We Once Made a Promise

We Once Made a Promise

He thought fifteen years would be enough to forget someone.

But that person had never let go of that evening when they were seventeen, not for a single day in fifteen years.

The first assignment Shen Yanqiu received after returning to the country was to shoot a cover for Lu Shiyan, the youngest leader in the financial world.

The elevator doors opened. He raised his camera. In the viewfinder, that face overlapped with the boy from the rooftop fifteen years ago. The scar on his brow was still there, and so was the way he looked at him.

He pretended not to remember.

Lu Shiyan pretended not to remember either.

Until he saw a faded old photo frame on Lu Shiyan's desk, holding a picture of two boys together at the school gate on their high school graduation day.

Until he noticed the faded red cord around his wrist, and saw that Lu Shiyan had one too.

Until he returned to the ginkgo tree at their old school and dug up the tin box they had buried fifteen years ago. Inside lay two yellowed letters.

His letter said: “Lu Shiyan, will you still remember me ten years from now?”

Lu Shiyan's letter said: “I will always remember you.”

On the back, in tiny letters written fifteen years ago, there was one more line:

“You must remember, we once made a promise.”

A domineering CEO who seems calm but is a maniac inside × a photographer who seems carefree but is sensitive inside

· At seventeen, they promised on the school rooftop to “be together forever.”

· At eighteen, he left without a word for New York, and stayed away for fifteen years.

· At thirty-two, they meet again on opposite sides of the camera. One pretends to have forgotten, the other pretends not to care.

· Then the tin box beneath the ginkgo tree is unearthed, and every truth and longing buried by time breaks through the ground.

“Seventeen-year-old Lu Shiyan meant what he said, and thirty-two-year-old Lu Shiyan still means it.”

After you left, I donated a library to our old school and named it “Qiuyan.”

I put your name and mine together. The wind can't blow them away, the rain can't wash them off, and no one can separate them.

Lu Shiyan

Reader's Guide:

1. Rekindled love | Reunion after a long separation | Bittersweet romance | Happy ending

2. Dual timelines: high school and the modern city, weaving together school memories and their reunion as adults

3. Both angst and sweetness. A little bittersweet at first, healing later, with a happy ending.

4. Every promise will be kept, and every wait will have an end.

Theme: Staying true to your convictions