A Double Life

Chapter 1: A Double Life

2023, Jinping City.

Jiang Qian woke up naturally from his nap, a routine he used to mitigate the side effects of watching films all night.

Facing the slanting rays of the sunset outside the window, he sat up calmly. The watch on his wrist read 16:58.

Good.

This meant the women of the house were all busy with their respective roles, perfectly content.

Jiang Qian put on his slippers, gave his shoulders a quick stretch, and stood up to walk around the large bed. As he passed the dressing mirror, he caught a glimpse of himself.

In his simple light-colored shirt and dark casual trousers, his fair, handsome facial features looked more and more like his father's in his youth.

Yet, his deep eyes and the overly sharp gaze he held when focused were a far cry from his father's gentle demeanor.

This moment of true exposure was fleeting.

Before stepping out of the room, Jiang Qian softened his expression, putting on an approachable face.

He pushed open the bedroom door.

Classical, soul-cleansing yoga music drifted through the living room.

As Jiang Qian turned, he saw his sister, Yu Xuan. A darling of the Jingcheng entertainment industry, gifted with beauty and talent that intimidated all others, she was currently on her yoga mat, gracefully stretching her body into a series of breathtaking poses.

Her thick, slightly wavy hair was tied back, her limbs were long and slender, and her skin was as delicate as white porcelain. The form-fitting, flexible yoga fabric outlined her tight, curvaceous physique.

It was as if she were showing off her proud proportions and a variety of... possibilities.

Yu Xuan was 26 this year. She had shot to fame playing the second female lead in a hit drama, completely overshadowing the lead actress and sweeping up awards that year.

Yet, at the peak of her career, this woman had brazenly retired from the industry!

Her reason: the circle was too messy, and a simple, fragile, and kind girl like her surely couldn't compete with those vixens.

It made no sense; clearly, she was more like the vixen who was hard to deal with.

But before the family could even dwell on it, Yu Xuan had already swiftly registered her own yoga studio brand and started her business... She even taught the classes herself, leveraging her celebrity status to make a fortune!

Currently, she had over a hundred branches in first-tier cities (including new first-tier cities) across the country. The "simple and kind" sister was finally living the life of a wealthy woman who didn't have to worry about the cost of daily necessities.

As an aside, she was also a proponent of singlehood, a shameful non-marriage advocate who had no intention of contributing to the reproduction of the species!

Right now, Yu Xuan was blatantly occupying the center of the living room. The "Golden Mountain in the Sun" painting on the sofa's feature wall complemented the fire-patterned gold-leaf yoga mat beneath her.

With the color palette she always favored, it presented a certain visual aggression.

Reasonable... Jiang Qian thought to himself.

After all, the entire house was under this woman's name.

At this moment, two other women were also in the house.

Jiang Qian glanced toward the mist-filled kitchen, where he could see his Aunt Jiang Chuntao busy at work, plump and capable.

This food blogger, who was currently staying at her maiden home, loved to dance around the kitchen with knives and spatulas in her flamboyant attire.

However, her cooking was highly inconsistent; she often produced indescribable culinary creations and forced others to taste them.

As the only man in the house, Jiang Qian had become nearly immune to all poisons.

On the other side of the house.

The study, where the lights had been on since early in the day, signaled that his grandmother, the matriarch of the Jiang Family, was reviewing the day's newspaper.

Without even getting close, Jiang Qian could imagine the septuagenarian wearing her magnifying glasses, reading the eye-catching paragraphs of the paper word for word with intense focus.

That way, by dinner time, she could summon the unique authority of a middle-school teacher and, with her customary lecturing tone, demonstrate her erudition to the whole family.

Hmm...

By then, his aunt's dark cuisine would be condemned, and Yu Xuan would be lashed for being too detached from the common world.

And he, the impeccable only son of the family, would reap the praise.

The corners of Jiang Qian's mouth curled upward.

He leaned against the doorway, refocusing on his sister's movements...

At the same time, within his concise and orderly brain, he quickly pulled up the interaction patterns for the corresponding scenario.

Having such a thought process did not mean Jiang Qian was an emotionless AI or a high-dimensional being lurking among humans to study them.

Jiang Qian was a real human—an undergraduate at Jinping University, majoring in Life Sciences.

He specialized in animals and plants, with a minor in evolution and ecology. Now a junior, he was in the prime of his youth and still single.

But he wasn't exactly a complete human.

