Short Story Translation: All About Summer- Galaxy's Breadth

[hazevi]

One could say it's ironic that I choose to translate a story from Yi Zhan Ye Deng's short story collection All About Summer during the wintery months for me, but with this story, I somehow think that both seasons are quite fitting for it. 

As the title of the collection suggests, Galaxy's Breadth (苍穹会所 cang qiong hui suo) is also a story about summer, but a summer in the far off future, where science and technology are much more advanced. The main characters, Xu Yuan and Mu Bai, meet during a fateful summer, and their story develops around their relationship in contrast to society's perspectives. 

Thus, I need to put a slight warning out here, the reason why I think this story is both summer and winter is because it tackles some heavy subjects, chilling and perhaps a little too realistic despite the sci-fi setting. Reader discretion is advised. 

-Involves marriage with a man
-Mentions of infidelity
-Pregnancy, motherhood, parenting, and the societal pressures around it 
-Character death .
 

The story has six chapters, or more like 5 chapters + an epilogue, at a total of around 20k characters. This first posting is the first two chapters, and I plan on finishing the rest hopefully before the end of January. 

Here's a link dump:

Table of Contents landing page
Chapter 1
tweet about it
bluesky post about it


Lastly, Happy New Year everybody!