Notice: This article may contain spoilers for Friends.

NNNNOTICE!!! Please do not spoil the plot beyond season four for me after you finish reading this.

Monica and Richard have broken up.

Breakups are actually quite common in this show. Because I had been spoiled that Monica's ultimate destination wasn't Richard, I knew they would part ways the moment I saw them together.

Maybe it would happen in the next episode—Richard couldn't stand the way Monica insisted the sunflowers on her quilt face the headboard, or some other trivial thing. Anyway, it's just a breakup; I've seen plenty of them after watching several seasons.

But I didn't expect it to be for this reason... It felt like Plato crashing into the Titanic. I kept wondering, would there be a turning point? Would they compromise? Would they keep on loving each other? But I also knew for a fact that they would break up. See? This is the downside of spoilers.

Many, many years ago, while browsing Zhihu, I saw an answer to a question that was something like, "What books should young people read to establish their views on love?" Many were recommended, and I picked out several with interesting titles to add to my reading list.

One of them was The Lover.

To this day, I still don't understand why The Lover would appear in an answer recommending books to teenagers. What kind of view on love would reading such a book establish? Wouldn't you be doomed after reading it? Couldn't they have just fobbed us off with Flipped or Jane Eyre?

Of course, there's no need to worry about my view on love. Because at that time, my Kindle homepage happened to recommend The Lover to me, and I read it with great joy, which had a huge impact on my view of love. It’s just that the The Lover I read was written by Junichi Watanabe. So, my view on love was already doomed to begin with.

That book told me that beautiful love should be white. The beauty it possesses comes from, and only from, love itself. Just love, nothing else; as long as there is love, I have everything. Mature love happens between two mature people; they complement each other and explore new beauty together. They meet after many years apart, yet it feels as if they have lived together for a lifetime. He describes to you the alley he used to run through as a child, and closing your eyes, you can almost smell the scent of the rain splashing up from that alley.

When the male protagonist in The Lover (Junichi Watanabe) handed his bankbook to the female protagonist, I felt a sense of insult to the love between them. Then, flipping to the next page, the female lead felt the same way. Imagine a castle built upon love, composed entirely of love, where two people in love love each other. In my heart, this castle must be white. Because white is white; even the slightest hint of another color would be glaringly bright, and white cannot tolerate even a speck of impurity.

However, love is not a jigsaw puzzle, and we are all shaped in strange ways. Even if someone really is "The One," statistically speaking, it is almost impossible for you to just happen to meet them. Perhaps that person is separated from you by centuries, or perhaps by tens of thousands of kilometers. A castle cannot be built on a vacuum; the only things that can be carried by nothingness are nothingness itself or bubbles. Bubbles are beautiful, white with iridescent colors, yet fragile enough to burst with a single breath.

Because the heart has no weight, it can fly across the world, colliding with things regardless of worldly conventions. But the body is tethered to the ground, building the outer walls of the castle brick by brick. The materials include milk and breadcrumbs, and the rooms are filled with family, friends, children, and a simple meal.

That is why Monica and Richard broke up.

Because she discovered that Richard was not love, but a bubble that had grown into the shape of her love. Yet, many people go their whole lives without even seeing a bubble; a bubble is already beautiful enough. It just arrived a little late, missing love by a hair's breadth.

By the way, there was another book recommended in that answer called Love in the Time of Cholera. To write this essay, I specifically went to check my favorites, and thank goodness, at the time, I didn't find the title interesting.