Love. Death. Redemption. Realization.

Life is full of never truly looking at ourselves while also learning to understand exactly who we are.

And this is precisely the kind of story the Thai BL 7 Days Before Valentine offers. It’s a theatrical, intense story about a man named Sunshine whose love life hangs by a thread. Just as he grapples with the daunting task of charting his life’s course after an unexpected breakup, fate intervenes in surprising ways. A mysterious Cupid reaper, wielding powers beyond comprehension, emerges with a proposition: to restore Sunshine’s lost love within the span of seven days by having him wish away a person each night. Yet, as the intricate web of fate unfurls, it becomes clear that every boon comes with a price. As Sunshine embarks on a journey of choice and reflection, he learns that some lessons are worth their weight in gold.

Adapted from the poignant novel by Patrick Rangsimant, under the direction of Punnasak Sukee, and brought to life by the stellar performances of Jet Somjet Saejang as Q and Atom Nathaphop Kanjanteak as Sunshine, this series does a splendid job of presenting grief, loss, and love in a way that proves to be an ultimate test of character.

There are a lot of references to Dante’s Inferno and other literary sources in 7 Days Before Valentine, but it never feels weighed down by rhetoric. Instead, the story is carried forward by a resolved, sometimes frustrating, indecisive male lead who wants to hold on to the man he loves.

This resolve brings me to my favorite thing about 7 Days Before Valentine: how it intertwines life and death.

Whether it’s in classic literature, television, the stage, or art, the choices we make in life, the feelings we have while living, and the way we feel when faced with death colors how we present ourselves to the world. It colors how we write, how we draw, and how we reach out to others. Most of all, it colors how the world works. We’re all cogs in a wheel that keeps rolling forward on paths headed in infinite directions.

It’s interesting how often roads and paths are mentioned in art. One of my favorite poems is The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost.

“Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by …”

Like roads and paths, life is a path we travel that diverges. Every time a new road appears, we have a choice to make. And it’s that choice that decides where we go from there.

The 7 Days Before Valentine book and the series look at death, grief, and sorrow and how losing love and the following sorrow sometimes causes us to make certain choices.

The book and series touched me in different ways. While both presented the concept of death, they chose slightly different paths in how they presented it. The series brought societal issues, literature, and the stage and merged them with death, morality, and choice to offer a varied look at a character on screen and how his choices in sorrow affected life in the present by having him manipulate the past to change what he hopes will be a better future. And in so doing, we, as viewers, are suddenly thrown into how self-centered he is as a character. Not because he’s a bad person but because we as humans often have a hard time seeing beyond the things we are feeling and experiencing. It’s much easier to empathize with ourselves than to face that we might be part of the problem.

For twelve episodes, Sunshine must face himself, his place in a much bigger picture, and the roles each person he’s met plays in his life and the lives of others. Because each time he chooses to remove a person from the world, he also rearranges his life and those around him. And not in the best way.

All while falling in love with someone else.

Amidst the darkness, sorrow, and choices, Sunshine grows closer to the fantastical and conflicted Cupid reaper by his side. Q’s mysterious past and how it aligns with Sunshine’s takes on a life of its own, building into a narrative about two men whose lives may have already crossed. Men whose choices affect each other’s futures in a bid to climb free of their own self-absorbed lives.

It takes stepping back, looking at oneself, and then placing ourselves in someone else’s shoes to understand ourselves and those around us.

But, like Sunshine, how many of us really question ourselves? How many of us are quick to place blame on everyone but ourselves? How many of us overlook the parts we play in a situation?

And that’s the true scope of 7 Days Before Valentine: seeing. This series makes Sunshine see himself and, in the process, makes us see ourselves. All while falling in love with two men who are suffering together.

I fell in love with them, their flaws, and their growth.

For a series that delves deeply into philosophical questions, personal choice, and self-reflection, check out 7 Days Before Valentine now on WeTV/Tencent Video.

Rating- 4.5 out of 5