ZJY also falls in love first!

Friendships are great, but friendships that evolve into love and care for each other is even better. I never image that enemies to friends to lovers would do it for me. The character development in our MC is truly heart-warming. Our FL is always so patient with her, and shows us how navigating conversations are not easy but communicating is always what you should do. The Author shows us how the MC reflects on her path of love, and for me I think just like the MC I want to always learn to be a better person each and everyday for the person I love. MC eventually learns to trust her partner and the author does a good job in showing her change.

Xiao Nan's reference to it during her life really got me good, ngl.

The author hinted several times throughout the story that Xiao Nan was in love with Yin Bai but their relationship was doomed from the very start due to the way it began, the power imbalance and honestly, with how cowardly Xiao Nan was being (which she herself admitted). She didn't feel like she could protect Yin Bai's pure heart and felt like Yin Bai deserved someone better which is valid but baby girl 🙁 Yin Bai really did love you despite her terrible way of showing it. Her live near the end of the story and Jinyou's response to it got me emotional though.

However, there were parts of this that could've been better communicated. We never really got to experience the inexperienced in love and overly obsessive Yin Bai that made all those mistakes with Xiao Nian. We were told about some of the errors she committed, but I still feel that more could've been done to make us feel the transition. The reason for this is that Yin Bai had already learned and changed before the story began and simply had a hard time breaking through the shell she created to communicate it with Xiao Nian, but regardless I feel that the impact of this plot arc would've been stronger if we had somehow gotten to know the former Yin Bai better. Similarly, we don't quite get enough of Yin Bai's outer shell to really feel her nature of having a very cold but thin outer shell hiding a very childish and innocent interior. We mostly feel the contrast through other characters reacting to how she is after she breaks through her shell, very notably with Xiao Nian's perspective, but I would have preferred to have this backed up through events rather than effectively second-hand information.

While side characters were not really focused on, Xiao Nian, for how little screentime she gets, is done very well I think. The glimpses we get of the past relationship showed her character and thoughts at the time very well since unlike Yin Bai it's fine for us to only get a partial understanding of her. The fact that we never really interacted much with her and Lu Qing also fits well with the story, as moving on from the past is a major theme of the work.

An micro-arc that I think could've been reworked to better suit the story, on the other hand, is that of Zuo Jingyou's former love, He Zhiwen. Considering how nuanced the story is with Xiao Nian and Yin Bai missing each other due to being the wrong people for each other at the wrong time, and how nobody is really at fault, He Zhiwen feels somewhat comically assholish. It's not unrealistic or an unworkable arc, but it feels like the wrong type of arc for this story. Somewhat related is that we never really got to feel Zuo Jingyou as He Zhiwen's ex-wife. We really only got a single scene that established that Zuo Jingyou ever actually liked He Zhiwen. It feels slightly odd that we never got Zuo Jingyou expressing her feelings in a similar way to Yin Bai as the two grew closer but before romance sparked, but it's not a huge deal or completely unreasonable, since it's implied this is also just part of her personality.

Worth pointing out is that Extra 3 helps mitigate some of these issues. We get to see a lot more of Yin Bai's prickly side when she has her shell up, and seeing how events happen differently from what we know in the past helps to make the contrast between the former Yin Bai and the Yin Bai influenced by Zuo Jingyou a lot more apparent.