Every once in a while, something comes along that touches your soul in a way that you were not expecting. I am quite old, and I have buried many experiences in my life, but this small gem helped me to recall lost memories that were uncannily close to the content of this story. Perhaps I am alone here, but I simply loved this story for its romance. It portrays romance in its purest form – carefree, youthful, deciduous. In a way that only happens once, if ever, in one’s lifetime. If you are fortuitous enough, it is serendipitous, intense, fervid, and fills your life with a burst of joy that you will never ever experience again. It is your first love. But your first love is with a person who is everything you dreamt that paragon would be, wanted to be. He was your knight in shining armor, your Prince Charming. Your Romeo. Your Adonis. Everything you imagined a fairytale love experience would be. I remembered mine and my experience was such ecstasy and therefore, I understood this BL series at its core. While my ending was certainly not as dramatic, my fervor was. Despite the diegesis’s many flaws, I only saw its beauty and the passion for the underlying message of its storybook love. I wish others would see it in this light as well.

This is a fantasy love story. It starts out that way and ends that way. Unfortunately, that point was missed or overlooked. Maybe the realm of fantasy based too much in today’s tangible world is too much for many to believe, or perhaps it just does not/cannot exist anymore. In any case, I am deeply saddened.

TK (Tontae Tinnakorn) is a wanderlust soul, who lives in a somewhat rural area of Thailand. Dreaming of course of exploring the world. Not content to be within the confines of his world, he wants to explore what life has to offer him. TK has a sweet innocence about him that is both alluring and endearing. Meanwhile, his best friend, Pi Nan Krai (Best Noratape) is an astonishingly handsome hardworking laborer who worships the ground that TK walks on. Yet, TK seems to glaze past his stares and his attention. TK is oblivious of Nan Krai’s subtle quest of love for TK. He seems to genuinely see Nan Krai only as a brother and friend.

Since TK is practicing and has rudimentary understanding of English, he is requested to accompany a Taiwanese visitor to their village who speaks English to guide him around the various sites in the area. His name is Victor (Hsia En). Victor is a young photographer from Taiwan, traveling the world alone, looking to explore its beauty and wonder and documenting his journeys. Knowing very little about Victor, there does seem to be an aura of loneliness that envelopes him. Something begins to happen between them that is magical and enchanting. Their affection for one another inarguably and palpably grows exponentially. A pure innocent love without issue, reservation, or care. It is simply there. The moment you know love will last forever because it enraptured their minds and hearts – and touched their souls. Their intimacies define ecstasy.

Before Victor must leave, he pledges to reconnect with TK again. TK waits and waits until the day when he does, and he invites him to come to Taiwan to begin an adventure with him.

Meanwhile, since Nan Krai failed to express himself, lost. TK fell in love with Victor. Hopelessly, deeply, and passionately with no room for anyone else. Nan Krai can only remain in the background and wait.

Life inevitably brings regrets, often because we overlook steady love in favor of temporary allure. This is not wrong — it is just how life unfolds. Sometimes we only recognize true affection when it is too late. We may not have observed its gradual development, as we have already chosen to follow an alternative path. Regret and pain are inseparable from love; they are simply two sides of the same coin.

Do not be fooled. This story is not simple. It is complex with horrible pain and anguish. With the learning of life lessons in a very punishing way. There is a moral arc to the story from the ancient love story of the princess of the village from long ago waiting for her love to return. Waiting and waiting in the cave for her love to return and keeping a look-out until he returns. Sustained only by her love, over eons of time she turns into stone. What is stone but a cold solid substance. Yet its formation is one that gives off beauty and joy to the beholder. So does this story if you reflect on the stronger implication of the story. Love is hard, however you personally wish to define it.

