When Sheng Wang talked about cooking with shalots for 40 minutes and then intrusive thoughts about how he could totally kill his friend on a hike...I felt that...I felt that for real
“A friend said to me, “Hey you need to grow a pair. Grow a pair, Bro.” It’s when someone calls you weak, but they associate it with a lack of testicles. Which is weird, because testicles are the most sensitive things in the world. If you suddenly just grew a pair, you’d be a lot more vulnerable. If you want to be tough, you should lose a pair. If you want to be real tough, you should grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.”
I have committed all sorts of crimes (my poor sleep schedule, my poor eyes, my absolutely poor neck) in order to stay up last night and finish Mou Mou (A Certain Someone), the novel behind the series The On1y One, and which is why I will inflict this on everyone else.
Also, fair warning, this is going to be long.
Some disclaimers before I begin:
The series ending left me in shambles and I don't remember being this angry at a series for deliberately choosing to end badly when it could have ended in n number of ways, none of which had to preclude hope completely. And for the record: no, I didn't expect them to get together at the end of the series, because part of the reason why this narrative is so compelling is because Jiang Tian and Shen Wang are not your average couple, but the series chose one of the lowest points in the novel to stick the ending to, and that's just a bad writing choice, second season lead-up or no (which was a bust, anyway). Because a series is a self-contained work and it should make narrative sense and have an ending that matches the overall rhythm and pacing of the episodes. And the episodes were all about hard-won progress made by both Jiang Tian and Sheng Wang to open up gradually, so there is no reason to take back all of that progress just to make sure that everyone watching it is punched in the gut, kicked for good measure and then left to rot in the rain that pours down at the end.
And this is why the novel is like a balm that I sorely needed after sitting through the last episode where I kept one eye on the progress bar and saw the minutes getting whittled down to single digits and still no hope was in sight. It requires a special sort of diabolicalness to choose to end a series which is all about hope by letting it all run dry and telling us that at the end of it, all of this effort is futile.
Okay, end rant, which is why the moment where Sheng Wang realizes in the novel that not everything needs to be fixed, like his eyesight, his meandering nature, his lack of resolve, can be embraced not because it's right, but because it's wrong is an incredible turning point. He says to himself that he won't live forever, and he won't be 17 forever, and if he wants to make mistakes, why shouldn't he make them now? That is a startling process of self-discovery that never really grinds to a halt before the other inevitable shoe drops, courtesy Sheng Wang’s overprotective father and also the general state of entanglement that they had fallen into because of their family situation.
Then the scene with Zhao Xi where Sheng Wang realizes that Jiang Tian had known about Zhao Xi and Lin Beiting being lovers, and had suffered mentions of all the parallels with them and him and Sheng Wang with no visible discomfort, which is also an important turning point in his relationship with Jiang Tian. Jiang Tian knew and he didn’t react at all to the gay parallels becomes indirect admission that he is not averse to having something more with Sheng Wang. Again, incredible signalling.
The third point comes soon after when they celebrate Sheng Wang’s not-birthday and share their first kiss. Sheng Wang at some point tells Jiang Tian, that in the darkness of the night, when there is only the two of them, can he call Jiang Tian something else? And Jiang Tian listens, dumbfounded, as Sheng Wang utters the term “boyfriend” and that is such a twist on their not-brotherly relationship that it creates a delicious frisson of something to zip through you when you read it.
I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting a lot of things but one of the most memorable ones is definitely the fateful stolen kiss on the fourth floor of the school building, where Sheng Wang has been forced to wear lipstick before the performance and he complains to Jiang Tian that he can’t be the only one wearing lipstick, when Jiang Tian leans in and kisses him, and then pulls away saying, there, now I have lipstick on my lips, too. It’s such a charged, sensual moment because both of them are aware of the danger of being exposed, but both of them are also actively inviting exposure because they want to scream their love for each other at the top of their lungs for the whole world to hear. And the description of the lipstick being a little sticky and then pulling at Jiang Tian’s lips as he moves away is just chef’s kiss.
The next one is obviously the scene with the confrontation at the school office where Sheng Wang’s quiet admission, there’s no need to look at it (the surveillance footage) sets the next arc in motion. I like the fact that it was Sheng Wang who admits it because he has always been the one to want to drag their relationship into the public eye, but he had only held back because of Jiang Tian. He had gravely underestimated his own father’s resolve to drill sense into his very-gay son, but that’s the next part of the novel.
Most of my favourite moments are after the 5 year? 7 year? Jump and Sheng Wang growing into this confident gay man who has no reservations about admitting to his coworkers that he’s gay and also after they bump into Jiang Tian, that they were former lovers.
But we also see the pain of it in the conversation between Jiang Tian and his mother, where she mistakes Sheng Wang for Jiang Tian and then Jiang Tian points out to her what her and Sheng Mingyan’s actions did to Sheng Wang: they turned a happy-go-lucky, lazy, outgoing kid into another Jiang Tian. He says to his mother, it took 5 years to create another Jiang Tian, and those lines are some of the saddest lines he has uttered in the novel.
Most of Sheng Wang and Jiang Tian’s interactions after their reunion are pure gold and I want to directly inject it into my brain for the pure serotonin that it pumps into the writing. I like their coworkers slowly figuring out their relationship and being like wow, they are boyfriends! I like Sheng Wang’s reaction to learning that Jiang Tian named their cat-son Wangzai was that, How could you sterilize him after you called him Wangzai? And Jiang Tian laughing out loud at that. They are such a pair.
I especially like their high school reunion where Jiang Tian gets shit-faced after losing a bet and then plays with Sheng Wang’s fingers on the table where anyone can see. It’s the most public demonstration of affection that Jiang Tian has ever made, and it is hot and endearing at the same time, and like Sheng Wang, I also got butterflies reading about it.
I think the quiet intimacy that they share after they reunite is a kind of drug for anyone who has read the entire novel, and the image that greets Chen Chen when he goes to visit Jiang Tian at his hotel is the one that will stay with me for a long, long time to come: a handsome young man, in a wide-necked t-shirt and grey sweatpants with cat hair sticking all over it, standing barefoot in the doorway and whom Chen Chen only belatedly connects to the put-together law consultant he met at last night’s dinner, and who is clearly too relaxed to be someone who came over in the morning in the heavy snow. Then Jiang Tian and their cat-son Wangzai joins him, and Chen Chen goes, oh.
