The doors of the Civil Affairs Office locked.

My photograph remained on every screen.

PERSON OF INTEREST. DO NOT ALLOW EXIT.

The official with gold glasses stood up immediately.

—Miss Shen, don’t panic.

—I’m not panicking. I want to know who issued that alert.

He checked his terminal.

Then his expression became even stranger.

—Municipal Data Administration.

—For what reason?

He clicked twice.

—Identity verification dispute.

I stared at him.

—People don’t lock government buildings because someone has an identity dispute.

—Exactly.

Before he could say more, someone knocked hard on the glass door separating our office from the main lobby.

Two municipal officials stood outside.

Behind them were four lawyers.

And between them…

was me.

Or almost me.

Same height.

Same eyes.

Same mole beside the mouth.

She looked slightly thinner, her hair longer, but the resemblance was so precise that seeing her felt like looking into a mirror that had learned to breathe.

Beside her stood Jonathan Song.

The supposedly dead man.

His face was pale with fury.

The moment he saw me, he pointed.

—That’s her.

I folded my arms.

—Congratulations on your resurrection.

Jonathan’s expression darkened.

—You altered my civil record.

—You married someone under my identity and attached two million yuan of debt to me.

—That can be explained.

—I can’t wait.

One of the lawyers stepped forward.

—Miss Shen, this situation involves sensitive family records. We suggest resolving it privately.

I looked at him.

—No.

—You may not understand the consequences—

—I understand perfectly.

I held up the copy of the marriage record.

—Someone forged a marriage using my identity. Someone fraudulently guaranteed a loan in my name. Someone manipulated the government system after I reported it.

I smiled.

—Private stopped being an option yesterday.

The woman with my face suddenly spoke.

—Serena.

My stomach tightened.

She knew my name.

—Who are you?

Her eyes filled.

—My name is Selena Shen.

The room became silent.

Serena.

Selena.

Even our names had been chosen like a pair.

She took out an old photograph.

Two newborn babies.

My mother holding both.

I stared.

—That’s impossible.

Selena shook her head.

—No. It’s what they told you that was impossible.

Then the truth began coming apart piece by piece.

Twenty-seven years earlier, my mother had given birth to twin girls.

Me and Selena.

Our father, Shen Wei, had been drowning in gambling debts.

My mother’s older brother—Grace’s father—was wealthy and childless at the time.

He offered money.

One child would remain with my parents.

The other would be raised quietly elsewhere until his wife could legally adopt her.

My mother refused.

My father didn’t.

Three weeks after our birth, Selena disappeared from our home.

According to the official record, one twin had died shortly after delivery.

That was the story my father told everyone.

My mother discovered the truth months later.

Their marriage collapsed.

She spent years trying to recover Selena.

Then she died when I was still young.

I had grown up believing her sadness came from illness and family problems.

It hadn’t.

She had lost a daughter.

Selena continued:

—I was raised by another family in the south. I didn’t know anything until five years ago.

—How did you find out?

She looked toward Jonathan.

That was when everything became uglier.

Jonathan had worked for Grace’s father’s investment company.

While sorting archived family records, he discovered the original birth documents.

Two girls.

Two identities.

One officially erased.

Grace found out too.

Then her father died.

And left behind a trust.

A very large one.

The inheritance conditions stated that a portion of the assets originally belonged to my mother and, after her death, should be divided equally between her two biological daughters.

Me.

And Selena.

More than ninety million yuan.

I stared at Selena.

—Then why steal my identity?

Her face tightened.

—I didn’t know that was what they were doing.

Jonathan interrupted.

—Enough.

I looked at him.

—No. I think we’ve finally reached the interesting part.

Selena continued despite him.

Grace had contacted her first.

She told Selena that I knew about the inheritance and intended to claim everything because Selena legally “didn’t exist.”

Grace offered to help restore her identity.

The process required biometric verification.

Fingerprints.

Facial scans.

Documents.

Selena provided everything.

Except those records were not used to restore Selena Shen.

They were used to strengthen a second version of Serena Shen.

Mine.

Then Jonathan married that identity.

The business loan followed.

—Why? I asked.

Selena’s eyes went toward him.

—I thought the loan was for a company that would eventually hold my share of the inheritance.

Jonathan’s jaw tightened.

I understood.

—There was never a company.

The official with gold glasses checked several registration numbers.

Then nodded.

—It’s a shell entity.

Jonathan stepped forward.

