A Special Souvenir Album

What reached Lin Hai before Tony was kidnapped and taken to Afghanistan was the final winter break of the four of them during their four years at the California Institute of Technology.

Just as Lin Hai had foreseen back in high school, as time passed, they grew, and the major events of the future unfolded, long stretches of complete, free time to spend with family and friends or travel together like they had as students were becoming increasingly rare.

In order to have enough time to observe and document Tony's "Afghanistan cave trip" before long, Lin Hai had no choice but to speed up work on his graduation thesis during this winter break.

Although his current level of knowledge and research experience meant that handling a graduation thesis was no difficult task, that did not mean the process would be easy.

Anyone who had written a thesis knew that the truly torturous, patience-draining, practically "cruel" part usually was not the early research and writing. It was the seemingly endless formatting revisions, layout adjustments, citation checks, and all the repeated fiddling required to meet formatting standards afterward.

Lin Hai needed to ensure that there would be no formal issues with his thesis and that it would preferably pass in one go, avoiding repeated revisions that could take up what little time he might have later.

Thus, after taking Gwen home with him for a few days before Chinese New Year and enjoying a brief but warm family reunion, Lin Hai and Gwen said goodbye to their parents and returned to Los Angeles, devoting most of their energy to polishing their theses.

Although Gwen only had a general idea of why Lin Hai was in such a hurry to finish his thesis, she did not satisfy her curiosity by pressing him for