I was the ninety-ninth stand-in.
Lu Yanzhou said I looked more like her than anyone else, but I was also the least like her. Our features were alike, but not our eyes. Hers held the waters of spring; mine were winter blades.
He laid down three rules: be on call twenty-four hours a day, have no personal feelings, and never fall in love with him.
I agreed to them all.
Because I had never come here to be a stand-in.
I had come for revenge.
For three years, under our contract, I played the woman he could never forget while he treated me like a shadow. I underwent memory surgery on his younger brother, and he sent me to prison. He held me in his arms on a rainy night and called me by her name; beneath the moonlight, I erased every memory of him.
I thought leaving would be the end.
But when I returned under another identity, standing at a height he could never reach, the man who had once held himself above everyone else knelt before me, eyes red, and said
“You used to kneel and beg me not to leave. Now it’s my turn.”
But Lu Yanzhou, love that comes too late is worth less than grass. Do you know that?
