A tear-jerker in a true sense.
I think that original synopsis is misleading in important details, because it describes a situation as if one person followed another, while the true situation was more complicated. So I'll again use my poor skills and try to describe how it was. So at first the general idea.
Synopsis: Lin Shu died in fire. As he spent the past month in torture of mental hospital he went through many emotions: rage, remorse, regret and numbness. He truly believed that Qin Yuchi, his lover, testified against him as an act of hatred. Qin Yuchi deserved to hate him, as Lin Shu thought, because he did many bad things he regretted. But God was not forgiving, he gave him the chance to be reborn before he met Qin Yuchi. The proud and arrogant Lin Shu resigned from the long-desired post at the helm of the Lin family and gave it to his half-brother who craved it so much, so he framed him in his last life. But he still had his wealth, what accumulated in years of work and investing, he felt he escaped Qin Yuchi by not meeting, but at this point nothing seem to matter in his life and he felt into slump and self-doubt, why he was given the chance to be reborn. But maybe God really felt they deserved the second chance.
Note: Psychological counseling in this novel, like other things are quite nonsense, keep that in mind.
This is a great emotional entanglement instead of some story-driven plot. I think plot-wise too little happens in the story itself, but emotional motivation in the end is explained in great detail. What we don't know at first is that despite deep remorse Lin Shu holds deep in his heart, both parties have a hand in how their relationship developed. Basically, it started from the wrong step and spiraled into abyss for the two of them.
I would call this novel more of a psychological journey on the path to healing. It really has little plot tbh.
let's start from beginning and how Lin Shu was reborn. Because he spent a month being tortured and was truly disappointed at the last moment Lin Shu felt quite sick psychologically when he was reborn. He left the Lin family and the fuss that Lin company faced to his half-brother Lin Qinxi. This half-brother liked to stick sticks when they did business concerning the Lin family, because of his status of beloved son born to the "true love". Little is said about their family, so you can infer only from small details and details are really small. Because of his condition, that blatantly resembles depression, Lin Shu excused himself being on vacation, while he didn't care about the Lin family, after all his personal investment paid off more than annual pay from the Lin business, he actually entered a slump situation. His heart was filled with great remorse and regret about things he did in the previous life. Because of their first meeting and how it ended Lin Shu did use the toxic way he was brought up by his father (grab everything you want, no matter how you do it), so he managed to hurt Qin Yuchi badly and basically trapped him with no way out. But Qin Yuchi treated him with col violence too. Many thing Lin Shu did later were under the guise of "doing it for the other person's good", but was it good. It wasn't before he was convicted and later bailed out because his father forged mental illness certificate he realized that the case of Qin Yuchi's sister and also the death of Taozi was blamed on his head and Qin Yuchi might have waited for his revenge hour. Despite deep love he was disappointed. In his new life he knew how toxic his actions were and eventually he realized that they were lovers for a long time, but they knew little about their true selves. Lin Shu thought he will never Yuchi again and then help Taozi to survive and maybe have a chance to save Yuchi's sister and this is part of his remorse, but in general he was in a slump, he didn't want to do anything, he lost the aim in life. This time he and Yuchi still met each other, but Yuchi gave a different feeling and he had no idea what it was.
On the other side Yuchi, who suffered trauma from falling, started to have weird dreams, where he saw a young man, but dreams happened to be true, there is a man named Lin Shu. He tried to get close but always met with a cold shoulder.
Lin Shu did not know how to react, in previous life he was this wanton and arrogant man, but now he was a coward that wanted to hide in his shell, he didn't know how to face Yuchi with all the things he did, he knew he did not deserve. Only later little by little when either he or Yuchi made steps to meet 'accidentally" he wanted to take a step closer when he hid in his shell again when he accidentally learned that Yuchi only had a dream about him, but those dreams did not contain all the sins he comitted.
But what was unexpected is that after a serious accident, Yuchi recovered his memory completely and instead of hate, his emotions were more complicated.
From Yuchi's side they did meet at a party, Yuchi was attracted but they started from the wrong foot. Lin Shu almost cornered him. At first Yuchi did hate Lin Shu, but did not realize that slowly he fell in love, but by this time treateing Lin Shu with cold violence, being constantly silent became a habit, he did not know how to talk. And he continued to dance on Lin Shu's bottom line.
What became a breaking point was the night he was called out. It was his mistake to go in the middle of the night and lie about it. When Lin Shu was convicted it was his mistake to not wait for the bail out, but to trust and transfer Lin Shu from police to mental hospital. Who had known that Lin Gang, Lin Shu's father did the same thing before. While he bribed the doctor to keep Lin Shu safe, instead he was tortured under direction of Lin Qinxi, so Lin Shu's condition became worse and worse, he could not move or speak and was a puppet in others' hands. It was a mistake that Yuchi realized later, that he didn't speak, that he should have said everything abou his feeling, that he should have waited that he shouldn't have trusted others, otherwise Lin Shu would not be dead. And even if it was eventually roven, nothing about Lin Shu and himself could be washed back to innocence. Thus Yuchi decided to end it all falling off the cliff in the car Lin Shu gave him, but instead came to rebirth timeline.
Both of them were sorry for each other, that they made so many wrong choices, but their love was maddening and they couldn't leave each other.
This is where pseudo-science comes in, because both Lin Shu and Yuchi go for treatment and they talk about their previous life experience. They become a pillar of each other on the way to heal themselves. They now try to communicate and correct all the mistakes they have made, all the silence and violence and toxicity.
This is why I say it's mot of emotional journey, because there's basically little plot which concerns the reason why they were framed and how they retaliated in this life, it felt almost too easy.
And it's good that it's short, 60 chapters or so, because it has a lot of tear-jerking moments of deep remorse and being guilty.
Someone in the comments said - how Lin Shu could be depressed and have outbursts - and I say why not? In general Lin Shu lost any desire to live, but still was hanging on, some ties were sill keeping him, but sometimes he jumped from hyper-action to complete slump, tiredness. He did not care and did not see how time passes, things seemed meaningless. There's a lot going on.
Yuchi was no better, because when he thought that Lin Shu will be out he heard news of Lin Shu's death and slowly he pieced together things that allowed him to realize that it was wrong to believe anyone and allow himself to carried away with the stream. Yuchi's situation is also peculiar because he has a control-freak father, theur family was bankrupted a long time ago and survived with the help of Yuchi, but he still acted with face-saving tactics and also did not treat his children as a normal parent would. From his his forbearance was born and this allowed him to continue being silent and allow their situation to deteriorate, although at one point Yuchi really fell in love with Lin Shu and wanted to change things.
Many things in this plot, or more like emotional plot exist just to serve it, so beware. In general it's a pretty sad story with two people going completely mad because of each, but also unable to be without each other.
RATE: 3/5. It's absolutely not bad, with the only difference that such novels give me sadness and headaches. The only thing might be author's approach to mental health, which is partially okay and partially sounds not that good. Good because they started to come out of the shadow of the past life and not good is because their dependence on each other by the end of the book is too strong (meaning that they can't be too far apart from each other and might not survive without each other, which doesn't sound healthy). So it's an okay novel (3=okay) :).
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