General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

HIStory4 (HIStory4：近距离爱上你)

HIStory4: Close to You (HIStory4：近距離愛上你; also romanized as HIStory4: Jin Ju Li Ai Shang Ni) is a 2021 Taiwanese BL (Boys' Love) romantic comedy-drama, the fourth installment of the HIStory anthology series produced by Choco Technology New Media for the streaming platform LINE TV. It aired in Taiwan from 14 March to 16 May 2021 and follows two couples: two coworkers and roommates at a wedding planning company who stage a fake relationship, and two stepbrothers whose long-hidden feelings surface after their parents remarry.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title	HIStory4-近距離愛上你 (HIStory4: Jin Ju Li Ai Shang Ni)¹
Broadcast	LINE TV, Taiwan, 14 March – 16 May 2021¹
Format	20 episodes of about 25 minutes (about 8 hours 20 minutes total); also packaged as 10 episodes of about 45 minutes²^•³
Production	Choco Technology New Media (CHOCO Media); director Chen Yi-yu; screenwriters Shao Hui Ting and Lan Jin-ling²^•⁴
Main cast	Charles Tu, Anson Chen, An Jun Peng, Lin Chia Wei, with Cindy Chi as the female lead Liu Mei Fang⁵
Franchise position	Fourth entry in the HIStory series; preceded by HIStory3: Trapped and HIStory3: Make Our Days Count, followed by HIStory5: Love in the Future²
Viewership	Surpassed 4.65 million plays by the finale in May 2021⁶

Spoilers

Premise and couples

The series is set at Muse Weddings, a high-end wedding planning company in Taipei, a backdrop the series uses ironically: the leads sell curated happiness and public vows while managing private feelings that are harder to arrange.²

The first couple. Xiao Li Cheng (蕭立呈), played by Charles Tu, is the blunt, high-performing manager of the sales division. He has carried a crush on Liu Mei Fang (劉美芳), played by Cindy Chi, since childhood, and when she joins the company he discovers she is a fujoshi, a devoted fan of BL fiction. He approaches courtship like a business plan: he asks his best friend and roommate, the cool, aloof Teng Mu Ren (藤沐仁), played by Anson Chen, to pose as his "date," hoping that two handsome men together will catch Mei Fang's interest. The staged affection becomes real, and Li Cheng falls in love with Mu Ren himself.¹^•²

The second couple. Ye Xing Si (葉幸司), played by An Jun Peng, is the company's warm, easygoing creative director. His younger stepbrother Fu Yong Jie (傅永傑), played by Lin Chia Wei, is a medical student who has concealed an obsessive attachment to Xing Si for nearly ten years, feelings Xing Si has always read as family affection. The series treats Yong Jie's possessiveness as both romantic tension and a warning sign, and the couple's storyline involves coming out to their family and the risk of a family rupture.²^•⁴

The two storylines run in parallel with deliberately different tones: the workplace pair plays as comedy, the stepbrother pair as melodrama. Fan communities named the pairings 呈仁CP (Cheng-Ren) and 永幸CP (Yong-Xing).⁷

Production and broadcast

The HIStory franchise began in 2017 on CHOCO TV as a same-sex romance anthology; by February 2024 it comprised five seasons and nine units, with Close to You as the fourth season's single unit.⁸ Close to You was produced by Choco Technology New Media with LINE TV, directed by Chen Yi-yu (陳怡妤), and written by Shao Hui Ting (邵慧婷) and Lan Jin-ling (藍今翎).²^•⁴ At the launch event, the production promoted its four lead actors, whose average height exceeded 184 cm, as a "high-visual" ensemble.⁹

The series aired Sundays on LINE TV from 14 March to 16 May 2021. Distribution was packaged differently by platform: 20 episodes of roughly 25 minutes in the original release, and 10 episodes of about 45 minutes in international sales materials.¹^•²^•³

International release and home media

The official channel listed the broadcast territories as Taiwan (LINE TV), Japan (VideoMarket and RakutenTV), Hong Kong and Singapore (Viu), and the Americas, India, and the Philippines (VIKI).¹⁰ In Japan the series was released as HIStory4 隣のきみに恋して～Close to You, with a Blu-ray box of episodes 1 through 10 on 25 December 2021 at ¥15,400 tax included, with Japanese subtitles and a story leaflet as a bonus.⁴

Print tie-ins followed the broadcast. Sharp Point Press published a novelization credited to the novelist Xia Tian Qing (夏天晴) with the screenwriters and the production company, and a photo book, 近距離愛上你: HIStory4 典藏寫真書, was cataloged with ISBN 9786263080089.¹¹^•¹²

Reception

By the finale on 16 May 2021 the series had surpassed 4.65 million plays, and its signed-edition novel and photo merchandise sold out within ten minutes of release.⁶ Vogue Taiwan's review credited the series with a consistently sweet, comedy-toned rhythm across both couples and noted that its popularity carried the HIStory brand to Japanese television while broadening the audience beyond established BL viewers.¹³ A NOWnews columnist called it, in overall craft, the most mature Taiwanese BL production to that point.¹⁴

Critical response was not uniformly positive. The cultural magazine BIOS monthly observed that discussion on Plurk faded after the premiere, and argued that the stepbrother storyline, which includes stalking, covert filming, and a non-consensual sexual encounter, broke the internal logic that lets BL audiences accept such tropes as fantasy, leaving that storyline caught between viewers who read it as romance and viewers who read it as abuse.¹⁵ Viewer reviews on Letterboxd similarly split, praising the main couple while objecting to the stepbrother plot.¹⁶

The unit's commercial performance fed directly into the franchise's continuation: HIStory5: Love in the Future premiered on LINE TV on 28 December 2022 as the series' fifth season.⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › East Asian web and streaming serials › Titles Cr to In

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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