Sinister doctor + docile puppy + domineering + pure love + sanction + loyal dog
When they met for the first time, Shen Zhizhou said to Cheng Huai, "Then we will find you." These words were like a seed that fell on the insurmountable boundary between the two people.
Treatment is conducted professionally and normatively. Cheng Huai took medicine on time and had weekly meetings, and his condition slowly improved. He began to name the orange cat in the pet shop "Li Zhi", learned to record "better" moments, and even made butter cookies for Shen Zhizhou - sweet ones, because he knew that Shen Zhizhou remembered that he liked sweets.
But the boundaries are silently blurred in the daily details of the two people. Shen Zhizhou began to remember every word Cheng Huai said, and wrote "Cheng Huai. Likes sweets" in the memo; Cheng Huai began to notice that Shen Zhizhou changed the color of his shirt, remembered his gestures when he spoke, and chewed every word he said over and over while awake at three in the morning.
This is a two-way transference and countertransference. Cheng Huai projected all the attention, acceptance and love he had never received in twenty-six years onto Shen Zhizhou; and Shen Zhizhou saw in Cheng Huai the shadow of himself when he was fifteen - the boy who was left in an empty dormitory, looking at the lights of other people's homes. They recognized their own pain in each other's wounds.
When that boundary was finally crossed and the two people came together, Cheng Huai's condition began to deteriorate at an irreversible speed. Not because love is wrong, but because love is too right - when a person finally touches what he has longed for all his life, the fear of losing it will be more deadly than never having had it.
