*
Years later, while investigating an unsolved case, Xue Yan sees Yu Zhoubai again.
In high school, Yu Zhoubai was a brash, carefree golden boy, while she was quiet and withdrawn. They were like summer and winter, so different that their paths could hardly cross.
When they meet again, Xue Yan has become a decisive industry professional. Yu Zhoubai is silent and gloomy, thin and pale. When he sees her, he lowers his eyes without a word.
At his home, she finds several old diagnoses of mental illness.
Their eyes meet, and Xue Yan remembers an evening in her second year of high school.
Her stepfather had thrown her out of the house after beating her. Sitting alone on a street corner, she cried, and Yu Zhoubai happened to pass by and buy her some pain-relief ointment.
His comfort was awkward and clumsy. After that, he said nothing more, quietly sitting with her all night and shielding her from the bitter midnight wind.
No one knew that from that moment on, Yu Zhoubai became her secret.
*
Near the end of their final year of high school, Yu Zhoubai disappeared without a trace.
Only later did Xue Yan learn that he had been caught up in a brutal kidnapping and murder case, held captive and tortured for days.
After they reunite, Xue Yan happens upon a yearbook Yu Zhoubai wrote in, on his bookshelf.
On the page he meant to give her, he had carefully written, stroke by stroke:
[May the future be a future with you.]
Sadly, Yu Zhoubai never got to give it to her.
[Reading Guide]
1. The male lead has PTSD. They have mutual crushes and heal each other.
2. The main focus is the romance, with a touch of mystery.
Theme: Live on in the face of death.
