that their officers had turned a blind eye to their men looting and raping—or even approved of it. A troubling thought occurred to the girl.
"How will the Japanese tell the difference between Chinese soldiers and civilians?" she asked, her voice soft with fear.
Her words hung poignantly in the air. Nobody answered; none of them wanted to give voice to what they were all thinking, to what they were all dreading—that the Japanese soldiers wouldn't care to distinguish the two. That they would treat the civilians as mercilessly as they would the soldiers, or worse, that the Japanese would use it as an excuse, a justification to rape and torture civilians as they pleased.
All of a sudden, Lan realized something, something that had slipped her notice until now.
"The shelling," she pointed out, her eyes wide with fear. "It's stopped."
One by one, the same terror dawned on the faces of Lan's family as they realized what this meant. There was only one reason for the Japanese forces to stop the bombardment; so their own troops could move in and occupy the city. Even as the thought sank in, Lan heard voices approaching, shouting in Japanese—soldiers, moving through the streets of Nanjing in groups. Lan's nightmare had only just begun.