Prologue: Years Later
May my wife find all things going smoothly, may Nianlan enjoy peace, may our daughter be healthy, and may we grow old together. - Chen Jingming
The diary closed softly, its pages carrying the gentle warmth of the years. A slender hand belonging to a young girl carefully returned it to its place, as though she were touching a fragile dream.
Su Nian held her breath and gently shut the locked drawer at the bottom of her father's desk. Today, she had stumbled upon the key and, by chance, glimpsed another side of her father, Chen Jingming, one she had never imagined existed.
In her memories, he was always dressed in a white coat or plain loungewear, carrying the clean scent of disinfectant. His gaze was kind, yet seemed forever separated from others by a professional distance. He devoted most of his attention to medicine and his patients. He was the emotionally steady, concise, rarely expressive "Dr. Chen."
But the words in the diary...
"Perhaps our first meeting was so dazzling that I could see no one else, and it gave the rest of my life a place to belong."
"Su Lan, meeting you is the greatest honor of my life, and you are where my life, Chen Jingming's life, belongs."
The handwriting was clear and strong, unmistakably her father's. Yet the clumsy, unwavering devotion overflowing between the lines had nothing to do with the "Dr. Chen" she knew.
Su Nian's heart was beating fast, and her cheeks warmed slightly at having snooped. But what she felt most was a strange mixture of emotion and sudden understanding. She slipped quietly out of her father's study, those lines echoing again and again in her mind.
So this was how her dad, whose eyes seemed to see nothing but medicine, and whose composure made him seem almost boring, had been when he met Mom.
So love at first sight really could change a person so completely, even someone like her father, who had always been known for his rationality.
Theme: True love does not mind arriving late. At the right time, it lets two mature enough souls recognize that each is the other's missing way home, then spend the rest of their lives turning the passing years into peace.
