Series / Couple Of Mirrors

Couple of Mirrors (Chinese: 双镜, literally Double Mirror) is a Chinese Period Drama set in the early Republican era.

Xu Youyi is a famous and successful writer living in Shanghai with her husband, Zhou Heng. Zhou Heng's father is a powerful minister in the national government, so powerful that he was able to get Heng a powerful position of his own, and combined with Youyi's writing success the Zhou family is amongst the richest and most influential in Shanghai. However, despite their wealth and fame, Youyi is growing dissatisfied with her marriage, exacerbated by her suspicion that Heng is having an affair. When she discovers that he is sleeping with Zhang Wan, her best friend and confidant, she resolves to get a divorce....but then the dead bodies start piling up.

Yes, it turns out that in the middle of this marriage falling apart is a much darker web of death and betrayal.

As Xu Youyi pushes through with her divorce, she falls in with Yan Wei, a mysterious woman who operates a photo studio and has a much more complicated history.

The first season aired in 2021, with the series apparently renewed for two additional seasons. The first season is available in its entirety for free on the official YouTube page.

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This series provides examples of:

• Abusive Dad: Mr. Zhou is quick to beat Zhou Heng with his cane after the affair is exposed, and dialogue from Mrs. Zhou indicates that he has behaved similarly ever since Heng was a child.
• Accidental Murder: Zhou Heng killed Chu Hui Zi when they were arguing and fighting over her desire to run away, and blackmailing him to fund her escape.
• Affair Hair: Xu Youyi has already discovered that her husband has been having an affair, but finding hair in her own bed and throughout her room emphasizes how long-running and widespread it has been.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Yan Wei begins to look after and protect Xu Youyi because Youyi was nice to her once, and she is desperate for friendship.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Zhang Wan and Zhou Heng think that they can control Xu Youyi because of how sweet and innocent she is. They are completely unprepared for the way she outmaneuvers them and takes control after their affair is exposed.
• Blackmail: Zhou Heng is threatened with blackmail from multiple people.
  • Zhang Wan threatens to blame him for Hong Mei's death if he doesn't set her up with a new career after Xu Youyi blacklists her from the writing industry.
  • Chu Hui Zi threatened to reveal their affair if he didn't either run away with her, or at least give her enough money to run away on her own.
• Child Soldiers: Yan Wei and other children were taken and brutally trained to be fighters when they were kids.
• Clear My Name
  • Xu Youyi is blamed for multiple murders, since she was present at all of the deaths and had varying levels of hostility with some of the victims. She is never formally charged, but is Convicted by Public Opinion.
  • Yan Wei is accused and tried for the death Chu Hui Zi, which was the one murder she hadn't committed.
• Coattail-Riding Relative: Zhou Heng only got his ministerial position because of his father.
• Confess to a Lesser Crime: When Xu Youyi confronts Yan Wei on why she was stealing records from the police archives, Wei explains that her ID card is a fake and she didn't want to get in trouble for that (She also lightly implies that she runs a business forging ID cards from her studio).
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • Zhang Wan is the driver who ran over Hong Mei, and Yan Wei figures it out seconds before she arrives at her photo studio with Xu Youyi and Zhou Heng for a photoshoot.
  • Hong Mei and Chu Hui Zi wore the exact same type of red thread bracelet, which makes Inspector Jiang think that Zhang Wan's killer also killed Chu Hui Zi.
• Convicted by Public Opinion: Xu Youyi is blamed by the public for many of the deaths that she was present at.
• The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: Chu Hui Zi's death is officially ruled an accident after Mr. Zhou tells the police to end their investigation.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: In their confrontation in the final episode, Xu Youyi criticizes Zhou Heng for not confronting her over her perceived affair, since he had countless options for recourse before beginning his own affairs and revenge plotting.
• Crash-Into Hello: Zhou Heng and Xu Youyi first meet when Heng's car runs Youyi over. He gets into her good graces taking her to the hospital.
• Declaration of Protection: Xu Youyi promises to use her wealth and resources to help Yan Wei if she ever needs anything. Wei in turn promises to protect her, and winds up doing a lot more protecting from the various threats against Youyi's life.
