After I was brought back to the Meng family, the fake daughter Meng Xuening took me on ninety-nine dates with her fiancé. Each time she cried and said, "She should be your fiancée. I am just an impostor." She locked Lu Yanxiu and me in a room together. She gave me the gifts he had bought for her. She dressed me in a dress identical to hers and asked him to choose. Every time, Lu Yanxiu chose her. Xuening grew drunk on that preference. For the hundredth test she asked him to propose on a livestream watched by millions. Under the lights, with the whole country watching, she declared again that she did not deserve him and bought a ticket to Paris that same night. "Lu Yanxiu, she should be your fiancée." She expected the same ending as always. But Lu Yanxiu looked at the cameras, at the millions of viewers, and at his cousins waiting to laugh. He rubbed his brow and said, "Meng Jianxi, will you marry me?" I smiled and put on the ten-carat pink diamond that had been meant for her. I became his fiancée to the applause of the guests and the elders. After everyone left, he looked at the string of red exclamation marks on his phone. "Jianxi, I am sorry. If you find someone you like, you may ask me to end this at any time. The Lu family will compensate you fairly. For now, we may need to attend some events together." I nodded gracefully. "Of course. I will be your fiancée until my sister returns."0

Lu Yanxiu had been humiliated by Xuening dozens of times. The elders of the Lu family had lost patience with him. If I had not stepped in, he and the Lu family would have become a joke. He was grateful, and gratitude was a useful place to start. "You do not have to blame my sister," I said. "She is only insecure. When she comes back, I will return the position of Mrs. Lu to her." He looked at me with something like relief. The next day he gave me a black card. "We are engaged. Use it for anything you need." I took it with a bright smile. "Thank you, Brother Yanxiu." I had grown up poor. I knew exactly what a black card meant. I also knew that Xuening had spent twenty years learning how to stand, speak, and smile in rooms like his. So I hired a etiquette teacher with the first money I received. I learned everything Xuening knew and everything she did not. I did not tell Lu Yanxiu. I sent him lunch in his grandmother's name. I stood beside him at galas and kept a comfortable distance. He began to rely on my presence without noticing. Two months passed. Then, at a meeting with an overseas client, the French translator collapsed. I stepped in and closed the deal in fluent French. Lu Yanxiu stared at me for a long time. I smiled into the light.0

Xuening called from Paris every night at first. Then the calls became messages, then demands. She could not understand why Lu Yanxiu had not come after her. She had used me to test him a hundred times. She had locked us in rooms, dressed us alike, even drugged him once. Every time he had chosen her, and she had screamed with joy and made him spin her around while I stood at the edge of the room like a piece of furniture. She forgot that the thing least able to survive being tested is a human heart. I planned the wedding with Lu Yanxiu calmly. His grandmother's health was failing, so the ceremony was rushed, but nothing was cheap. The Lu family opened their grand hall. Relatives, friends, and business partners filled the tables. Lu Yanxiu took me to pay respects to the ancestors. Then the doors opened and the guests turned. Xuening stood there in a white dress, thinner than before, her eyes red. She had come back. She looked at Lu Yanxiu, then at me in my wedding dress, and something in her face cracked. "Yanxiu," she said. "I am back." The hall went silent. Lu Yanxiu did not move. He looked at her for a long moment, then at me. "You are late," he said. Xuening's smile faltered.0