Associated Titles: 你是我的荣耀
Author: 顾漫 (Gu Man)
Status: completed [37 chapters + 15 side stories]
Key words: intelligent female protagonist, actress, online gaming, comedy, old crush, mature main leads.
Link to the translation site(s) at the end of the review
Qiao Jing Jing is a very popular actress who has been able to keep her seat at the top of the acting industry for a long time. However, she made a blunder. During an interview about her being the spokesperson of a very popular online game, Kings of Glory, she claimed being a pro at playing the game. Actually not a blunder, but still a lie. Someone leaked a video of her QQ personal account playing KoG… well, if that could even be called playing ah. To calm the uproar and not disappoint her fans, QJJ accepts participating in an exhibition event after the autumn tournament, a bit more than one month away.
After skillfully calming down her Weibo fans, she is set in spending the whole month learning to properly play KoG from her manager’s husband, who is quite skilled at the game. But he isn’t that good of a teacher, or maybe she isn’t that good of a student (okay, let’s face it, she is quite awful). QJJ then discovers that a former classmate and her old crush, Yu Tu, is actually super skilled at this game, and so she devises a plan to make him come to her place and then convince him to teach her how to play during this month.
And here starts their journey together, where, while meeting each day at her place to play games, they will get to know more about the other and deepen their friendship. For Jing Jing, it’s a nostalgic time where she reminisces her youth days, when her unrequitted love received an answer she was dissatisfied with. Meanwhile, she is still filled with curiosity and admiration towards this person who has always unwaveringly chased after his dreams (also feels a bit attracted to him, after all it’s an old crush and currently very handsome ah). For Yu Tu, it’s getting to know the real her, the woman behind the actress, the person behind that girl he never really knew, and discover the brightness in her he was unable to see when he was younger.
Jing Jing is a strong and very clever woman, but she is also very hardworking, which led her to the place she is now. She is someone that knows what she wants and will take the initiative to get it, a totally charming personality. Althoug being very intelligent, she also has her dumb moments which make her totally cute. I love their interaction and how their relationship develops, they are both intelligent (both IQ and EQ) and, what’s more, mature. There are also funny moments here and there, especially the epilogues at the end of the story are hilarious. And its lovely to see how Yu Tu’s impression of her changes and his shock at his own thoughts at certain moments.
There are several situations in which they have diferent opinions and they inevitably quarrel, still they are both mature about it and try to solve it, so seeing them acting like that also feels nice, no unnecessary drama or misunderstandings. They are adults so sometimes they will also face difficult life choices, and overall the novel has this reality feeling to it.
The thing I repeat the most when praising this novel is probably the word ‘mature’ (and not in the R18 sense lol). Tired of reading countless shoujo mangas and webnovels where the MCs are stupid, naive, and totally immature girls, this novel is really a breath of fresh air. During the whole novel I keep having this thought, I have finally found a novel with mature characters, it’s such a wonderful thing to read. So, this is one of the points that makes me love it.
Unfortunetaly for me, although she is an actress there are no acting scenes (I’m a sucker for acting tags), but there will be a great amount of paragraphs with gaming and characters explanations (specially in the beginning), which I totally didn’t get but who cares, I’m sure you’re not here for the gaming. They don’t get too bothersome either and you can just skim through them. The development of their romance is really yummy and the comedy is also there in the right amount ^^.
It is almost completely translated, only a few epilogues remining. The translator does a very good job and pays special attention to explain concepts that might be unkown to us foreign readers.
Links:
Description, chapter directory: NovelUpdates Original TLion site: Hui3r
Other novels by Gu Man: A slight smile is very charming Come and eat, Shan shan
Blooming Translation 