The Double of a Superstar(1)

Author：Han Zhi Le

1.

When I regained consciousness, I found myself bound to a chair.

A swaying lamp hung from the ceiling.

The air was filled with the salty odor of seawater.

It seemed like I was on a ship.

As I tried to recall why I was in such a situation, the cabin door opposite me was pushed open with a clang.

A middle-aged man wearing a gray duster coat, a cap, and dark brown sunglasses walked in and stopped before me.

He looked me up and down through the sunglasses. After a while, he asked, "Michael Smith, right?"

I nodded.

"What crime did you commit?" His tone was full of sarcasm.

"Murder," I said, looking up at him, "and you're some kind of smuggler?" I turned around and looked at the rope on my arms. "What does this mean?"

He didn't reply. Instead, he walked around me twice and clicked his tongue.

"Here's the thing," he said. "I have a job for you. If you agree, you can live a good life without being stranded in another country."

"I don't want just any job. I paid you, and you should take me there." I feigned toughness.

"Don't you even want to know what it is?" The man with sunglasses was surprised. He scratched his nose and said, "Well, you have no choice. It's the high seas outside, and more than a dozen sharks are following our ship. If I throw you down, I'm sure they'll eat every piece of you in less than 10 minutes."

2.

I was desperate and had no choice but to agree.

"What kind of job is it?" I asked that man uneasily.

The man smiled. "You'll know when the time comes." After that, he waved his hand.

The two strong lackeys behind him untied my restraints and carried me out of the cabin after receiving the order.

They walked up the stairs, reached a deck, and entered a room like an infirmary along the winding corridor.

The corridor was wide and clean. I was puzzled. It looked nothing like a worn-out fishing boat used for smuggling.

I didn't have memories of being brought on this ship. After paying to be smuggled away, I was given drugs and fainted with a hood over my head.

The medical staff wearing a mask in the room asked me to take off my clothes and be naked for examination.

I could only do as I was told. The staff measured my height, weight, hearing, and vision and took my blood and urine. It was like a full-body physical examination in a hospital.

I was nervous and guessed that I might have fallen prey to an evil organization specializing in extracting and selling human organs.

I would be a dead man if the other party wanted my heart.

The ship was like an island, so there was no way for me to escape unless I could grow wings.

My mind was a mess when I cooperated with the examination.

The two fierce-looking men followed closely behind me, rolling up their sleeves to reveal their muscular arms.

I excused myself to go to the bathroom and sat on the toilet to think of a solution.

But before I could think of anything, a big bearded man pulled me out of the compartment.

I was almost dragged into an operating room. My mouth was taped, so I couldn't even scream.

When I was in the operating room, two doctors in light green coats helped the two men press me onto the operating table.

I felt a sharp pain in my right calf. I had no idea what had been injected into it.

In less than a minute, I felt sleepy and soon lost consciousness.

3.

When I awoke, I was lying naked in a snow-white room with a blanket covering my body.

My head was wrapped in gauze, and I felt uncomfortable in my throat. Even swallowing would cause me pain.

My eyes, hands, and feet were still intact, and nothing seemed unusual with my chest and abdomen.

I heaved a sigh of relief. It didn't seem like any organs had been removed.

"Then what did they do to me?"

I grazed my head, feeling confused.

The room had no mirror, so I couldn't see my reflection.

Even if there was one, I could do nothing as my head was wrapped up like a ball.

After hesitating for a few moments, I gave up thinking.

I was still alive. It was always better to live than to die.

About a month later, the gauze on my face was removed, and I could touch the traces of surgery on my chin, nose, and places around my eyes.

I wore a patient uniform with a number printed all day. Every one or two days, someone would change the gauze on my face and inject me with some unknown drugs.

After another month, the stitches on my face were removed entirely, and they began transplanting hair onto my forehead.

After that, they removed some scars and moles on my body and added a few more moles to places where there were no moles.

It was like I was an object, constantly being modified.

The whole process lasted for roughly half a year. Finally, one day, I had a black hood put on my head and I was stuffed into the back seat of a van.

The car only stopped after a long time. I couldn't hear any sound as I had rubber earplugs stuffed in my ears.

