"Click!" At the end of the red carpet, Lin Tong and Gu Shang gazed at each other across the crowd. A fan photographer captured that moment forever.
"Aah! My Pure First Love CP is so beautiful, like a legend!"
"Who else suddenly got attacked by all those dead memories?"
Five years later, a single photo of them together brought the "Gu-Lin CP" back to life and sent them trending.
But in a later interview, Lin Tong only gave a faint smile at the camera. "We're not close."
One sentence crushed every last fantasy.
When the camera panned to Gu Shang, his lips curled slightly, but the light in his eyes slowly dimmed before finally going still.
From beginning to end, she was the one who didn't want him.
1
Lin Tong had been a child extra on film sets since she was six. People had told her since childhood that she wasn't suited for this line of work.
Later, she became the youngest actress to win the Grand Slam of acting awards.
At the ceremony, she smiled as she held her trophy. "I never regretted being so stubborn back then."
Everyone thought she meant risking everything to pursue an acting career.
Only she knew the price of that dream: on a snowy night that year, she let go of his red, frozen hand and turned away, saying, "Gu Shang, this is where we end."
2
At twenty-two, Gu Shang made the transition from idol to actor.
At twenty-four, he had his breakthrough playing the second male lead, who loved without being loved in return, in Little Dimple.
Then he worked with Lin Tong, the only leading lady of his entire youth.
When his unpolished acting was mocked all over the internet, Lin Tong was the only one who stayed up late rehearsing scenes with him. In front of the cameras, she said firmly, "He's good."
Onscreen and off, for a while, he thought he had really held on to the light. Until she snuffed it out with her own hands.
Later, Lin Tong kept winning awards until she became a legend in the industry. On her thirtieth birthday, a friend, slightly drunk, asked if she had any regrets in life. She gazed at the brilliant nightscape beyond the window, fell silent for a long time, then raised her glass with a smile. "I got everything I ever dreamed of."
Gu Shang became an international film award-winning actor, playing every kind of devoted lover, yet remained alone. When asked about his love life in interviews, he always smiled nonchalantly. "It's enough for the characters to get their happy endings. There's no need to demand that much of life."
They attended different events, appearing on facing pages of the same magazines, but never appeared in a photo together again.
They both ended up standing in the brightest starlight,
but they were lost to each other forever.
Theme: Those who love themselves will be loved by the whole world
