>>338274
I woke up too early and can't go back to sleep, so I'm going to summarize some events of the book that I left out of my synopsis that I think are actually fairly important. I'll try to focus on characters and events that are likely to appear or be referenced by the Canto.
Near the beginning of the story, Baoyu has a dream about meeting the fairy Disenchantment in the Land of Illusion. Apparently his ancestors want her to "initiate him in the pleasures of the flesh ... in such a way as to shock the silliness out of him." She shows Baoyu records of various notable women in the story and has some songs performed. These are all a bunch of poems that describe future events of the story, but do so using metaphors that are difficult for a brainlet for me to understand. Some things I can tell they're foreshadowing is Baoyu marrying Baochai despite being in love with Daiyu, the families fall from wealth, and tragic ending for many of the characters.
After all this, Disenchantment give Baoyu a wife in his dream to learn how sex works and just do it there in the dream. When he wakes up later, his maid Hua Xiren (named Aroma in the Hawkes translation that I'm reading) notices that he had a wet dream, so she finds an opportunity to go alone with him to another room, so he can change into some clean clothes in private. While they're alone, Baoyu decides to try out what he learned in his dream on Aroma, and this kicks of a sexual relationship between the two. They have a really close relationship after this, and Aroma has even been promoted to an unofficial chamber wife of his fairly recently where I'm at in the story.
I also want to go into some more detail about Baoyu's relationship with Daiyu. They grew up together, so they both know each other better than anyone else. Daiyu has an incredibly sensitive personality; she very easily gets offended or depressed. Baoyu frequently says something to upset her, and then she cries, and then he apologizes and comforts her until they go back to normal.
One incident that stands out is when Daiyu was trying to visit Baoyu, but the servants weren't letting her in because they didn't recognize her voice. She assumes Baoyu told them not to let her in, and she gets angry at him. The next day, Baoyu is in the garden, and he starts collecting a bunch of fallen flowers from the ground. (In the past, had thrown the flowers into the stream, but Daiyu told him that the flowers would eventually reach the end of the stream and get dirtied with mud. She preferred to bury the flowers so they could be returned to the Earth instead, so Baoyu also started burying flowers with her.)
Once Baoyu gathers all the flowers, he goes to where he had buried some with Daiyu previously, and he runs into her crying and reciting a poem. This poem is apparently popular in China, and it's what the upcoming battle pass name is referencing. I'm no good at reading or interpreting poetry, so I recommend looking it up and reading it yourself if your at all interested in it. It's essentially about her flower burial ritual, mourning the death of the flowers and the end of spring, and thinking about when she will eventually die. Baoyu is so affected by the poem that he also starts crying. Shortly after, he managed to talk to her and clear up their misunderstanding and make up.
There was a period of time where they were both in love with each other, but they didn't want to express their love until they knew if the other person felt the same way. So they're trying to subtly hint at their own feelings to see how the other responds, but since the other person is also hiding their feelings, all it's doing is making them frustrated that the other person seemingly isn't understanding their feelings.
They do eventually have a moment where they finally understand each other, but they're too overwhelmed with feelings to talk to each other. Daiyu leaves and Aroma comes to talk to Baoyu. Still deep in his thoughts Baoyu doesn't notice Daiyu leaving and finally expresses his love out loud, but to Aroma on accident. Aroma knows that Daiyu had just left and realizes that the confession must have been meant for her, so she now know about the their relationship.
In my previous post, I mentioned that Baochai has a golden locket with an inscription that matches the jade Baoyu was born with. That locket was given by a monk that said she must someday marry someone with "a jade to match the gold." Baochai's mother has explained this to Baoyu's mother in the past, so it's the clear they're eventually going to have the two get married once they grow older.
There was one night where Baochai went to visit Baoyu, but he was already asleep. Aroma leaves the room temporarily, so she's alone with a sleeping Baoyu. In his sleep, he states that he doesn't believe in a marriage between gold in jade, and instead wants a marriage of a stone and flower. She's shocked to hear it, but hasn't said anything about it to anyone so far.
I also want to briefly describe Wang Xifeng, because she's a major character I haven't really mentioned so far. She married into the family and quickly became popular in the household for being intelligent and charismatic. She's also notably greedy; the reason Zhao tried killing her with that curse alongside Baoyu was that Xifeng was trying to direct as much of the family's wealth as she could towards herself.
I'm going to go back home sometime today, and then I'll finally have plenty of reading time. I'll get through of much of volume three as I can before the update.