It turns out you only ever passed by my side, while I mistook you for a rainbow falling from the sky.~

The first television drama I ever watched, ya.

And Yang gave me another one. Thank you—and it stars a pair I used to ship so much that I even dreamed of them becoming a couple. No regrets now. Besides, I think I could watch this one for a lifetime.

A slightly untimely review of a television drama today.

To Qiao Jingjing:

I hope this letter finds you well. I finished the almost twenty years of your story with Teacher Yu in three days. The scene I remember most clearly is when you used a broken air purifier as an excuse to get Teacher Yu to your home, then turned back in the backlight wearing your carefully calculated makeup. I really want to see that look again, but I am afraid I would fall in and never come back out, just like Teacher Yu.

When you visited the launch site as a family member, one of the staff said that he had grown up watching your television dramas. At that moment, I suddenly thought without meaning to: from the first time I met you and Teacher Yu until now, I seem to have grown up too. Teacher Yu seems patient with age, but I feel restless about it instead.

Also, I found that I used to prefer watching the two of you shower each other with sweetness. Now, though, I find a different emotion in the two episodes where you are wronged. Sadness seems to move me more deeply than happiness. But it is not my sadness; it is someone else’s sadness, perhaps Teacher Yu’s. As an observer, maybe this is why so many people end up preferring tragedy to comedy. I used to be completely unable to accept anything too painful.

Of course, I still feel that way. I do not want a work to make its ending deliberately heartbreaking merely to force a deep impression on me. I am also happy for you and hope you will keep walking together to the end. Although I nearly laughed when the first confidant, Guan Zai, ranked ahead of you—Teacher Yu called him first to share the good news, and only then called you.

But it is fine. It is fine.

Besides the two main reasons for this drama—you and Teacher Yu, both of whom I have watched since I was young—there is another: The Long Ballad. In that play within a play in the desert, you played Li Changge, right? The third thing I love most is The Long Ballad. I do not understand why that comic attracts me so much, but it has always been first in my heart. It is subtle. The attraction is not only about its plot or character settings; it is comprehensive, just as this drama attracts me.

Why did I suddenly start watching television dramas? I have a roommate who watches them between programming sessions, whatever is most popular that season. But since around college, I have had a prejudice that television dramas are simply a waste of time. I do not know where that prejudice came from, but I have held it for a long time.

But during the holiday, a poster of you and Teacher Yu flickered across the corner of my eye while I was eating, and I clicked in without thinking. Thank you for keeping me company for three days.

Thank you for the nostalgic feeling your performance gave me. And thank you for making me realize that I am actually in a pretty bad place right now.

I have been lying low for too long. Without realizing it.