Twelve years ago, an accident left him with a complex and rare emotional disorder.

In layman's terms, he had almost lost the ability to perceive certain emotions and could not provide normal feedback—which was only natural, as he couldn't feel them, so he couldn't react to them.

This included, but was not limited to: guilt, fear, and sadness.

The overall diagnostic process was extremely complex. The high-end medical institution commissioned by the Jiang Family had proposed the following hypotheses:

1. Weak perception of guilt: This meant that when the patient committed acts beyond reason (such as harm or invasive behavior), he lacked the necessary sense of guilt—the doctor had marked this point with an asterisk*.

2. Weak perception of fear: This meant the patient's personality would gradually shift toward being unruly; authority would no longer command his awe, and eeriness or violence would fail to act as intimidation. The boundaries that seemed insurmountable would no longer effectively constrain him.

3. Weak perception of sadness: This meant that when facing negative stimuli like loss or failure, the patient might possess a calmness and resilience beyond that of an ordinary person.

Note: Due to the lack of the aforementioned empathy, the patient would likely be unable to build deep, intimate relationships with others. Such individuals are prone to extremes and could become mainstream elites or turn to the dark side of society—hospitalization for observation is recommended. However, this recommendation was vetoed by Grandmother Jiang.

Misfortune and fortune are interdependent; what Jiang Qian "lost" was compensated for in other ways:

His powers of observation and memory seemed to have broken through certain limits, becoming extremely acute.

His super-strong observation skills gave him a thought pattern unlike anyone else's. A field of vision filled with vivid details and the trajectories of development and change opened the door to a new world for him.

Even more exaggeratedly, as long as Jiang Qian wished, any information captured by his senses could be recorded clearly and accurately in a way he understood.

This part of his memory was not "eroded" by the forgetting curve; like a perfectly preserved crime scene, it was stored concisely and orderly in the archives of his Memory Palace, ready for exploration and retrieval at any time.

The comprehensive manifestation of these "gains and losses" was that, compared to his peers, he was increasingly cold and ruthless, contemptuous of rules, and adept at using schemes to achieve his goals.

Such "symptoms" nearly cost Jiang Qian his chance at an education.

Facing such a rare patient, even the brain experts in Jingcheng were at their wits' end.

It is necessary to mention here that Jiang Qian's grandfather, who passed away in a plane crash, had been a famous brain expert in Jinping City during his lifetime. It was precisely because of this connection that the Jiang Family was able to find the best experts in Jingcheng for a consultation.

It showed the family's refusal to give up on Jiang Qian, their persistence, and their exhaustive efforts.

However, just as the whole family was racking their brains and going through fire and water, Jiang Qian miraculously... recovered on his own.

It was as if he were a different person: he was no longer argumentative when facing authority, no longer obsessed with cutting up animal carcasses, and never again beat classmates who annoyed him until they were a bloody mess, all while appearing to have no psychological burden...

Although the shadows in the damaged areas of his brain had not changed in the slightest, Jiang Qian's behavior had indeed changed.

No one could explain the reason for this change.

In Jiang Qian's own words, it was: he had found a way to coexist peacefully with this world.

The child just wanted to be a proper person.

Here, one must marvel at the greatness of family education.

Born into a scholarly family, Jiang Qian relied on his self-awareness to actively bridge the gap between himself and ordinary people.

Through continuous and extensive observation, he learned the interaction patterns between people, combined them with his own characteristics, added some creative flair, and summarized and established a set of basically "safe" behavioral patterns.

Then, within the limits allowed by law and morality, he repeatedly practiced, verified, and reinforced this "safe" pattern.

Just like that, Jiang Qian mastered the technique of playing a normal person at an astonishing speed.

After one transfer and one move, he completely covered up his past abnormalities.

Almost everyone who came into contact with him afterward would praise him to his family for being wise, humorous, and sensible, certain that he would have a bright future.

His family also gradually got used to his "normality"... well, perhaps except for his mother.

After all, that accident had cost his mother her husband.

In fact, from the moment Jiang Qian first showed signs of abnormality, his mother's attitude toward him had changed.

As a well-known contemporary painter, she often drew inspiration from all over the world, willing to abandon her small family to dedicate herself to art.

This reason was barely passable.

But only Jiang Qian knew that his mother was afraid of him.

When they occasionally reunited, his mother always tried to avoid being alone with him, even when he was just a boy of ten or so.

