chapter 1

chapter 1

I became strange.

Normal people cannot read minds, but I can.

Only Cheng Lin’s mind.

Cheng Lin is my younger sister in name, but she is the true Cheng family daughter, and I am the fake.

On the day she was brought back, Mom, Dad, and my brother held her and cried bitterly. I stood off to the side, clearly and unmistakably an outsider.

After that day, I knew I could no longer act spoiled or willful.

All I had to do was play the backdrop in this family.

Everyone began revolving around Cheng Lin.

Cheng Lin hated me, the counterfeit. I could understand that. After all, I had occupied her nest for a full nineteen years. She had suffered plenty outside, while I had lived a rich and comfortable life.

I accepted things as they were. I was quite open-minded about it.

Mom, Dad, and my brother belonged to her. Feng Yan, my fiancé, who had been engaged to me since childhood, ought to belong to her too.

Lately, Cheng Lin often went to the Feng family. Whenever she came back, she would show off in front of me, saying how well Mrs. Feng treated her, how gentle and courteous Feng Yan was with her, and how lively the entire Feng family always became whenever she was there.

My brother, who had always been affectionate with me, looked like he wanted to say something several times when he saw me.

In the end, Mom came to find me and said, “Yangyang, that child Cheng Lin has really fallen for Feng Yan. She knits scarves for him and makes pastries for him. If Cheng Lin hadn’t gone missing back then, the one engaged to Feng Yan would probably have been her…”

Before she could finish, I immediately said,

“Mom, as long as my sister is happy.”

Mom first let out a breath of relief, then belatedly felt a little guilty. “Good girl. In the future, I’ll keep an eye out for outstanding boys for you. I won’t let you be wronged.”

I nodded obediently.

But now, who didn’t know what an awkward existence I was in the Cheng family? Outstanding boys would probably avoid me like the plague.

Forget it.

It wasn’t as if I had ever planned to rely on a man anyway.

Only, Feng Yan somehow got wind of the matter. Just as casually as when we were children, he walked into my room. We had been childhood sweethearts for so many years. Ever since we were little, he had liked to linger in my room, while I liked to play house and act as his mother, forcing him to eat the fried rice I made out of modeling clay.

But after we grew up, this was the first time he barged straight in without knocking.

“Feng Yan…”

I had only just opened my mouth when he grabbed my wrist and yanked me straight up from the sofa.

His strength was somewhat rough. Only then did I realize that standing in front of him, I came up only to his chest.

Through his thin white shirt, I could see the rising and falling lines of muscle across his chest, carrying a dangerous, untamed wildness.

He had been mischievous as a child, but after growing up, he had instead become gentle and quiet. I had never seen this side of him before.

My wrist hurt from his grip.

I wanted to scold him as I had in the past, but then I thought about it. This man was about to become my brother-in-law.

I wouldn’t argue with him.

Who knew that when he saw I was silent, he would only go further? His hand wrapped around my waist, pulling me tightly into his arms.

Even though we had been engaged since early on.

We had never done anything this intimate.

“Feng Yan, are you insane?” I couldn’t help cursing at him, wanting to struggle free.

“Shh.” His voice was low and hoarse as he spoke softly by my ear. “Be good. Let me hold you for a while.”

I struggled even harder, but in the face of his absolute advantage in strength, it had no effect at all.

He held me for quite some time, then suddenly lowered his head to look at me.

His eyes were so dark they seemed ready to devour someone.

“Yangyang, I’ve known since we were little that you can only be mine.”

The invasive look in his eyes made my whole body uncomfortable. I only felt that this childhood friend had turned into a wolf that had lain in ambush in the dark for a long time.

When Cheng Lin came in, Feng Yan still did not let go.

Caught in this hellish love-triangle scene, my scalp prickled with embarrassment.

But Cheng Lin was clearly a girl with deep thoughts. Faced with this scene, her expression did not change at all.

She merely smiled and said, “Feng Yan, didn’t you promise your mother you would have dinner with me?”

