At eight in the evening, the food street was bustling with traffic. The rain was still falling, but it couldn't dampen the enthusiasm of Liang City's people for eating out.

Once summer arrived, Liang City became hot and humid. It was unbearable to stay at home; even the air conditioning felt stuffy, so everyone loved to go outside to cool off. The elderly liked to bring out small stools, gather at the alley entrances, wave cattail leaf fans, and enjoy the cross-breeze. Residents of new communities flocked to garden plazas. The several lakes in the city and the riverside were the best places to escape the summer heat.

Young people were more restless, fond of calling up friends to gather at open-air food stalls for barbecue and beer, finding it satisfying only when they were dripping with sweat. Liang City also had a lot of delicious food: local specialties like lake delicacies and game, river fish and wild vegetables, desserts and snacks... Trying them one by one, you couldn't finish them all even in one or two months.

The food street was located by the river. As night fell, the neon lights lit up. The multi-colored signs for "River Fish Restaurant" and "Crayfish" filled the night sky. Shop assistants poured onto the street to attract customers.

Song Ran parked her car. The shower had stopped.

The waiter at the crayfish restaurant was setting up outdoor tables and chairs at the entrance.

After a brief discussion, they decided to sit outside. It had just rained, and the river breeze felt very comfortable.

Song Ran ordered three large basins of spicy crayfish, along with lotus root and pork rib soup, stir-fried lotus root shoots with green peppers, stir-fried dried tofu with crown daisy, stewed fish head with radish, plus a pile of barbecue...

Xiao Qiu interrupted, "Don't order too much, we won't be able to finish it later."

Xiao Dong said with a laugh, "Did you get a bonus from your business trip? You're being so generous."

Song Ran said, "We can get it to go if we can't finish it."

It's quite embarrassing to order too little when treating colleagues to a meal.

Xiao Xia said, "There's no need. This is enough."

"Oh." Song Ran closed the menu. "Then let's order these for now. We can add more later if it's not enough?"

"Alright."

Everyone sat around the table. They communicated a lot during work on weekdays, but rarely gathered privately. At this moment, they stared at each other, smiling foolishly, and the air fell silent for a few seconds.

Xiao Dong brought up a topic: "Liang City has opened up its household registration policy. Housing prices are going to rise again."

Shen Bei touched up her lipstick and said casually, "I've never paid attention to housing prices."

Xiao Chun: "Of course you don't have to. It's better to be a local. You have a house, you can spend your salary however you want, and you have nothing to worry about."

Song Ran shook her head, "Locals can't afford houses either."

Xiao Qiu said, "You don't have to worry. Among our batch of new reporters, you're the most capable. A promotion and a raise are just a matter of time."

Before Song Ran could say anything, Shen Bei tossed her lipstick into her Chanel bag and looked up to ask, "Did you order drinks?"

Song Ran: "Yeah. Two pitchers of watermelon juice."

The crayfish arrived quickly, and everyone put on gloves and dug in.

Xiao Xia, softened by the free meal, praised, "To be honest, Pre-war? A Record of Dongguo is really good. I especially love watching it. Ran Ran, I noticed a long time ago, whether it's the scripts you write or the records you make, they seem quite ordinary, but they always attract people and make them want to watch."

Xiao Qiu agreed, "Right, and you can always see angles that others can't."

Song Ran gave a slight smile in response.

Shen Bei asked, "Song Ran, you studied journalism, right?"

Song Ran shook her head, "No. I studied history."

"Huh?" Everyone was quite surprised. Most of them had majors related to media, and even Shen Bei's was highly relevant to the international news department.

Shen Bei: "Our department even recruits history majors?"

Song Ran: "When I was a student, I liked to write some casual essays and short articles, and I submitted them to a newspaper affiliated with Liang City TV."

"Oh." Everyone looked as if they'd had a sudden realization.

Xiao Chun: "It seems you've loved reading and writing since you were little. No wonder your writing is so good."

Xiao Xia, chewing on crayfish meat, said, "Ran Ran is obviously an artsy type, quiet and reserved, always reading a book when she has free time."

Xiao Dong said, "Song Ran is too introverted. You could be a little more lively."

Song Ran explained, "I'm not introverted..." It's just that most of the time, she didn't have anything she wanted to say.

"Staying in Dongguo for so long, did you ever encounter any danger?" Shen Bei asked. Back then, the leader had also arranged for her to go to the front lines, but she was afraid of the war and didn't dare to go, staying in the country to do situation analysis. Now, seeing all the vivid stories Song Ran had filmed and recorded, she was a bit envious.

She asked, "The situation there is turbulent, pretty chaotic, right?"

"Sometimes I'd run into thieves. Other dangers... there weren't any." Song Ran paused, thinking of that day, that man.

The moment she thought of him, a wave of emotion washed over her.

He wasn't a symbol, but an image. His camouflage uniform, his fingerless combat gloves, his eyes.

But she didn't want to talk about it.

She didn't want to mention a single word about it to anyone.

It was like suddenly finding a very good book or hearing a beautiful song one day, so good that you only want to keep it to yourself and not share it with anyone.

The crayfish was a bit spicy, and beads of sweat formed on the tip of her nose as she ate.

The street was still wet. A few dozen meters away, the river water surged.

The wind had died down for a while, and the air was muggy and humid.

Song Ran glanced into the distance. Lights twinkled on the black surface of the river; they were the lights from passing ships.

Xiao Xia asked Shen Bei, "What were you up to all day yesterday?"

Shen Bei hesitated for a moment, then said, "I went to Jiang City to interview a few soldiers."

