His eyes fell upon the header 'Dear Major Xia', and below 'h.e.l.lo' was written … Xia Jinyuan cringed, this young lady must be doing it on purpose! She even used honorifics!

The letter was simple, an apology at the start, after which she mentioned about the things that had happened recently. Then, she talked about her entire three years of senior middle school spent in the government school studying, with no plans to go to the capital of the province, and ending with a one-liner, "Han Zheng took a few pictures of me, could I get those pictures back?"

There wasn't anything else besides that.

How many words were written on this tiny menu? Xia Jinyuan chuckled, before carefully counting the number of words … 627 words, along with punctuation.

He could only think of 4 words after much thought, 627 words, not bad, indeed.

Then again, the young lady was really calm. He had left the words "wait for him to return" behind so clearly, yet how did she have no reaction to it?

Did she not understand?

No, it can't be. With her intellect, she definitely would have understood. If it wasn't mentioned in the letter, it could only mean that she was either avoiding the topic or thinking that he's joking.

If she was really avoiding the topic, it would still be alright. He could still think of a way to get her to face it.

But if she thought that he was joking … then that was a problem as that would mean that in her heart, his words were completely not trustable.

After carefully looking at it again and memorizing the 627 words in his heart, only then did he gingerly fold the letter, and put it in the pocket close to his heart.

It was a shame that they couldn't communicate with the outside world. If he could, he really would have wanted to send a reply.

Especially because she wrote below the seal, Major Xia, are we pen pals now?

It was as though her gentle voice was just by his ear, causing him to reminisce every second he spent with her.

There was still 8 months till his one year term ended, and the little fox would have already gone to high school when he returned, what a shame! She was still younger by a little, not yet an adult.

Keeping the letter properly, he felt a tinge of warmth in his chest and remained silent for a while. He then turned to Han Zheng who was preparing the bread, "Other than the letter, did she have anything else to say? Also, how did she send you the letter? How do I know the address?"

"It's a long story. My order to transfer came, Brigadier Han disagreed and stalled on it, but a military order was indisputable, how long could he stall it for? As long as I didn't give up, he didn't have any other option. But things couldn't carry on at this rate, so I trained every day, all the way till the Southern Province … and I coincidentally ran into the girl at the Provincial City Great Hall."

Han Zheng had already placed the bread which had turned hard as a rock, and distributed to each comrade a ham sausage, working as he talked about how he met Ye Jian and whatever he said to her.

"That girl of yours, she's really intelligent. The first thing she said was what if she took a liking for me. So I said, ok then, then we can both stay…" Receiving a glance colder than snow, even though Han Zheng couldn't finish what he had to say, he couldn't stop laughing, "That's what she said, and my reaction was … me cringing at her. Besides that, she really didn't say anything."

Not talking to people she wasn't close to, was indeed her character, and thinking about this made Xia Jinyuan start grinning, "She's not close to you, so naturally she wouldn't talk to you seriously. The bread's turning to stone, I'll boil some water to cook some vegetables."

Upon entering the winter season, members of the elite platoon at the base would at most only eat bread, and only occasionally would they start a small fire and put some greens in the water that would never boil, in order for those greens to serve as nutrients for them.