As It Happens, I Fell in Love with You

The story follows a group of young people through their university years, including humanities prodigy Zha Wenzhe, physics genius Zhao Haoze, journalism student Gao Yixi, and Jin Longyu, heir to an academic family. It delicately depicts the subtle balance they strike between scholarly ambition, exploring their feelings, and finding themselves.

Zhao Haoze and Gao Yixi meet while conducting an interdisciplinary study on “misinterpretations of quantum concepts.” Their methodological disputes give way to mutual understanding, and as data and emotions collide, they gradually grow closer. After repeated failures in experimental physics, Zhuge Bai meets Zha Wenzhe, a Chinese literature student who interprets the world through Tang poetry. Meanwhile, the seemingly perfect Jin Longyu begins to face the family expectations he has long avoided, along with his own true desires, through his quiet interactions with Su Wei.

Beginning with the season’s first snowfall, the novel follows the turning of the seasons, using brushwork as delicate as the Jiangnan region to evoke the cold glow of the laboratory, the quiet of the library, the warmth rising from a hotpot, and footprints quietly overlapping in the snow. This is not only a story about love, but also about how young people, standing at the boundaries of knowledge and crossroads in life, clumsily yet sincerely seek understanding, shoulder responsibility, and ultimately find their own warmth between loneliness and connection.