Zhen Yu and Jia Le continue to run into each other in extremely compromising situations. The parameters of how exactly their worlds are colliding start to become more clear as Zhen Yu puts on his logical lawyer hat and analyzes the situation.
Recap
Zhen Yu disappears and Jia Le bursts through the door. Her bedroom is empty. Someone rings the doorbell.
Zhen Yu is surprised when Jia Le suddenly stops pushing at the door. Did he see a ghost again?
Jia Le opens the door to a neighboring auntie from the apartment below who complains about a leak from Jia Le running her washing machine every night. Jia Le zones out while the neighbor continues complaining. She hasn’t been using her washing machine at all.
Jia Le asks her landlord about the issue, but the man says that there’s nothing wrong with the pipes and to just ignore the crazy neighbor lady. Jia Le’s friend Man Man (Juno Liu), the owner of the coffee shop they’re meeting at, backs her up with the landlord, pointing out that Jia Le was accosted by a pervert in her bedroom the other night and suggesting that he should install extra locks. They ask if the man could have been a previous tenant or a family member. The landlord says that he only rents to women and his son is in America studying. He thinks Jia Le and her friend are trying to get him to lower her rent, but leaves after saying he won’t negotiate on the rent.
Da Jun asks Zhen Yu if he brought a woman home while drunk — he thinks that’s more likely than a ghost. They sit down across from the same landlord that Jia Le met with, who tells Zhen Yu he should drink less. Then maybe he’ll stop seeing ghosts. Zhen Yu insists that he didn’t drink the previous night when he saw Jia Le, but the landlord thinks he’s just trying to reduce his rent.
Zhen Yu starts describing Jia Le to the landlord. The landlord suddenly looks nervous. He claims that he never rented to anyone like Jia Le, then scurries out. Zhen Yu and Da Jun can tell that he’s lying. So she really is the ghost of a previous tenant?
That night, Jia Le is taking a bath and Zhen Yu a shower when the clock strikes 10:06 PM and their apartments merge. Zhen Yu feels Jia Le’s foot creeping up his leg and turns slowly. They both scream and submerge themselves under the water. Zhen Yu accidentally unplugs the drain. In his scramble to re-plug it, he touches Jia Le’s bare leg. She kicks him in the head and knocks him out.
When Zhen Yu regains consciousness, he’s lying in the empty bathtub with a towel over him. Jia Le is now fully dressed and cautiously watching him while trying to get signal on her phone. When Jia Le notices that Zhen Yu is awake, she starts trying to bind him with rope. He thinks that she’s trying to take advantage of him and begs her not to. She gets annoyed and kicks him a few more times before stomping away saying she’s going to call the police.
After Zhen Yu gets dressed, Jia Le holds him at a distance with her backscratcher as they sit on opposite ends of the couch and bicker over who is at fault and who is trying to take advantage of whom. He’s surprised she doesn’t recognize him from the news.
They both believe that the other is lying about being a tenant of the apartment and Zhen Yu goes to the study to show Jia Le his contract. She shows him hers. The contents are exactly the same except for the tenant name and date — Jia Le’s is from September 2017 and Zhen Yu’s is from January 2018. Jia Le calls Zhen Yu out for trying to trick her with a fake contract from the future. She shows him the date on her phone: it’s October 9, 2017. Zhen Yu asks if her phone also fell in the water and shows her the date on his own phone: it’s February 9, 2018.
Jia Le points out that everything in the study is hers. If this is Zhen Yu’s apartment, then why are her things here? He responds that he just moved in. He heads to the kitchen, needing a drink. They pass by his unpacked moving boxes, which Jia Le finally notices. When Zhen Yu opens the fridge, he finds it stuffed to the brim.
Zhen Yu thinks he knows what’s happening. There can only be one explanation: Jia Le has psychogenic amnesia. She must have experienced some sort of trauma and now believes that she’s living four months in the past. Jia Le knows that Zhen Yu is just trying to call her crazy and thinks that he’s the one who’s acting delusional. Zhen Yu decides that they need to involves a neutral third party: the neighbors.
He knocks on the door of a downstairs apartment. An elderly man, an Uncle Lin, opens the door and recognizes Jia Le from upstairs. He comments that he hasn’t seen her in a while — did she move? Jia Le is surprised to see him on his feet — is he better now? She asks where his wife is. He responds that he got so annoyed with her he sent her back to her hometown a month ago. Jia Le is again confused — didn’t she just come upstairs to complain to her yesterday?
Zhen Yu turns to Jia Le and tells her that he can help her jump ahead on the waitlist for a psychiatric appointment with a doctor he knows. Jia Le starts to head outside, saying she needs to ask the property manager about this. Zhen Yu follows her, then gapes when she suddenly disappears.
