"Hey, Yuan, is sothing bothering you?"
Wei Zhen threw an arm around Chen Yuan’s neck. He was all smiles, but against the watery moonlight, he saw sothing glistening on Chen Yuan’s cheek.
He froze.
"How co you’re..."
"Ahem, it’s nothing," Chen Yuan said, wiping his face and forcing himself to look calm. "Let’s rest a bit, then I’ll take you guys back to school."
"What’s the rush to go back to school?" Wei Zhen shot a look at their other two buddies, waving them over. They gathered around Chen Yuan. "I noticed you were off earlier. Whatever you’re feeling... just let it out. There are no outsiders here."
"Is it sothing with your family?"
"Yuan, why are you crying? Are you upset?" Quan Yafeng asked tentatively.
"I don’t know... I don’t know how to say it. I’ll be fine if I can just be quiet for a bit by myself."
"Co on, don’t keep things bottled up. You’ll feel better if you talk about it."
"He doesn’t want to talk, and you’re forcing him. Liu Nan, get lost. Having you try to comfort soone just makes things worse." Wei Zhen kicked him.
"Alright, alright, I’ll ’get lost,’" Liu Nan said, throwing up his hands. "This damn school is a nightmare. I have to deal with dorm bullying every day. I’m living like a dung beetle’s ball of dung, just getting rolled around all the ti."
"Serves you right!"
"Ahh, what a nice, cool river breeze~" Liu Nan said, turning back with a cheeky grin. "Hey, Wei Zhen, can we talk about sothing?"
"What?"
"Can you do a favor?"
"Tell what it is first, then I’ll think about it."
"Put on a dress, pretend to be my girlfriend, and make all my dumbass classmates super jealous."
"You... What the hell are you talking about? Bring up the dress thing again and I’ll fucking kill you."
The words had barely left his mouth.
Wei Zhen, like a tiger let out of its cage, lunged at Liu Nan, his fist raised to strike. The two of them started circling around Chen Yuan, dodging and weaving.
The more he’d asked for a mont of quiet, the more chaotic the riverbank beca.
Liu Nan was even yelling for Quan Yafeng to protect him.
For a mont, Chen Yuan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The waves of emotion were so intense that he looked up at the sky, his eyes welling with tears.
"Stop ssing around! Fine, I’ll talk, alright?" he said in despair.
The two who had been fighting imdiately stopped, coming to a halt with perfect coordination.
"See? I told you my laugh-therapy works. I tease my little sister like this every day."
"I think my acting skills were just that good."
They sat back down on the steps, flanking Chen Yuan on his left and right.
Chen Yuan turned to look at the one on his left, then the one on his right.
He was forced to laugh out of exasperation.
The "therapy" hadn’t worked at all. He was simply being tornted by these two to the point where his head felt like it was about to explode.
Perhaps it was because these feelings were just too much to handle.
Or perhaps Chen Yuan had truly reached the point where he’d suffocate if he didn’t let it all out.
"Listen to . This might sound a little crazy, and I’m still in the stage of not being able to accept it," Chen Yuan said, taking a deep breath. "It all started almost a year ago, when I got into an online relationship..."
The streetlight cast a dim, yellow glow.
You could faintly hear the SPLASHING of water against the riverbank, lapping at the stone wall beneath the steps. In the darkness, a layer of mottled foam floated along both sides of the river.
It was a night with a bright moon and few stars.
Chen Yuan recounted his story, from their online relationship to eting in real life.
From their first breakup to getting back together.
From what he thought was a split personality to his discovery that there was another secret behind it all.
This long and complicated story made his three friends’ eyes gradually go wide as saucers. By the end, their jaws were hanging open.
He spoke for a full half-hour.
After the three friends heard the whole story, the shock in their hearts was sothing that wouldn’t subside for a long ti.
"So that’s it. The truth is, the ’person’ I was dating was actually two people. Twin sisters. The older sister is Jiangg, the teacher we know from Lanjing University. The younger sister is a lively and cute otaku girl. Thinking back, I should’ve realized sothing was wrong from the beginning of the online relationship. I didn’t even suspect anything when we got back together after the breakup."
After he finished speaking, Chen Yuan casually picked up a small stone and started skipping it across the river’s surface.
They looked at each other, swallowing hard.
"Hard to process," Liu Nan said.
"Hard to comnt," Wei Zhen said, his expression complicated.
"Unbelievable!" Quan Yafeng shook his head in horror.
Chen Yuan gave a self-deprecating laugh. As absurd as it was, it was true. He’d been deceived from start to finish.
"No, wait, Yuan, how co you get all the good stuff? Why aren’t there any twins deceiving !? I’d be willing to be deceived! Please, oh please, grant a pair of twins."
"You’re just shaless, aren’t you? You actually want soone to cheat your feelings? To play you for a fool, completely disregarding how you feel? To have your own identity stripped away and still feel smug about it? If this is the truth, have you even considered how Yuan is feeling right now?"
After scolding Liu Nan, Wei Zhen’s face turned ashen a mont later as he said, "Jiangg seed like such a good person, to do sothing like this! I despise her from the bottom of my heart!"
"Just because Jiangg is beautiful and outstanding, you’d be willing to be played by her? I think what she did was completely out of line."
"Look how strong his morals are!"
The guys chattered amongst themselves, debating.
Each of them had a different take on it.
After venting, Chen Yuan did feel a little better. The pain wasn’t as sharp anymore.
"I just want to know... what should I do now?"
He waited expectantly for his friends’ answers.
"What else can you do?! Confront her!"
"Expose them in person!" Quan Yafeng stood up. "You have to expose them to their faces and demand to know why they did it!"
"I support it! Punish them severely!"
Suddenly, the group was riled up.
"But if I don’t catch them in the act, they won’t admit it. They’ll just cry and make a scene to brush the whole thing off. Then it’ll be my word against theirs, with no proof. Maybe I should just break up with them directly," Chen Yuan said, hesitating.
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