Pre-war? A Record of Dongguo was too popular, so Shen Bei took the opportunity to propose to the leader that they add some interviews with the military officers from the evacuation to promote some positive energy. The leader naturally agreed.

Hearing this, Xiao Qiu gently nudged Song Ran's leg under the table.

Song Ran was in the middle of eating crayfish, her mouth surrounded by red oil. She raised her head and looked at Xiao Qiu with her pair of jet-black eyes.

Xiao Qiu: "..."

She didn't know if Song Ran didn't understand, or was pretending not to.

Xiao Qiu decided to ask Shen Bei herself, "Are they the soldiers who participated in the evacuation from Dongguo this time?"

"...Yes. A portion of them were dispatched from the Jiang City Military Region."

Liang City and Jiang City are a four-hour drive apart and are in the same greater military region.

Xiao Qiu asked deliberately, "Why did you suddenly think of interviewing them?"

Shen Bei was very nonchalant, "They happened to be in charge of the evacuation in several cities in central Dongguo. They experienced some minor thrills, which made them quite newsworthy."

"Ah!" Song Ran squeezed a crayfish shell too hard, and the spicy soup inside squirted into her eye, stinging so much she couldn't open it.

Xiao Qiu quickly handed her a napkin. Song Ran wiped it twice, but she still couldn't open her eye. She wanted to ask Shen Bei for details, but her eye hurt too much, so she hurried to the restroom to rinse it.

When she returned to her seat, she happened to hear Shen Bei saying, "...His name is Luo Zhan. He's their political commissar, and he's quite handsome. Ai, men in military uniforms are really handsome. I just love soldiers."

Luo Zhan.

Song Ran froze.

In the local dialect of this region, there's no distinction between posterior and anterior nasal sounds. So, the "zhan" in Luo Zhan would be pronounced "zan" by the locals.

Could he be Ah Zan?

"Ran Ran, what are you spacing out for? Does your eye still hurt?"

"Ah, it's fine now." She came back to her senses and glanced at her watch. It was nine-thirty at night.

The dinner broke up at ten o'clock at night, and it started to rain heavily again. It was almost eleven by the time Song Ran had dropped off her colleagues at their respective homes.

The rain fell harder and harder. Her car was driving on the ring road. She was supposed to turn right at the next interchange, get off the elevated highway, and it wouldn't be long before she reached her home.

The car's headlights shone on a green elevated road sign. The dazzling characters for "Jiang City" pointed straight ahead.

She looked at her watch again. It was exactly eleven o'clock, and the rain was falling even harder.

Driving her little Alto, she went straight through the interchange and disappeared into the vast curtain of rain.

The downpour lashed against the windshield, and the wipers worked hard to clear the curtain of rain. Song Ran stared at the beam of the low headlights in front of her car. The lines of rain were like a thousand threads, and she felt she had never been as clear-headed as she was right now.

She wasn't tired at all during the four-hour drive. On the way, she even felt a strange sense of excitement and exhilaration. There were few vehicles on the highway late at night; only the vast expanse of rain accompanied her.

Along the way, the rain gradually lessened.

When Song Ran arrived at the Jiang City Military Region base, it was three in the morning. The iron gate at the entrance to the base was tightly shut, and several sentries stood guard with rifles.

She parked her car a few hundred meters away, turned off the engine, and curled up in the back seat to sleep.

She woke up when the morning light was faint. At six in the morning, she heard the sound of a bugle call from inside the base. The soldiers were about to begin their morning exercises.

The bugle call was loud and clear, echoing in the early morning sky.

The rain had stopped, and pigeons flew across the sky. There was a pinkish dawn in the east.

The soldier on guard asked her purpose for being there.

Song Ran showed him her press pass and ID card and said, "I'm from the news department of Liang City TV. I'm looking for Luo Zhan, Political Commissar Luo. My colleague, Shen Bei, came to interview him two days ago, but some details in her questions need to be supplemented. So I came over to complete it."

The other party checked her credentials, didn't seem to suspect anything, and said, "Please wait a moment, I'll make a call."

Song Ran felt a little guilty and flustered. She had been a good girl all her life and didn't know how to lie. It was her first time deceiving someone, so naturally, she lacked confidence. The other person didn't say anything, but she herself had blushed beet red.

The soldier said, "You can go in. Political Commissar Luo is in Building 1, Room 0203."

"Thank you."

0203 was a conference room. The decoration was simple, with a dozen or so chairs arranged around a long table. The national flag, the party flag, and the military flag hung on the wall, along with a poster with the words "Strictly Govern the Party, Strictly Govern the Army."

Outside the window, the shouts of "Huo! Huo!" could be heard from the soldiers training on the parade ground.

She gazed out for a moment before suddenly remembering to take out a mirror and fix her hair.

She was a Liang City native, born and raised. She had naturally clear, dark, and bright eyes, and fair, rosy skin. Not yet 23, she looked pretty even without makeup. But she had been working overtime a lot recently, so she had some dark circles under her eyes, and her lips weren't very colorful. If she had known, she would have gone home to grab some lipstick.

Just as she was thinking this, she heard the sound of the door being pushed open behind her.

She instantly put away the mirror and turned around, only to see a tall, handsome man in a military uniform walking in.

Their eyes met. Song Ran's mind buzzed and suddenly went blank. He...

She stared into his eyes.

In that instant, she was stunned.

She had thought she remembered them very clearly, but with nearly a month having passed, she could no longer recall those black eyes.

She slowly raised her hand, covering his face, leaving only his eyes and brows visible.

But...

She wasn't sure.

She didn't know if it was him.

The sharp pain in her heart at this moment was clear, but those eyes had blurred in her memory. She couldn't remember them anymore.