I spoke too soon.

Like, sure if out of nowhere you call a super famous eye doctor (because that's a thing) who has long been retired and give him a sob story over the phone about wanting him to operate on you to cure your blindness, the doctor will hear you out, diagnose you over the phone, initially insist that he can't operate on you but eventually agree to meet with you anyway, despite knowing nothing about you except you're a random phonecaller.

Or, like, sure it's totally romantic and sweet for you to give up painting, which has been your form of therapy and self-expression and also your literal career for years after losing your eyesight, because you don't want to be in the public eye anymore and just want to paint for yourself now that you have the emotional support of a loving partner. That's valid and fine in the abstract, even if I side-eyed it because it was yet another move of the shou's where he's becoming even more dependent on the gong.

But I don't think it's romantic and sweet for the gong to then bring the shou out to a mysterious place, have him stand somewhere which the shou realizes is a podium, and then have a woman introduce him as a class's new art teacher. And then for the voices of small children to be heard talking, during which the shou realizes that the kids are blind, and the gong arranged WITHOUT DISCUSSION AND NEITHER THE SHOU'S KNOWLEDGE OR CONSENT for the shou to become an art teacher at a school for blind children.

And, while he's literally standing stunned on the podium, the gong gives an apology for doing this without the shou's knowledge and says he got the idea after that one day they had a date in the park and the shou gave a little drawing lesson to a random kid. And then tells the shou that it's totally up to him so if he doesn't want to do it then he doesn't have to—while the shou is literally still standing at a podium in front of all these kids and the school principal. Way to put him on the spot, especially when you know he has self-esteem issues, has never formally taught before, and just a couple of weeks ago quit painting as a career after a plagiarism scandal that was eventually resolved in his favor but made him decide he wanted to only paint privately from now on.

Naturally the shou is overwhelmed but finds courage thanks to the gong's encouragement and ends up in tears because he can teach these poor blind children to have self-worth and give them the guidance and mentorship he never had. He does this by telling these 7- and 8-year-old blind children the story of how he became blind and telling them that although they were blind from birth, he wasn't, so what he lost is something they never had and therefore his blindness is more painful and poignant than theirs. F*** you, Lin Ting, I now hate you after 32 chapters of finding you increasingly spineless but otherwise sort of okay.

Legit, here is the quote: "What Lin Ting conveyed wasn't particularly complex or deep, but his words flowed smoothly, captivating his audience as if he were weaving a tale. He explained that compared to those who are blind from birth, his experience of losing sight later in life was especially painful. This was because he had once seen the vibrant colors of the world around him, making the loss even more poignant." (Chapter 32)

Also, as far as disability portrayals go, the story started off well by talking about him using a white cane and using the accessibility settings on his phone, and there are details of the habits and things his family does around the house to help accommodate him like not rearranging furniture and keeping things in specific places so he can find them.

But then the author writes scenes later of the shou stumbling around his own house and being unable to find things because his aunt isn't home, and being unable to peel an orange (... because he's blind? Or the orange has a peel of steel? Who knows) and trying to cut it with a knife and of course cutting himself in the process because he's blind. Then there's also clearly not-thought-out sh*t like the gong and the principal leaving the shou alone in an unfamiliar classroom with no cane and without any kind of aide or assistant for a "trial run" of teaching a bunch of blind children how to paint. WTF.

Basically the two meet up at a café for their blind date and hit it off, and date for like a couple of months before the shou hears that his mother in the hospital with Generic Brain Cancer (the treatment of which is Even More Generic and has zero knowledge behind it which is painfully obvious even to me, some danmei-reading yahoo on the interwebs with no medical background) has taken a turn for the worse and she hopes he can find happiness with a partner. The shou decides then and there to marry the gong, who is agreeable but asks him to his face if he's only willing to marry him to please his potentially-about-to-kick-the-bucket-mother, and the shou is blushy and ashamed and like, Uhhhhh well yeah but also I guess I sort of like you a lot, and the gong totally accepts this with a loving smile and they basically get a paper marriage right away.

Then after a while of happy married life, on the SAME DAY, they separately find out from their respective date-facilitators that heyyyy, actually, they met the wrong blind date. They find this out because the facilitators are like, Congrats on getting married, who is your partner, never seen 'im before, you gotta introduce me! And the gong/shou is like, Whut, but you set me up with him! And the facilitators are like, Oh, no, guess I never told you that the actual guy ran away/was a no-show, so who the heck did you marry?

