Su Xiaoruan is the only daughter of the Su Group, a freshman at C University, and a pampered little princess. On the first day of military training, she realizes that the stern instructor onstage is Huo Yan, the boy next door who left without a word ten years ago.
She tries every trick to tease him, and he makes her run laps with a stony expression. When she sulks and ignores him, he is the one who can’t sit still. She thinks it’s just the thrill of reuniting after so long, but she has no idea that ever since she gave him a piece of candy at the age of ten, this man has been secretly in love with her for a decade.
The old heart-shaped scar on Huo Yan’s wrist came from when he shielded her as she fell from a tree. The anonymous birthday gifts she received every year were bought with his military allowance while he was stationed at the border. For ten years, he wrote “last letters,” each one beginning, “Xiaoruan, if I don’t make it back...”
Then one day, disaster strikes the Su family. Her father is taken away, the company is driven into bankruptcy, and the campus forum is flooded with vicious abuse. The man who has always kept her at arm’s length finally steps in front of her.
Huo Yan isn’t an ordinary instructor. He has returned both to carry out military orders and to keep a promise made ten years ago. The father and son of the Lu family close in at every turn, while foreign forces lie in wait. What they’re fighting over has never been just the Su Group...
It’s a classified algorithm powerful enough to transform the security of the nation’s communications.
He takes off his military ID and places it in her palm. “My life is in here. Keep it safe.”
Amid the ruins, she finds a photograph her father took twenty years ago. On the back, it says: “May the day come when you stand side by side and see the land at peace.”
“Su Xiaoruan, I won’t be your big brother anymore. From today on, I’m your man.”
He will never fail his country, and he will never fail the woman he loves. With ten years of secret devotion, he earns her answer for a lifetime.
