Chapter 1

We hadn’t seen each other for a while, so our friends arranged a meal together. Out of habit, I sat beside my best friend.

As she reached for some food, our chopsticks collided and hers fell to the floor. She turned on me.

“Xiaoyu, you know I’m left-handed. Why do you always have to sit next to me?”

I froze halfway down to pick up her chopsticks.

Lin Shu was left-handed. That was true.

But she had made me a private promise: whenever we ate together, she would use her right hand.

If she was using her left, then this person could not be her.

It went back years.

There had been a post online saying best friends always sat next to each other at meals.

After reading it, Lin Shu declared that from then on she would always sit beside me.

I laughed at her. “Idiot. You’re left-handed. If you sit next to me, won’t we keep bumping elbows?”

She thought for a moment, her eyes sparkling. “Easy. Whenever I eat with you, I’ll just use my right hand!”

I hadn’t expected her to last three days.

But she had done it.

For two whole years, whenever we ate together, she dutifully used her right hand.

Sometimes she would reach out with her left without thinking, then snatch it back and stick her tongue out at me, like a child caught doing something wrong.

She had said something else too.

“If I ever eat with you and use my left hand, that person definitely isn’t me anymore!”

Her face had been so serious that I remembered it clearly.

Yet here she was, holding her chopsticks in her left hand and deftly picking food from a plate.

I stared at that hand for several seconds, then bent to retrieve the fallen chopsticks.

My own hand would not stop shaking.

Could the person in front of me really not be Lin Shu?

Or was this just some little joke she was playing on me?

I looked up and forced a smile. “All right, all right. I’ll sit opposite you. Don’t be mad.”

I moved across the table with my bowl and asked for a fresh pair of chopsticks.

Lin Shu’s expression had returned to normal. As she swished slices of meat through the broth, she complained about one problem after another at work.

Her tone, her expressions, the rhythm of her speech—everything was just as I knew it.

Perhaps I had been too tired lately. Perhaps I was imagining things.

But I could not suppress the chill inside me.

Just then her boyfriend, Jiang Yue, returned from the restroom and settled naturally beside her.

For the rest of the meal, they chatted about familiar, everyday things.

Lin Shu complained that his mother was pushing too hard for them to marry. Jiang Yue smiled and put food in her bowl, saying they would have the wedding at the end of the year.

Everything looked utterly ordinary.

Until Lin Shu began eating noodles—and ate the scallions in her bowl without a second thought.

My heart jolted.

“Why are you eating scallions?”

Jiang Yue paused too, looking at her in confusion.

“Right, sweetheart. Don’t you hate scallions?”

Lin Shu looked briefly blank, then said reproachfully, “Blame your mother. She puts heaps of them in everything she cooks. I’ve got used to them.”

Jiang Yue gave an awkward smile and leaned over to coax her, oblivious to everyone else.

I broke into a cold sweat.

He had always thought Lin Shu avoided scallions because she was picky.

Only I knew she was allergic.

In our second year at university, a cafeteria worker had accidentally sprinkled a handful of chopped scallions over her food.

She had eaten two mouthfuls without noticing. That evening, I had taken her to the emergency room.

After that, she had not dared even to touch them.

Speech and behavior could be copied. Certain memories could be forgotten.

But a body’s reaction could not lie.

By the end of the meal, Lin Shu still showed no discomfort from the scallions.

Her skin was smooth, her breathing normal. She even put more scallions into Jiang Yue’s bowl.

My heart grew colder by degrees.

The person before me was not Lin Shu. I was certain of it now.

Then where was the real Lin Shu?

At home, I collapsed onto my bed and stared at the ceiling, my thoughts a tangled mess.

I tried to put the timeline in order.

When had Lin Shu begun to change?

A week ago, before she left for Yunnan, she had still been herself.

On the morning of her departure, she had sent me a voice message. “Xiaoyu, I’m off! Tell me what local specialties you want, and I’ll bring them back.”

After arriving, she had messaged me every day.

Photos by Erhai Lake, the crossing-the-bridge noodles she had eaten, the view outside her guesthouse at night.

