What?
Bring my girlfriend home?
Meet each other’s families?
I just spaced out for a second—how did you all end up talking about so much?
“Mom, Dad, she and I…” Ji Yueniang wanted to put her masterful persuasion skills to use again, trying to buy more time.
But Ji Hong, standing beside Huang Qingchuan, waved his hand and cut her off. He gave Ji Yueniang a heavy look. “A man does what he says—words spoken are like water poured out.”
All the words Ji Yueniang had prepared got stuck in her throat, and she could only give up, helpless.
It was common knowledge that Ji Yueniang harbored a natural fear toward her stern-faced father. After that little game with Jiang Chi, this fear had only deepened—as if she’d encountered a top predator from the upper echelons of the food chain.
“All right, all right. Come try the egg custard I just steamed.” Huang Qingchuan also knew her second son was innately a little scared of his father. Maybe it was because Ji Hong had worked overtime so much when Ji Yueniang was little, and father and son hadn’t had time to build a proper bond.
As she spoke, Huang Qingchuan brought out four bowls of egg custard from the kitchen. The golden yolk paired with the fresh green spring onions made it all the more appetizing.
Yet when Ji Yueniang saw the bowl of egg custard in front of her, her stomach involuntarily clenched a few times, her expression turning slightly odd.
She suddenly thought of last night’s dream.
The first half of the dream had been normal enough. The main characters were still Jiang Chi and herself. But after the college entrance exam, the dream changed.
Based on the pattern of her previous dreams, after the exam, whether Jiang Chi did well or not, he would always choose Finance as his major. But this time was different. For some unknown reason, in the dream, Jiang Chi chose Biology instead, giving up on Finance for the time being, and even convinced his father.
After they parted ways for university, her double-sided silver coin somehow stopped working. No matter how she flipped it, she remained stuck in “Dominant Lady” mode.
And after losing Jiang Chi, her “external brain,” she didn’t even make it through the last summer break of her senior year. Her true identity was exposed. She simply gave up on college, took the money from her parents, and traveled around the country.
Until she turned 25, when a biotech company sprang up out of nowhere and, with government support, flourished and rose to prominence. By then, she had fully adapted to her female identity—mature, sexy, with the aura of a dominant woman. With money from her father, she had just bought a sports car and was cruising around.
But for some reason, a group of people suddenly intercepted her mid-ride. When she woke up, she found herself tied up in a laboratory.
And from that point on, her usual first-person view in the dream vanished, replaced by Ji Yueniang’s unique third-person perspective.
In her third-person view, a young man in a white lab coat gently cut open her skull, carefully removed her brain, and placed it in a jar of nutrient solution.
Next to that nutrient solution container, two fully-developed, naked bodies soaked inside were on display. One exuded the chilly aura of a dominant lady; the other was full of the pure charm of a young girl.
At that moment, Ji Yueniang finally saw the middle-aged man’s true face—Jiang Chi, at 25 years old. He gazed at the brain soaking in nutrient solution, then looked at the two bodies, fiddling with something in his hand, before giving some orders to his subordinates.
He set the silver coin in his hand onto a complicated machine. After a series of dazzling, incomprehensible operations, the once white and red brain was burned into a charred, roasted mass under the machine’s effect. Then, two brilliantly-colored electric currents were transmitted into the two bodies.
The next moment, the third-person view abruptly shifted to first-person. Ji Yueniang felt as if her consciousness was splitting apart—she could feel her own existence clearly, yet could simultaneously see another “self.”
Two distinct yet identical perspectives merged; both the dominant lady and the young girl fainted, leaving only Jiang Chi in his lab coat, kneeling in excitement and shouting, “It worked!”
The dream ended abruptly there, but the image of her brain, charred by electricity, lingered in Ji Yueniang’s mind, more grotesque than any nightmare she’d ever had before.
All in all, it was just intensely discomforting.
“What is it? Yueniang, don’t you like egg custard?” Seeing Ji Yueniang hadn’t moved her spoon in a long while, Huang Qingchuan asked with concern.
“No… no, that’s not it.” Ji Yueniang snapped out of her thoughts, scooped up a spoonful of egg white, and put it in her mouth. “I was just thinking about the monthly exam that just ended.”
“I saw your results—no improvement,” Ji Hong said flatly, looking at Ji Yueniang. “At school, you need to put your heart into studying. This is your last year of high school. You should focus your mind.”
“Mm, I will, Dad.” Ji Yueniang nodded, lowered her head, and silently ate the egg custard, though in her heart she quietly wondered: why isn’t my dad as caring as he was in my dream?
In that dream, after she decided not to go to college because of her gender swap and chose to travel the country, her mom and older brother both tried to persuade her to at least finish four years of university. Only her dad supported her, gave her a supplementary card, and comforted her, telling her not to do anything rash because of her gender, not to go to extremes, not to cosplay as a teru teru bozu or anything like that.
Of course, no matter her grumbling, Ji Yueniang never truly thought her dad was bad—at most, just a bit too strict.
*****
In the rental apartment.
“So, you’ve gotten yourself into another big mess?”
“Yeah.”
After Ji Yueniang briefly explained that she “needed to bring a girlfriend home,” Jiang Chi stared at the righteous-looking, long-haired dominant lady in front of him and, for some reason, suddenly felt a little tired.
“Jiang Chi, you can do it, can’t you?” The gorgeous woman put on a playful grin and leaned in close to Jiang Chi, wrapping her arms around his. Those two soft mounds pressed against his arm, making his heart flutter.
“Jiang Chi—no, Chi-bao—you helped me get through a tough spot last time. This little case will be nothing for you, right?”
Jiang Chi fell silent. Then, he pulled his arm free, took out the fake ID he’d used before, and started walking toward the door. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?” Ji Yueniang quickly trotted after him.
“The police station, to get you a new ID card. Then you can go home and tell the truth.”
“What?”
The long-haired dominant lady suddenly dropped to her knees, clutching at the young man’s leg, refusing to let go. She started crying and making a scene. “Chi-bao, you can’t just abandon me! I don’t want to change my name or transfer schools yet!”
“Think about our long-standing friends-with-benefits relationship—just help me out one more time! I swear to heaven I’ll keep my mouth shut from now on and never agree to anything on a whim again.”
“Wuwuwu~ If you absolutely refuse, I’ll cosplay as a teru teru bozu right now, using ‘Ji Qingchan’s’ face! Jiang Chi, Chi-bao, my dear boyfriend, La-ge—no, pull your Yueniang, your Qingchan, up for once! Please, I’m begging you!”
Jiang Chi looked at the long-haired dominant lady clinging to his leg, crying and whining, acting spoiled and rolling around, and couldn’t help but twitch his lips.
After the gender swap, Ji Yueniang really was a handful.
“We’ll talk about this later.” Jiang Chi forcibly set Ji Yueniang upright and shook the fake ID in his hand. “Today, I’m taking you for a physical exam. We agreed on this before.”