The Early Spring Episode 18 Recap
**SPOILER ALERT**
Table of Contents
TL;DR (Quick Overview)
BUCKET LIST
A jealousy-fuelled misunderstanding over a dating app, an ex-boyfriend’s reappearance, and one badly timed lie all collide in Shenzhen, pushing Zhitao to finally ask for what she actually wants. What she gets back instead is a painfully honest rejection that finally exposes the wall standing between them.
A Dating Scam, Not a Date
Sun Yu holds her first ever dating app launch event, and Zhitao’s there helping at the registration desk, dressed up for the occasion as men filter through the door. Luan Nian shows up with the dog to check on her, and the moment he sees her all done up, he can’t resist a jab, is she actually here participating in the matchmaking herself?
She explains he’s misreading the whole situation, this is just a normal singles networking event Sun Yu’s organizing, but he’s already pulled up a fake profile created under her name, “Tao Zhi Yao Yao,” listing her as a Penn graduate earning four hundred thousand a year, one hundred seventy-one centimetres tall, fifty-four kilograms, fluent in three languages, an avid skier, diver, and golfer.
She points out she can’t do a single one of those sports, it’s obviously computer-generated. He counters that the account’s already chatted with forty-five different men, meaning every weekend she claimed to be “busy,” she was actually here running a fake dating profile the whole time.
She insists the company manages those accounts, she’s never even logged in herself, and he uses that as proof it’s a scam outright, telling her he’s pulling his investment recommendation and warning the other investors to reassess the risk. She begs him not to drag Sun Yu into this because of her, the startup’s barely getting off the ground and it hasn’t been easy.
He shoots back that she should just find another investor then, one willing to fund actors for staged dating events. Furious, he hands her the dog’s leash, tells her not to take him for a fool, and walks off. Deleting her profile the second he’s gone, she gets a text from him anyway: dating scams are cheap, and being a shill in one is nothing to be proud of. He drives off, clearly more jealous than actually principled about it.
A Homecoming, and an Apology
Back home, Sun Yu and Zhitao are surprised to find Sun Yuanzhu’s already there, having cooked dinner, and they’re both thrilled to see him, though visibly concerned he’s lost weight since his hospital stay. He insists he’s been eating fine. Sun Yu busies herself making him millet congee for his stomach, and Zhitao watches quietly, noting how happy her friend clearly is to have him home.
Sun Yu apologizes to Zhitao for the whole dating app mess, insisting it’s entirely her fault and she’ll have the team scrub the account history immediately. Zhitao brushes it off gently, telling her not to worry, once someone’s decided to believe something, no amount of explaining tends to change their mind.
Off to Shenzhen
A month later, Zhitao’s packing for a work trip to Shenzhen, catching up with her friend Yao Bei, who’d relocated to Hong Kong, over the phone. Yao Bei mentions she’s told her old college boyfriend, Xin Zhaozhou, that Zhitao will be in town too, and they’ll likely all meet up. Zhitao’s happy at the idea.
She travels to Shenzhen with Luan Nian, and the moment they reach the hotel, Zhaozhou’s already waiting in the lobby, catching her off guard. She introduces the two men carefully, Luan Nian strictly as her boss, Zhaozhou as a friend she’s catching up with. Luan Nian, clearly unimpressed, tells them to enjoy their evening and walks off.
An Old Flame, Rekindled Nostalgia
Zhaozhou takes her to dinner and for a drive along the water, telling her how much she’s changed, matured. She tells him plainly that if she hadn’t changed after everything these past few years, it would’ve all been for nothing.
He asks about Luan Nian, guessing correctly that he’s her boss, and notes he doesn’t look easy to get along with. She warns him simply not to get on his bad side. He mentions he’s heard she’s doing well at work, and she admits it’s been genuinely tough, though rewarding.
He reflects on their history, how he’d headed south while she’d insisted on Beijing, both of them knowing the city wouldn’t be easy, though nothing could talk her out of it. All he could do, he says, was wish her well and hope the city wouldn’t swallow her whole. He wonders aloud sometimes whether, if he’d gone to Beijing with her instead, he might have made it just as far.
