Chapter Text
We begin with a flashback of a summer around 10 years ago. A young Mulan hums as she works at the loom, having been taught by her mother how to weave at a young age and already an expert at the craft. Her mother, A-Li, instructs Mulan to call back her little sister Muxiu for lunch, who has been playing outside. Mulan follows and runs out of her house in excitement.
The sky is clear, and a wind blows past over rice fields, rousing ripples of lush green. Mulan waves at the farmers along the way (they are like uncles and aunties to her), and says hello to her working father, Hua Zhou.
While looking for Muxiu though, Mulan hears a cry and turns a corner to find her meimei getting cornered and harassed by a group of boys who want to snatch her candies away and have them all for themselves. Without thinking, Mulan comes to her rescue and proceeds to beat the shit out of them, shouting confidently, “don’t worry, big sister is here.”
Cut to the aftermath, Mulan’s mother reprimands her eldest daughter (“I asked you to pick A-Xiu up, not beat people up”), and fretting about how she’ll be scaring all the boys off from marrying her in the future just from seeing the ugly bruises on her face. Meanwhile, Muxiu looks on worryingly from afar as she stands next to her father, Hua Zhou, who apologises to the parents of the other boys on behalf of Mulan.
As the Hua family walks home together, Muxiu thanks Mulan for saving her, and asks her jiejie to teach her some of her self-defense moves. Mulan agrees to it, provided that ‘A-Xiu’ asks for their parents’ permission first. Looking up at Hua Zhou, the small smile on his face speaks of approval.
The lighthearted atmosphere sours a little when Mulan asks her father why he apologised to the boys’ parents for her when it’s clear they instigated the whole thing. Hua Zhou pauses for a moment, then requests his wife to take Muxiu home first, wanting to talk to Mulan alone.
Muxiu becomes a little concerned for her big sister, but Mulan reassures their father won’t be scolding her and pats her head affectionately, even presenting to her the candies she had stolen back from one of the boy’s pockets, much to A-Xiu’s delight. A-Li snarks about how ‘A-Zhou’ and ‘A-Lan’ would be eating their cold lunch for dinner if they return late, but her husband only chuckles at that.
When the two are out of sight, Hua Zhou finally sighs and slowly levels himself down to his daughter’s height. He holds Mulan’s hands as he admits that she had apparently beaten the boys up too much for their parents’ liking, but reassures Mulan that she had done the right thing, and he made sure the boys apologised to Muxiu as well and learned their lesson.
Mulan immediately poses what if the boys didn’t learn their lesson, to which Hua Zhou playfully replies: if it ever happens again, he would approve Mulan beating that lesson into them. Mulan cracks up at that, and Hua Zhou also joins in. Both of them laugh so hard to the point Hua Zhou falls to the ground on his butt and groans at the sudden ache in his disabled leg. Mulan wants to help her father up but he refuses.
It is at this moment Hua Zhou tells Mulan that the leg he injured in battle, the wars he fought and the hardships he went through are all for his daughters to live a peaceful life, and all he asks from Mulan is to not take it for granted.
Mulan ponders for a while, then she nods, promising that her father’s sacrifices will not go to waste, and as the eldest child of the household, she will always put her family first. Upon hearing that, Hua Zhou smiles and embraces Mulan, telling her he’s certain his daughter will grow up into a beautiful, good woman.
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Transitioning back to the present day, a bustling city is going about its business when military patrols stationed above its gate walls spot a wave of horses galloping towards them in the distance, seemingly emerging all of a sudden from the sweltering desert to the north. Discovering that the invading forces were Rourans, the city is immediately put on lockdown and soldiers are alerted to guard and defend. Yet, the Rourans overwhelm the garrison on duty there and capture the city in one fell swoop.
In the Imperial Palace, the Chancellor reports to the Emperor that the Rourans have crossed the northern border and taken down six garrisons in a coordinated attack. We cut back and forth between scenes of the Imperial Palace and the Rourans’ ruthless assault.
