EPISODE 31
So we finally get a scene where XQ has to resuscitate SY. I guess after all the times he saved her, she had to have at least one time to be the one to electrocute him ‘back to life’ LOL.

I felt that the editing was a bit strange.
We get a scene of XQ provoking/distracting the man and his mother who threatened to jump off the hospital roof, while the firemen were inching their way over to stop them from jumping. They get stopped from jumping because XQ provoked the man so much that he wanted to kill her LOL.

We never get to see the OTP talk to each other about this particular suicide prevention.

The next scene is a bromance scene of SY and Jiang Yu. But already there are hints here of family wanting the firefighters to have a job transfer to a safer position. JY’s family wants him to leave the frontline.

Then that night, which looks to be the same night of the attempted suicides, XQ looks troubled. She’s having fears for SY’s life, but she mentions an explosion which happened in the previous episode to Jiang Yu. The scene did not seem to connect well with the attempted suicide scene.

Her nightmare too is of an explosion in which SY dies.

Her worst fears are almost fulfilled when gas poisoning nearly kills SY. So she’s the next family member to want a firefighter to transfer away from the frontline.

@GB regarding the strange editing, I would like to share how all of this went down in the novel as a point of comparison.

The factory fire and explosions:
This scene occurs much later in the novel. The entire scene is much more everything in the novel, because the factory owner was making illegal fireworks. People were trapped, there were lots of explosions, it took most of the day to get the fire under control, etc. Also, XQ has the nightmare of SY dying in an explosion before this, and is convinced the dream is coming true and that SY won’t survive.

The man and his mom threatening to jump:
There are several differences, but the main one is that after jumping down from the ledge, the man fights the firefighters who try to grab him and ends up kicking one hard enough to knock him over the edge of the building. Song Yan grabs the rope and the momentum pulls him hard and fast to the edge before others grab the rope and stop both of them from falling. XQ is petrified by his near-death and that’s when she starts to really be afraid and worry about him working such a dangerous job. And that night is when she has the nightmare about SY dying in an explosion.

So the drama switched the order of these scenes and made quite a few changes. I have no issue with the changes; in fact, it makes more sense for XQ to have the nightmare after the fire/explosions than before it.

One other thing these eps have left out is that in both scenes, XQ has every intention of following SY if he dies. The novel is very clear about her state of mind regarding this. I’m definitely okay with the drama leaving out this aspect.

I hope no one minds that I share things from the novel. I’m not trying to say one is better than the other, I just find it interesting to compare the drama to the novel.

@Stacy, thanks a lot. I appreciate knowing the flow of the story from the novel side and seeing if it makes sense when adapted.

The order of when which explosion took place is getting foggy in my mind until I rewatch. I thought that XQ did not know of any other explosion than the one that hurt Suo Jun. Did she know that Jiang Yu was also blasted out of the building and could have died? Since SY was not hurt, and since we were shown other non-explosion related scenes in between … I didn’t understand why she should have the nightmares when she did.

The almost suicide man who knocks the firefighter off the building sounds so much more dramatic in the novel!! I’m surprised they didn’t put this scene into the drama. It turned out pretty mild with XQ practically making the suicide man come to attack her so that he got off the ledge. Yes, and it was because she was the one being attacked by him that I didn’t understand why she should have a nightmare of SY dying. It should have been a nightmare of her being killed.

Oh… so novel makes XQ rather an obsessive sort of person who would kill herself if SY died? Yes, it’s better that it does not get portrayed. Impressionable people might thing it’s the thing to follow!!!

Oh dear XQ’s parents. Murder-suicide!!! It’s strange that XQ’s adoptive mother did not consider her parents bad people and therefore that XQ would also be bad. After all she considers SY’s parents bad people and that nothing good can be expected from SY.

@Stacy, did the novel say what the reason was for the Meng family and the Song family to be on such bad terms?

@GB If the drama stays true to the novel, there’s a detail that is revealed later that helps explain Mrs. Meng’s attitude towards Song Yan’s family. The part where SY’s father becomes the scapegoat and gets fired is not in the novel. I suspect the drama will tie it to the unrevealed detail.

