Top Soldier Pursued by a Beauty

The two arrived on the hotel balcony.

Ding Lan walked to the railing and gazed down at the bustling city below, her face etched with melancholy.

Frowning, Zhao Dong came to stand beside her. He didn't say a word, just silently lit a cigarette. The smoke vanished into the wind, and Zhao Dong remained silent.

Ding Lan looked into the distance, her long, straight hair fluttering in the wind and revealing her beautiful profile.

Indeed, Ding Lan was beautiful. She had been a renowned beauty back in school, with countless admirers.

Even Zhao Dong himself didn't know how he had ended up with Ding Lan. He only remembered that they didn't talk much at the time, yet they saw everything in each other's eyes. Then one evening, Ding Lan had stopped him.

"Zhao Dong, want to date?" she had asked.

Zhao Dong was taken aback for a moment, but he nodded. And just like that, they were officially in a relationship.

As memories of their early days surfaced, a trace of melancholy appeared in Zhao Dong's eyes.

How could the innocent, pure, naive, kind, playful, and adorable woman from his school days have become so materialistic?

Perhaps society really is a great dye vat. The purer a woman is, the more easily she is stained when she steps into it.

Zhao Dong silently watched Ding Lan's back. She was wearing a beige long dress with a small white jacket and high heels. Her long hair cascaded to her waist. She stared into the distance with her hands in her pockets, her silhouette exuding a cool elegance in the wind.

Ding Lan's profile was beautiful, with a delicate chin, skin as white as snow, and beneath her long eyelashes were those eyes as clear as autumn water.

Zhao Dong had once loved Ding Lan's eyes. They were like a mountain spring, limpid and clear. They were also like a patch of moonlight on a desolate plain on a winter's night—cool, quiet, lonely, and melancholic...

Eventually, Ding Lan brushed aside the hair the wind had mussed and looked at Zhao Dong. Her voice was gentle as she asked, "Did you drink too much today?"

Zhao Dong replied coolly, "That much alcohol is nothing to me. So, why did you ask me to come up here?"

A complex emotion flashed across Ding Lan's brow. After a moment, she asked faintly, "Are you with Ji Xueyao now?"

Zhao Dong raised an eyebrow and glanced at her. "That's none of your business, is it?"

Ding Lan's hand clenched into a fist. The sting of her nails digging into her palm helped her calm down. She said slowly, "You're right, it's not my business. But surely there's no problem with me asking as a friend?"

Zhao Dong exhaled a ring of smoke and squinted. "There's no problem with you asking. But whether or not I answer is my business. And I don't want to."

Ding Lan's face paled slightly. She turned her head to look at Zhao Dong, her autumn-water eyes filled with an emotion he couldn't decipher.

Finally, biting her pale lip, she said with a tremor in her voice, "Zhao Dong, you've changed."

"It's you who's changed."

"I never changed."

Zhao Dong let out a laugh dripping with sarcasm. He didn't say anything, just shook his head.

Ding Lan gave a wretched smile, hearing the mockery in his laughter. She turned her head away, not wanting him to see her red-rimmed eyes.

"Zhao Dong... am I really that kind of woman in your eyes? A materialistic snob who despises the poor and fawns over the rich?"

Zhao Dong continued smoking in silence.

Ding Lan gave a self-deprecating laugh. "I know you think of me that way, but I want to tell you... if I were really that kind of woman, I never would have gotten together with you. I wouldn't have spent three whole years in a relationship with you, giving you my youth, my body... my everything. You should know how many people I rejected back in school, and there was no shortage of rich, handsome men and trust fund kids from East Sea among them."

Zhao Dong nodded. "Yes... but that was all in the past, Ding Lan. You're different now. The woman you were back then held a place in my heart that no one could ever match—not even the woman you are today. You have changed. This materialistic world has molded you into someone I find strange... and pathetic."

Ding Lan shook her head and said softly, "No... you're wrong. I, Ding Lan, am still the same woman I've always been. The one who's changed is you."

"You keep saying that I've changed. Tell me, how?"

"Then how have I changed?"

Zhao Dong smiled faintly. "The moment you told me you wanted to break up, my feelings for you died. You kept saying over the phone that you couldn't see a future, couldn't see any hope. Have you forgotten?"

Ding Lan's voice trembled, her lips turning a bloodless white. "Zhao Dong, I admit I said that, but no one knew what I was going through, what I was experiencing! Even you didn't know what had happened to me back then!"

