The Fake and Real Heiresses Fell in Love (GL) - Chapter 6

Cheng Xuan was led upstairs by her, her mind a complete blank.

“Sit down,” Yao Yanyan told her. “Uncle Zheng will bring food over soon, it’ll be quick. Are you hungry right now?”

Cheng Xuan shook her head. She stood still where she was. The air conditioning on the second floor was running high, and the warm lights made the atmosphere seem incredibly quiet and peaceful. A book with a beautiful cover lay on the coffee table, with a bookmark stuck in the middle.

Yao Yanyan looked back and saw her standing at the top of the stairs again, like a cat full of vigilance. She couldn’t help but let out a helpless, quiet laugh.

Sometimes, she really didn’t know what to do with her.

Yao Yanyan sat up, smoothed her black hair, walked forward, and took hold of Cheng Xuan’s wrist: “Don’t be so reserved, we’re friends, aren’t we?”

Cheng Xuan was pulled to sit on the sofa opposite Yao Yanyan. Only then did she clearly see a bottle of red wine and a stemmed glass on the coffee table.

A thin layer of residual red liquid coated the bottom of the glass. Yao Yanyan noticed Cheng Xuan’s gaze and asked, “Want a drink?”

Cheng Xuan shook her head.

Yao Yanyan propped up her face: “No alcohol… Are you not of age?”

Cheng Xuan looked at her: “Yes.”

Yao Yanyan asked: “How old are you?”

Cheng Xuan replied: “Seventeen.”

Yao Yanyan: “Oh, I’m two years older than you. My name is Yao Yanyan, the ‘Yao’ from yǎotiǎo shūnǚ (a graceful, refined lady), and the ‘Yan’ from yānwù (smoke).”

A fair hand reached out. Cheng Xuan pursed her lips and shook her hand: “Cheng Xuan… the ‘Xuan’ from xuánhuàn (fantasy/mystery).”

Yao Yanyan smiled: “I’m two years older, so you should call me Sister.”

“Call me ‘Sis.’ I’ll protect you from now on, alright, Cheng Xuan?”

Cheng Xuan looked at her, her dark pupils completely unmoving.

A warning sounded in Yao Yanyan’s mind: [Beep! Actions that bully Cheng Xuan are forbidden!]

Yao Yanyan: [? I’m not, though.]

The System’s mechanical voice carried a hint of seriousness: [Yes, you are. You are forcing Cheng Xuan to call you ‘Sister’.]

Yao Yanyan: […You’re just a machine, what do you know about humans.]

The System was about to argue further with Yao Yanyan when it heard Cheng Xuan open her mouth and say: “…Sis.”

“Aiy!” Yao Yanyan’s “Aiy” was so sweet that the System was immediately “Aiy-ed” offline and didn’t reappear.

Cheng Xuan was startled and looked at her with a strange expression, as if she fundamentally didn’t understand what was so happy about it.

Yao Yanyan, meanwhile, recalled the opening plot of the novel.

When Cheng Xuan first arrived at the Yao family, she was like an extremely cautious small animal. The two Yao sisters thought Cheng Xuan was easy to bully and constantly mistreated her.

When going to school, Cheng Xuan didn’t know the way. The book’s Yao Yanyan acted one way in front of her family and another behind their backs. She pretended to be the loving sister, saying she’d show Cheng Xuan the way, only to completely turn on her the moment they left the house the next day.

“Stay far away from me. You stink. It’s disgusting.”

Cheng Xuan’s steps paused slightly. Perhaps she was already disappointed in the family, or perhaps she was already accustomed to being treated this way. She didn’t say a word, quietly widening the distance between herself and the Yao Yanyan walking ahead.

The person leading the way, however, deliberately turned into a small alley.

A few female thugs were waiting there. When they saw Cheng Xuan, they intimately slung their arms over her shoulder.

Yao Yanyan smirked from the side: “These are the friends I’m giving you. Make sure to bring more money every day to be friends with them, or who knows what they’ll do to you.”

Cheng Xuan’s eyes were as black as ink. There were many people in the alley, but Cheng Xuan only stared at Yao Yanyan.

Yao Yanyan felt uncomfortable under her gaze. She was about to say something, but Cheng Xuan had already knocked away the thug’s hand on her shoulder and walked past them, leaving without looking back.

From then on, Cheng Xuan never followed behind Yao Yanyan again.

The Yao Yanyan in the novel never protected Cheng Xuan, not even once.

Instead, she deepened her trauma about family, making Cheng Xuan never believe that anyone in this world could ever truly love her.

But this time, if she still had the right to.

Yao Yanyan truly, deeply wanted to be the sister who could protect Cheng Xuan; she desperately wanted to become Cheng Xuan’s family.

Even though she knew the actions of the “Yao Yanyan” in the book were not her intention, she still carried a profound sense of guilt and a strange sense of responsibility toward Cheng Xuan.

Uncle Zheng arrived half an hour later.

Knowing that Cheng Xuan would also be eating, Uncle Zheng quickly prepared an extra meal. He packed the food in beautiful containers and came upstairs without even untying his apron.

Yao Yanyan saw Uncle Zheng—wearing an apron, black sunglasses, and carrying two lunchboxes—coming up the stairs, and she was speechless.

Yao Yanyan wanted to lecture him—if you walk around at night wearing sunglasses, people will think you’re blind—but then she remembered he had cooked two meals on short notice, which was hard work, so she decided not to speak.

The lunchboxes were placed on the table. The Yao family was in the catering business, and the containers were unique to them: dark red bases imprinted with gilded vine and flower patterns, with large peonies blooming at the corners.

