If the lover you reunite with is actually another self, carefully disguised, is that love real or fake?
At eighteen, Jiang Wanqing untied the bow on Fu Chengyu’s wrist at a “matchmaking banquet” arranged by their families. Two model students wearing perfect masks secretly fell in love beyond the bounds of their assigned roles. But after the college entrance exams, one went overseas while the other stayed in China. Eight years passed without a word.
At twenty-eight, she’s a composed, professional cardiac surgeon on the verge of settling into a stable marriage. One stormy night, she “finds” a man in the emergency room who claims to have lost his memory: “Xiao Zimu.” He’s wild and sweet, his eyes full of her, yet his features are startlingly similar to Fu Chengyu, the head of the Fu family’s business empire, who has pushed her to the brink in the corporate world.
From then on, her world splits in two. By day, he’s the cold and aloof “Mr. Fu.” By night, he’s the passionate, straightforward “Xiao Zimu,” forcefully invading her life and using a fervor she’s never known to pry open her long-sealed heart.
As the romance woven from lies reaches its peak, the truth crashes down. This grand reunion is his desperate all-or-nothing gamble in the name of love. After stripping away every one of his social identities, he has offered her the most reckless and vulnerable version of his true self.
Jiang Wanqing must choose: embrace the wounded soul who created a substitute for her, or turn away and pursue the stable life laid out for her?
A “substitute game” that began with a bow, and an ultimate adventure in sincerity and pretense, duty and selfhood, is about to begin.