The Chancellor continues in a voiceover that the Rourans are led by General Mugulü, who previously fought in the war between the two nations. Already a famous and celebrated general amongst his men, it seems that after the death of the Rouran Great Khan and his next of kin by the end of the war, Mugulü had taken the opportunity to become the new ruler, uniting the tribes and resurrecting the army.
The Grand Commandant, Sun Yuanshuai*, tells the Emperor that the Rouran forces have grown stronger than before, and proposes setting up defenses around the capital city and other major cities. The Emperor objects though, reasoning that his dynasty has suffered enough from the previous war, from the damage of the Rourans, and the quicker they put out these invaders once and for all, the better.
The Emperor sends Sun Yuanshuai to deploy the Imperial Army, and then orders the Chancellor to issue a decree to all provinces calling every family to supply one man to war.
When Sun Yuanshuai insinuates he believes his troops are enough to stop Mugulü, the Emperor says he’s not taking any chances. The Chancellor and the Grand Commandant bow deeply but share a brief glance out of the Emperor’s sight.
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A crowd makes their way through trodden, dusty paths to the recruitment camp ahead of them, a military stronghold spanning across acres of land, a leftover from the previous Rouran war. Hua Mulan, who’s disguised as a man, is merely one out of thousands of young men heading towards the same destination. Her current appearance is the very opposite of what is expected of a beautiful, young woman: ragged, worn down and scruffy-looking.
A long, singular queue is formed as the new recruits line up to register their names, so Mulan takes the chance to observe her surroundings: the guard towers, the wide gates, the tall barricade made of stone, the rows of white tents, the troops stationed all over the area, and the flags of the Imperial Army dancing in the air. Doing this is necessary if she wants to survive in this unfamiliar land.
A young man introduces himself as Lin Xiaoshuai to the person waiting in line in front of him, hoping to make a friend on his first day in the army. Said person, Qian Po, introduces himself as well, and unexpectedly shares that he was raised in a monastery, which explains his bald head. Xiaoshuai is slightly dazed at the reveal, given he hadn’t ask the other man about it or even notice his bald head in the first place, but he quickly recovers from it and, in order to return Qian Po’s regard for him, shares that his given name actually means ‘Little Handsome’.
In the meantime, a stalk of wild grass is held out of Xiaoshuai’s notice and playing close to his ear. Xiaoshuai swats it away, but as he continues to explain to Qian Po that his parents named him in such a way because he’s the most handsome person in his village, the tingling thing makes a comeback. When Xiaoshuai swats it away with greater force for the second time, he accidentally hits the person right behind him in the face. “Ow!” Zhang Ling exclaims, holding a hand over his cheek, while the culprit, Wang Yao, is laughing hard, gratified at pulling a prank on not one, but two people, killing two birds with one stone.
Obviously upset, Xiaoshuai tells Wang Yao to stop whatever he’s doing, but Wang Yao begins to loudly make fun of his given name, insisting that they should be calling him ‘Little Cricket’ instead of ‘Little Handsome’.**
Wang Yao makes Xiaoshuai go to the back of the line, claiming that he’s blocking their friend in the line, referring to Qian Po. Xiaoshuai is not one who complies easily though, protesting that he’s starving from his journey and doesn’t like waiting any longer, which clearly sets off Wang Yao.
Qian Po tries to defuse the situation, telling Wang Yao he doesn’t mind switching places with Xiaoshuai if he’s so concerned about not having his friends staying close to him, but it seems nothing could be done to stop Wang Yao at this moment.
Just before Wang Yao could do anything to Lin Xiaoshuai, someone grabs his arm in a vice grip from behind. Wang Yao turns his head around, finding the person stopping him to be Mulan. The look she gives him is a serious one, her stare unfaltering even as another man, Yu Longwei, accuses her for cutting his line.
Mulan calmly tells Wang Yao to stop bullying people for their names, but internally she struggles to restrain herself from punching him in the face. The other man deflects Mulan’s accusations, asking how is making fun of your friend’s name be considered bullying, to which Mulan bluntly points out he doesn’t look like Xiaoshuai’s friend.
