Apart from being impressed by how such good performances were coaxed out of the young actors, I was impressed by the story-telling, particularly in the first two-thirds of the series.

From the start, the series makes the character of Chaoyang rather intriguing by portraying him as a guarded person who may or may not be as vulnerable as he appears to be. He takes in his friend (Yan Liang) and a girl (Pupu), but is also guarded against them. The two friends he takes in are more straightforward characters, but because of their relative simplicity, their moral dilemmas appear more compelling.

There are also many other interestingly complex characters ranging from Chaoyang's divorced parents to his father's new wife. At first, the father sees the son occasionally and does not pay him that much attention apart from giving him money or things money can buy. The increased attention the father gives to the son may be due to his guilt for not trusting the son, but is it truly fatherly love if it stems from a sense of indebtedness? The mother vacillates between being controlling and caring, but she, too, may be caring so much because of what it shows about her parenting. She does not quite get over the child's father's affair and her own divorce.

The story starts with a crime, but as far as crime is concerned, we know the criminal from the very beginning of the series, so it's not a whodunit series. Still, one may be pulled into the story by the question of how he is going to be exposed and whether the kids, who end up blackmailing him, will succeed. The story goes rather well until the last few episodes where both the story and the storytelling itself get weaker. In the last few episodes, when certain things are not revealed, it becomes too obvious that they are deliberately not shown (like what happens to Pupu after her asthma attack and what happens after the murderer is about to stab Yan Liang). The police suddenly start to connect the dots in the last episode (how timely!) and that's after a few more body counts in the murderer's ledger.

The story is complicated by the occurrence of an accident leading to the death of Chaoyang's half-sister. While it does not appear as though a crime has caused her death, the death of the girl plays a big part in the story as it causes her mother to accuse Chaoyang and his mother of murdering her. Even Chaoyang's father tries to secretly record a conversation with him to find evidence while ostensibly having a meal with him. Chaoyang finds out by accident, and perhaps his character takes on a darker turn here as he finds it harder to trust others from this point on.

In the last episode, the accident seems to take another turn as Pupu says to Chaoyang in her letter to him that she has not told Yan Liang about what happened in the Children's Palace (where Chaoyang's sister falls to her death). However, in Episode 3, we see Yan Liang being told about it in Chaoyang's presence. Is this a continuity error or deliberately added in to show that things may not be what they seem?

Chaoyang is ultimately the most intriguing, if perplexing, character. He may seem vulnerable and innocent, but he is also a smart and guarded person. He may well be selfish at times, perhaps understandably--like how he does not wish his friends to report to the police the events leading to the death of his sister because he is worried that his father will not forgive him for the indirect role he plays in causing her death. Despite having incriminating evidence of the murderer killing people, he does not duplicate the video evidence (or has he really not done so?), perhaps because he is also in the videos and will have a lot of explaining to do to his mother. He can even be manipulative--after discovering his father's attempt to record their conversation, he guilt-trips the father into spending more time with him and giving him more attention.

The focus of the series in, finally, not on crime but on human nature. The almost-psychopathic murderer may not be ruthless all the time. The innocent kid may not be all that innocent. People have the capacity to be self-centered and go to extremes as a result, but perhaps parenting makes a big difference. The killer's character may have been shaped by his childhood experiences, and Chaoyang may well end up like him without proper parenting. On the other hand, the jealous, self-centered girl in Chaoyang's class appears to become better over time after her father's assurances that it does not matter whether it's the top student.