After getting pulled out of the car, I suspected that I had been dragged inside a building, up some stairs, and through a door based on the occasional changes in the light and shadows I saw inside the hood.

From what my feet could feel, I could tell that the ground changed from rough cement to smooth floor tiles, and I was constantly being taken right and left.

In the end, I was thrown onto a smooth chair.

The next second, the hood was pulled off.

I narrowed my eyes and struggled to open them after a good while.

I saw a tall and lean man standing opposite me, looking at me.

He widened his eyes with his mouth agape.

He opened and closed his mouth excitedly as if he were shouting something.

I pulled out my earplugs and heard him cursing.

That was when I realized who this man was. He was none other than Alfred Carvell.

He was a well-known movie star. My two ex-girlfriends were both die-hard fans of his.

And the reason why they became my girlfriends was that they thought I looked very similar to Alfred.

What was going on? Why was Alfred here?

Having seen my confusion, Alfred produced a hand mirror and held it up to me.

"Damn it! The person in the mirror looks exactly like Alfred," I cursed quietly.

4.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that I would become Alfred's doppelganger.

He said he had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on me.

There was almost no privacy for a star like him with so much public attention.

The paparazzi working for newspapers were everywhere, allowing him to have no private life at all.

He had been driven crazy by this kind of lifestyle. And one day, he was inspired by a stand-in scene in a TV series where he starred.

I asked him why he wanted me as a replacement.

"With you attracting the media's attention, I can finally live like an ordinary person," he said.

An absurd feeling arose in my heart.

Countless ordinary people dreamed of becoming a superstar like him, but he spent a vast sum of money just to enjoy the life of a normal person.

I had to learn all his personal stories by heart to not reveal myself.

That was when I really got to know him.

Born into a typical family, he was discovered as a child star because of his excellent looks.

Later, he became the least talented member of a three-person boy band.

However, he became immensely popular and the public liked his face very much (he even took out a huge insurance policy on his face).

When he was still a minor, his parents used him like a cash cow and took away his property.

Growing up, he fell out with his family, cut off his ties with them, and even sent his biological father to prison.

At this point, you might be curious about how much money he had to his name.

I vaguely remembered reading through a news article on my phone before becoming a substitute. It was something about a financial media outlet analyzing the value of domestic A-list male artists.

Alfred was ranked first, with real estate under his name and various companies' shares, stocks, options, and exclusive brands of clothes and cosmetics. He seemed to have hundreds of millions of dollars in total, and that was the news from a few years ago.

In addition to his personal details, I also had to familiarize myself with his interpersonal relationships.

His nominal friends, several rumored girlfriends, partners, agents of every period, legal advisers, and financial consultants.

After I learned all this off by heart, I was requested to take a test. When any photo appeared on the screen, I had to say the person's name and his or her relationship with Alfred within five seconds.

If I made a mistake, I would get punished. My fingers would be electrocuted, and I would be starved and thrown into solitary confinement.

I was treated like a kid who made a mistake, making me feel like a child again.

Besides that, memorizing some of Alfred's habitual body movements, imitating his handwriting, and learning his pet phrases were necessary.

For me, the hardest thing to do was to lose weight. Alfred and I were about the same height, but I weighed 20 pounds more than him.

I almost slept in the villa's gym to lose weight during that time.

Usually, my range of activities was limited to the villa's interior.

To prevent peeping, the windows were inlaid with one-way glass. Even so, I was still prohibited from going anywhere near the windows.

Alfred said that unscrupulous media had once used drones to spy on him.

Fortunately, the villa was big enough. There were three floors above the ground, one floor below the ground, and dozens of rooms. They all had their functions.

There was an entertainment room, a gym, a recording studio, and a small movie hall that could accommodate more than a dozen people.

Other than Alfred's exclusive area on the east side of the second floor, I was allowed to enter and exit any other room.

The villa had a courtyard and a wall over 10 feet high with an electric wire net.

Sometimes, when I saw the wire net, I had the illusion that I was in prison.

Usually, it was just me, Alfred's agent, Mr. Miller, and Alfred himself in the villa.

It was said that some internal staff had colluded with outsiders before.

Therefore, the two full-time servants could only enter the villa at a fixed time. They stayed in the bungalows behind the estate the rest of the time. There was a sentry box at the villa gate, where the gardener and doorkeeper, Bill, lived.

