The first time she met Jiang Wang, she was eight. He grabbed her arm and hid her behind a cabinet.
She said goodbye to Jiang Wang when she was fifteen. He was taken back to the Jiang family in Nanheng, and the farewell letter he wrote her promised they would meet again when she turned eighteen.
At eighteen, she ran away with nothing but a small suitcase and arrived in Nanheng City, but Jiang Wang was nowhere to be found.
Someone heard her say she was looking for Jiang Wang and took her to one of Nanheng's famous bars.
He lounged on a sofa beneath the bar's shifting lights.
A girl beside him smiled sweetly as she spoke to him. He toyed with a lighter, responding now and then.
For a moment, the flame illuminated his features, revealing the roguish, rakish look in his eyes.
She watched him for a long time. The girl beside him noticed and coyly asked who she was, and whether she was another love he'd gotten involved with somewhere.
He smiled lazily, his tone dismissive. "There are plenty of people pining after me. How could I remember every one of them?"
She shouldn't have clung to the thought, but his face was exactly the same as Jiang Wang's.
His friends called him Jiang Wang. He answered with an indifferent "Mm." Even his name was exactly the same.
Just as she finally let go and prepared to leave Nanheng,
Jiang Wang gripped her chin and forced her to look him in the eye. His gaze was fierce, his knuckles white with the force of his grip. Their friends beside them tried to persuade him to let it go.
But he stared at her intently. "Let it go? She's the one who started this. And now you want me to let it go?"
"Chen Xiruo, have you figured it out yet? Which one of us is who?
Every time you say my name, are you thinking of my counterfeit little brother, or of me?"
· The prodigal returns / the stand-in takes the place of the original
· 2023/3
Theme: No Such Summer
