Summer solstice autumn tung blossoms

Aurora has loved Julian since high school, when she shielded him from a car accident and he swore she would be his first and last girlfriend. Seven years later, his devotion has curdled into obsession: he deletes the men from her phone, punishes any glance at another man, and kisses her best friend Chloe in a VIP room just to watch her break. When he pulls her close and calls that kiss her punishment, Aurora finally stops believing his madness is love.

That same night, a letter arrives from the National Classified Biological Research Institute. She has been accepted, and in ten days a special vehicle will take her to a base where her identity will be strictly confidential and she cannot contact anyone outside for five years. It was her lifelong dream, the work her parents left unfinished. Aurora signs her name.

Julian fills her last days with breakfasts, a gemstone necklace and a lavish party, certain he has won her back. At the party she slips into the garden, where a man in a sharp suit greets her as Daniel, her childhood next-door neighbor.