Up until the last episode, I thought I would be giving this drama 9 or 9.5 rating. Beautiful cinematography, realistic portrayals of characters that makes you feel anyone of them could have been your next-door neighbor or office co-worker or classmate, and I love those little scenes of no dialogues such as Chaoyang hiding his mother's valuables and setting a trap so he would know if his friends tried to search his house for items of value to steal (this is in ep 1, so I don't consider this a spoiler).

But, but-- the frustration and anger that arise in me at the last scene.... Made me decide to give this drama a 7 rating. Then again changed it to 7.5 becos director has successfully made me feel about 5% of the frustrations that Zhang Dongsheng would have felt. Why such a sharp drop in my opinion of this drama? Here's why:-

I was expecting some flashbacks scenes in the last episode, that would give some clues or hints as to at which point in the drama that the narrative becomes unreliable. But lo and behold, they leave this completely open-ended to our own interpretation! The very obvious "fairytale" parts I have understood (who are imagined to be alive), but no hints, no clues given as to at which point in the narrative that things are "enhanced" and not what it seems.

I wouldn't mind if this is a movie or telemovie (in 4, 5 parts). But this is a 12 episodes drama!! Are we actually expected to rewatch from ep 1?.... Because for those who have watched this, isn't it suspicious that only Chaoyang can hear the whistles that his 2 friends made (when they want to meet him)?? Notice how no one else complain about the whistling, I mean an adult could have opened a window and shout some profanities about the whistling! So, should we doubt that this form of communication, the whistling never happened?? ..... there lies my frustrations.