She pulls Lin Xiaoshuai to her side and suggests the two of them leave the three alone as, in her words, these people who he wants to befriend with are not worth his time. But as they start to back off, Mulan stumbles face-first, almost comically, into the dusty ground below. The men around her start laughing at her, and as much as it could have been accidental, Mulan wants to believe someone has purposefully tripped her.
When someone approaches her to offer a hand, addressing her as ‘little man’, Mulan looks up, scowling, to find a man in blue clothes, his appearance too clean and too tidy for a peasant, and on his face a cheeky smile as if she should feel grateful that he has come to her aid.
Mulan slaps away the offered hand and stands up to draw her father’s sword to the man’s throat, threatening that he’ll ‘taste the tip of my blade’ if she’s insulted again. Totally not a good way to introduce yourself in front of a crowd, Mulan thinks at the back of her mind, but in hindsight, she’s relieved that the laughing has died down, and she wants to keep it that way.
The other man, Chen Honghui, draws his own sword to Mulan’s throat as well, telling her to lower her sword. However, Mulan isn’t willing to back down and the two of them come to a standstill, both waiting on the other to make the first move.
Fortunately, before anything could happen, a man in golden armour steps in, and in a series of swift and efficient martial art movements, disables both Mulan and Honghui, holding both their swords in his hands, the sharp edges of their blades never meeting skin even once throughout.
The older man introduces himself as Dong Jiangjun, their commanding officer, and gives a stern warning that he won’t tolerate fighting in his camp. Honghui immediately responds to the General with much spirit, but it takes Dong Jiangjun a direct address towards Mulan to get a response from her.
When Dong Jiangjun returns their respective swords, he notices the golden characters engraved on Mulan’s sword, wondering for a second why they look familiar to him. He demands Mulan’s name, and her answer is, “Hua Jun, Commander.”
“Is this your family’s sword?”
“It belongs to my father, Hua Zhou.”
An indecipherable look crosses Dong Jiangjun’s face, but before Mulan is given a chance to deduce the meaning of it, the General composes himself and orders everyone to fall back in line, walking away.
Honghui proceeds to queue up behind her, his glare of disdain not escaping Mulan. She paid no mind, given he has the right to hold such sentiments towards her, and reasons to herself that she would rather be feared and contemned than be picked on by her peers, determined to not let anyone else discover her secret.
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Night falls on the day Hua Mulan arrives at the army camp. The woman in man’s disguise, while unsurprised, is still dismayed by the sight that greets her once she steps foot into the sleeping tent she’s assigned to: 20 men fooling around with little to no clothes to flaunt on their first day of getting a bath after weeks of travelling, not mentioning the goddamn smell.
Cue Lin Xiaoshuai calling ‘Hua Jun’, approaching her with only his pants on and thanking her for standing up for him back at the queue, on top of clarifying to her that he now doesn’t mind others calling him ‘Cricket’. Mulan asks if there’s anyone who is bothering Xiaoshuai but she gets cut off by Zhang Ling’s loud cry to ‘give it back!’ in the background as Wang Yao snatches something away from his hands. ‘Sorry, Ling-ling’ is all the prankster shouts back.
Xiaoshuai laments to Mulan that they will be sharing the same tent as Wang Yao and his two friends (if they even could be called that way). He sighs that this is already the third time Xiaoshuai has seen Wang Yao pranking Zhang Ling, all within a single day. Judging from Qian Po’s lack of reaction towards such occurrence, it shouldn’t be a stretch to believe that this is normal for the three men. Amid the disarray, Mulan tells Xiaoshuai that if Wang Yao bullies him the next time, she will not hold herself back and kick his butt for real.
