Whoever Falls First Loses

What is love? Hormones? Dopamine? A genetic conspiracy?

Math genius Lu Shiyan believes it's none of those things. He believes everything in the world can be quantified and modeled, including love.

He designed a complex soul-matching algorithm, named it the Equation of Love, and successfully used it to identify the theoretically optimal partner: Gu Yunqi, a philosophy professor.

Lu Shiyan approached Gu Yunqi to verify his data, but through their repeated face-offs, data analysis, and model iterations, he discovered that her sensibility and his rationality were like two disjoint sets.

Gu Yunqi talks about the role of chance and emotion in history, and he tries to explain them with probability. He offers her formulas, but she asks what “existence” means in “existence precedes essence.”

Lu Shiyan doesn't believe there is anything in this world that can't be quantified, yet Gu Yunqi becomes the one and only bug his algorithm can't classify.

Then, at an important academic summit, the real-world case study completely disproves the model Lu Shiyan has painstakingly prepared, plunging him into self-doubt. Gu Yunqi doesn't try to comfort him. She simply takes him to watch a meteor shower that follows no discernible pattern. “Look,” she says. “The most magnificent displays in the universe have never been found in any formula. Love is the same.”

Mathematical tyrant vs. Philosophy queen, knowledge-centered romance, soulmates

Theme: The essence of existence is recognition