Yao Yanyan languidly asked: “Which one has more meat dishes?”

Uncle Zheng pointed: “This one, Miss.”

He was about to hand the meat-heavy one to his young lady, but she raised her hand: “Give that to Cheng Xuan.”

“She’s a child, growing up.”

Following the order, Uncle Zheng placed the lunchbox in front of Cheng Xuan, setting all four tiers down on the table.

There was indeed a lot of meat—so much that Cheng Xuan frowned, staring intently at the lunchbox as if it were a difficult enemy.

Yao Yanyan noticed she hadn’t touched her chopsticks for a long time and said to Uncle Zheng: “You can go back now.”

Uncle Zheng didn’t move: “Miss, there’s something else.”

Yao Yanyan: “Hm?”

Uncle Zheng scratched his head: “Miss, I was afraid you’d be bored, so I specially found you a companion to keep you company.”

Yao Yanyan frowned: “Ah?”

Uncle Zheng: “Miss came here to relax. Staying in the room all day is dull; you need to go out for a walk.”

Yao Yanyan didn’t bother dwelling on it. Seeing it was late, she told Uncle Zheng to go home first and lowered her head to continue eating her own meal.

Swallowing a piece of sashimi, she looked across the table.

Cheng Xuan hadn’t touched her chopsticks, wasn’t even looking at the food, and had become completely gray again, lost in thought.

Yao Yanyan asked her: “Not going to eat?”

Cheng Xuan snapped out of it: “Um…”

Yao Yanyan lowered her eyes: “If you don’t eat it, I’m going to throw it all away later.”

Throw it away?

Cheng Xuan was stunned and spoke the longest sentence she had since coming upstairs: “Why would you throw it away? It hasn’t gone bad.”

Yao Yanyan: “Because I’m willful.”

Cheng Xuan: “…”

Cheng Xuan pressed her lips together and picked up her chopsticks.

Half an hour later, the four-tiered lunchbox was completely clean. Yao Yanyan saw the uncomfortable look on Cheng Xuan’s face from being so full and stifled a laugh: “Let me find you some digestive tablets.”

Cheng Xuan: “…Thank you.”

Yao Yanyan turned her back and couldn’t help but laugh silently.

The digestive tablets were in a drawer in the bedroom. When Yao Yanyan came out with the medicine, Cheng Xuan was sitting straight-backed on the sofa, looking down at a book on the coffee table.

Cheng Xuan was actually very beautiful.

She had naturally good features and an exquisite face. It wasn’t obvious because she was too thin and tanned, but now, sitting under the light, her features stood out.

Her eyelashes were straight, making her phoenix eyes look even more slender. Her nose was straight, her jawline sharp, and her lips were always pressed tight, giving her a sense of extreme resilience and refusal to submit. Even sitting under the warm light, she couldn’t be tainted by any trace of fragility or meekness.

Yao Yanyan watched her for a long time. It wasn’t until Cheng Xuan noticed a constant gaze fixed on her and turned around that Yao Yanyan snapped out of her trance.

She walked over: “Do you like that book?”

After eating, Cheng Xuan was much more relaxed, and her tone was slightly looser: “The cover is very pretty.”

Yao Yanyan saw that she seemed open to continuing the conversation. She smoothed the hem of her nightgown and sat down beside Cheng Xuan.

“This book is quite interesting. I’m reading it for the second time.”

Yao Yanyan picked up the book.

The cover was black and white—a mystery novel with a bizarre and striking style. Resting on the hem of her pink nightgown, it somehow lost some of its eerie quality.

“It tells the story of an impoverished person whose house was occupied by his adoptive mother, leaving him homeless. One day, he meets a wealthy writer who says he wants to be his friend and save him, but he only plays with the poor, pitiful person. The wealthy writer is terminally ill and doesn’t have much time left, so he treats this as his last amusement in life. He sets up a huge scheme to trap the poor person, claiming he killed the adoptive mother who occupied the poor person’s house.”

“And then?” Cheng Xuan looked at her.

Yao Yanyan met her gaze: “Then, the poor, pitiful person was fooled. No one had ever been so kind to him, so he didn’t want to betray the friend who was so good to him. He risked everything to help the writer escape, becoming paranoid and nervous all the time, completely unaware that the writer next to him laughed so hard every night he couldn’t sleep.”

“In the end, the poor person discovered that the adoptive mother wasn’t dead, that everything was a hoax, and he went mad himself.”

After she finished recounting the plot, neither of them spoke for a long time.

The more Yao Yanyan spoke, the more she felt something was wrong. Seeing the look in Cheng Xuan’s eyes, she realized this story shouldn’t have been told, but since she’d started, she had to finish.

She parted her lips, wanting to explain something, but felt any explanation would just be a cover-up. She forced a dry laugh, saying: “That… that writer is so unethical, haha.”

“This… this book isn’t very good. Hmm, the core values aren’t right. Let’s switch to a book suitable for an underage girl. I’ll lend you one.”

As she spoke, Yao Yanyan put the book down and moved to get up.

Cheng Xuan suddenly spoke: “I’ll take this one.”

“I like it very much.”

Yao Yanyan wanted to travel back in time and kill her excited self for telling the plot: “…Okay!”

The book was handed to Cheng Xuan.

“I’m leaving now,” Cheng Xuan nodded to her.

Yao Yanyan waved her hand, then remembered something: “Oh, right!”

She smiled: “Will you come out with me tomorrow?”

Cheng Xuan paused slightly, then nodded after a moment, and went downstairs.