CB Series #2: The Reunion 顶天立地 (Mediacorp)
This is a story about three NS buddies and their journey to realising their ambitions after their army days. The story takes a dark turn when the three friends, each consumed by their own desires, find their paths diverging, and eventually, their friendship broken beyond repair.
If you wondering about the English title, the three buddies reunited on Christmas Eve night 12 years later to kill each other.
Brothers in arms
Kechun (Chew Chor Meng), Yazhou (Tay Ping Hui) and Guanjun (Terence Cao) were three young men who met and became buddies during their commando training in NS in 1985. They were close as biological brothers, sticking up for each other against the unit bully.
Perhaps the most memorable moment of the show, Kechun and Guanjun swapped guard duties without permission and got ratted out. They both got charged and sent to Detention Baracks (DB), but Yazhou beats the tattletale up and got sent into DB with his two friends as well.
Many Singaporean men may have mixed feelings about their NS experience, but one thing for certain is that bonds forged in the military are quite hard to forget. While my own BMT buddy is now outside the force, we still talk (albeit only very very once in a while). The shared experience and a common goal (be it to pass out from course or to countdown to ORD) brings men of different backgrounds together. The prolonged contact time allows everyone to know each other beyond the surface, from their living habits to how they perform under duress.
Underneath the uniforms
Yazhou: If you had $10 million right now, how would you spend it?
Kechun: Having $10 million does not mean you've won the world. If I have $10 million, I'll use $5 million to buy social standing and respect. Smugglers and drug traffickers may make $10 million, but they'll always be looked down upon. So even if you are rich, you must be a rich patrician, not some rich cad.
Yazhou: *nods*
Kechun: And you? What will you do if you had $10 million?
Yazhou: I don't want that money.
Kechun: Why not?
Yazhou: My father used to have many $10 millions. But when his business failed, he lost his mind and my mother killed herself. My sister...we've lost touch. I was sent to the Boys' Home for theft and robbery. If my family weren't rich to start with, my family would probably still be together happily.
The peculiar thing about a military uniform is that it literally serves the purpose of stripping away a soldier's individuality to assimilate everyone into one cohesive unit. It is easy to forget that under every uniform is a person with his own past, personality and aspirations.
Early on, the story branches into each of the three individuals' story arcs, and we are introduced to who they are outside their identity as soldiers.
Kechun's father was a criminal, and his mother a bargirl, both of whom he considered to be an embarrassment to him. As a result he lied to all his peers that his parents were business people and that he lived in a condo. On a few occasions, his mother attempted to break into the commando army camp to borrow money from him. She tricked him into selling their house to repay her debts, leaving him without a home to return to after NS (more about this later).
He aspired to become a renowned lawyer to gain respect in society.
Yazhou used to be from an affluent family, but his family went bankrupt from a failed business venture when he was a child. His family fell apart and Yazhou turned to a life of crime and street fights as a youth and was committed to a Boys' Home at 16.
Stoic and unfazed on the outside, we are exposed to his inner vulnerabilities through his letters to a penpal, Yuhang (Wong Li Lin). He had low self esteem due to his traumatic past and can't walk in society with his head up high. Through a dialogue with Kechun, he mentioned that the way people looked at his family changed when they went bankrupt- an experience that evidently affected him significantly.
Guanjun was raised by a single mother Foul-Mouthed Lian (Koh Chieng Mun) who raised him by singing Chinese Opera. His father apparently left them both. Guanjun was a loud-mouthed trumpet who liked to toot his own horn about making it rich despite having no concrete plans to achieve that. His aspirations were to "make it rich" to give his mother a comfortable life and marry the girl he had always liked, a florist named Xiuwen (Yvonne Lim).
You may realise at this point that of the three characters, Guanjun is the only one who can be read right off the bat. His emotions and desires were written all over his face and his two buddies knew everything about him, from his single-parent household to the girl he liked to his plans for the future (i.e. none). Yazhou and Kechun, however, had information about themselves they were not completely honest about to everyone in the trio (either through outright lying or from withholding). We are left to infer things about them through their actions, expressions and interactions with other characters.
I think this is the case with a vast majority of people in society. The relationships we form with people are based on what we think we know and what they are willing to reveal. When new information is surfaced, it may change the way we relate to them.
