The day the Gu family threw me out, I knelt in the snow for two hours, and no one cared.
But Xie Chenglan, heir to the Xie family of the capital, came riding up in person and asked me in front of everyone, “Will you come with me?”
I thought he was my salvation.
Only later did I learn I was nothing but a substitute. My face looked so much like that of his dead true love.
He gave me a life of luxury and cared for me in every way, yet each night he wept before a portrait. The woman in it was called Aji. Her smiling eyes were his whole world.
I guarded his kindness, careful not to overstep.
Until one day, I accidentally found an old case file in his study
The one who had rescued him from the fire all those years ago wasn’t Aji at all.
It was me.
But he had mistaken me for someone else.
I looked at the case file, then at the face in the mirror, so much like Aji’s, and suddenly laughed.
So all along, I was the one he truly loved.
He just didn’t know it.
And I had no intention of telling him.
After all
Once you’ve played the substitute long enough, who would still want to be one?
Three years later, at a peace banquet between two nations.
Dressed in black, I sit among the enemy nation’s military advisers, looking across the room at him.
He stares at me, eyes reddening, his voice trembling. “A’an...”
I raise my wine cup in a distant toast, a faint smile on my lips.
“Mr. Xie, please call me Master Mingyu.”
