In the Past, Present, and Future, I Only Like You

“In the Past, Present, and Future, I Only Like You” is the declaration through which Gu Huaian makes his feelings for Shen Tang unmistakable. Its force lies in its temporal sweep: the confession does not limit love to the present crisis but claims continuity across the past, the present, and the future, giving the relationship a promise of constancy at the moment when Shen Tang is unsure whether she will remain beside him.

Context and Trigger

The expression appears during a conversation about a woman who had been Gu Huaian’s classmate overseas. Gu Huaian explains that they had not been close, and adds that she had received Western education from a young age and was therefore more physically affectionate. When she hugged him, he says, he immediately pushed her away. Shen Tang responds by asking whether he also told the woman that the embrace would cost extra, turning the potentially threatening romantic misunderstanding into a sarcastic exchange.

The clarification matters because Shen Tang is not simply being given information about another woman. The conversation places Gu Huaian’s boundaries and Shen Tang’s interpretation of them in direct contact. His insistence that he rejected the hug becomes the immediate groundwork for a stronger statement: the issue is not merely that he did not accept someone else’s affection, but that his emotional attachment is directed toward Shen Tang alone.

The Confession as a Turning Point

Gu Huaian first states that he does not like the overseas classmate. Shen Tang’s inner response reveals her defensive distance: she thinks that she should not care whom he likes because, in her understanding, he does not like her. The exchange therefore contains a sharp contrast between spoken dialogue and unspoken belief. Shen Tang treats herself as emotionally excluded even while the conversation is moving toward a disclosure that will overturn that assumption.

Gu Huaian then says, “I like you.” Shen Tang freezes, and he repeats the declaration more fully: “I like you, Shen Tang. In the past, present, and future, I only like you.” The repeated naming of Shen Tang removes ambiguity, while “only” establishes exclusivity. The three-part time structure expands the sentence from a confession of current attraction into a claim about the whole emotional direction of his life. In narrative terms, the value at stake shifts from uncertainty to acknowledgment: what Shen Tang believes is one-sided becomes openly mutual from Gu Huaian’s side.

The line also functions as an action rather than mere description. By speaking it, Gu Huaian takes responsibility for his feelings and changes the terms of the relationship. Shen Tang’s immediate shock—she freezes and stammers over how he could like her—shows that the confession has produced an effect beyond the information contained in its words. Her inner astonishment confirms that she had not expected the feeling to be returned, making the sentence a reversal of her working assumption about their intimacy.

Timing, Fear, and Emotional Stakes

The confession is made at an especially unstable moment. Shen Tang has not decided whether to stay in the world she currently inhabits or leave it for the other world where she grew up. She has money and friends where she is, but the other world remains the place of her formative life. Her uncertainty makes Gu Huaian’s declaration more urgent than a conventional romantic advance: he is not speaking into a secure future but trying to reach her before a possible separation makes the relationship impossible.

The narration directly identifies his fear that if he did not say it then, he might lose his wife. That fear gives the expression its pressure. Gu Huaian is not waiting for a perfectly prepared romantic scene; he speaks because delay itself has become dangerous. The line consequently carries two meanings at once. It is a confession of present love, and it is an attempt to hold open a shared future against Shen Tang’s unresolved decision to leave.

Shen Tang’s reaction preserves the asymmetry between what is said and what is emotionally understood. Gu Huaian can articulate an absolute preference, but Shen Tang initially receives it as something nearly impossible: she asks how he could like her and internally reacts with astonishment. The phrase thus marks not the end of uncertainty but the point at which uncertainty becomes speakable and can begin to be negotiated between them.

Relation to the Couple’s Communication

The expression gains additional significance from the couple’s habitual use of indirectness, teasing, and inner voices. Their conversation moves from the overseas classmate’s hug, to Gu Huaian’s rejection of that contact, to Shen Tang’s joke about charging extra, before arriving at an unequivocal declaration. The route is comic and defensive, but its destination is serious. Humor gives both characters room to approach jealousy and vulnerability without naming them at once.

The distinction between external speech and internal response is especially important. Gu Huaian says that he likes Shen Tang, while Shen Tang’s inner voice insists that he does not like her anyway. The sentence therefore exposes a gap between the relationship as Gu Huaian experiences it and the relationship as Shen Tang thinks she is permitted to understand it. Once the confession is spoken, that gap can no longer remain stable. His words challenge her interpretation of his behavior, while her shock shows how deeply she had relied on that interpretation.

The expression is also deliberately broader than a promise tied to one immediate circumstance. It does not say only that Gu Huaian likes Shen Tang now, or that he prefers her to the overseas classmate. By placing “only” across three temporal horizons, it presents his attachment as singular and continuous. That breadth is what allows the sentence to operate as a relationship-defining utterance rather than a passing reassurance.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

Within the romantic trajectory, the expression is a major movement from guarded attachment toward explicit commitment. Gu Huaian’s decision to speak before Shen Tang makes her choice about worlds gives the confession a characteristic tension between intimacy and possible loss. The declaration cannot guarantee that she will stay, but it ensures that her decision is made with knowledge of his feelings rather than under the mistaken belief that he does not love her.

The phrase also condenses the story’s concern with time, altered lives, and relationships that must survive uncertainty. Its past-present-future sequence is particularly resonant because Shen Tang’s life is divided between worlds and because the couple’s bond has developed under conditions that make ordinary romantic certainty difficult. Gu Huaian answers that instability with a verbal structure of continuity: whatever temporal point is considered, his stated preference remains Shen Tang.

As an expression, it therefore carries the emotional logic of a vow without adopting the formal language of a contract. Gu Huaian’s marriage to Shen Tang has contractual dimensions elsewhere in the story, but this sentence asserts a different kind of bond: not an arrangement enforced by terms, but an exclusive desire voluntarily spoken aloud. Its decisive consequence is not that every obstacle disappears, but that the central emotional fact can no longer be credibly denied—Gu Huaian wants Shen Tang, and he wants her across the whole span of time he can name.