At that exact moment, her lips did not move, yet I heard her full-throated roar.

Like thunder crashing down inside the room, echoing for a long time.

— “Fuck your mother, you perverted male lead. Stay away from the heroine! She belongs to the second male lead!”

Feng Yan’s expression remained normal.

I thought I was hallucinating.

But immediately after that came another line.

— “You walking ick, get your ass downstairs and eat. Stop bothering the heroine.

— “Or watch out, because I’ll send you off to eat prison food someday!”

Me: ?

I looked at Cheng Lin, who was smiling with an innocent face, and felt my entire worldview suffer an unprecedented shock.

But she knew nothing about it and was still roaring inside.

— “I’m here now. I won’t let you have the chance to hurt the heroine.

— “Got it?”

From then on, I could always hear these strange things coming from Cheng Lin’s mind.

For example, that day after she went to have dinner with Feng Yan and came back, she showed off to me as usual when she saw me.

“Feng Yan is such a good person. When he heard me complain that eating fish was troublesome, he even picked out all the bones for me. He said there was a place with especially delicious fish and that he’d take me there next time. I’m definitely going to fall in love with eating fish.”

In reality, her mind was full of profanity.

— “Eat shit!

— “That bastard Feng Yan, who the hell was he aiming that funeral face at during dinner? It wasn’t like I tied him up and dragged him there!

— “He lusts after the heroine and still wants the Cheng family’s support to cement his position in the Feng family.

— “Trash. Absolute social trash.

— “Aside from his face, he’s good for nothing.

— “I sincerely hope his dick is short and tiny.

— “A pitiful little three-second man.”

Me: …

I said, “Pfft.”

Cheng Lin instantly looked at me, the affected show-off expression on her face almost slipping.

Her inner voice rang out again.

— “? What’s she laughing at?”

Then she quickly understood.

— “Sigh, with that mental state, looks like I’ve driven her crazy with anger.

— “Hope she’s okay.

— “But better a sharp pain now than a long one. Stay away from this perverted scumbag, and she’ll be happy for eight hundred lifetimes.”

Cheng Lin walked past me and went up the stairs, then suddenly looked back and curved her lips at me in provocation.

“Sister,” she said, “as for Feng Yan, I am absolutely determined to have him.”

After saying that, she strutted away like a peacock in full display.

Accompanied by her excited inner voice.

— “Yay!

— “That’s me.

— “I should go sit the Best Actress exam when I have time.”

My brother came back from a business trip to Chile.

He brought gifts.

Cheng Lin and I each got a crystal bracelet. She got one more pair of pearl earrings than I did, and I got one more tin of chocolates than she did. I had specifically asked my brother to bring them for me. My brother also knew I wasn’t very interested in jewelry and preferred sweets.

Cheng Lin took a fancy to my chocolates.

She wanted the whole tin.

My brother couldn’t withstand her soft pleading and said to me, “Yangyang, Cheng Lin never ate things like this before. That family of hers couldn’t afford them either… How about this time you give the chocolates to her, and later I’ll have someone buy more for you.”

I had never realized before that my family was so good at serving up imaginary flatbread.

The moment I gave the chocolates to Cheng Lin, a storm rose in her heart again.

— “Speechless. Completely speechless.

— “If he’s this good at imaginary flatbread, why doesn’t he go to India? He could toss flying flatbread there.

— “What a spineless, useless man. All the opinions in his head got flung away along with the flying flatbread.

— “Heroine, hurry up and lose hope in this useless thing.

— “After all, when this thing gets a wife in the future, it’ll be even more incredible. He’ll let his wife bully you too.

— “Today it’s a tin of chocolates and he tells you to bear with it. In the future, his wife could slap you across the face and he’d still tell you to bear with it.

— “Heroine! Wake up.

— “There simply aren’t that many things in this world worth putting up with.”

I stared blankly up at her.

There simply aren’t that many things in this world worth putting up with.

I didn’t know what part of that sentence struck me. With two soft patters, my tears fell.