When he was sixteen years old, Shen Nianzhao was tricked into returning to Peiping from Shanghai by an urgent telegram saying that his mother was seriously ill.
The person who picked her up at the dock was not a servant sent by her family, but the man she had been hiding from for three years - the eldest brother next door, Shen Yushen. He took her suitcase, held her wrist, and protected her behind him like he had done countless times before.
But she was no longer the little girl running after him.
The Shen family came to propose marriage, and it was their younger brother Shen Yuan who proposed marriage. Her father was anxious to marry her off to the eldest son of the Cheng family in order to avoid the marriage. Shen Yushen stood between the two families and said calmly: "I'm just here to pick up someone for my family."
Is this really the case?
The person who would be the first to jump in to save her when she fell into an ice cave; the person who put a silver ring into her palm before she left for Shanghai and took it back in panic; the person who sent books to Shanghai every month for three years but never left a word in the package——
Is he really just the neighbor's big brother?
In the late autumn of the 25th year of the Republic of China, the ginkgo trees in Peiping fell to the ground. Shen Nianzhao stood under the old locust tree and looked back, and saw Shen Yushen standing three steps behind her, just like every evening in the past fifteen years.
But this time, he didn't come up smiling like before.
He just looked at her, his eyes as deep as a well.
"Nian Zhao," he said, "you have grown up."
Intention: In turbulent years, only sincerity and waiting can give people a spring-like season all year round.