I sat bolt upright, opened our chat, and scrolled back to the day of her trip.

She had sent a video filmed by Erhai Lake. The camera shook violently, and wind roared all around her.

She shouted, “Xiaoyu, this is amazing! I want to come back again!”

I watched it over and over.

It really was her in the video. It was her voice. There was nothing strange about it.

But that only made my doubts deepen.

It did not feel like she was sharing her trip.

It felt like a deliberate appearance, meant to prove she was there.

If the current Lin Shu was an impostor, had the one messaging me been real or fake?

And did her boyfriend, Jiang Yue, know that the woman beside him had been replaced?

I tossed and turned all night without sleeping.

Early the next morning, I went to the police station.

“I’d like to report that my friend may be missing.”

The officer who spoke to me was a man in his thirties. He asked me to sit and explain everything slowly.

So I did.

Ever since Lin Shu returned from Yunnan, she had seemed like a different person. Habits known only to the two of us had completely changed.

And she could eat scallions without an allergic reaction.

The officer gave me an odd look.

He tapped a few keys, then said, “We have checked on this Lin Shu you’re talking about. She is at home.”

“Her phone is working, and her social media is updating normally. She posted on her Moments feed yesterday, didn’t she?”

I nodded.

“In that case, we cannot open an investigation.”

“But she isn’t Lin Shu!” I cried. “That woman is an impostor!”

The officer looked at me as though I were mad.

“Miss Song, you say she isn’t your friend, but her identity documents and social connections all check out.”

“Do you have any evidence that she is an impostor?”

My mouth opened, but nothing came out.

All I had was instinct.

And secrets only the two of us knew.

Those did not count as evidence.

The officer stood, his tone turning stern.

“Miss Song, if you continue like this, we will have to ask you to leave for obstructing police work.”

I was turned out of the station.

Outside, the glaring sunlight stung my eyes.

Lin Shu’s parents had died in a car crash three years earlier.

Now I was the closest person she had left.

If she was still alive, she had to be somewhere waiting for me to save her.

If something had… happened to her, I still had to find her and bring her home.

A new WeChat message appeared.

It came from Lin Shu’s account, with a photo of lunch and a caption.

“The cafeteria food is awful today!”

The same old complaints about work.

I stared at the words, my fingertips icy.

The fake Lin Shu had taken her phone.

If the real Lin Shu wanted to contact me, or tell me something…

A thought struck me. I ran home at once.

There was an old phone in the house, the one I had used at university and long since abandoned.

But it still had a little app Lin Shu had written back then, just for the two of us to chat.

After changing phones, I had gradually forgotten about it.

I hunted out the old phone and frantically plugged it in.

Once it started, I found the little app’s icon, still veiled in dusty gray.

I tapped it.

Sure enough, a new message was waiting.

Sent seven days earlier, at 3:12 p.m.

Only one phrase.

“Hide-and-seek.”

I stared at it, my heart pounding.

Seven days ago. 3:12 p.m.

According to her usual itinerary, Lin Shu should have been on the flight to Yunnan.

Her phone would have been in airplane mode. She could not have sent a message.

Unless… she had never boarded at all.

I immediately picked up my phone and called the airline.

“Was there a passenger named Lin Shu on a flight a week ago who checked in but never boarded?”

After checking, the customer service agent confirmed it.

A passenger named Lin Shu had indeed checked in that day, but had not boarded the plane.

Cold washed through me.

Lin Shu had never gone to Yunnan.

Yet on the day of the trip, she had sent me a video from Erhai Lake.

In other words, something had happened to the real Lin Shu before she ever reached Yunnan.

And “hide-and-seek” was the clue she had left me.

I read the phrase again and again, trying to decipher it.

Hide-and-seek.

We had played it together since we were small.

In her courtyard, she always hid beside the water jar behind the flower bed. I always found her first.

But that was too simple.

If she had only meant that address, she would not have sent just that phrase.

What else could it mean?

I closed my eyes and tried to remember every place we had been together.

The old street where we grew up had long since been demolished.