In addition, we can also tell that Yazhou was the pillar holding the trio together. Empathetic and loyal, he was the one with whom Kechun and Guanjun could have deep conversations with. Between Guanjun and Yazhou, Yazhou was the one who knew about the truth about Kechun's family. Between Yazhou and Kechun, Yazhou was the one who went to Guanjun's opera shows and helped him beat off an old family enemy.
It kind of makes sense if you think about it. Guanjun had other people he cared about more (his mother, Xiuwen, his friends outside the army). Kechun placed relationships low on his list of priorities (as evidenced from later events). Yazhou did not seem to much else other than his two buddies, except his mentally ill father, estranged sister and Yuhang who was a new friend. His family falling apart might have influenced him to cherish every relationship too.
Like real-life relationships, there will always be people who invest more into a relationship than the other party.
Seeds of resentment
While the trio appeared to be great brothers, jealousy was simmering under the surface between Yazhou and Kechun. This was when the three were at their closest, even before any hint of conflict. Yazhou surpassed Kechun in combat fitness, and Kechun, who needed to win in everything, did not like it.
Before their ORD (the end of the two years of conscription), there was a major exercise for the commando unit. The three men did their typical bro thing. Yazhou and Guanjun waited for Kechun even as Kechun was struggling with the task in the swimming pool, and waited for him to surface before moving off together for their next task, even if the entire exercise was timed.
However, the show allows you to closely observe their dynamics during the paintball task.
Yazhou did what a good bro should have; saved Kechun from an enemy soldier. Kechun was not pleased- he saw this as being overshadowed.
This was him talking to himself after lagging behind just before the combat task.
To Yazhou, he was sticking up for a friend because he cared about loyalty. To Kechun, his friend was beating him because he cared about winning. On a fundamental level, the two could not even interpret a simple act the same way.
In a real relationship, this can possibly be resolved through mature conversation, but if you recall, Yazhou and Kechun were not people who were honest about their feelings. Guanjun, as a neutral party, could have arrested a potential crack in the friendship at this point, but as someone who wore his heart on his sleeve, he naturally assumed the same of everyone and failed to read between lines. This was the first beacon point in the deterioriation of the friendship.
This is how misunderstandings happen in real life and true enough, it set the stage for major conflict later in the show.
Making their mark
Homeless Kechun was now ready to start uni. While he initially had plans to stay on campus, campus hostels cost money. Guanjun introduced him to his love interest Xiuwen, as she had wanted to learn computers and Kechun was good at it. Xiuwen was a simple girl but had a relatively decent standard of living. She ran her own floral business and had her own place. She developed a liking to the smart and ambitious Kechun. Kechun saw his chance- he seduced Xiuwen despite what his friend would think. He needed the free lodging.
While at law school, Kechun found his true target. We are informed that she was the campus beauty queen, was a kind girl who just wanted a loving family, did charity work and was a perfect girl etc, yet you've never met anyone more unlikeable and stupid. Meet Zhu Yuhang, daughter of law magnate Steven Choo (Huang Wenyong). If you recall from the previous paragraph, she was Yazhou's penpal and by this time, the two had developed mutual feelings for each other.
Kechun had his eyes on the prize (her family's law firm and wealth) at first sight, and was determined to marry into her family. He seduced Yuhang despite what his friend would think. He needed the career prospect and a chance to earn a standing in society.
Guanjun was reduced to being a bookie, collecting horse betting money to make ends meet. After getting on the bad side of a gang in Singapore, he was "forced" to abscond to Thailand. By a twist of fate, he meets international druglord Taiba who took him under his wing, teaching him to run casinos, vice rings and sell drugs.
Earlier while they were still in army, the three friends were put through a selection test for special task force agents. Yazhou was the only one who passed (the other two did not know it was a selection test) and was presented the opportunity to undergo special agent training. In exchange, he had to keep mum about his identity as a special agent as he would be required for critical missions. Not wanting to lead a life of shame after being a small-time criminal as a youth, Yazhou accepted the job. Not even Kechun and Guanjun knew this- he lied to them that he was off to be a seaman.
It is interesting how much foreshadowing we get from the supporting characters who had earlier picked the same path as the three men.
