Jiang Yian worked as a stand-in for two years before he realized that the person he resembled was named Chen Yu.
Fu Sinian bought him a cashmere sweater of the same style as Chen Yu's, and let him have Chen Yu's hair style. Even when he called his name, he deliberately lowered the final sound - because Chen Yu's "yu" had a slightly upward arc, but he didn't. When Jiang Yian found the photo in Fu Sinian's study, the young man under the ginkgo tree smiled brightly and shared a similar face to himself. Only then did he realize that all the tenderness in those two years was not for him.
On a rainy night, he left Fu Snian's apartment and bumped into someone in the elevator. The man had high eyebrows and deep eye sockets, and his whole face was as cold as a frozen river in winter. He glanced at Jiang Yian and said, "My name is Chen Yu."
Later, Chen Yu came to pick up the coat he had left at Jiang Yian's place. He stood at the door of the rental house, looked over his shoulder at the cramped partition, and suddenly said, "Keep the clothes for now. I'll pick them up next time."
He didn't say when the next time would be. But the pine smell of the coat lingered in the room, like a too-long foreshadowing.
This is what it feels like to be seen - truly seen, from head to toe. It was not that he was looking for the shadow of an old friend in another person, but for the first time, someone pulled him out of the shadow and called his name.
Jiang Yian.
Intention: The true value of a person is not to be someone's shadow, but to be seen completely and without replacement by another person.