When you're so into kissing your to-be boyfriend but the police rains on your parade:

i need to hear this dialogue so bad 🤤

entirely personally speaking, i like the book better. its much more realistic and leans heavily into its gang themes + the despondence of living in a place like kowloon.

liuyi actually has the ruthlessness you'd expect of a "rabig dog" gangster, beats chusan up at multiple occasions and doesn't have much affection for him (cause why would he?). the saving-from-falling-beam (which happens to be metal in the novel, unlike its series' wooden counterpart) still does exist, but its not that deep or important.

chusan is studious, yes, meek in front of liuyi, also yes, but hes not stupid - hes exactly the kind of person you'd expect him to be. he has had his fair share of gang experiences (albeit not that many, since hes always wanted to graduate, earn money, and get the fuck out of kowloon. just your normal grew-up-in-gang-violence-riddled-neighbourhood). hence, he's much more mentally agile when dealing with liuyi. however! he did also want to, i quote, spank that round perky butt of liuyi's. this ass obsession is canonical.

the book is also incredible fast paced. all this was wrapped up in 3 chapters! and the chapters aren't even that lengthy.

the show has taken a much more lighthearted approach to literally everything. the most obvious differences are:

1) liuyi and chusan are much, much closer in the show. they've already bonded quite a bit (wound treating, chusan's closeness to xiao man) whereas in the book, their relationship was neither deep nor close, just purely professional (and the occasional beating up-s). this also contributed to the chapters being short, since there wasn't much material to begin with.

2) this one, i admit, i like the show version better. liuyi and cheng qing clearly know they like each other, liuyi very much knows he's the reason his sister has an unhappy marriage, and cheng qing tells him as much. the novel hasn't yet told why they married in the first place, but given that liuyi literally has a certain prostitute who he meets monthly (only meets and listens to songs, actually), just to keep up the pretense of heterosexuality, i'm assuming they just didn't want to deal with period typical homophobia. now why would xia "sister complex" liuyi agree to this, we haven't yet been told.

show!chusan is just.....a wee bit naive, i suppose. he really does have the survival skills of a hamster. novel!chusan just overall dgaf; he lowkey just wants to get the fuck out. thats his only goal.

liuyi, in the show, is rarely shown to be personally violent. its either his henchmen doing shit, or him complaining of his lack of beating-people-up opportunities. his overall tsundere + failure of keeping up the tsundere pretense + endearingly aloof and just overall silly personality is a stark contrast to his novel counterpart.

i'm led to believe they just wanted to make liuyi more likeable in the show lmfao. i mean, a gang boss who keeps beating up his future boyfriend, isn't even cute and silly, and there's no romantic development? i imagine that was too little and too slow.

CHUSAN'S TOP ENERGY AND GANG BOSS LIUYI'S BABYGIRL ENERGY ARE COMING OUT YEAH I TOTALLY SEE IT NOW