Law magnate Steven Choo (later Kechun's father-in-law) did exactly what Kechun plotted to do- Yuhang's maternal grandfather owned a law firm so Steven Choo married Yuhang's mother for the money and the business. He later died as a result of the power struggle for the law firm between himself, his mistress and his son-in-law Kechun. Taiba died in the hands of the police after a life of organised crime. Yazhou's fellow special agent Xiaoyang lost both her parents and her undercover policeman boyfriend while in the line of duty, leaving her all alone in the fight for justice.
Funny how sometimes life gives you warnings and you still throd down the exact. Same. Path.
Conflict of romance
For Kechun to succeed, he needed to drive a wedge between Yuhang and his friend Yazhou. This was a critical turning point in Yazhou and Kechun's friendship. We start to see the full prowess of Kechun's manipulative bastard skills- playing Yazhou's identity as an undercover cop against Yuhang so she would misunderstand him, and later, playing Yazhou's insecurities against him so he would leave Yuhang.
Once he got Yuhang at his fingertips, obviously, he needed to get rid of his old lover, Xiuwen. Xiuwen was not only pregnant with his child now, she was slightly unhinged from being jilted and threatened to reveal their tryst to Yuhang. Not wanting to risk losing his golden cash cow, Kechun drugged Guanjun and set him up with Xiuwen to deceive Guanjun into thinking the child was his. Obviously, the friendship blew apart and Guanjun and Kechun turned into bitter enemies over Xiuwen.
To the viewer, Kechun seems like a completely sociopathic, evil madman who sacrificed his friends in this manner just for laughs. Actually I disagree- removing the fact that he murdered Xiuwen, everything else about him is how sociopaths would act realistically. Don't talk to them about your feelings because they can't find any shits to give- they only care about what they want. They are capable of faking entire relationships and manipulating public opinion about you to isolate you from your trusted circle.
Kechun was intelligent, capable, glib, young and handsome- all of which are assets he happily leveraged to advance his cause. His petite, good-two-shoes image also gave other characters the impression of a harmles nerd while hiding his emotional intellgence and cunning personality. This allowed the people around him to trust him easily and be manipulated.
Often in life, people who play their cards straight (like Guanjun) get hurt the worst. He was like an open book pouring his heart out to Kechun and Yazhou. It is not wrong; with the right people, like his sidekick Sanwan and his neighbour Mingzhu, he can form the strongest relationships. With someone like Kechun, his sincerity and trust get stored as sabotage capital. On hindsight, you now realise it was inevitable that Yazhou and Kechun could not open up like Guanjun did. Most people are not trying to be deceptive, insincere or liars on purpose; they are just protecting themselves.
Conflict of principles
As a special agent, Yazhou was tasked to go undercover to bust the drug lord Taiba. Yazhou used Guanjun, who was now Taiba's right-hand man, to enter Taiba's trusted inner circle and finally kill Taiba, accomplishing his mission.
Guanjun, who has always seen Taiba as a benefactor, was naturally mortally offended by Yazhou's "betrayal". During the showdown between Taiba, Yazhou and Guanjun, Guanjun shot Yazhou in the back, putting Yazhou in a vegetative state for months. With that, Guanjun and Yazhou turned into bitter enemies.
While Yazhou and Guanjun appeared to share the same views on loyalty, a critical conversation they had showed us that what they did not share was a common definition of loyalty. Guanjun felt betrayed as Yazhou had killed his mentor, but Yazhou reminded him that Taiba was an international criminal who was a ruthless murderer. Guanjun replied that it did not matter what Taiba was, Taiba was the only person who saw value in him and for that, he was willing to lay his life for him.
To Guanjun, being loyal to your brothers meant doing everything and anything for them. This was evident in how his men acted when he had his own triad. He could yell orders at them and his men scurried to get it done without question. It also explained his increased respect for Yazhou back in NS when Yazhou whacked up the tattletale and ended up in DB with him and Kechun, despite the fact that beating someone up was wrong.
To Yazhou, however, there was a limit to everything and enabling his friend to work for a druglord was below that moral baseline. Yazhou thought that as a a true brother, the right thing to do was steer his friend back to the right path.
Two interesting contrasts between this friendship and that with Kechun is that one, the broken friendship clearly affected them both. Yazhou's distress took a more visible form. Barely functioning not just becaise the gunshot from Guanjun injured his nerves, but also because he was unable to recover from the trauma of almost being killed by a close friend. Guanjun tried to leave the past behind but was clearly triggered when one of his men commented on a TV show, in which someone "shot his buddy from the back". Turn that shit off said Guanjun; he don't want to be reminded of what he did to Yazhou. A second was that remnants of their feelings for each other remained even after the big confortation. Yazhou and Guanjun let each other go on multiple occasions and Yazhou had even attempted to talk his friend around.