There is a plethora of characters in this series but there is one individual who warrants special mention. He is a life-long friend of both TK and Nan Krai whose name is Dan (Shindan Kreangsak). Shindan Kreangsak plays this part with such quiet dignity and seemingly omnipresent, giving off the sense that he knows more about what is going on than his character lets on. The character Dan is a quiet unassuming individual who absorbs everything around him and quietly processes it. He has figured out rather astutely and undoubtedly early on, that Nan Krai is in love with TK but can do little to either aid it along or discourage its advancement. But as he sees TK get more deeply involved with the foreigner, he realizes that Nan Krai is becoming more self-absorbed about TK, that he can no longer function appropriately anymore. So, he does try to intervene. Although nurturing by nature, Dan succumbs to his emotions and allows them to get the better of him, without challenging himself to see or understand what TK had just gone through. His bitterness and rejection while blaming TK, destroys TK and seals his fate. TK has now lost everything and everyone.

Of course there are issues with the production of this series. The uses of flashbacks and montages were a bit too much. It only confuses the story and makes it difficult to follow. And overusing it in the beginning of episodes becomes a cheap way of filling in time rather than creating a more coherent storyline. The overindulgent and third-wheel female pursuing Nan Krai was over-the-top, except for her journey to final rejection. That was the nexus of this series and carried weight throughout the remainder of this series. She realized that Nan Krai’s love was for TK. Nearly weeping and almost begging, she says to Nan Krai she can wait for him “if he loved her even 1%.” He could not; yet that became Nan Krai’s mantra for waiting for TK. This series is abundant with profound aphorisms that are peppered throughout. I just wish they had more impact.

The love story between TK and Victor is a Greek tragedy. So is the love story between TK and Nan Krai. They are two separate and distinct love stories, however. TK never really saw the loves Nan Krai had for him. Thus, he in turn could never return it. His love for him is brotherly and reached only to a friendship level. Nothing more. Then when Victor enters, TK’s universe explodes. Victor is exotic, erotic, and enticing. Meanwhile, TK is impassionate, intriguing, and inviting. With the combination of the two and the blending of fantasies, sparks of destiny were bound to happen. If you have never had that experience, then you cannot truly understand how much this series captured their moments together with precise and exact emotions. Their giddiness. Their childish behaviors. Their starry-eyed passion for one another. Their almost gibberish talk between them. Remember, English was not TK or Victor’s primary language, and so they were trying to communicate through a language that for both was not with fluency or understanding. I found it, as an English speaker, charming, and elementally eloquent in a very convincing way. When they spoke in their native tongues, their demeanor changed. I found all of that so believable and convincing. They were speaking their own form of the language of love known only to them as lovers. It is a language that is simply spoken to individuals who have fallen in love for the first time in a place least expected and in a place that is exotic and fulfills your idea of what nirvana must be like. This is the time you are most at peace, most in love, most at joy, and the most intensely in love that you will ever be in your life. You are in heaven. They captured that. For those who have never experienced this singularity, then you indeed will never fully understand what it is like to be love-struck.

Undoubtedly, there is a price to pay for a starstruck love. And the cost is great. You must come down from this mountain of happiness and when you do, you can slide down it rapidly and crash into a wall of reality that you were completely unprepared to endure. TK paid the price.

I am astonished, frankly, by the negativity towards this series and how I think it WAS so misunderstood. I shall try to clarify without giving away the content.

TK experienced unbearable and unspeakable pain. It is unimaginable, really. He became self-absorbed. Withdrawing from the world. When he inched his way back to his world, he was faced with even more pain that was beyond endurance. His friends blamed and abandoned him after the recent tragedies, although he was just trying to be himself.

Escaping to the cave, the princess and guardian of the cave, sees how broken and destroyed he is, screaming and crying in emotional pain, collapsed in utter defeat, comes to him. She understood his heartbreak and despondency, taking pity on him. Her maxim was compassion; for she suffered the same for eons. She turns back time…..

Reflecting on his suffering and being quite alive for the very first time with much greater wisdom, TK can now choose which path to love is the compos mentis one. Does he take the path to the 99% or the one to the 1%? TK sees the wisdom of the moral arc of the story of the princess. Perhaps, to some degree, this also frees her from her curse as well.

After all, this is a fantasy. Even TK never completely rules out any option, if you listen carefully. We can make this saga whatever we want.

This is a remarkable series if you open your eyes and mind to its esoteric denotation and let go of reality.

Rating- 4.5 out of 5

Streaming on- WeTV