listen,

i'm not particularly picky when it comes to romance, especially not shoujo ai, so me having enough interest to complete this was a no-brainer. really, you could give me the most boring shoujo ai manga on earth and i'd still give it a high rating.

that aside, though, it fell off at some parts, and i didn't particularly like some tropes and aspects of it. i found some characters to be quite...creepy, in a way? (perhaps i'm overthinking this, but i found cui xin's interest in qi lin and cang shu's relationship quite odd) and some parts were just flat-out unnecessary. (side note: it may have just been the translation, i can't speak chinese fluently enough so i can't really confirm, but i found some of the language used to be quite....eh)

i actually started reading this quite a long time ago but ended up dropping it for reasons that i couldn't remember, but now that i've picked it up again and read it until the end, i think i kind of remember why i didn't go through with it then.

but i'll put these complaints aside and praise it now.

i actually liked how it approached character flaws and trauma. cang shu, for example, is someone i can say i somewhat relate to. that fear of failure is something that i strongly feel myself, and to see a character have that same fear and experience it almost exactly the same way as i do was something that made me feel quite satisfied. it's a small thing, i know, but seeing pieces of myself in characters in media i consume is something i find quite nice.

also, i liked how cui xin's whole thing with his gender was dealt with. the whole arc surrounding him and his identity as kyoko-chan was honestly one of my favorite parts. that fear he felt as the issue regarding his persona and his true identity began to spread, and that pain he felt as the hate comments started coming in was something that really hit me. the frustration he felt as people began to spread misinformation and misconceptions about what happened was played out so well that i got mad, too.

i think my favorite part of the arc was when a fan messaged him and told him about his story - about how he, like cui xin, liked wearing skirts and dresses and presenting feminine, and was ridiculed and shamed for it. what happens after was somewhat of a tearjerker for me, because cui xin's words kind of struck a cord. i saw a part of myself in that fan; i felt something similar. so sure, maybe what cui xin said was quite frankly bare minimum at best, but bare minimum doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. i felt seen, and i liked that.

final verdict: would recommend if you aren't particularly nitpicky about what language and tropes are used, but if you are, then i wouldn't really say it's a must-read. it's a pretty cute read, though, so i'd say just give it a try and simply drop it if you think it doesn't suit your taste.