Since NS days, Yazhou had been the pillar of the friendship. The above events took the hardest toll on Yazhou and he held onto the friendship for the longest, until Guanjun killed Yazhou's friend Xiaoyang. That was the trigger in getting Yazhou to fully recover from his injuries and return to the police force to track Guanjun down.
"I'm sorry Xiaoyang, I should have pulled the trigger then when you told me to kill Guanjun."
In the final few episodes, a subordinate of Yazhou realised he was still keeping a photo of him and his two buddies in his car. She asked if Guanjun and him used to be friends. At first it seemed like Yazhou was fondly describing Guanjun's idiosyncrasies during their NS days until Yazhou came back to the point- Guanjun's character is as such, he has these skills, so they needed to play that against him to capture him. Yazhou used the same method against Kechun in the final climax. Memories of the friendship were no longer a fond reminiscence; they were now tools used against his friends to defeat them.
With that, we know the friendship had passed the point of no return.
This drama was released in 2001 and had left a deep impression on me since. The gunfights and underworld backdrop aside, the three main characters could represent anyone in society. It also realistically represents the formation and downfall of a friendship.
Schools and NS are stages in life when many young people forge their friendships, later to part ways to experience life for what it truly is. They are sheltered, relatively low-stakes environments where friendships can remain unbastardised and uncomplicated. Kechun himself said, while they were in NS, he was physically the weakest and everyone looked down on him except Yazhou and Guanjun, which was why he picked them as friends.
But you step out into society and realise it is not the same in the wider scheme of things when careers, romance and principles are added into the equation. At which point, you must be prepared to lose at least a few people in your life.
If Kechun, Yazhou and Guanjun completely went separate paths after NS, perhaps today they could be three happy middle-aged men catching up every once a year over coffee bragging about their business ventures and their children's milestones. Good lord I sound like Ru Yi.
However, their paths were destined to intertwine. Yazhou and Guanjun both picked career paths that inevitably put them at odds. The three men knew the same people (Mingzhu, Xiaoyang, Yuhang and Xiuwen), which provided conflict in their romatic lives. In real life, where there is conflict of interest friends are forced to confront their priorities. You may realise you don't mean as much to your friend (Kechun) as they meant to you (Yazhou). You realise they value other things more (Guanjun, Kechun). You realise your mutual friends are stupid (Yuhang) who readily believe everything the opposite side says and you get isolated from them. In same cases, maybe you don't even have the same moral baseline. So it ends in one of three possible outcomes: you part amicably, or you successfully sort out your differences and the friendship emerges stronger than before.
Or you wind up bitterly hating each other.
"I'm very tired"
There is no long epilogue at the end. After the final climax we are just shown a 1 min scene of Yazhou resigning from the force, and Yuhang driving with her daughter to the airport. In a four-sentence letter she left to Yazhou, she said all that happened left her very tired, and that she'd be leaving with her daughter to Australia.
I think it's a perfect conclusion to everything, because too many of us try and seek closure where there is none to have. I have had a bad fallout with a friend before. Many of us have had breakups. And I think some of us have tried seeking the other party out for one last conversation, for a long reflection, just to ensure no feelings of resentment remain.
While I think it's a healthy way to cope with lost relationships, we need to accept that we won't always have this prvilege. The other parties will not always be available for that. Sometimes the best closure is to be had with yourself. You will hurt, you will cry, you will find 100 ways to find answers and not find any.
But ultimately, you must sort it out, leave the unhappy past behind, and like what Guanjun said just before ORD (almost like an ominous foreboding): 该忘的人，总该要忘的. (What's meant to be forgetten, should be forgotten.)
The Reunion with Emglish subtitles is available on Mewatch.sg (episode 1 is missing, not sure why. But you won't miss much, half of it is repeated in episode 31).
If you wondering about the English title, the three buddies reunited on Christmas Eve night 12 years later to kill each other.
