#linsu

both mcs and llh are main characters dying from incurable poisons and both are more or less ok with that whereas their partners are less so. after that they do diverge quite a bit; lin chen rather famously declares that he doesn't know lin shu, mei changsu's previous identity, only mei changsu. di feisheng, on the other hand, is obsessed with who li lianhua used to be, li xiangyi, di feisheng's one and only rival.

lin chen shows up at the beginning of nif to set up mcs and then fucks off for 40+ episodes only to show up at the end to try to discourage mcs from fulfilling what he feels is lin shu's (his) destiny, because he's no longer lin shu but mcs and mcs has inherent value of his own. dfs starts out forcibly trying to cure llh to turn him back into lxy, but grows closer to llh over the course of mlc and they drink nuptial wine together and talk about the moon. at the end, dfs leaves the probable cure for llh's poison with him rather than shoving it down his throat like he would have at the beginning.

most relevantly to me, lin chen gets the chance to go with mcs to the very end. he enlists and follows him to meiling. he works to keep mcs going as long as he possibly can, he looks mcs's death in the face and does his best to delay it. he's there until the very last second. llh doesn't even leave dfs a body.

lin chen lives with the grief as it looms closer and closer and knows the shape it takes in his life. he's a doctor, he's faced this before even if it's much, much more personal this time. dfs is left widowed at the altar at their beach wedding with a hundred guests. he searches relentlessly for llh with all of the considerable resources available to him, and finds nothing. i wonder a lot about how long he searches. does he search forever? does he eventually give up? does he, a man steeped in death since childhood, actually know how to grieve?

i don't really have a conclusion to draw. i'm just thinking about who these two men leave behind and what different pictures the ones left have to work with. mcs leaves behind letters, but not to jingyan and not to lin chen, who most likely has to coordinate their delivery. llh leaves dfs his only letter where he offers fdb as his successor.

maybe it's that lin chen has to watch mcs die but gets the closure of being with him up until his final moments and dfs gets nothing. no goodbye, no grave, just the shards of lxy's broken sword. llh didn't even leave him those on purpose. maybe he gets the hope that it's not true, but at what cost?