Her head jerks, and she glances around. “Wait, let me go to my room. I’m in the kitchen,” she mutters under her breath.
She dashes upstairs, heaving slightly as she closes the door behind her.
“Who the hell have you kidnapped?”
I shrug. “No one. I was just asking what you’d do.”
She sighs audibly, shaking her head before settling on her bed. Well, good. I need her seated for the kind of conversation I’m about to have.
“So, in case you ever do decide to kidnap someone in the future, I’ll have no choice but to help you hide them.”
I grin. “And what if I kill someone?”
She narrows her eyes. “I really hope you won’t ever do such a thing. But if you end up doing it… I’ll dig the grave in our farm.”
I bite the corner of my lip. “And what if I tell you I love someone I should not love?”
Her face freezes, horror spreading across her features. “Please. Tell. Me. It’s. Not. Zo.”
“How do you know?”
She shoots up from the bed, running a frantic hand through her hair, pacing like a madwoman, her expression twisting into strange faces before she finally drops back down again.
“I suspected it for a long time, but I was praying it wasn’t true.” She drags her palm down her face. “Have you completely lost your mind? Out of billions of people, you fall in love with your brother? It would’ve been so much better if you’d fallen for Pa’s old butler.” She yanks the phone closer to her face, eyes wide. “Undo your love. This can’t happen.”
Then, as abruptly as a storm, she flings the phone onto her bed. Her voice carries faintly from a distance, ragged with despair. “But… is it even possible to undo love? What have you done?” A groan escapes her before she snatches the phone back up, the screen shaking in her hand. “Does he know?”
I shake my head.
She exhales a long, heavy sigh and falls silent. Her eyes are on me, but her mind is elsewhere, most likely conjuring the worst possible outcomes of this forbidden mess. She’s always been the best at imagining catastrophes.
Finally, she shakes her head, her voice low but sharp. “No. This can’t happen. How will you ever show your face to anyone? And even if you shamelessly manage to, how will Uncle and Aunt show theirs?”
I know this all too well.
She finally focuses on me. “So, this is what’s been tormenting you all this time.”
I nod.
She presses her lips together before giving a solid nod. “Fuck it. We’ll deal with the consequences. Isn’t love always about facing the hard consequences? Just stop drowning yourself in guilt. Your love may not be the ideal, peaceful one, but it’s yours, and I’ll support my sister’s love over anything else. I’ll stand beside you. We’ll share the tomatoes thrown at you.”
I sigh. “I know how wrong I am in loving him, but I can’t help it. It happened so slowly that by the time I realized, I was already at the bottom of the deepest pit. And the worst part is, I don’t even want to climb out.” My eyes blur with tears. “I want to love him more and more, Wen. Even knowing how wrong it is.”
“Stop beating yourself up over it. Have you forgotten our motto? ‘We’ll give our heart to only one person and never take it back.’ This is the kind of love we always dreamed of. So what if you found it in your adopted brother? Okay… it changes the entire dynamic, but that doesn’t make it a sin. Alright, maybe it’s a little sinful… but that doesn’t make it wrong. Fine, it’s wrong, but we can’t do anything about it.”
I let out a soft chuckle at her tangled reasoning. She wants to support me, yet she can’t fully overlook the wrongness in it.
She mumbles to herself for a couple of minutes, setting her phone aside before finally showing me a thumbs up and then her face. “I’ve collected the points to prove your love is not wrong.” She sits straighter, resting her back against the headboard. “First, he’s not related to you by blood. Second, he cares too much for you, so it’s only natural for you to feel something toward him. Third, everyone knows how he looks. Fourth, he’s a genius, so it’s practical to want to have children with him, your kids would be born with his good genes. And my fifth pointseals it, he has a massive female fan following.” She pauses. “What? Don’t make that ugly face. Did you forget? Women are instinctively drawn to men whom many others desire, because it increases the chances of having an attractive son like that man and passing on multiple copies of her genes as well.”
I blink slowly. “No one is going to believe this bullshit.”
“We don’t need anyone to believe it. It’s not for them, it’s for us. Especially you. You need to stop telling yourself that you’re committing some unforgivable crime by loving him.”
I nod. She’s right. I need to pull myself out of this trap of shame and guilt.
“So, what’s the big problem? Surely you didn’t call me just to give me an update.” She narrows her eyes.
I giggle. “I’m not exactly proud of my feelings, so I kept them hidden.” My expression turns serious. “But now I’m in trouble. Today Zoan asked me what’s bothering me, and he was relentless about it. With the level of intelligence he has, it won’t take him long to figure it out. What should I do now?”
