“Don’t call me Auntie.”

“Then what should I call you…?” Chen Yuan’s face was ashen. Thankfully, he was about to get Jiangg Ruxue back to her hotel safely.

‘I’ll have to ask about the relationship between my father-in-law and mother-in-law later.’ He was already imagining a miserable scene of a couple at odds, stuck in a loveless marriage for decades.

“No woman likes to be called that.”

‘Woman???’

Chen Yuan stopped dead in his tracks. He realized something felt very wrong.

He quickly changed the subject, figuring his mother-in-law must have had too much to drink today.

“You said you were in a bad mood, didn’t you? Why don’t we talk about that?”

“Alright,” Jiangg Ruxue shrugged. “To be honest, at my age, there aren’t many things to worry about. It’s mostly just family matters…”

“Mm, I can understand that.”

“You can understand?” Jiangg Ruxue turned and chuckled softly. She pursed her lips and quickened her pace. “It’s just that my relationship with my daughter isn’t great. She doesn’t really trust me. It feels like she’s hiding everything from me, avoiding me.”

“That’s pretty normal, isn’t it? Kids are like that when they grow up. There are always going to be clashes between the older generation’s views and their children’s. Young people need their own space.”

Chen Yuan had found a topic he was most interested in and became more talkative. He finally understood why Jiangg Ning never talked to him about her family—it was because she and her mother didn’t have a good relationship.

“Normal? Are you like that with your mother?”

“Pretty much. She tries to interfere with a lot of what I do, and I often wish for a little more freedom.”

“Hah. There’s no such thing as absolute freedom in this world.”

Jiangg Ruxue scoffed, clearly disagreeing with his point of view.

“I didn’t say absolute freedom, I said basic freedom. Maybe you should try to communicate more with your daughter. Deep down, she probably wants to have a real talk too. With such a strained relationship, she must not be very happy…” Chen Yuan thought silently about Jiangg Ning’s “condition,” and his heart suddenly ached.

He was thinking of his girlfriend again as he earnestly tried to persuade his future mother-in-law, naturally speaking from the heart. ‘If I could just help a little, if I could make the relationship between Jiangg Ruxue and Jiangg Ning a bit better, that would be perfect.’

The soft-hearted Chen Yuan had no idea that he was worrying over a non-existent condition, consumed by anxiety because of a lie concocted by the two sisters.

“Perhaps,” she replied noncommittally.

So many years of stubborn views weren’t about to change because of a single sentence from Chen Yuan.

“Are we almost at your hotel?”

“You really don’t want to walk me, do you…” Jiangg Ruxue rolled her eyes. “We’re almost there. Don’t worry, I won’t take up too much of your time.”

“Okay.”

“By the way, how old are you?”

“Eighteen. Uh… my nineteenth birthday is coming up soon.”

“Pfft—so young. I can’t even remember what I was like at eighteen.”

Jiangg Ruxue suppressed her astonishment. She had thought Chen Yuan was at least twenty, not this green. Suddenly, she felt absurdly old.

The shock even sobered her up a little.

“Since you have daughters, you should be able to see a shadow of your younger self in them.”

“That’s true, you’re right about that,” Jiangg Ruxue turned nimbly, her eyes glinting. “I think the most wonderful thing is coming home and seeing them playing the piano, or reading—looking exactly like I did when I was young.”

“Ha…”

Wait—

Chen Yuan had been imagining what Jiangg Ning looked like when she read, a smile just starting to form on his lips, but it froze on his face.

‘Them…?’

‘Where did “them” come from?’

“How many other children do you have?” Chen Yuan asked, suppressing the tremor in his heart.

“Not many, just two. You could say it’s one, actually, since they’re practically inseparable…” Jiangg Ruxue waved her hand, thinking of the twins. “You wouldn’t understand even if I told you.”

Of course, Chen Yuan was sure he understood.

He mostly got it. She must be referring to the dissociative identity disorder. As the mother, of course Jiangg Ruxue would know her daughter suffered from this condition.

‘Medically speaking, split personalities are considered two separate people.’

‘So it’s not wrong to say there are two of them.’

Chen Yuan clutched his chest, terrified. For a second, he had actually thought that Jiangg Ning and Jiangg Yao weren’t the same person!

‘That would have been too horrifying!’

Such an absurd thing could never happen in the real world. Not even the most brilliant playwright would write such a trashy plot. If anyone were to write such a story, they should do it like Shakespeare, focusing on the core themes of kinship, ethics, and internal struggle.

Chen Yuan never imagined that Jiangg Ruxue had just inadvertently revealed everything.

That crumpled ball of paper, engulfed in blazing flames, was already starting to smell of scorching.

…

“WTF!!!!”

「Mingzhu City.」

「In a pristine bedroom.」

Jiangg Yao shrieked, contorted, and scuttled around in the dark. She trembled, tugged at the skin on her face, and whispered frantically.

“What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?”

Anyone who didn’t know better would have thought a Cthulhu-esque Outer God was awakening in her mind.

She had gone with Jiangg Ning to a family gathering where a couple of little brats had played on her phone until the battery died. She couldn’t get back right away, either, because her grandmother had held her hand and spent ages fussing over her.

She never expected that after rushing home and finally plugging her phone in to charge, she would discover this!

‘Mom actually went to Lanjing!???’

“What are you screaming about? The people downstairs can hear you.” Jiangg Ning, wrapped in a bath towel and drying her hair, strolled in from outside and admonished her with a frown.

“Mom! Mom!!”

“Are you crazy? I’m your sister.”

“No…” Yaoyao frantically slapped the blanket. “Mommy went to Lanjing!”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep