It has been some time since I’ve done recaps on a Taiwanese drama, and I really hope this drama won’t be a disappointment! (I felt like TW dramas were in a slump for such a long time – where were all the good old idol dramas of the past??)

You Qian wants An Xi to call him Xia You Qian because he finds Mr Xia to formal but An Xi, being the girl that she is, mistakes his intentions and tells Zhi Lin and Mei Wen that You Qian says everyone can call him You Qian from now on. He tries to stop her, “I’m saying you can -” An Xi coos, “You Qian ah~” and You Qian quickly makes his escape to his room. Why can she disrupt my life like this? When this is over, I must leave. 

Jiang Hai Kuo’s sidekicks discuss the possibility of An Xi and You Qian in an ‘affair’ and Jiang Hai Kuo realises that there may be some truth to the idea that An Xi and You Qian aren’t enemies after all. He wants to back out of the competition but he cannot because he has already sworn in front of the deities that he will turn up.

The sidekicks therefore come up with a plan to make sure that You Qian will not be able to turn up for the competition instead. It amuses me a little with the random comic relief moments as the two sidekicks use walke-talkies even though they are side by side. They try to lure You Qian to a haunted house via a note shot into his window, but it is An Xi who receives the note instead.

When You Qian returns to his room, he finds the green mango slushie which An Xi has left in his room and asks Mei Wen about it. He hears that An Xi has left the hostel without her phone and returns to his room, slightly worried. He notices the scrunched up note on the floor and realises that An Xi has gone ahead to the haunted house.

The point is – why is his house now a haunted house? Before he can dwell upon that, he finds An Xi trapped in a huge net. He quickly rescues An Xi and as An Xi steps out of the net, she grumbles, “If one day, Jiang Hai Kuo gets smashed by a vase while walking on the road, it -” She loses her balance and tumbles backwards into You Qian’s arms.

You Qian finishes her sentence, “It must be done by you.” You Qian leans in, captivated by the moment, but a rumble of thunder breaks the silence.

While waiting for the rain to stop, You Qian decides to explore the ‘haunted house’. An Xi is scared that he will want to invest in this house and tries to stop him with stories – how this house used to be inhabited by a pair of grandfather-grandson who quarrelled non-stop and that one day, they simply disappeared. You Qian feels super insulted, “You knew the people who lived in this house. If you are creating untruths like this, you either hate them a lot or you are just evil-hearted.”

You Qian leaves without a word and the next morning, he drives back to his old house. While An Xi freaks out over his empty room, he stands in front of his house, thinking.

Through flashbacks, we see how An Xi saved You Qian once again from the bullies, and he overheard that An Xi had created this rule – whoever could obtain the Angel’s Tears from this lake would be able to date her. He went through lots of trouble to get the lake’s water, had an accident, but his mind was on the glass bottle the whole time.

He almost died en route to the hospital but even after getting hospitalised, he left to give An Xi the bottle – only to see her smash the bottle into the pavement. He returned back to his house, fainted and was sent back to the hospital. A month later, his grandpa showed him their empty house and he realised that his grandpa had sold the house in order to pay for the surgery because of his injury.

An Xi thinks that You Qian might have gone on to the fields and leaves eagerly with Zhi Lin, but she only finds Jiang Hai Kuo and sidekicks there. You Qian thinks to himself how he has forgotten that he was the one who caused his grandpa to lose his house, and now he wants to help someone else save her hostel.  However, even though his grandpa told him that they should let those who had disappointed them before down, I’m not such a generous and kind-hearted person. 

Jiang Hai Kuo and sidekicks are super happy at You Qian’s absence and start singing Du du du du du~ but You Qian soon turns up and doesn’t even bother to change into farming attire, “Let me warn you, you better act fast or you will lose disastrously.

He gets down to work immediately, leaving a shocked Jiang Hai Kuo who falls flat on his face when he rushes to the fields. He panics and breaks many scallions which don’t count to his total number of plucked scallions. You Qian wins with no sweat. He returns the debt in cheque to Jiang Hai Kuo and gets the land deed. An Xi beams at him, and he smiles his dimpley-smile initially but it disappears.

That’s because he wants to make life difficult for An Xi – he has only promised to get the land deed from Jiang Hai Kuo, he has never promised to return it to An Xi. From now on, her creditor is You Qian.

During dinner, Mei Wen notices that You Qian is weird and cold, but An Xi is just blissfully unaware, “I’m naturally high~” (a pun on the hostel’s name Natural Ocean).

You Qian later overhears An Xi’s conversation with Mei Wen that now she can sleep with no troubles, and think to himself, “Let us see if you really can sleep now that the debt is transferred to my hands.”

I really thought that he was gonna do something mean and evil, but his first step in ‘revenge’ is to request for a change of rooms. He turns down every single room until he comes to An Xi’s room and demands for it. An Xi moves her stuff into his room and gazes at the ceiling optimistically. While she wonders what she could do to show her gratitude towards You Qian, You Qian is looking at the markings on the wall that shows her height progression, “You have so many memories in the past decade, but I have nothing. I’m going to make you regret that you met me again ten years later.”

 

He cannot fall asleep later on, and throws a pillow in frustration. The pillow overturns a basket of something and he realises it contains presents still in their wrapping papers. He is bitter that she keeps others’ presents so tenderly, but throws his away.

