Chapter 1 — You Raised Me, I'll Care for You When You Grow Old

My twin sister has never believed in men. Keeping it a secret from me, she went behind my back to test the loyalty of my online boyfriend. Upon returning, she drank herself into a stupor:

"He is a truly good man. Do not ever fail him."

That night, Yan Zhou stood outside my door for a very long time, not daring to step inside. I asked him what on earth had happened. He lowered his head and remained silent for an eternity, before finally speaking in a hoarse whisper:

"It is nothing. It is simply that everyone... carries a regret for a love they could never attain."

I pressed him no further. Until late one night, when I accidentally stumbled upon a plea for help online: 【My younger sisters boyfriend is the first love I could never have.】 【Lately, I disguised myself as my sister and secretly met him a few times. Perhaps he realized the truth long ago, yet neither of us ever exposed it.】 【I do not know what to do... if this continues, I will surely lose my mind.】 【Yet I truly cannot bear to stop. I am terrified that if I stop, I will lose even the mere pretense of loving him.】 The attached image showed their hands intertwined on a bed, and around Yan Zhou’s wrist was the heart-shaped bracelet I had given him. As I scrolled past this post, Yan Zhou was still lying right beside me, his arm wrapped tightly around my waist as he slept. I stared at the heart bracelet on his wrist, feeling only a profound and chilling sense of mockery. Yan Zhou and I had met very early on. After dating for two years, I still had not dared to tell my sister. It was only when she accidentally caught sight of my ring that I confessed to having an online relationship. She threw a massive tantrum, insisting on taking my place to test Yan Zhou, claiming it was a trial every man must endure. Yet I never anticipated that the final result of this trial would be my own undoing. My trembling fingers continued to scroll down. 【Because I carry the regret of an unattainable first love, I refuse to believe that any romance in this world can ever reach a true end.】 【When I took my sisters place to test her online boyfriend, I never imagined that he would be him...】 【We spoke at great length that day, and his eyes and his heart held only my younger sister.】 【He took my sister to every single place we had once imagined visiting together. In his leather wallet was a photograph of my sister, framed from the exact same angle as an old picture of mine.】 【He even told me that whenever my sister stained her clothes during her period, he would wash every single one of them by hand.】 【He told me: "Your sister looks very much like you, but she is her and you are you. I can tell the difference."】 【I do not know if he said those words intentionally for me to hear, but hearing them filled my heart with an unbearable ache.】

I gripped my phone tightly, my entire body shivering uncontrollably. That photograph was one my sister had also seen, though back then we merely chalked it up to coincidence. After all, Yan Zhou’s entire world genuinely seemed to revolve around me. Knowing I wished to keep our romance hidden from my sister, he purchased an apartment in the residential complex next to mine, placed the deed in my name, and told me that whenever I wished to see him, he would always be there. On the nights I did not stay with him, he would act like a spoiled child, begging for a secret phone call just so he could fall asleep in peace. The memory that pierced me deepest was from a time I went on a business trip. The elevator malfunctioned, completely cutting off all signal and leaving me stranded and unreachable for two hours. Upon checking the security footage and realizing I was trapped, he refused to wait for the building management, smashing open the elevator doors with his bare hands until they were covered in blood. The moment the doors parted, he lunged forward to pull my trembling form into his embrace, whispering: "Thank God, you are safe." Back then, I had seen how terrified he was, his hands refusing to stop shaking. A love so fierce could surely never be feigned. I stared at every single word of the post, my heart twisting into a knot: 【In truth, I wanted to cut all ties with him completely.】 【Yet that time, while my sister was in the shower, I saw a message he sent to her phone, arranging to meet the very next day.】 【Driven by some perverse impulse, I replied with a single word, yes, and even deleted the chat history.】 【I told myself it would be just this once, allowing myself a single moment of indulgence.】 【The following day, I dressed like my sister and went to meet him. When he saw me, he paused in silence for a few long seconds, his eyes filled with emotions I could not decipher. In those few seconds, I was utterly terrified and tense.】 【In the end, he took my hand and called me by my sisters pet name: Yingying.】 【That was the happiest day I had experienced in years, as though I had been carried back to our past.】

I let out a harsh laugh. I remembered the day she returned, humming a cheerful tune. She had never cared for skincare in her life, yet she had even begun applying facial masks. I had teased her: "Sister, have you fallen in love? You look entirely radiant~" Her expression had instantly chilled as she tossed the mask straight into the trash, her voice dropping several degrees:

"Nonsense, stop letting your imagination run wild. I will never fall in love."

