How About Some Body Double Romance?

[New serial, My Childhood Friends Are All Villains. Please add it to your reading list!]

[The second story in the series. The first was a body-double trope featuring four stories about Dazai, Okkotsu, Yorichi, and Gojo. If you're interested, please check out the author's page.]

Chuuya's Story:

You're an assassin, and one day you take on a job.

Unfortunately, you fall in love with him while getting close to him.

You start questioning your professional ethics.

On a night ablaze with fireworks, he confesses to you.

Forget it. Who needs ethics when I can have a boyfriend?

He's thoughtful, caring, and adorable. You lose yourself in love and fall for him more and more.

When you learn that you look just like the woman he loved and lost, you pull yourself together, ready to pick up what little professional integrity you have left.

"Chuuya, would you like a gentle way to die?"

"I'll grant your wish, my former love."

Hijikata's Story (mutual body-double trope):

The first person you see after being reincarnated in another world is him. The moment he speaks, your heart skips a beat.

You see a brilliant light flicker in his eyes. He reaches out and draws you into his world.

He's strong and gentle, and your eyes are full of love whenever you look at him.

You hear he once loved a woman deeply, and that you look just like her.

Ah, so what? I'm only treating him as a stand-in, too.

"Toshi, sing me a song. A little lower, yes, just like that."

"I like it a lot."

Toji's Story:

On graduation day, a friend takes you to some kind of hostess club, saying you should experience the pleasures of adulthood.

You fall for a man with an incredible physique at first sight.

But you don't dare do anything. You sit awkwardly in a corner, and he comes over to you.

There's a scar at the corner of his mouth. It's so sexy.

You blush as you talk to him.

After that, you often sneak over alone and wait for him in the corner.

He turns down other jobs to come see you, shields you from other people's probing, covetous looks, and swaps your drink for juice.

You confess your feelings to him.

You thought it was just a one-sided crush, but he returns your feelings.

Then you think you're in love, only to accidentally learn the cruel truth.

Then what am I supposed to be?

I look so much like her, don't I?

You put down the photograph of the two of you.

And get ready to let him go, too.

"I'm sorry, Toji. I can't accept this."

"You'll wish me well, won't you, when I spend the rest of my life with someone else?"

Note:

[Body-double trope, you know the drill: vintage dog-blood melodrama, the most intense and unbeatable chase-your-wife-to-the-crematorium arc, the kind where not even the ashes are left. If it says a bad ending, it really means it. Chinese people don't lie to Chinese people.]

[The unusual tropes are extremely out of character. I'm in tears.]

[This is food I made for myself because I was starving and there was nothing to eat. Each story is thirteen chapters.]

[Second-person narration: the heroine is