Yao Bei told him everything, the friends she’s made, the promotions, the major project she landed entirely on her own, and he tells her plainly he’s proud of her, admitting it was his own fault for not holding on tighter, leaving her to carry so much alone. She deflects, changing the subject to how beautiful the sea looks, her first time seeing Shenzhen’s coastline.
Dropping her back at the hotel, he buys her favourite red bean ice cream and invites her to a class reunion the next evening. She tells him she has a work dinner and isn’t sure she can make it. He asks, pointedly, if it’s actually because of him.
Of course not, she insists, and he calls her out gently, some things never change, she still can’t look him in the eye when she’s lying. He tells her it’s fine either way, and asks for one final hug before she goes. She agrees, and as they embrace, Luan Nian happens to be watching from an upstairs window.
A Petty Retaliation
Back in his room, Luan Nian’s furious and completely thrown by what he just saw, drinking, pacing, drinking more, unable to settle. When the doorbell rings, it’s Zhitao, there to rehearse tomorrow’s presentation, but he ignores the request entirely, cranking up his music instead, distracted, telling her flatly the presentation will go fine tomorrow regardless.
His phone rings, and he tells whoever’s on the line he’s coming down soon. When Zhitao asks where he’s off to, he tells her, deliberately cruel, that he’s going to dinner with an ex-girlfriend. She can’t say anything, storming off instead while he follows, visibly smug. Her key card fails to work, forcing them both down to the lobby, where his “dinner date” turns out to be his own sister, who greets him with a hug and calls him her little brother.
He immediately shushes her, aware Zhitao’s nearby getting her key reissued, and steers his sister outside deliberately within view, hoping to provoke some jealousy. He hugs her, holds her hand for effect, and his sister asks, genuinely, if he’s really as difficult and cutting as people say.
She laughs it off though, teasing that something’s clearly gotten into him, must be a girl. He admits, half to himself, that yes, he says cruel things sometimes, but underneath it all, he has the softest heart. They head off to dinner together.
A Presentation, and a Vigil
The next day, Zhitao delivers her presentation flawlessly, a complete success, and the celebratory toasts flow freely afterward until she’s thoroughly drunk. Luan Nian brings her back to her room, and as he’s removing her shoes, her phone rings. He ignores the call, but moments later, the doorbell rings, it’s Zhaozhou, unable to reach her and worried after hearing she’d been drinking heavily at the class reunion dinner.
Luan Nian lets him in just as she starts throwing up, and once she’s tucked into bed, Zhaozhou offers to take over watching her. Luan Nian refuses outright, insisting he’s responsible for the safety of all his female employees, and pointedly reminds Zhaozhou he’s merely her ex, not her current boyfriend, so he isn’t comfortable leaving her alone with him.
Zhaozhou concedes it’s awkward being there with her boss present, but insists on staying anyway, knowing she tends to kick off her covers and get thirsty once the nausea passes. Both men end up sitting vigil in her room through the night while she mutters drunken complaints about Luan Nian being a jerk.
A Mortifying Morning, and a Truth Revealed
Zhitao wakes to find both men asleep in her room, checking frantically to make sure she’s still fully dressed, mortified by the whole scene. She slips out to meet Yao Bei for breakfast, who announces she got married two months ago to an architect, and when Zhitao asks about her own love life, Yao Bei admits she’s actually been seeing someone for four years, the same length of time Zhitao’s been with Luan Nian.
Yao Bei points out plainly that statistically, once a relationship passes the three-year mark without heading toward marriage, the odds of it happening at all start dropping fast, and encourages her to really think about what she’s doing with her own life.
Returning to the hotel corridor afterward, Zhitao runs into Luan Nian and his sister together, and Siyuan quickly clarifies she’s actually his older sister, not an ex-girlfriend at all, exposing the lie he’d told out of spite the night before. Relieved, Zhitao invites him for a walk along the river.
