In the third year of the Jialong reign of the Great Jing, General Shen Yan fought bloodily at Yanmen Pass. But at the very moment blood stained his spearhead, he transmigrated into a modern high school classroom. The glaring fluorescent lights, the unfamiliar math test, and Lin Wan, the classmate who offered him a strawberry candy, became his first ray of light in this strange world.
He couldn't learn to type on a phone or tell red lights from green. Lin Wan was the one who introduced him to his first hamburger, listened as he recited old frontier poems, and helped him catch up on math amid the mountain of exam papers in his final year of high school. She even secretly drew a little clay figurine of a young general on the cover of his notebook. Their feelings flourished in the sweetness of strawberry candy and the ink-scent of monthly exams. He saved three months of pocket money to buy her a silver bracelet, hoping to confess after the college entrance exams, but the sudden heat of the white jade clasp at his waist interrupted him. It was the token of his transmigration, and a sign that he might be pulled back a thousand years into the past.
He began to pull away. First came unanswered messages when they went to universities in different cities; then, when facing Lin Wan, he insisted that they “weren't right for each other.” He buried both his unspoken confession and the secret of his journey through time deep in his heart. The burning pain of the jade clasp gradually faded, but the girl who used to offer him strawberry candy and pick up roasted chestnuts never appeared in his future again.
Years later, Shen Yan became a history teacher. Only when he saw a roasted chestnut stall on a street corner did he understand that some regrets weren't born of a lack of love. He had been holding a thousand-year chasm between them, and even saying “I'll stay with you” had become an impossible dream. This is a tender love that began with strawberry candy and ended with a goodnight never spoken, a youthful romance spanning a thousand years, and a regret written in fate.