Back to the trio, a half-naked Qian Po catches Zhang Ling’s possession at Wang Yao’s beckon, but the cloth wrapped around Qian Po’s lower half accidentally drops. Mulan instinctively averts her eyes from the sight. Xiaoshuai, seeing Mulan’s reaction, turns around and gasps in surprise. Embarrassed, Qian Po apologises and hastily scoops the cloth back up and passes the thing in his hand to Xiaoshuai at the same time. Unsure of what to do with it, Xiaoshuai turns back around and hands it to Mulan.
She deliberately opens only one of her eyes to examine the item in her hand. It’s a wooden name tag that is issued to every soldier enlisted in the army. The front is written with the soldier’s name (Zhang Ling), their assigned regiment and their home county and village. Mulan flips it around and immediately understands why Wang Yao is so interested in his friend’s name tag: there’s an ink painting of a woman on the back.
Before she could savour the little art piece, Wang Yao is throwing himself right in Mulan’s direction, ferocious determination lightening his eyes. In a split second decision, Mulan throws Zhang Ling’s name tag overhead, pushes Xiaoshuai away with an arm and covers her own chest with her other arm before Wang Yao squashes her with his own weight. What Mulan didn’t account for is the man crushed underneath her, who turns out to be Longwei, the same man whom she had cut the line with previously in order to save Xiaoshuai.
From afar, Mulan could see the wooden name tag boinking against Honghui’s head, who’s halfway taking off his clothes, and she winces at the sight. As Honghui picks the name tag up in curiosity, Mulan locks eyes with Wang Yao who halfheartedly swears, his saliva spraying all over Mulan’s face, before getting up and going after Honghui. A chase quickly ensues in the sleeping tent. Mulan gets up and tries to apologise to Longwei, but he gives her a scorned look and huffs his way out.
The presence of Dong Jiangjun’s second-in-command, Jiang Fuguan, puts the chaos to a halt. Admonishing that they should be in the bathing lakes, panic crosses Mulan’s face as she roughly wipes off Wang Yao’s saliva. She couldn’t help but ask to confirm, “Bathing?”
“Yes, bathing.” Jiang Fuguan continues to scold the soldiers, calling them stinky and ‘crazy dogs still playing around in the mud’. Mulan quickly thinks up an excuse on the fly and interrupts the deputy general, “I have volunteered for night guard duty.”
“How do you know we have night guard duty?” Jiang Fuguan asks with an eyebrow raised.
“Before I came here! Commander… no, our commanding officer had asked us – I mean, asked me.”
It’s a weak explanation (Mulan’s self-deprecating giggle gives it away), but Jiang Fuguan gives Hua Jun a pass nonetheless since she says it was Dong Jiangjun’s request. Being granted the go, Mulan wastes no time in departing the tent, leaving Jiang Fuguan a fervent thanks as she runs off.
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As the new recruits clean themselves up in the bathing lakes, Zhang Ling swears that he will get back to Wang Yao someday, to which the latter teased, “Only after you get your girl, Ling-ling”. The two get into a water fight, where some men could be heard hollering in excitement, some awkwardly watching at the side, while others cannot be bothered in the slightest. Regardless, the sudden flash of lightning and the loud roar of thunder urge the soldiers to quickly bathe, and by the time the first raindrop reaches the ground, they have already returned to their tents.
Cut to Jiang Fuguan entering Dong Jiangjun’s tent, bringing in the day’s report. He notes how the General is still writing this late into the night, his desk piled up with stacks of paperwork on their newly recruited men. Dong Jiangjun thanks his deputy for being considerate, later sighing as he offhandedly mentions about putting off writing to his family back home.
Dong Jiangjun tells Jiang Fuguan to take his leave, but before the latter could leave the tent, the General suddenly remembers that they need volunteers for night guard duty.
“I thought you’d already asked,” Jiang Fuguan answers back.
Not expecting to hear such a response, suspicions fill Dong Jiangjun’s mind, so he could only inquire further, “Who?”
