After waiting in line in the restroom for a while, when Su Jindong came out, Guo Wenjing was nowhere to be seen.

He glanced at his wrist; it was almost time to have his ticket checked.

Thinking that Guo Wenjing had gone to the restroom by herself, she stood there and waited for a while.

The staff member with the loudspeaker in front of them was announcing that it was time to check tickets, but Guo Wenjing still hadn't come out.

Su Jindong walked towards the passage leading to the restroom and waited a short distance away.

After a while, he stopped a woman who came out and asked, "Hello, comrade, my boyfriend went in and hasn't come out yet. Could you call him for me?"

The woman gave him an unpleasant look, but her attitude softened when she saw he was wearing a military uniform.

"There's no one inside. It's the last movie showing, and they're checking tickets now. Who's still inside?"

"Nobody's here? No way, you're not seeing things, are you?"

Su Jindong then started to panic, and disregarding the men's and women's restrooms, he ran outside and started shouting at the top of his lungs.

"Wenjing, Wenjing, are you inside?"

"Wenjing, it's time to check your ticket."

"Wenjing, are you inside?"

Seeing that no one answered, he turned and ran towards the hall.

I walked up to the counter and pulled aside a staff member selling snacks, asking, "Excuse me, sir, did you see where that lady who was standing here just went?"

"Wearing a plaid coat, a red scarf, and yes, holding a bag of popcorn."

The staff member selling snacks looked up at him and recognized him as the soldier who had just bought a lot of snacks.

"Oh, you mean the little girl who came with you, right?"

"He went out with another girl."

She glanced at Zhou Ningyan a couple more times when she walked over.

Military uniforms were the most fashionable clothes at that time, and Zhou Ningyan's outfit really caught her eye.

"Going out with a woman? Where did they go?"

The saleswoman pointed to the door with a gossipy look on her face, her eyes filled with excitement. She had overheard the two women talking earlier; they were fighting over a boyfriend.

"They went outside. The woman you brought seems to have been bullied. When you took her away, she said she didn't want to give you back the hair clip she was wearing."

As soon as the other person finished speaking, Su Jindong ran outside.

"Quiet, quiet~"

He could tell from the saleswoman's words that the person who asked Wenjing to leave was Zhou Ningyan.

He hadn't felt anything before, but now he suddenly panicked. He was afraid that Guo Wenjing would misunderstand, and he was eager to explain things to her.

"Quiet, quiet~"

With a pair of sharp eyes, Su Jindong quickly scanned both sides of the street and shouted twice.

Guo Wenjing is so timid that she doesn't even dare to speak loudly to unfamiliar people.

Zhou Ningyan... Thinking of this, Su Jindong became even more anxious.

Kyoto's winters are cold, and most people don't go out at night, so the streets are deserted, but movie theaters are an exception.

A movie had just finished showing, and some people who were walking slowly were still walking side by side on the road.

"Hello comrade, excuse me, have you seen two female comrades go out? One is wearing a plaid coat, and the other should be wearing a female military uniform."

"No, we just came out too."

“Brother, I’ve seen it,” a man standing in the corner smoking said.

He accompanied his girlfriend's mother to the movies, but couldn't resist his nicotine cravings and left early.

"That girl was wearing a red scarf and holding popcorn, right?"

"Yes, yes, yes."

The man pointed behind him and said, "They went to the back."

"Okay, okay, thank you."

Su Jindong thanked him and ran off quickly.

On the other side, Zhou Ningyan led Guo Wenjing, talking about her sweet moments with Su Jindong as they walked.

"Back then, he often trained with scrapes and abrasions, and I was always the one who treated them. I was very curious why he got injured so easily, and later I found out that he did it so he could see me more often~"

“We would watch the moon on the hillside behind the mountain and row small boats on the lake below the West Street intersection. He would often bring me food, afraid that I would be hungry when I was on night shift, and he would bring me all sorts of snacks.”

"Looking back now, it must have been very difficult for him to get those things."

"He would bend down to tie my shoelaces, and he would hold his coat over me to shield me from the rain. He was soaked to the bone, but he protected me tightly."

At this point, Zhou Ningyan paused and glanced at the hairpin that Guo Wenjing was holding tightly in her hand. "This hairpin was brought back to me from Shanghai by his comrade who was visiting his family."

Guo Wenjing listened to Zhou Ningyan's story in a daze, her mind filled with images of Su Jindong's tender and attentive manner towards Zhou Ningyan.

She took a deep breath and asserted her dominance, "What do you mean by telling me all this? No matter how good things were between you two in the past, he's my boyfriend now. The past is the past. Besides, this isn't the Qing Dynasty anymore; this is the new China. It's about free love. Who can guarantee they'll only date once in their life?"

“I don’t care at all about his past relationships. He’s very good to me now. I like him, and he likes me too. His family, including his grandmother and his father, all like me!”

Guo Wenjing's meaning was clear: so what if you dated him before? He was just someone who didn't even know which way his house was, while she had already entered his home and was already in the public eye.

Hearing Guo Wenjing's words, Zhou Ningyan's eyes flashed with jealousy, but she spoke softly and weakly.

“You don’t understand, things are complicated between him and me.”

“I left him on purpose because I wanted what was best for him. He had a conflict with someone who wanted to use me to harm him, but I refused. I was afraid of implicating him, so I rejected him. I know he was very sad and even risked being given a major demerit by fighting with someone because of it.”

"Now that person is no longer in the army, I finally dare to express the feelings I've been keeping hidden in my heart..."

“I’m sorry, I don’t want to give up on this relationship. I want to clear up the misunderstanding with him. I came out here specifically to find him. Actually, I’ve been watching you all the way here.”

"Although you're his girlfriend now, you're not married yet, so I still have the right to pursue my own happiness. I'm the first girl he's ever liked, and you should understand that feeling of first love..."

"So, can you withdraw voluntarily?"

Zhou Ningyan deliberately said things to provoke Guo Wenjing. Of course, her real purpose was to make this well-behaved and innocent girl in front of her feel upset and break down, preferably to cover her face and run away crying.

This way, Su Chang'an, hiding in the shadows, could make his move while also clearing himself of any wrongdoing.