Li Xian paused and turned his head slightly.
"Is something wrong?"
The Mistress slowly approached Li Xian. When she was only a few steps away, she raised a hand to rest it on his shoulder-
"Miss Dolly!"
The slightly urgent call interrupted the Mistress's movement.
The Mistress turned gracefully at the call and gazed at Song Qingzhang, waiting for him to continue.
Song Qingzhang held his hands awkwardly at his sides and said, "When will lunch be ready? I'm getting a little hungry."
The Mistress turned to look at the clock on the wall, covering her lips in mild surprise.
"Oh my, is it that late already? I've been so absorbed in preparing for the Art Exhibition... I'll go and make lunch for our guests right away."
With that, she headed toward the kitchen. Only when her footsteps had faded into the distance did Li Xian turn around and hurry upstairs with Song Qingzhang.
"Where's Liang Pei?"
"When the Mistress left the exhibition hall and saw him, she seemed to notice something. She stopped Liang Pei and asked where he was going..."
Song Qingzhang wiped away a cold sweat. The Mistress had all but forced Liang Pei upstairs, leaving him with no choice but to follow quietly behind her and wait for an opportunity.
"Let's go upstairs first."
After closing the door, Li Xian took out the item he had brought from the Mistress's room.
He had been in too much of a hurry to look inside the book earlier. Now that he opened it, Li Xian discovered that it was actually a photo album.
Beside him, Liang Pei and Song Qingzhang both lowered their heads. On the first page of the album were two photographs of babies.
Li Xian slid a photograph out of its pocket. Its corners had yellowed slightly, and a date and a short note were written on the back in black ink:
"September 9, 1980: Du Sha (older sister) and Dolly (younger sister) were born."
As they continued through the photographs, the two babies grew steadily older. The two girls in the pictures were inseparable, wearing identical dresses, sporting identical hairstyles, and sharing identical faces. No one could tell what distinguished one girl from the other.
"They look way too alike..."
Song Qingzhang couldn't help clicking his tongue. Usually, no matter how alike twins looked, there would still be differences in height, weight, and other details. But the two girls in the photographs looked as though they had been cast from the same mold.
The person documenting their lives had also written in frustration on the back of a photograph, "These sisters look so alike that sometimes even I can't tell which one is Du Sha and which one is Dolly."
Five years old, ten years old, fifteen years old...
The two girls grew older and taller, and differences finally began to emerge.
It wasn't that their faces had stopped looking alike, but that their clothes and preferences gradually began to differ.
The person documenting their lives was delighted by these changes, too, and wrote on the backs of the photographs:
"Du Sha prefers bright red clothes, while Dolly prefers pale blue."
"Du Sha has taken an interest in oil painting, while Dolly is practicing the piano."
Their individual personalities began to emerge, but the photographs still showed them together. The sisters seemed very close, doing everything side by side. When Dolly practiced the piano, Du Sha painted behind her. They sat back to back without disturbing each other, yet neither could do without the other.
Those happy days continued until September 9, 1998, when the first solo photograph appeared in the album.
Dressed in red, Du Sha smiled as she posed beside a full-length portrait of herself.
Song Qingzhang let out a quiet exclamation. "That full-length portrait! Isn't that the one hanging on the first floor?"
Du Sha wore exactly the same clothes in the photograph as she did in the portrait. She stood serenely beside her full-length portrait with a faintly shy smile.
"Why would the Mistress hang a portrait of her older sister on the wall?"
Li Xian shook his head and turned to the next page.
It showed Dolly, dressed in blue, posing beside her own full-length portrait.
"Looks like they each had a full-length portrait painted."
As Li Xian spoke, he turned the photograph over and discovered that the message this time had been divided between the two photographs. He put them together and found that the writing took the form of a letter:
"To Du Sha and Dolly:"
"Today is your eighteenth birthday. I know you've been inseparable since you were little. Even when I wanted to photograph just one of you, the other would always be in the frame. Looking back, every photograph in this album turned out to be of the two of you together. So I deliberately chose the day you came of age to find the best painter in town and have an individual portrait painted for each of you."
"I hope these paintings can symbolize that you have become independent individuals, that you no longer need to depend on each other and can enjoy lives of your own."
"Your mother"
"September 9, 1998"
It was a very familiar date.
The newspaper they had pieced together had given September 9, 1998 as the date when "Ms. Du" had suffered burns in a fire.
Liang Pei quickly reached a conclusion:
"So the sisters each had a portrait painted on their eighteenth birthday, then went their separate ways. The Mistress, Dolly, came out unharmed, but her older sister, Du Sha-the woman you saw last night-was caught in the fire and ended up looking like that?"
[That makes sense, but if that's what happened, why is the Mistress making all these portraits?]
[And why would she lock her own sister inside a painting? Weren't the sisters really close?]
[Something still feels wrong...]
The viewers didn't accept Liang Pei's explanation, but no matter how they thought it over, they couldn't come up with anything more plausible. They continued watching the livestream with their questions unanswered.
Li Xian neither rejected nor agreed with Liang Pei's theory. Instead, he took out the remaining photographs one by one and laid them flat on the bed, studying them closely.
After the fire, their mother hadn't taken another photograph for an entire year.
It wasn't until September 9 the following year that she took a photograph of Dolly in a pale blue dress, making a wish before the candles on a cake.
"Dolly's wish is for her older sister to move past the trauma and regain her spirits."
After that birthday, there were only two solo photographs of Dolly, and she looked melancholy in both, as though grieving for her older sister.
The next photograph was dated September 9, 2000, exactly two years after Du Sha had been caught in the fire.
The photograph showed Dolly only from behind. She held a slice of cake, as though she was taking it to someone.
"Dolly has been caring for her older sister all year. It's been so hard on her. Du Sha actually said she wanted cake without being asked. I hope she can come to terms with things and stop hurting people and smashing things."
Only one photograph remained, dated a month later. Unlike the others, it was extremely blurry, seemingly taken covertly of a figure dressed in blue. The person's face wasn't visible, and she appeared to be holding a paintbrush and painting something.
On the back of this photograph, written in an almost panicked scrawl, were the words:
"No... Something feels wrong, all of it. What am I thinking... It can't be!!!"
Before you continue