Chapter 162: The Power of Love (1/2)

“Don’t joke around like this,” Cheng Yang said, with a tinge of traumatized shock. “Your brother’s a straight male, a steely type.”

He thought that his words were witty, but Cheng Xi didn’t even crack a smile. She looked coldly at him. “You know, brother, I wish that the truth was that you were truly attracted to him. Otherwise, you would be intentionally manipulating his attraction towards me.”

Cheng Yang muttered, “Mom would kill me.”

“If she didn’t beat you to death, then would you really like him?”

Cheng Yang glared at his sister, but then deflated in the next moment. “No.”

“Then why did you do all that?”

“……”

The reason was honestly too embarrassing to say out loud, and he braced himself as he spoke his next words. “Can you not interrogate me like a criminal? It’s really quite scary.”

“Brother!” Cheng Xi was about to slap the table herself.

Cheng Yang could only surrender. “Alright, alright, I’ll say it. It was just a joke……” He squinted and glanced at Cheng Xi. When he saw that her face was still frosty, he changed his story again. “Alright, I was trying to do some business with Donglai Corporation through him.”

“You can’t do business with Donglai Corporation in broad daylight?”

“See, this is why I didn’t want to tell you the truth.” He even sounded justified as he explained, “Do you know how hard it is to do business? Do you know how hard it is to do business with Donglai Corporation in particular? Your brother doesn’t have any connections or a big company, so even if I praise myself as a lovely flower in my bid document, no one would even glance at it.”

“So you…… made use of Lu Chenming?”

“Isn’t that just because Lu Chenzhou’s too hard to get close to?”

“Cheng Yang!”

Cheng Yang trembled. Cheng Xi only ever yelled at him like this once in a blue moon. Throughout the span of his entire memory, she had only ever done so once before, when they were both in middle school. Their grandmother had been sick, and nobody at home had enough spare time to pay any attention to him. He became a bad student, hanging out with other hoodlums and skipping class, either by going to an Internet cafe or by going to a cinema and secretly watching age-restricted movies. Then, they would run around with some other delinquents and peek on girls in the area…… Then one day, as he was sneaking out from someone else’s house, he saw his sister standing outside with an ashen face and a big stick in her hands, as broad as his arm. As he fell to the ground in fear, she had swung it at his leg.

Cheng Yang had become extremely scared of her ever since the beating, and even though his school life didn’t improve by much, it also didn’t degrade further.

This time, however, Cheng Xi didn’t beat him up. Instead, she started crying, huge tears steadily rolling down her face. In truth, this was even more scary than a beating. Cheng Yang jumped up in shock. “Why are you crying? I’m wrong, alright? I made a mistake!” He couldn’t find any tissues, so he leaned over and used his clothes to wipe her tears away. “I really didn’t have any malicious intent behind those actions. I thought that it was all just a joke.”

Cheng Xi was really disappointed in him. “If you truly thought that it was just a joke, then why did you avoid meeting Lu Chenming? Why would you have such a guilty conscience that you wouldn’t even dare to meet him? It's because you know that it wasn’t a joke, or at least, that it wasn’t a joke at all to Lu Chenming. Right?”

Cheng Yang pursed his lips, not saying anything.

“Brother, how could you be like this? Do you know what the one thing that you absolutely can’t play around with in this world is? It’s other people’s emotions! Some things can’t be resolved just because you brush it off as a joke. The moment you sent those words over, you sentenced Lu Chenming to pain and suffering! Especially so given his personality. He’s sensitive, detail-oriented, introverted, and bad with words. He put his entire being and all his emotions into the Internet, believing that you’re female, believing that you’re a kindred soul, believing that, even through the Internet, that you really do love him. Thus, he put all his effort into loving you back. Over these past two years, he’s attended almost all of my classes, through wind and rain. Doesn’t this show how much effort he’s put into this relationship, into believing and loving the fake persona that you’ve crafted over the Internet? And then you’re just going to dismiss this as a joke? Brother…… how could you be like this?”