Loving You Beneath Ten Million Eyes

In 2004, two stars entered the entertainment industry at the same time.

One was “Teacher Xiao Song” from Teens in Times, a student at the Central Academy of Drama with smiling, crescent-shaped eyes. He was a beat slow to react, but always came out with a witty line. The other was the liberal arts top scorer at Jinghua University, a violinist and Chinese dancer who spoke three foreign languages and was hailed as “the chosen one.”

They should have had nothing to do with each other, until the autumn of 2023.

That year, Shen Zhiyi had just turned 18 when she was blacklisted across the internet for refusing a private invitation from a powerful investor. Her depression returned, and she relied on medication to sleep each night. Meanwhile, Song Yaxuan was juggling school and work schedules as he faced doubts about his “transition from idol to actor.” The rehearsal room at four in the morning was the place he knew best.

Fate pulled them into the same recording studio.

When the opening notes of “If Love Were Destined” began to play, no one expected the new actress, who had barely appeared on variety shows, to bring Han Hong to tears with her first line. Nor did anyone notice the quiet boy singing in the corner, who silently remembered that she needed 85% dark chocolate when her blood sugar dropped.

The story that followed was a long one:

There was the way he instinctively shielded her when obsessive fans surrounded them, the sound of his violin coming through the door on nights when her depression flared up, the way she cried until her makeup ran backstage when he won the first acting award of his life, and the day she finally stopped taking medication, when he brought her a roomful of sunflowers and said, “You were always the sun.”

This is not some clichéd tale of a top-tier star falling hopelessly in love.

It is about two children who grew up in the spotlight becoming each other’s light through the long, dark nights.

If love were destined.

Destiny brought them together.