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Standing in attention on one of the guard towers, Mulan doesn’t expect herself to find comfort in the heavy rainstorm, the incessant pattering providing a good distraction from her stressful mind and disorientating shock at… the unfamiliar antics of men. Mulan exhales a huge sigh of relief at last. She scans around one last time before taking a step forward towards where the rain impetuously splatters against her face. She lifts her arms from her sides to make a quick face wash, finally able to clear the grime and perspire plastered all over her.
“When I’m told you had volunteered for night guard duty, I thought you’re thinking of running away.” Dong Jiangjun’s sudden appearance almost gives Mulan a heart attack. She hastily wipes the rainwater off her face with her wet hands (a redundant move) and stands upright, arms firmly back to her sides.
“Yes. Commander. Sorry, Commander.” Mulan lowers her gaze, expecting punishing words from her commanding officer, the fear of being exposed creeping back into her mind, but all she’s returned with is, “I wasn’t expecting to find you here.”
Mulan doesn’t know how to react to it, to the pleasant surprise in Dong Jiangjun’s voice, so she continues standing upright in silence, trying her best to fix a blank expression on her face so as to neither give away her confusion nor offend her superior.
“Hua Jun, am I right?” Dong Jiangjun turns to face the rain, remarking on how seriously Mulan takes herself and her duties even on her first day being a soldier, saying that she has her father’s spirit.
Allowing herself to relax a little, Mulan gingerly replies that her father told her serving in the army is the best honour one man could bring to their family and their homeland. The General laughs at that, and when he sees Mulan’s confusion clearly showing on her face, Dong Jiangjun reveals that he personally knows Hua Zhou and goes on praising him as one of the best warriors the military has ever witnessed in recent history whose accomplishments no one could ever wish to top, not even Dong Jiangjun himself.
“If it weren’t for Hua Zhou saving my life in the heat of battle, I wouldn’t have live to this day.” After saying that sentence, Dong Jiangjun internally lets out a sigh.
Mulan timidly comments that Dong Jiangjun is their commander now in any case, and that he should be proud of how far he’d come. The older man hesitates before he eventually assents, “I’m proud.”
Silence falls between them, but before the moment could stretch out for too long, Dong Jiangjun decides to take his leave, informing Mulan to wait for the next guard to take her shift, and telling her to get some sleep earlier because tomorrow is going to be a busy day. Mulan’s eyes lingers on the General’s leaving trail, her mind ruminating on whether Dong Jiangjun is worth putting her trust in for the foreseeable future.
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Hua Mulan returns from her post to find everyone in her assigned camp snoring away, undisturbed by her entrance. She takes the opportunity to remove her armour and chest-binder as quietly as she can (much to her relief) and lies on her designated cot without making a noise. Before she can close her eyes though, the man sleeping beside her is about to drape an arm over her. Luckily, she blocks it on time with her own forearms and jabs the sleeping figure with an elbow, making him turn his body to face the other side. She also faces away from the man, her arms instinctively curling around her chest.
Mulan’s mind drifts to the night she ran away from home. Already suited in her father’s old armour, bearing his dear sword by her side, one hand clutching onto the conscription scroll, the other contained a pouch filled with enough money to buy a horse on her own, and her hair tied up in a man’s topknot, she spared one last look at her family (her father, her mother, her younger sister) sound asleep before she went off. The three were squeezed together on the parents’ bed, with A-Xiu snuggling between Father and Mother, holding each other as though one of them would vanish into thin air if they weren’t close enough.
The young woman felt like she had both not enough time and too long a time staring at what would be the last image she would remember of her family before leaving them for good, blinking back tears in her eyes when she finally turned away and headed out of the house.
Mulan hates that she’s starting to feel homesick within the first day of arriving at the army camp. And as it had long become routine at night, she begins questioning her own decision-making: how equally filial yet unfilial her decision must have been in Baba’s eyes, all done in the name of her love for her father. That conflicting feeling of knowing full well the risk she had taken while being confused as hell on what she had gotten herself into is all too familiar.
Be that as it may, she curls her arms more tightly around her chest and shuts her eyes, willing herself to fall asleep.