• Doom Magnet: People just keep dying around Xu Youyi. There are so many murders around her that the populace thinks she has to be the blame for at least some of them.
• Downer Ending: For the live-action series, presumably to open the possibility of a second season. While the ending of the series plays out mostly the same as the manhwa's, here the judge doesn't take Yan Wei's act of vengeance into account during her sentencing and gives her a fifteen year jail time for the assassination of Zhen Shan and Zhang Wan. The series then ends with cuts of future events interspersed with images from Yan Wei's past. The images include Xie Yifan dying of a gunshot wound with a white rose next to him, the smashed remains of You Yi's typewriter, the photo studio being closed by Government Order, and the photo of You Yi and her son being splattered with blood.
• Drunk Driver: Zhang Wan ran over Hong Mei when she and Zhou Heng were drinking and driving.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Doubles as a Surprisingly Happy Ending. In the manhwa, at least. After the death of Zhou Heng, Yan Wei and You Yi try to live a normal life with their son, Yan Xu. However, knowing that Detective Jiang will never stop hounding her for the deaths of Zhen Shan and Zhang Wan and adding the complication of whoever keeps sending her the white rose, Yan Wei opts to turn herself in to the authorities as a way to protect You Yi and Yan Xu while turning her back on her past at the same time. Fortunately, the judge decides to be lenient after the victims' ties to Hong Mei's death is revealed and sentences her to a mere five years in jail. Judging from the timeframe of the epilogue, Yan Wei is released from prison early and reunites with You Yi and her son during his toddlerhood, finally living in peace with them afterwards.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Not only was Zhou Heng having an affair with Zhang Wan, Xu Youyi's best friend, but Wan was also manipulating Youyi to doubt her own suspicions and judgement. This betrayal hurts just as much as Heng's affair.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": "Broker Bai", a new hire on Xu Youyi's management team who used to work for a large brokerage firm before deciding to change careers. Even after it is revealed that he is actually a hitman, everybody still calls him "Broker Bai". During the trial at the end of the series, they even have to clarify that Broker Bai and his legal name refer to the same person.
• False Friend: Zhang Wan was Xu Youyi's best friend, but was having an affair with her husband behind her back and manipulating her in all her business deals. The final episode reveals that she was actively sabotaging her as far back as seven years ago, when she first started dating Zhou Heng.
• Frame-Up: Yan Wei is framed for the death of Chu Hui Zi, ironically the only person she didn't kill.
• Framing the Guilty Party: Xu Youyi bribes a worker at the hotel where Chu Hui Zi was murdered to testify that he saw Zhou Heng bribe the maid who is claiming she saw Yan Wei commit the murder. Heng had hired an intermediary to give the bribe, but Youyi knew he was guilty anyway.
• Friendless Background: The brutal combat training Yan Wei had during childhood stressed that there is no such thing as friendship. Xu Youyi is the first friend she has had.
• Identifying the Body: After Hong Mei's death, Yan Wei is the one to identify her at the morgue because her mother hasn't even noticed she is missing yet.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Yan Wei leaves the fighting life she had to begin a life in Shanghai. All she wants is to live normally, and make friends.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Yan Wei leaves her fighting life and moves to Shanghai so that she have a normal life and make friends for the first time in her life.
• In Love with the Gangster's Girl: Chu Hui Zi is the mistress of crime boss Peng Jiu Yi, which complicates the affairs she is having with two other men. She is also terrified of him, and desperately looking for a way out. She and actor Chen Shuang Cheng were lovers years ago, and after Chu Hui Zi dies he is terrified that Peng Jiu Yi is going to come after him. She and Zhou Heng were having a current affair, and she tried to blackmail him to fund her escape when her fear finally drove her away.
• Inspector Lestrade: Jiang Bin is committed to solving all of the crimes that occur over the course of the series, but never actually manages to put anything together himself.
