[I thought I was playing the part of your beloved, but I never knew that all along, you were waiting for me to come back.]
After the college entrance exams, Ji Yan received the news that he was dying of terminal stomach cancer, but he never got to say those words to Shen Jingyan.
When he opened his eyes again, he had become the most favored Ninth Prince of the Silver Moon Kingdom. After falling into the water, he lost all his memories of his past life and spent half his life in the palace, knowing nothing of the world beyond its walls.
Years later, the newly crowned Best Actor Shen Jingyan was startled out of his wits when a staggering figure in ancient costume stumbled into his room in the middle of the night during an awards ceremony. That face was exactly like his dear friend Ji Yan, who had been dead for years.
He thought it was a sordid setup and looked at the intruder with icy suspicion, until the other man raised bewildered eyes and instinctively called him by the childhood nickname he had long since buried.
He kept this self-proclaimed amnesiac "Ji Yan" by his side, caring for him and recreating the days they'd shared. They found warmth in their closeness and distance, yet in the dead of night each wondered whether they were merely a shadow of the moonlight in the other's heart.
Then, when his memories suddenly came flooding back, Ji Yan shakily dialed a number and asked a question that spanned half a lifetime and crossed the divide between life and death: "Back then... what was it you never got to say?"
Through the receiver, Shen Jingyan's voice was hoarse and burning with emotion: "I love you. From the day you left, I've never been able to say those words to anyone else."
Later, Ji Yan turned his memories of the Silver Moon Kingdom into a novel called The Moon's Return, and it became an overnight sensation. An adaptation was launched, with Ji Yan as the screenwriter and Shen Jingyan as the lead actor.
On screen, they were loneliness and longing spanning time. Off screen, every glance between them was filled with a fated understanding.
Until the joint signing event at a comic convention...
Ji Yan, writing under the name "Mujing," was about to take the stage when the mysterious, top-tier author "Zhouyan," appearing alongside him, slowly removed his mask.
Under the spotlights, Shen Jingyan's gentle, smiling gaze crossed the crowd and landed directly on him.
It turned out that through all those years of missed connections, in the lives woven from reality and words, they had long been each other's one and only most devoted readers, traveling thousands upon thousands of miles toward one another.
[After that, the Best Actor always had the genius author sitting beside him at every public event.]
[After that, the first page of every new book by the author bore the same line:
"To Jingyan,
I crossed life and death and journeyed through the world, all for the sake of meeting you again."]
Theme: Once you've chosen, stay true.
