The Double Life

2023, Jinping City.

Jiang Qian had slept through his lunch break, waking naturally to adjust for the side effects of watching videos all night.

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

Excellent.

That meant the women at home were all busy with their own pursuits, enjoying themselves immensely.

Jiang Qian put on his slippers and rolled his shoulders a little. Then he got up, walked around the large bed, and glanced at his reflection in the full-length mirror.

A simple, light-colored shirt and dark casual pants. His handsome, fair-skinned features were looking more and more like his father's had when he was young.

But his deep-set eyes and the overly sharp gaze he wore when concentrating were a far cry from his father's gentle manner.

That glimpse of his true self vanished in an instant.

Before leaving the room, Jiang Qian relaxed his expression and put on an approachable face.

He opened the bedroom door.

A stretch of classical, soul-soothing yoga music drifted from the living room.

Turning around, Jiang Qian saw his older sister, Yu Xuan. A heavenly beauty, blessed with talent and looks that put the entertainment industry in Jingcheng to shame, she was on the yoga mat, calmly stretching her body into one astonishing pose after another.

Her thick, slightly wavy hair was tied back. Her limbs were long, her skin as delicate as white porcelain, and her close-fitting, supple yoga clothes outlined her taut, curvaceous figure.

As if showing off her enviable proportions and all kinds of... possibilities.

That figures... Jiang Qian thought.

After all, even the whole house belonged to this woman.

There were two other women living at home.

Jiang Qian glanced toward the hazy kitchen, where he could see his aunt, Jiang Chuntao, working diligently. She was curvy and capable.

This food blogger, who was staying at her parents' home, loved to dress up and wield knives in the kitchen.

But her cooking was wildly unpredictable. She often made indescribable dishes and forced people to try them.

As the only man in the family, Jiang Qian had nearly developed immunity to all poisons.

On the other side of the house,

the study light had been on for some time, a sign that his grandmother, Grandmother Jiang, was reviewing the day's newspapers. She had spent her whole life teaching.

There was no need to go closer. Jiang Qian could picture the elderly woman, now in her seventies, wearing a magnifying lens and studying the eye-catching passages in the newspaper word by word, utterly absorbed.

That way, come dinner, she could put on the authority unique to a middle-school teacher and show off her knowledge to the whole family in her usual lecturing tone.

Mm...

At that point, his aunt's abominable cooking would be condemned, while Yu Xuan would be chastised for being so far removed from everyday life.

And he, the unimpeachable only son of the family, would receive praise.

Jiang Qian's lips curved up.

Leaning against the doorway, he focused once more on his sister's movements...

At the same time, his clear, orderly mind quickly pulled up the corresponding interaction patterns for the situation.

This thought process didn't mean Jiang Qian was an emotionless AI, or some higher-dimensional creature lurking among humans to observe and study them.

Jiang Qian was a genuine human being—a life sciences undergraduate at Jinping University.

His main focus was plants and animals, with a minor in evolution and ecology. Now in his third year, he was still single at the tender age of twenty.

But he wasn't quite a complete human being, either.

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

To put it simply, he had almost completely lost the ability to perceive certain emotions and couldn't respond to them normally. Of course he couldn't respond—he couldn't feel them in the first place.

These included, but weren't limited to, guilt, fear, and sadness.

The diagnostic process had been extremely complicated. A high-end medical institution commissioned by the Jiang Family had proposed the following possibilities:

1. Diminished perception of guilt. This meant that when the patient committed acts that went beyond the bounds of reason, such as harming or violating others, he lacked the appropriate sense of guilt—the doctor had specially highlighted this point.*

2. Diminished perception of fear. This meant that the patient's personality would gradually become more rebellious. Authority would no longer inspire awe in him, nor would the uncanny or violence intimidate him. Boundaries that seemed impossible to cross would no longer restrain him effectively.

3. Diminished perception of sadness. This meant that when faced with negative stimuli such as loss or failure, the patient might be more composed and resilient than ordinary people.

Note: Due to his lack of the above empathic abilities, the patient would likely be unable to form deeply intimate relationships. People like him were prone to extremes. He might become a leading figure in mainstream society, or turn against society—hospital observation was recommended. But Grandmother Jiang had vetoed that recommendation.

Misfortune and fortune went hand in hand. What Jiang Qian had "lost" was compensated for in another way:

His powers of observation and memory seemed to have broken through some kind of limit, becoming extraordinarily sharp.

His exceptional powers of observation gave him a way of thinking unlike that of ordinary people. His perspective, filled with vivid details and the trajectories of how things developed and changed, had opened the door to a new world.

More astonishingly, if Jiang Qian wished, any information his senses could detect could be clearly and accurately recorded in a way he understood.

Those memories were untouched by the "erosion" of the forgetting curve. Like a perfectly preserved crime scene, they were stored in the archive room of his Memory Palace, simple and orderly, ready to be examined and retrieved at any time.

The overall result of these "gains and losses" was that, compared with his peers, he became increasingly cold and ruthless, contemptuous of rules, and skilled at using schemes to achieve his goals.

These "symptoms" had nearly cost Jiang Qian the opportunity to receive an education.

Even the brain specialists in Jingcheng had been at a loss when faced with such a rare patient.

It was worth mentioning that Jiang Qian's grandfather, who had died in an air disaster, had been a well-known brain specialist in Jinping City. It was thanks to this connection that the Jiang Family had found the best experts in Jingcheng for a consultation.

This showed how the whole family had refused to give up on Jiang Qian and had done everything in their power for him.

And yet, just as the whole family was racking their brains and braving every danger for his sake, Jiang Qian had miraculously... recovered on his own.