• Interclass Friendship: Xu Youyi is a rich and famous author/socialite, while Yan Wei runs a one-person photo studio. Their class differences aren't remarked upon much, except when people express surprise that Youyi is living with Wei in the photo studio.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Yan Wei forms a close bond with Hong Mei, the young girl who delivers milk to her photo studio. This is partly because Wei has never had friends before. When Hong Mei is killed by a drunk driver, Wei seeks revenge on her killers.
• Intrepid Reporter: Xie Yifan has made a name for himself as a successful reporter, and now that he is back in Xu Youyi's life he wants to use his skills and resources to help her. Unfortunately all his efforts to help just make things more difficult for her, and she doesn't want him back in her life in the first place.
• Invented Individual: Despite already being a famous author and socialite, the Zhou family creates an entirely new fake backstory for Xu Youyi when they want her to release a new novel. They get her a diploma from a prestigious Japanese university, with reference letters from professors and classmates, and change her mother's job when she was young. They even give her the new book that she is going to be releasing.
• Jury and Witness Tampering: A maid at the hotel is bribed to lie and say that she saw Yan Wei kill Chu Hui Zi. Xu Youyi manages to find another worker who will testify that he saw Zhou Heng bribe the maid. Heng eventually confronts her that he got an intermediary to bribe the maid, not himself, and Youyi admits that she bribed the second witness because she knew he was guilty anyway.
• Lipstick Mark: Perfume, in this case. After she has been tipped off that Zhou Heng is having an affair, Xu Youyi starts to believe it when she notices that he smells very strongly of cigarette smoke, which was a tip her friends had given to cover up perfume and avoid making a wife suspicious.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: "Broker Bai" tries to kill Xu Youyi by drugging her coffee, then driving her car into water to make it look like she died in a car accident.
• Media Scrum: The paparazzi hounding Xu Youyi often barge in every time she leaves her house or appears in public. They shout questions at her as she walks by, and often have to held back by her staff.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Zhou Heng rationalizes all of his affairs because he believes Xu Youyi had been in love with her ex-boyfriend Xie Yifan all along, basing it all on a single barrette that she wore at their wedding. He never listens when she tries to explain that not only has she not been pining for Yifan, but she actually threw the barrette away and it was Zhang Wan who who added it to her hair.
• Most Writers Are Writers: Main character Xu Youyi is a famous and celebrated author.
• Murder by Inaction: Yan Wei kills the magician Zhen Shan because when he came upon Hong Mei dying in the street, instead of helping her he began taking photographs to use in his performance.
• Mysterious Note: An anonymous letter delivered with her fan mail is what first tips Xu Youyi to her husband's affair, as a fan had seen him with another woman.
• Never My Fault: Despite publicly taking all the blame for his affairs, Zhou Heng insists internally that it's actually all Xu Youyi's fault for driving him to it.
• Not Me This Time: Yan Wei is the killer that Jiang Bin has been hunting for, but he only manages to get enough proof to prosecute for the death of Chu Hui Zi, the one person she didn't kill.
• The One That Got Away: Xu Youyi and Xie Yifan dated seven years before the start of the series, but broke up when Yifan chose to focus on his career. Now he is back in Shanghai and wants to reunite, because he sees that her writing shows that she is also still in love with him. Youyi rejects him, pointing out that she has not spent the past seven years pining for his return, and that he made his choice and has to live with it.
• Paparazzi: Xu Youyi is constantly hounded by paparazzi after the deaths start happening.
• Parental Neglect: Hong Mei's mother doesn't even notice that her daughter has been missing for two days, and when she learns that Hong Mei is dead she is upset at all the time and money she wasted on raising her.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Yan Wei is hunting down and killing the people responsible for Hong Mei's death.
• Phony Degree: The Zhou family get Xu Youyi a real diploma from a prestigious Japanese university, even though she never attended classes there. They are constructing an elaborate lie for her whole life to sell her new novel, and they back it up with documents and references.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Yan Wei very rarely opens her photo studio for business, spending almost all of her time looking after Xu Youyi. This is eventually commented on by others, and Youyi wonders about her income.