I love Song Yan and Jiang Yu’s bromance just as much as loved the early eps with SY and Vin Zhang’s character 😀

I will admit though, to having a bit of an issue with JY walking away unscathed from that explosion. The way the scene showed him being blown back and hitting that large metal thing then falling to the ground…he should’ve been sent to the hospital for x-rays at minimum.

I suspect they changed both of the scenes I mentioned for budget reasons. Or maybe they felt that SY had had too many near-death experiences lately LOL.

As for the nightmare, the novel presents it almost as if she was having a premonition instead of a stress-induced response. In the drama, I assumed she did hear about the explosion and JY, which triggered the nightmare.

The airing schedule on MDL shows 2 eps/day Mon-Thurs of next week.

@Stacy, I see that all the remaining raw episodes have dropped.

The timing of the Chinese subs are not all working well yet. I can figure out broadly what’s happening from the show without English subs.

Minor SPOILERS

Minor SPOILERS

EPISODE 33 is fraught with emotion.
Should we be surprised that YC too is emboldened to speak up?
I guessed that someone or other was going to get badly hurt… it was a matter of when and whom.
I shed tears. 😢😔🥺

@Stacy, I’m thinking it was more around Ep 37 that XQ finds out more. I was skip watching, and trying out an auto translate app on my phone with the Chinese subs LOL.

@Stacy, it’s always good to know when the adaptation wanders from the source.

I watched Ep 33 raw but only skip watched it… then I watched it subbed.

@Good Twin, yes, I wanted to ask that question too.

I thought, from an earlier post of Stacy’s, that there was the case of the illegal fireworks fire, but I had the impression that it took place some time earlier and triggered nightmares in XQ. The order of the events seem to me to cocked up LOL. Editing might have been told to rearrange the scenes.

I was maliciously pleased that Yan Chen told Mother that he wished he was not her child LOL. What a slap in the face on Lunar New Year!

@GT @GB Neither one was in the novel. It looks to me like the screenwriter took all of the fire scenes in the novel and took bits and pieces here and there and created all new scenes. Which is fine, as long as it flows and keeps the story moving.

From what I can tell, it looks like the fireworks/explosion arc is pulling details from a bar fire scene in the novel. Common points: sub-standard building materials, fire safety protocols not met, a firefighter dies (in the novel it’s one from another station, not one of SY’s men), and SY takes a stand. But in the novel it’s against higher-ups who accepted bribes to overlook failed fire inspections, it had nothing to do with the Meng family.

@GB
(replying to the 22nd July post)

XQ came across as person who’s been living a submerged life, barely surviving, on whatever little oxygen she can pull in .. and all the while she’s trying to swim upwards towards the light .. towards the air .. so she can stick her nose out and breathe, and one day maybe live on land under the sunlight.

SY is her clean, fresh, abundant air, given the toxic home she grew up in he must have exploded on her senses like a shower of dopamine.. and she’s an introvert not given to friendships either, a loner.

She has felt alive ever since she entered his space .. Thus any scenario of his death looms like a lid shutting and cutting off the air, she visualizes a metaphorical death were he to be gone ..

That ‘XQ jumping from the window’ example SY gives YM and XQ crying out “he’s my life” at the earthquake site, underlines her state of mind .. the state of mind she is struggling in and fighting to be free of.

I found it understandable where that fragility of hers came from. SY gets it too. Most of the show where they’ve come together shows him doing “healing” things to her, looking after her like she were a child, parenting her almost, feeding, cleaning, wiping, caressing, blowdrying, tucking into bed, making porridge for her.

YES .. most romance dramas have this .. but of note here is .. XQ is receiving the “healing” always .. like a child would.

How and why does SY do the “healing / caring”? His own practice and experience of it from “parenting his father and his mother too” .. His empathy grew and got exercised while growing up.

Except when she is being a doctor and treating him medically, she doesn’t really do any caregiving actions.

Does she?

This I felt was worked beautifully into the meshing of their romance and nature of relationship.

One hopes one day the trapped child inside her will catch up with the adult her. Professionally she is an adult though.