Five years ago, a 32-character text message brought Cheng Wan’s three-year romance to an end. There was no warning, no explanation. The day before, he had said, “I’ll take you to see the sea this weekend.” The next day, Shen Jibai disappeared. She searched everywhere, then learned from the school forum that he had dropped out and gone home to take over the family business. For five years, Cheng Wan forced herself to accept the simplest and most painful conclusion: he had stopped loving her. A campus romance with a rich young heir, over as soon as graduation came.
What she didn’t know was that his father had pressed the button to send that message. That year, Cheng Wan’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Shen Yuanzhou used the only spot in a life-saving clinical trial to force Shen Jibai to drop out, break up with her, and return to the family. On the day they parted, he smoothed her windblown hair and said only, “I have to go.” Then he wrote the text in his office, trading his departure for a chance to save her mother.
Five years later, they meet again in a conference room at Shen Pharmaceuticals. She’s a director invited to film a corporate documentary; he’s the acting CEO. They shake hands and exchange pleasantries, pretending to be strangers, until, in an empty hallway, he calls her by her full name: “Some things aren’t the way they looked to you.”
The deeper the filming goes, the darker the truth becomes. Behind Shen Pharmaceuticals’ polished image lie falsified clinical trial data and a death disguised as an accident. The victim was Cheng Wan’s father. Shen Jibai is torn between protecting her and protecting his family. Cheng Wan’s mother takes a turn for the worse, while his fiancée, Gu Qingge, unexpectedly changes from rival to ally.
When the whole truth about five years ago finally comes out, Cheng Wan understands that the man she hated for five years shielded her from storms she would never have known about. But knowing the truth is harder than not knowing.
