Chapter 9: I’m Your Older Sister (Part 2)
Jiang Bao still had a few thousand yuan on her, but her ID card was still in Shen He Xiang’s hands. As she was currently underage, she couldn’t go to a hotel alone. She hesitated for a while before calling Zhao Yuan Qing’s phone.
“Can you come over?”
Zhao Yuan Qing was a bit surprised. “What’s wrong? It’s the middle of the night. Did something happen?”
Jiang Bao: “I’m outside the school, but I don’t know where to go.”
“Okay then, wait for me.”
Half an hour later, Zhao Yuan Qing disembarked from the taxi.
Jiang Bao then took out all her money and used Zhao Yuan Qing’s ID card to get an executive suite at the Four Seasons Hotel.
“You actually spent so much money to stay in a hotel.” Zhao Yuan Qing was stunned entirely.
This would have covered all her living expenses for three months. Wasn’t Lin Can in a financial emergency last week?
Jiang Bao: “There are two beds in the room. It’s a little late now, so you can stay with me overnight.”
“Did something cause you to go into shock? Don’t take it too hard.”
Jiang Bao: “… no.”
—
The room was on the upper floor. With the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, you could get a bird’s-eye view of the entire city at night. The city lights outside glittered, extending endlessly into the distance as if they were stars in the sky.
Zhao Yuan Qing looked around but found that Lin Can had fallen fast asleep.
When Jiang Bao woke up the next morning, Zhao Yuan Qing was still staring at her, dark circles under her eyes. Jiang Bao calmly washed up, then took her out for breakfast.
When the two returned to the hotel again, the phone rang.
Lin Can and Adam (TL: it was Avla before… the author probably confused the names previously) had already gotten off the plane. Jiang Bao sent her the address of the hotel so that they could come directly.
Zhao Yuan Qing initially had work to do, but Lin Can said she had an appointment. She was afraid Lin Can would be deceived by someone.
When the doorbell rang, she went over and opened the door. Outside the door stood a foreign man with a huge build and a beautiful girl standing next to him.
The girl seemed quite young, with hair a glossy black color, a tall and slender build, fair skin, and blue-gray eyes.
She had the look of a mixed-blood.
“You’ve come.”
Jiang Bao saw her face for the first time from another person’s point of view and felt fascinated.
Lin Can nodded her head.
Jiang Bao added, “Don’t you still have something to do, Zhao Yuan Qing? You should go back first. Let Adam wait outside the door.”
The tall man looked at Lin Can, and after receiving an affirmative signal, he stepped back and stood by the door.
“Okay, Young Lady.”
Before Zhao Yuan Qing left, she looked back at the room. So it seems the foreign man was the girl’s bodyguard.
That girl’s identity must be extraordinary for her to bring a bodyguard with her.
But how could Lin Can know someone like that?
Zhao Yuan Qing was good at reading people. She could sense that this seemingly exceptional girl was actually afraid of Lin Can.
—
Jiang Bao closed the door, walked over to the sofa, and sat down, gesturing for Lin Can to come over.
She opened her mouth and asked, “The emails I sent you, didn’t you see them?”
Lin Can: “The computer was password-protected. I’ve never opened it.”
“Then what sort of people came to see you in the past few days?”
Lin Can shook her head in a negative.
Jiang Bao breathed a sigh of relief as she made certain that Lin Can had revealed nothing odd about herself.
She had been adapting for some time now, so she was now in a calm state of mind. Jiang Bao changed her posture and asked again, “Do you know why this happened to us?”
Without waiting for the other party to answer, she blurted out the answer herself, “We’re twins, and you’re my younger sister.”
Lin Can’s eyes widened with disbelief.
How was this possible? No one had told her, and the two looked nothing alike.
Jiang Bao saw the other party’s confusion, “Lin Xiao Yuan wouldn’t tell you. She climbed into a man’s bed for a sum of money and traded one of the twins, which was me, for another sum of money. She got to keep you to make money for her. What a good deal.”
They were both just that woman’s goods for sale[1], and Jiang Bao didn’t think of that woman as a mother.
“We’re not alike. We’re fraternal twins.”
Lin Can: “……”
She felt everything that she had known until now had all taken an immense blow.
Jiang Bao: “Your life is such a mess, I could barely manage. Don’t go back to America for a while.”
She thought back to the night of Lin Can’s memorial service. She had said this sentence in her mind, “If I were her, I would never do this.”
She wondered if it had anything to do with this.
This whole thing was strange enough. Perhaps they’d switch back in a few days. Or it might take a long time.
Both situations should be taken into account.
Jiang Bao had already sent a letter to the university faculty stating that she was taking a break from school for medical reasons. With Lin Can’s face, she could not return to her previous life for the time being.
No one would believe it even if this matter was spoken about. It might make the news instead.
The social circle valued education, and if she was going to be Lin Can for a long time, then she had to consider an alternative.
“You can’t go to school right now. Not to MIT, nor a normal high school. But you can learn on your own. You have to get high marks in STA, and you can ask me for help if you don’t understand anything.”
Lin Can nodded and asked again, “So do I have to tell mom?”
She thought of the trophies lined up on the floor-to-ceiling bookcase. The other party, although the same age as herself, was far too excellent. The way she spoke was also very put-together.
…… This made her look up to Jiang Bao a lot.
“Don’t mind them. They aren’t your family.” Seeing the way Lin Can’s face darkened at this, Jiang Bao, who had never before cared about other people’s feelings, checked her words for the first time.
“You have family. It’s me.”
Lin Can lifted her head, surprised.
Jiang Bao was suddenly at a loss for words.
After being completely let down by others again, the twenty-one-year-old Lin Can underwent stages of prejudice, bravado, and guardedness. Until finally, she resigned herself as a recluse, unable to handle being hurt by others once more.
But she could now feel the seventeen-year-old Lin Can, trying hard to please her as if walking on thin ice.
However, being too cautious might not be a good thing sometimes. If you tried so hard to live up to the expectations of others, then what about your own feelings?
Their personalities were simply too different.
Lin Can took out her cell phone and whispered again, “By the way, a person named ‘Xie Liao Yuan’ called seven times and sent a lot of text messages. I didn’t dare to reply.”
Jiang Bao’s words came out, “That man is actually a brute. Ignore him.”
She never expected that guy to be two-faced.
Footnotes:
[1] It’s an idiom and the literal meaning is ‘to wait for a good price to sell’
