My Online Girlfriend Has a Twin Sister

“Hey, Yuan, is something bothering you?”

Wei Zhen threw an arm around Chen Yuan’s neck. He was all smiles, but against the watery moonlight, he saw something glistening on Chen Yuan’s cheek.

He froze.

“How come you’re…”

“Ahem, it’s nothing,” Chen Yuan said, wiping his face and forcing himself to look calm. “Let’s rest a bit, then I’ll take you guys back to school.”

“What’s the rush to go back to school?” Wei Zhen shot a look at their other two buddies, waving them over. They gathered around Chen Yuan. “I noticed you were off earlier. Whatever you’re feeling… just let it out. There are no outsiders here.”

“Is it something with your family?”

“Yuan, why are you crying? Are you upset?” Quan Yafeng asked tentatively.

“I don’t know… I don’t know how to say it. I’ll be fine if I can just be quiet for a bit by myself.”

“Come on, don’t keep things bottled up. You’ll feel better if you talk about it.”

“He doesn’t want to talk, and you’re forcing him. Liu Nan, get lost. Having you try to comfort someone just makes things worse.” Wei Zhen kicked him.

“Alright, alright, I’ll ’get lost,’” Liu Nan said, throwing up his hands. “This damn school is a nightmare. I have to deal with dorm bullying every day. I’m living like a dung beetle’s ball of dung, just getting rolled around all the time.”

“Serves you right!”

“Ahh, what a nice, cool river breeze~” Liu Nan said, turning back with a cheeky grin. “Hey, Wei Zhen, can we talk about something?”

“What?”

“Can you do me a favor?”

“Tell me what it is first, then I’ll think about it.”

“Put on a dress, pretend to be my girlfriend, and make all my dumbass classmates super jealous.”

“You… What the hell are you talking about? Bring up the dress thing again and I’ll fucking kill you.”

The words had barely left his mouth.

Wei Zhen, like a tiger let out of its cage, lunged at Liu Nan, his fist raised to strike. The two of them started circling around Chen Yuan, dodging and weaving.

The more he’d asked for a moment of quiet, the more chaotic the riverbank became.

Liu Nan was even yelling for Quan Yafeng to protect him.

For a moment, Chen Yuan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The waves of emotion were so intense that he looked up at the sky, his eyes welling with tears.

“Stop messing around! Fine, I’ll talk, alright?” he said in despair.

The two who had been fighting immediately stopped, coming to a halt with perfect coordination.

“See? I told you my laugh-therapy works. I tease my little sister like this every day.”

“I think my acting skills were just that good.”

They sat back down on the steps, flanking Chen Yuan on his left and right.

Chen Yuan turned to look at the one on his left, then the one on his right.

He was forced to laugh out of exasperation.

The “therapy” hadn’t worked at all. He was simply being tormented by these two to the point where his head felt like it was about to explode.

Perhaps it was because these feelings were just too much to handle.

Or perhaps Chen Yuan had truly reached the point where he’d suffocate if he didn’t let it all out.

“Listen to me. This might sound a little crazy, and I’m still in the stage of not being able to accept it,” Chen Yuan said, taking a deep breath. “It all started almost a year ago, when I got into an online relationship…”

The streetlight cast a dim, yellow glow.

You could faintly hear the SPLASHING of water against the riverbank, lapping at the stone wall beneath the steps. In the darkness, a layer of mottled foam floated along both sides of the river.

It was a night with a bright moon and few stars.

Chen Yuan recounted his story, from their online relationship to meeting in real life.

From their first breakup to getting back together.

From what he thought was a split personality to his discovery that there was another secret behind it all.

This long and complicated story made his three friends’ eyes gradually go wide as saucers. By the end, their jaws were hanging open.

He spoke for a full half-hour.

After the three friends heard the whole story, the shock in their hearts was something that wouldn’t subside for a long time.

“So that’s it. The truth is, the ’person’ I was dating was actually two people. Twin sisters. The older sister is Jiangg, the teacher we know from Lanjing University. The younger sister is a lively and cute otaku girl. Thinking back, I should’ve realized something was wrong from the beginning of the online relationship. I didn’t even suspect anything when we got back together after the breakup.”

After he finished speaking, Chen Yuan casually picked up a small stone and started skipping it across the river’s surface.

They looked at each other, swallowing hard.

“Hard to process,” Liu Nan said.

“Hard to comment,” Wei Zhen said, his expression complicated.

“Unbelievable!” Quan Yafeng shook his head in horror.

Chen Yuan gave a self-deprecating laugh. As absurd as it was, it was true. He’d been deceived from start to finish.

“No, wait, Yuan, how come you get all the good stuff? Why aren’t there any twins deceiving me!? I’d be willing to be deceived! Please, oh please, grant me a pair of twins.”

“You’re just shameless, aren’t you? You actually want someone to cheat your feelings? To play you for a fool, completely disregarding how you feel? To have your own identity stripped away and still feel smug about it? If this is the truth, have you even considered how Yuan is feeling right now?”

After scolding Liu Nan, Wei Zhen’s face turned ashen a moment later as he said, “Jiangg seemed like such a good person, to do something like this! I despise her from the bottom of my heart!”

“Just because Jiangg is beautiful and outstanding, you’d be willing to be played by her? I think what she did was completely out of line.”

“Look how strong his morals are!”

The guys chattered amongst themselves, debating.

Each of them had a different take on it.

After venting, Chen Yuan did feel a little better. The pain wasn’t as sharp anymore.

“I just want to know… what should I do now?”

He waited expectantly for his friends’ answers.

“What else can you do?! Confront her!”

“Expose them in person!” Quan Yafeng stood up. “You have to expose them to their faces and demand to know why they did it!”

“I support it! Punish them severely!”

Suddenly, the group was riled up.

“But if I don’t catch them in the act, they won’t admit it. They’ll just cry and make a scene to brush the whole thing off. Then it’ll be my word against theirs, with no proof. Maybe I should just break up with them directly,” Chen Yuan said, hesitating.