It was as if he'd become a different person. He no longer argued defiantly with authority, no longer took pleasure in cutting up animal carcasses, and never again beat classmates who annoyed him until they were bloody and battered, all while seeming to feel no psychological burden...

Although the shadow over the damaged part of his brain had not changed at all, Jiang Qian's behavior had indeed changed.

No one could explain the reason for this change.

As Jiang Qian himself put it: he had found a way to live in peace with the world.

The kid wanted to be a decent person.

This was where one had to marvel at the power of family education.

Growing up in a family of scholars, Jiang Qian had relied on his own conscious effort to bridge the gap between himself and ordinary people.

Through continuous, extensive observation, he learned how people interacted with one another. He then combined those patterns with his own characteristics, added a little creative improvisation, and came up with a basic set of "safe" behaviors.

Then, within the limits of the law and morality, he repeatedly put this "safe" model into practice, tested it, and reinforced it.

In this way, Jiang Qian mastered the art of playing a normal person at an astonishing speed.

After transferring schools once and moving house once, he had completely concealed his former abnormality.

Almost everyone who later came into contact with him praised him to his family, calling him clever and witty, measured and sensible, and destined for great things.

His family, too, gradually grew accustomed to his "normal" self... well, perhaps with the exception of his mother.

After all, that accident had taken her husband from her.

In fact, ever since Jiang Qian had first begun behaving abnormally, his mother's attitude toward him had changed.

A well-known contemporary painter, she spent most of the year gathering material from around the world, willingly leaving her family behind to devote herself to art.

That was a plausible enough reason.

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

Whenever they were together, his mother always did her best to avoid being alone with him, even when he was just a boy of ten or so.

Fortunately, Jiang Qian didn't feel sad about it. He had lost the emotions associated with sadness.

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

Yu Xuan was kneeling gracefully on the yoga mat, bending forward with her hips raised, her rounded chest pressed against the mat as she stretched both arms out in front of her... slowly and carefully, holding the pose at its limit.

Then she slowly shifted her weight forward, rolling her waist lazily, like a cat.

Finally, she lifted her swanlike neck and tightened her abdominal muscles.

This was a classic finishing pose in yoga. It stretched the limbs and helped keep the muscles toned and the body graceful.

"You've been watching for a while. What do you think?"

Yu Xuan said this with her back completely turned to Jiang Qian. He had no idea how she'd noticed him behind her.

She felt no embarrassment about showing off her figure in front of her little brother.

You'd probably beat me to death if I said it... Jiang Qian gave a light cough. "Don't worry. Even if you were completely naked, I wouldn't have any improper thoughts."

"As if."

Yu Xuan casually untied her hair. Her thick locks cascaded down like a waterfall.

She rose proudly, like the sun breaking through the clouds...

Yu Xuan was the kind of woman who was always full of energy. People like her were hard to ignore in a crowd; every gesture, every smile, every frown drew people's attention.

Still leaning against the doorway, Jiang Qian lied with a perfectly calm face. "Watching you show off your talents is no different from watching a cabbage take flight."

Yu Xuan looked at her little brother with concern. "This won't do. You're the Jiang Family's only son, after all. I have to take responsibility for your physical and mental well-being."

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

Jiang Qian had barely made it halfway through his sentence when a fleeting hint of danger brushed past his instincts.

Before he could retreat, his sister had one hand hooked over his shoulder and the other pinching his cheek. Her clear, makeup-free face drew close, a meaningful smile on her lips.

"See? I knew you had something on your mind~ You said you didn't have any improper thoughts?"

At this distance, Jiang Qian could even smell his sister's distinctive fragrance.

"Don't tell me you've already made plans... hmm?"

Jiang Qian endured the tugging on his face. "I was going to say, you meet lots of girls. Could you keep an eye out for someone suitable for me?"

Yu Xuan was taken aback. Her expression stiffened slightly.

Thankfully, an incoming call put an end to this one-sided assault. When it came to business, tormenting her little brother seemed a little less appealing.

"...Okay, see you in a bit."

After hanging up, Yu Xuan's smile gradually turned benevolent. She gently smoothed the wrinkles in her little brother's clothes.

Her astonishing acting skills sprang into action. "Good little brother, your big sister has a work event tonight. Could you tell Teacher Tang I'll be absent~"

Teacher Tang was Jiang Qian's grandmother. The old lady strictly forbade the younger members of the family from staying out all night.

Even a twenty-six-year-old unmarried woman.

"Go tell her yourself." Jiang Qian had just been manhandled, so he put on a stubborn, unyielding face.

"I may not have the guts, but I have a good little brother~" Yu Xuan was best at using both carrot and stick.

"Your good little brother's a little short on cash lately."

With Grandmother Jiang's thrifty household principles hanging over him, it was hard for Jiang Qian to keep more than five figures in cash on hand. Even Yu Xuan, who had long since achieved financial freedom, didn't dare break the rules for fear of being punished by the family law.

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

Yu Xuan raised her phone and completed a series of transactions in one smooth motion.

Jiang Qian's phone immediately chimed with a message: Your account has received a deposit of 1,000 yuan.

"How are you leaving, sis? Driving or calling a car? Want me to call one for you?"

"No need, sweetie~"

Yu Xuan winked at Jiang Qian and slipped back into her room. A short while later, she came out wearing a stylish pale-gold suit, her makeup immaculate.

In her stiletto heels, she tiptoed toward the door.

As she opened it, she didn't forget to lower her sunglasses and mouth to Jiang Qian: "Handsome, I'm counting on you!"

His reply was: For Athena.

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

Had that woman forgotten her car keys again?

"Coming!"

Jiang Qian walked to the door and glanced at the security monitor. Then the hand gripping the doorknob came to a halt.