5.

About a month later, I showed my face as a substitute for the first time.

It was the premiere of a movie.

Alfred played a supporting role in the movie with few scenes but occupied the center of the poster.

The only people who knew I was working as a substitute for him were his agent Mr. Miller and himself.

Mr. Miller was the man in a duster coat who threatened to throw me into the sea to feed the sharks on the ship.

I had already prepared what I should say before going there. When it was my turn, I needed to respond according to the words I had memorized.

Unexpectedly, the host did not play by the rules and asked a few questions that were not in the plan.

I was so anxious that I broke out in a cold sweat. I tried to brush them off with my wits, and to my surprise, the effect was not bad. The audience burst into laughter.

When I returned, Alfred was delighted with my performance and asked, "What kind of job have you done before?"

I told him that I used to work for a modern drama troupe as a curtain raiser.

He asked me what it was.

"Open the curtains before the play begins and close them when it's over," I answered.

"Oh," he replied absent-mindedly, yawned, and waved his hand, signaling to me to leave.

I filled in for Alfred at various events in the next few months. There were a few incidents, but fortunately, I managed them all with ease.

Most of the time, I would stay in Alfred's villa, watching TV, exercising, and reading when I had nothing to do.

I would occasionally be called out by Alfred to help attract paparazzi who had been waiting at the villa's entrance all year round.

Usually, I was asked to leave in his car with the window half open, deliberately showing my face to the paparazzi.

As long as the car left the villa, the paparazzi would follow closely behind.

Most of them were riding motorcycles. They were working in pairs, one riding and the other filming in the back.

Fortunately, Alfred's car was superior in performance, and with Mr. Miller's skills, they would not be seen after a few sharp turns.

After getting rid of the paparazzi, Mr. Miller would merge into the traffic flow and take me around the city. He would only send me back after an hour or so.

Every time he drove, he would listen to a woman's songs. He looked tired and lazy. I could tell it was his break time.

Since I couldn't play on my phone, I could only sit in the back seat, looking into space.

The car's sound system was terrific, and the unique sound echoed in the sealed space.

I couldn't really understand the lyrics, but the melody of one of the songs moved me to tears.

I asked Mr. Miller who was singing.

Mr. Miller said it was Maria Kelly.

I shook my head to show that I knew very little about her other than her name. I saw Mr. Miller curling his lips and smiling from the rearview mirror.

The contempt and sarcasm in his smile were plain to see.

6.

I did a good job as a substitute. Alfred paid me monthly.

He would stuff the money into the envelope. On the tenth day of each month, Mr. Miller would give it to me.

The salary was several times that of my previous monthly salary.

"He's so stingy!" I cursed in my heart. He didn't have to do a damn thing, but he received a hundred times more than me.

After cursing, I froze and wondered what was wrong with me.

"If I had fled to another country, I would not have known what kind of life I would have lived.

"Now, not only am I alive, but I can also earn some money. I have to be content!"

With that in mind, the resentment inside me dissipated, but it didn't take long for the dark thoughts hidden inside me to surface again.

Sometimes, I couldn't sleep at night, and my imagination would run wild. I even fantasized that one day Alfred would have an accident.

For example, a car accident or a fire. It would be best if his face were ruined beyond recognition.

In this way, I could naturally replace him.

Due to my presence, he gradually became bold and almost left all the work of showing his face in public to me.

Sometimes, I would wonder what he was doing when I was working as his stand-in.

I speculated that he might be going on a date with his lover.

Once, I couldn't resist asking him the question.

I didn't expect him to tell me he was just strolling the streets in disguise.

Of course, I didn't buy it but didn't dare to question him, so I smiled politely.

He might have read my mind, so he smiled and said nothing else. From the look on his face, I could see that he thought I was shallow.

I often saw exhaustion and indifference on his face, as if he had lost interest in everything.

It was hard for me to understand! I really wanted to stand in his shoes, but I couldn't!

He was worth several billion dollars, and his food and clothing were all top-notch.

The only downside was that he was forever in the public's gaze.

But were ordinary people really free? In order to make a living, they had to work hard just to earn a little money.

No one was truly free.

At least Alfred had the finances to spend money on a replacement.