And that very day, Yan Zhou’s chat window had remained eerily quiet. It was even the first time he had failed to reply to my messages instantly. I continued to read further. 【But as you all know, once a person tastes sweetness, a first time inevitably leads to a second...】 【I added him using a secondary account disguised as my sister, and our meetings grew increasingly frequent.】 【That was the first time I made a request, asking him if he might stop calling me Yingying. He agreed without a single question, and from then on, he called me darling.】 【Afterward, every single night he would act spoiled and demand we stay on the phone until we fell asleep.】 【I knew it was wrong, but it seemed I was growing increasingly accustomed to having him in my life. What on earth am I supposed to do now?】 My fingernails dug deep into my palms. For the past two years, no matter how late I worked overtime, he would whine for a phone call. Everything else was negotiable, but on this single matter, I could never win against him. He claimed he missed me terribly and desperately needed that sense of security. Yet lately, Yan Zhou had stopped calling me altogether. When I asked him why, he merely said: "Darling, I know you dislike phone calls. Anything you dislike, I refuse to force upon you." Even though I insisted I did not mind at all, he still refused to call. I had foolishly believed he was simply being deeply considerate of my feelings, never imagining he was spending those hours on the phone with another version of "me." Scrolling down further, the timestamp read twelve oclock last night: 【My sister was working overtime today, so he took me to a concert featuring my favorite singer.】 【At the most soaring crescendo of the lyrics, he suddenly asked: Do you regret it?】 【I thought he had figured out the truth and was so terrified my heart nearly leapt out of my chest.】 【Until he smiled, stroked my hair, and said: "Darling, do you regret not meeting me sooner?"】 【It was only then that I nodded, and he took my hand, asking: "Tonight, do not go back, alright?"】 【I... I agreed.】 【That night, he tormented me for hours, almost as if he were exacting some form of retribution... yet I still wept.】 【My guilt toward my sister grew heavier by the day, yet I simply could not control my heart from wanting to stay by his side. I cannot deceive myself any longer. What on earth am I supposed to do?】

Reading up to this point, I felt as though the air had been entirely squeezed from my lungs. I sat up straight, staring fixedly at Yan Zhou sleeping soundly beside me, feeling a nausea so profound it turned my stomach. For a man to be capable of making two separate women fall deeply in love with him, the problem undeniably lay with the man himself. If anyone claimed he truly could not tell the twins apart, I simply would not believe it. Unable to contain my revulsion any longer, I raised my hand and delivered a fierce, resounding slap across his face. The impact left my palm burning with a sharp, stinging pain.

Yan Zhou jolted awake in a daze, disoriented for several seconds before instinctively reaching out to find me: "Yingying? What is wrong?" His voice was heavy with post-sleep fog and panic. I forced a smile, my voice turning eerily gentle: "A-Yan, did you have a nightmare?" He cupped his cheek, looking wronged: "Perhaps. The dream felt... far too real." I drew in a deep breath, quickly dressed, and spoke in a chilling tone: "There is an early meeting at the company today. I am leaving first." Without waiting for him to ask further questions, I grabbed my bag and walked out. I refused to spend another second in this apartment, and I never wanted to set my eyes on a man named Yan Zhou again.

The moment I arrived at the office, my phone buzzed. A message from my sister appeared, her tone unusually ingratiating: 【Are you working overtime tonight?】 【I am only asking. If you are not, will you come home for dinner? I am stewing a pot of soup for you.】 Seeing all those chilling betrayals detailed in the post had not brought me to tears. But at the exact sight of my sister's message, a burning sting flared at the bridge of my nose, and tears spilled uncontrollably down my cheeks. My twin sister had been born mere seconds before me. Yet because we were both girls, we had been abandoned by our birth parents as infants, later taken in by an old grandmother who collected scrap for a living. After the grandmother passed away from illness, my sister stepped into the role of our matriarch. I still remembered the very first bowl of soup I had ever tasted. It was something my sister had foraged for out in the barren fields, digging up wild herbs, wild yams, and stripping tree bark piece by piece to boil in a single pot. She had tasted every single wild herb herself to test which ones were edible. The ones that would not cause a stomach ache, she cooked for me. The ones that did, she consumed herself. It tasted atrocious. Yet it remained the most filling meal in all my memories. Back then, she was not even seven years old. Clearly, she was the one taking care of me, yet she always used the harshest, most abrasive tone to express her concern:

"This dress is hideous to the point of dying. I would rather freeze to death than wear it, so you can have it."

"This piece of meat tastes so foul only a stray dog would swallow it. Eat it all!"

"Will you stop already? I do not like eating it, and if you keep handing it to me, I am throwing the whole thing away!"

Yet it was also her who, deep in the dead of night while paying respects to our grandmother's small shrine, would whisper to the photograph: "Grandmother, rest assured. I am the elder sister, and I was born to take good care of my younger sister." From that day onward, no matter how bitter or unpalatable her soups tasted, I would always drink every last drop. Yet this time, when she said she wanted to stew soup for me, her true intention was merely to find out whether I was working overtime... so she could take my place on a date. I stared at those words for a long time, my tears splashing against the screen and blooming into tiny wet halos before I finally typed out a single reply: 【Coming.】 Pausing for a moment, I added another sentence: 【Sister, I want to drink the soup you make.】 The instant I hit send, I was suddenly reminded of the final lines of her online post. She had written that her guilt toward her sister grew heavier by the day, yet she could not control herself. It seemed I, too, was entirely out of control. I could not control my urge to hate her, nor could I control my inability to truly hate her. My phone buzzed once more. Her reply came swiftly: 【Alright, then I will let it simmer a little longer, until it is thoroughly tender. Your teeth were never very strong when you were little, and you always loved soft food.】 I crouched down inside the restroom stall, burying my face against my knees, and wept until I could no longer draw breath.

On my commute home that evening, I opened the post once more. A new comment had surged to the top of the thread: 【So, do you regret it?】 【To bear only the identity of the younger sister, watching the way he loves her, must have broken your heart, did it not?】 The IP address was also located in City A. There was no profile picture, resembling a freshly registered account. Yet the background banner of that profile featured a travel landscape photograph I had once taken myself. The author of the post had replied directly beneath his comment: 【Regret... I regret it to the point of going mad. If I could do it all over again, I would never let him go. But ultimately, there are no second chances.】 Beneath it, passing strangers left angry rebukes: 【You knew he had a girlfriend and you still horned in, what on earth is there to regret?】