Fanghua in Fang Duobing’s perspective is maybe kind of deeply insane because it’s like. What if you were young and carefree and naive and unleashed upon this great big world, but it’s nothing like the home where you grew up coddled and adored, and you end up hungry and lonely so you follow your first friend home. Despite repeat encounters with the side of the road, you grow a tiny all-encompassing crush on him, and you recognise that he returns these affections somewhere soft and quiet in his eyes (of course, this was never in doubt - again, you grew up coddled and adored). You settle into his home like you always belonged there, with the casual assurance of forever. You critique his cooking and you drive his horses and you bicker with him like you’ve been married for decades. And then, somehow, it turns out the man who inspired your entrance into this great big world has been accompanying you through it this whole time - there he is, that tired old fox, the hero of your childhood, and he’s been dying for a while. Now you are not as naive as you once were but you are Fang Xiaobao, whose legacy would’ve been marked by illness if not for a brief glimpse of hope, who knows what you get is what you fight for, who decided on a rooftop forever ago to spend the rest of his life with Li Lianhua. You are going to find a cure for the incurable, you know it in your bones, perhaps deludedly, but - he doesn’t let you. He doesn’t let you. You leave to save him and when you return he isn’t there, he’s gone away, buried himself somewhere deep and hidden for a slow agony. He’s left you his home, his dog and his previous life’s work, like a master to a disciple or a dead spouse to the living. And so you are widowed at twenty-something. And so it turns out you’ll spend almost your entire life mourning one man, all because you followed your first friend in the jianghu home.