Brothers in arms
"With my brawn, Kechun's brains and your worldy experience, the three of us can easily dominate the streets!" - Guanjun
Kechun (Chew Chor Meng), Yazhou (Tay Ping Hui) and Guanjun (Terence Cao) were three young men who met and became buddies during their commando training in NS in 1985. They were close as biological brothers, sticking up for each other against the unit bully.
Perhaps the most memorable moment of the show, Kechun and Guanjun swapped guard duties without permission and got ratted out. They both got charged and sent to Detention Baracks (DB), but Yazhou beats the tattletale up and got sent into DB with his two friends as well.
Many Singaporean men may have mixed feelings about their NS experience, but one thing for certain is that bonds forged in the military are quite hard to forget. While my own BMT buddy is now outside the force, we still talk (albeit only very very once in a while). The shared experience and a common goal (be it to pass out from course or to countdown to ORD) brings men of different backgrounds together. The prolonged contact time allows everyone to know each other beyond the surface, from their living habits to how they perform under duress.
Underneath the uniforms
Yazhou: If you had $10 million right now, how would you spend it?
Kechun: Having $10 million does not mean you've won the world. If I have $10 million, I'll use $5 million to buy social standing and respect. Smugglers and drug traffickers may make $10 million, but they'll always be looked down upon. So even if you are rich, you must be a rich patrician, not some rich cad.
Yazhou: *nods*
Kechun: And you? What will you do if you had $10 million?
Yazhou: I don't want that money.
Kechun: Why not?
Yazhou: My father used to have many $10 millions. But when his business failed, he lost his mind and my mother killed herself. My sister...we've lost touch. I was sent to the Boys' Home for theft and robbery. If my family weren't rich to start with, my family would probably still be together happily.
The peculiar thing about a military uniform is that it literally serves the purpose of stripping away a soldier's individuality to assimilate everyone into one cohesive unit. It is easy to forget that under every uniform is a person with his own past, personality and aspirations.
Early on, the story branches into each of the three individuals' story arcs, and we are introduced to who they are outside their identity as soldiers.
Kechun's father was a criminal, and his mother a bargirl, both of whom he considered to be an embarrassment to him. As a result he lied to all his peers that his parents were business people and that he lived in a condo. On a few occasions, his mother attempted to break into the commando army camp to borrow money from him. She tricked him into selling their house to repay her debts, leaving him without a home to return to after NS (more about this later).
He aspired to become a renowned lawyer to gain respect in society.
Yazhou used to be from an affluent family, but his family went bankrupt from a failed business venture when he was a child. His family fell apart and Yazhou turned to a life of crime and street fights as a youth and was committed to a Boys' Home at 16.
Stoic and unfazed on the outside, we are exposed to his inner vulnerabilities through his letters to a penpal, Yuhang (Wong Li Lin). He had low self esteem due to his traumatic past and can't walk in society with his head up high. Through a dialogue with Kechun, he mentioned that the way people looked at his family changed when they went bankrupt- an experience that evidently affected him significantly.
Guanjun was raised by a single mother Foul-Mouthed Lian (Koh Chieng Mun) who raised him by singing Chinese Opera. His father apparently left them both. Guanjun was a loud-mouthed trumpet who liked to toot his own horn about making it rich despite having no concrete plans to achieve that. His aspirations were to "make it rich" to give his mother a comfortable life and marry the girl he had always liked, a florist named Xiuwen (Yvonne Lim).
*ahem* who actually liked Kechun
You may realise at this point that of the three characters, Guanjun is the only one who can be read right off the bat. His emotions and desires were written all over his face and his two buddies knew everything about him, from his single-parent household to the girl he liked to his plans for the future (i.e. none). Yazhou and Kechun, however, had information about themselves they were not completely honest about to everyone in the trio (either through outright lying or from withholding). We are left to infer things about them through their actions, expressions and interactions with other characters.
I think this is the case with a vast majority of people in society. The relationships we form with people are based on what we think we know and what they are willing to reveal. When new information is surfaced, it may change the way we relate to them.
In addition, we can also tell that Yazhou was the pillar holding the trio together. Empathetic and loyal, he was the one with whom Kechun and Guanjun could have deep conversations with. Between Guanjun and Yazhou, Yazhou was the one who knew about the truth about Kechun's family. Between Yazhou and Kechun, Yazhou was the one who went to Guanjun's opera shows and helped him beat off an old family enemy.