Jia Le returns to her own time, suddenly disoriented and surprised to find herself alone. Auntie Lin appears and nags Jia Le again about talking to her landlord about the leaky pipes. Jia Le is confused by her sudden reappearance, and more so when Auntie Lin denies having ever gone back to her hometown.
Zhen Yu is still freaking about Jia Le’s disappearance when Da Jun shows up with some midnight snacks. He follows Zhen Yu up to the apartment, where Zhen Yu opens the fridge and finds that all of Jia Le’s things are gone.
Zhen Yu asks Da Jun how Ji Rou’s case is going. Da Jun tells him that De Feng, Zhen Yu’s former law partner, has accepted the case, and has reassured Wu Han Wen that there’s not enough evidence to convict Ji Rou, but Zhen Yu knows that the evidence that does exist is unfavorable. Zhen Yu thinks that Ji Rou was hiding something from him; Da Jun responds that it’s obvious Ji Rou lied to him. This case has caused him enough grief — why is he still thinking about it? But Zhen Yu has known Ji Rou since they were children and knows that there must be more to what happened.
He visits Ji Rou, who apologizes for causing him so much trouble. But Zhen Yu doesn’t blame her. He knows that this is all Mu Si Ming’s fault: he’s the one who hired a fake gangster informant to lead him to fake evidence, all to get him off this case. They’ve had a rivalry ever since their law school days.
Zhen Yu has come to Ji Rou as a friend instead of a lawyer and asks without asking if she killed her husband. She says no, but her smiles fades and her eyes redden. Zhen Yu tells her that if she accidentally killed her husband in a domestic dispute, she should tell her lawyer because she might be able to claim self-defense. But if she insists on going with this gangster revenge story when all the evidence points to her, then she might receive serious jail time.
He gently puts his hands on her shoulders and tells her that he knows she’s still the same girl he grew up with, the one whose mother abandoned her with his family. She’s always been a bit lonely, but when she smiles, it’s like the sun. He asks her to not make any choices that will hurt herself.
Jia Le and Zhen Yu both stop by the same convenience store on their way home at night. It seems like they’re there at the same time in their respective timelines. At one confusing point, it seems like they might actually be in the same time and space without realizing it.
Zhen Yu writes a text to Ji Rou telling her that he’s there for her if she needs him, but we don’t see whether he sends it or not.
This time when the clock strikes 10:06 PM, Zhen Yu is awake and in the living room when his apartment starts to change in front of him. He notices the time and explores the apartment, finding all of Jia Le’s clutter. He realizes that the fusion of time and space seems to be the only logical explanation for what’s happening.
He tries opening a cabinet. It’s full of his and Jia Le’s things and his glasses crash to the floor, shattering. Zhen Yu storms around, shouting for Jia Le, but she’s not home. He starts to Google her name, but he has no service.
He starts poking through her things, noticing her judo championship trophy and poor choice of snacks. (Also a good time for product placement.)
Zhen Yu pokes around some more and finds Jia Le’s diary. He notices that the notebook is completely blank for November. Is this apartment and Jia Le really from four months ago? He leaves her a note, asking her to stop haunting him, then sits on the bed waiting for time to pass. At 10:52 PM, his phone chimes with a notification. He jumps up to check his phone, then realizes that his apartment has reverted to its empty, tidier state. Jia Le’s notebook is gone. The note he left is on the ground.
When Jia Le returns home, she immediately notices that someone has moved her things around, but her apartment is otherwise empty.
Zhen Yu shares his theory with Da Jun the next day. Da Jun still thinks he’s crazy, but humors him and looks Jia Le up on Facebook, then sends her a message asking if she rented a certain apartment 4 months ago. He scrolls through her page and notices that she hasn’t posted in over a month. Is Zhen Yu actually being haunted by a ghost?
Zhen Yu notices one of Jia Le’s posts showing her at the Legal Aid Foundation, dated four months ago exactly to the day. In the background is someone who looks a lot like Zhen Yu. He checks his calendar and realizes that he was there that day, covering for his law partner. Then everything glitches for a moment and Zhen Yu has a sudden flash of memory of Jia Le confronting him.
Commentary
Was that glitch at the end the timeline changing? I didn’t realize that the parallel universe aspect was going to be time travel within such a short span of time, but that’s exactly what makes all of this so interesting. They obviously exist within the same world and timeline and there’s plenty of potential mystery as well as easy ways for the characters to link back up at the end (no weird age gaps or inexplicable appearances.) Why does Jia Le disappear? The timing seems to be around the time of Jiang Cheng Hao’s death.
The acting is a bit iffy but the leads are charmingly comedic so far. Da Jun is far from an important character but I love how much face time he’s getting because I’ve been missing Someday or One Day and Li Zi Wei a lot lately.
Is it weird that Ji Rou reminds me of Bo Ya from The Devil Punisher? They have similar tight smiles and wide eyes that feel kind of forced and haunted and not genuine.
The Drama Llama 