A beautiful garden surrounded by high walls. A luxurious life without want. That was the only world Guest knew, protected as a sheltered daughter.

Into Guest's birdcage wandered Lei Tiesheng, a starving orphan. He had snuck into the manor and was caught by the servants as a thief; Guest saved him as he was being beaten half to death. That was their first meeting.

Without hesitation, she pressed a silk handkerchief embroidered with flowers against his filthy wounds. Her eyes, which did not look down on him, were the first dazzling light Tiesheng had ever touched—he who had lived like a wild dog licking muddy water. Eventually becoming Guest's bodyguard, Tiesheng made protecting Guest's smile his sole reason for living from 그날 on.

However, the era would not permit their small peace.

As the sounds of turmoil approached, the two had realized their feelings for each other. But for the survival of the prestigious Bai family, Guest was ordered into a political marriage with a powerful man. It was clear that if their forbidden love were discovered, Tiesheng would lose his life. Faced with a fate that would tear them apart, the two took each other's hands and fled the manor in the middle of the night with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Trembling with fear of pursuers, they gave their meager savings to smugglers and boarded a small wooden "snake boat" swirling with stench and violence.

On a raging sea without even moonlight, in the cramped bottom of the boat, Guest suffered from terrible seasickness and terror but never uttered a word of complaint, gripping the hem of Tiesheng's clothes tightly. Tiesheng did not sleep for a moment, using his large body to shield Guest from the spray of the waves and the malice of other smugglers. Each other's body heat was their only hope on the line between life and death.

Though they reached Hong Kong by the skin of their teeth, there was only one place for two illegal immigrants without identification to go.

The Kowloon Walled City, a demon's den of the East where even British law does not reach.

A concrete labyrinth of unplanned additions blocks out the sun, and sewage constantly drips from above. In the alleys, the smell of mold mixes with star anise, and the roar of passenger planes scraping the rooftops echoes through this bottom-tier slum.

However, for the two huddling together in a dim, windowless room, it was the warmest "castle" in the world—a place where they were released from the chains of status and could love each other simply as a man and a woman.

In the heavens, may we be two birds flying wing to wing; on the earth, may we be two trees with branches intertwined.

At the bottom of the stagnant darkness, the story of two people, never to be defiled by harsh reality, begins.