It kind of makes sense if you think about it. Guanjun had other people he cared about more (his mother, Xiuwen, his friends outside the army). Kechun placed relationships low on his list of priorities (as evidenced from later events). Yazhou did not seem to much else other than his two buddies, except his mentally ill father, estranged sister and Yuhang who was a new friend. His family falling apart might have influenced him to cherish every relationship too.
Like real-life relationships, there will always be people who invest more into a relationship than the other party.
Seeds of resentment
While the trio appeared to be great brothers, jealousy was simmering under the surface between Yazhou and Kechun. This was when the three were at their closest, even before any hint of conflict. Yazhou surpassed Kechun in combat fitness, and Kechun, who needed to win in everything, did not like it.
Before their ORD (the end of the two years of conscription), there was a major exercise for the commando unit. The three men did their typical bro thing. Yazhou and Guanjun waited for Kechun even as Kechun was struggling with the task in the swimming pool, and waited for him to surface before moving off together for their next task, even if the entire exercise was timed.
However, the show allows you to closely observe their dynamics during the paintball task.
Yazhou did what a good bro should have; saved Kechun from an enemy soldier. Kechun was not pleased- he saw this as being overshadowed.
This was him talking to himself after lagging behind just before the combat task.
To Yazhou, he was sticking up for a friend because he cared about loyalty. To Kechun, his friend was beating him because he cared about winning. On a fundamental level, the two could not even interpret a simple act the same way.
In a real relationship, this can possibly be resolved through mature conversation, but if you recall, Yazhou and Kechun were not people who were honest about their feelings. Guanjun, as a neutral party, could have arrested a potential crack in the friendship at this point, but as someone who wore his heart on his sleeve, he naturally assumed the same of everyone and failed to read between lines. This was the first beacon point in the deterioriation of the friendship.
This is how misunderstandings happen in real life and true enough, it set the stage for major conflict later in the show.
Making their mark
"Life is like a stage. If you want to sing, make sure you make something out of it. Don't be like my mum, who has not made a name for herself after so many years. What's the use?" - Guanjun
Homeless Kechun was now ready to start uni. While he initially had plans to stay on campus, campus hostels cost money. Guanjun introduced him to his love interest Xiuwen, as she had wanted to learn computers and Kechun was good at it. Xiuwen was a simple girl but had a relatively decent standard of living. She ran her own floral business and had her own place. She developed a liking to the smart and ambitious Kechun. Kechun saw his chance- he seduced Xiuwen despite what his friend would think. He needed the free lodging.
"I can't stay at your place for free Xiuwen, so I'll pay you with a good time. Who is Guanjun?"
While at law school, Kechun found his true target. We are informed that she was the campus beauty queen, was a kind girl who just wanted a loving family, did charity work and was a perfect girl etc, yet you've never met anyone more unlikeable and stupid. Meet Zhu Yuhang, daughter of law magnate Steven Choo (Huang Wenyong). If you recall from the previous paragraph, she was Yazhou's penpal and by this time, the two had developed mutual feelings for each other.
Kechun had his eyes on the prize (her family's law firm and wealth) at first sight, and was determined to marry into her family. He seduced Yuhang despite what his friend would think. He needed the career prospect and a chance to earn a standing in society.
"I'm the accused Li Kechun, I love you Yuhang. By the way, does your father Steven Choo have any money left or has he given it all to his mistress?"
Guanjun was reduced to being a bookie, collecting horse betting money to make ends meet. After getting on the bad side of a gang in Singapore, he was "forced" to abscond to Thailand. By a twist of fate, he meets international druglord Taiba who took him under his wing, teaching him to run casinos, vice rings and sell drugs.
Earlier while they were still in army, the three friends were put through a selection test for special task force agents. Yazhou was the only one who passed (the other two did not know it was a selection test) and was presented the opportunity to undergo special agent training. In exchange, he had to keep mum about his identity as a special agent as he would be required for critical missions. Not wanting to lead a life of shame after being a small-time criminal as a youth, Yazhou accepted the job. Not even Kechun and Guanjun knew this- he lied to them that he was off to be a seaman.
"I don't want to give up, I want to become the Elite of the Elites."
It is interesting how much foreshadowing we get from the supporting characters who had earlier picked the same path as the three men.