—This is getting out of control.

One municipal official immediately moved between us.

For the first time, Jonathan seemed nervous.

I smiled.

—Funny. Yesterday you had two million reasons to make me responsible.

—Serena—

—Don’t.

I pointed toward Selena.

—You used one sister’s existence to steal from the other.

Then I looked at the lawyers.

—And somebody inside the municipal system helped you.

That was why the alert had appeared.

Not because the city was searching for me.

Because someone needed to stop me from leaving with evidence before Jonathan arrived.

Unfortunately for them, the young official had already copied the access logs.

Three government accounts had altered my civil records.

One belonged to the deputy director of the district registry.

Another belonged to an administrator related by marriage to Grace.

The third had accessed the system less than ten minutes after I filed the identity-theft complaint.

The building wasn’t protecting the public from me.

It was protecting the fraud from me.

The matter moved beyond civil affairs that afternoon.

The marriage record was suspended.

The loan guarantee was frozen.

Jonathan and several others were formally investigated for fraud, identity theft and improper system access.

Grace disappeared for three days before her lawyer arranged for her to appear voluntarily.

When I finally saw her again, she looked nothing like the cousin who had once brought Jonathan to family dinner and smiled beside him.

—Serena, listen to me.

—I’ve done enough listening.

—Jonathan manipulated everything.

—And you gave him my documents.

Silence.

She lowered her head.

That was the answer.

Grace had been terrified that if Selena’s identity was restored properly, the old trust would be reopened.

Her family’s inheritance would shrink dramatically.

So instead of acknowledging Selena as my sister, she helped Jonathan create a false identity trail connecting Selena to me.

If the debt defaulted, my assets would be frozen.

If I became entangled in litigation, Grace believed she could delay the inheritance case for years.

The plan had one weakness.

They assumed I would panic.

Call relatives.

Beg Grace for help.

Perhaps even sign whatever documents they placed in front of me to “solve” the problem.

Instead, I went to a notary.

Then a lawyer.

Then the registry.

Six weeks later, a court formally declared the marriage under my name invalid.

The two-million-yuan debt was removed from my record.

Selena’s identity restoration took longer.

DNA testing confirmed what we already knew.

She was my twin.

The first time we sat alone together, neither of us knew what to say.

Finally, Selena asked:

—Do you hate me?

I looked at her.

—Why would I?

—I wore your name.

—Because you were told yours didn’t exist.

She began crying quietly.

I pushed a box of tissues toward her.

—For what it’s worth, I hate your haircut.

She stared at me.

Then laughed through her tears.

It was the first normal moment we ever had as sisters.

We didn’t become inseparable overnight.

Real life isn’t that simple.

We were strangers with the same face and twenty-seven missing years between us.

But we started.

Coffee once a week.

Then dinner.

Then exchanging childhood photographs.

She showed me the life I had never known.

I showed her our mother’s letters.

One contained a sentence neither of us could read without becoming silent:

“If my daughters ever find each other, tell them neither one was abandoned by me.”

A year later, the inheritance case was resolved.

The trust was divided according to my mother’s original rights.

Selena received what should always have been hers.

So did I.

My monthly salary was still 6,300 yuan.

I kept working as an interior designer.

Money didn’t suddenly make me interested in becoming someone else.

But I did use part of it for one thing.

Selena and I bought back the small house where our mother had lived before she died.

We renovated it together.

Two bedrooms.

Same size.

No one getting the bigger one.

Jonathan eventually received legal consequences for his role in the fraud.

Grace lost the inheritance she had tried so desperately to protect and faced her own consequences for participating in the scheme.

I never visited either of them.

One evening, Selena and I sat outside our mother’s restored house eating pancakes from the same street stall I had visited the day this began.

She looked at me.

—Do you realize you technically killed your brother-in-law for forty-eight hours?

I laughed.

—Legally.

—Still impressive.

—He shouldn’t have married me without asking.

She nearly choked on her food.

I looked toward the lights inside the house.

I had entered the Civil Affairs Office believing I needed to delete a husband I never had.

Instead, I discovered a sister I had never been allowed to know.

The false marriage disappeared.

The debt disappeared.

The people who had borrowed my identity eventually lost control of their own carefully constructed story.

But the strangest part was this:

For twenty-seven years, official records had insisted only one daughter survived.

They were wrong.

There had always been two of us.

And after spending our entire lives separated by someone else’s lies—

we finally got to decide for ourselves who we were.