5.1. The Children Who Painted the Last Palace
(Location: Abandoned Pavilion, Former Mukden Palace Reconstruction Site)
Description:
At the southern edge of the city, where reconstruction halted under ambiguous orders, an incomplete pavilion waits under tarps and scaffolding. Here, groups of schoolchildren were once brought to paint imaginary versions of the last palace of Manchukuo. Each child received one panel—no references, only dreams. Now the panels lie in loose stacks, curling at the edges. One features a golden dragon crying black ink. Another shows a staircase rising into cloudless blue. Juna reads their signatures: some real, some scribbled under aliases like “Crown Prince Nobody.” Judai discovers a discarded guidebook printed by the Ministry of Retrospective Education. It instructs teachers to say: *Paint what should have remained.* But no one stayed to hang the panels. The children grew up, and the palace vanished again.
Keywords:
##pedagogical fiction
##child reconstruction labor
##palace by imagination
##imperial nostalgia
##retrospective curriculum
Very Short Story:
Juna lifts a sun-warped panel depicting a throne room made entirely of mirrors. “This one thought the emperor should see himself,” she says. Judai flips over another—a palace filled with empty cribs. “And this one imagined no heirs.” A notebook lies nearby, scrawled in pink ink: *My dad says we lost, but I made us win.* They linger in silence. Wind slips through scaffold joints like voices barely remembered. A paper crown flutters down from the rafters, landing beside them. Juna picks it up, fits it gently to her head, and bows. “For the reign of make-believe,” she murmurs. “Long may it not rule.”