Law magnate Steven Choo (later Kechun's father-in-law) did exactly what Kechun plotted to do- Yuhang's maternal grandfather owned a law firm so Steven Choo married Yuhang's mother for the money and the business. He later died as a result of the power struggle for the law firm between himself, his mistress and his son-in-law Kechun. Taiba died in the hands of the police after a life of organised crime. Yazhou's fellow special agent Xiaoyang lost both her parents and her undercover policeman boyfriend while in the line of duty, leaving her all alone in the fight for justice.
Funny how sometimes life gives you warnings and you still throd down the exact. Same. Path.
Conflict of romance
For Kechun to succeed, he needed to drive a wedge between Yuhang and his friend Yazhou. This was a critical turning point in Yazhou and Kechun's friendship. We start to see the full prowess of Kechun's manipulative bastard skills- playing Yazhou's identity as an undercover cop against Yuhang so she would misunderstand him, and later, playing Yazhou's insecurities against him so he would leave Yuhang.
Once he got Yuhang at his fingertips, obviously, he needed to get rid of his old lover, Xiuwen. Xiuwen was not only pregnant with his child now, she was slightly unhinged from being jilted and threatened to reveal their tryst to Yuhang. Not wanting to risk losing his golden cash cow, Kechun drugged Guanjun and set him up with Xiuwen to deceive Guanjun into thinking the child was his. Obviously, the friendship blew apart and Guanjun and Kechun turned into bitter enemies over Xiuwen.
To the viewer, Kechun seems like a completely sociopathic, evil madman who sacrificed his friends in this manner just for laughs. Actually I disagree- removing the fact that he murdered Xiuwen, everything else about him is how sociopaths would act realistically. Don't talk to them about your feelings because they can't find any shits to give- they only care about what they want. They are capable of faking entire relationships and manipulating public opinion about you to isolate you from your trusted circle.
Kechun was intelligent, capable, glib, young and handsome- all of which are assets he happily leveraged to advance his cause. His petite, good-two-shoes image also gave other characters the impression of a harmles nerd while hiding his emotional intellgence and cunning personality. This allowed the people around him to trust him easily and be manipulated.
Often in life, people who play their cards straight (like Guanjun) get hurt the worst. He was like an open book pouring his heart out to Kechun and Yazhou. It is not wrong; with the right people, like his sidekick Sanwan and his neighbour Mingzhu, he can form the strongest relationships. With someone like Kechun, his sincerity and trust get stored as sabotage capital. On hindsight, you now realise it was inevitable that Yazhou and Kechun could not open up like Guanjun did. Most people are not trying to be deceptive, insincere or liars on purpose; they are just protecting themselves.
Conflict of principles
As a special agent, Yazhou was tasked to go undercover to bust the drug lord Taiba. Yazhou used Guanjun, who was now Taiba's right-hand man, to enter Taiba's trusted inner circle and finally kill Taiba, accomplishing his mission.
Guanjun, who has always seen Taiba as a benefactor, was naturally mortally offended by Yazhou's "betrayal". During the showdown between Taiba, Yazhou and Guanjun, Guanjun shot Yazhou in the back, putting Yazhou in a vegetative state for months. With that, Guanjun and Yazhou turned into bitter enemies.
While Yazhou and Guanjun appeared to share the same views on loyalty, a critical conversation they had showed us that what they did not share was a common definition of loyalty. Guanjun felt betrayed as Yazhou had killed his mentor, but Yazhou reminded him that Taiba was an international criminal who was a ruthless murderer. Guanjun replied that it did not matter what Taiba was, Taiba was the only person who saw value in him and for that, he was willing to lay his life for him.
To Guanjun, being loyal to your brothers meant doing everything and anything for them. This was evident in how his men acted when he had his own triad. He could yell orders at them and his men scurried to get it done without question. It also explained his increased respect for Yazhou back in NS when Yazhou whacked up the tattletale and ended up in DB with him and Kechun, despite the fact that beating someone up was wrong.
To Yazhou, however, there was a limit to everything and enabling his friend to work for a druglord was below that moral baseline. Yazhou thought that as a a true brother, the right thing to do was steer his friend back to the right path.