• Plagiarism in Fiction: To try and get the public focus away from Zhou Heng's affair and all of the deaths around Xu Youyi, the Zhou family tries to start a new news cycle by having Youyi reveal that she is releasing a brand new novel. They provide her with the already-written novel, and all the records to back up that she has spent years working on it.
• Plot-Inciting Infidelity: The series begins with Xu Youyi suspecting her husband of infidelity. It is eventually revealed that the death of Hong Mei, which brought Yan Wei into the story, was also due to the same affair.
• Police Are Useless: The police are helpless to solve any of the crimes throughout the series. Jiang Bin and his subordinates do put in an honest effort, but even they are hopelessly out of their depth and cannot build an effective case even when they identify the right suspect, or even hold onto evidence in their own station.
• Poor Communication Kills: Zhou Heng could have asked Xu Youyi about the barrette at the beginning of their marriage, but he never does.
• Protection Racket: Brother Fa, the local thug in Yan Wei's neighborhood, tries to start up a protection racket for the local businesses. Most of the locals are intimidated by his size and demeanor despite his general incompetence, but when he pushes Wei too far she beats him up and moves on. Afterwards, whenever he sees her he desperately tries to pretend he isn't running a protection racket, quickly returning the money he just stole over his victim's confusion.
• Rags to Riches: Xu Youyi grew up poor, but became a successful author and married into the wealthy and powerful Zhou family. She is still sometimes accused of being a Gold Digger because of her origins.
• Revealing Cover Up: Zhou Heng makes sure to smoke several cigarettes outside his house to cover up the smell of another woman's perfume, which makes Xu Youyi very suspicious when she hears her friends talking about that exact coverup.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: The Zhou family is wealthy and powerful, and is not above calling their other powerful friends in the government to get their way. They even get Chu Hui Zi's death ruled an accident when the detectives keep pestering Xu Youyi. This is not enough to prevent Zhou Heng's conviction for manslaughter at the end of the series, but it does get him a reduced sentence and likely enabled his escape from prison instead of serving his term.
• Secretly Wealthy: Yan Wei may be rich. She makes several references to 'having money' when Xu Youyi talks about how infrequently she actually operates her photo studio, and she never has problems buying Youyi exorbitant luxury products at her every request. How much money she has, and where she gets it from, is never revealed.
• Slave to PR: Mr. Zhou isn't angry that Zhou Heng had an affair, he's angry that he got caught. All of his damage control, and the profuse apologies that he gives to Xu Youyi, are to save the reputation of the Zhou family.
• The Snack Is More Interesting: Crime boss Peng Jiu Yi is always shown cooking food at his home when running his criminal enterprise.
• Socialite: When she isn't writing, Xu Youyi spends most of her time giving interviews, photo-ops, and attending prestigious parties. Unusually for the trope, she herself comes from humble beginnings, but has gotten used to the high life after marrying Zhou Heng.
• The Spartan Way: Yan Wei was one of many children forced through brutal training to make them fighters.
• Stupid Crooks: When Brother Fa finds Yan Wei's rifle — and is arrested in a matter of minutes for shooting it off in the middle of the street — Inspector Jiang dismisses him as a suspect in Zhang Wan's murder because he's too incompetent to be an assassin.
• Surprise Pregnancy: Xu Youyi doesn't discover she is pregnant until after Broker Bai's attempt on her life, when she is recuperating in the hospital.
• The Svengali: Zhang Wan, who controls all aspects of Xu Youyi's writing career and contracts, overruling her own decisions and desires no matter how mundane.
• Vengeance Denied: Xu Youyi was in the midst of attacking Zhang Wan with a dinner knife when Wan was shot and killed, preventing her from striking the actual blow. Afterwards, Youyi reflects that she didn't really want Wan dead despite all that she did.
• Worthless Foreign Degree: Inverted: To help sell her new novel, the Zhou family gets Xu Youyi an official degree from a prestigious Japanese university, even though she has never attended classes there. They back it up with documents and references, and Youyi is boggled at the complex lie they are trying to tell.