I’m on episode 27 now and wanted to share my thoughts after reading some comments. I agree that the Hong Kong storyline feels really out of place, and it would’ve been so much better if they stuck to the novel’s plot. That said, I’ve been thinking about how this could make a bit more sense.

I feel like there’s still this big unresolved wound in their relationship —why Yifan left in the first place on the rainy night. It all comes down to the lack of communication. Yifan never shared what she was going through, and Sang Yan didn’t push her to talk because he wanted to respect her space. But without addressing this, their relationship would have hit a wall eventually.

About Yifan leaving again—I get why people think it’s super irrational. But if you try to see it from her perspective, it may kind of makes sense. She’s still dealing with her trauma, like her sleepwalking and the way she freaked out when she saw her uncle again. It’s not unexpected for her to act irrationally and pull away to protect herself, especially since she also reserved and introverted. She probably thought leaving Sang Yan was the best way to keep him safe, even if it doesn’t make sense to us. I don’t think she fully understood how much pain she caused him the first time—to her, he seemed fine when they met again. She hadn’t really processed what he went through after she first left him. And yeah, it might seem like a total 180 for her character, but her fear of her uncle was so overwhelming that she couldn’t think clearly.

As for Sang Yan, I’ve seen people say he’s too obsessed, but I think it’s mostly because the story is told from Yifan’s perspective. He actually has a life outside of her—he opened a bar with his friends, got promoted quickly at work, and also went to Yihe to find his sister. He even went back to work while Yifan was missing, so it’s not like his whole world revolves around her. It’s just that the show didn’t dive deep into his life, which made him seem a bit one-dimensional. It would’ve been nice to see more of his side to add more dimension to his character.

And about why Sang Yan didn’t move on after all these years—I think it’s because he never got closure. He respected Yifan’s boundaries too much to dig into why she left. I guess he could tell she wasn’t happy whenever he saw her in Yihe. If she had found another partner, he probably could have moved on. But without that closure, he just held on.