Two interesting contrasts between this friendship and that with Kechun is that one, the broken friendship clearly affected them both. Yazhou's distress took a more visible form. Barely functioning not just becaise the gunshot from Guanjun injured his nerves, but also because he was unable to recover from the trauma of almost being killed by a close friend. Guanjun tried to leave the past behind but was clearly triggered when one of his men commented on a TV show, in which someone "shot his buddy from the back". Turn that shit off said Guanjun; he don't want to be reminded of what he did to Yazhou. A second was that remnants of their feelings for each other remained even after the big confortation. Yazhou and Guanjun let each other go on multiple occasions and Yazhou had even attempted to talk his friend around.
Since NS days, Yazhou had been the pillar of the friendship. The above events took the hardest toll on Yazhou and he held onto the friendship for the longest, until Guanjun killed Yazhou's friend Xiaoyang. That was the trigger in getting Yazhou to fully recover from his injuries and return to the police force to track Guanjun down.
"I'm sorry Xiaoyang, I should have pulled the trigger then when you told me to kill Guanjun."
In the final few episodes, a subordinate of Yazhou realised he was still keeping a photo of him and his two buddies in his car. She asked if Guanjun and him used to be friends. At first it seemed like Yazhou was fondly describing Guanjun's idiosyncrasies during their NS days until Yazhou came back to the point- Guanjun's character is as such, he has these skills, so they needed to play that against him to capture him. Yazhou used the same method against Kechun in the final climax. Memories of the friendship were no longer a fond reminiscence; they were now tools used against his friends to defeat them.
With that, we know the friendship had passed the point of no return.
Closing thoughts
This drama was released in 2001 and had left a deep impression on me since. The gunfights and underworld backdrop aside, the three main characters could represent anyone in society. It also realistically represents the formation and downfall of a friendship.
Schools and NS are stages in life when many young people forge their friendships, later to part ways to experience life for what it truly is. They are sheltered, relatively low-stakes environments where friendships can remain unbastardised and uncomplicated. Kechun himself said, while they were in NS, he was physically the weakest and everyone looked down on him except Yazhou and Guanjun, which was why he picked them as friends.
But you step out into society and realise it is not the same in the wider scheme of things when careers, romance and principles are added into the equation. At which point, you must be prepared to lose at least a few people in your life.
If Kechun, Yazhou and Guanjun completely went separate paths after NS, perhaps today they could be three happy middle-aged men catching up every once a year over coffee bragging about their business ventures and their children's milestones. Good lord I sound like Ru Yi.
However, their paths were destined to intertwine. Yazhou and Guanjun both picked career paths that inevitably put them at odds. The three men knew the same people (Mingzhu, Xiaoyang, Yuhang and Xiuwen), which provided conflict in their romatic lives. In real life, where there is conflict of interest friends are forced to confront their priorities. You may realise you don't mean as much to your friend (Kechun) as they meant to you (Yazhou). You realise they value other things more (Guanjun, Kechun). You realise your mutual friends are stupid (Yuhang) who readily believe everything the opposite side says and you get isolated from them. In same cases, maybe you don't even have the same moral baseline. So it ends in one of three possible outcomes: you part amicably, or you successfully sort out your differences and the friendship emerges stronger than before.
Or you wind up bitterly hating each other.
"Merry CHRISTMAS!! Dipshit"
"I'm very tired"
There is no long epilogue at the end. After the final climax we are just shown a 1 min scene of Yazhou resigning from the force, and Yuhang driving with her daughter to the airport. In a four-sentence letter she left to Yazhou, she said all that happened left her very tired, and that she'd be leaving with her daughter to Australia.
I think it's a perfect conclusion to everything, because too many of us try and seek closure where there is none to have. I have had a bad fallout with a friend before. Many of us have had breakups. And I think some of us have tried seeking the other party out for one last conversation, for a long reflection, just to ensure no feelings of resentment remain.
While I think it's a healthy way to cope with lost relationships, we need to accept that we won't always have this prvilege. The other parties will not always be available for that. Sometimes the best closure is to be had with yourself. You will hurt, you will cry, you will find 100 ways to find answers and not find any.
But ultimately, you must sort it out, leave the unhappy past behind, and like what Guanjun said just before ORD (almost like an ominous foreboding): 该忘的人，总该要忘的. (What's meant to be forgetten, should be forgotten.)
The Reunion with Emglish subtitles is available on Mewatch.sg (episode 1 is missing, not sure why. But you won't miss much, half of it is repeated in episode 31).
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