Zhao Dong furrowed his brow. "What happened to you back then?"

Ding Lan stared blankly at Zhao Dong. In the next instant, tears began to fall silently. She wiped them away and said softly, "What's the point of talking about it now? Zhao Dong, I regret it..."

"What do you regret?"

"I regret impulsively breaking up with you..."

Ding Lan's voice grew choked, and she said hoarsely, "After I told you we were through, I tried calling you again, but you never picked up. You never gave me another chance... Do you know? That night, after breaking up with you, I wandered through East Sea like a madwoman, revisiting every single place we'd ever been... Zhao Dong, I fantasized countless times that you would come looking for me, that you wouldn't just let me leave. But I was wrong. You just let me go. We... we just ended. Like that."

Zhao Dong took a deep drag from his cigarette, the smoke obscuring his eyes. After a long moment, he said in a low voice, "The way I see it, the moment you broke up with me, you were already prepared to leave. I figured you must have thought your life would be better without me, so of course, I wasn't going to hold you back."

Bringing up the past, even after a year, made his heart ache. Even now, he vividly remembered the feeling of Ding Lan breaking up with him over the phone. In that instant, his heart felt like it had been torn to shreds.

The woman he thought would never leave, the woman he had been convinced was deeply in love with him, had told him she wanted to break up. In that single moment, she had decided to leave him...

Zhao Dong slowly tilted his head back and took a deep breath. That night, he had smoked two whole packs of cigarettes and hadn't slept a wink.

Who could possibly understand how he felt?

Zhao Dong's hoarse voice cut through the silence. "Ding Lan, let's not talk about the past. Once a mirror is broken, it can never be made whole again. Besides, you have Zhang Shaowen now."

Ding Lan clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from sobbing, tears streaming from her eyes and slipping through her fingers.

Zhao Dong glanced at her and sighed softly. "Alright, you should go back. Don't let people get the wrong idea."

Ding Lan's shoulders trembled as she cried. She leaned against the railing, covering her face and letting tears stream down her beautiful cheeks.

Finally, she opened her swollen, red eyes. Looking at Zhao Dong, her face streaked with tears, she said, word by word, "Zhao Dong, I told you, my parents and the Zhang family's parents forced me to be with Zhang Shaowen! I had no choice!"

Zhao Dong shook his head. "But you yourself wavered."

Ding Lan gave a bitter smile. "I only wavered because of your heartlessness! I once naively thought I was important to you. If you really cared about me, you would have noticed something was wrong with my voice on that call. But you didn't even ask. Even after we broke up, you never asked me for an explanation! Zhao Dong, I hate you!"

A sudden hatred flared in Ding Lan's eyes, and the sight of it made Zhao Dong's heart shudder.

"You're always saying I've changed, aren't you? Fine! Today, I'll prove to you that I, Ding Lan, haven't changed! I have never changed! Zhao Dong, you don't understand me, and you don't know me at all! I've always been the same Ding Lan. You're the one who changed... I've never liked Zhang Shaowen. The one in my heart... has always been you!"

Tears streamed down Ding Lan's face like rain. Her sobs, carried on the wind, pierced Zhao Dong's heart.

Zhao Dong said hoarsely, "Ding Lan, look to the future, alright? We're really over."

"I want to look forward... but how am I supposed to forget you, Zhao Dong...? I'm begging you, please just tell me... tell me how I can forget you!"

Ding Lan's tears fell like raindrops onto the ground. Zhao Dong remained silent, letting out a soft sigh.

Just then, a look of bleak determination crossed Ding Lan's face.

"You're always doubting whether I've changed, right? Well, now I'll show you that I haven't!"

As she spoke, a strange expression appeared on her face, and Zhao Dong instinctively felt something was terribly wrong.

Before he could react, Ding Lan had climbed onto the railing and turned as if to leap from the rooftop.

This was the rooftop of a hotel, a hundred meters high—falling from here would mean being smashed to pieces.

"Ding Lan, have you lost your mind?!"

Zhao Dong's eyes widened in horror, his soul threatening to leave his body. Without a second thought, he lunged forward like a madman.

"Zhao Dong, is this the only way to make you know what's in my heart?"

With a final, forlorn smile, Ding Lan jumped from the rooftop.

"NO!!!"