Fortunately, Jiang Qian did not feel sad because of this; he had lost the corresponding emotions.

Jiang Qian happened to be standing in Yu Xuan's blind spot.

He watched as Yu Xuan gracefully knelt on the yoga mat, bowing and lifting her hips, her rounded chest pressed against the mat, her hands stretched forward... slow and careful, pausing at the limit.

Then, she slowly shifted her center of gravity forward, moving her waist like a lazy cat.

Finally, she raised her swan-like neck and tightened her abdominal muscles.

This was a classic finishing move in yoga, used to stretch the limbs and make the muscles symmetrical and the posture beautiful.

"After watching for so long, what are your thoughts?"

Yu Xuan said this while completely facing away from Jiang Qian; there was no telling how she had sensed him behind her.

She felt no embarrassment at showing off her figure in front of her younger brother.

"If I said it, you'd beat me to death, wouldn't you..." Jiang Qian coughed lightly. "Don't worry, even if you were stark naked, I wouldn't have any thoughts."

"In your dreams."

Yu Xuan carelessly loosened the band holding her hair, and her fluffy long hair cascaded down like a waterfall.

She stood up proudly, as if the scorching sun were blooming...

Yu Xuan was the kind of woman who was always full of energy. Such people were hard to ignore in a crowd; every gesture, every smile, would become the focus of people's attention.

Jiang Qian remained leaning against the doorway, lying with a calm face: "Watching you show off your talent is no different from watching a cabbage take flight."

Yu Xuan looked at her brother with no small amount of worry: "This won't do. After all, you are the only seedling left in the Jiang Family now. Sister has to be responsible for your physical and mental health."

"Uh, if you care that much about carrying on the Jiang Family line..."

Jiang Qian stopped mid-sentence, his intuition catching a fleeting trace of danger.

Before he could retreat, his sister had one hand clamped onto his shoulder and the other pinching his cheek. Her clear, makeup-free face pulled close, revealing a meaningful smile.

"Look at that, your little secrets are showing, aren't they? And you claimed you didn't have any thoughts on the matter?"

At this distance, Jiang Qian could even smell the unique fragrance on his sister.

"Don't tell me you've already started planning it... hmm?"

Jiang Qian endured the tugging on his face. "I was trying to say that since you meet so many girls, could you keep an eye out for anyone suitable for me?"

Yu Xuan froze at these words, her expression stiffening slightly.

An incoming call arrived just in time to end this one-sided assault. In the face of her career, the activity of tormenting her younger brother seemed suddenly less enticing.

"...OK, see you later."

After hanging up, Yu Xuan's smile turned increasingly benign. She gently smoothed the wrinkles on her brother's clothes.

Her astonishing acting skills kicked in instantly. "Good brother, I have a business engagement tonight. Could you help me ask Teacher Tang for leave?"

Teacher Tang referred to Jiang Qian's grandmother, an old lady who strictly forbade the younger generation of the family from staying out overnight.

Even if one was a twenty-six-year-old unmarried woman.

"If you've got the guts, go ask her yourself." Having just been tormented, Jiang Qian put on an unyielding face.

"I don't have the guts, but I do have a good brother." Yu Xuan was a master of using both carrots and sticks.

"This good brother is a little short on cash lately."

Under the shadow of Old Buddha's frugal family traditions, Jiang Qian's cash flow rarely exceeded five figures. Even Yu Xuan, who had long since achieved financial independence, dared not break the rules for fear of family discipline.

"Is that so? Why didn't you say so earlier!"

Yu Xuan raised her phone, her movements fluid and practiced.

Jiang Qian's phone immediately chimed with a text notification: Your account has received 1,000 yuan.

"Sister, how are you leaving? Driving or calling a car? Do you need me to call one for you?"

"No need, be a good boy."

Yu Xuan winked at Jiang Qian, turned, and slipped back into her room. Before long, she walked out wearing a pale gold suit with a striking design, her makeup exquisite.

She stepped into her stilettos and tiptoed toward the door.

As she opened it, she didn't forget to lower her sunglasses and mouth to Jiang Qian: Handsome, it's all up to you!

The response she received was: For Athena.

Jiang Qian saw his sister out and then went to the bathroom. When he returned to the living room, the doorbell suddenly rang.

That woman, she couldn't have forgotten her car keys again, could she?

"Coming!"

Jiang Qian walked to the door, but after glancing at the security monitor... his hand froze on the doorknob.