Nan Ke, a high-ranking official in the capital’s political circles, and Wu Yanqing, heir to the wealthy Wu family, were perfectly matched and truly in love. They promised to spend their lives together. Before the wedding, a sudden car accident left them both gravely injured and caused them to lose their memories at the same time, precisely erasing everything about each other. Terrified, their families cut off all contact and kept the accident secret, erasing each other from their lives entirely.
After five years without their memories, Nan Ke married Shen Lingyi, whose family had generations of diplomats, and enjoyed a smooth political career. Wu Yanqing married Zhou Yanzhi, heir to a business family, and built a home and career. They lived respectable, seemingly perfect lives, yet each felt an inexplicable emptiness inside. In late autumn of the fifth year, they caught sight of each other at a political and business summit, and all their memories came crashing back. They remembered each other and saw the wedding rings on each other’s left hands.
How cruel fate was: they had married other people without knowing the truth, then remembered everything only when there was no hope of making things right. They were people who took their responsibilities seriously: they would not elope, cheat, or destroy their families. For decades afterward, whenever their social circles brought them together, storms raged in their eyes while their faces remained perfectly composed. They spent their lives in restraint, repaying the five years that had been stolen from them. After their spouses passed away one by one, they were finally both single again, yet chose never to meet, because they felt they had wronged the departed.
Nan Ke died at eighty-eight, and Wu Yanqing passed away soon after. They never saw each other again. But the wheels of fate kept turning: years later, Nan Ke’s grandson and Wu Yanqing’s granddaughter met and fell in love. At their wedding, held without either elder present, two empty seats stood side by side. A ginkgo leaf was tucked into the bride’s bouquet, but no one knew where it had come from.
They missed each other for their entire lives, yet their bond began anew in the next generation