In the morning, An Xi accidentally provokes him by asking if he has any needs. To You Qian, exposing your need is a fatal point. You can attack someone any time once you have grasped someone’s weak point.

An Xi is taken aback by his cynicism and he scoffs at how she belittles humanity’s selfishness. On the other hand, An Xi is shocked at how he looks down on humanity’s warmth and she promises to prove that to him.

You Qian continues to make things difficult for An Xi by calling her for help when he is in the next village 10 km away. She cycles all the way there and learns that he needs to change his tire. Halfway through, he sees her wiping her sweat and unconsciously takes out his handkerchief, but stops himself.

An Xi finds out that You Qian actually knows how to change a tyre but doesn’t get angry. She even wonders why it’s so difficult to turn the spanner and says cheerfully that he should have said earlier when he comments stoically, “You are turning the wrong way. Turn it anticlockwise.”

You Qian gets a phone call from someone called Yong Qing and An Xi notices that it’s a girl’s name. She tries to get You Qian to see that love relationships are not transactional and are full of warmth, but You Qian insists that even love is a transaction. The Prince would not have married Cinderella if she wasn’t from an upper class family.

After this heated debate, An Xi finishes up her job and looks at You Qian hopefully. You Qian thinks smugly to himself that this girl is going to ask him for a ride back to the village, but she shocks him by asking for the old tyre.

“What’s wrong with this girl, will she die by asking for a small favour?” An Xi is ignorant to his thoughts and is happily trying to get the tyre onto her bicycle.

She finally gets home and Mei Wen is frustrated that she’s doing so much for You Qian. An Xi replies, “Service is like this. A reasonable request is for training; an unreasonable demand is for honing.” Mei Wei retorts, “That’s for army.” Hahaha.

Mei Wen wonders if An Xi’s possessed from the haunted house and An Xi protests that there’s no ghost in the house – she was the one who created these stories. Unbeknown to her, You Qian happens to overhear this bit of conversation outside the door and wonders unhappily why this girl is spreading such lies about him and his house.

In order to cheer him up, An Xi decides to bring him out for their ‘Special’ Programme – to look at fireflies. “Our fireflies can sing!” *Cues Mei Wen with a guitar, serenading them with what is actually the theme song for this drama.

Zhi Lin tries to chat with him, but he shoots her a disgusted look and keeps quiet. An Xi whispers behind his back (literally), “I told you already that he’s a difficult person.” Zhi Lin persists and asks if he was always this good looking and if girls have always liked him. He turns and stares at An Xi. An Xi looks back at him awkwardly and realises that his cup of beer is empty, “Ohh your cup is empty. You should have said earlier, I can’t read your mind! *proceeds to pour more beer*”

You Qian persists in staring at An Xi, “I was really ugly last time and no one liked me.” An Xi laughs awkwardly and wonders if he wants her to console him. Haha. You Qian requests for Mei Wen to sing more songs, “It would be nice if your volume is loud enough to cover their voices.” HAHA.

Turns out that Mei Wen cannot sing more than three songs in a row or she would start crying  because a man has once broken her heart. An Xi points out, “Isn’t love like this – I like you, but you don’t like me. You like him, but he doesn’t like you.” You Qian looks sad at her words and drowns his sorrows in more beer.

Soon, he finishes the entire bottle of beer and Mei Wen and Zhi Lin return to the hostel to get more beer for him.

An Xi reveals that her father used to lie that fireflies carry gold on their backs, and whenever she’s sad, she would request for her father to bring her to see fireflies. The fireflies finally turn up, and You Qian stares at them in fascination, before launching into a scientific rant on the lifespan of fireflies. An Xi grumbles that he has spoilt the romance associated with fireflies, but he continues murmuring, “They shine, they lay eggs, they die….they shine, they lay eggs, they die…”

Hahaha someone is drunk!

He is suddenly very amazed at the fireflies in Pu Lang Village because they can multiply! One is turning into two, and two are turning into four. Okay, sure sign of craziness. He beams at the skies, “It’s turning into Van Gogh’s painting~” and then tumbles into An Xi’s arms. She brings him back to the bench and asks him to close his eyes, “Trust me.”

You Qian mumbles, “Believe that you are an angel…got injured, lost the house…but even then…you…”

 

“You have not thought of me.” 

-the end-

I’m not super into this drama yet and at this point in time, I usually do not take many screenshots!

I really like this new find because I’ve not watched a Taiwanese drama in ages (the last one would be Aaron’s Fall In Love With Me). I think Jasper Liu’s acting is not bad, or maybe his role is easy to act out, but I’m not really feeling the female lead yet. Although she can cry naturally, which is already a bonus compared to many actresses out there, there’s just something about the way she talks or the way she acts that I don’t really like – it makes it obvious that she’s acting, rather than living as her character. That being said, I think it’s always difficult for a female actress to act out a chirpy, optimistic girl from the start. Even Puff Guo in Just You took many episodes to get to a comfortable stage.

I actually think Jiang Hai Kuo and his sidekicks can be quite funny hahaha but I think we won’t be seeing them much from now on. I hope the plot will introduce something good soon to spice things up! Lots of potential so I’m eager to see them take this drama somewhere. Please don’t let it be a wreck.

<3thoughtsramble