And I'm just like...

Because for one thing, the gong just happens to have the EXACT SAME NAME of the blind date the shou was meeting up with, Shen Chuhan. On the gong's side, I guess he just never knew the name of the guy he was supposed to meet or what he looked like or anything about him and just assumed that the shou was his (turns out literally) blind date. On BOTH their sides, apparently they never talked to their friend (gong's side) or sister (shou's side) about how the blind date went, and neither friend nor sister ever bothered to apologize for setting them up with a no-show—and for that matter, how the **** did they find out the other party was a no-show? Did the no-show contact them to be like, "Hey, I didn't go because I found out the other party was blind/scarred"?

When the gong finds out about this, he's surprised. When the shou finds out about this, he practically goes catatonic in shock that he married a total stranger that he knows nothing about who is pretending to be someone else since his name can't also be Shen Chuhan, and he then proceeds to run away back home and cut off contact with the gong for all of like three days before the gong manages to talk to him. And they resolve this by kind of just kissing and making up and that's it.

And I'm just like WTF because they DID date for a couple of months at least and the shou was the one who rushed into the marriage, and he was being set up on a blind date anyway, did it ultimately matter if he made a mistake when the other guy turned out to be such a good guy? Why is he so melodramatically shocked? The only thing that's suspicious is him having the exact same name, which is ultimately just brushed off after being vaguely acknowledged as wow, what a coincidence.

There are a LOT of coincidences in this story though. The shou's eyesight-losing accident happened on the exact same date of the gong's fire-scarring incident. They find out that they both apparently went to the same school, though because they were in different years they didn't ever cross paths. As already mentioned, the gong has the exact same name as the guy who originally ditched the shou. The gong's friend just happens to be an ophthalmologist who was mentored by a super famous eye doctor that even the gong has heard of (because that's totally a realistic thing, I mean, I can sure name a super famous eye doctor off the top of my head right now). The super famous eye doctor's partner just happens to also have had the exact same kind of "pressure on the eye nerve due to blood clots" partial blindness as the shou, and the reason the doctor retired from surgery in order to teach is because the operation failed and instead of restoring his partner's sight, his partner became completely blind.

There are even more coincidences than that. Just so. Many. Coincidences.

Oh, and if you're wondering, the shou IS legally and functionally blind, but can still see some light/shadow and bright colors. I at first praised the story for not going the typical route of "I see only absolute darkness" since there is a range of blindness, but I had to retract that praise as the portrayals got s*upider and s*upider.

Further, the actual cause of blindness for the shou makes no sense and shows the author did zero research and couldn't even keep their own story straight (funny I should say that for a BL novel). At first, it says his corneas were scratched by gravel and that's why he's blind. But later on, it says his optic nerves are compressed due to blood clots, and I'm not in the medical field or anything but given that his accident was like 10 years ago, wouldn't any blood clots have long since resolved themselves (WOW I just did more research than the author by hitting up Google for as long as it takes to type "how long do blood clots last" and the results say that yeah, blood clots resolve within weeks to 6 months), and how exactly are they causing pressure only on his optic nerves and causing him to be partially blind, i.e. he can still see light and shadow and bright colors, and why did no doctor or hospital ever detect this before. And if both things are causing his blindness, it's not like a generically vague "operation" will "cure" his corneas—as far as I'm aware, he'd need a transplant, and this is never mentioned in the story, just the optic nerve thing.

like I feel like the author could've done without the sudden healing of eyes. esp when it was said that mc's mother did so much to find out how to cure his eyes and couldn't find any and ended up in the hospital bcs of brain tumor (I think) and it's on the last stage too.

it feels kinda nasty too cos apparently his surgery to cure his eyes wasn't even something that is rare? (at least not to me... like it seemed fairly easy to find someone who would know of a way to cure his eyes.)

as well as how the ML decide to find a job for the MC. like it might be cute to some but nah man. wtf. why is finding a job a gift omg.

The whole “married the wrong blind date” became a total nonstarter and honestly doesn’t make a lot of sense. They were both mutually blown off... but ML really has the exact same name as the MC’s original date? That part was never mentioned. It would have been better if MC just didn’t ever know the potential date’s name. Also, for this main conflict being in the title, it only came up over halfway through the story and was resolved in a chapter.