That same night, they wake up with the same sensations – the feelings young girls get when they have their first periods. Both are called Mei-li, and come from two different worlds. One is from a middle-class family who live in a Taipei high-rise. She watches silently as her siblings engage in their material pursuits and their long-suffering parents live out their rocky marriage. Mother has a lifetime of woes to share with anyone willing to lend an ear. Father, who used to have his dreams, is now a bitter old man, lying into tantrums when he is not parked in front of the television set. The other Mei-li lives in an old house at the other end of the town. Her parents are simple working folk who don't want their children to experience the hardships they had to endure. The matriarch of the family is Granny, a woman of quiet dignity and forboding visions. She has suffered for most of her life but is unable to enjoy her comfortable old age, haunted as she is by nostalgic memories of her long-dead husband, who in her mind was a romantic gangster… One Mei-li does odd jobs around town, while the other has just dropped out of school, to the pained incomprehension of her father. Fate brings them together as cashiers in the box office of a movie theater…