1st Night of the Fading Echo, Under the Pale Moonlight

Photo: Koboldfoto

The air tasted of ashes.

A veil of mist settled over the memories, blurring their edges, tearing them apart until they were nothing but fragments—fleeting, meaningless. I tried to hold onto them, but they slipped through my fingers like water.

Something inside me whispered her name.

Meng Po. The Guardian of Forgetting. The final threshold between life and rebirth.

The Legend

They say that no soul can cross the Naihe Bridge without passing through her hands.

Meng Po sits at the edge of the underworld, on the shore of forgetting. In a bowl, she holds her brew—a bitter concoction, distilled from the shadows of past lives, from the voices of those who have already departed. Every drop erases a memory, every sip takes more of what once was.

The souls drink—they have no choice. And with each swallow, they fade. They forget who they were. They forget whom they loved. They forget their pain.

They step onto the bridge and return to life—empty, unwritten, ready for the endless cycle of rebirth.

And yet...

Some whisper that an echo remains.

A memory, buried too deep to truly die.

Photo: Koboldfoto

The Idea

When my grandmother died, something inside me shattered.

Death did not come quietly. It came with torn voices, with cold walls, with sterile lights that drained all warmth from the room. I watched as life slipped away from her, watched as silence devoured the space.

I would have wanted to forget.But the pain refused to leave.

So I went to Meng Po.

I wanted to understand. Wanted to know what it meant to let go. Wanted to feel what it was like to step into the shadows and remain there.

So I let her speak through me.

The Costume

Black fabric, heavy as the night. A Han-Tang robe, its long sleeves dragging across the floor like lost voices.

My hair bound in a tight knot, hidden beneath a veil of darkness. I let it fall over my face, let it conceal me, let it dissolve me into silence.

The goddess of forgetting wears no colors.Why would she?

She knows no past.

She knows only what is to come.

Photo: Koboldfoto

The Performance

The first notes of the music crept across the floor like cold smoke.

I stepped into the darkness, slowly, each movement heavy with voices I did not want to hear. My hands rose, trembling, shaping a bowl—invisible, yet unbearably heavy.

I brought it to my lips. I offered it.

Every motion flowed, lingered, fractured. The room pulsed with the distorted riffs of the music, a rhythm like the heartbeat of the underworld itself.

I turned, withdrew, stepped forward—again and again, as if caught in the endless cycle. As if I had forgotten I had ever been anything else.

The shadows breathed with me.

I heard them whisper.

Or was it my own breath?​