Jiangg Ning felt just as awful. Anyone would feel anger welling up from the depths of their soul after being deceived by someone they trusted. But even so, she didn’t let it cloud her judgment.
After taking a moment to compose herself, her breathing steadied, and the important matters began to crystallize from her chaotic thoughts.
Right now, what she wanted to know more than anything was Chen Yuan’s true intentions.
Rushing to confront him without knowing all the facts wouldn’t solve anything. It would just end in a huge fight and accomplish nothing else.
Even if she was almost certain her suspicions were correct.
Everything required evidence. As a rational woman, this was the greatest amount of restraint she could offer at the moment.
There was another, equally important point, though it was difficult to bring up... Jiangg Ning desperately wanted to know, in this three-way relationship, if Chen Yuan had really done what she suspected, what stage were he and Jiangg Yao at?
This thought didn’t come from a place of competitiveness.
Rather, if things between Chen Yuan and Jiangg Yao had already gone too far—to a point of no return—then once the truth was out, she would have to demand an explanation.
Suddenly, a RUSTLING sound came from beside her.
Right in front of her, Jiangg Yao pulled out her phone, about to call Chen Yuan. The way she gritted her teeth clearly showed how furious and disappointed Yaoyao was. As the one who had invested the most in this relationship, she was the most baffled by Chen Yuan’s actions.
All those sweet nothings, all those solemn promises.
They echoed in her ears now, grating and harsh.
Jiangg Yao desperately wanted to know what Chen Yuan was playing at. If he couldn’t deliver on his promises, why make them in the first place?
Was he really planning to just keep things going like this indefinitely, as he had suggested before?
"No, don’t call him yet." Jiangg Ning quickly pushed Yaoyao’s hand down.
"Why?! I’m going to make him explain himself right now! What does he mean by telling you the same things he told me?"
"Yaoyao, how far have things gone between you and him?"
"Sis, why are you asking that?"
"I just think that maybe we were wrong from the very beginning. It might not be entirely his fault. A three-person relationship like this should never have happened. Even if we find out what he’s thinking, what are we supposed to do then?"
"But at least we shouldn’t be lied to like this, both of us!"
"It’s because we didn’t want to be deceived that we ended up getting deceived. Have you noticed that ever since we got back from that trip, we’ve been completely in the dark about each other’s progress with him? It’s obvious. Whenever the three of us are together, we subconsciously play by the rules he deliberately creates, and we end up presenting a false image to each other."
"A false image?"
"Meaning, I think nothing is happening between you two, and you think nothing is happening between him and me. That’s exactly the scenario he wants."
"Right, Young Mast—Pah! That bastard is doing it on purpose. As long as he maintains that picture and keeps us under this illusion, he can drag things out forever. But even if he stalls, doesn’t he have to choose eventually? Or maybe... maybe he doesn’t know what to do either. That’s a possibility."
"Yaoyao, you don’t have to make excuses for him... Now, are you willing to tell me? What’s the situation between you and him? How much has he promised you?"
"Well..."
The sudden question left Jiangg Yao at a loss for words.
Instead of baring her soul to her sister, she really just wanted to confront Chen Yuan. Revealing all of her and Chen Yuan’s secrets wouldn’t benefit her at all; in fact, it would only make this awful situation worse.
’What if this storm blows over? If I tell her everything, I’ll lose any advantage I have.’
At that, Jiangg Yao couldn’t help but look at her sister with suspicion.
She had just come home today to find all this happening. Unlike her sister, Jiangg Yao hadn’t actually noticed anything suspicious herself. From start to finish, this was all based on Jiangg Ning’s own suspicions and accusations.
’Could this be a trap?’
The brief alliance, forged from a shared sense of betrayal, crumbled in an instant with that single thought.
Jiangg Yao was certainly no simple-minded, ditsy girl. She looked at her sister, hesitated, and said nothing.
"You don’t trust me?" Jiangg Ning asked, surprised.
’Even now, Yaoyao still chose to trust Chen Yuan over her.’
A chill ran down Jiangg Ning’s spine.
’Could it be that the genuine affection she thought she was receiving from Chen Yuan was just an illusion? Was it possible that Yaoyao and him were the ones who were truly close, and she was the only one who had been kept in the dark all along?’
Jiangg Ning’s thoughts were, once again, mostly correct.
However, it wasn’t a matter of who he loved more.
It was that Chen Yuan knew there were some things he couldn’t say to Jiangg Ning.
Ningning was proud and stubborn. Once she made up her mind, it was difficult for anyone to change it. The only feasible way was to subtly implant the idea in her mind through daily life.
He was too afraid of how Jiangg Ning would react, so he had previously chosen to reveal a hint of his desire to marry both sisters to Yaoyao instead.
He was still met with firm opposition.
But Jiangg Yao, being the understanding person she was, chose to give Chen Yuan more time.
Her anger stemmed from misplacing that trust; she should have forced him to lay his cards on the table back then.
"It’s not that I don’t trust you, Sis. I just can’t talk about it. How about you go first and tell me about your situation with that bastard of a young master," Jiangg Yao said, looking at her sister and pursing her lips slightly.
"I..."
For a moment, Jiangg Ning was caught in a dilemma.
She didn’t dare to just come out and say that she had become Chen Yuan’s "personal" secretary, and that the two of them were often intimate in the office.
’If she said that, wouldn’t Jiangg Yao explode on the spot?’
The two sisters sat together on the sofa.
At that moment, the twins who had once been so in sync they could read each other’s minds now looked at one another, speechless.
Chen Yuan’s strategy was working. In a sense, it was working all too well.
Deceive both sides.
Divide and conquer.
Play the long game.
If it weren’t for Jiangg Ning’s sharp intuition and the stupid, fatal mistake he’d made, he might have actually pulled it off. If he had kept this up for another six months or a year, dragging things out indefinitely, that brat might have succeeded in making their harmonious life as a trio an inseparable part of their existence.
At that point, reason and principles would likely have been forced to yield.
But even the most tangled knot can be unraveled.
Jiangg Ning furrowed her brow, wracking her brain for a way to escape the trap Chen Yuan had set for them.
A gentle breeze drifted in from the balcony, stirring the sisters’ hair. Suddenly, Ningning’s eyes lit up.
"I’ve got it!"
"What is it?" Jiangg Yao asked, looking at her expectantly.
"I have a perfectly fair solution. It will not only let us find out what he’s really thinking, but we also won’t have to worry about the other one being deceived or hiding things."
"Well, tell me, Sis!"
"Starting tomorrow, you pretend to be me, and I’ll pretend to be you. It’s the weekend, conveniently. How much we can find out in these two days will be all up to our own skills... But let me be clear, if I find out he’s truly wronged me, I’m laying all my cards on the table!" Jiangg Ning’s voice was resolute.
"Fine. Then I’m going to get my own answers. He’d better not have wronged me," Jiangg Yao added with a cold snort.
「Meanwhile.」
Far away in Kyoto, Chen Yuan was completely oblivious.
The tables had turned.