A coming-of-age fable about "self" and "other".
Fourteen-year-old Lin Xu created a phantom on the ruins of his broken love - Nian Nian. She is the product of his loneliness, the gentle echo of his subconscious, the non-existent lover he uses to fight against nothingness. And when this phantom appeared in the high school classroom in a real flesh-and-blood body and changed its name to Gu Niansheng, Lin Xu was forced to face a cruel and beautiful question: Does he love the perfect mirror image created by his own hands, or the real girl who is hungry, tired, and rolls her eyes at him?
The novel opens up the divided inner world of a young man with an almost cruel touch. The disappearance of Nian Nian is not a tragedy, but a recovery - when a person no longer needs fantasy to confirm that he is worthy of being loved, the phantom should disappear. The book consists of eight volumes and twelve years, completing the spiritual journey from "narcissistic imagination" to "true love". This is not only a youth novel, but also a philosophical note on the nature of human loneliness.
In a word: Throughout our lives, we are just learning to love a real person.
