That year, Xing Ye, a cadet in the People’s Armed Police, fell in love at first sight with medical student Li Zhiqin. After she turned him down three times, he handed her a blank sheet of paper. “Make me a list. I’ll change.” She couldn’t write one, because she couldn’t find anything about him that fell short.
Five years later, he was a special operations company commander, and she was a surgeon. On the military training grounds, he was the instructor and she was a trainee. For thirty days they pretended not to know each other, while tension simmered beneath the surface. Reporting their relationship, meeting the parents, registering their marriage, holding the wedding: she thought happiness had finally arrived.
At her father’s sixtieth birthday banquet, he was taken away in handcuffs. Three days later, he suffered a heart attack in the interrogation room. He never got the chance to see his wife and daughter one last time.
Unable to face Xing Ye, she applied to join Doctors Without Borders and left alone for a foreign country ravaged by war.
He didn’t know she was pregnant. As “Li Guodong’s son-in-law,” he was helping the police close in on their target. To protect her, he cruelly asked for a divorce.
“It’s not that I don’t love you. I just don’t know how to keep loving you.”
He watched the plane take off at the airport and said to himself: Wait for me.
Amid the shelling, she lost the baby. She rested a hand on her empty belly and wept in silence.
After completing his mission, he applied to join a peacekeeping force and flew to the country where she was.
He owed her an explanation. He had to make it back alive.
This is a story about choices and their price. He chose loyalty; she chose to leave. But some heartbeats, once missed, can never be made up for.
When I typed the words "The book is finished", it was already dawn outside the window. This story has been in my mind for two years, and when I write it, I often get teary-eyed as I write it. Xing Ye and Zhi Qin waited a long time for a child, and I waited a long time for them to reconcile. Fortunately, the rain will stop, people will come back, and someone will catch the missed beat of your heart after all. Thank you for accompanying me through this journey. I hope everyone who is waiting can wait until that sentence - "You are here." I hope that everyone who cares about you will be treated gently by time. See you in the next book.