A Bucket List, and a Rejection
Standing by the water, she tells him about a personal goal she’s held onto, wanting to marry and start a family before turning thirty, and asks outright if they could finally make their relationship public, be a normal couple, raise the dog together, meet each other’s parents, maybe even have a child someday.
He tells her he’s never once thought about anything like that, he doesn’t have a bucket list. He admits plainly that being with him hasn’t been easy, that people around him call him difficult, that his temper is genuinely bad, that he isn’t good at loving someone the way she deserves.
She’s still young, he says, still uncertain about so much, and watching her at a matchmaking event, watching her ex care for her so gently, watching how close she is with her roommate, made him realize the life she actually wants might not be one he can give her.
She tells him, hurt, that she’s never been someone who falls in love casually, he’s the only boyfriend she’s ever had, and none of this is how she imagined it starting, but it’s what they built regardless. She reminds him, quietly, that he’s also her boss, and she needs this job, this respectable life she’s built. She admits she’s exhausted, but owns that exhaustion as hers alone. He tells her he hopes she’ll calm down.
She tells him she’d hoped four years together would mean something deeper than it did when they first started. Walking away, she reflects privately that what he said, however gentle and sincere, cut straight through everything between them like a blade, laying the truth bare. It hurt, but it also clarified something she’d been avoiding, some people are simply out of reach, some longing has to end eventually. However badly she wanted this love to work, she was still colliding with reality.
Between them stood an invisible wall built from their personalities, their families, everything about how they’d each been raised, and she wonders now if they were ever truly on the same wavelength at all.
The Early Spring Episode 18 Recap: My Thoughts
I felt there was no real link, no smooth transition, between episode 17 and 18. Seventeen was heavy, dealing with the fallout of the sexual harassment storyline, and then eighteen pivots entirely into jealousy, with Luan Nian suddenly behaving unreasonably for no real reason.
For someone in advertising, he should understand better than anyone that startups sometimes need a little creative padding to get off the ground, and did he really trust her so little that he couldn’t see the fake dating account wasn’t something she was personally running? They just needed the numbers up. Calling it a scam and threatening to pull his investment felt completely out of left field.
Then he gets jealous watching her walk the dog with her roommate, laughing and joking, when they’re clearly just friends.
As for the ex-boyfriend, I understand the jealousy a bit more there, though it was so long ago, and she’d already explained the breakup was amicable, they just happened to both be in Shenzhen and were catching up over dinner, nothing more. The drunken bedroom scene afterward, though, was fun to watch. I can only imagine how confused the ex must have been watching her boss hover around getting her water, tucking her in, clearly restraining himself the whole time.
And then suddenly we jump to Zhitao bringing up marriage, something that’s never once come up before. Now she wants to go public with the relationship, which feels strange given she’s always been the one insisting on secrecy because of her job.
I don’t know where this shift came from, or why she needed it right then, since they’d never had this conversation before. I’m also not fully convinced by Luan Nian’s response. Does he genuinely not want marriage, or is he just lashing out from all that pent-up jealousy? Whatever the real reason, Zhitao reflects later that this was likely the exact moment their relationship started to crack and spiral.
I think it’s fair to say any relationship built on this much secrecy for this long can never really be healthy. Four years is a long time to call each other boyfriend and girlfriend while their close friends know and their own parents don’t, constantly lying, constantly hiding, and mixing business with romance on top of it all. She said it herself, it’s exhausting. How is that sustainable long-term? At some point, something has to give.
The chemistry between these two continues to be excellent. Jing Boran does such a great job playing this difficult, nearly intolerable man who’s simultaneously so deeply in love, reachable and unreachable all at once. I don’t think he even fully understands what he wants or who he’s trying to be. He always seems to need that undercurrent of anger, that angst, and the moment things start going too smoothly, he seems to manufacture chaos just to feel something familiar.
Sun Qian, meanwhile, continues to beautifully portray this warm, good-hearted woman completely in love with him, putting up with his difficulty and rawness, hoping quietly that it’ll all work out even as some part of her clearly suspects it won’t. She’s too invested to walk away at this point, genuinely obsessed and completely addicted to him.
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